This was originally posted in Mary's M.Ed. Journal, Tuesday, October 12, 2004.
Several threads have come together for me during e-Fest, and the feral learning model is beginning to take on more definition.
Feral Learning is a phrase coined by Ted Nunan (1996) [see below]. My interpretation of the concept draws on constructivist and transformative learning theory.
Lert's start with an acknowledgement that learning (as opposed to being taught) is a basic, instinctual survival skill.
From before their birth human beings learn more, better and faster than any other species on the face of the planet. This characteristic of the species is cited as the reason why human young take such an absurdly long time to reach sexual maturity. The extra time is available for learning - assimilating information into our disproportionately large brains. The ability to learn, and to mainipulate thoughts, is what we humans have instead of strength or speed or size. An infant (and not only the human infant) learns - assimilates information and uses it to manipulate its environment - or it does not thrive.
This is the natural condition of children up to the age at which we put them into a formal eduation setting. For the next 12 years or more of that child's life, we have traditionally proceeded to alienate them from their own learning process. Pupils are socialised not to enquire for the sake of it, because they want to know, because it's fun finding out - but to channel their learning into the narrow curriculum that someone else has determined they OUGHT TO be interested in. The compliant survive this system - some survive well, and some of them go on to become the next generation of teachers. Those who don't learn (in Marc Prensky's words) to "play school" become alienated and drop out.
We continue to socialise students throughout primary and secondary school and on into undergraduate study, to accept that someone other than themselves is the best arbiter of what they need to learn, what they ought to learn, and what they will learn. Anything they pursue for themselves outside of their formal education curriculum is scorned. They are labelled as "off-task", "un-co-operative", or worse. Of course, those who do reach the giddy heuights of post-graduate study are then expected to be self-motivated, reflective, critical thinkers in spite of the training that has got them to that point.
Feral learning is alive and well. What Wayne Mackintosh referred to as the future that has already happened. For the most part, it does not reside in formal education centres. It lives in early childhood, (the pre-school sector) and in the social interactions and interests of people outside of formal eduacation. Most of all, it rules the internet. This is not, as some have suggested, a problem to be overcome. It is the energy that powers the new pedagogy. Rather than farmers taming the landscape, the educators of the new age must learn to be conservators of the natural world.
Feral learning is
Student-led: Transformative learning, even more than constructivist, describes learning in terms of the contribution it makes to an individual's personal development. A transformative learning experience is one that changes (transforms) the learner's understanding of their world.
The roles of the educator in a feral learning environment are in many respects the same as those described in existing student-centred models of learning: mentor, coach, facilitator, guide, assessor, co-constructor of knowledge. There is a strong overlap here with the roles of a professional counsellor. This is no coincidence. Like constructivism, transformative learning and feral learning, counselling theory and practice is rooted in the writings of theorists such as Jung, Berne and Carl Rogers.
The one role that is no longer appropriate is Dictator of what is relevant. Rather than prescribe curriculum content, the educator's job is to assess how the content selected by the learner may speed them on their learning journey.
Seamless: Because feral learning describes a lifelong process of growth and adaptation it is a seamless process. It is not helpful to base learning models on arbitrary distinctions between how an eight year-old, an eighteen year-old and an eighty year-old learn. It is not the process of learning that changes, but the social context in which those learners are placed. Anyone familiar with the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum, Te Whariki, will know that it is based on an acknowledgement that young children are critical, self-directed, reflective learners. If we as educators provide a learning environment throughout their later years that enables students to retain those characteristics, there is no need to create pedagogical models of how we learn when ownership of our own learning is alienatd from us. The infant can mature incrementally into a critical, reflective, self-motivated post-grad student.
A-curricular: Feral learning is a-curricular in that all learning is acknowledged as valid. In a formal education context, the only vestige of curriculum that is required in a feral learning pedagogy is an assessment framework. How or where a learner acquires their learning (the content) is not the point. The point is whether they have done it. Again, this is simply an extension of existing pedagogical principles. A primary school student's integrated studies project on a topic of their choice is a feral learning strategy. A secondary or tertiary student referencing texts or theories not presented in the learning material presented to them, or drawing an analogy from a different curriculum area because it makes sense to them, is using a feral learning strategy. As these discussions clearly indicate, feral learning can, in fact, cope with some level of prescribed curricula, so long as they are a means to the learning experience rather than the end point of it.
Sandy Britain's discussion from yesterday of the different approaches to managing complexity - attenuation (filtering information/stimuli from the environment down to a level that you can comfortably deal with - as a 'discipline' or 'course', for example) or amplification (disseminating thoughts or ideas out into the environment as a blog or discussion, for example) blends into it along the way, as does the concept of "learning nuggets" from Elizabeth Valentine's presentation on m-learning.
There, though, I have to stop for now or I shall never drag myself out of gbed in the morning.
Nunan, T. Flexible Delivery - What is it and Why a part of current educational debate? Paper presented at the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia Annual Conference Different Approaches: Theory and Practice in Higher Education Perth, Western Australia, 8-12 July, 1996.
Feral Learning is a phrase coined by Ted Nunan (1996) [see below]. My interpretation of the concept draws on constructivist and transformative learning theory.
Lert's start with an acknowledgement that learning (as opposed to being taught) is a basic, instinctual survival skill.
From before their birth human beings learn more, better and faster than any other species on the face of the planet. This characteristic of the species is cited as the reason why human young take such an absurdly long time to reach sexual maturity. The extra time is available for learning - assimilating information into our disproportionately large brains. The ability to learn, and to mainipulate thoughts, is what we humans have instead of strength or speed or size. An infant (and not only the human infant) learns - assimilates information and uses it to manipulate its environment - or it does not thrive.
This is the natural condition of children up to the age at which we put them into a formal eduation setting. For the next 12 years or more of that child's life, we have traditionally proceeded to alienate them from their own learning process. Pupils are socialised not to enquire for the sake of it, because they want to know, because it's fun finding out - but to channel their learning into the narrow curriculum that someone else has determined they OUGHT TO be interested in. The compliant survive this system - some survive well, and some of them go on to become the next generation of teachers. Those who don't learn (in Marc Prensky's words) to "play school" become alienated and drop out.
We continue to socialise students throughout primary and secondary school and on into undergraduate study, to accept that someone other than themselves is the best arbiter of what they need to learn, what they ought to learn, and what they will learn. Anything they pursue for themselves outside of their formal education curriculum is scorned. They are labelled as "off-task", "un-co-operative", or worse. Of course, those who do reach the giddy heuights of post-graduate study are then expected to be self-motivated, reflective, critical thinkers in spite of the training that has got them to that point.
Feral learning is alive and well. What Wayne Mackintosh referred to as the future that has already happened. For the most part, it does not reside in formal education centres. It lives in early childhood, (the pre-school sector) and in the social interactions and interests of people outside of formal eduacation. Most of all, it rules the internet. This is not, as some have suggested, a problem to be overcome. It is the energy that powers the new pedagogy. Rather than farmers taming the landscape, the educators of the new age must learn to be conservators of the natural world.
Feral learning is
- holistic
- student-led
- seamless
- a-curricular.
Student-led: Transformative learning, even more than constructivist, describes learning in terms of the contribution it makes to an individual's personal development. A transformative learning experience is one that changes (transforms) the learner's understanding of their world.
The roles of the educator in a feral learning environment are in many respects the same as those described in existing student-centred models of learning: mentor, coach, facilitator, guide, assessor, co-constructor of knowledge. There is a strong overlap here with the roles of a professional counsellor. This is no coincidence. Like constructivism, transformative learning and feral learning, counselling theory and practice is rooted in the writings of theorists such as Jung, Berne and Carl Rogers.
The one role that is no longer appropriate is Dictator of what is relevant. Rather than prescribe curriculum content, the educator's job is to assess how the content selected by the learner may speed them on their learning journey.
Seamless: Because feral learning describes a lifelong process of growth and adaptation it is a seamless process. It is not helpful to base learning models on arbitrary distinctions between how an eight year-old, an eighteen year-old and an eighty year-old learn. It is not the process of learning that changes, but the social context in which those learners are placed. Anyone familiar with the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum, Te Whariki, will know that it is based on an acknowledgement that young children are critical, self-directed, reflective learners. If we as educators provide a learning environment throughout their later years that enables students to retain those characteristics, there is no need to create pedagogical models of how we learn when ownership of our own learning is alienatd from us. The infant can mature incrementally into a critical, reflective, self-motivated post-grad student.
A-curricular: Feral learning is a-curricular in that all learning is acknowledged as valid. In a formal education context, the only vestige of curriculum that is required in a feral learning pedagogy is an assessment framework. How or where a learner acquires their learning (the content) is not the point. The point is whether they have done it. Again, this is simply an extension of existing pedagogical principles. A primary school student's integrated studies project on a topic of their choice is a feral learning strategy. A secondary or tertiary student referencing texts or theories not presented in the learning material presented to them, or drawing an analogy from a different curriculum area because it makes sense to them, is using a feral learning strategy. As these discussions clearly indicate, feral learning can, in fact, cope with some level of prescribed curricula, so long as they are a means to the learning experience rather than the end point of it.
Sandy Britain's discussion from yesterday of the different approaches to managing complexity - attenuation (filtering information/stimuli from the environment down to a level that you can comfortably deal with - as a 'discipline' or 'course', for example) or amplification (disseminating thoughts or ideas out into the environment as a blog or discussion, for example) blends into it along the way, as does the concept of "learning nuggets" from Elizabeth Valentine's presentation on m-learning.
There, though, I have to stop for now or I shall never drag myself out of gbed in the morning.
Nunan, T. Flexible Delivery - What is it and Why a part of current educational debate? Paper presented at the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia Annual Conference Different Approaches: Theory and Practice in Higher Education Perth, Western Australia, 8-12 July, 1996.
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