mountain masala

ATOM

There's some great stuff available in Australia for people who teach media-related stuff (I can't wait to getting back to teach it!).  ATOM = Australian Teachers of Media.  "Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) is an independent, non-profit, professional association promoting the study of media. The membership of ATOM primarily includes teachers and lecturers from across subject disciplines at all levels of education. The membership also includes media industry personnel, a range of media, education and government organisations and, increasingly, the general public interested in the media."

They produce a great magazine (Metro), study guides for films, access to free screenings of new movies for teachers, and more.

Today the announced study guides for iPad, presumably using the new iBook Author app. You can find out which films are available here. And the apps are free!

Worth checking out and joining their email list.

 

 

Theory of Practice

Finally starting to read Pierre Bourdieu's "Outline of a Theory of Practice". The first two sentences:

"The practical privilege in which all scientific activity arises never more subtly governs that activity (insofar as science presupposes not only an epistemological break but also a social separation) than when, unrecognised as privilege, it leads to an implicit theory of practice which is the corollary of neglect of the social conditions in which science in possible. The anthropologist's particular relation to the object of his study contains the makings of a theoretical distortion inasmuch as his situation as an obersver, excluded from the real play of social activities by the fact that he has no place (except by choice or by way of a game) in the system observed and has no need to make a place for himself there, inclines him to a hermeneutic representation of practices, leading him to reduce all social relations to communicative relations, and, more precisely, to decoding operations."

Methinks he needed a good editor, even in French... 'decoding' is indeed the word.

 

Australian Association of Researchers in Education Conference

I'm at the annual AARE conference in Hobart. Lovely to be back  in Tassie. I'm here with hundreds of people who study education, teach educators, study the teaching of educators, study how educators teach, study how education is studied, study those who study education, and study what we mean by all of the above. i'm out of my comfort zone. (i know two people whom I havent seen yet.) people from universities, education depts and schools from across Australia and overseas.

there's a strong focus on schooling (yet little/nothing specific to church schools), and on preparing teachers to teach. a much lesser focus on higher education in general. very little on vocational education. virtually nothing on more 'community-based' learning eg. church.

i've been to a helpful session on research methods, and a session on educational leadership that was really about school principals for the future. there are 600 presentations over 5 days, so I'm hoping that i pick a few winners. the challenge is that there are lots of people here who know stuff that would be interesting and helpful for me, but its not really going to be in the sessions, is it?

tomorrow night I'm going to the "technology & education" special interest group dinner. i dont have an iPad... will it be all geek introverts? virtual food?

the Routledge book display has some great looking books on educational research and research in general...

i'm doing church work while I'm here too. that's the next post...

parenting and school achievement

Here's an article in the New York Times by Howard Friedman: "How About Better Parents?" suggesting that policy makers look beyond school performance as contributors to academic achievement in young people.It is based on OECD research concerning standardised academic testing of middle school students in the US.

There's a full report here.

The  main findings:

- children whose parents read to them in their early primary schooling scored better in high school academic tests, regardless of the family's socio-economic background

- parent's engagement with their teenagrs is strongly associated with better academic performance

The latter includes often diascussing political or social issues, and discussing books, film or television programs

This does not seem to be rocket science, and indeed reflects the broader based research of Search Institute over the last 30 years. However there is clearly an issue in helping anf encouring parent.s particularly those less inclined or able to read themselves, to do so. This would certainly be true in Australia as well.

It raises the question of how churches might partner with parents in these two key areas.

Thanks to Gene R for the link.

CRASSH

I've just stumbled across CRASSH - the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge University. Loads of interesting stuff. Manuel Castells is about to give some lectures about . All kinds of interesting conferences and symposia... discussion about how creativity and innovation are measured as social capital, 'digital humanities' research... definitely worth watching and a visit next time I'm in the UK.

conferences and papers

here are some links to a range of conference papers available online recently... just thought I'd compile them here. lots of excellent stuff.

Symposium on Children's Spirituality, Melbourne - papers here

Religious Education Association (US) - papers here

Australian Association of Mission Studies - papers here

Access to learning about practice

Lave and Wenger (Situated Learning) are great at questioning traditional assumptions about learning. They suggest that there is a "folk epistemology of dichotomies" (have to remember to slip that phrase into conversation....). eg. "between 'abstract' and 'concrete' knowledge. These categories do not reside in the world as distinct forms of knowledge, nor do they reflect some putative hierarchy of forms of knowledge among practicioners. Rather, they derive from the nature of the new practice generated by sequestration. Abstraction in this sense stems from the disconnectedness of a particular cultural practice. Participation in that practice is neither more nor less abstract or concrete, experiential or cerebral, than in any other. Thus, legitimate peripheral participation as the core concept of relations of learning places the explanatory burden for issues such as 'understanding' and 'levels' of abstraction or conceptualisation not on one type of learning as opposed to another, but on the cultural practice in which the learning is taking place, on issues of access, and on the transparency of the cultural environment with respect to the meaning of what is being learned." (p104).

Great, hey! So it's not that the classroom deals in abstract theory (or cognition) and the field setting in concrete practice (or experience). Rather, the classroom is abstracted from the field setting because what happens there is in fact a different set of cultural practices. So its not that there's a burden on the classroom to the transmit the theory correctly and on the field setting to inculcate people with the right experiences. Rather BOTH settings involve learning new understandings and practices that are designed to replicate the kinds of communities in which they take place!

But more than that, the classroom teaching may be designed to withhold certain kinds of information or experience on the assumption that "theory" must be learned before "practice". The issue here is that the control of information may have more to do with the institution's ways of replicating itself than with a sound theory of learning for effective practice in a field setting.

I do like this stuff!

apprenticeship #2

"It seems typical of apprenticeship that apprentices learn mostly in relation with other apprentices. There is anecdotal evidence that where the circulation of knowledge among peers and near-peers is possible, it spreads exceedingly rapidly and effectively. The central grounds on which forms of education that differ from schooling are condemned are that changing the person is not the central motive of the enterprise in which learning takes place. The effectiveness of the circulation of information among peers suggests, to the contrary, that engaging in practice, rather than being its object, may well be a condition for the effectiveness of learning."
J. Lave and E. Wenger, "Situated Learning", Cambridge University Press, 1991, p93.

If this is correct, a key role of educators is to establish peer learning environments whereby learners have siginifcant freedom and resources to explore what it means to engage in practice, drawing upon the expertise of the teacher as required. I take the last point as meaning that performance is not simply a result of good teaching, but rather a requirement within a peer-oriented learning process. It is important to note that, as Lave and Wenger's case studies demonstrate, the nature of those 'apprenticeship' processes may vary significantly.

The authors also refer to the ways in which the masters or experts may withhold both expertise and opportunity to learn as a way of maintaining power (not simply as incentive to the learner).

None of this is dissimilar to the kinds of things that Greg Whitby and others are saying about the ways in which technology is helping to shift teaching and learning to a more learner-centred philosophy and practice.

Of course, Christian educators have been teaching in such ways in the past in various settings. Yet the more 'academic' the setting becomes, the less such kinds of apprenticeship have been evident (IMHO).

The question is what this means in a congregational setting. To what extent to leaders/teachers create peer environments or opportunities in which purposeful experimentation around discipleship practice take place?

apprenticeship #1

Lave and Wenger's "Situated Learning" (Cambridge University Press, 1991) includes 5 quite diverse studies of apprenticeship - Mexican midwives, Liberian tailors, US navy quartermasters, butchers and members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

"In all five cases described in the preceding chapter researchers insist that there is very little observable teaching; the more basic phenomenon is learning. The practice of the community creates the potential "curriculum" in the broadest sense - that which may be learned by newcomers with legitimate peripheral access.

Learning activity appears to have a characteristic pattern. There are strong goals for learning because learners, as peripheral participants, can develop a view of what the whole enterprise is about, and what there is to be learned. Learning itself is an improvised practice: A learning curriculum unfolds in opportunities for engagement in practice. It is not specified as a set of dictates for proper practice. In apprenticeship opportunities for learning are, more often than not, given structure by work practices instead of by strongly assymetrical master-apprentice relations."

 As I read this stuff, my brain is running both training for ministry and equipping for discipleship through the authors' lens. In terms of discipleship, it seems to me here that 'strong goals for learning' and 'engagement in practice' are key dimensions - in other words, purposeful participation. When I consider ministry students, learning as improvised practice seems critical. The relationship with a mentor or supervisor is less critical than is the opportunity (and responsibility) of 'playful' and experimental involvement in aspects of leadership.

There is so much other good stuff in this book. I skimmed it a few years ago and am now re-reading it properly.

Learning and Performance

"Given a sufficient disjunction between the skill being taught and the acutal performance situation, one could imagine an actor who becomes expert as a learner - that is, who becomes a master at managing th learning situation - but who never actually learns the performance skills themselves.... The apprentice'a ability to understand the master's performance depends not on their possessing the same representation of it, or of the objects it entails, but rather on their engaging in the performance in congruent ways. Similarly, the master's effectiveness at producing learning is not dependent on her ability to inculcate the student with her own conceptual representations. Rather, it depends on her ability to manage effectively a division of participation that provides for growth on the part of the student."

William Hanks in the Foreword to Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation by Jean Jave and Etienne Wenger, Cambridge University Press, 1991.