Knowledge, the disciplines and learning in the digital age Jane Gilbert
Mar 22, 2016
Widely assumed that ICTs will play a key role in the education of the future.
The Knowledge Age = the Information Age = the Digital Age = the age of ICTs
ICTs = magic bullet - will revolutionise teaching and learning, solve all our educational problems
ICTs now widely used in schools.
However they haven’t changed basic teaching practices. Why is this? Does it matter? Should we care?
Yes, it does matter
1. While ICTs and ‘Knowledge Society’ thinking are linked in world outside education - they are not, as yet, in education
2. Current practice is preparing learners for world of the past, not the future
3. Much current practice is “digital busywork”
Why haven’t ICTs changed teaching practices much?
• ICTs have been ‘added to’ a model of education that was developed for a different time
• Our current education system - our ideas about what schools are for, what we teach, why we teach it, what it means if students don’t learn it etc - is an Industrial Age system
Current system driven by two key ideas:1. The importance of ‘the
disciplines’(distinct bodies of knowledge with distinct ways of building new knowledge)
2. Education’s ‘sorting’ functionWhere did these ideas come from?
PLATO The Republic The Laws
set out a model education system a stable, secure, ‘just’ society
Plato’s education system was designed to develop the qualities needed in ‘philosopher kings’ (society’s watchdogs or guardians)
Plato’s system was knowledge-centeredThe mind is best developed by exposing it to the best and greatest knowledge
Plato’s curriculum was based on knowledge chosennot because it is ‘useful’, but because it develops the mind - in particular ways
Plato’s model is the basis of the traditional ‘academic’ curriculum
Mass education relatively recent
two quite different purposes:
i. human resource needs of the economy
ii. equal opportunity
many important conflicts
students are ‘processed’ in ‘batches’ (year groups)
all ‘processed’ at the same rate pre-set curriculum ‘delivered’ to all in ‘bite-sized’ pieces in
a pre-set order
aim is to produce a standardised, quality ‘product’
‘products’ easily sorted according whether or not they meet the quality control standards
THE ‘PRODUCTION LINE’
MODEL
One size fits all
the traditional academic curriculum is the quality control mechanism -- used to sort students
many are rejected - and allowed to drop off the production line
THE ‘PRODUCTION LINE’ MODEL
For most of 20th century NZ this seemed OK to most people
system gave everyone ‘the basics’ higher education rationed to those with ability
THIS IS NO LONGER THE CASE
• very low unemployment• plenty of low-skill jobs for
the production line’s ‘rejects’ ...
Industrial Age ideas about knowledge, minds and learning
• Learning happens in individuals• Knowledge is ‘stuff’• Learning/knowing involves storing stuff
away in individual minds. (Some individuals can do this better than others)
• There are different types of knowledge (disciplines). Some are harder than others
Why is this a problem?• We’re not in the Industrial Age any more…
• We’re in the Knowledge Age
Does this mean that we should throw out1. the traditional disciplines?
2. education’s sorting function?
The Knowledge Society – What is it?
a paradigm shifttotally new ideas about
what knowledge is
how it develops
how it is used
who owns it ….
The Knowledge Society – What is it?
‘Knowledge’ societies
No longer rely on the exploitation of natural resources.
KNOWLEDGE is the key resource for economic development.
The Knowledge Society – What is it?
“The generation, application and exploitation of knowledge is what drives modern economic growth.
Most of us make our money from thin air: we produce nothing that can be weighed, touched or easily measured.
Our output is not stockpiled at harbours, stored in warehouses or shipped in railway cars.
Our children will not have to toil in dark factories, descend into pits or suffocate in mills. They will not hew raw materials or turn them into manufactured products.
They will make their living through creativity, ingenuity and imagination.”
Leadbetter, C. (1999) Living on Thin Air: The New Economy. (London: Penguin).
1. SOCIAL THEORISTS 70s 80s & 90s
2.BUSINESS MANAGEMENT THEORISTS
3.PHILOSOPHERS
the shiftFROM the modern - or Industrial - age
TO the post-modern - or Knowledge - age
is a paradigm shift
equal in significance to the pre-industrial industrial age transition
result of interaction between many different factors
e.g.
crisis in traditional capitalism ‘fast’ capitalism
globalisation major social and economic
changes & massive expansion in knowledge
new ICTs - if it’s not digitisable, it’s not knowledge...- web-based, multi-media technologies
RESULT
KNOWLEDGE is NO LONGER
linked to TRUTH
but to ‘PERFORMATIVITY’
- what it can do
and to INNOVATION
Manuel CASTELLS The Rise of the Network Society (2000)
Knowledge in the Knowledge Society’ is:
dynamic, fluid, generative, something that causes things to happen;
no longer an object or a ‘thing’ that is codified into ‘disciplines’, but more like energy
KNOWLEDGE
is a process, not a ‘thing’
does things
happens in teams, not in individual ‘experts’
can’t be ‘codified’ into ‘disciplines’
develops on an as-and-when needed basis
develops to be replaced, not stored.
new ‘mental models’…..
LEARNING: involves generating knowledge not storing it;
is primarily a group - not an individual - activity;
happens in ‘real world’, problem-based contexts;
should be ‘just-in-time’, not ‘just-in-case’;
needs to be à la carte, not en bloc.
new ‘mental models’…..
MINDS
Are not containers or filing cabinets to store knowledge “just in case”
Minds are resourcesthat can be connected to other resources in order to generate new knowledge
What does this mean for education?
2. The traditional disciplines still matter - but they now matter for different reasons….
1. Everyone needs the knowledge and skills traditionally only provided in ‘higher’ educationi.e. end of the production line, one-size-fits-all, model of education designed to sort people by likely employment destination
Need to see traditional disciplines, not as an end in themselves, but as resources for “pursuing performativity”
Performativity = the ability to:• take elements from one knowledge
system• put them together with elements from
another different knowledge system• re-arrange these elements to do
something new
i.e. - doing things with knowledge- going beyond mastering existing knowledge
To do this, one needs systems- or meta-level understanding...
Systems-level understanding
• how different disciplines ‘work’ • what assumptions underpin each discipline • how experts generate and justify new knowledge • comparing/contrasting one discipline with another
i.e. it involves understanding how meaning is made in different disciplines
• now more important than detailed facts • not the same as inter-disciplinarity)
In Industrial Age education...• Strong focus on the disciplines - as an
end in themselves• The individual is ‘disciplined’
by/subsumed within the discipline• Strong focus on print/text based ways
of representing knowledge and on developing print literacy
=> ICTs used mainly for finding and/or presenting existing knowledge
• information retrieval - databases, Internet• presentation of findings – word processing,
PowerPoint, video, web pages
=> Learners are passive spectators in relation to knowledge - it just is...
A Knowledge Age education system needs to focus on...
• Developing new knowledge through real research (not teacher-initiated ‘projects’)
• Developing multi-modal literacy - understanding and using non-print modes of making meaning (images, sounds, gestures/body language etc)
• Relationships, connections and interactions - between different knowledge systems and different modes of representation
i.e. how meaning is made (process not product)
ICTs could be very useful here...1. To develop the kinds of
relationships/connections/collaborations (global and local) needed to generate new knowledge
2. To provide the tools and resources needed for real research
Knowledge Age schools need to be producers - not consumers - of knowledge
3. To ‘play’ with different ways of making meaning - via multi-media tools
4. To build learners’ sense of themselves as active knowledge-builders, having a unique niche, role, point of difference...
ICTS could be the magic bullet that revolutionises teaching and learning - but this is unlikely in our Industrial Age system
We need to re-focus our thinking for the Knowledge Age, to re-think our ideas on:• what schools are for • what we teach• why we teach it • what it means if students don’t learn it
AWAY FROMfinding/presenting/mastering existing knowledgeTOgenerating new knowledge
AWAY FROMlearners as passive consumers of knowledgeTOlearners as active producers of knowledge
AWAY FROMprint/text primary mode of representationTOmulti-modal representation
AWAY FROMlearning the key facts of disciplineTOsystems-level understanding
AWAY FROMdisciplines as separate entitiesTOrelationships/connections, comparing and contrasting
AWAY FROM‘old’ disciplines as end in themselvesTO‘old disciplines = resource for generating new knowledge
AWAY FROMlong apprenticeship in disciplineTOdoing things with knowledge from an early age
AWAY FROMhierarchies of knowledge (academic/applied split)TOdifferent knowledge useful for different purposes
AWAY FROMdisciplines used as gatekeeper to higher educationTOeveryone needs higher order/critical thinking skills
Personalising learning
21st century version of Beeby ‘vision’
(equal opportunity for all)
Preparing people for life in the Knowledge Age
not one-size-fits-all- system customised to
fit individual
purpose not to sort people- everyone achieves
not reproducing existingknowledge – learning/generating
new knowledge
How could we do this…?
ICTs make this possible…
• Tech Angels research(21st century learning - via authentic “real world” tasks)
• Jim Gee’s work - what computer game designers can teach us about learning and motivation….
Further reading...Bigum, Chris (2003) The knowledge-producing school:
Moving away from the work of finding educational problems for which computers are the solution. Computers in New Zealand Schools, 15 (2), pp. 22-26.
Gilbert, Jane (2005) Catching the Knowledge Wave?: The Knowledge Society and the future of public education in New Zealand. Wellington: NZCER Press.
Bereiter, Carl (2002) Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Cope, Bill and Kalantsis, Mary (2000) Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Routledge.
Lankshear, Colin and Knobel, Michele (2003) New literacies: Changing knowledge and classroom learning. Buckingham UK: Open University Press.
Gee, James-Paul (2003) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Beare, Hedley (2001) Creating the future school. London: Routledge.
Kress, Gunther (2003) Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge.