Background Noise
I know I may not do things the way everyone else does. I don’t follow the research. I don’t follow the trends. I look for patterns. From a cacophonous blur, I pull at a tiny thread and follow it, until it disappears, or leads to resolution. As I wade through the murk, there’s a constant background noise. It’s the noise of my past experiences and the noise of the people around me. I’m guided by the patterns found in everything I’ve absorbed in my lifetime.
Dave Truss’ post led me to think more about what motivates me to seek better opportunities for learners. I see a pattern in the noise. Those of us seeking change and experimenting with alternative learning models, are learners who discovered in our youth that we had to take control of our own learning. We received good grades for substandard work, or poor marks for quality composition, with disregard for style guidelines or rubrics. We assigned emotional and economic value to learning and made decisions that led us to roles where we have the opportunity to free others from the restrictions limiting opportunities to learn. We are intrinsically motivated, and therefore, disregard the criticism when it doesn’t provide for personal improvement in areas we value.
There’s another thread I’ve been following through the noise, and it’s thicker and more grossly defined. It is starting to concern me, yet I don’t know that I have the ability to influence it. I see many people blindly following others around, without questioning or seeking personal meaning in the advice of industry experts. We encourage our students to approach information with a sense of inquiry, yet many of us accept new knowledge based solely on the authority of the publisher. We need to start questioning everything. Question me. Find your own answers. Find your own meaning, and then share it with everyone!
June 26th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Somehow there has to be a balance. Blind acceptance of authority is no good… but neither is complete disregard of research. And aren’t trends a kind of pattern?
The key is how we make use of the findings, work, positions, and philosophies of others. That only works if people put their words and thoughts out there, which is one of the reasons I’ve been enjoying many of your recent posts. Whether I agree or disagree, I know we need more writing like yours as of late.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Chris, so glad to see you surface! I don’t think I deliberately disregard research, I just don’t seek it out. If it were in my face more, I’m sure my posts would be much more formal and well-informed, and not just off the top of my head. Trends are a kind of pattern, but I suppose I’m not speaking of trends in general. Maybe I am speaking more of “trendiness,” if that makes sense.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Kia ora Jennifer!
We evolved from hunter gatherers, or so we’re told. If this is true, much of the genetic code that made our ancestors what they were must run through our veins.
A teacher looking for patterns in how kids learn is much like the hunter gatherer who comes across a new fruit or a new glade or a new way to lift the fruit from the bush.
From a dusty range of hazard-laden valleys, of pot-holes, cliffs and chasms we gather fruit. Every time we scour the same ground we meet different challenges - the climate is different and the yield is ever-changing. But at the end of each harvest we have a basket of fruit. Though the fruit is not always the same and the quality differs often for no reason that we can see, it is our harvest and we are proud.
In a recent post I outlined a gathering of things that allowed me to see patterns in how kids learn from assessment: what worked, what didn’t, what sometimes worked and maybe why it was sometimes and not always, what motivated learning etc. It represents a thin slice of what I keep in mind while I teach, because I know that there are places I can visit that may yield fruit. But I have to be careful how to get there and and the way that worked the last time won’t necessarily work this time. So I try something else.
That’s what teachers do.
Ka kite
June 27th, 2008 at 1:17 am
I think we may be seeking change more than ‘finding answers’.
Konrad recounts,
http://www.teachandlearn.ca/blog/2007/11/12/conversation-with-pre-service-teachers-the-set-curriculum
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“No, I don’t see any major weaknesses here … I’m sure you’ll do well.”
“Thanks … but … will this get me 89%?”
“Why 89%?” I asked, puzzled.
“I need 89% on this assignment to get into Queen’s.”
That’s when I realized that, to Julia - one of the best students in my class, one of the best writers - writing was really only about getting a grade. It had no other meaning or purpose. All of her learning was reduced to one thing - the need to achieve a certain average.
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…and realizes,
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“…the problem with a set curriculum, regardless of the subject, is that it makes us focus almost exclusively on teaching. It makes us think that the most important person in the classroom is the teacher. It is based on the assumption that we know all and that the students know very little.”
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Alec reads,
http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/829
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“…we’ve reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.”
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…and then says,
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But what if you know it is just a band-aid? What if you know deep down that schools need to change drastically or cease to exist at all before there will ever be any significant change? What if you feel you are just prolonging the inevitable, and simply giving temporary life to a model that is clearly in its death throes?
“It is about honesty. It is about being truthful to our students about the flaws of our educational system. It is essential that we open a dialogue with our children to help them design their educational processes. Together we can do more than simply patch the existing system, and we need to do it soon.”
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And so I find it hard to look at the ‘experts’ for guidance. Experts brought us to the broken model we are in.
I eagerly follow Konrad… Alec… You… Chris or Ken… My Students… questioning, rather than blindly.
‘We’ gather meaningful formative feedback from students. We listen, question, challenge ourselves, our peers and our students… We lead the way.
It will take time for the research to catch up. I’m not waiting. I do not want to go quietly into my classroom:
http://www.slideshare.net/datruss/brave-new-www
Occasionally we will go down a wrong path… but blindly following a bad path that was laid before us offers little if any promise.
To err is human, to complain and wait for change is asinine.