L4D Learning for Democracy

We will explore the impact of the dissolution of boundaries on learning and look at possible structures for learning institutions that create less barriers to cross-boundary learning.

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Group discussion > Setting a basis for a new institutional approach to learning

Setting a basis for a new institutional approach to learning

Alan McCluskey

Alan McCluskey
252 days ago

We have seen that many of the underlying assumptions on which existing schooling is based work against deeper learning rather than favouring it. As a result, schooling fails to contribute satisfactorily to preparing young people to be flexible and creative. In our work, we drew up a brief list of the possible premises on which to build a new institutional approach to favour deeper learning rather than hindering it:

Education needs to be built on respect for the individual and the richness of diversity.
Education should encourage divergent thinking, non-linearity and imagination rather than conformity and standardisation.
People do their best when they do the thing they love, as a result education needs to foster and cater for intrinsic motivation.
Education should question things that are taken for granted.
Most good learning happens in groups so education needs to facilitate groups, communities of practice and peer exchange.
Education needs to be a model in the handling of change and complexity, both in its form and in its practices.
Education needs to emphasise and encourage a holistic, interconnected perspective.

This list is no doubt incomplete and the premises require further work, however we can use it as a starting point in our task of thinking through institutional structures that would favour these premises. How would you imagine an institution built on one or more of these premises?

Alan McCluskey

Alan McCluskey
238 days ago

Change and values

"Currently we walk into the future backwards (our attention fixed on the past or present) with our eyes closed (blinded by habit and our self imposed limits)."

Leadership, information gathering and the future - What if we've got it wrong? Connected Magazine, http://www.connected.org/learn/have-we-got-it-wrong.html

Learning is no longer only about what is or what was, but also very much about what will be and how we deal with that emerging future. We need to discover new approaches and perspectives on the world and the tools we have available. We need to develop new ways of doing things and new tools to do those activities. As a result, one of the most important criteria for an institution aimed at encouraging and assisting learning is that it be able to handle change. That means not just "teaching" people about change, but being capable of handling change and innovation in its own structures and ways of working. Flexibility, creativity, innovativeness, experimentation, diversity, divergence, unpredictability are the key words.

Despite the ever-present discourse about innovation in industrial and political circles, change remains a central problem for many institutions whose time-honoured structures and ways of working are often designed to keep a tight control over change and innovation. Cynics might say that one of the central roles of schooling has been to resist change or at least to slow it as much as possible, making school a stabilising factor in society. Such a role is no longer appropriate in a time of great change when survival depends our ability to adapt and rise to new challenges.

This may sound like a battle cry for the dominance of innovation and change over all else. Such is not the case. The emergence of the future needs to go hand in hand with a questioning of the values on which society and institutions are based. An interesting approach to the emerging future is suggested in a book called "Presence, Human purpose and the field of the future" by Peter Senge and three other authors. An institution for learning needs to take up this joint challenge: bringing together the mastery of change as an essential process in life and society and a deep questioning of values on which those changes and our activities take place..

See also: Opening Education to the Future … or rising from the Second Fall from Paradise (http://www.connected.org/learn/HOSC.html)

Alan McCluskey

Alan McCluskey
219 days ago

Discussion of this subject is far from over. However, within the framework of L4D time is up. For that reason I propose to pursue the conversation in the FaceBook group: Future Learning. Here is the link:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_197735283578928

You will need to be signed up with FaceBook to access this group.

Alan McCluskey

Alan McCluskey
209 days ago

I have posted an article based on the discussions on L4D and on Facebook about dissolving boundaries in education: Learning in dissolving boundaries.

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