Just back from Vienna, and the ECER 2009 Education research conference. While I am ready to take on a mess that is my desk and office, first I want to reflect on a few personal lessons I took from this trip before I get started. The special interest group that I attended at the conference was one based on innovation and intercultural education. That translated to spending three days with people from all over Europe who were interested not only in their education practice, but also in how that practice and their experiences relate to those in other people's cultures.
The last session of the conference was guided by younger researchers who are exploring the way people interact with space. They did that by taking us out of our comfort zones. Shown in the picture above, they set up a space made of boxes, string, and posters and, as participants, we started our work with them by moving through this space. The presentation after theirs was a discussion led by an older educator about overcoming the challenges of cultural prejudice. At first glance, you could not have thought of two sets of presenters that have less to do with each other.
Today I'm working with the ideas of Gordon Dryden and his system through which we can provoke innovation. He has the process simplified into eleven key steps. Those steps are: 1) starting with your passion, 2) turning your passion into a specific dream, 3) simplifying that dream into a clear mission, 4) producing something a new product and 5) developing a new type of service that supports that product. The next steps take it the innovation process out into the world through 6) embracing it starting a culture by establishing the values that support it. The practical issues are 7) funding its in new and creative ways, 8) managing it with a new business design, and then making it real in the world. This is done in another three steps 9) branding it giving a presentation this useful , 10) reinventing its reframing the city in the country etc. with this new vision in mind and finally 11) networking it globally.
One thing we know for sure when we ask the question: “What do our children need for the world they will inherit?’ is that literacy and numeracy will be on the list. SOUNS (written purposefully without the D because that is the way people hear the word) are big letters and will work in any language that uses the Latin based alphabet. Unlike the abstractions that are letters – these shapes (letters) are to be interpreted as their basic sound – short vowels and hard consonants only. For children 5 months to 3 years they offer
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George Siemens presented this model as part of a discussion on the adoption of technology.
I borrow it for use here as a framework through which we may create meaning in our quest to redesign education.
I think the Isle of Wight participatory team who met last week was indicative of the issues that come with the over use of systematization – so much so that the person and the relationship that might exist become irrelevant to the test results. I was frankly shocked that individuals in the UK are being let go from teaching due to test scores. This implies some people believe in those scores much more than I do – what I believe is that the scores show that schooling is not working, rather than people are not doing a good job. We can’t make students learn, take our tests well, or even care about our systems and that is what I believe they are telling us when the repeatedly do poorly on standardized assessments – they are telling us the schooling is irrelevant to their world.
I see innovation in terms of education regularly cycling through to the chaotic but relationship based education models. Interested? Follow the READ MORE link.
When we discuss technology and the changes it has brought to our lives and our educational systems we invariably end up discussing the tensions that exist between the two. In browsing through Reader the other day I came across this utopian view (one I agree with) and one that speaks to the reasons this project has both community level participatory groups AND the global network that support them.
Paraphrased From http://bgblogging.wordpress.com/2008/09/19/thoughts-as-we-near-the-fall-equinox-the-time-of-between/
This is why I am emphatic that (our networks) have PHYSICAL components, rooted in real communities, to help ease the digital divide, and to help people reap the benefits of the internet and Web practices while also staying connected to our lived-in communities lest they crumble around us while we're glued to our computers and cellphones and iPods. I want to reap the benefits of online open ed and in-person community-based ed. Simultaneously. Together. In tension. Checking and balancing. I envision a place where people from all parts of a community gather to discuss this new world, to explore the benefits and risks of being plugged-in, of connecting across as well as within affinity groups.
Thanks BG - I could not have said it better myself.
Alana
Will you bear with me if I start this conversation about participatory action research (PAR) and the reason(s) it is intermingled throughout the Future(s) of Education project with a story that will seem to bear no relation to education? Trust me, it will circle round at the end and I think will make the point.
I live at the base of a hill, topped with a 600 year old fort. Every morning I walk my dogs around that area as do a dozen or more other people. As is the way of things we first become familiar with each others dogs and sometimes build friendships from there. This is the case with my friend Kate and her Basset Hound, Wellington. This morning I came across Kate frantic... Wellie had run off, as he sometimes does to play with other dogs, but now it had been 30 minutes or more and she was having visions of poor Wellie having fallen off one of the cliffs, floating in the sea. Long story short, we found him as another dog walker had taken him off the hill and was looking for Kate in the parking lot.
The reason I tell this story is because of how frantic Kate was when I first met her, and how having me come along, acknowledge how awful the situation was, go with her to look over the cliffs etc. helped her begin to calm down. Now she wouldn't be completely calm until we found her dog, but it began to become "normal" or "under control" when she had someone else she trusted helping her look, problem solve etc.
Now let me take this back to PAR and why I have used it and proven it successful in helping people address complex adaptive issues that we all are facing (for the rest of the article click the read more link!)
