The ‘Ogy’ problem
5th April, 2007Like many of you I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about how best we might use technology to support learning. In particular of late I have returned to the thorny issue of trying to understand the role of technology with respect to theories of learning and wish to make an observation and pose a question as you head off to tuck into your Easter eggs.
I aired my observation at CAL 07, we now face a situation in which the teachers and experts who know more than the learners about the ‘stuff’ we want people to learn may well not know as much as the learners about the technologies that could act as a tools for learning. So there is a real opportunity for reciprocal teaching and learning. Learners need to know how they can use these tools to learn more about a particular subject or skill and teachers and experts need to know enough about these tools to scaffold learners. It’s a collaborative relationship where the more able partner is both the teacher and the learner, but with respect to different expertise.
So, my question is: do we understand enough about this relationship to reap its advantages for learning? For a start, it seems that we need a new ‘ogy’. We have pedagogy, which describes the situation where one person knows more than another and helps them to learn, we have andragogy and with it a focus on the process rather than the content being taught, and we have heutagogy, which brings the concept of self-determined learning. None of these seem to quite fit the bill for the situation we now face, so what would? Some combination of ped/andr/heut agogy, or something new?
Do please let me know your thoughts
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April 6th, 2007 at 1:22 am
Hello Rose – Your posting sent my voracious band of knowledge seekers racing to the resident, though dated, hardbound OED, the 24 Volume version. The word which turned up most was analogy and its cousin, although granted not an ‘ogy’, metaphor.
While it could be argued that the foregoing does not contribute to the quest, the fact that it got my crew thinking, is a point I do not ignore.
My contention is, whatever turns on the quest for knowledge and sustains it beyond the oft analyzed attention span of our young is a valid endeavor. A quick glance at your home port shows you may have a lot more with which to stimulate learners, some far out in the nether reaches of the Highway of Light, yet the blink of an eye away.
April 6th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I think the issue is deeper than that of the relationship between techno-savvy learners and subject-savvy practitioners. I have argued that we need to be aware of the pedagogy / andragogy / heutagogy continuum as a way of developing learners with both the curiosity and skill to take charge of their own, socially useful, learning. Repectively they should develop understandings of knowledge, negotiation and enterprise (creativity?). I taught this way for many years in Lewisham adding technologies into the mix as enabling devices as they came along and I found ways to use them. Students resisted this process at first because it wasn’t familiar, but as a practitioner I found through negotiation, support and trust, over time, that I could empower them to be actors in their own learning.
Maybe the dynamic that Rose talks of that is happening now, will enable a deeper understanding of socially useful learning strategies to develop, but it needs to be about more than just recuperating technology into the learning mix.
April 9th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
When this came up in our meeting the other week I tried to think of the Greek word for “community” – eventually remembering it is of course “polis” so how about “POLIGOGY”? A silly coined word but one that maybe reflects the idea of learning being embedded in a community, whether proximate or diffuse, virtual, whatever.
Mind you, Nigel then responded by observing that the ancient Athenian polis, for all that it espoused democratic principles, was exclusive in certain ways (no women, no slaves, no foreigners)… But that is true of all “communities” and the learner-generated contexts issue must also account for inclusion/exclusion.