Poutiantine & Conners (2012) suggest we consider the question of the difference between formation and transformation. In considering this question I see a transformation being not the building of new beliefs or constructing completely new knowledge but a change in beliefs or modifications to existing knowledge. This leads to the question of the amount of change needed to show transformation, and this writer holds that a transformation needs to be a change in kind, not a change in degree.

Upon reflection on my learning journey over the past year it became clear a transformation took place. This transformation was in my thinking and my attitude and awareness of academics and the academic process. Perhaps the transformation could be described as from a student and practitioner to a proto-scholar practitioner, a change that, I believe, is a change in kind, not a change in degree.

When I started my journey I was just another graduate student. Now perhaps I am a just another graduate student with a publication to my name, but a transformation of sorts took place during my journey: a transformation from a student to a scholar. To be fair, the transformation did not suddenly happen, all at one time, during my pursuit of the question “What is 21^st century learning?” (Last, 2012a) but the transformation started previously, during the foundational graduate courses required by UBC’s Masters of Educational Technology program. However it was during the freedom of pursuing my own question and being immersed in reading and reflecting on academic writings from many sources and from many countries that the transformation began in earnest. The transformation completed itself during the experience of preparing a paper for submission to AACE for consideration for presentation at SITE 2012. The experiences previously reported in Last (2012d) were not the transformation taking effect, but are the evidence that a transformation did take place.

A marvelous and obvious transformation.

The transformation includes, but is not limited to, an understanding of meta-learning, a beginning of guiding the practice not just through past experiences but also through consultation of literature, a grounding of educational pedagogy in sound theory, and a realization of becoming a scholar (or perhaps more properly, a proto or emerging scholar). This is a transformation of kind, a change from a practitioner and student to a scholar and practitioner, not just a change in degree to a more aware practitioner.  This is transformational and not formational because before the journey began I was already an educational practitioner, but without the awareness of the academic world, of grounding pedagogy in sound theory and decidedly not meta-learning attuned.

This transformational journey has not always been easy. There were some dead ends, there were times when which direction to take was obscured. There were times when I was just tired and frustrated and ready to simply give the journey up. The encouragement and advice from my faculty advisor, Franc Feng, was invaluable in completing this journey, and I would like to thank him for the invaluable help he was to me. In the end, the journey has been well worth it. I feel much more capable as an educator, and have a greater respect for and understanding of scholars. I feel like a transformation has taken place, and I aim to have my practice and continued academic pursuits reflect this.

Maurice Last
August 2012

References

Reflections on a First Time Experience

I presented an academic paper for the very first time on March 8, 2012, at SITE 2012 in Austin, Texas. This blog entry is a reflection on that experience.

Presenting at an academic conference for the first time was not a trivial affair. The preparation ahead of time: writing a proposal, writing the paper, editing and revising the paper to get it to the prescribed length, then creating a presentation based on the paper, revising and editing the presentation, practicing the presentation and then revising it a few more times, are all tasks that consume time and energy, but finally the time arrives when the stage is ready and it is I they are expecting to speak, to present, to share newly discovered knowledge, or to provoke deep thought. As a teacher I have presented innumerable time to classes, numerous times to colleagues, and a few times to management, but I had never presented to an academic group as an academic peer. To be honest I was both looking forward to the opportunity and dreading the task.

When I first arrived at SITE 2012 I was tentative and unsure if I belonged there; I felt like an imposter. Having all those Ph.D.s in the same room was a little daunting until I sat in on a few presentations and noticed a few things. Firstly the majority of the attendees were concerned with education and technology, just as I am. Next, the majority of the people there were no less apprehensive about presenting than I was. And finally, the attendees and presenters were all there to learn, to ask and answer questions, and to accept what others, including myself, had to say about the topics being presented.

After that first day I felt a whole lot better. I realized the other attendees and presenters were just people too. I began to feel more comfortable and more confident. Perhaps I did have something to offer, even if it was a little different than most were sharing. I became more confident and began to enjoy the presentations more and more and to dread my coming performance less and less. But I still spent the afternoon before my presentation revising my PowerPoint slideshow and practicing the actual presentation!

I feel my actual presentation went as well as it could, considering the time constraints. Perhaps my topic was too large for the 25 minutes allotted, considering 5 minutes were reserved for questions and answers. Keeping the number of slides to a minimum and keeping the amount of writing on each slide to a minimum are excellent rules to adhere too; not thinking ANY slide is an exception to the second rule is challenging, and one area my presentation needed improving. There were a few questions; most were clarification of points made; one person wanted clarification of my background to understand better where my framework came from.

All in all I feel the trip to SITE 2012 was successful. I think the process of preparing a paper, then preparing a presentation, and then presenting the paper is irreplaceable by any other activity. The immersion in four days of academic discourse was fantastic, and even though I will not recall all the details of what was talked about, my learning and my growth were immeasurable.

Maurice Last

June 2012.

Another reflection

In the previous blog entry I started to reflect on the journey I made in trying to make understanding from all the chaos surrounding learning in the 21^st century. This blog entry seeks to delve deeper into the journey mentioned in that entry.

As previously stated (Last, 2012a), my journey was prompted because of seeing the term “21^st century learning” used in various places, including literature and mass media. In particular Premier’s Technology Council’s (2010) [PTC], with its references to knowledge based societies, lifelong learning and project based learning, drew my attention because these issues/concepts were central to graduate courses I completed during my early time in UBC’s MET program.

In struggling to make some meaning out of PTC I found numerous organizations and individuals who were describing and rationalizing their own versions of 21^st century learning, the most prominent whom I summarized in my paper (Last, 2012b) and media presentation (Last, 2012c). Most groups’ rationalizations involved social and economic reasons for adaptation, but I was interested in what the literature had to say about these groups’ positions, especially how they aligned with current educational theory and sound pedagogical practice, and so I decided a literature review of exactly that would be useful. A literature review would be useful for myself and perhaps would contribute in some small way to helping others understand and make meaning out of the confusion caused by so many groups calling for so many similar, yet unique changes to education. So I set out to create a literature review, but found searches for “21^st century learning”, “21^st century schools”, “21^st  century classrooms” and numerous analogs using EBSCO turned up many opinion articles and blogs, but few scholarly articles supporting or refuting the positions described by the groups calling for change.

With too few academic articles to perform a literature review, I needed to change my focus slightly, and seeing a gap existed in analyzing educational reform calls from an educational standpoint, I decided to create a framework to do just that: a framework, based on current educational theory and sound pedagogy, to be used to analyze a call for reform to evaluate its educational value. I envisioned a framework that could help schools and decision makers determine if a 21^st century learning proposal was educationally valid. The framework was not meant to influence how or when change to schools took place, but to take the focus off of social and economic reasons for change and put the focus on the educational value of the change.

In starting the framework I considered constructivism, the increasing technicalization of society, personal experiences in the classroom and personal experiences in a technical support role. Numerous articles from MET courses were read or re-read, but in the end most of the framework came from those four considerations. The four major influences gave me the basis for 10 areas which were described or mentioned in Last 2012b, including areas of protecting basic literacy and numeracy, paying attention to digital divides, reassessing assessment, revising technical support, changing teacher education and training, changing how curriculum is viewed, ensuring learning advantages are gained, accepting new literacies, ensuring change is actual change, and examining effectiveness and efficiency in education. As can be seen, my educational technology standpoint is evident here, but I feel this is a valid standpoint, and a valid basis for evaluating educational change. I realize this framework is in its infancy and needs more work, but it is a starting point which attempts to bring educational matters back into the discussion of 21^st century learning.

maurice
May 2012.

References

An Almost Final Reflection

During the past 12 months I have been on a journey of sorts, an experience, a seeking, an attempt to make meaning. What have I been seeking? The answer to the question “What is 21^st century learning?” This journey started after seeing and hearing the term “21^st Century Learning,” or one of its analogs (21^st century schools, schools of the future, etc) many times while completing Masters of Educational Technology courses at University of British Columbia.

Originally I planned to create a literature review of literature critiquing the major 21^st century learning proponents, but found little of substance (albeit with a non-exhaustive EBCSO search) in the literature.

Next I examined the major calls for reform: from think tanks, educational associations, and industrial consortia and saw a need for a method to analyze these numerous reform calls for their educational value.

From there I developed the beginnings of a framework to perform that analysis, drawing upon reform calls, classroom experiences, literature and personal experiences, which I  presented at SITE 2012. I also created a media presentation on my framework, embedded below.

A number of questions remain unresolved. I still am unclear on what 21^st century learning is (or should be). The question of how reforms should be implemented is unclear, as is how the school system can afford many of the reforms being called for.

In my mind, many of the reform calls have some merit, but one, P21, stands out. P21 has the most comprehensive package, involving revised curriculum, teacher education and changes to school’s structure and organization. The major failing of P21 is in not addressing the affordability of their plan, and to not foresee the explosion of mobile devices such as iPod Touch and smart phones.

Digging deeper into 21^st century learning reveals more that is unknown, more that is unclear, and it reveals that academics and researchers are not all looking in the same direction or with agreement on what is best practice. Although constructivism is currently the methodology being touted as most effective and efficient, in my personal experience, it is not being supported by teacher unions, school structures, district administration, and governments.  Perhaps governments are resistant to changes that are perceived as having less accountability and perhaps teacher unions are resistant to changes that are perceived as decreasing teacher’s influence in schools.

At least two things became evident during this journey. The first is that while there are definite changes to societies attitudes towards technology, evident, for example, by world wide usage of cell phones, educators are slow to adjust their practice and make use of new technology. The frequent, simplistic “education” solution is to ban new technology, whether it is the cell phone, Wikipedia, or game consoles, from school, a short sighted and reactionary method of dealing with technologies that are not fads and are not about to go away any time soon. I believe schools need to embrace new technologies and to adjust educational practice to take advantage of the vast, rich affordances of many of the new technologies. For example, instead of banning cell phones, engage students in discussions on ethical and good social habits of cell phone usage, require students to use cell phones in class, adjust the tasks, assignments and learning outcomes to acknowledge and reflect the power of the cell phone as a learning tool.

The second item that became clear to me is that educational experts will never agree completely on what is the best educational system. Since there are vastly different concerns in education, from improving the literacy rates in third world countries, improving school completion rates in inner cities, to increasing university readiness of students in  college preparation schools, there is likely no one best system. What there should be, however, is an agreement on the purpose of school and what “being educated” means. Right now there is conflict between many 21st century school reform advocates and current curricula, required practices, and standardized testing. I believe governments are going to need to make changes to curricula, required practices and standardized testing, all items which were put into place because lawmakers perceived the need for them at the time they were enacted, before educational systems can move forward. For governments to be given the impetus to make those changes the public need to be more informed about effective and efficient educational practices, perhaps needing to realize that test scores are a poor measurement of how well educated a person is.

As this journey draws to a close, I pause and reflect upon the journey itself and not just where it took me, and realize that a lot of learning took place on my part. From refining searching skills and improved synthesis, to a deeper understanding of the research process and gaining improved well-roundness, the journey reinforced the richness a large educational project can impart on the learner. I was humbled by my naivety, encouraged by my understanding, delighted by my accomplishments, and enriched by my interaction with the problem. All in all, I feel the journey was memorable and successful, the learning monumental, and the experience unlike any other in my life long learning.

Maurice Last
April, 2012.

References