Should the learning theories that we have been studying and discussing since Education 101 be reexamined in the light of today's society? Clearly, advances in technology have altered the way we go about our day, but have they also changed the way that we think and learn?
The article by Siemens posits that Connectivism is the natural learning theory for use in the digital age. I agree that Connectivism, with its emphasis on the role of social and cultural context would seem to be well-suited for today's world. As society in general, and schools more specifically, embrace trends in technology, social and cultural lines will most likely keep changing. Well-prepared students will have the characteristic of understanding these changes.
I appreciated Siemens' idea that "knowledge is growing exponentially" and his reiteration of Gozales' notion of the "half-life of knowledge." Siemens continues by stating that the acquisition of all the knowledge that we need to act is no longer possible through personal experience and that the vetting of the knowledge that is available to us has become the key to learning. I certainly see that change in my daily pursuits. I see teachers in my school almost incessantly teaching about how to tell a valid source of information from a spurious one. In the article, the author lists the principles of Connectivism. The one that resonated most with me was "Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning." I absolutely agree with that statement. In mathematics, those connections are the key to progress. Students must be able to connect the new concept to the old in order to succeed. Those who try to remember what to do in every situation are doomed to mediocrity at best.
Of course, the article made some statements that gave me pause, especially under the heading of significant trends in learning. One of these trends is that "formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning." To the extent that formal education has ever comprised the majority of our learning, I do not think that that has changed. I do not see students in our school extending themselves outside of their assignments to gain more knowledge than the teacher is asking of them. Another such statement is that "many of the processes previously handled by learning theories (especially in cognitive information processing) can now be off-loaded to, or supported by, technology." The very idea that cognitive information processing can be off-loaded to technology seems absurd to me.
Two of our readings were chapters from The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences. Greeno's chapter on what he refers to as a "situative approach" was dense and made some interesting points, but ultimately did not serve my purpose as, by its own admission "situativity is a general scientific perspective and as such does not say what educational practices should be adopted." My needs are a bit more immediate and so I set that article aside for this discourse.
I enjoyed the second chapter much more. That one, by Scardamalia and Bereiter, on Knowledge Building, made a more immediate connection with my practice. One of the tenets of Knowledge Building is that students should be assessed on idea improvement as opposed to strict concept acquisition. In the example given in the chapter, the students were successful because they improved their understanding of gravity. They still had a way to go to completely understand it, but they added to their knowledge and that is the goal. I like that theory, but do so with a caveat. If the students are curious and the building of knowledge ultimately leads to complete understanding, that sounds great to me. I worry, however, that, when teaching higher level math concepts, students need to acquire skills completely pretty much right away- the ACT is just around the corner. I am not sure if I have time to gradually build their understanding of each topic.
So, the answer to my opening questions is still "I don't know." The internet has certainly changed the landscape of where information can be found and how much there is to find, but I remain unconvinced that what it means to acquire knowledge, and the ways we go about that acquisition of knowledge have undergone a significant metamorphosis.
I really enjoyed reading your post! I agree with you that cognitive processing cannot be completely offloaded. Nevertheless, I would argue that just as we can see smaller with a microscope, or travel faster with a car, tools such as calculators, graphing software and the web help us do things faster with lesser effort than without. So in that respect there is some amount of cognitive offloading.
ReplyDeleteYes, to understand higher level math concepts students cannot simply use strategic thinking skills. They need to be familiar with, and have a deep understanding of the organized body of knowledge in the field. We will explore this further in next week’s reading (Bransford et al.) where we will read about 4 perspectives on learning environments, and I think you will agree with their take on ‘knowledge-centered environments’. I hope our readings over the next few weeks will continue to help you reflect on whether advances in technology have altered the way we think and learn. :)
Bryan, I like that you picked out the Scardamalia and Bereiter text for its focus on improvement as the basis for assessment. I like that idea too, and it's obviously in line with how we often think of students at AIM. The authors give a number of examples to show that progress, rather than a "final state of perfection," is the real indicator of success in the world. So why should education be any different? Your caveat to this idea is of course correct, and I would even simplify it more than your gravity comparison. Say a student begins the year and typically commits 50 spelling mistakes in a 300 word essay, and in June only commits 45 spelling mistakes in a similar essay. That's a 10% improvement and probably qualifies as "knowledge building," but no one would call that good enough, or that the student has become knowledgeable. I guess my point is that there are certain skills that are either known or not, and the progress is meaningless until you reach a certain level of mastery.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with your take on Siemen's comments on technology, though. This was the first thing I read this week, and I really enjoyed it. The idea that technology can support or take over a lot of the cognitive processing resonated with me, because I think we see this everyday in action. I'm thinking of supremely dyslexic students with above average intelligence being weighed down with reading, until they are given a text-to-speech technology. Suddenly the cognitive energy they were expending to interpret written text can instead be applied to the content, which allows them to access more difficult content. And I can only imagine that the technology available to Siemen when he wrote this article in 2004 seems second nature to us now.
I enjoyed your comments, and Betty's and Jessie's comments. As you know I found Siemens article of little value, yet many others in the class have found it of more interest. This resulted in me reading the article from a different perspective. I will admit that I did change my opinion somewhat, I found more that I could not agree with than I could agree with.
ReplyDeleteWe also have a disagreement between Greeno's article and Scardamalia's and Bereiter article. I do agree with the article Knowledge Building in regards that building knowledge until there is an understanding the subject is very important, I enjoyed Greeno's article more. While Knowledge Building is probably more relevant to the here and now, Greeno's article provided more insight on how we need to look at things in the future. Currently, the environment and teaching tools have changed very little. Today, the environment and teaching tools are changing and that will result in new ways that we approach and evaluate learning.
Bryan, I understand your scepticism about student progress occurring rapidly enough in a world that demands competency development at a faster rate tha nwould be fostered in an open learning environment proposed by the Scardamalia and Bereiter article. Hey, inquiry is a great instructional practice if you have 200 years to learn the content. I suspect that a reasonable balance will be reached that provides some structure while also allowing for students to build their own understanding. There is considerable evidence that shows that many misconceptions persist after exposure to traditional instruction. In fact, helping students to "correct" these misconceptions has proven to be a daunting task. Perhaps the development of guided inquiry curricula will allow students to develop well founded fundamental knowledge at an acceptable rate.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of what I wrote in the discussion board about job interviews being mainly about what do you know now (and not as much about what will you tomorrow). While technology may be changing the possibilities of teaching and learning, the measures of success seem to remain the same in society.
DeleteLike you mention Bryan, knowledge building in mathematics would be great if it wasn't for that pesky ACT that's right around the corner. As long as the measures of success and progress in society remain the same for the most part, all of these really great methods of teaching and learning will not be as helpful as they should be.