Systems vs People - where do we start redesign ideas? First week thoughts
I confess I was influenced by Summerhill when I first started my career, and as a seasoned adult I understand the pressures that lead to institutionalization - and even the benefits of it to youth growing up in chaotic environments.
Yet I search for a new vision - one that is not covered in any of the OECD scenarios - a vision of education that is built from the ground up with the highest priority being the successful navigation of all children through to full citizenship in a global economy and world. Of human evolution if you will as many parts of the world are very different in their understanding of human potential.
Influenced at an earlier time by Sugata Mitra and the Hole in the Wall project, I want to ferment conversation here as to how we can also include those less involved in the institutions about what else might work? That was the basis of the Future(s) project where we try to answer what our young people need to thrive in the world they will inherit? While our site is desperately in need of a remodel, we provide easy to access research ideas, give voice to educators. youth and parents around the world, and hope to find patterns in ideas that are not showing up in reports like the one from the OECD. I hope others in this class may be interested, if so check the project out at www.futureofeducationproject.net and then will come back here and bring suggestions of what you might like to do along these lines - I will be glad to join in.
Another resource of interest if you haven't seen it is http://www.wearethepeoplemovie.com/ a movie by Sir David Putnam, etc. but even with the resources of open university I don't yet see activity here on the "what else can we do?" front.
Finally, I look forward very much to this next week on critical thinking. I attended the Education Project in Bahrain last year and with participants from all over the Arab world and through Africa and the Pacific Rim critical thinking was key. At the same time I am not sure the world means the same things when they speak those words and the cultural context of what is allowable is still so different.
3 comments so far:
Ruth Howard says: Alliances and social ventures
Thanks Alan I am moved by Sugata Mitra's work too. Yes I can see what looks to be the conundrum. Trying to fix, transform or change education as a socialisation and learning system, but if I really trust in co-creation, co-evolution, self-organisation, self-education, collaboration and human potential I have to get behind those who are not part of 'the system'. Some of them are those children who are benefiting from Mitra's Hole in the Wall. Some of them are well springs of passionate communities gathering at local levels and mostly they are those who as identified by John Seely Brown and John Hagel lie on the edge, where the solutions are greatly desired and needed.
It is another aspect of the conundrum as you mention that people desire different things of education and so a 'system' may not actually be what is needed which in my mind further supports the idea that creating alliances with those at the edge may be one way that education/educators can open up their domain. I'm thinking social venture partnerships where each institution/group might cover particular problems/solutions but the ideas are as much driven by people outside the institution. All of this of course happens but I'm thinking a more consciously open engineering that allows for serendipity alongside data. A policy of social ventures, maybe even instead of Phd's where academics and students work across disciplines together and each member has accreditation for their contribution to the venture. How to make education more of a social (ad)venture?
As you can tell I'm making it up as I go along, just throwing out ideas.
alanajames says: Ruth I hope you see this comment
Hi Ruth - since I am new to drupal, I don't know if you will automatically get this reply to your throwing out ideas on how open engineering might work in education. Do you know Christensen's book Disrupting class? In it he talks about innovation as always being planted in a consumer group that the main service did not care about - pcs went to children as did transistors is his example. What I was struck by there - and I think it may be echoed in your notes, is that education needs on the edge (Africa, India as examples) have the chance to be the breeding grounds of new designs - and that those can then become refined - and, like the pc, take over.
In another post from George - a video - he makes comments about the necessary and normative powers of institutions - as though they will always be with us. Just because I can't imagine the specifics of life without institutions does not me that I can't understand and support efforts to experiment with structures like those you describe.
Do you know action research? Networked AR is my passion where pods of people make local changes but their learning is then uploaded to the wider network - perhaps that is a model similar to what you were trying to tease out?
I hope we have more conversation! This is fun,
Alana
Ruth Howard says: Does it fractal?
I am thinking about this use of "scaling" how does it scale that I hear in various discussions and I'm thinking instead of (how) does it fractal?
I'm thinking that there's an exponential bifurcation of perspectives and culture simultaneously both a global and a localised context. As above so below.
So that makes sense to me your model of local pods whose solutions may serve a global context.
Is there an applicable research methodology that you know of that consciously engages fractal thinking?