Thanks for all the comments, suggestions and help on this.....this is what learning in the 21st century looks like :)
Kevin
PS..I still like the first one :)
Kevin Bonnar
Critique: A New Culture of Learning
March 10, 2012
Thomas
and Brown (2011) explained in A New
Culture of Learning that we must change our current system and thinking
from “the stable infrastructure of the twentieth century to a fluid
infrastructure of the twenty-first century” (p. 17). The authors made many
great suggestions on how to make this transition. First, they asserted the need
to switch from an old model of teaching to a new model of learning. Their
second assertion was that technology is fueling a rapid change in the amount
and speed of information being shared in learning environments. The third
assertion was that collectives should be used to foster learning in the 21st
century.
Thomas and Brown (2011),
in arguing that education must let go of an outdated mechanistic view, wrote, “Learning
is treated as a series of steps to be mastered, as if students were being
taught how to operate a machine or even, in some cases, as if the students
themselves were machines being programmed to accomplish tasks” (p. 35). Furthermore,
Thomas and Brown contended that teachers are viewed as the “givers” of
knowledge and students as empty buckets waiting patiently to be filled with
information, thus inhibiting the growth of today’s students (2011, p. 39). The
authors described how our view of schools must change: “If we change the
vocabulary and consider schools as learning environments, however, it makes no
sense to talk about them being broken because environments don’t break” (Thomas
& Brown, 2011, p. 36).
I embrace Thomas
and Brown’s theory of a learning environment that cannot be broken. If educator
and student can learn together, then it is harder for any one entity to be held
responsible for learning or for blame to be placed when goals are not achieved.
Instead, the two are intertwined, learning side by side, with each benefiting
from the relationship. The struggle going forward will be the need for educators
to reevaluate traditional learning models and learn to provide more
opportunities for collaboration and change. Douglas Thomas experienced this
when he taught a course at the University of California in 2004. Although initially
feeling that he had “lost control” of his learning environment, Thomas instead learned
from his students:
They, however, had
taught him a great deal about what the new culture of learning might look like
and how powerful it can be when students see each other as resources and figure
out how to learn from one another. (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 25)
Thomas
and Brown’s (2011) second assertion was that technology is changing the way
learners can acquire new information. Tom, an example from the book, had been
diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes. He was frustrated and scared by new
challenges his body presented. He turned to the Internet for information,
advice, and social support. Tom described how connecting technology with traditional
doctor visits helped him learn: “You also learn from other people’s experiences.
You find out what are the right questions to ask your doctor and you can learn
how to tell a good doctor from a bad one” (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 30). In
the past, it would have taken Tom months, if not years, to gather the
information on his own with a traditional approach of reading textbooks to find
answers. Furthermore, the social support that Tom received would have been
restricted by time and geography (Rehm, 1999). With new technologies, Tom
expanded his social network and accessed them when his needs arose.
One
factor for change in the way that we learn is the speed at which technology is
being introduced. The Internet, arguably the most influential piece of current
technology, shows us how fast our culture is being supplemented by technology. From
1997 to 2008, the proportion of homes with Internet access grew from 18% to 73%
(Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 41). The increase in Internet availability is
astonishing when combined with the fact that current broadband Internet capabilities
are up to 100 times faster then the dial-up service that most people used just
10 to 15 years ago (Woodford, 2011, p. 1). The vast amount of information so
speedily available to students is changing everything about learning. Ken
Robinson (2011) discussed the way that many educators are sometimes confused by
21st-century learners: “Many educators suggest that some students
may have ADHD and need to be slowed down in order to fit into the teacher’s self-contained,
limited, and often slow-paced collective.” As an educator, I often try to go
the other way—knock down the walls, open up the world, and match the pace of
learning with each student’s needs. For example, I have provided online forums
for my students to share different aspects of literature they are reading. This
gives them a bigger audience to engage in discussion, as well as freedom to
self-pace their own reading and discussions. Like Tom, my students are using
technology to change the way we learn.
The
author’s final assertion was that collectives should be used to foster learning
for 21st-century learners. Thomas and Brown (2011) define the
collective as “a collection of people, skills, and talent that produces a
result greater then the sum of its parts” (p. 52). I interpret this as a
classic case of power in numbers and using teamwork to reach a goal or answer a
question.
An example of one
such collective was a study group created by Chris Avenir in 2008 at Ryerson
University (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 68). The 146 students in the online
group helped one another solve individual chemistry problems. The university
charged Avenir with 147 counts of academic misconduct; all charges were later
dropped (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 69). That charges were even pressed
against Avenir illustrates how many of the cultural changes in education that
Thomas and Brown discussed are often misinterpreted or challenged. I don’t
think many teachers would argue against student teamwork in learning or in sharing
resources, but students are now also collaborating in different ways. Avenir described
how his group used the online collective:
So we would each
be given chemistry questions and say: “Does anyone get how to do this one? I
didn’t get it right and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.” Exactly what we
would say to each other if we were sitting in the Dungeon. (Thomas & Brown,
2011, p. 70)
I am glad that
Avenir was cleared because I would consider his conviction a huge setback for
education. I often try to find opportunities for students to learn as a
collective. They can learn a lot more by collectively looking at a variety of
problems than by approaching learning all by themselves.
Albert
Einstein once said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity
has its own reason for existence” (Clark, 2011). Questioning is the foundation
of my own ideal culture for 21st-century learning. Tony Wagner (2010)
explained the importance of asking students great questions:
I have consistently
found that the kinds of questions students are asked and the extent to which a
teacher challenges students to explain their thinking or expand their answers
are reliable indicators of the level of intellectual rigor in a class. (p. 53).
Everyone involved must feel safe
asking questions, supported and engaged in finding answers, and—most important—motivated
to never stop finding new ways to chase down new answers. The kicker is that
those answers will have to be questioned in order for this new culture to work and
keep up with new information and new work by collectives.
References
Clark,
R. (2011). Einstein: The life and times. (Electronic ed.). London:
Bloomsbury Publishing. Retrieved from
http://books.google.com/books?id=6IKVA0lY6MAC
Rehm, M. L. (1999). The internet as a
practical problem: Empowerment in the electronic global village. Kappa
Omicron Nu Forum: Technology, 11(1). Retrieved from http://www.kon.org/archives/forum/11-1/rehm.html
Robinson,
K. (Producer). (2011). Our school system is broken! [Web Video].
Retrieved from http://ahrengot.com/opinions/our-school-system-is-broken/
Thomas,
D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new
culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change.
Lexington, KY: CreateSpace.
Wagner,
T. (2010). The global achievement gap: Why even our best schools don't teach
the new survival skills our children need and what we can do about it. New
York, NY: Basic Books.
Woodford,
C. (2011, October 31). How broadband internet works. Explain That Stuff.
Retrieved from http://www.explainthatstuff.com/howbroadbandworks.html
Thank you mom, you are a great editor and therapist. Thank you everyone else for talking me through/down on this one. I know I was pretty worked up for a couple days :)
ReplyDeleteKevin