Matt Groening’s “Life in Hell” comic book (1990)
Source: Imgur
Archives For Learning
Thanks to Bob Thomspom from Concordia for sharing the link to this great video. It is too bad our educational system does put students in a position where exam results all to often dictate their fate. Unfortunately, this direction is getting even more entrenched as we place even more significance on exams.
Employers Want Broadly Educated New Hires, Survey Finds – Students – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) survey “It Takes More Than a Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Student Success,” reveals that most employers don’t think colleges are doing a very good job of preparing students for work. In response to the survey results, 160 employers and 107 college presidents agreed to sign a compact and work toward helping the public:
understand the importance of a “21st-century liberal-arts education,” comprising broad and adaptive learning, personal and social responsibility, and intellectual skills.
While I admire this initiative I am somewhat skeptical of its impact. Why? It was only 6 years ago that AAC&U conducted a similar survey that revealed similar findings. In the 2008 report How Should Colleges Assess and Improve Student Learning?) Peter D. Hart Research Associates revealed the following 6 Key Findings:
- When it comes to preparedness for success at the entry-level, one-third of business executives think that a significant proportion of recent college graduates do not have the requisite skills and knowledge.
- When asked to evaluate recent college graduates’ preparedness in 12 areas, employers give them the highest marks for teamwork, ethical judgment, and intercultural skills, and the lowest scores for global knowledge, self-direction, and writing.
- Most employers indicate that college transcripts are not particularly useful in helping evaluate job applicants’ potential to succeed at their company.
- Few employers believe that multiple-choice tests of general content knowledge are very effective in ensuring student achievement. Instead, employers have the most confidence in assessments that demonstrate graduates’ ability to apply their college learning to complex, real-world challenges, as well as projects or tests that integrate problem-solving, writing, and analytical reasoning skills.
- Employers deem both multiple-choice tests of general content knowledge and institutional assessments that show how colleges compare in advancing critical-thinking skills of limited value for evaluating applicants’ potential for success in the workplace. They anticipate that faculty-assessed internships, community-based projects, and senior projects would be the most useful in gauging graduates’ readiness for the workplace.
- When asked to advise colleges on how to develop their methods for assessing students’ learning, employers rank multiple-choice tests of students’ general content knowledge and institutional scores for colleges as conspicuously low priorities.
This report focused on assessment and learning and offered some very specific and practical recommendations that, if followed, should have resulted in a different findings in the latest AAC&U survey. Why hasn’t higher education made any progress in this area over the past 6 years? Theodore Sizer, the former Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean and Educational Reformer, argues in his book, The Red Pencil, that little has changed in education since his experiences in the information and test based classroom he endured in 1946. Why does higher education perpetually find itself in a state of paralysais by analysis?
We need to heed the advice often attributed to Albert Einstein. Although he never actually offered the following quote this notion of challenging conventional thought is still useful:
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
We can stop this insanity only if we stop hiring so many traditional risk adverse leaders and faculty. As I detailed in my post Pick Two – Innovation, Change or Stability we need to search out individuals who are outside-of-the-box thinkers with entrepreneurial spirits and unconventional career paths if we really want to bring about the changes we so desperately need in education.
If we really want to take advantage of all the opportunities that the digital information age offers, we need to move away from fixed mindset to growth mindset thinking. Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
- Tend to view looking smart above all else;
- May sacrifice important opportunities to learn—even those that are important to their future academic success—if those opportunities require them to risk performing poorly or admitting deficiencies;
- Believe that if you have ability, everything should come naturally;
- Tell us that when they have to work hard, they feel dumb;
- Believe that setbacks call their intelligence into question, they become discouraged or defensive when they don’t succeed right away;
- May quickly withdraw their effort, blame others, lie about their scores, or consider cheating.
In contrast Dweck explains that students with a Growth Mindset believe that they can develop their intelligence over time and subsequently will:
- View challenging work as an opportunity to learn and grow;
- Meet difficult problems, ones they could not solve yet, with great relish;
- Say things like “I love a challenge,” “Mistakes are our friends,” and “I was hoping this would be informative!”
- Value effort; they realize that even geniuses have to work hard to develop their abilities and make their contributions;
- More likely to respond to initial obstacles by remaining involved, trying new strategies, and using all the resources at their disposal for learning.
The fixed mindset, or as it is more often referred to as innate intelligence, was the widely accepted theory of cognitive development until 60’s when UC Berkley professor Mark Rosenzweig replicable studies made the case for the environmental impact on brain development and plasticity. It is now widely accepted that the brain remains plastic and adapts to our constantly changing environment which is foundational to Dweck’s argument for the growth mindset.
This notion of adapting to a constantly changing environment is also important when we consider our move from a static print information age to the dynamic digital information age.
The emphases of the print information age and print culture include:
- development of systems of cataloging and retrieval
- emphasis on memorization
- information as primary, analysis as secondary
- centralization of instructional space
- learning as hierarchical, “objective,” and categorized
- standardization paramount
Therefore, the greatest challenge of the print information age is finding existing or fixed information. A learning environment that is based on the print culture will emphasize memorization and regurgitation of standardized information.
In contrast the emphasis of the digital information age and digital culture include:
- systems of communication & interconnection
- emphasis on participation
- analysis, critique & “remixing” as primary
- information as a “commodity”
- centralization of creation & production
- emphasis on community & social interaction
The greatest challenge of the digital information age will be assessing Information and making meaningful connections between existing information and new information that is developed. A learning environment that is based on digital culture will emphasize, creation, communication, and participation as primary and hold information simply as a commodity or a product of interconnected human endeavours.
Considering that we have moved into and have been in the digital information age for at least the past two decades we need to consider our roles as educators and look long and hard at the changes we need to make to our learning systems. The following questions are central to how I will be responding to how I see my role as an educator in the 21st Century:
- If I imagine my primary job as a teacher is to serve information, am I helping solve the current informational problem or make it worse?
- And given the vast complexity of the informational network, if I insist on my centrality, does that establish or harm my credibility as a teacher?
- If assessing information – and the wisdom & experience that requires – is the central challenge of the current informational age, are teachers more or less necessary?
Helping learners assess the vast amounts of information that is available and giving them necessary skills and abilities that they need to make meaningful and useful connections is more important than it has ever been. Learning is an active and dynamic process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current/past knowledge. The making of meaningful connections in the digital information age is key to the learning and knowing.
We need to move from fixed mindset thinking and the passive educational environment of main lecture points, rubrics, individual competition and standardized testing to growth mindset thinking of active learning, dynamic interactivity, critical and analytical thinking, collaboration and meaningful projects.
For the past couple of weeks the post by Allison M. Vaillancourt, the vice president for institutional effectiveness and human resources at the University of Arizona, regarding academic disdain for the popular press or books that are on best sellers lists has been on my mind. Vaillancourt makes the argument that we (academics) should “lighten up” and accept the fact that
the ability to make connections using elements of popular culture can help us be more relevant to those who don’t live in our world.
While I appreciated Vailliancourt’s admonishment to the academy to accept non traditional academic writing as a source of useful information, the post also stirred up a long lasting frustration I have with the academy regarding what is deemed to be worth-while reading. The response of “my grade 7 math textbook” to a radio talk show text in survey asking what is the last book you have read was the final push I needed to finally vent my angst. Too many people do not read. Academic scorn toward popular press or best sellers contributes to this problem.
I was first exposed to the scorn that so many academics have toward popular books when I was a undergraduate student. I have always been a voracious reader and heading back to school in my 30’s was a wonderful opportunity to immerse myself in an environment where reading and writing and the discussion of what one was reading would be the central focus–or so I thought. I quickly found that reading and discussion were not the primary focus… it was taking notes and regurgitating empty information on exams. To be fair to a some of my English, Religion and Philosophy professors there were a few classes where reading was intriguing and the discussions were genuine but for the most part my undergraduate studies were simply a process of what I refer to as recipe and regurgitation. I also quickly learned that most of my student peers did not do the required readings but relied on lecture notes to get by, so the lively discussion that I sought didn’t happen in the classrooms or in the hallways. I also quickly learned that professors were not very comfortable being challenged with students who not only read all the required and supporting material but who could approach the material from a different perspective or who pulled in references from alternative sources. Too many professors just wanted to lecture, test and be left alone.
Fortunately, there were are few who were willing to enter into challenging and interesting debates but even a few of these academics were not willing to, or were hesitant to engage in, discussions on popular books that were on New York Times best seller lists. I am still bothered that I was not able to find any professors who were willing to enter into a debate or discussion on Allan Bloom’s book, The Closing of the American Mind. Bloom’s main argument was that the “great books” of Western thought have been devalued as a source of wisdom and students were no longer being exposed to this level of thinking. Back then I found the paradox of these professors scorning a best selling book that itself scorned popular pop culture and stressed a return to the Great Books frustrating, but today I realize just how harmful this scorn can be.
This was my first experience with academic scorn or arrogance toward popular books and, unfortunately, it would not be my last. I found that many of my student peers were put off by this elitist attitude. Too much of this attitude also finds its way into Schools of Education and ultimately the K-12 system. Anything that discourages reading is harmful not just to individuals but to society as a whole. The Pulitzer prize winning author Ray Bradbury argued:
“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
Granted, Bradbury was not an academic and was only a fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction writer and since so many of his works were adapted into comic books, television shows and films perhaps my academic peers can ignore his argument. However, they will have to acknowledge an academic among academics. Robertson Davies the Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, professor and the founding Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto stated:
The great book for you is the book that has the most to say to you at the moment when you are reading. I do not mean the book that is most instructive, but the book that feeds your spirit. And that depends on your age, your experience, your psychological and spiritual need.
The notion of a book feeding one’s spirit is not only refreshing it is good. Similarly the notion that any book that can do this a great book is not only refreshing it is should be instructive. Books should not be scorned because they do not fit into the required academic model.
To be fair to my peers in the Academy most professors are well intentioned. Many see the consumption of pop culture through popular press, books, television and now through youtube and other media as the primary contributor to the decline in reading. Dr. Mark Bauerlein, English professor at Emory University and the author of the book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30), is a prime example of a well meaning academic who misses the point when it comes to accounting for the decline in reading. Bauerlein’s central argument is that our culture’s dependence on the screen, first the TV and now media through the internet, has not only contributed to a decline in reading but also a decline in reading ability because screen media:
minimizes verbal intelligence, providing too little stimulation for it and intense long term immersion in it stultifies the verbal skills of viewers and disqualifies them from most every academic and professional labor.
While Bauerlein’s point that a diet of only screen consumption will reduce or limit a person’s vocabulary is valid it is only an issue if the screen is the only source of information for an individual. Rather than blame media altogether, I would suggest that we also look at the accessibility of print in which Mr. Bauerlein refers. What I mean by accessibility is how engaging is the print or more specifically how easy is the print to read and understand. Bauerlein’s book is also a very good example of high brow academic writing that is inaccessible to most people. I have read thousands of books, and usually read one to more books a week as well as hundreds of blog posts and articles, I have a Ph.D. and a healthy vocabulary but I still found Bauerlein’s book very difficult to read — by far one of the most difficult books I have read in the past few years. Why? I spent so much time looking up words in dictionary.com and re-reading sections of text to fully understand the content that I could never develop any flow in my reading. In addition, I couldn’t get a clear understanding of his main point until 130 pages into the book when he finally stated why this generation is the dumbest generation (lower exposure to rare vocabulary on screens than in print). I struggled through the remaining hundred or more pages simply to see if he hand another point. Dr. Bauerlein truly has an amazing vocabulary which is much higher than mine and most other people I know and is no doubt a brilliant man, but his writing and vocabulary are not very accessible. I took the time to review some of the articles that he published and confirmed that he is very consistent in his writing and equally inaccessible. His book didn’t say very much to me and it didn’t feed my spirit because it was so difficult to read. I wanted to stop reading it after just a few paragraphs.
I understand why many people do not like reading especially if they have had to curl up with a good dictionary when trying to struggle through a highly acclaimed academic text. I also understand why people are discouraged to read when some academics are so quick to roll their eyes and dismiss anything popular as“psychobabble” and “common sense”. Like Vailliancourt, I appreciate familiarity with contemporary thinking and want to be in the know when someone refers to:
super connectors” (Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point), “flying too low” (Seth Godin’s The Icarus Deception), “right people on the bus, wrong people off the bus” (Jim Collins’s Good to Great), or the importance of “purpose, mastery, and autonomy” (Daniel Pink’s Drive).
I have read (or in the process of reading) all these contemporary best sellers and have to acknowledge that I learned more about psychology and motivation from Daniel Pink’s book, Drive, than I did in all my psychology classes (my Ph.D. is in Educational Psychology). Similarly, I gleaned more from Collin’s book, Good to Great, then I have more traditional academic business texts.
To dismiss these types of books because they are popular and accessible is not only arrogant, it is ignorant and I am embarrassed for my academic peers who hold this lofty attitude. Furthermore, it is our responsibility as highly educated members of society to promote reading of all sorts of diverse material. A high brow attitude and scorn for certain types of books or material doesn’t help. And as we all know…If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.
