I’ve been quietly following along with Bill’s documentation of work as he prepares a critique of Connectivism. He happened upon a slogan list for web2/learning2 and has posted what I think is a very important reflection on it. In it is a very usable slogan: I want teachers to become more like activists, not more like academics. I subscribe to this one BIG TIME. In fact, the best teachers that I have met, are the activists. The worst I have met are the academic. Another gross generalisation I know, but that’s the activist in me.
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February 3, 2007 at 11:22 pm
preilly
Hi,
I left this comment on Bill’s site after reading your post. I’d be interested in your thoughts.
“Bill;
While I agree with so much of what you say in this post; I think this is not just a case of revolutionaries fighting hierarchies of power. I believe politics can help rid us of NCLB; but that is only one part of the challenge.
I have worked with many in the hiearchy…superintendents of schools, school principals, regional and state agencies that are doing their best to transform teaching and learning. They are not just talking about it but putting significant resources behind their efforts and they are frustrated at the lack of progress, too.
The great challenge is the cultural shift that has to take place at the point of teaching and learning today…the classroom. Changing the beliefs and behaviors of teachers cannot be successfully mandated from above.
We’re living through a great example of that now in Iraq. We haven’t been able to mandate a functioning democracy no matter how many soldiers we have sent nor how much of our national treasure we have spent.
Changing the belief structures of deeply rooted cultures is both political and to some degree spiritual. I don’t mean spritual in a religous sense but more of an inspirational appeal to the heart. It is a combination of the politics (mind) and spirit (heart) that will begin to shift the culture of schools.
Personally, I haven’t heard the words, the story, or the narrative yet that will awaken the hearts and minds of the hierarchy and the educators in our classrooms to the possibilities of the coming “Golden Age” of learning.
I see the search for the moral clarity of an “I have a dream” speech for the transformation of teaching and learning and the leader(s) to deliver it as an important step forward.
In the meantime, each of us can do more to inspire change in our own environments. ”
pete
February 4, 2007 at 4:33 am
Leigh Blackall
I agree Pete, hence - activists more than academics have their hearts involved. I still think the State and hierarchy can do a hell of a lot more to improve the situation. Democratic censoring instead of.. in your case DOPA, and in the Australian case - centrally controlled filters and black/white lists.
The teacher’s unions should be doing more than simply defending teacher’s income and conditions. They should be equally, if not more active in changing the culture also. In many ways I see (in Australia at least) the Teachers Federation (union) perpetuating the problems of entrenched practices.
And teacher training should/could be having a bigger impact on cultural change as well. Changing their curriculum for a start. Including the works of earlier activists and revolutionaries like Illich and Friere would help instill more of an activist culture in our teaching force. And then offering a kind of alumni to support the activist burn out as the new breed face off against the old.
You’d have to go back through my blog to find many more comments and ideas for changing teacher culture. I agree with you though.
I just hope no one speaker has to be shot dead before change might happen.
February 5, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Bill Kerr
hi leigh,
Words are hard. I don’t think it is a good slogan as a stand alone because it tends to separate theory from practice (bad), while elevating the primacy of practice in the final analysis (good). Theory and practice need to be a connected spiral IMO. But also you do need to separate them sometimes, eg. just reading theory to suss it out. I’ve read a lot of new theory in preparation for the connectivism conference and my presentation would be a poor one without having done that. But then towards the end of my preparation I realised the theory was taking over too much, so I went through and took out the bits that I haven’t yet connected in a real way to practice. It wasn’t that I thought it was bad theory, it was just that I couldn’t bring it alive by reference to my own lived experience, yet.
I think the sentence before the one you like does change the context: “Learning theory is important but I need to restrict what I say here to what I have learnt in a nitty gritty way, my current zone of proximal development. I want teachers to become more like activists, not more like academics.”
Part of me also believes very strongly that teachers need more theory and better theory, perhaps even philosophy.
February 13, 2007 at 9:27 pm
simonfj
I hope you don’t mind if I butt in, but this activist discussion is one after my heart. One of the hardest things, from an instutionalist’s perspective, is thinking outside the square. They’ll have a go at doing something different, but you have to give them a prop which helps them work together without upsetting their ‘belief structures’.
The approach I’ve been flogging (to your digital strategies guys as well Leigh) is that we are trying to encourage global communities and not change (national) institutional practices. TALO’s google group is one example.
So we need to take a very different approach and start thinking along the lines of (in Oz) http://www.groups.edu.au as a place for inter-institutional groups, and by coming up with a directory off this main index, using it as a way for global institutionalized research groups to find one another, at a fixed point in cyberspace. In NZ’s case it would be http://www.groups.ac.nz.
I don’t see that the culture needs to change too much more, but you’ll never change the entrenched culture unless (as I’ve said on TALO’s g.group) you get a bunch of global peers to say, we’re going to start weaving the global groups together. You can start anywhere you want but the obvious spot would be these guys at your end, http://www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz/default____4.aspx and these guys over here. http://www.dcita.gov.au/communications_for_business/funding_programs__and__support/clever_networks
We have to take a philosphic approach and say something like, “we’re watching the change from one way institutional media to two way media built around interactive global groups (or institutional committees)”. And that we don’t measure the degree of interest their communities have in a discussion. i.e we don’t measure readership or page views or demand. Our institutionalists already know that they should. http://www.agimo.gov.au/government/damvam
They just don’t do it. (because they think it’s complicated
At least that’s they arguement that I’m flogging to our friends at edna, and a bunch of other white elephants. We just need to offer a way that similar groups can find one another , connect, and share their learning; at a fixed spot in cyberspace that doesn’t disappear after the funding runs out. Thoughts?
February 13, 2007 at 11:58 pm
leighblackall
Hi Simon, you’re popping up everywhere! I’m flattered. Nice to have you around - keeping me on my toes.
My thoughts? As always my first thought is - do we need to set up an EdNA and the like. Why not just use the tools that are available (like g-groups) and grow grow grow.
A lot of people respond to that with concerns about reliability of services like Google or Yahoo. I hear that - I don’t trust them and their shifting ethics - but I’m not sure that that is any worse than the bureaucratic neurosis of educational administration, crippled by liability and the like.