Eighteen months ago, on World Heutagogy Day 2022, Vijaya Bhanu Kote launched her heutagogy Primary School the Heutagogy Brainery. This was 100 years after AS Neill launched his Summerhill school and, personally I think of Vijaya as a digitally-enabled 21st Century AS Neill. Not because she was inspired by Summerhill but, rather like Neill in A Dominies Log, she was informed by watching how her children learnt. Unlike Neill in his small quiet village in Scotland she found resources about Heutagogy and learning agency on the Web and, believing she had permission to develop a learner-centred approach to learning, she began developing her version of Heutagogy in her school, which ultimately culminated in the Brainery.
In recent discussions with Vijaya, her Heutagogs and their heutagogic parents I realised that another lens with which to view the Brainery by was our earlier Community Development Model of Learning. From research into existing digital community learning centres in 2002, we had discovered that effective community learning centres (in England) both evolved and improved in tandem with the human communities that they served. John Cook, who carried out this research, called this the lifecycles model of the learning centre, and he argued for a dynamic, responsive learning institution not a static, rigid, one trapped in the pedagogy of content-delivery.
This community-centred curriculumis another way of describing a human-centred approach to learning; arguably an Andragogy approach in that it comes out of negotiations with a community of people active in the learning centres activities. These are not only about learning but also represent a value, or need, of the community that the centre serves, in some specific way. John Cook described this as the hook; the attractor that made the centre inviting to the community that it was a part of. The attractor is a value in itself; it might be a creche, it might be a football team. The attractor then also shaped the evolution and development of the centre which would evolve in line with the interests of those people who attended and shaped the purpose of the centre and thereby its lifecycle.
Learning Architecture of Participation(AoP); to Nigel Ecclesfield and I this lifecycle model represents a learning AoP in which those attending and taking part in the learning offer are actually the subjects of the learning process, not the objects by which the institution measures and manages its performance. So the curriculum, or what people choose to learn in such a centre, evolves dynamically depending upon who turns up. Another aspect of the lifecycle model is that, almost like medieval guilds and their apprentice model, people who go evolve from having an erratic, occasional attendance just watching from the sidelines (or browsing the centres’ activities), to being part-time learners, then to full-time learners, to part-time assistants, to full-time assistants and, in some cases, employees. We called them trusted intermediaries; because they have earned the trust of those who attend due to their involvement with centre activities. Clearly at the Brainery and in her local community in Andhara Pradesh, Vijaya is highly trusted and significantly, in return, she trusts both her heutagogs and their parents in a wonderful virtuous circle of learning…
Presentation online for Bucharest on 10/11/23. Full presentation first link, based on 13 Steps to a Craft of Teaching (in the Age of Algorithms) Individual resources listed thereafter (below) All resources derived from our book Digital Learning:
Vijaya Bhanu Bote (Primary School teacher and community learning initiator): a brief introduction
In our book, Digital Learning: Architectures of Participation (Ecclesfield N and Garnett F (2020)) we devoted a substantive section of Chapter 8 to the work of our friend and collaborator Vijaya Bhanu Kote who lives and works in Andhra Pradesh as a headteacher in a rural primary school working with her students, colleagues, parents and her wider community to promote heutagogy (self-determined learning) – see Hase S and Kenyon C (2013) “Self-Determined Learning”. In the three years that have passed since we drafted our note on Vijaya’s work, much has happened, including more publication on heutagogy and a wider recognition of Vijaya’s work both within India and internationally. Now seems an appropriate time, to revise and update our original piece and celebrate Vijaya’s work up to the present, covering the period 2009 to 2022 and encourage further exploration of her work and those wider activities she has contributed to since 2019.
From 2013 onwards, we have been involved in ‘World Heutagogy Day’ as contributors and, latterly as co-ordinator for the day (Fred). Fred has also contributed to ‘Self-Determined Learning’ Hase and Kenyon ed. (2013) op cit, which, focused on heutagogy. It is through contacts made in our activities to promote heutagogy; we were made aware of the work of a primary school teacher in the state of Andhra Pradesh (India) who has implemented heutagogic practices with her pupils/learners and is leading training and development activities with teachers and secondary school learners, parents and members of her local community across this large state, nationally, across India and internationally making use of digital technologies and developing architectures of participation with these participants. Producing training and learning resources to help implement heutagogy for learners, parents and her colleagues, Vijaya is leading changes in practice in her state and continuing to build rich external links to enhance her work with wider perspectives and practices, drawn from around the world. What follows is a short, amended account of her work and an analysis of its implications for our work, especially our concerns with architectures of participation.
Vijaya works in an elementary school in the heart of rural Andhra Pradesh having over twenty years’ experience as a teacher and working in her community as a freelance journalist. In one of her published accounts of how she came to adopt heutagogic practices she describes her motivation in the following words.
“Over time, as I happened to observe kids and their common attitude towards simple yet important aspects in their life, I could gradually understand what wrong is happening in the education system. As educators, we try to insert pieces of information and knowledge into their brains to let them gain good grades in “high stakes assessments.” I could see that the kids rushed out of the class, as if they wore wings when the games period bell rang. Their joyful screams lingered in my ears for long time. (“Enabling kids enjoy learning through heutagogy – The Hans India”) One thought always triggered me. “How would it be if the same attitude for learning develops in kids?
Now, I wanted a model that could fulfil my dream. My dream where kids enjoy learning and learn by themselves just like they play games. I wanted the same passion towards learning on their own. Bhanu Kote (2019a) After a decade of my experiments on various methods, I found Heutagogy during my Independent research into learning and teaching methods. I researched more on this “Gogy. Later, I created a format for this “Gogy” that could suit an Indian context of learning. My small experiments resulted in tremendous success and following these successes with my grade V kids (Aged 9-10) authored “Letha Akasalu” (Tender Skies) book on how they learned through Heutagogy.”
(Vijaya sees that teaching practice can be characterised as consisting of three inter-related elements Pedagogy, Andragogy and Heutagogy which are not mutually exclusive, but intertwined as in Merleau-Ponty’s conception of pedagogy and child psychology.
“Relationship between pedagogy and child psychology
Pedagogy is not the application of psychology; pedagogy is entirely child psychology.” (Merleau-Ponty 2010) p69 Merleau-Ponty’s analysis adopts a position that seems to see education as taking place in schools and concerned with children, hence his reference to child psychology reflecting the time and context of his writing (1949-50) in France. Equally, he sees child psychology as focused on learners and pedagogy as focused on teacher (adult) reactions to learners as interlinked components of learning and teaching practices see Ecclesfield and Garnett (2020)). He summarises his views about teaching and learning as follows “We do not thus find three naturally distinct disciplines, but instead unique work (our emphasis) whose manner depends on where the work is directed, be it toward the rules of behaviour (morality), toward objective knowledge (child psychology) or toward the adult’s reaction to the child (pedagogy).” (Ibid p69)).”
At the time of writing, much of Vijaya’s work has been published in Telugu, the official language of Andhra Pradesh and this is predominantly through the Ministry of Education of the state. There are accounts published in English in Australia, India, Finland, and the UK although it is hoped that translations of “Letha Akasalu” and her training manual on heutagogy for teachers, recently published by the Ministry of Education, will be made available in other languages. Since 2020, however, two works have been published (in English), setting Vijaya’s work in a comparative context These are Ecclesfield, Bhanu Kote and Ecclesfield (2021) and Bhanu Kote, Ecclesfield and Ecclesfield (2022), looking at Heutagogy in the context of primary and early years learning. It is hoped, in future, to publish work emerging from a recent partnership with a primary school in London and further work looking at early years (Ages 2-5)
What is significant about Vijaya’s work is how her pupils, parents, the local community, and participants in her training are drawn in to learning activity and encouraged to see themselves as contributors to each other’s learning. School pupils work collaboratively to produce works that show both how they have learned something and the outcomes of their learning, while parents are encouraged to share their knowledge and expertise as craftspeople and professionals in school along with members of the community who demonstrate their work and encourage participation in vocational tasks e.g., weighing goods and calculating their prices in market settings. Similar approaches are used with teacher participants in training programmes, making use of peer groups and local networks to illustrate a key objective of this approach “learning outside the classroom” or “learning beyond teachers” In this work is embedded a recognition of learners as being part of the “ecology of resources” described by Luckin and co-creators of their own learner-generated contexts that are individual (Vijaya refers to self-determined learners as “Heutagogs”). In this they share characteristics of the children described by Mitra and his colleagues in their work, and the far earlier work of the School of Barbiana in Italy in their “Letter to a Teacher.”
One of the keys to Vijaya’s approach to learning and teaching is that she engages learners and teachers simultaneously, to experience heutagogy together. As she describes her approach.
“Freedom to the teacher
“Teachers are given freedom to implement their ideas and prepare appropriate tools to implement their innovative ideas. Bhanu Kote (2019b)) Tools should be prepared based on the needs of the students. We can consider the societal background and the environment of the students while preparing ideas or tools.” This approach can be readily compared with Merleau-Ponty’s perspective quoted above.
Kids are naturally Heutagogical learners
“Primary school is a wonderful opportunity to build on their skills of hypothesis making, hypothesis testing, exploration, working together, failing, playing, watching others, hands-on learning, researching, and learning ‘what is wheat and chaff’- Hase S – personal contribution to World Heutagogy Day” (2019).
Context is Queen, localising self-determined learning
“For Heutagogy, as self-determined learning to work for India, or in any other location, it must be localised. It needs to be India’s or Andhra Pradesh’s Heutagogy, it needs to be the teacher’s Heutagogy, it needs to be the school’s Heutagogy. We have a phrase, borrowed from the Learner-Generated Context Group that “Context is the Queen”. So, there is not one “best” or “ideal Heutagogy,” but there is only the practical Heutagogy, that you develop together and share.” “Teachers need to “own” the framing educational practices as much as the learners need to “own” the learning.” – Whitworth, Garnett, and Pearson (2012).
26th September is “World Heutagogy Day” and this is the day in 2013, the first book on Heutagogy, “Self-Determined Learning” ( Hase and Kenyon (2013) was published. Bhanu Kote (2019a). The slides launching the book were based on the 50-word submissions by the authors in the book, providing their definitions of heutagogy for a “curated conversation” Garnett (2019). The resulting definition emerging from this conversation was “Heutagogy is the process by which teachers help learners to determine their learning interests and follow them as much as possible within the education system in school, college, or university.”
Heutagogy brings informal interest-driven learning into formal subject-based learning contexts. Ideally, it enables the curiosity of all learners to stay with them after they leave education.” Bhanu Kote who works in a rural context with high levels of poverty and where resources are often scarce in the sense of both equipment and consumables, although Vijaya brings an ecological focus to her work to promote the re-use and recycling of materials as well as using digital technologies in highly developed ways to support learning and create rich and engaging collections of resources gathered and created by her learners, their families and the wider community, which includes “sponsors” who donate learning resources and their time to supporting Vijaya’s school and its children.
Nevertheless, teachers appropriate existing resources themselves and incorporate resources from “beyond the classroom” to the extent that they can create, or become part of, architectures of engagement and participation that inform and support the “ecologies of resources” Luckin et al (2010) op cit that they build around their learners and their practice. Vijaya is an example of these practices, using and incorporating digital technologies as part of a practical and philosophical stance to her work that uses her local, regional, state, national and international peers to extend and develop her work. As noted above, she often insists that learners and teachers learn about heutagogy together with learners as teachers and teachers as learners, coming together in “obuchenie,” see Luckin (2010) and Luckin et al (2010) for discussions of this concept.
Most recently, Vijaya, responding to her poor health, is in the process of setting up a Heutagogy institution/ Academy (the Heutagogy Brainery) with her partner and son to continue her work and to provide a means for her students, who are now in secondary education, to continue to progress their self-determined learning as co-operative and independent learners and to support teachers, parents and adults working in their own communities to pursue their learning projects and enhance community projects. We will continue to follow this work and the work referenced in the books noted below. What we would like to ask, for World Heutagogy Day 2023 (26th September) is for those of you reading this note to participate in the discussions and sharing of practice initiated on Learn Teach 21 and to send comments and questions to Vijaya via this blog. (https://learnteach21.wordpress.com) to extend dialogue and disseminate your good practice. An ePub file of the first draft of Vijaya’s book providing an extended introduction to her work and her approach to learning and teaching will soon be available, prior to editing and publishing via more conventional routes, on Learn Teach 21 and the World Heutagogy Day blog (https://heutagogicarchive.wordpress.com/2022/09/26/establishing-heutagogy-whday22), please feel free to contribute to the discussions initiated there.
Self-organised group discussing the structure of flowers
References
Ecclesfield N and Garnett F (2020). “Digital Learning: Architectures of Participation,” IGI Global, Hershey, PA.
Hase S and Kenyon C (2013) “Self-Determined Learning” Bloomsbury, London
Merleau-Ponty M (2010) “Child Psychology and Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949-1952”. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois
Bhanu-Kote V (2019b) “Letha Akasalu (Tender Skies), Government of Andhra Pradesh, Amaravati
Ecclesfield N, Bhanu-Kote V and Ecclesfield P (2021), “Learner Agency and Architectures of Participation” in Hase S and Blaschke L M (eds) (2021) “Unleashing the power of Learner Agency”. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/up
Bhanu Kote V, Ecclesfield P and Ecclesfield N (2022). “Digital learning, innovative learning strategies for modern pedagogy, self-directed learning” A.S.A. Lawrence & M. Manivannan (Eds.), Emerging trends of psycho-technological approaches in heutagogy (pp 2 -6). Tamil Nadu Open University
Mitra, S. (2012). “Beyond the Hole in the Wall” TED Books, New York
Mitra S. (2019). “The School in the Cloud: The Emerging Future of Learning” Corwin, Thousand Oaks CA
The School of Barbiana (1971). “Letter to a Teacher.” Penguin, London (A new edition of this important work has been published for Kindle by Boiraag Publication, Kolkata: released on 15th September 2022)
Whitworth, A., Garnett, F. and Pearson, D., (2012) “Aggregate-then-Curate: how digital learning champions help communities nurture online content.” (“Aggregate-then-Curate: how digital learning champions help communities …”) “In Research in Learning Technology, [S.l.], v. 20, Dec. 2012.” (“(DOC) Ambient Learning City | Fred Garnett – Academia.edu”) ISSN 2156-7077
Luckin R., Clark W.; Garnett, F., Whitworth A, Akass J., Cook J, Day P; Ecclesfield, N, Hamilton, T., and Robertson, J (2010) “Learner Generated Contexts: A framework to support the effective use of technology for learning”, in Lee M., Sturt C. and McLoughlin C. (Eds.) Web 2.0-Based E-Learning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching. IGI Global, Sydney
Luckin R (2010) “Redesigning Learning Contexts: Technology-Rich, Learner-Centered Ecologies”, Routledge, London
A New and Significant Launch for World Heutagogy Day 26th September 2022
Introduction; From her home in rural Andhra Pradesh, Vijaya Bhanu Kote, whose work has featured as part of World Heutagogy Day since 2014, has set up “The Heutagogy Brainery” to promote and support Heutagogic (self-determined learning) practice across the educational spectrum from early years to post-compulsory education. To support the launch, we are featuring Vijaya’s own introduction, below, to her work and the “Brainery, and the outline of her new book, which pulls together her work up to date. The “Brainery is an important development, drawing on over twenty years of engagement as a parent and teacher encouraging learner agency and self-determination, whose work has implications for learners and practitioners worldwide and is now recognised across India and around the world; Nigel Ecclesfield – September 2022
Launch of Heutagogy Brainery World Heutagogy Day 2022; by Vijaya Bhanu Kote
Objectives of Heutagogy Brainery
To create awareness about Heutagogy.
To conduct awareness and self-realization courses for teachers, parents and students.
To publish books on Heutagogy.
To establish a research wing for Heutagogic research.
Counselling parents, teachers and students
It had been a long journey from 2006 to 2022 with Heutagogy. Heutagogy has changed my life as well as my family’s outlook about life and education. My son was about 18 months of age when I started experimenting on him. I wanted his brought up to be unique, with no pressure, no stress. I started experimenting on little things like letting him see me and imitate. Letting him do things on his own. For example, applying crayon colours on the pictures after watching me do it for few days, putting his toys in a carton after playing. Tidying up his workspace after playing or drawing, letting him do things on own, however he likes them to do, like selecting his own picture in the book or selecting his own toy.
I read many books when he was in my womb. I used to talk to him placing my palm on my stomach. I read stories to him as well. May be, it was a compensative emotion to lessen my agony for the loss of my first two twin kids Glory and Gracy. He started doing things on his own after few months of imitation. He started growing up as a Heutagog. Some years later, he started school. He was self-determined in his choices and execution, but the schooling was quite different from his thoughts and expectations. My husband worked with the same institution where my son a pupil. Due to the frequent Asthma suffered by my child, we had the opportunity to make suggestions to his teachers. At our request, Buddy was not given any homework, nor put under any pressure to study as per the school norms or coerced to obtain grades in his work or exams. He was free. He practiced piano, played games, enjoyed being with his friends and family, learned new skills, read so many books, learned drawing and other skills., after his school hours. This gave him good insights and when he was in Grade III, we noticed a leadership spark and deft in writing in him. He collaborated with my school kids and established an organization named, “Impact” with the help of Green Climate Magazine team. He led many social awareness programs and, from then on, wrote stories and articles for magazines and painted many pictures.
His success increased from then on leading him to talk about the National and the International issues in seminars and conferences, becoming a published writer and a social activist. He became a small farmer after watching the suicides of farmers in India. He wanted to understand how our agriculture can be transformed to ensure that farmers can live with dignity and sufficient wealth. He conducted many experiments in farming. He received State Eco Friend Award when he was in Grade VI (10-11 years). His school correspondent was so happy for him that he allotted land on his farm for Buddy to conduct his experiments. Buddy did experiments on mono cropping and mixed cropping and with the results he went to Ahmedabad to present his experiments at National Children’s Science Congress when he was in Grade IX. He gained the National KVR Scientific Society Award at the same time. His work won laurels from many organisations. During Covid 19, he read continually, listened to podcasts, did a Junior MBA course to find his further education course. He is now pursuing his education in Business Administration and wants to be a Social Entrepreneur.
When anyone asks him “What Heutagogy is about, he will just smile and say, “Liberty.”
When Buddy (Vardhishna Vibhavas Rajith Elipe) was growing up, being a Heutagog, my husband was overwhelmed with his son’s happy, easy-going, stress-free attitude. He started practicing Heutagogy for his school kids too. His teaching career took a new turn, and he was happier than before. He worked in a corporate school where experimentation was not so much encouraged. He took the permission of the school’s Joint Secretary and the principal to implement Heutagogic mode of learning. He had a hectic schedule, owing to which he could document not much of his work but was very much happy being a Heutagogy Practitioner. He submitted his experiments on “Introspective Heutagogy” for the World Heutagogy Day 2020 to wikiquals. He presented his paper on “Introspective Heutagogy” to CCE Finland Global Symposium in April 2022, that won laurels from the chair, UNESCO.
I was diagnosed with Brain (pituitary)Tumour in 2021. My world toppled down as I was diagnosed with an exceedingly rare disease named “Cushing’s Disease” that was not identified earlier, though I suffered a great deal. The disease, along with its associated tumour existed in my body for at least 10 years without treatment. The rest was a story of search for a doctor who had proper skill in removing my tumour from an extremely critical area of my pituitary gland, my surgery, my walk towards recovery which is still going on.
On the day of my surgery, only thing that pricked me hard was, “What will be the fate of the Heutagogic way of learning I have developed for Indian context?” I asked my husband and son to start a Heutagogy Academy and propagate Heutagogy. I asked them to encourage teachers, parents, and students to learn through Heutagogy and even urged them to establish a “Research Wing” that could encourage teachers, parents, and students to experiment and document their Localized Heutagogy.
I survived the critical surgery but still on recovery mode with different health issues persisting and newly developing. My husband Bangarraju quit his job few months back and started working on the launch of “Heutagogy Academy.” I cannot be involved in the academy as I am working for the Government. So, both my husband and son got engaged with the works related to the academy. At last, on 26th September 2022, on the eve of World Heutagogy Day, we are launching “Heutagogy Brainery” at our place, may be the first of its kind in the world, as the founder of Heutagogy, Stewart Hase said. (There are so many agencies and academies in India that the auditors asked us for any other synonym for academy, so we gave the name Brainery)
We designed both awareness and self-realization courses for teachers, parents and students. We are planning to propagate Heutagogy around the world with these 5 principles;
To create awareness about Heutagogy.
To conduct awareness and self-realization courses for teachers, parents and students.
To publish books on Heutagogy.
To establish a research wing for Heutagogic research.
Counselling parents, teachers and students
Thanks, is a very small word but we would love to thank Stewart Hase ji, Fred Garnett ji and Nigel Ecclesfield ji for their constant support. Thank you so much for helping with editing and modelling my module that is being released on the World Heutagogy Day 2022. I would rather say, it is the soul talk of four souls. Thanks for everything.
Background; We, Nigel Ecclesfield and myself, Fred Garnett, have been working collaboratively in this area, that is attempting to develop a socially-inclusive approach to education, and society, through varying strategies connected education and society since we met at Becta in 2002.
Key Points; 1) Informal learning; in researching how people learn informally in newly developed digital community centres (2000-02) We developed the Community Development Model of Learning. Key message; we learn best from people they trust, not necessarily from educational professionals;
2) Emergent Learning Model; in looking at how we might integrate Informal (community) learning , non-formal (vocational) and formal (academic) learning (as part of the EU Bologna Process we argued that learning began in informal contexts and moved up into formal education institutions. Not the other way round as academic institutions continue to insist. Key message; learners learn long before academics assess and accredit their “education”
3) Social media models of learning; Having worked with the Learner-Generated Contexts Research Group, who were researching post Web2.0 models of learning, we helped develop the Open Context Model of Learning. Key message “learner-centred education after the internet requires teaching that is based on Pedagogy, Andragogyy & Heutagogy, in order to develop self-determined learners“
4) I Am Curious #Digital in the emerging digital world we need to rely on teachers as Digital Practitioners using a combination of their professional curiosity, personal technologies to create “artfully-crafted, student-centred. learning experiences” Key message Education can be set up so that the digital curiosity of both teacher and learners can help co-create new student-centred learning“
5) We can use the city as a learning environment. As we learnt in the Manchester-based Ambient Learning City project with Manchester University if we wish to change the frame of education, by changing the learning environment then the key message is that “Everything is a Metaphor” and we need to rethink the metaphors with which we understand learning”
6) Participatory Learning City 2.0 With the Silicon Valley hierarchical model of the smart city dominating how new technology use is viewed in cities we developed the Participatory City model and looked at what learning is in new contexts. Key message “Web 2.0 technologies change the use context and we need to become active context-shapers”
We’ve pulled all this work together in our new book Digital Learning: Architectures of Participation motto ‘Trust the optimism of the learners not the pessimism of the educators. Key message is that we need to be “building learning infrastructure“
Our book is an attempt to rethink the future of education in the digital 21st century, based on a wide range of projects we have been involved in, with many other contributors working across several sectors of education and published in a number of peer-reviewed publications. Significantly for this post I want to highlight those aspects of our future-facing work that have emerged specifically from earlier innovative practice in UK Further Education.
The Open Context Model of Learning (2006); Our book opens with a discussion of our founding piece of work into digital learning which was developed collaboratively with 10 co-authors who had experience of digital projects and research across all sectors of the UK educational system. The Open Context Model of Learning was developed to be the “pedagogy” for an emerging learning practice where the learner used digital tools to access learning resources and designed their personal learning networks accessing social media using personal technologies as they co-created and determined their own learning goals (heutagogy). We (all) saw digital learning as representing a shift from a didactic, pedagogic subject-based education system, as it had been for 1000 years, to a collaborative, dynamic, open-ended process of inquiry, which will require a new digital learning infrastructure.
EMFFE (2007); This was the first project Nigel Ecclesfield and I worked on together and it was a national one designed to identify how to make Further Education institutions, colleges, more e-learning ready by creating an EMFFE (E-Maturity Framework for Further Education). Using the language of the book what we were concerned with was to examine how to design 21st century educational institutions in which digital learning would become the driver of educational outcomes. In partnership with 15 further education colleges from across England, representing the range of the sector, its educational practice and demographics, we created a sector-wide “e-maturity framework” and then gave each college some funding to do further developmental work across our 5 key areas; leadership, resources, technology, estates and human resources.
Architecture of Participation (2008) With our development work on the prototype of EMFFE completed (then handed to the Department of Education who passed it on to PWC for development into the Generator project) Nigel and I then wrote a paper for BJET in which we reflected on what we had learnt from the project and called it “Towards an organisational Architecture of Participation“. This was based on the O’Reilly term used in “What is Web 2.0?” (the participatory web) and was our first outline of how a digital learning infrastructure could be developed. We have continued to examine this question on the Architecture of Participation blog we describe an organisational Architecture of Participation as being “adaptive institutions working across collaborative networks” another way of describing 21st century digital institutions but also capturing how the EMFFE would work as sector-wide collaborative practice.
Digital Practitioner (2011); This is perhaps the most significant part of the book in terms of addressing how the process of digital transformation of traditional educational institutions might best be achieved. This was an open research project with original questions set by Geoff Rebbeck and a novel research process designed by Nigel where we interviewed 3 sets of FE lecturers on how they were using (any) technologies with their students. As we subtitled the research work it is about what happens when “digital natives grow up”, go to work and use the personal technologies that they grew up with in their professional work. Arguably it is about a digital “craft practice” where teachers develop their teaching expertise with technologies they are already comfortable with to create “artfully-crafted, student-centred, learning experiences”
Curiosity and Critical Thinking (reflection); What was most interesting about the Digital Practitioner research for Nigel and I, who had come from working on large-scale national projects built at the institutional level, was that the emerging practice of the digital practitioner came from the everyday practice of Continue reading “Further Education Inspiration”→
In 1997 I got to design an Internet Learning Labat Lewisham College. I was the first person to write and obtain curriculum approval for a “blended learning” course (on “Information Systems in Society”) and I designed the layout of the lab around an “ecology of resources” model as Rose Luckin calls it, although I hadn’t read her work then. Computers, well PCs, were arrayed around the walls of the room and a large table dominated the centre, around which learners could discuss what they had discovered online. Search was still relatively primitive, full of Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle (Yahoo) and probably the meta-search of Dogpile was the most useful. Google of course is NOT a search engine…
It occurred to me that we were about to do something entirely new in that class and I’d better rethink what the learning literacies would be when using online resources as opposed to books from a library. I already had a sophisticated, and unique, view of my teaching and learning strategies (as a colleague, Richard, said when adding me to his HNC course team in Systems Analysis “I don’t know what Fred does but his students love him“) which I called brokering; enabling students to learn by following their interests. So how could I help students follow their interests in this new online learning world? What would a learning literacy look like in the digital world? Well learning, not content-delivery (as in the severely-limited world of xMOOCs) came first, so I had to design afresh for this new learning context. However I was informed by 17 years of teaching experience which helped; a lot.
I decided to create a 3-part assessment for the course (which was examining the social impact of existing business information systems being used in new social contexts) as follows. Firstly a digital learning literacy portfolio (which was simply pass/fail as it was a form of training), secondly a research portfolio (evidencing the breadth and origin of resources used) and thirdly an individual project report on the social impact of an emerging technology.
What I saw as a digital learning literacy was built around adjusting to what digital access offered whilst retaining the core qualities of how we might learn in a classroom. To my way of educating the classroom enables discussion; which is where “learning” takes place. So my digital learning literacy portfolio was as follows;
Netiquette
Search
Evaluation
Supporting others learning
Discussion
Moderation
1 – Netiquette. The Internet, where “you own your own words” was arguably a far more ethical place than the (proprietary) web has become and there was a well detailed set of ethical principles called netiquette, largely developed for dealing with email conversations but also about respecting others online. I tried to emphasise this as a learning etiquette, where learning is co-created.
2 – Search is complicated or, as they say in Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil, “information retrieval is expensive” which was very much the case in 1997 when we were still in the post-Internet situation of needing to know the actual IP address of resources and so people were slowly building resources directories, which was how search was seen in 1997. Search meant
Today we might say “Open the search doors Google”
3 – Evaluation is about evaluating the value of the resources discovered through “search” so that they can be used for the research report being prepared by a student for their research assignment.
4 – Supporting others learning which is what we should be doing in classroom discussions, might be better described, perhaps, as supporting others research in this class. Each student was required to find a useful resource for at least one other student and give them the link to their resource. This usually lead to discussions about other students
5 – Discussion is the essence of learning, as Socrates pointed out in the original Academy. In 1997 I used a free online discussion resource, egroups, and made that the focus of learning discussions, with behaviours shaped by the Netiquette agreement everybody had signed. Every learner had to both comment and lead discussions.
6 – Moderation which I though was actually the ultimate (new) digital learning literacy as it required learners to “lead” or chair learning discussions of their learning colleagues.
Firstly we were chronically ill and writing a book is something you can do even when you are in physical lockdown. That remains true in social lockdown, as we have now, as well.
Secondly we aren’t academics who are amply rewarded for just sitting down and writing up their thoughts. We were much more practically-oriented than that and had been involved in many local and national projects in which we had brought “digital” elements into learning.
Thirdly whilst working for the UK government’ Education Ministry, which is how we met, we started working on meta-projects. By which we mean large-scale digital projects with a design intention of systemic transformation. For a time we were working on the UK “modernising government” programme which included a target to “transform education”. At this point (around 2005) we realised a wide-scale design problem and started asking the question “Are we transforming education or just e-enabling existing practice?”
Fourthly we were fortuitously included in a project to examine why educational institutions we not delivering the “learning gains” that e-learning resources and tools seemed capable of delivering. This was the serendipitous moment that set us on the path to this book. We were part of EMFFE which examined the lineaments of how sector wide transformation and the organisational redesign of educational institutions could help improve learning in digital environments. We gained a fantastic amount of insights that really haven’t been acted upon.
Fifthly Nigel and I then started writing about how that systemic transformation could be achieved under the rubric of “architectures of participation” and have evolved that thinking on our blog, along with the work on Public Value, Ambient Learning City.
Our question now, which we would like to discuss in the book in 8 tweets process is; Can we build learning infrastructures instead of educational institutions?
Or, amplified, “can we build learner-centred, learning infrastructures, instead of content-delivery educational institutions that we have had since at least 1093?”
We want to discuss how we might achieve this by answering 8 questions to which we think we have preliminary answers but, around which, we need further debates. What follows is our 8 questions and our tentative answers:
A What have we learnt so far (modelling learning)?
Bringing out a book for Autumn 2020 is probably one of the craziest things that could be done, when so many books have been published in this same period and all the travel and geographical options open to authors and publishers are shut down and, in the UK at least, there is an onset of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic with a sharp focus on universities.
The response of universities, colleges, schools and Government has been to resort to “blended learning” which means different things to different people e.g. requiring teachers/academics to place their existing materials in a learning platform or publish in MOOCs, while students are expected to avoid mixing with their peers and stay stuck to their computers while “learning online”. At a time like this, publishing a book called Digital Learning: Architectures of Participation might be helpful as we have tried to explore how digital technologies can move from being sources of content, generated and moderated within individual institutions (e.g. MOOCs) to resources for collaborative learning in “learner-generated contexts”, which we explore in Chapter 1.
Secretary of State for Education in England, Gavin “Williamson, said the pandemic had seen “new ideas emerge”, such as “new platforms, new ways of teaching, new ways of being able to ensure that children from whatever background are able to benefit”. He mentioned blended learning and singled out Oak and the NTP – two government backed schemes – for praise.” (Schools Week 14th September 2020 – https://schoolsweek.co.uk/williamson-covid-is-an-opportunity-to-drive-education-reforms/) Which sounds fine until it is realised that “blended learning” is a term that has been in regular use since its first appearance in 1999 and, whichever definition you choose they all see the term as being far wider in scope than the digital delivery of content that is the core activity of the organisations funded by Government and praised by the minister.
As you will see in this blog and in the book (https://www.igi-global.com/book/digital-learning-architectures-participation/244422), we believe there is a powerful and potentially transformational role for digital technology in learning and teaching, but it lies not in the delivery of content, but in enabling collaboration and the making of learning by learners, practitioners and their wider communities and settings through architectures of participation.
Our book had its genesis when a group of British people who had built a prototype social network in 2002, a “Facebook” before Mark Zuckerberg had started coding ConnectU at Harvard for the Winklevoss twins. They asked themselves the question “what would learning look like in a post Web2.0″ world?” Having tried to build our digital future we recognised that we were moving into a Web 2.0 world and, as Hazel Henderson had said in 1984 “technology is the essence of politics” (ideas she explores in greater depth in Henderson (1996), so the future of learning would be shaped be the emerging and evolving new technologies in the orbit of Web2.0. In “What is Web2.0?” O’Reilly (2005) O’Reilly had delineated some of the elements of Web2.0, the participatory web, which has been described elsewhere as the Read/Write Web. It would mean “web as a platform” it would mean “permanent beta” and it would mean building “architectures of participation” This book looks at these three core Web2.0 ideas, and much more besides in terms of the broader aspects of a 21st century digital economy, and asks what it means for learning, and education.
Web as a platform; we interpret as being about “learning beyond the classroom” and has been well-described in the “Ecology of Resources” model developed by Rose Luckin (2008).
Permanent Beta: we interpret as being about an evolving process, which has been well described by Steven Johnson in his book Emergence Johnson (2002) and which we re-position with the “Emergent Learning Model”
Architecture of Participation; unlike what Jeff Bezos describes as “the institutional no” Brandt (2011) to digital change, we see organisational Architectures of Participation are about the creating “the institutional yes” and formal Education is really bad at that.
How, then do we build for “the institutional yes” in education in our post-Web2.0 world?
We wrote this book as a means of bringing together our work on learning, teaching, institutions and their development and digital technologies. While this work has been developed with colleagues working in post-compulsory education, higher education, Government and the private sector, its focus, from the start of our collaboration in 2005 has been on public education and those post-compulsory providers of education that are not , primarily, engaged in higher education. As you will see, in every chapter, post-compulsory education outside higher education in England is a complex set of entities providing learning for a great diversity of learners and catering for their needs. For both of us, throughout our careers, our engagement in post compulsory education has given us opportunities to observe and participate in learning and teaching that would not be available to those practitioners working in schools or universities, both in the past and especially in the current policy climate and we see them as missing the experience of engaging with the ‘craft’ of teaching in its rich variety. We will come back to our ‘contexts’ as we progress and pick up the issues raised in this first paragraph, but first, you need to know what the book is and is not.
Primarily, the book is intended to initiate dialogues around the issues it raises and to provide tools and pointers to resources and that wellspring of dialogue, ideas. We have both been privileged to work and research within a wide range of contexts and have come to work with and develop ideas in the company of many people as colleagues and peers, not least those who were learners in the courses and lessons we took and, generally, our learning was not greatly influenced by textbooks and their purpose of covering a syllabus or curriculum. Where textbooks did help us, was when they allowed us and their other readers, to see beyond the boundaries of a fixed course or qualification into new worlds of ideas. So, this book has been written to help readers to look, with us, at a wider set of ideas about teaching and learning/learning and teaching that emerges out of a “coincidence of motivations” that can emerge from self-determined learners engaged in their learning and thus able to make use of the tools and affordances of the digital technologies that emerged and were developed in the contexts created by the development of the Internet and the World-Wide Web and, more specifically, what became known as Web 2.0.
The book falls into two main parts, the first setting out our theories that emerged both from the projects we engaged in together and also the work of our peers. These theoretical chapters e.g. we start with the Open Context Model of Learning, emerge from our desire to provide tools that can be applied to practice and, Continue reading “Digital Learning: Architectures of Participation – what’s in the book”→
We have produced introductory set of slides covering our book from the perspective of 8 key questions. We think we offer many answers in the book but perhaps we haven’t formulated the right questions about the future of education and learning in a digital age. As William Gibson once said “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed“. We think that…
“The answers are already here, we are just asking the wrong questions”
Here’s our set of questions and answers about the digital learning future of education
Learn Teach 21 