John Connell: The Blog

It was a delight as ever to bump into Judy O’Connell at the ACEL Con­fer­ence. Judy was busy doing some pod­cast­ing work for the con­fer­ence, so I could only say hello in pass­ing. Judy’s blog con­tin­ues to offer a wealth of ideas, thoughts, com­ments and intel­li­gent debate on the state of edu­ca­tion, whether in Par­ra­matta or across the world. A recent post from Judy on Cre­at­ing Pos­si­bil­i­ties in Learn­ing described the think­ing under way in Par­ra­matta Catholic Edu­ca­tion, under Greg Whitby, to re-assess the fun­da­men­tal ques­tions around school­ing, such as “what is edu­ca­tion?” and “what does it mean to pre­pare stu­dents for their lives in the 21^st century”?.

Notions such as dis­rup­tive intel­li­gence, “think­ing is a dia­logic and soci­etal process”, knowl­edge as nar­ra­tive (as a “story that works”) were all part of a dis­cus­sion pro­voked by Yoram Harpaz, found­ing Direc­tor of the Com­mu­nity of Think­ing pro­gramme at the Branco Weiss Insti­tute in Jerusalem. As Judy writes:

“Yoram men­tioned many times that school­ing has been a very suc­cess­ful soci­o­log­i­cal exper­i­ment, but a fail­ure for our stu­dents because of our incon­sis­tency in our ped­a­gog­i­cal frameworks.”

One of my themes when I deliver a Keynote at ACEL tomor­row will echo this, as I feel that the chang­ing nature of soci­ety, the shift­ing rela­tion­ship between teacher and learner, brought about by the chang­ing rela­tion­ship we have to knowl­edge in a Web 2.0 world, all mean that tra­di­tional ped­a­go­gies alone can no longer ful­fil the needs of our young peo­ple as they learn how to sur­vive and thrive in the world they now face.

Tech­no­rati Tags: judy o’connell, heyjude, Yoram Harpaz, par­ra­matta catholic edu­ca­tion, aacel2007

§ One Response to A Story that Works

• gail dyer says:

  October 11, 2007 at 9:01 am

  Liked the idea you men­tioned today of being “col­lec­tively autonomous” is that like devel­op­ing a crit­i­cal mass and tak­ing your own “brave” path? Actions need to echo rad­i­cal words; how­ever, there seems to be a fear that if you act then you may be caught doing some­thing wrong. I won­der how long it will take for edu­ca­tors to realise there is a lot of bag­gage of which they have to “let go”. First and fore­most of things to let go are the con­trol they wish to exer­cise over the stu­dents and the need­less con­tent in the cur­ricu­lum. Heidi’s notions that we keep the stuff of time­less learn­ing and utilise the timely is so appro­pri­ate. The mes­sage from Senge is think and act, and from Heidi Jacobs talk, talk and if all else fails talk. Kids just love mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions with adults and they are so pro­found in their obser­va­tions. We need to lis­ten. Our mantra is “Do It! Talk it! Write it! Read it! very pow­er­ful and dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies can be used to pro­mote it.
  You are right Web 2.0 and all its para­pher­na­lia has changed the rela­tion­ship between teach­ers and stu­dents. Now we have the chance to develop truly mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships as the bound­aries between us are becom­ing so blurry. Who teaches? What is to be taught?
  John the school visit is ok if you would like, we’d be proud to show you and your wife around, con­tact Kim or me.

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