John Connell: The Blog

I ven­tured into a short dis­cus­sion the notion, intro­duced to me by Ron Bur­nett, of the ‘rad­i­cal impos­si­bil­ity of teach­ing’. If we start from the assump­tion that ‘learn­ing never pro­gresses along a sim­ple one-way road from igno­rance to knowl­edge’, and if we know that learn­ing ‘can never be reduced to the way infor­ma­tion and ideas are struc­tured for com­mu­ni­ca­tion’, then we can­not in good faith con­tinue to ped­dle a ped­a­gogy that is based pre­cisely on such mis­ap­pre­hen­sions. We need to con­sider and develop ped­a­go­gies that move us deci­sively away from ‘mod­els of human think­ing and mod­els of the mind that could best be described as func­tion­al­ist and reduc­tive in orientation.”

This took me very eas­ily into the issue of pas­sion. A sys­tem of school­ing that does not allow learn­ers to bring their pas­sions firmly inside the class­room is not ful­fill­ing it fun­da­men­tal role. Using the thoughts of John Seely Brown as a start­ing point, I spoke of how som many young peo­ple are schooled in a con­text that does not per­mit them to share their pas­sions or to develop their pas­sions other than when they are not in school.

There are pock­ets, many inter­est­ing and var­ied pock­ets, of imag­i­na­tive think­ing in edu­ca­tion across the world. One such is in that small enclave of Aus­tralian edu­ca­tion cur­rently led by Greg Whitby (men­tioned above) in Par­ra­matta. I am able to watch and lis­ten to what is hap­pen­ing in Par­ra­matta through the words of Judy O’Connell in her blog, HeyJude. Judy recently referred to a very inter­est­ing ses­sion led by Yoram Harpaz in which he worked with the team in Par­ra­matta to go back to fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the pur­pose of edu­ca­tion and the ped­a­go­gies that work in the mod­ern circumstance.

In speak­ing about Web 2.0, I referred to the report from JISC, writ­ten by Paul Ander­son, on “What is Web 2.0:Ideas, Tech­nolo­gies and Impli­ca­tions for Edu­ca­tion”. I con­trasted the views of Andrew Keen and David Wein­berger, between the ‘Cult of the Ama­teur’ and ‘Every­thing is Mis­cel­la­neous’ (and made my pref­er­ence for the lat­ter obvi­ous — for instance, I did not say that David Wein­berger has the kind of face you just want to slap, but Andrew Keen.….). Also pointed to the Educause/New Media Con­sor­tium Report “New Hori­zons 2007″ which looks at pos­si­ble future trends in Web 2.0 in edu­ca­tion and scholarship.

Given the theme of the ACEL Con­fer­ence, I high­lighted the inter­est­ing exper­i­ment in lead­er­ship cur­rently being con­ducted by Don Led­ing­ham, in East Loth­ian Edu­ca­tion, in Scot­land. Some ini­tial out­line of Don’s phi­los­o­phy and his prac­tice can be gleaned from a num­ber of his blog posts:

Imag­in­ing a Culture

Open Source Leadership

Is it Safe?

Account­abil­ity

Sep­a­rat­ing the Per­son from the Practice

As final thoughts, I first of all spoke of the opti­mism and hope that is invested in edu­ca­tion (and con­nected edu­ca­tion in par­tic­u­lar) in places such as Liberia, and across the devel­op­ing world.

I fin­ished with my favourite quote, on the non-neutrality of sci­ence (which I extend to edu­ca­tion and tech­nol­ogy) by Richard Feyn­man: “To every man is given the kay to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.“

Tech­no­rati Tags: don led­ing­ham, richard feyn­man, jisc, new hori­zon 2007, andrew keen, david wein­berger, heyjude

§ 5 Responses to Glances Ahead: Lead or be Led! pt.3"

• Judy O'Connell says:

  October 14, 2007 at 6:50 am

  I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed your keynote pre­sen­ta­tion, as much for the sense of opti­mism and the focus on cre­ativ­ity, as for the rich and var­ied exam­ples that you included in your talk to urge us for­ward in our work of chang­ing school­ing and our expec­ta­tions of what learn­ing is all about. A fan­tas­tic col­lec­tion of quotes and the­o­ries, and influ­ences that have shaped who we are and pro­vide the clues for our future. Lovely to get a deeper insight into Don Ledingham’s work — Don’s blog is already a source of inspi­ra­tion around the world — but a per­sonal insight into his ‘spirit’ of lead­er­ship was a treat. I think that you were the only speaker dur­ing the whole con­fer­ence who alluded to the power of col­lab­o­ra­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion that blog­ging pro­vides. While we had superb keynotes and work­shops, these peo­ple are not our only source of inspi­ra­tion and inno­va­tion. Quite the oppo­site, we need to utilise their strengths and gather power and courage from our own dis­cus­sions and by shar­ing as much as we can broadly through blog­ging and other forms of col­lab­o­ra­tion — much as you and Don already do. I was hon­oured to be men­tioned in your pre­sen­ta­tion!! Thanks again for your ongo­ing inspi­ra­tion and gen­uine ‘grass roots’ rev­o­lu­tion right there with the ‘work­ers’ — we edu­ca­tors who are strug­gling to make change and embrace a vibrant future for our kids rely on inspi­ra­tion from peo­ple with your expe­ri­ence, exper­tise and gen­uine capac­ity to bring about change.

  Reply
• John Connell says:

  October 14, 2007 at 8:34 am

  I would never dis­miss the need for ‘evidence-based research’, so much of which was on show at ACEL last week, but it can only be part of the story, as I think you are imply­ing, Judy.

  One of my favourite quotes is from Hegel, when he wrote in the Phi­los­o­phy of Right:

  “The Owl of Min­erva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”

  By this he meant that phi­los­o­phy can under­stand the event only after it has hap­pened. This must be just as true for social sci­ences research too. Of course, we can use our knowl­edge of what has gone before to inform our future prac­tice, but some­times we just need to look around our­selves to see what is hap­pen­ing and how we should be changing.

  This, I think, is the sit­u­a­tion today in edu­ca­tion. Too lit­tle research steps firmly out­side the accepted par­a­digm of what school­ing is and has been for so long, that it is dif­fi­cult to see how it can really inform rad­i­cal change of the kind that is needed at the present time.

  Don, I am sure, will read your kind words for him­self, but I will pass your good wishes to him when I next meet him over a beer in Lauder some time after the 21^st!

  Reply
• Don says:

  October 14, 2007 at 2:06 pm

  John

  Thanks for the men­tion — the pint will be on me!

  Judy

  Thanks for your kind com­ment about my Learn­ing Log. We have much to learn from what’s hap­pen­ing in Aus­tralian edu­ca­tion — but it’s nice to think we can share some of our prac­tice with oth­ers around the world.

  Cheers

  Don

  Reply
• David Gilmour says:

  October 17, 2007 at 11:19 pm

  I’ve seen using infor­ma­tion from the past as a basis for future plan­ning com­pared to dri­ving while look­ing in the rear-view mir­ror — sorry, can’t remem­ber where. Not so eso­teric, I’m afraid, as your Hegel quote — but it con­jures up a pow­er­ful image!
  You’ll find fur­ther strong sup­port for this sens­ing of future direc­tion in Pres­ence by Peter Senge.

  Learn­ing based on the past suf­fices when the past is a good guide to the future. But it leaves us blind to pro­found shifts when whole new forces shap­ing change arise.”

  Reply
• John Connell says:

  October 18, 2007 at 3:49 am

  Very apt, David, given Peter Senge’s involve­ment in the con­fer­ence in Sydney!

  Reply