Tag Archives: learning

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On nurturing the fantasy that knowledge is always cumulative

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Last week I read a piece on Shane Parrish’s excellent Farnam Street blog — “We nurture the fantasy that knowledge is always cumulative” — highlighting commentary on that topic from author Kathryn Schultz (Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error).

I tweeted the link and it struck a chord with a number of people in my network. Why?

I sometimes wonder whether it’s just a provocative title that catches the eye of people. But in this case I suspect that it’s more than that. That is certainly the case for me.

Schultz captures (elegantly) something that works, I think, at both micro- and macro- levels.

Let me explain. Good scientists know that they are part of a long line of approximating and “are constructing models rather than revealing reality,” she writes. And that at some point in the future, they will be proven wrong.

This is a tough idea to put into real practice, however. Schultz notes that throughout history we all fall to the misconception that now — at this moment in time — we are at the top of human know-how. We live in a fantasy world which says stuff will be built upon our stuff. It is much more difficult to accept the idea (in practice) that our stuff might just have to be trashed first before new stuff emerges. Trashed because it’s wrong.

Yet these two competing thoughts — on the one hand being committed to a concept or idea, while on the other allowing for it to be totally wrong-headed — can be held simultaneously. See Here’s to ‘acting as if’ which references Marlene Fiol’s piece of the same title and deals with the challenge of ‘embracing being wrong.’ She calls out the field of organizational learning researchers on this point of  intellectual hubris.

At micro levels I see this in my world of organizational studies. “Best practices” is an example. There is no such thing. Good practices, yes. And maybe “constructing models” that in some conditions approximate a specific reality – and they prove useful under those conditions. But do we really consider the possibility that what we think of as organizational best practices actually rest on a foundation of crap?

This dilemma scales across domains and to larger issues, as Schultz notes. Today’s New York Times (Sunday Review) carried a piece by Dan Slater — Darwin Was Wrong About Dating — outlining how a new cohort of scientists are challenging the idea that immutable, physical differences (rooted in evolution) create gender differences in sexual behavior. They way in which the argument is playing out has uniquely academic and scientific overtones. But the same pattern plays across many domains when you look for it. Politics? Nate Silver. Baseball? Billy Beane.

And in a very real sense this argument is playing out about “knowledge” itself. David Weinberger hits this idea head on in his book Too Big to Know. Perhaps the greatest value brought to us by digital technology and the internet (my reading of Weinberger) is to make more visible the rich, ugly, confusing, complex debate that occurs as we come to create something that “we know.” Well, what we know for the time being. Until we trash it.

But at least we are becoming more open about the process. And that is truly exciting.

photo credit: sanjibm via photopin cc

Got ‘gogy?

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Fellow blogger Alison Seaman threw down the gauntlet and pointed to recent work exploring the relevance of heutagogy as an approach to guide the practice of designing learning activities for adult, life-long learners. Heutagogy shifts the emphasis from focusing exclusively on the “best ways” to learn to also explicitly focusing on aiding adult learners in learning how to learn.

It is certainly an interesting notion and gets at Alison’s underlying question about whether adult-learners are ready for life-long learning and what do we, as education practitioners, do about it. It is also interesting because it plays into the on-going discourse around MOOCs, digital literacies and what appears to me to be a struggle to find firmer footing in the quest for opportunities to transform education in the new digital landscape we live in (see Hybrid Pedagogy, for example).

We seem to be carefully feeling our way up some rocky mountainside in hopes of reaching a vantage point with a clear vision.

Is heutagogy that vantage point? It certainly seems to focus on some very productive questions. It is worth reading Lisa Marie Blaschke’s “Heutagogy and Lifelong Learning: A Review of Heutagogical Practice and Self-Determined Learning” and the original work of Stewart Hase and Chris Kenyon, who defined heutagogy and positioned it as an extension of andragogy. Andragogy was an important shift in educational thinking in that it differentiated adult learning (and educational approaches) from pedagogy, which focuses on the teaching of children.

The theme that I find most interesting across the development of these ‘gogy’s is the locus of control – from very strong teacher/educator (pedagogy) to the concept of “self-directed” learning in andragogy and finally “self-determined” learning in heutagogy. My reading of the difference between the latter two – self-directed vs. self determined – is in relinquishing the control of curriculum. The challenge posed by a heutagogical approach is really allowing the learner to take control in determining the curriculum. And curriculum is really not the correct word – it still has overtones of a teacher-centered mindset – but let’s use it with the understanding that we mean determining the general direction in how a learner moves toward some desired learning outcome. And thus “learning how to learn” becomes critical.

This has a great deal of appeal, I think, because underneath this shift in control toward the learner is an assumption that adults really do want to learn and have a natural inclination to do so. Anyone who doesn’t believe this should take a look at hackerspaces such as Pumping Station One – physical spaces were people come together to make things, or learn to fix things. There is no curriculum. But there is a lot of learning – and productive learning at that.

So the appeal of heutagogy is in the challenge of truly shifting our mental model about “control” of learning. Truth is, adult educators never really had control. We just acted like it. So maybe our shift is from thinking about “designing” curriculum to being of service to adult learners in — back to Alison’s original question — helping them see that they are, in fact, ready to learn.

The motivating power of good questions

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Earlier today I had a short Twitter exchange with Alison Seaman (@alisonseaman) about some resources she found and shared related to new work on web and digital literacies. I noted in the exchange that I am very interested in the work on digital literacy specifically from the perspective of adult learners (in contrast to children and young adult learners).

She tweeted back: “Indeed. Literacy q’s also keep bringing me back to this question, which I think is related,” adding a link to a blog post she wrote in late 2011 titled “Adult education and lifelong learning orientations in the organisation: are adult learners ready?” [my emphasis]

What a great question.

Alison writes thoughtfully in her piece as she explores this issue. But two key points stick out for me:

  • We speak within organizations of the need for “continuous learning,” but how often do we consider the ability of adults to self-reflect in order to know how and what to self-improve? (My hunch: Close to never. Rather we tell them what they should “continuously learn” about because we supposedly know best.)
  • Most adults have a tendency to learn enough to become proficient – or “good enough” – and then stop there. I found this a key point in thinking about adults and digital literacy.

So we have at least a two-headed-monster problem here. We need to deeply consider whether adults can learn to continuously learn (is that self-reflective muscle strong or underutilized?). And then we need to overcome the tendency to just-get-good-enough.

I see this dynamic unfold (and feel it myself, frankly) in thinking about the development of digital literacies. It’s hard work to go from simply “being on” Twitter to turning Twitter and other social media into productive tools in a personal learning network. It takes persistence. Skill-building. Self-reflection. And a whole lot of social support. Not simply to become good at the technicalities of working social media tools, but to benefit from the broad and deep learning that an effective personal learning network can generate.

So what’s the motivation to move through all of that? I think it’s good questions. “Are adults truly ready to continuously learn? And what would an environment look like that truly fostered the ability for adults to learn to continuously learn?” Those work for me.

What are yours?