Evolutionary tinkering in revolutionary times. “AMERICA’s university-based teacher preparation programs,” declared US secretary of education Arne Duncan in a much-quoted remark, “need revolutionary change — not evolutionary tinkering.”
We could use a revolution here too. In fact, we know what it could look like as well as knowing that it’s needed. But it seems almost certain that we’re not going to get it. The need is almost scandalously obvious. When new teachers are asked to rate their pre-service course, about a fifth say that it was not much help in learning how to “develop a unit of work,” a third report that it didn’t help them “work effectively with other teachers,” around four-in-ten don’t feel helped in “knowing how to engage students in learning” or in “handling a range of classroom management situations,” and two-thirds or more say the same about “teaching literacy,” “understanding and catering to student differences” and “working with students from different cultural backgrounds.”
Principals agree with them. Credit for Massive Open Online Courses. The double bind of open education #edcmooc. For week two of the eLearning and Digital Culture MOOC, one of the assignments is watching Gardner Campbell speak at Open Ed 12 from last October.
Here's the video: One of Gardner's key points of reference is Gregory Bateson, specifically Ecologies of the Mind. Having been up and down the cybernetics business, Bateson is familiar to me from that angle, but my first encounter was through Deleuze and Guattari, right at the start of A Thousand Plateaus, where they write: "A plateau is always in the middle, not at the beginning or the end.
A rhizome is made of plateaus. Gregory Bateson uses the word "plateau" to designate something very special: a continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities whose development avoids any orientation toward a culmination point or external end. " This is perhaps not so far off from what Gardner is seeking in his use of Bateson: open education as a "continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities. " Episode 103: Founder of 'UnCollege' Describes His Alternative to Campus - Tech Therapy.
Dale J.
Stephens, who was home-schooled as a kid, argues that people can direct their own college-level learning without ever setting foot on a traditional campus. Now he is faced with spelling out what his alternative might look like—including running an admissions process and establishing a $12,000 “gap year” that teaches students how to teach themselves. Mr. Stephens explains his vision to the Tech Therapy team, who ask how he plans to avoid the trappings of institutions that he criticizes. Links discussed in this episode: UnCollege | Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will Each month The Chronicle’s Tech Therapy podcast offers analysis of and advice on what the latest gadgets and buzzwords mean for professors, administrators, and students.
Return to Top. TEDx Warwick.
Storify · Don't get lost in the noise. Discover the voices worth sharing. From the E-learning and Digital Cultures MOOC.