Learning in the context of the information society

Learning in the context of the information society

The changes in the way that knowledge is produced and communicated have dramatically shifted the social role of the learner. Drawing on the ideas of Vygotsky (1986) it is clear that learning is a product of inter-relationships between learners and adults using cultural tools (both cognitive tools and artefacts), a form of apprenticeship which Polanyi described as the ‘passionate participation’ of an individual’s mental powers in the active process of coming to know, through dialogue with adults and ideas. By changing the nature of the tools – for example by giving learners access to the Internet and Google – what is learnt changes. As Saljo (1999, p. 147) defi nes it, ‘learning is not only inside the person, but in his or her ability to use a particular set of tools in productive ways and for particular purposes’.

In school the teacher’s challenge is to motivate students to focus their activity on learning curriculum knowledge, an effort which is fraught with diffi culty in direct relation to the extent that the curriculum is mandatory and not subject to negotiation. We learn most creatively when in the state of total engagement and accelerated mental processing which Csikszentmihalyi (1996) calls ‘fl ow’, but it might be a near impossible task for a teacher to orchestrate the activity so that learners experience ‘fl ow’ even occasionally in a traditional classroom. However, the introduction of ICT tools, providing learners with new possibilities for autonomy in their choice of learning activities, a hugely increased range of resources, and opportunities to place the products of their learning in a public forum such as a website or blog, can transform some of the characteristics of classrooms. Roschelle et al. (2005), in their introduction to a special issue of the Journal for Computer Assisted Learning, review how wireless and mobile technologies merged education with students’ social life as they developed new routines for managing learning over time. These are fundamental rather than superfi cial changes in the learning process if we conceive of learning as productive tool use (Saljo, op. cit.), or in term’s of Wittgenstein’s performance epistemology as ‘making, doing and acting’ (Lankshear et al. 2000, p. 21).

In the early days of computer use in English schools, ten years or so before schools were to be connected to the Internet via broadband, Underwood and Underwood (1990) focused on how children’s minds could be extended with computer-based learning. They identifi ed two kinds of activity which could serve this purpose: the fi rst equipped children with ‘a toolkit of basic mental skills’, by means of drill and practice software, to help establish ‘automatised sub skills’ and give opportunities for extended practice to build up profi ciency; the second involved ‘the application of those skills in generalised problem-solving’. In the latter category they included learning to program in Logo which had been promoted by Papert (1980) as a means of giving children control over mini-environments and allowing them to develop higher-order cognitive processes through engaged creativity. These ideas of the 1980s and 1990s are even more applicable with the kinds of ICT tools available

Inside innovation 33 in the twenty-fi rst century. Claxton, although he makes no mention of ICT, urges

that learning in the twenty-fi rst century should no longer focus on the acquisition of discrete bodies of knowledge, but be a process of cultivating ‘the transferable capabilities and dispositions of effective, real-life lifelong learning’ (Claxton 2002, p. 32).

I am not meaning to imply, however, that ICT’s only value for learning is as a generic set of tools to develop thinking skills and problem-solving abilities. ICT has many affordances which can be taken up and used pedagogically to transform students’ learning. Ideally, teachers and students should have the kind of ubiquitous access to Internet-connected ICTs to enable their use fl exibly within a range of different pedagogical practices. They can be used for students’ exploratory use of the Internet, or for a range of production activities using generic tools for word processing, image manipulation, calculation, knowledge management and presentation. Through interactive whiteboard technology, they provide an excellent means for teachers to enliven formal expositions, including demonstrations of practical procedures such as measurement, and explanations of complex concepts in mathematics and science which require students to visualise possible concrete enactments arising from abstract concepts such as the theory of calculus in mathematics. They also have numerous uses for group activity, for example in the course of conducting scientifi c experiments, or using computer simulations for investigations (Somekh et al., in preparation). ICT use in classrooms should encompass a range of pedagogies rather than only one, but until all students have their own portable ‘digital learning companions’ and access to the Internet wirelessly, as and when needed, its use for learning is inevitably constrained.

There has been much less interest in schools in England than in higher education in the development of on-line teaching although the UK government, the BBC, many local education authorities and some schools provide on-line resources to support students’ learning. Video-conferencing to provide teaching at a distance in specialist subjects has proved valuable in rural areas such as north-west Scotland or outback Australia. Davis and Niederhauser (2005) report on two case studies of virtual schooling, one an ambitious attempt to use two-way interactive video to provide ‘live’ synchronous teaching on two campuses in the USA, the other a school ‘replacement’ model that provided interactive teaching to children in remote areas in Australia with some synchronous but mainly asynchronous communication. A more radical approach, described by Selinger (2004) is a global ICT-based curriculum developed by Cisco to teach Internet technology skills and prepare students for industry certifi cation. The curriculum was designed and is continuously refreshed by Cisco in the USA and taught by local providers in educational institutions in over 150 countries, world wide. Since this course has not been developed to fi t into the regulatory practices for curriculum and assessment in any country it provides an example of what can be achieved when teachers have the opportunity to introduce innovative ICT pedagogies with the support of a high status international sponsor. Selinger bases her evaluation on web-based questionnaires, face-to-face interviews with students and instructors and lesson observations in eleven countries (ibid., p. 229) in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa). Analysis of the data is

34 Understanding innovation informed by a review of the literature on differences in national culture and their

impact on pedagogic practices. Selinger suggests that an area of particular relevance to the design of e-learning materials is the extent to which national culture privileges ‘high or low uncertainty avoidance’. For example, countries which have uncertainty avoidance (UA) cultures prefer teaching resources which are simple, provide limited choices and give priority to clear navigation schemes and help systems, whereas those which have low UA cultures ‘prefer complexity with maximal content and choices’. The evaluation showed that the course was popular in all countries, but that the way in which teachers used the e-learning materials differed markedly. This was partly related to language (the materials are all in English) and partly to ease and speed of access to the Internet both in the educational institution and students’ homes. However, it was also related to cultural assumptions about the teacher’s role and authority, the students’ autonomy, and established practices in the use of paper-based resources. Overall, it provides a clear example of the kind of ‘take-over’ of education by commercial companies envisaged by Kompf (op. cit.) (see Chapter 1), but it is signifi cant that the focus of the course is on technical knowledge directly related to working in the technology industry and therefore relatively lightly inscribed with national cultural traditions.