[quoting Hughes, 5 Dec 96] I am interested in how we create communities of learners that (1) engage students in "participation frameworks" (brainstorming for example) that provide them with tools they need to delve into problems, (2) how we help learner select goals and persist until attaining a high standard, and (3)how we create value for learning the skills and attitudes learners need to participate in our society. I have not grappled with whether or not these skills and attitudes are locally, nationally, or globally determined. I am not yet at that state.
Creating a community of learners may follow the same set of stages or states as described by M. Scott Peck in Further Along the Road Less Traveled:
Stage 1: Chaos
Stage 2: Rigidity, the letter of the law
Stage 3: Doubting
Stage 4: Communion/community, the spirit of the law
ID and ISD seems to be going through these stages. Just as each individual learner (1) begins in chaos, the learner/designer (2) chooses to create a more rigid boundary to focus attention on the perceived order. As growth occurs, (3) doubt naturally follows. Those who do not doubt do not grow. With further growth, (4) an appreciation for relationships over mechanical rules increases learning and creates community. Stages are linear and consecutive--states are fluid. These tend to be correlated with (1) infancy/early childhood, (2) childhood, (3) adolescence, and (4) adulthood.
And, Stage 4 is simultaneously the peak and also the new beginning.
This has been my own experience. We cannot teach or design what we do not first know. The designer/teacher cannot teach/design beyond what they have not grown through on their own. To be truly learner-centered, instructors must paradoxically concentrate on their growth in order to be effective teachers/designers for others. If they choose not to do so, but remain fixed in one of the previous 3 stages, they tend to fragment the community of learners. Yet, as Peck mentions, people in different stages often do not understand the others. This is the same in any classroom of learners anywhere--in a classroom or online. Stage 1 people are best taught by Stage 2 people, Stage 2 by Stage 3, and Stage 3 people are led to grow by Stage 4 people. That's why we're all useful at some point in time to someone else, though not all to everyone at any one point in time. And, children are great teachers/designers, too.
We learn more from the relationships to the people in each stage as we grow. If we stay stuck in a stage, problems occur. Some choose to stay stuck. Some residing in the same stage, collaborate and try to control the others outside that stage by means of negative remarks. Some refuse to grow. That's beyond the control of a teacher/designer, except for essentially setting an environment of respectful tolerance and human dignity, which gives learners an opportunity to continue to grow out of one stage and into another.
[quoting Hughes, 5 Dec 96] So, I am coming at Charlie's paper looking for anything that might help me formulate my thinking. I am particularly looking for different ways to assess the quality of the learning environment as opposed to the performance of individual students--and I look at this quality as being measured by how successfully students can access and make sense of the scaffolding they receive at any point in the learning process.
From my experience and learning, I have assimilated a general way to assess the learning environment: Look at the lives of teachers/designers. How have they grown? They set the tone.
[quoting Riegeluth's paper] I feel it is important to encourage instructional theories in a wide variety of different areas--not just in the cognitive domain, where we need theories for fostering understanding, building higher-order thinking skills, developing metacognitive skills, designing problem-based and interdisciplinary or thematic learning environments, and tailoring instructional guidance to specific content-area idiosyncrasies, but also in the affective domain, where we need guidance for developing what Daniel Goleman calls "emotional intelligence" and for what Thomas Lickona calls "character education," as well as how to develop attitudes and values and so forth. Instructional theory has been construed much too narrowly in the past.
Before we implement these, we need to work first on ourselves. We cannot teach what we do not first know. How many teachers/designers have the emotional intelligence lacking in so many learners? If we do not have emotional intelligence, how are we able to pass it on?
The problem is not "out there" with the paradigms or the theories or the strategies, but within us. Not until we as individuals change are any external instructional strategies online or in the classroom going to affect ID or recipients of ID. Ritual without reality is meaningless.
[quoting Hughes, 5 Dec 96] I guess I believe that learning occurs within a social context where a "real" person cares about the interests and development of another. Somehow I want to use the technology to let us shift to a very different learning paradigm that support the learning goals Charlie lists above. I think of the give and take between teacher and learner (or peer to peer) as a mutually enriching exchange in which each party to the activity changes and "learns." So, for me, there is also a shift away from thinking of learning as being the transferal of an idea FROM one person or object to another TO a social exchange that results in mutual learning.
Yes, I too have learned more about myself from my students than anywhere else. I listened and changed attitudes, strategies, styles, as needed, not in a chameleon way, but as a process of growth within me. I listened more; I watched more; I reflected on my practice more. There is ancient saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." Likewise, when the teacher/designer is ready, the student will appear. Sometimes that student is one with whom I have great rapport who takes time after class to talk or suggest ideas or strategies; at other times, that student may oppose me strongly and teach me about an area I had resisted changing or had been blind to before that.
[quoting Quinn, 6 Dec 96] I think we can do it by having the intelligence come from the dialogue between learner and facilitator, with the technology providing activities, resources, and communication.
When we, as designers/teachers, choose to grow through our own stages, with or without the technological advances, we will reflect learning/growth through ourselves. Our own lives, our own character--more than any theory, strategy, or activity--will speak volumes as we dialogue with learners regardless of medium.