Reflection: How did I get here?

My mother was a secondary teacher, so one of the things I always promised myself growing up was that I'd never be one myself... which is a shame, because I L-O-V-E teaching, I just couldn't stand be a school teacher (!) I love learning new stuff, finding things out I didn't know before, testing my understanding and my thoughts against what other people know, and I love helping other people to discover the thrill of doing that.

Somehow though, that's not what school-teaching is all about. ECE, postgrad, workplace, anywhere else is fine - but schools and undergraduate university study are generally not. *sigh.*

When I left university with an Honours degree in economics I had had enough of formal study & promised myself I wouldn't ever go back. (It was a mediocre degree, university didn't engage or challenge me any more than school had. I've always regarded it as a double major - in Economics and Nightclubbing. As a consequence, the result didn't do me or the university in question much credit really. )

The thing that drove me back to education was having kids. In New Zealand we have a wonderful co-operative Early Childhood organisation called Playcentre (one word) where parents train to work as ECE 'teachers' learning child development, observation skills the ECE curriculum etc alongside their children. You get a very different perspective learning ECE pedagogy to support your own child and your friends' and neighbours' children from what you might otherwise. It can't help but be learner-centred. (Besides which, working in ECE settings is like herding cats - first of all you have to figure out where they want to go, then you work with that.... otherwise you're sunk!)

Once my kids had both gone to school I worked for about 5 years doing project management of course materials in a distance education institution, and as part of my PD there I began studying online in the University of Southern Queensland's M.Ed programme.

Postgrad rocks! You're allowed to have an opinion again - and to question and challenge and THINK FOR YOURSELF! I don't think it was just that I had learned by then to work to my own satisfaction, rather than anyone else's (although that was part of it), a big part of it I am sure was a difference in attitude on the part of the course leaders from what I had experienced in formal education anywhere before.  I loved it! Haven't finished my M.Ed yet, but I will (one day)...

The feral learning idea grew out of an assignment I did for a paper in Instructional Design. I once heard Marc Prensky quote his game designers as saying "You give an idea to an instructional designer and they'll suck all the fun out of it..." Frankly, I think they have a point - and not just instructional designers, professional educators across the board tend to fall into the same trap. And you know, none of those andragogy, pedagog or other-gogies actually describe how I learn, although Jack Mezirow's transformative learning is close (although he doesn't understand kids), and so is Linda Silverman's visual-spatial model. Why on earth not?

I was very fortunate to find myself participating in a group at CABWEB with Jan Visser of the Learning Development Institute (LDI), who was editing a book, "Learners in a Changing Learning Environment". Jan invited me to submit a chapter on feral learning (which I'd been holding forth on at some length) - so the ideas got formalised and incorporated into the book... which I'm very proud of.

So here I am... in a bit of a hiatus at the moment because Real Life has taken over again for a while - and developing my own PLN through interesting sites like Change the Schools,  Edutopia,  AERO,  Shifting Thinking and the like.

I wonder what's around the next corner?

From the archive: Transformative learning (2)

Transformative Learning

This was originally posted in Mary's M.Ed. Journal, Friday, September 10, 2004 as part of a larger post, Discussion: Design & development phase

 Transformative learning is based on humanist principles and is in many ways an extension of the constructivist framework. With roots in the work of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow about self-direction and self- actualisation, it spans the fields of education and counselling. The critical difference is that transformative learning not only perceives the learner (client) as being at the centre of the process, it also explicitly frames the learning process as an aspect of the lifelong process of personal growth and development. The learner learns because they have a natural inclination and an intrinsic motivation to do so. It is a natural part of the human condition.

According to Hiemstra and Brockett (1994),

Humanism generally is associated with beliefs about freedom and autonomy and notions that "human beings are capable of making significant personal choices within the constraints imposed by heredity, personal history, and environment" (Elias & Merriam, 1980, p. 118). Humanist principles stress the importance of the individual and specific human needs. Among the major assumptions underlying humanism are the following: (a) human nature is inherently good; (b) individuals are free and autonomous, thus they are capable of making major personal choices; (c) human potential for growth and development is virtually unlimited; (d) self-concept plays an important role in growth and development; (e) individuals have an urge toward self-actualization; (f) reality is defined by each person; and (g) individuals have responsibility to both themselves and to others (Elias & Merriam, 1980).

From the archive: Transformative learning (1)

This is a post from my original Mary's M.Ed. Journal blog which I've since discontinued. Much of that blog is specifically related to my study at USQ, however some of the posts contain thoughts, links, and insights that are key to ideas I'm developing here. Rather than flick between the two, I've decided to re-post teh relevant ones here.

Shirley put me onto the concept of transformative learning in her feedback on my project proposal. Bloody brilliant!

Here's one take on it from the Wikipedia link above [accessed 2Sept04] that sums it up quite well:

Perhaps one of the best definitions of transformative learning was put forward by O'Sullivan (2003):
"Transformative learning involves experiencing a deep,structural shift in the basic premises of thought, feelings, and actions. It is a shift of consciousness that dramatically and irreversibly alters our way of being in the world. Such a shift involves our understanding of ourselves and our self-locations; our relationships with other humans and with the natural world; our understanding of relations of power in interlocking structures of class, race and gender; our body awarenesses, our visions of alternative approaches to living; and our sense of possibilities for social justice and peace and personal joy." [My emphasis.]

Great stuff, eh?

In other words, transformative learning gives us a model of learning as personal growth - which is what I believe true learning always is. So, what I want to know now is:

- WHY IS THIS ALWAYS REFERENCED TO ADULT EDUCATION?

Isn't this the very essence of childhood and adolescence - to learn in ways that transform us from child to the adult we choose to be?

Two answers come to mind, and both of them quite cynical.

1 - Preserving academic power structures.
Academia takes itself quite seriously. And, in the world of academia, it's academics who define what's worth knowing and doing. And, not surprisingly, academics historically have tended to be older, male, use reductionist frameworks, and fit the definition of 'specialists' as those who know more and more about less and less, until finally they know everything about nothing.
(As opposed to 'generalists' who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything.)

In other words, what's worth knowing is defined in terms of what those at the top of the heap think they already know. And because of the way academia has evolved, what those at the top of the heap think they already know is defined in terms of domain, discipline, reductionism, and precedent. (All of which is perfectly valid as far as it goes, but still only one way of knowing.)

And what people like this know best is people like them. Older. Who learn the way they learned. Because that's how the system is set up, so to succeed in it you have to work the way it works. What people like this know least is - children.

So, the most important and relevant models are models of how successful academics have been taught. The least important and relevant models are the ones that deal with how children and young people grow and assimilate learning to become useful functioning adults.

Pardon?

2 - Preserving adult power structures.
In our society - in New Zealand anyway, formal education is defined in terms of teaching activity, not learning activity. When we think of the "education" of children and young people it is as something that is imposed on them, compulsorily, for 30 hours a week, whether they like it (or value it, or benefit from it) or not.

Now, before you start with the hate mail, let me hasten to say that this is my perception of the social and institutional aspect of our "education" system, not necessarily of individual teachers within it. There are some schools, some teachers, and some students, who do very well at creating meaning and transforming students' lives, in spite of the way the system is set up. But the structure and financing of formal "education" in New Zealand is institutionalised and collective - about the greatest good for the greatest number, NOT, as the rhetoric would suggest, about individual achievement of potential, about identifying and meeting individual needs, about nurturing the individual, about achieving personal growth.

The exception is the early childhood sector, (which isn't really regarded as "formal" education anyway) where the curriculum document, Te Whariki is framed in terms of the value and transformative effect of the curriculum on the learner. As the introduction to the curriculum explains,

This curriculum ...is about the individual child. Its starting point is the learner and the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that the child brings to their experiences. ...
Each community to which a child belongs, whether it is a family home or an early childhood setting outside the home, provides opportunities for new learning to
be fostered: for children to reflect on alternative ways of doing things; make connections across time and place; establish different kinds of relationship;
and encounter different points of view. These experiences enrich children’s lives and provide them with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to tackle
new challenges. ...
The learning environment in the early childhood years is different from that in the school sector. ...This curriculum emphasises the critical role of socially and culturally mediated learning and of reciprocal and responsive relationships for children with people, places, and things. Children learn through collaboration with adults and peers, through guided participation and observation of others, as well as through individual exploration and reflection.

Te Whariki, page 9

Gosh, it makes them sound almost human!

Then they enter the school sector, and we spend the next decade or so training them out of the responsibility for their own learning and way of being. The emphasis changes, from who they are and who they can be, to what they know, and whether they can prove it.

Children and young people intrinsically have all the qualities required for genuine, reflective, transfoirmative, constructive learning. We just train it out of them until they get to graduate level. And then we wonder why they're not mature enough learners to take responsibility for themselves and their own learning. How ironic! It's our socialisation that erodes these qualities in children as they grow up, not any intrinsic lack of them. So, if you want to understand the essential nature of learning and teaching, take a look at early childhood.

And for God's sake, let's put an end to this patronising nonsense about old and young learners being different - it's not the learners that are different, it's how we treat them. 

Thursday, September 02, 2004

Why being an agent of change isn't easy (or common)

I've had a couple of interesting conversations recently about the difficulty of getting people (and by extension, their organisations) to deal with the fundamental issues and ideas that underpin their day to day activities.

So often, when I try to have a conversation at that level it's dismissed as pedantry or triviality.

It's all very frustrating, but on reflection it's absolutely predictable in terms of transformative learning processes.

At the core of Transformative Learning Theory, is the process of "Perspective Transformation." Clark (1991), identifies three dimensions to a perspective transformation: psychological (changes in understanding of the self), convictional (revision of belief systems), and behavioral (changes in lifestyle) (in Mezirow, 2000).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_learning  [accessed 10 April 2010]

The energy and maturity of approach required to reflect critically on your own frame of reference (perspective) is significant. It requires a capacity to enter, more or less at will, that space where all things are simultaneously possible - where cognitive dissonance prevails; Schrodinger's cat can be simultaneously alive and dead. This is the land of the White Queen,who could believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. It's also described as the "neutral zone" of transition; and the bottom of Scharmer's U of profound change:

...we move down one side of the U (connecting us to the world that is outside of our institutional bubble) to the bottom of the U (connecting us to the world that emerges from within) and up the other side of the U (bringing forth the new into the world). On that journey, at the bottom of the U, lies an inner gate that requires us to drop everything that isn't essential. This process of letting-go (of our old ego and self) and letting-come (our highest future possibility: our Self) establishes a subtle connection to a deeper source of knowing.

http://www.presencing.com/presencing-theoryu/summaries.shtml [accessed 10 April 2010]

The U metaphor illustrates why this process takes so much mental energy: in order to enter that 'neutral' space where real ("profound") change  - i.e. a perspective transformation - is possible, it is necessary to abandon all forward momentum. In order to exit from it, it is necessary to create a new direction and movement from scratch. As anyone with even a passing understanding of basic physics knows, both of these processes absorb energy. Think for a moment of how much fuel is required to stop a tanker on the ocean, or turn it. It's not just a matter of not accelerating, engine power is needed to brake, or to push in the new direction. The same is true with our movement through life.

None of which is going to make it any less frustrating for an agent of change, an innovator or an early adopter dealing with people who are not able to do this; but perhaps it may make it easier to accept that it's just how it is. Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation theory where those terms come from, suggests that 1 person in 40 (2.5% of the population) is an 'innovator' and about 1 in 8 (13.5% of the population) is an early adopter (also known as opinion leaders or lighthouse customers).

All of which ties in quite neatly with this article in CLO Magazine about Ambiguity Leadership and the art of mastering uncertainty.

Thinking about change: Becoming a more fully functioning person

The "thinking tools" Jennifer Garvey-Berger introduced us to at the Shifting Thinking conference were familiar in some respects, but different enough to offer some new and interesting ways of looking at the process of learning as transformative change  (Mezirow, Senge).

Anyone who starts their presentation with some great poets and philosophers is on the right track for me.  Jennifer used a Rilke quote to kick off her first presentation.  I didn't make a note of it but I'm hoping it will be up on the conference website soon because it seemed to capture the spirit of transformative learning and learning as personal growth (Rogers). I'm sure I've dealt with that in other posts in my other blog but I can't for the moment find it - harrumph. However, the idea is captured in this quote from The Good Life and the Fully Functioning Person (1953) which you can find quoted online here.

The good life is a process, not a state of being.
It is a direction not a destination.
The direction which constitutes the good life is that which is selected by the total organism, when there is psychological freedom to move in any direction.
This organismically selected direction seems to have certain discernible qualities which appear to be the same in a wide variety of unique individuals.
The good life, from the point of view of my experience, is the process of movement in a direction which the human organism selects when it is inwardly free to move in any direction, and the general qualities of this selected direction appear to have a certain universality. ....

Rogers identifies the characteristics of this process as  

1. An increasing Openness to Experience ...a movement away from the pole of defensiveness toward the pole of openness to experience. The individual is becoming more able to listen to himself, to experience what is going on within himself. He is more open to his feelings
2. Increasingly Existential Living ...an increasingly tendency to live fully in each moment. ...the self and personality emerge from experience rather than experience being translated or twisted to fit pre-conceived self-structure... [so that]... one becomes a participant in and an observer of the ongoing process of organismic experience, rather than being in control of it.
3. An increasing trust in his Organism ...as a means of arriving at the most satisfying behavior in each existential situation. 

His conclusion is that "It appears that the person who is psychologically free moves in the direction of becoming a more fully functioning person." That, I believe is the touchstone for effective pedagogy (and in fact all successful human relationships) - to conduct ourselves ina a way that contributes to the other party (in this case the learner, and since teaching is transactional, ourselves as well) becoming a more fully functioning person. 


This is in fact closely echoed by the National Education Goals (NEGs) that govern New Zealand's education system, which specify

Goal 1: The highest standards of achievement, through programmes which enable all students to realise their full potential as individuals, and to develop the values needed to become full members of New Zealand's society.