Learners in a Changing Learning Landscape

Reference: Learners in a Changing Learning Landscape Reflections from a Dialogue on New Roles and Expectations Series: Lifelong Learning Book Series , Vol. 12 Visser, Jan; Visser-Valfrey, Muriel (Eds.) Springer,
2008, XII, 304 p., Hardcover

There are numerous books about learning and many different points of view about how people learn and what kinds of institutions (if any) work best for students and the public at large. The nuances of learning and the subtle and often challenging issues that surround the learning experience have remained (after hundreds of years of effort) at the centre of policy development for most western governments. Obviously, there are many important questions and concerns that make the debates about how we learn crucial to understand and to consider, not the least of which is that so much public money is invested in learning institutions. Notwithstanding the extent of and devotion to learning, the gap between our understanding of how people learn and why has only widened in recent years. This is perhaps the result of demands upon the educational system to both supply human resources for the benefit of our economic health and to teach with enough breadth to create a good citizenry. The balance that is needed among economic exigencies, creative freedom and critical thought cannot be achieved through simplistic and often linear notions of pedagogy and outcome. It is in this context of intense debate that a new book, entitled, Learners in a Changing Learning Landscape edited by Jan Visser and Muriel Visser-Valfrey is so welcome.

For those of you who are not familiar with Jan Visser and his extraordinary contribution over many years to learners and learning, take a look at the web site of an international organization that he founded and of which he is the President, Learning Development Institute.

The book is divided into fourteen fascinating chapters. The Vissers have brought together writers from many disciplines and the range of articles is very impressive. There is as much emphasis on the philosophy of teaching as there is on the experience of being an on-line learner. There is a superb chapter on the role of games in learning and some profound reflections on some of the basic principles of instruction. However, I will limit this review to the crucial second chapter by Jan Visser because it is such a fine and important piece of research while also being an important call to action for teachers and policy-makers in the educational area.

Visser begins the chapter with what seems like a simple question, what is learning? (12) He uses his own life as a way of reflecting on the informal manner in which we learn. So much of who we become and so much of what we do is the product of processes over which we have very little control. [Over the years,] “I learnt numerous other things, such as overcoming shyness, accepting tragic and irreversible loss, and interacting gently with most of those I meet. None of these were ever taught to me in any formal way or setting. I had to find out for myself, interacting with those whose advice I chose to accept and whose model I sought to emulate.” (13)

Learning is about comprehension and comprehensiveness and in the final analysis without a holistic view and practice, the learning experience loses its intense connection to collaboration and context. Classrooms, lecture halls and conversation are about collaboration, which in its simplest sense means that any exchange depends on the parties involved feeling that they are on a level playing field. And learning does not take place in one place or at one time, but is a continual feature of how humans engage with the world. So, Visser comes up with the following definition of learning: “…the disposition of human beings, and of the social entities to which they pertain, to engage in continuous dialogue with the human, social, biological and physical environment, so as to generate intelligent behavior to interact constructively with change.” (15) Perhaps the most important feature of this definition is the emphasis on change and on the notion of continuous change. Visser connects this to an even higher value centred on complexity that is, on the ability to engage with increasingly complex problems and challenges as one of the foundations of learning. Complexity is opposed to linearity and ambiguity is of greater value than certainty.

This emphasis on complexity continues throughout Visser’s chapter with a distillation of some of Edgar Morin’s ideas on education.

Visser has pulled together something very important here. This entire book becomes an example of what he suggests in his opening chapter. It is not only that learning is complex, but also that in order to understand learning more is needed than the kind of simple progression — linear in its design — that we have put together through the traditional educational system. The challenge is to take all of the elements that make it possible to live a rich and inquisitive life and place them into a context where they can be appreciated. In order to change that context, a new philosophical base has to be built, one that appreciates the transformative relationship between learning and change. A must read.

Table of contents
1. Let the dialogue begin: An introduction.-
2. Constructive interaction with change: Implications for learners and the environment in which they learn.-
3. The learning sciences, technology and designs for educational systems: Some thoughts about change.-
4. Learners in a changing learning landscape: Reflections from an instructional design perspective.-
5. The influence of epistemological beliefs on learners’ perceptions of online learning: Perspectives on three levels.-
6. Getting to know the feral learner.-
7. Postsecondary education in the changing learning and living landscapes.-
8. Online learning in context.-
9. New online learning technologies: New online learner competencies. Really?-
10. Reflections on seeking the ‘invisible’ online learner.-
11. Will games and emerging technologies influence the learning landscape?-
12. What makes good online instruction good? New opportunities and old barriers.-
13. Why basic principles of instruction must be present in the learning landscape, whatever form it takes, for learning to be effective, efficient and engaging.-
14. We question, we reflect, and we question again, therefore we are…: An analysis of the evolving dialogue around the central themes in this book.-

Reflections on Disciplines and Their Role in Universities

This short piece is adapted from a lecture I gave some years ago about the way disciplines, in particular film studies, develop into departments within universities. How do disciplines stay alive and remain current and connected to the social and historical context of which they are a part? How do they grow and how and why do they often stagnate?

Disciplines or areas of study and research are in large measure created and sustained by the institutions within which they are taught. To my mind when I say that, I am presuming that a discipline cannot be taught without also being researched, even if that research consists of no more than just keeping up with the production of others in the field.

Film Studies for example, has always been a hybrid of many different disciplines. This, as we shall see, has had both negative and positive results sometimes leading to an expansion of the discipline, other times leading to a severe contraction. Film is both an object of study and a creative discipline although there is a tendency to separate production from theory.

The construction of a discipline is dependent upon a set of processes which are located in the structure, politics and history of institutions. This may seem obvious, but over time the processes which have produced that history are often lost from view. The struggle through which that history has been forged recedes into the background. There have been many efforts over the last 35 years or so to build the study of film into a coherent and recognizable as well as acceptable discipline. Yet, because institutions drive towards discursive sameness (and this need not be a negative characteristic) as a means of giving disciplines credibility for teaching and research purposes, the often complex and bumpy road which has been followed doesn't appear to be a part of the discipline itself.

In concrete terms it would be unusual for a university film department to offer students a history of its own construction because that might entail rethinking the very purpose of the department itself. Furthermore, questions as to how one discourse, say in film theory, has become more privileged than another, go right to the heart of how a consensus has been built in the first place. Even, for example, the presumption that film history needs to be taught in film departments, suggests a particular theoretical schema, one that needs to be foregrounded and not simply assumed.

The internal cohesion of a discipline is driven by the demands of institutions, demands which are more often than not situated in the very language of the institutions themselves. How do the conditions of knowledge production affect the goals of disciplinary development?

The daily practice of film scholarship is provided with meaning by the community of researchers and teachers who together participate in constituting, creating and maintaining it. That community, however heterogeneous, will inevitably search for, and then fix upon a certain set of primary ideas which it feels 'represent' the discipline (a canon). The creation of a specific and sometimes very powerful discourse to re-enforce the strength of that approach is perhaps unavoidable. What needs to be discussed are the assumptions which have produced that discourse and the politics which have governed the choices that have shaped the discipline.

Sometimes, the environment of universities for example tends to militate against that happening. And so students are faced, as they are in many other disciplines, with an area called film studies which of necessity presents itself as already constituted. Again, this is perhaps unavoidable, but what interests me is what is lost in the process and how institutionalization has created pedagogical and research models to support certain discourses over others.

Cinema Studies has, in a short period of time, achieved what seemed very remote in the early 1970's. There are at present many teachers of cinema and an extraordinary proliferation of film departments at both the university and college level, particularly in North America. The discipline has been fragmented into a variety of specialties with each having an internal cohesion undreamed of during the early period of disciplinary 'construction'.

The heterogeneity of approaches which characterizes the study of film, has a great deal to do with what critical theorists like Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno recognized in the 1930's. Film was then seen as the cutting edge of twentieth century culture, the practical manifestation of all that was wrong and right about the effects of new technologies upon art and audiences. If we were to reconstruct the arguments of that period we would find that the examination of film was heavily affected by debates in psychoanalysis and linguistics, as well as in literary criticism and the arts. Those debates were not seen as an infringement on the already defined territory of film studies, rather, it was if new technologies like film needed those debates and drifted inevitably towards the ideas which those debates initiated and developed.

Ironically, if film represented that sphere, that cross-section of interests which reflected its position as a new technology, it also pointed the way to a re-evaluation of the critical and theoretical enterprise in the arts. Its particular organization of meaning, its effective collapse of signifier and signified, its astonishing naturalization of the difference between the real and representation, all of these characteristics meant that the study of film could not proceed along conventional lines.

It is interesting to note that in each successive phase in the development of film studies, "other" disciplines have been used, as if the difficulty of finding a strategy to analyse film, meant that some kind of master code had to be found elsewhere. But as it turns out, this elsewhere suggests a division between disciplines and other areas which film studies has never been able to sustain. Film as poem, film as novel, film as text, images as sentences, as words, as frames. Film as painting, as music. Film and television, film in opposition to television and so on. I won't even begin to raise all of the comparisons with photography, the presumed interdependence, photographic metaphors, the fact that film as movement, images in movement, have always been seen in the light of images as still, photographic stills.

What we call film studies has never been able to bare its soul, to reveal, beneath of all of the comparisons, precisely that uniqueness which might distinguish it from the interlopers who camouflage it. I would suggest that film studies has been quite fortunate, because that essence just doesn't exist, and both the history of the 'discipline' and the manner in which films produce meaning, points towards the interdisciplinary as the context in which definitions of the field can best be worked out. Problems remain of course because every discipline has its own history, its own set of debates, often, its own language. But this doesn't in any way devalue the process of borrowing, albeit that more care needs to be taken with the use of other disciplines, including a more profound recognition of their boundaries and assumptions.

The Transformation of Culture (2)

In my previous post, I talked about the new world of writing that our culture is experimenting with in which conventional notions of texts, literacy and coherence are being replaced with multiples, many media used as much for experience as expression. Within this world, a camera, or mobile phone becomes a vehicle for writing. It is not enough to say that this means the end of literacy as we know it. It simply means that language is evolving to meet the needs of far more complex expectations around communications. So, the use of a short form like Twitter hints at the importance of the poetic. And the poetic is more connected to Rap music than it is to conventional notions of discursive exchange. In other words, bursts of communications, fragments and sounds combined with images constitute more than just another phase of cultural activity. They are at the heart of something far richer, a phantasmagoria of intersecting modes of communications that in part or in sum lead to connectivity and interaction.

The Poet's Challenge to Learning

Albert Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore's work on education and learning (He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.) is of great significance and is not as well known as it should be in the West. In keeping with the richness and diversity of Tagore's vision, I would like to comment on a superb paper (The Poet's Challenge to Schooling: Creative Freedom for the Human Soul) by Shilpa Jain and others that explores not only Tagore's philosophy but his impact on the essential spirit, if not the soul of what it means to learn and be taught.

I would like to recount an experience, which I had some years ago during a visit to an experimental school in California, and how it affected my own expectations about teaching and learning. I was invited to a Rudolf Steiner School to examine their approach as well as to learn more about how they hoped to change the experience of learners in a positive and constructive fashion. I have many doubts about the underlying religious foundations for Steiner education, but I saw something that really affected me that is closely linked to the spirit of Tagore's perspective on education.

My hosts took me to a small elementary school that had been built at the edge of an agricultural area. Once inside the school, I noticed that the ceilings were quite low and that the furniture was considerably smaller than I had anticipated. One classroom had a very small door built into a larger one and as I looked into the classroom, I noticed that the desks were also smaller than usual. I asked the Director of the school why this was so and she explained that they had decided to tailor the architecture to the size of the children in order to make them more comfortable with the scale of the space. This struck me as an extraordinary idea. Children see the world around them from a very different perspective. Adults can seem like giants even when they are gentle. Scale, perspective and space are crucial components of a child's world, but are often disregarded. In fact, the general architecture of schools is poor and rarely takes students and their experience as a central premise for the design process. These factors are not minor ones for learners. Why would the school system be so unaware of their importance? There are many reasons for this, but perhaps the most important is a lack of synchronicity between the higher purpose of learning and the everyday needs of learners.

This goes to the heart of one of Tagore's concerns, which is the relationship between creativity and freedom. Schools are presently designed to teach students and are not centred on the principles of learning. The lack of a holistic viewpoint of the sort suggested by Tagore is missing. Keep in mind, that my own view of learning is that it is very ephemeral and that for the most part, schools have outlived their usefulness in their present form and need to be completely rethought. This point of view is summarized in the following quote from Jain's piece:

"…the very act of creation is freedom, for it allows human beings to discover their full potential. They have the opportunity to live what is theirs, to make the world of their own selection, and to move it through their own movement." (Page 11 of The Poet's Challenge to Schooling: Creative Freedom for the Human Soul)

In order for creativity to be released and for students to discover their real purpose in learning, they have to have the power to criticize and reflect upon the experiences that they are having. This is much more difficult than it appears. It is part of a double bind. If the students themselves have not learned enough to make their criticism rigourous and well-thought out, then their commentary will fall on deaf ears. On the other hand, if the environment does not facilitate the growth and the development of enough intellectual acuity, the quality of their discourse will be poor. This is not dissimilar to Tagore's commentary on the alienating experience that students have as they struggle with the banality of school and the lack of respect for nature and spirituality in the school system.

From my own perspective as the President of a University of Art and Design, I am most interested in the history of Santiniketan, the ashram that Tagore founded which turned into a school and now is a university. My own experience has taught me that institutions are very far away from understanding their own cultures with enough depth to engage in real change. This may seem like a dramatic statement, but the reality is that even the best of leaders tire out very quickly as they encounter increasingly complex levels of resistance to sometimes urgently needed shifts. The question is, what is it about an educational institution that breeds so much resistance? The answer is not a simple one because there are also numerous institutions in which radical thinking is taking place.

There is something fundamental about schooling that Tagore understood. In order to keep a school going the experience has to be systematized, that is, days have to be ordered and classes scheduled and marks given. Yet, it is precisely structures of this kind, which inhibit the development of open spaces and places for learning. What is unclear about Tagore’s perspective is how to ‘free’ up institutions — how to create enough of a sense of community to sustain open-ended inquiry and freshness of thinking. Tagore looked to nature as an example and in this he is quite close to the thinking of Thoreau and Rousseau. It is unclear how long that openness can be maintained without introducing some expectations both on the part of learners and teachers. In other words, there is a profound romanticism at the core of Tagore’s thinking and practice. It is a romanticism that I support, but for which there is no social, political or cultural consensus.

Even Tagore’s use of art and music mirrors many other experiments from Steiner through to Montessori. Jain’s paper explores all the facets of Tagore’s wonderful effort to build a new way of thinking about the world and about learning, but it fails to address the fundamental issues of institutional culture and institutional change. Given the large number of people are seeking to learn and the incredible investment of time and money into institutions ostensibly devoted to learning, strategies of institutional transformation seem to me to hold the key to future change in education as a whole.

The Importance of Colleges

I began my career as a teacher in a two year college in Montreal. Vanier College was the second English language institution created as part of the CEGEP system in Quebec after Dawson College. (CEGEP means, College of General & Vocational Education or Collège d'enseignement général et professionnel) I consider those early years to have been among the best, at least at the level of learning both for myself and for my students. Recent tragic events at Dawson College have reminded me of the richness of my experiences and the need to understand the importance of the colleges to the educational system in Canada.

Colleges (particularly two-year institutions) are generally looked down upon by universities for reasons that have little to do with their importance, indeed the centrality of colleges to a variety of communities. Here in British Columbia, colleges are crucial to so many communities that I often wonder (perhaps I am being naïve) why they are not celebrated not only for their histories, but for their achievements. College teachers have larger workloads and are not expected to do research, although it is impossible to teach without staying current within your field. Most post-secondary educational systems are characterized by tremendous diversity, in large measure because colleges respond in a more direct way to the needs of their constituents. It is a difficult balancing act — be responsive and yet provide contexts for learning that enhance and enrich not only the lives of learners, but allow them to develop the skills to go to university or into a profession.

I mention all of this because of a wonderful column by T. F. RIGELHOF entitled How we'll heal in the Saturday, September 16, 2006 edition of the Globe and Mail newspaper about the Dawson shootings. Unfortunately, the article is not available on the web. In the piece, Rigelhof celebrates the love that he has for the college and for its students. And for me, this is about the wonder that he feels at the engagement that is required to teach and learn.

In an earlier piece of mine, I wrote the following: "Ignorance is about resistance. It is about the desire to think and act in certain ways, most of which are rooted in a conscious refusal to engage with processes of inner reflection. The problem is that some pedagogical strategies try to anticipate what students need to know, as if teachers have already solved their own contradictory relationship with learning. The result is that teachers create (if not imagine) an ideal student and then make judgements about the students who are unable to attain the standards set by their instructional methods. If there is to be some equality of exchange here, then the teacher has to be learning nearly all of the time. This can then set the stage for some linkage and visibility between the foundational assumptions of the instructor and her own past, as well as her own history of learning. This may then return the teacher to a closer understanding of what it means to be a student."

I still stand by what I said and Rigelhof exemplifies why a strong emphasis on students changes not only their lives, but the lives of those who teach.