Module 4 Week 3 discussion

Grainne Conole paper on Learning Design

The five overarching themes on design approaches and methods

In a nutshell, the challenges faced by teachers while designing for learning are:

1. the rapid pace of technological change and range of pedagogical approaches causing confusion in adoption of suitable technologies and pedagogical approaches
2. the increasing size and diversity of the student body
3. the increasing requirement for quality assurance
4. technophobia
5. lack of time to explore the use of technologies resulting in lack of awareness of different possibilities
6. aversion to the risks inherent in experimentation
7.  fear of being supplanted by the computer
8. low levels of dissemination of ICT-based learning projects
9. lack of ICT-based learning examples to model
10. lack of support and training

Priya: "All the four users I interviewed [for her Module 1 project on Cloudworks] believed that learning designs are heavily dependent on the context and so, they cannot be shared or reused much"

Seema: "Learning Design Tool provides a more standardised framework allowing designers to pick the right tools considering range of factors such as level of learning outcome (Knowledge acquisition-understanding-problem solving), level of guidance(high –medium-low), content focus (information-application-evaluation), content application (procedural-interpretive-creative), learner freedom (low-medium-high), learning form (practising-choosing-designing), learner preference (teacher centered - working with peers- learner-centered) and different type of engagements.

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Daniel paper on Social Capital

Michelle: [social capital] has been described as a composite of norms, trust and networks that enable participants to work together effectively to pursue shared goals...Daniel suggests that for virtual learning communities that it is conceptualised as ‘a common social resource that facilitates information exchange, knowledge sharing and knowledge construction through continuous interaction, built on trust and maintained through shared understanding’

Benefits/Drawbacks of Social Capital

Benefits have been identified in terms of traditional communities that include

• Resolving collective problems more easily
• Facilitation of community advancement
• Making interactions more enjoyable
• Facilitation of dissemination of information
• Reducing selfish behaviour
• Encouraging behaviour that is socially acceptable
• Improving educational and health outcomes
• Minimising cost and bureaucracy
• Bridging cultural differences
• Enhancing trust and solidarity

Drawbacks

• If the social capital is high within communities, it may limit inter-community communication as allegiances to one’s group may be negative e.g. criminal organisations.
• They may be so cohesive that they exclude others from entering e.g. nepotism
• Sometimes the reach of social capital is overstated resulting in the inappropriate analysis of the potential benefit/limitations

Virtual Learning Communities vs Distributed Communities of Practice

The future potential role of research using interdisciplinary research approaches to research social capital in online resources is described and a list of 8 future research points is included.

1. Social capital lacks clear definition and consequently, it is difficult to develop concrete measurement scales.
2. Social capital is a complex construct that is a mixture of more primitive variables like trust, reciprocity, cooperation, shared norms and shared understanding. There is lack of a clear, concise and consistent framework for understanding which of the contributing variables are most influential, and how they interact with each other.
3. Studies have shown that social capital emerges from interaction and it depends on the characteristics of individuals and groups. Nonetheless, it is not clear what the key characteristics of individuals and groups might be that can contribute to the development of social capital.
4. Research on social capital mainly assumes that social capital is correlated to positive, pro-social outcomes, but such research ignores the negative ways that social capital may be manifest.
5. Social capital depends on different levels of trusting relationships. However individuals in virtual communities are geographically and culturally distributed and often have different levels of knowledge and skills. Since these individuals span space, time, and cultures, they have little knowledge of others beyond assumptions and stereotypes. A lack of sufficient information about others hinders individuals' abilities to develop trust.
6. Trust primarily develops through interaction in face-to-face encounters. There are limited computational tools that can augment, promote and maintain trust in virtual environments.
7. Social capital has been applied to understand different social issues but there is no work done on the effects of social capital on learning in more traditional environments, technology-based environments or "blended learning" environments.
8. Social capital depends on other variables such as cohesion among individuals, but few studies correlate the influence of cohesion on the overall social capital in a group.

Ayman: I agree that we're somewhere in the middle because virtual learning environments with all the technology available could not bridge the gap (f2f) from the social perspective.  I think that's exactly one of the researchable areas mentioned at the end of the precis.  Research in this area is still not mature enough to compensate for the social effect from face-to-face interactions.  I can prove that by how our own relationships changed dramatically after the first residential and then the second residentail.  We felt so good we asked for a third didn't we?  Technology is so great in automating routine tasks of the learning process, but has it never made it up for how we trust one another just by being over the wire.

Michelle: (from her Module 2 paper) Virtual learning communities are formalised, focus on learning goals, often have a defined and limited lifespan and fixed goals. Distributed communities of practice are commonly associated with higher levels of trust, shared understanding, informal learning goals, a life-span that is determined by the value of the outcomes for members.

Sean:

VLC

• • We begin as individuals with a goal
  • Join the PhD in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning programme
  • Programme has pre-planned and fixed goals
  • Domain specific
  • Individual learning needs
  • Social interaction based on learning needs and/or community requirements and support by VLE.
  • VLC exists in pre-defined VLE

Social capital

Trust, cooperation, shared norms and shared understanding maintain(?) VLC.

Influences participation

F2FCoP

• • Temporal (physical)
  • Required residential
  • Student/faculty adhoc meet ups
  • Lancaster University Faculty & Admin Staff
    • Interactions with students
    • Interactions with other staff members

Social capital

Trust, cooperation, shared norms and shared understanding built in VLC, encouraging further means/needs for interactivity.

Leads to possible formation of new communities.

Feeds back into VLC

DCoP

• • Informal learning goals
  • Life spans determined by value community provides its members
  • Multiple VLEs & F2F meetups
  • Moodle, Mahara, Edumodo, international F2F meetups

Social capital

Trust, cooperation, shared norms and shared understanding built in VLC and F2FCoP, encouraging further means/needs for interactivity.

Leads to possible formation of new communities (i.e. F2FCoP, DCoP).

Feeds back into VLC and F2FCoP

 

Sheila: "I'm thinking very specifically of an online course I taught last year where three or four individuals had much greater social privilege than others in the class (who were more typical of the usual student population of this first-year introduction to literature class). The individuals with greater social privilege were engaging on a much more critical level than the other students, most of whom were still struggling with basic literary analysis. The central characteristic of this online environment became much more critical and competitive than similar courses I've taught in past semesters. And I'll admit that it was a pleasure as an instructor to have students engage at this level, but I did think that it served to alienate many other students in the class who could not contribute at the same level. "Alienate" may be too strong a word, but the gap in that particular class was quite profound.

"Daniel does note, ““Lave and Wenger (1991) and Brown and Duguid (1991; 2000) observed that shared language and codes facilitate individuals' abilities to gain access to people and information, but when individuals do not share language and codes, they can fail to come together…they also warned about the dangers of having well defined community boundaries, which can make it difficult for a community to integrate new members and assimilate new knowledge into the community from other communities (Wenger, 1998).”


Sean: "I am also beginning to see the importance of temporality as just clarified by Don (perceptions and focus on time). Is temporality an issue for individuals in a DCoP or the DCoP itself? I would assume that a DCoP as an entity would have medium- to long-term goals, but does that mean participants in the community need to? If membership is fluid or has a high turnover rate, would there be an impact on the temporality of the DCoP". 

Module 5: Professional Practice. Week 1 - Communities of Practice

Wow, I can't believe it's been six months since I posted anything on here! That needs to change...

 

Wenger, E. (1999) Learning as Social Participation

Wenger states that "the concept of learning immediately conjures up images of classrooms, training sessions, teachers, textbooks, homework and exercises. Yet in our everyday experience, learning is an integral part of everyday life. It is part of our participation in our communities and organisations."

He then clarifies that "the problem is not that we do not know this, but rather that we do not have very systematic ways of talking about this familiar experience... We pay attention to what we expect to see, we hear what we can place in our understanding, and we act according to our world views."

To sum up, Wenger suggests that "perhaps more than learning itself, it is our conception of learning that needs urgent attention when we choose to meddle with it on the scale on which we do today".

Lave, J. (1996) Teaching, as Learning, in Practice

Advocates a move away from the perception of learning as an 'individual, psychological phenomenon' towards an understanding of learning as a 'social, collective' phenomenon. Also challenged the assumption that decontextualised, 'formal', classroom learning was 'good' and that informal, contextualised learning (such as apprenticeships) was 'bad'.

Lave has previously argued against the assumption that teaching is a necessary precondition for learning. His research into apprentice tailors also showed that far from just learning how to reproduce existing practices, apprentices "were learning many complex "lessons" at once" - e.g. about social divisions and identities in Liberian society.

Lave's research into apprenticeship suggested that "learning is the more basic concept, and that teaching (transmission) is something else. Indeed, whole apparatuses of explanation for learning become merely cultural artifacts about teaching - in need of explanation - when learning is taken to be the basic concept."

Lave's belief: "if there is no other kind of activity except situated activity, then there is no kind of learning that can be distinguished theoretically by its "de-contextualisation"". Lave suggests three ways to conceptualise learning differently:

1. a need to reverse the 'polar values' of differing educational power for schooling and "other" forms of education (i.e. school is 'good', apprenticeships are 'bad')
2. a reversal of the research into learning to shift the focus from teachers to learners
3. a view of learning as a socially situated activity

 

What is a theory of learning?

Martin Packer proposed that a theory of learning consists of three kinds of stipulations: 

1. Telos: a direction of movement or change of learning (not the same as a goal-directed activity). Encourages a focus on the trajectories of learners as they change rather than the educational goals set by societal / cultural authorities. E.g. for apprentice tailors the telos was not simply learning to sew, rather it might be described as becoming a respected, practicing participant among other tailors, ultimately becoming so imbued with the practice that others in turn become part of their practice. The subjects and the world with which they were engaged mutually constituted each other. This might also be defined as "constructing identities in practice".

2. Subject-world relation: a general specification of relations between subjects and the social world (not necessarily to be construed as 'learners' and 'things to be learned').

3. Learning mechanisms: ways by which learning comes about.

Different epistemologically-based theories depend on the variable answers to two questions:

1. Where does reality lie (in the world or in the subject)?
2. How can we come to know it (depending on where "it" is)?

"How is the objective world socially constituted, as human beings are socially produced, in practice?"

Conventional views on learning vs views derived from social practice theory

Conventional views would suggest that learning through apprenticeship creates "marginalised learners, engaged in a disorderly process of rote reproduction of existing practice. But the view derived from social practice theory is that apprentices are engaged in a long term project as persons becoming experts known for their learned practice.

What if...

We took the collective social nature of our existence so seriously that we put it first, so that crafting identities in practice becomes the fundamental project subjects engage in?

Crafting identities is a social process, and becoming more knowledgeably skilled is an aspect of participation in social practice. By such reasoning, who you are becoming shapes crucially and fundamentally what you "know". "What you know" may be better thought of as doing rather than having something - i.e. knowing rather than acquiring or accumulating knowledge of information. This is related to Cook and Brown's separation of 'knowledge' and 'knowing', where the latter constitutes the application of the former.

What is teaching?

If learning, rather than teaching, is taken as the fundamental phenomenon and understood principally as "the identity-making life projects of participants in schools", then teaching is a "cross-context, facilitative effort to make high quality educational resources truly available for communities of learners. Great teaching in schools is a process of facilitating the circulation for school knowledgeable skill into the changing identities of students".

Why is it that most of us are able to remember great teachers, but do not have routine was to talk about what great teaching is?

If teachers teach in order to affect learning, the only way to discover whether they are having effects and if so what those are, is to explore whether, and if so how, there are changes in the participation of learners learning in their various communities of practice.

Communities of domination? Reconceptualising organisational learning and power

Huzzard (2004)

This paper addresses the under-theorised relationship between learning and power. It identifies:

1.     a shortcoming in situatied learning theory that it is narrowly restricted to routine labour processes, and

2.     a shortcoming in work on sensemaking, in that this has been unrelated to micro-political processes and considerations of power

The role of power in communities of practice was clearly identified by Lave & Wenger (1991) in their initial formulation of situated learning theory. Yet power has since become somewhat lost as the notion so CoPs has been subsumed within the organisationa learning literature.

Huzzard argues for a ‘conceptualisation of sensemaking, sensegiving and learning in a model of organizational change that focuses on learning through exploration in projects rather than learning through exploitation in routine activities’

Could it be argued that undergraduate courses ‘exploit students in routine activities’ – i.e. is the traditional lecture an example of this? If an UG course were reimagined as a community would student learning happen more through ‘exploration in projects’?

According to Lave & Wenger:

·       ‘the mastery of knowledge and skill requires newcomers to move toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community’ (1991: 29)

·       learning is a social process that ‘…includes, indeed it subsumes, the learning of knowledgeable skills’

·       knowledge of the socially constituted world is socially mediated and open ended…cognition and communication in, and with, the social world, are situated in the historical development of ongoing activity (p.51)

Situated learning theory departs from “mainstream’ accounts of learning (Gherardi et al, 1998) in that a contrary view is taken on the ontological status of knowledge:

·       in mainstream accounts, knowledge is seen as something that is objective, uncontested and unproblematically diffused to learners.

·       For Lave & Wenger, however, knowledge is socially constructed: when actors draw on new “knowledge” they attribute new meaning to it, contextualise it locally and translate it into practice through everyday interaction. New understandings are then generated retrospectively through collective reflection. Accordingly, learning has a relational character whereby the negotiation of meaning is pivotal. Although such learning can be triggered by information obtained from external sources, it is nevertheless more appropriately defined in terms of the (social) negotiation of meaning during its contextualization rather than the receipt and storage of “facts”; for example, the content of training manuals.

This is a key argument in favour of reimagining UG courses as communities. In order for this to happen, how should the role of the tutor change?

·       Traditional approaches [to learning in organisations] see knowledge as objective and learnable through data collection routines = learning as uncertainty reduction whereby understanding leads to action (Addleson, 1996; Ford & Ogilvie, 1996) Spender, 1996)

·       Situated learning sees knowledge as ambiguous and thereby subject to interpretation and trial-and-error application = learning as meaning creation whereby action leads to understanding (Addleson, 1996; Ford & Ogilvie, 1996; Spender, 1996)

·       Legitimate peripheral participation: short of full participation, a novice is not fully accepted within the community (is short of legitimacy), and lacks belonging (remains peripheral)

·       Crucially, therefore, LPP suggests that learning is embedded in power relations and processes of identity formation, an insight markedly absent in mainstream accounts (Contu & Wilmott, 2003)

Contu & Wilmott (2003) sought, from a post-structuralist perspective, to pay more sustained attention to how learning practices are embedded in relations of power. For them: 

·       power is articulated through social practices that produce the “truths” that make up our self-concepts and the institutions in which our selves are embedded

·       power is not exercised by sovereign individual, but is located in social practices and the relationships on which such practices are built

·       power relations accordingly operate to either facilitate or impede learning processes

The ‘radical’ view (Lukes, 1974)

This views organisations as arenas of domination whereby the powerful are in control of socialisation processes and political agendas. Those in dominant positions wield power through shaping

1.     common ideologies

2.     common definitions of issues and

3.     common beliefs

In each of these three views there is an implicit recognition that actors have real, material interests. However, in the radical view of Lukes, actors are not always aware of what their real interests are. Power, accordingly, can be exercised subconsciously – disconnected from any notion of intent. I could argue that this is certainly the case in classrooms where the teacher wields all the power, even though they are not necessarily aware of this ‘power’ and of their potential to shape ‘common beliefs’ in their students.

The ‘relational’ view (Foucault, 1982) and post-structuralism

This view questions the tendency…to assume that individuals or groups are sovereign agents or possessors of power. Such sovereignty and agency are, rather, the product of regimes of “power/knowledge” (Contu & Wilmott, 2003). Such regimes find their expression in discourses, and power is located in relationships. In the relational view, power is involved in everything we do and necessarily implies resistance. It is a capillary force and not the property of dominant groups (Fulop & Linstead, 1999). As with the radical view, there is an emphasis on social construction and non-intentionality; on the other hand, post-structuralists question not only whether it is possible to identify what “real” interests are, but also argue for the impossibility of our knowing the material world outside of our preferred discursive constructions.

Two views:

1.     that a material world exists, outside and independent of discourse, about which we can make plausible truth claims. In terms of discourse, agency is attributed to the dominant party. i.e. 'The Gevernment are more powerful than me because they have more power'

2.     that there is also a socially-constructed world ontologically different from the real world. Power may exist in either covert or overt forms; it may or may not involve agential intent that is associated with the perceived real interests of dominant groups. In terms of discourse, a sort of quasi-agency is attributed to the discourse itself. i.e. in the 'real' world the Government don't have any more 'real' power than I do, but their power is created through the influence of their rhetoric/discourse. This feels 'real' because the population share a common perception of their power created through the verbal and written word, but this 'reality' is in fact socially constructed.'

Is this right?

Conclusions

Learning is an outcome of power. But this needs to be made more specific: do unequal relationships of power enhance learning or is learning enhanced when such inequalities are broken down and more equal relations prevail in a community of learners?

Proposition 1:

A degree of domination is required in projects to shape and direct learning processes in line with the project remit and its financial and time constraints.

Proposition 2:

Learning is enhanced when hierarchies are broken down and power relations are (temporarily) set aside. This would appear to have some support in the literature (Dixon, 1997) and has been a fundamental belief at the core of action research efforts aimed at generating learning in development projects through democratic dialogue (Gustavsen, 1992).

Proposition 3:

An outcome of learning processes can be new power relations. Power, or rather newly-configured power relations, might be the outcome of learning.