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This article examines the place technology occupies in the continuum of learning theories from a postmodern perspective.
It would be hypocritical to write about postmodernism in a positivist way. The principle that the individual constructs their own meaning is central to the epistemology of postmodernism. Therefore, the writer had first to decide what method of learning would be personally relevant for this project. Since every part of my formal education has involved writing articles, I felt that writing an article would be personally suitable. I then had to determine whether writing an article could be postmodern. Although articles appear, prima facie, to be behaviorist because they are structured and linear, an article written in hypertext has no true beginning or end. Furthermore, although this article includes a short abstract, Bednar, Cunningham, Duffy and Perry state that "Evaluation in the constructivist perspective must examine the thinking process." (109) Therefore, in place of a summary this article contains personal reflection and internalization throughout its prose. This article addresses many of the issues involved in postmodernism, but leaves the formulation of conclusions and recommendations to the reader.
It has been said that education is about telling stories. O'Riley (http://borg.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/jte-v7n2/oriley.jte-v7n2.html) encourages us to use storytelling in educational technology in order "to meet the needs and interests of the diversity of students entering today's technology." Pinar and Reynolds describe the difference between stories in traditional educational settings and post-modern stories.
The stories we tell in schools, formalized as disciplines, are always others' stories, always conveying motives and countermotives, dreams and nightmares. To understand curriculum as a deconstructed (or deconstructing) text is to tell stories that never end, stories in which the listener, the 'naratee', may become a character or indeed the narrator, in which all structure is provisional, momentary, a collection of twinkling stars in a firmament of flux. (7)
To be post-modern, therefore, it is important to begin this project with a story for the reader to relate to, thereby placing the article into context and making it more interesting.
After 5 years of university, I had enough credits to convocate with a Bachelor of Education degree in the fall of 1991. I began my first year teaching a Grade 7/8 split of 35 students at Montreal Lake School in northern Saskatchewan. The barriers that denied students an education immediately frustrated me. These students had a wonderful spirit, a sense of humor and a joy for life. But reality for these children was very much different from mine. For some of my students, safety, food, clothing and shelter were issues that came before education. They seemed almost hungry for something stable in their lives and if I could give that to them, they would come to school just for that. I was predictable, consistent, calm, collected and stable while the world around us was filled with chaos and disorder. For some students the only thing they knew for sure was that every morning, come snow or sunshine, my classroom was waiting for them and it wasn't such a bad place to be.
In terms of technology, about 20 Apple IIe clones and 6 Apple IIgs computers lay wasting in a room in one corner of the school. They were not set up, they had little software and few knew how to use them. Those who did know how, had more or less given up on ideas of a practical use for them. I taught Computers 10, but with the resources I had, I could only teach programming in BASIC and keyboarding.
Although I was unsatisfied with my performance, I maintained faith in the idea that an individual teacher could make a difference. If one envisualizes what they would like educational technology to look like and then works toward that vision, I believe it will come to pass.
Unfortunately, I was not the one to have that vision as the next year my son was born and I moved back to Saskatoon to teach in the Saskatoon Catholic Board of Education at St. Michael's Elementary School. St. Michael had six Apple IIgs computers for a population of 140 students until SIAST Kelsey campus graciously donated 19 Apple IIe's to the fleet in 1994. Our computer program was all but non-existent.
One day, I was taking my grade 5/6 split class on a field trip to the University Campus. As we crossed the river on the bus, I realized the significance of field trips to these students when one asked me whether we were still in Saskatoon. Although this was a major bridge which my own child would have recognized as being in Saskatoon, these children were lost. It had not occurred to me that there might be children in my class who had never seen the other side of the city, much less other cities in our province. Here I was trying to teach students a curriculum about Canada and its Atlantic neighbors when some of them could not identify Canada on a map. Why would they understand the concept of Canada if they had never been anywhere? Everything outside of our little city was foreign to them.
As a result of this revelation, I began to imagine that I could take these children places they had never been before. If only they could experience even a few other places on earth, their experience would be so much broadened. I found myself dreaming that I had a classroom like the "holideck" on Star Trek, where a virtual world would appear all around us and I could take my students on virtual fieldtrips to such places as the Grand Canyon, or the palace of Versailles in France. I also thought about making video to replace the aging library of resource materials available to us through our school board resource centre. It was at this time that I began to think about doing a Master's in Educational Technology.
Within the continuum of learning theories, there lie two opposing camps. On side of the spectrum lies behaviorist theory, which is rigid, structured, and objective. It treats everyone the same and ignores individual differences. Rooted in the age of Enlightenment, behaviorist theory assumes that there is a tangible, objective, measurable canon of knowledge that everyone should learn. Furthermore, certain universal principles of rational communication exist. For example, Covey argues that "Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value. They're fundamental. They're essentially unarguable because they are self evident." (35) Hartley explains that the principle of Enlightenment is that "by discovering the laws which govern the world we [can] Öthereby change it, for the better, for everyone." (26) Those who possess this knowledge instruct those who do not. The instructor communicates his knowledge to the learner, usually by lecture or in writing. Freire calls this the "banking" concept of education, in which students are "containers" or "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teacher. (58)
Behaviorist learning theory can be useful for setting standards, reporting results and for technical-type training where critical thinking is not necessary. It is often appropriate for younger age levels because young children lack the experience to be able to make critical choices and require more structured environments. However, behaviorist learning theory is often criticized for ignoring the humanity and the individuality of learners.
On the opposite end of the spectrum lies constructivism, often referred to in discussion on postmodernism. Postmodernism as defined by Dupuis and Gordon (274) "focuses on the significance of the person in the learning process and the way in which meaning is constructed in the educational experience." Constructivism allows individuals to personalize knowledge by attaching personal values to different bodies of knowledge; essentially to decide which things are important to learn and which things are redundant or unimportant. Under constructivist learning theory the instructor is replaced by a facilitator whose job is to guide, challenge and work out learning plans with the learner, rather than direct the learner.
Constructivist learners move from the known to the unknown and from the simple to the complex, using various encoding, tuning and motivation techniques. Cognitivist learners look for patterns from various perspectives, collaborating with one another and reflecting on their learning. Hartley writes that "the appropriation of postmodernist deconstructionism can provide the basis of a methodology for teachers and pupils to make meaning together, to look beneath the surface of events, revealing their structural antecedents." (87)
Hlynka says that constructivism is frightening because it destroys the linear, structured mind-set of behaviorism and "replaces it with a vision of chaos". (113) It threatens the traditional roles of teacher and pupil, master and student.
This continuum of learning theories is illustrated below.
|
|
Conservative Model |
Liberal Model |
Postmodern Model |
|
Content chosen by: |
Teacher Chooses Content for Learner |
Teacher Supplies Content Chosen by Learner with Some Constraints |
Learner Chooses Personally Relevant Content with Teacher - Also Evolves During Learning Process |
|
Instruction: |
Teacher Directs |
Teacher Guides |
Teacher Supports Process |
|
Learner interacts with the content: |
No |
No |
Yes |
*taken from Depuis and Gordon, p. 274
Prior to the age of Enlightenment, education was not so formalized. Church and state were generally the only certifying institutions and granted political appointments rather than educational credentials. Many scholars were self-taught in multiple disciplines as there were no divisions of bodies of knowledge.
Formal education, complete with certifying institutions, canons of knowledge and professional designations essentially began with the Modern Age. Modernity is said to have emerged "in the fifth century when newly Christianized Romans wished to distinguish their religiosity from two forms of barbarians, the heathens of antiquity and the unregenerate Jews. In medieval times, modernity was reinvented as a term implying cultivation and learning, which allowed contemporary intellectuals to identify backwards. With the Enlightenment, modernity became identified with rationality, science and forward progress" (Alexander, 66)
With the onset of modernity it became more difficult to distinguish oneself as educated in the formal sense. One had to receive certification from newly created professional bodies in order to receive a title such as "Master Carpenter" or "Surgeon".
It was no easier to receive an education in many traditional first nation cultures of North America. Barsh IPFE claims that among many first nation cultures, traditional knowledge was and is something that has to be earned, "not simply by being clever enough to learn it", but also by demonstrating that he or she will use the knowledge properly. First Nation societies passed their knowledge through the oral tradition. The educated ones, the elders, were certified by their elders before them and the canon of stories, unwritten, changed with the storyteller, while still remaining essentially the same. Barsh IPFE has also claimed that traditional knowledge as it now exists would die if elders were certified and traditional knowledge was listed in a canon of learnings.
The scientific method "lay to rest the comfort of religious and metaphysical certainties, andÖ awaken[ed] critical reasoning" (Hartley, 12) Peters comments that the "scientist came to be seen as that of a pure spectator, who was expected to report objectively on the world of nature." (135) Where before people had a faith in religion and a belief in a wider order of things, now "the increasing secular world was to have 'faith' in science." (Hartley, 12)
More recently, the idea of scientist as an objective spectator of nature has been greatly challenged. Peters says that the return to cosmology that is symbolized in postmodern science seeks to reinsert humanity into the world of nature. (136) Usher, Bryant and Johnston conclude that "every research method is embedded in commitments to particular versions of the world (an ontology) and ways of knowing that world (an epistemology) implicitly held by the researcher. Peters furthers this argument, saying, "Clearly, scientific practice cannot be separated from other practices serving other interests. Further, by extension, it is possible to argue for the social character of all scientific practice." (134) Usher, Bryant and Johnston argue that if the scientific method, a behaviorist learning theory, is presented as the model for all "proper" research, then the scientific method is not a matter of objective logic, but more a matter of politics or power. "In other words, the rules are themselves neither neutral nor universal!" (176) Peters describes how Habermas (1971) develops the thesis that all knowledge is political, by which he means that knowledge is always constituted on the basis of human interests that have developed in and been shaped by social and historical interests. (138) Wheatley preaches that "The new physics cogently explains that there is no objective reality out there waiting to reveal its secrets" (7)
Nevertheless, it would seem that the world has clung fiercely to its faith in science and the scientific method. If a report comes out that says that insulin helps to enlarge muscles, people tend to take it at its face value and not to question the research. (Globe and Mail) While the media reports the news as if it has selected its stories carefully and without bias, it is all too obvious that the main objective of media is to sell more of its product. Yet instead of asking the media why the O.J. Simpson trial is important to Canadians, we continue to allow the media to choose what we watch by watching it, then discussing whether O.J. is guilty or innocent.
While western educators are moving from behaviorist learning theories towards constructivist learning theories, society seems resistant to let go of educational technology's place in the past. Morton accuses schools of "using computers today in a misguided effort to support 19th-century instructional practices". (417) He argues that today, we tend to look at computers as an appliance and to categorize it with other appliances around the school and home. Thereís the toaster in the kitchen, the stereo in the living room, the telephone in the hall, the fax machine in the den, the television in the family room, etc. Perhaps this mentality comes from the dictionary definition of the word "computer":
An electronic machine that can store large amounts of coded data and can be set, or programmed, to perform mathematical and logical operations at high speed, without the intervention of a human operator during the operation. (Gage Canadian Dictionary, 241)
Computers are still the electronic tool as defined here, but they have evolved to the point that there exists a potential for them to become more than the sum of its parts, depending largely on what consumers demand them to be. If our learning theories change, shouldn't our use of technological innovation change as well? Will our view of the "computer as tool" mentality? Will we let go of the word "computer"?
Some educators are considering making changes in the structure of their education system. The Ontario Department of Education has discussed radically redefining the traditional classroom setting in the near future. Their discussion included the transformation of the role of the teacher to that of a "facilitator" by the year 2005 and students learning "at their own pace, anytime, anywhere, anyplace." (B7) Many educators feel that we should not only focus on using technology in different ways than we have in that past, but also in different ways than we are currently using them. Obviously, because of my experience in the classroom, it is my desire to find new ways of using technology to overcome some of the barriers that are built by poor socio-economic situations. I see technology as a useful tool that has the potential to add to the experience of students who have no other way of gaining experience.
There are also strong counter arguments that innovations in technology should not be embraced so quickly, without serious considerations of its impact beforehand. Chaptal implies that technology that we implemented in schools in the past may have come too soon as he tells us to be "optimistic, but cautious ñ very cautious" about embracing innovations in technology. (15) Rogers (83) cautions that it isn't always beneficial to adopt innovations simply because we can.
There are those who would argue that video technology could never replace the value of written text. For the literate, text, usually in the form of books, grants us experiences than no technology could ever rival because written text lets us use our imaginations. When one reads, the mind imagines people, places and things so vividly that the experience is virtually real. Imagination is the ultimate virtual reality. Images, sounds, smells, and feelings that are imagined are often ideal memories that are interconnected with an infinite number of other memories. When one imagines chocolate cake, one imagines the best chocolate cake he ever had. Furthermore, the memory of the chocolate cake may be attached to a memory of a particular birthday, various people who were present, various smells, sounds and events that occurred on that day. No technology could ever come close to replicating the experience of imagination and memory.
However, it is easy to get caught up in the excitement of technological innovations. Some would say that we are in the midst of a new frontier of technological innovations. Some have already dubbed this a time of "communication revolution." Chaptal warns that "The history of instructional technology is also a history of prophets, of people predicting a revolution in the educational system in the years to come due to some new technology." (15) Peters is skeptical of the significance of contemporary technological innovations, complaining that some people "still cling tenaciously to the idea that advanced industrial societies are witnessing a series of interrelated changes as significant as those accompanying the shift from agrarian to industrial society." (128)
Can we really compare the technological advances of the past with those of today? Microsoft did not exist twenty years ago. Does anyone remember what it was like without MacIntosh desktops and Windows? E-mail has only started to be embraced by the general population for practical use in the past five years. The World Wide Web was only developed in 1991. Descy points out that "Of the 9.5 million people on the Net, about half went on line in 1995!" and says without reservation in the same statement that "The internet is slowly changing the basic fabric of our society." (1997) The Star-Phoenix reported that Northern Telecom recently found a way to bring the Internet to homes through electrical outlets, opening doors for countries where the infrastructure for internet access has not yet been put into place. (C12)
One could argue that we should worry about underestimating the effects of these technological innovations on society. When have people ever been able to communicate with such ease? Has there been a time in the past when there was so much technology available that one could not possibly use it all, even if one knew how? Does it not seem that we live in an era unprecedented in technological innovation? Does it not seem like the perfect time for new ideas to come forth?
Simply by observing the number of new technologies we have developed in the past decade, there must be an infinite number of possible uses for these technologies that havenít been thought of yet. Should we not open our minds and our imaginations to the possibilities? Should we dare to dream?
We do not want to be held prisoner within the constraints of our own fear. It is good and natural to feel fear, but should we not also have faith? We could freeze in fear that if we let go of the structure that has existed in education during our lifetime, anarchy will reign. Heavens! If we let students have fun, play, use their imaginations, dream, and conjecture, we will have no control over their learning. They might learn things that they should not! But who is qualified or certified to decide what things our children should learn to prepare for the future? Who decides what is true or what is community? "In postmodern society, where knowledge and power are to be regarded as simply two sides of the same question, the problem of legitimization of knowledge necessarily comes to the fore." (Peters 140) Who are we to predict the future?
Therein lies the paradox; on one hand we wish to supervise and influence our children's learning because that is how we make them our children. We care about what they learn and we teach them our values. We trust only people like ourselves to teach our children while we are at work. At the same time, we want to allow our children the freedom to choose the things they want to learn, to value knowledge for themselves and to have fun playing, working, learning about things they enjoy.
Contemporary technology could be used to integrate everyday life with education. Take for example the growing number of people who work out of their own home. Why shouldn't people learn, work, and find enjoyment at the same time? Hartley says that "We could stand to learn a thing or two from our children. Children play naturally, "and in their play they experience the world." (77) Instead of learning abstract concepts in a school setting, concepts should be learned by practical application in the real world. " An essential concept in the constructivist view is that the information cannot be remembered as independent, abstract entities. Learning always takes place in a contextÖ"
As I write this paper I cannot help but worry that it will be boring to a multitude of readers who do not understand its context. As a reader, it is your responsibility to decide what this means to you. I chose my title, faith, hope and humanity, because I have faith that you are smart enough to understand at least some of what I am trying to communicate to you. I believe that as a constructivist teacher I have a responsibility to do my best to model the process for learners and coach others to do their best as well. I share beliefs Hiemstra's humanist belief "in the natural goodness of humankind, in freedom of choice, in the dignity and worth of all people, and in the value of establishing an environment in which the potential inherent in every person can be developed. (188) I can only hope that some of I have written here for you is knowledge that you will value.
Ultimately, it is up to every on of us to take responsibility over these issues. I won't tell you where we should place educational technology in learning theories. I will tell you that we should listen to and try to understand each other. We should respect our different learning theories for the value in all of them, behaviorist, cognitivist or constructivist. We should have a little faith in humanity and not be afraid of one another. Wheatley said "I want to move into a universe I trust so much that I give up playing God." (23) I couldn't agree more.
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