Here's a report from your session.
I must say thanks to Joe and Mariana for the hard work in synthesizing all of this.
Hope it will be useful!
....
We split into groups and discussed LEARNING versus EDUCATION. What is the difference between each and what is the purpose of each?
Key Points:
- Learning takes place through enthusiasm and is a lifelong process
- It is (or can be) fulfilling in itself
- Education is typically more formalised
- Grading/certification
- Has a startpoint (enrolment) and an endpoint (graduation)
- Learning is a bottom-up process; Education is top-down.
For one segment of the LOTE Learning breakout session, we split into three groups of variable size. Each group established a CHALLENGE to learning and/or education, identified the STAKEHOLDERS involved and proposed a SOLUTION to their challenge.
Notes on these follow:
GROUP A
Challenge: Empower teachers to develop their practice
Stakeholders:
- Teachers
- Students
- Headmaster / Institution
- Policy makers
- Enterprises
- Community
Working towards a solution:
The knowledge to improve learning processes already exists at the ground level, within the teachers. Good solutions for improving learning processes should be found by asking teachers what they need, what they want to change and how they want to change it.
The current system (in the UK) is based on a national curriculum which, while providing a framework that ensures all children are educated to at least a certain level, also restricts the teachers and depowers them. It may be possible to achieve better results by putting more trust into the teachers and enabling them to implement their own ideas and projects - this can be extra-curricular, if the national curriculum need not be subverted.
Solution:
- Set aside a fixed budget of perhaps (to choose an arbitrary figure) €1,000,000.
- Split this budget into, say, 1,000 equal portions.
- Allow for teachers and educators to apply for a portion that can be used to enable them to implement a learning project of their own design.
- First come, first serve
- A minimal application process should be used in order not to filter out good ideas too early
- With above figures this would enable 1,000 individual projects. If 900 of these projects turn out to be bad ideas, then that is not a bad outcome. It means that 100 of those projects were not bad, and some portion may, in fact, be excellent!
Evaluation (does it benefit stakeholders):
- Students benefit from the projects that are good if it improves learning outcomes or student engagement.
- The headmaster or the institution hosting the project benefits from successful projects; improves standing of school.
- Policy makers benefit from successful projects because learning outcomes are improved
- Very successful projects can be rolled out into larger projects
- The reflected glory is good for them personally!
- Teachers benefit from the scheme because their projects have been enabled and their ideas are being taken into account and are immediately actionable.
- Basic motivational theory indicates that this is a good thing.
GROUP B:
Challenge: A new mechanism for evaluating education without damaging access to job market
Stakeholders:
- Students
- Parents
- Teachers
- Neighbours
Working towards a solution:
It may be important to overcome job profiling and aiming to anticipate the future needs of industry and employers. By focusing instead on the skills needed to facilitate lifelong learning, you can enable the possibility of work in different jobs and/or places.
Solution:
No marks or grades, no scoring or competition. A different mechanism is required for a less reductive form of feedback and evaluation that shows individual competencies better.
Evaluation (does it benefit stakeholders):
GROUP C:
Challenge: Access to resources and expertise
Detail:
- Resources includes e-resources, spaces in which to work, peers/communities and other teaching and learning materials.
- Access to sources of expertise is required for advice, assistance, knowledge-sharing, real-world experience.
- There is no reason why relationship with experts could not or should not be peer<->peer.
- Barriers to access include cost, travel requirements, lack of awareness wrt what's available, time/scheduling.
Stakeholders:
- Student-peers
- Mentors/Mentor-peers
- Social Partners: Employers/Industry, Employees/Colleagues, Government, Community
Working towards a solution:
- Remote learning platforms (e.g. Khan Academy, Open University) provide excellent access to resources and good access to expertise.
- Resource access is typically enabled by technology (video and e-resources)
- Better use can be made of resources as recording (for example) can be paused, repeated, and even annotated/commented by users
- Typically at a lower cost than centralised platforms
- Minimal barriers for travel/distance and for time/scheduling
- Provides no access to spaces as a resource
- Centralised education (e.g. traditional colleges/universities) provide variable access to expertise and adequate access to resources.
- Typically at a massive cost
- Access to expertise damaged by:
- Full deployment of teacher->student model with often limited access to teacher
- Expertise levelled within peers by grouping into year blocks (reduced peer<->peer learning).
- Large barriers introduced by travel/distance and by time/scheduling.
Solution:
All institutions should create and share resources in a free (as in beer) and open way, enabled (but not exclusively) by digital technologies.
- It is clear that e-resources and written or otherwise recorded resources offer benefits that, for example, lecturing does not (rewatching, pausing, etc).
- In such environments, users can even improve resources through peer-rated commenting and public questioning and answering.
- It is also clear that e-platforms can enable better peer<->peer learning by encouraging groups to mix; open collaborative spaces (e.g. hackspaces) are even better for this.
Institutions should recognise where they are failing to create and share resources that could easily be shared - e.g. recording and uploading of lectures as a matter of course, sharing printed or presented workshop materials, sharing spaces and tools with ALL stakeholders.
Evaluation (does it benefit stakeholders):
- Mentors/mentor-peers benefit from reviewing each other's practices
- Learners/students benefit from:
- Remote access to a wider range of resources
- More diverse access to expertise
- Fostering of peer<->peer learning environments.
- Social partners benefit from closer involvement as this allows them to communicate their real needs directly to learners
Other notes that, for some reason, I don't have a category for, aka
KEY OBSERVATIONS
- There are cultural difference throughout Europe that affect the institutions of education and also the learning culture. In any 'solution' these must be accounted for! A solution that can be effectively applied without accounting for cultural differences may not exist, and may actually be damaging (monoculture of learning?).
- A common problem in changing education systems is validation/certification of skills for the job market. It is important that evaluation accounts for personal differences and individual competencies but an evaluation system must also be understandable by employers.
- Unless we take a different approach towards employment ;)
- Autonomy is important on every level: At student level, at teacher level and at an institutional level.
- Policies are likely to RESTRICT rather than enable; without care, they can end up reducing autonomy in a dangerous way.
- Trust is important between all stakeholders.
- Students must trust mentors and teachers to teach them the right things and to teach them well.
- Teachers must trust students to be self motivated learners
- Teachers must trust industry/employers to provide realistic and correct guidance as to what they need! (This is probably not happening right now)