Archives For Learning
Outside the field of behaviorism, Chomsky’s paper is considered to be a classic, and is cited as final evidence of the inadequacy of behaviorism as a general framework for animal behavior and human affairs (Virués-Ortega, 2006 p. 243).
As you will see in the Noam Chomsky Behaviorism video and read in the articles linked below even though behaviorism has been shown to be inadequate it not only persists to this day it still dominates educational practice. Most recently we have seen a resurgence of behaviorism in the form of personalized learning, or “competency-based education,” which Diane Ravitch (2018) argues are are both euphemisms for computer adaptive instruction.
Norm Freiesn (2018) argues that educations primary purpose has always been to help children to gradually become free and responsible adults who will contribute to everyday life in our civil society. The reliance on computer algorithms to control the education process moves it away from its essence as a human activity. Ironically the label of “personalized learning” is used even though computer-aided instruction depersonalizes and reduces the process of learning to that of matching curricular competency with workforce placement. Personalized learning is really about the meaningful connections that are made with teachers, peers, and the significant learning experiences that are made possible by giving learners choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities.
The following warning from Paul Emerich (2018) a former Silicon Valley personalized learning expert emphasizes the human dimension of genuine personalized learning:
We must walk away from this hyper-individualized brand of personalized learning. We must walk away from its reductionism, assuming that education is simply an arrangement of individualized playlist cards or isolated experiences. We must run from the idea that technology is necessary to make the classroom a more personal and humanized place, because what personalizes the classroom is not fancy technology and big data: truly knowing children is what personalizes and humanizes a modern classroom.
References
Chomsky N. Review of B. F. Skinner, Verbal Behavior. Language. 1959;35:26–58. Retrieved from https://chomsky.info/1967____/
Chomsky N. Review of B.F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity. The New York Review of Books. 1971 Dec 30;17:18–24. Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1971/12/30/the-case-against-bf-skinner/
Emerich, P. (2018, January 16). Why I left Silicon Valley, edTech, and “personalized” learning [Blog]. Retrieved June 22, 2018, from https://paulemerich.com/2018/01/15/why-i-left-silicon-valley-edtech-and-personalized-learning/
Friesen, N. (2018). Personalized learning technology and the new behaviorism: Beyond freedom and dignity. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/36112036/Personalized_Learning_Technology_and_the_New_Behaviorism_Beyond_Freedom_and_Dignity.docx
Ravitch, D. (2017, December 29). 5 risks posed by the increasing misuse of technology in schools [Blog]. Retrieved June 22, 2018, from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-12-29-5-risks-posed-by-the-increasing-misuse-of-technology-in-schools
Skinner, F.B. (1965).Science and Human Behavior. New York: The Free Press.
Skinner, B.F. (1971). Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York: Bantam/Vintage
Virués-Ortega, J. (2006). The Case Against B. F. Skinner 45 years Later: An Encounter with N. Chomsky. The Behavior Analyst, 29(2), 243–251. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223960274_The_Case_Against_B_F_Skinner_45_years_Later_An_Encounter_with_N_Chomsky
Watters, A. (2017, December 23). Education technology and the new behaviorism. Retrieved June 22, 2018, from http://hackeducation.com/2017/12/23/top-ed-tech-trends-social-emotional-learning
This video is our response to the Disruptive Innovation hype that is all too often publish by too many mainstream organizations. The following infographic is what Dr. Thibodeaux and I discuss in this week’s episode of our Learner’s Mindset Discussion.
Source: http://www.govtech.com/education/higher-ed/Documenting-Disruptions-Infographic.html
Nuremburg Funnel – the idiomatic expression started back in the 17th century that conveys the notion of pouring in information.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Funnel
En Lan 2000 – A 19th-Century Vision of the Year 2000
Source: https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/france-in-the-year-2000-1899-1910/
When educational issues hit the evening news it is very important that you understand how to move past the hype to see what is really happening. The announcement of Chicago Public Schools and nonprofit Leap Innovations receiving a $14 million grant from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to expand personalized learning to 100 schools is definitely worth investigating. Without fully understanding what personalized learning means within the educational context, on its own merits, it sounds like a great idea. If we look to the recent confession from Larry Berger, CEO of Amplify about what personalized learning actually is. Berger’s company Amplify creates products and curriculum that are supposed to “truly personalize learning” (https://www.amplify.com/curriculum) and since he and his company has spent over a decade using big data algorithms to promote this model, his insider knowledge is useful.
Berger argues that when most people refer to personalized learning they are referring to the engineering model of personalized learning. His explanation of the model is worth repeating verbatim (link to the full confession):
You start with a map of all the things that kids need to learn.
Then you measure the kids so that you can place each kid on the map in just the spot where they know everything behind them, and in front of them is what they should learn next.
Then you assemble a vast library of learning objects and ask an algorithm to sort through it to find the optimal learning object for each kid at that particular moment.
Then you make each kid use the learning object.
Then you measure the kids again. If they have learned what you wanted them to learn, you move them to the next place on the map. If they didn’t learn it, you try something simpler.
If the map, the assessments, and the library were used by millions of kids, then the algorithms would get smarter and smarter, and make better, more personalized choices about which things to put in front of which kids.
I spent a decade believing in this model—the map, the measure, and the library, all powered by big data algorithms.
Here’s the problem: The map doesn’t exist, the measurement is impossible, and we have, collectively, built only 5% of the library.
To be more precise: The map exists for early reading and the quantitative parts of K-8 mathematics, and much promising work on personalized learning has been done in these areas; but the map doesn’t exist for reading comprehension, or writing, or for the more complex areas of mathematical reasoning, or for any area of science or social studies.
If the CEO of one of the leading personalized learning companies is willing to confess that – The map doesn’t exist, the measurement is impossible, and we have, collectively, built only 5% of the library – then perhaps we should listen to him. Especially when he points to the fact that if we really want our kids to learn how to learn then we need to take a look at what “your best teachers and coaches do for you—without the benefit of maps, algorithms, or data—to personalize your learning?”
Chances are these great teachers and coaches created significant learning environments in which they gave you choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities. Learning has always been personal because until you take ownership of your own learning by making meaningful connections you do not learn. Effective teachers have always known that learning is the responsibility of the learner and their role was to create the environment in which this could happen.
These types of teachers have always used the latest technology to enhance the learning environment and recognized that technology, big data, and algorithms as simply tools that can be used to help make this happen. Unfortunately, we have the tendency to look to the tools to solve our problems. We need to head the warning or confession of the foremost tool maker and remember that: The map doesn’t exist, the measurement is impossible, and we have, collectively, built only 5% of the library
Instead of looking to technology to solve the personal component of personalized learning we need to look to the great teachers who have been doing personalized learning all along by giving their learners choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities. These people have also been using technology in those authentic learning opportunities to help their learner explore, create, collaborate and communicate.
Personalized learning is one of the many educational technology quick fixes that we have a tendency to hope will solve our learning challenges. There are many more ideas, issues, and topics that need clarification and we are looking to you and our Digital Learning and Leading students to join us in exploring these significant issues.
- Consider the following list as a starting point and let us know if you would like to write an article, post or other publication that will bring real clarity to the learning environment:
- Never been a better time to be a learner and/or teacher
- Growth mindset & Grit criticism
- STEM instruction is mostly delivered via lecture
- The much-needed shift to mastery learning
- Personalized learning problems & benefits
- Individualized instruction
- Differentiated instruction
- Additional names for competency-based education
- Why technology isn’t a Quick fix
- Silicon Valley’s failed promises with edtech
- Problems with SAMR and related quick fix methodologies
- Learning styles and related educational Zombie myths (bad ideas that just won’t die)
- Problem-based instruction that isn’t
- Shift from passive to active learning
- Choice
- Ownership
- Voice
- Authentic learning opportunities
- Why all elements of COVA must co-exist
- COVA from a student perspective
- The issue with taking ownership and agency – why folks don’t do this
- Creating significant learning environments
- Future of education
- Connecting the dots – making meaningful connections
- Why – go & show rather than sit & get
- Digital leader vs digital manager
- Design thinking for designed learning
- Confronting the Myth of the ‘Digital Native’
- Decades of evidence…but where is the change? Translating educational research to practice
- 18 years into the 21st century – how are we doing with 21st Century learning
- Communities of Practice (CoP’s) and their impact
- Problems with STEM/STEAM initiatives
- Importance of Learning How to Learn
- Importance of asking good questions vs finding right answers
- Reality of Thorndyke vs. Rhetoric of Dewey – more to be said
- Failing forward
- Feedback to Feedforward
- How to Avoid the Hype/Getting Caught in the whirlwind of day-to-day processes
Please contact either Dr. Thibodeax or myself (Dr. Harapnuik) if you would like to research, write, and publish on one or more of these topics. This list is also just a starting point so if you have other ideas with which you would like to collaborate write, just let us know.
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
—Ernest Hemingway, 1920
Whether or not the short and impactful six-word story was penned by Hemingway there is no denying that it evokes a great deal of emotion. It is almost as if there is something in us that makes a connection beyond the six simple words that we read.
Jonathan Haidt argues that “the human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.” (p. 328). Haidt points to the work of the psychologist Dan McAdams who is recognized for identifying that we each have a story of ourselves that we use to reconcile our place in the world. McAdams argued that psychologists must connect the qualitative data that they gather on their clients with the qualitative perspective of the narratives that people use to make sense of their lives.
We go to movies, binge watch TV series on Netflicks, read fiction, and sit around the campfire listening to our friends and families stories because we just like stories. Why? In their essay Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story, Roger Schank and Robert Abelson argue that “stories about one’s experiences, and the experiences of others, are the fundamental constituents of human memory, knowledge, and social communication” (p. 2). They posit:
- Virtually all human knowledge is based on stories constructed around past experiences;
- New experiences are interpreted in terms of old stories;
- The content of story memories depends on whether and how they are told to others, and these reconstituted memories form the basis of the individual’s “remembered” self”.
Connecting new experiences with old experiences or in this context “old stories” is central to the notion of making meaningful connection which is foundational to the constructivist definition of learning. Stories help us to make meaningful connection which means that stories help us to learn. We can use stories in our learning environments in several ways of key ways. The most effective way is to create a significant learning environment in which a learner is given choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities. This referred to as the CSLE+COVA approach and The authentic learning opportunity or a real-world problem that the learner chooses to resolve can provide the story and the context for learning because it requires that learner to face a sequence of real-world situations. As the learner works through the real-world or authentic learning opportunity they are challenged to develop knowledge, skills, and abilities that are necessary to address the challenges that the authentic learning opportunity present.
If an authentic learning opportunity is not available then using Roger Schank’s Story-Centered Curriculum (SCC) is the next best option. SCC is a:
carefully designed apprenticeship-style learning experience in which the student encounters a planned sequence of real-world situations constructed to motivate the development and application of knowledge and skills in an integrated fashion. A realistic story, at the core of each SCC, provides a meaningful, motivating role for the student, designed to ensure that the student faces exactly the right progression of challenges to stretch and build his or her abilities (Shank, 2007).
While the SCC can provide an effective simulated model the power of choice, ownership and voice will have a more significant effect on the transformative effect of the learning and should be the first choice. This is especially important if we want to have a lasting effect and really enable our learners to learn how to learn and not just work through a simulation.
Stories help us to make sense of the world around us and enable us to make the meaningful connections that can help us also make sense of our lives. It only stands to reason that stories that will come from real-world or authentic learning opportunities will also help us make meaningful connection and help us to learn. Are you taking advantage of this in your learning environment?
References
Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by religion and politics. Pantheon, New York.
McAdams, D. P. (1993). The stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. Guilford Press.
Schank, R. C. (2007, April). The story-centered curriculum [Blog]. Retrieved from https://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=1266881
Schank, Roger C. & Abelson, Robert P. (1995) Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story. In: Robert S. Wyer, Jr (ed) Knowledge and Memory: The Real Story. Hillsdale, NJ. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1-85. Retrieved from: http://cogprints.org/636/1/KnowledgeMemory_SchankAbelson_d.html#fnB0
