#cck11 Exploring the Validity of Connectionism: IRRODL’s Special Issue on Connectivism Part 2

This post completes my look at the Connectivism Special Issue of IRRODL e-Journal (International Review of Research on Open and Distance Learning)  Connectivism: Design and Delivery of Social Networked Learning (Vol 12 (3)).  The first half of this 2 part review is here.

Three Generations of Distance Education Pedagogy by Terry Anderson and Jon Dron

Interconnecting Networks of Practice for Professional Learning by Terry Evans & Julie Mackey

I see these 2 articles as related.  First, Terry A. & Jon have a great insight, that the design of distance education has been driven by technological development, but I don’t think they takes it far enough.  There is substantial infrastructure and 19th Century technology dedicated to higher education, but the technological infrastructure of distance education has pretty much been just bolted on to that traditional infrastructure.  The changing needs of learning cannot be met with the infrastructure of the past.  Many of the limitations of connectivism that Terry A & Jon presents are rooted in the fact that connectivist networks are not yet well developed.  Many of the participants in those courses do not interact outside of the course, making it necessary to re-create an interactive network for each implimentation.  Imagine if the entire university infrastructure had to be re-created for each course.

Terry E & Julie discuss a similar problem in the way that Higher education is organized by pointing out the philosophical contradiction between social cultural / situated learning beliefs.

A problem with institutional perspectives of socially constructed learning is that the zone of interaction is usually confined to the online course community.  . . . This insular view of community, bounded by course curriculum and timelines, is problematic for professional learning and highlights a tension between the underlying philosophical stance and the pedagogies adopted by universities. A central tenet of sociocultural epistemologies is that learning is vitally situated within the context of its development and that “understanding and experience are in constant interaction” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 51). As Lave and Wenger (1991) describe in their theory of social practice, there is a “relational interdependency of agent and world, activity, meaning, cognition, learning, and knowing” (p. 1).

The biggest challenge in redefine the integration of working and learning is to change the traditionally idea that learning and working are separate activities.  Learning happens in the university and is separated from work activities.  That is no longer the case today.  Another problem is the growing gap between the knowledge services higher education offers and the knowledge needs of professional practices.  Hagle, Brown & Davison (The Power of Pull) state that the pace of change is outpacing our knowledge infrastructure.  Their advocacy of pull learning models could be implemented by professional communities supported by higher education and online services in a connectionist pedagogy, but traditional practices in higher education seem hard to break.  All of these issues can be related to the 19th Century infrastructure of the university as compared to today’s changing learning needs.

So what would make more sense.  The basic technology and web infrastructure are already available and waiting to be appropriated by professional dialogic communities of practice and inquiry.  The infrastructure we lack is the organization of professional communities that would be a natural home for professional learning.  I do believe that this also entails dovetailing the organization of universities and professional organizations with new digital infrastructure.  The university could act as a gateway to and an enabler of this community, but currently higher education remains separated from professional practice.  Students could be ligament peripheral participants in this community.  Knowledge development could be accelerated through cooperative interaction that is supported by advanced communication and mash-up applications.  One technological need is advanced filtering tools that will coordinate network activity and keep everyone in the flow of knowledge at their chosen and appropriate level.  Long-standing core participant will act as peer reviewers and validators of activity, except they will act in a dialogic fashion rather than current monologic practices.

Of course, this is all sometime in the future.  Here’s a great article about self-reinforcing powers in business management and there are just as a many barriers in higher education.  So, until that day finally dawns  –  May you live long and prosper!

The Challenges to Connectivist Learning on Open Online Networks: Learning Experiences during a Massive Open Online Course by Rita Kop

Referencing Sfard (1998) (I favorite article of mine), Rita points out that Connectivism is inline with the theories that expect learning to accrue through participation.  She points to the PLENK course (Personal Learning Environments and Network Knowledge) and to the struggle that some learners have with developing the participation skills to support their PLE.  Inline with the participatory idea, enabling Legitimate Peripheral Participation could solve these problems, but first we need to strengthen ongoing online learning communities.

I find it interesting that the largest block of leaders were 55 years of age and older.  Learning goals may have a significant impact on participation and it may be interesting to investigate individual participation goals further.

EduCamp Colombia: Social Networked Learning for Teacher Training by Diego Ernesto Leal Fonseca

Diego presents a case study that describes a successful workshop whose implementation was modeled after the concepts of a Personal Learning Environment, the Unconference, over the shoulder learning in software.  These are 3 concepts that I hope to study in more detail.  The article mentioned many practical aspects of organizing an event

The EduCamps have served as a testing ground for the exploration of ideas concerning the design of learning environments. The results suggest the experience has an important impact on the perception of attendees about technology and its possibilities as a learning tool, but there are questions that remain open.  . . . It is clear that the workshops have the potential to be a trigger for the development of a community of practice around the social software platforms explored, which helps participants to sustain and enhance the connections they create during the workshop. However, this potential currently remains unrealized.

Once again the question of how you can foster the development of professional ongoing online communities of learning remains an important question.

Frameworks for understanding the nature of interactions, networking, and community in a social networking site for academic practice by Grainne Conole, Rebecca Galley & Juliette Culver

Grainna, Rebecca & Juliette describe the application of a social networking site named Cloudworks.  The site has been used for workshops, courses, as a discussion space, to facilitate reading circles, for open reviews, to aggregate resources, to explore practice design, and to find expert consultations.  They were able to analyze site usage through 4 frameworks: Communities of Inquiry, Communities of Practice, Activity theory and Actor-network Theory.  What I would really like to are case studies where professional oriented learning communities move onto these types of platforms and how to strengthen and develop the potential of these communities through social applications.

#cck11 Exploring the Validity of Connectionism: IRRODL’s Special Issue on Connectivism

THe IRRODL e-Journal (International Review of Research on Open and Distance Learning) has released a Special Issue – Connectivism: Design and Delivery of Social Networked Learning (Vol 12 (3)).  Though cck11 has officially ended, I am looking at these 9 articles as a continuation of my thought on the validity of Connectivism (4 articles are considered in this post, the remaining 5 in a part 2 post.).  These are not meant to be reviews, but rather my impression of  what I consider to be important points raised by my reading of these authors.  I encourage all to follow links to the original.  All articles are worthwhile additions to the connectivism literature.

Emergent Learning and Learning Ecologies in Web 2.0 by Roy Williams, Regina Karousou & Jenny Mackness

Roy et al state that the information age is being overtaken by the interactive age in that simple data transfer is now accompanied by interaction, collaboration and emergent learning.  There are questions that that these changes foreground: what structure and constraints support learning ecologies that can support this type of learning, how is the resulting knowledge validated and can prescriptive and emergent learning co-exist together.    There currently are institutions and frameworks that support web learning ecologies like Open Source and Creative Common Licensing, and cloud-based applications, but more pluralistic learning ecologies are needed.  These questions will continue to be at the forefront of building validity for Connectivist practices.

Connectivism: Its Place in Theory-informed Research and Innovation in Technology-Enabled Learning by Frances Bell

Frances states that Connectivism is not a sufficient stand-alone theory to guide a wide range of technology enabled learning projects, though he does acknowledge that we need new models for learning.  I would agree, but I don’t expect any theory to capture every perspective.  Instead I would look to include the ideas of other theories to expand upon and extend the ideas of Connectivism.  My personal belief is that many academic research projects that look into practices are based on rather narrow (and therefore weak) theoretical structures.  Strong structures are only developed by inter-relating multiple theories that address different levels and understandings of practice.  Many of these articles in this issue do just this type of theoretical development.

Note – Bell contrast blog supported Connectivism with Peer Review supports Actor_Network theory.  While this is basically correct, what it points to is the inadequate and slow moving nature of peer review, which is ill-suited to a fast moving interconnected world.  Peer review is more suited to the interests of the publishing industry and the academic hierarchy than it is in supporting knowledge building in connected world of practice.  Validation of knowledge is important, but new practices are needed beyond traditional peer review and publishing practices.

Proposing an Integrated Research Framework for Connectivism: Utilizing Theoretical Synergies by Bopelo Boitshwarelo

Bopelo moves on to connects other theories in a “functional synergistic relationship” with Connectivism.  Specifically he considers Design-based Research, Activity Theory and Communities of Practice (Situated Cognition).  Not only can these theories extend our understanding in Connectivism, but they also provide methodological examples for how to approach research.  He details a Connectivist informed case study, but I think that this study (based in the WebCT) might not be the best environment for evaluating Connectivism as most implementations of learning management systems are not recognized as the most innovative environments for collaborative web learning.

Dialogue and Connectivism: A New Approach to Understanding and Promoting Dialogue-rich Networked Learning by Andrew Ravenscroft

Andrew claim a social constructivist perspective, although I find his ideas include a broad understanding that includes a deep understanding of social cultural theory (Vygotsky), the dialogue theory (Bakhtin), and knowledge building (Beretier).

So this article argues for greater attention upon, and the pedagogical shaping of , the learning dialogue process within network learning spaces (and) . . .without a reworking of attested dialogue theory into more open and ambient pedagogies we will be less successful in converting mega-social interaction into mega-meaning making and learning.  . . .shouldn’t our endeavors still fully appreciate the role of language and dialogus as our oldest and arguably still most powerful semiotic System.

In my last post I mentioned Zhuge’s active dynamic nature of knowledge flows.  The root of these flows is also meaning-making or sense-making as discussed by theorist like Jerome Brunner.  In a quote of Bakhtin, Andrew points out that meaning, in the final analysis, is not a result of Hegalian logic, but rather comes from the clash of voices in dialogue.  I think this is compatible with Connectivism’s view of learning.

#cck11 Exploring the Validity of Connectionism: Three things

#1 The Nature of Theoretical Standards

All theories are abstractions.  They hope to model concrete aspects of our world, but the abstract and the concrete never coincide.  This is the main point expressed by Jonah Lehler.  In the Wired Article The Mysterious Decline Effect, he says:

One of the philosophy papers that I kept on thinking about while writing the article was Nancy Cartwright’s essay “Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts?” Cartwright used numerous examples from modern physics to argue that there is often a basic trade-off between scientific “truth” and experimental validity, so that the laws that are the most true are also the most useless. “Despite their great explanatory power, these laws [such as gravity] do not describe reality,” Cartwright writes. “Instead, fundamental laws describe highly idealized objects in models.”  The problem, of course, is that experiments don’t test models. They test reality.

This is a pragmatist stance.  Connectivism is not true, but neither is any other theory.  It is a map of reality, but it is not reality.  When seeking pragmatic validity, our quest is to understand how it relates to other theories, as well as where and under what circumstances it can be considered useful.

#2 The Hermeneutic Relational Nature of Knowledge

My previous post discussed the hermeneutics circle, which seems that it might generally be consistent with the connectivist idea that we form new concepts by joining other concepts together in new ways.  A common place we see this is in the practices of designers using white spaces.  Ideas are placed on a wall or whiteboard and moved around in physical space in order to experiment combining these ideas in different and creative ways.  Similar practices are the increased use of mind maps, graphic organizers, and visualization in eduction.  It’s seems that these practices tap into visual cognition abilities, but I think it also implies how our functional cognition is organized.

I don’t think Connectivism’s description of these process is yet fully developed, but I do think it addresses these aspects of cognition better than previous theories.  As visualization practices increase, this aspect will become more important.

#3 The Dynamic Nature of Knowledge Flows

I am coming to believe that there is a sense in which peer interaction with other people helps us to construct useful knowledge.  The nature of how interaction helps us goes beyond general constructivist ideas to ideas that are better reflected in Connectivism.  This idea is also implied in The Pragmatic Web.

In contrast to the Syntactic Web and Semantic Web the Pragmatic Web is not only about form or meaning of information, but about social interaction which brings about e.g. understanding or commitments.

And also consider the Action Language Perspective on which the ideas surrounding the Pragmatic Web are based.

Language/Action Perspective (LAP) is based upon the notion as proposed by Terry Winograd that “expert behavior requires an exquisite sensitivity to context”

I’m thinking that knowledge is dynamic, not static, and that using knowledge entails appropriating it to the needs of oneself and one’s context.  When we tap into knowledge flows, we see knowledge at it’s most dynamic and we are also exposed to how others are appropriating that knowledge for their use.  Knowledge does not flow in a static form, but is constantly evolving.  Hai Zhuge speaks of this nature in scientific knowledge flows.

Scientists have developed many approaches to the static representation of knowledge, and to extracting, discovering, learning, and reasoning about it. However, knowledge is dynamic—it goes through human brains for knowing, invention, propagation, fusion, generalization, and problem solving.  . . .The knowledge flow network implicit in the citation network consists of knowledge flows between nodes that process knowledge, including reasoning, fusing, generalizing, inventing, and problem solving, by authors and co-authors. (Discovery of Knowledge Flow in Science, Communications of the ACM, May 2006/Vol. 49, No. 5)

Once again, connectivism may be better able to represent this aspect of knowing better than previous theories.

#cck11 Hope for Connectivism as a Theory for the Future

These are 3 things I’m thinking about in regards to theory in psychology, education and for evaluating Connectivism as an educational theory that can provide a pathway to the future.

  1. The difference between reducible physical objects and non-reducible psychological properties.
  2. The hermeneutic nature of cognition and theory’s conceptual role in hermeneutically informed science.
  3. Recent criticisms of connectivism as a standalone theory that I think it should be judged within a wider field of educational theory.

Social Action is not Reducible to Individual Behavior: The Complex Emergent Variable Field of Social Science

This continues a previous conversation with Alan Cooper about the nature of theories and educational theories.  See here and here for that conversation.

First, start with an example of the development of communication between mother and child (From Vygotsky, need reference) .  The child randomly grasps for an object, but the mother interprets this as intended communication to obtain the object.  Overtime, the mother helps the child formulate efficient communicative actions by presenting objects and interacting with the child to refine the resulting communicative acts.  This demonstrates the social genesis and nature of communicative action.  Neurology is not the only foundation of action.  Communicative action also functions at a higher social level. You will never see the complete neurological correlates of social behavior because it involves the neurology and practices of other people.   Social action is not reducible to individual behavior.

This is also just one example that shows why the variable fields social and educational research are so diverse.  Natural science is able with some success to reduce experiments to a narrow field of variables, but in ways that are not available to social sciences.  This does not mean that education and social science research is not possible or valid.  It is just that it cannot operate within the same standards for validity as natural science research.  Validity is an integrative evaluative judgement of the degree of support for research.  Standards cannot be established a-priori, but must fit a situated holistic understanding of the method, intentions and variable field in which the research is operating.

Digging Deeper: The Hermeneutics of Psychology and Education

But during the 60s (Paul) Ricoeur concluded that properly to study human reality one had to combine phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. For hermeneutics, whatever is intelligible is accessible to us in and through language and all deployments of language call for interpretation.  Paul Ricoeur Entry in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

First Aspects of Hermeneutics: Our Horizon, Our Prejudice and Our Ability to Change

Our field of interpretation is often referred to, through a vision metaphor, as our horizon.  This horizon represents our field of experience.  The object we interpret stands in this field and we compare and contrast it to our experiential field to make our interpretations.  It is both our horizon and the basis of our prejudice, the preconceptions that we bring to any interpretive task.  These preconception are the horizon with which we see or interpret any subject or object.  Our horizons are not static, but are ever changing.  They change in the process of fusing different horizons.  The primary work of interpretation to take something alien and interact with it in a way to expand our context of meaning.  What first appears alien can later be understood as a function of our initial perspective or prejudice.  (Note – Prejudice in this usage is about all preconceptions not just bigotry)

Second Aspect of Hermeneutics: The Dialectic Between Part and Whole

The hermeneutic circle expresses the central idea that interpreting any text (or experience) is by reference to the whole, whether it be a body of texts, a discipline or the whole of one’s experience.  In turn, one’s experience (our horizon) is made up of other experiences and texts.  No idea, project or theory can be understood by itself, but only in reference to other ideas, theories and projects.  While this does presupposes no ultimate or final interpretation, is does not preclude the ability to make judgements about the validity of interpretations.

The Hermeneutics of Theory

Theory, like any concept, cannot be understood except as a reference to a wider conceptual field.  This mean convergent and divergent differences with other theories as well as it’s position relative to broader intellectual movements and by considering lower level concepts that can be juxtaposed and compared with the concepts of other theories.  Therefore, evaluating the validity of connectivism involves (1) situating it within broader intellectual movements, (2) by comparing it’s structure and concepts to the structure and concepts of other theories, and (3) by evaluating conceptual parts of the theory for comprehensiveness and consistency.

How do reviews of Connectivism fit within this evaluation framework and what theories and movements would I consider relevant for evaluating Connectivism.  I’ll leave those questions for future posts.  I am looking for the pragmatic ability to peer into the future.  This is the future question posed by John Hagel at Edge Perspective:

(H)ow do we embed teams in increasingly rich platforms that will scale by encouraging the formation of  more and more teams. How do we then motivate and help these teams to connect with and learn from each other? What would these platforms look like?  . . . a pathway that is pragmatic and provides short-term value while also building the foundations for much more powerful long-term learning and performance improvement.

This is the next killer app. for education.  How do we create knowledge flows, the pragmatic web, the places that bring everyone together in increasingly empowering ways?  I don’t think that existing theories can foot that bill.  And we can’t wait 25 years for traditional theoretical development pathways to work their magic.  This is the hope I have for this Connectivism journey.

#cck11 – Adding to a New Model of Education: John Seely Brown’s New Book

What is learning?  What does it mean to understand and what does it mean to be an educated person?  You can give a definition, but your answer will be incomplete without going beyond a simple definition to include a specific a model of learning.  Adding to a new model seems to be what Brown and Thomas are doing in A New Culture of Learning as presented by John Hagel’s blog post.  (I’m still waiting for a copy of the book; possibly more to follow?)  John says:

We all have the uncomfortable feeling that the education we received is serving us less and less well. The reassuring notion that the concentrated dose of education in our younger years would serve us well for the rest of lives appears increasingly suspect.  . . . What if there was a different model?  . . . (A) fundamentally different approaches to acquiring knowledge.

The meaning of the differentiation this book proposes came to me when reading a critique of social media learning by ryan2point0.  If you think about technological changes in education when you are guided by old models, they will look much different then when they are seen through the prism of Brown and Thomas’ model.  We need a new model of learning that embraces tension, imagination and play.  John Hagel add these 4 claims that he draws from the book:

1. Tacit knowledge is becoming more important when compared to explicit knowledge.

(T)acit knowledge cannot be taught – it can only be learned, but only if the environment is designed to do that. In a stable world, focusing on explicit knowledge perhaps made more sense, but in a more rapidly changing world, tacit knowledge becomes increasingly central to our ability to thrive.

2. Questions are more important than answers.  (Hagel, quoting from the book)

(L)earning is transformed from a discrete, limited process – ask a question, find an answer – to a continuous one. Every answer serves as a starting point, not an end point. It invites us to ask more and better questions.

3. Learning is a social process

Collectives provide the context for learning and the learning process involves a complex interplay between the personal and the collective.

4. Brown and Thomas’ new model of learning is derived from imagination and play.

Imagination is about seeing possibilities and generating the questions that frame the learning process. Play is about the engagement and experimentation that drives the learning process.  Both of these become even more powerful when they move beyond the individual and drive collectives that can learn from each other.

This book seems to be devising a way that educators can think about learning processes when guided by the book The Power of Pull.  It’s a much different from traditional educational processes and the organization of most educational institutions.  I think there has always been a pedagogical distinction between passing on received stable knowledge and the generation of new knowledge where we don’t necessarily know the right answer.  But most education is about learning what the teacher already knows.  In traditional education, it is only after you have reached the pinnacle of learning that you deemed ready to venture out to find new stuff.  What we are seeing more and more is that this is a false distinction.  There may be some knowledge that we want to pass on in a stable form, but there is also room at all levels of education to explore new knowledge.  This is not just a constructionist pedagogical trick.  There really is room for new understandings at all levels.  Discovery learning is really about finding new knowledge, not about finding knowledge and then testing the student to see if he really found the correct knowledge.  The world of knowledge is very big indeed!

This looks like a good book.  I’m sure there will be more thoughts to follow.

#cck11 – Equipotency: A Potentially Important Concept for Connectivism?

I would like to contrast some recent interesting posts (prompted by the CCK11 MOOC) with the peer to peer concept of equipotency which I will define as: an open and equal capability to participate in diverse social network activity.  The theoretical / memetic foundation of equipotency is the emergence of open peer to peer culture, that I think can also be related to the idea of knowledge flows, as defined by Hagel, Brown and Davison (HB&D) in the Power of Pull.

Stephen Downes notes that we need a precise vocabulary  to analyze and talk about social networks.

Rather than use prejudicial and imprecise vocabulary, . . . we can respond to it meaningfully, with clarity and precision.  . . . the point is that we can use network terminology to explain much more clearly complex phenomena such as instruction, communities and interaction.

I believe we need much more than vocabulary, we also need a framework; a theoretical account to help us distinguish between information and noise and to point out how things are changing overtime.  This is the relevance of connectivism as a theory. What is the connectivism framework?  I like Jennie McKensie’s summary in a Connectivism Linkedin Group conversation when she says:

Understanding according to George Siemens is, “Depth, Diversity, Frequency, Integration and the strength of your Ties”.

But, Paul McKensie reply was also interesting.

Knowledge is distributed with a decreasing half-life – why do we insist on cementing the same blocks of content together.

Traditional education, focusing on content and a specified curriculum is, I think, an example of HB&D’s push learning.  It can only really be successful where knowledge is stable, changing only slowly.  When we are faced with situations where knowledge behaves more like Paul’s decreasing half-life metaphor, we need an openness to change that focuses on more than things like equipotency.  Equipotency may become an important to a connectivism framework.  Concepts such as tie strength may not be focussing on the most salient aspects of learning relationships.

Sui Fai John Mak further expands on this discussion through discourse analysis and asks whether discourse and power relationships are important to the social web.  Quoting Rita Kop he says;

(T)he notion of  ‘supernode’ predictably emerges when some contributors are recognized by a  number of others as having particular relevance to, or knowledge of a problem. There seems to be a natural tendency within the ‘perfectly’ democratic network to organize itself, over time, in a hierarchical system composed of leaders and followers.

In her dissertation Rita also said:

As research has shown, the open WWW has a hierarchical structure and is not the power free environment that some would like us to believe (Barabasi, 2003; Mejias, 2009) (pp. 267-268)

HB&D’s point is that it is not longer possible to identify what will be important in order to push it out to the network.  Digital networks can be seen as a flow of knowledge, and the point is to be open and able to draw on this flow in productive ways.  As I commented on John’s blog: many people are still searching for expertise in their network participation, teachers or knowledgable others (in Rita’s terminology) who can push the knowledge they need to their where they are at the time of need, but participation in peer to peer culture recognizes that value can arise from any node and can not be predicted in advance.  Supernodes, if they are truly valuable, may represent people who are not experts or knowledgable others in content knowledge, but are most able to recognize value in the knowledge flowing around them.

Open peer to peer culture as a way to understand the creation of value and participation in web-based social networks.  Peer to peer culture according to wikipedia is described and defined as:

  • Relationly and structurally dynamic,
  • based on the assumed equipotency of its participants,
  • organized through the free cooperation of equals

Task wise it can be thought of as:

  • the performance of a common task (peer production),
  • for the creation of a common good (peer property),
  • and with forms of decision-making and autonomy that are widely distributed throughout the network (peer governance).

Peer to peer culture may describe a new evolving type of community that is relevant to learning, especial where knowledge is in development.  It is likely important for collaboration and Collaborative Inquiry and it may warrant a prominent place in the Connectivist’s framework.  As I see it, equipotency is an important key to peer network organization.  Strong and weak ties, expertise, authority, and other forms of discourse based power can exist within and can influence network activities, but like Hagel Brown and Davison’s emphasis on serendipity, value creation can not be easily predicted and does not always emanate from expertise or strong network ties. Networks must be open to the unexpected contribution of any node in the network.  This is the basis of equipotency and peer to peer value creation networks.

#cck11 Connectivism is a Retroactive Theory to Previous Learning Theories

Mike Dillon asks:

“(H)ow connectivism fits into the scheme of how we learn and how we educate” and states “there is obviously the debate about whether or not it can stand as an independent learning theory”.

I believe that most successful new theories are, as Mike says, retroactive, in that they arise to address what previous theories were unable to address while also explaining the same phenomena that the previous theory addressed. The problem with most learning theories is that the discipline is so conservative. People hang on to their perspective and moving on very slowly.   It what Thomas Kuhn described when he noted that many paradigms change not because people change their minds, but because they retire.  A second reason things appear complicated is that the field does not move in a strict linear fashion.  We still haven’t seen the end of people reinterpreting John Dewey.

I find connectivism most closely resembles the Vygotskian Social-Cultural School. Vygotsky addressed the inadequacies of behaviorism directly in his day (1930s Russia) and his introduction to American’s in the 1970s also served to address the limitations of early cognitivism and provided a more detailed functional view of aspects of social constructivism.  Vygotsky was a contemporary to John Dewey and his thinking was similar in many ways. What I think Vygotsky did not address very well was the creation of new knowledge and he also relied too much on mental representations in his thinking.  (Much of this criticism is also applicable to Dewey.)  I think much of connectivism was contained within Vygotsky’s and Dewey’s work, just under-developed or aspects that were unacknowledged by these thinkers. I think this focus on new knowledge and on a non-representational view of cognition is where connectivism excels.  I usually think of connectivism mostly as a retroactive extension and an update of Vygotsky, yet one that is sufficiently extensive that it warrants a place in its own right.

#CCK11 Education: Stretching the Mind by Adopting New Frames

A follow up on the frame discussion prompted by reading Jamshed Bharucha’s Education as Stretching the Mind.   Jamshed places the idea of re-framing as a central goal of education, which he states like this:

Learn new frameworks, and be guided by them.  But never get so comfortable as to believe that your frameworks are the final word, . . .

He defines frameworks broadly:

a range of conceptual or belief systems — either explicitly articulated or implicitly followed. These include narratives, paradigms, theories, models, schemas, frames, scripts, stereotypes, and categories; they include philosophies of life, ideologies, moral systems, ethical codes, worldviews, and political, religious or cultural affiliations. These are all systems that organize human cognition and behavior by parsing, integrating, simplifying or packaging knowledge or belief. . . .

But there is a problem.  Frames are necessary to reduce cognitive chaos and complexity to a manageable level, but the mind also has an overwhelming bias to maintain these frames, even in the face of disconfirming evidence and sometimes they even create perceptions that are just plain wrong.

The brain maps information onto a small set of organizing structures, which serve as cognitive lenses, skewing how we process or seek new information. These structures drive a range of phenomena, including the perception of coherent patterns (sometimes where none exists), the perception of causality (sometimes where none exists), and the perception of people in stereotyped ways.

But the plasticity of the brain can allow us to change our mind, abet within limits and with much effort, critical tools, reasoning, and the support of ethical and committed people called educators.  Neuro-linguistic Programming: I’ve always thought that therapy should be grounded in education, but maybe education should be grounded in therapy.  I believe strongly in positive psychology, but maybe we can also benefit from curing some of our diseased conceptions.

#CCK11 Frames: The Tools and Contexts We Use to Create Meaning in Joint Action

This post follows a discussion from CCK11 MOOC, where there has been some talk about framing, context, and rationality.  Lindsay Jordan says:

Frames which seem pretty much the same thing as ‘context’ – am I right?

and Jaapsoft2, who says:

Context is a means to think about words in a rational way. Frames do have a physical, neural source. Reframing is a neuro-linguistic method where a situation or context is seen in another frame.

I agree, but I am going to think of words, word meanings, frames and contexts at 3 different levels, in order to tease out a deeper understanding of these concepts for myself.

First Level – Society

I going to think of frames at a societal level.  Frames at this level are not associated with our personal contexts, but they can be thought of as the contexts of our words and word meaning in a larger shared societal sense.  In example, the meaning of the word surgeon can not be separated from the concept of hospital, disease, as well as many other concepts.  All of these words inter-relate to create a frame that gives depth to our understandings and meanings, but it does so in a ways that is generally shared with other people around us.

Second Level Personal Experiences

Our personal contexts do enter into our understandings through our past experiences.  You may have a different understanding of the word surgeon than I do.  We share a societal frame, but may differ on a personal level because of our unique experiences.

Third Level – Joint Action

When we are in a specific context and speaking to each other, we negotiate the meanings of our words and concepts to fit our context and intentions.  You might say that this is where our personal frames come together and we attempt to form a negotiated shared frame between us.  M.M. Bakhtin (I think) would say that interaction is where our unique frames, added to our intentions, come together to create meaning jointly as we act together.  I wrote about this before:

(I)n dialogue, once we have spoken, we have to wait to see how our utterance is interpreted by our counter-party before we can go on.  We can speak, but it’s like the meaning is in the hands of our dialogic partner.  I think it’s what Wittgenstein meant when he said that we don’t reach for certainty, but rather for the ability to go on and continue the dialogue.  Katerina Clark and Michael Holquist give a similar account of the psychological implications of this dialogic way of looking at things when they quote Bakhtin saying:

(T)here is no reason for saying that meaning belongs to the word as such.  In essence, meaning belongs to a word in it’s position between speakers . . . meaning is realized only in the process of active, responsive understanding. . .” (p.232)

In this way framing does not determine meanings, but it does set the stage, or maybe it’s better to say, it gives us the tools by which we can act together to create meaning in joint action.

This is also the conceptual space where reframing is able to happen.  Jaapsoft2’s reference come from a therapeutic technique of trying to find other frames that help us to think of our circumstances in new ways.  Goffman did this same thing when he pointed out that people with disabilities were stigmatized because of their deviance, but it was also possible to think of difference without a negative connotation.   However, at some level, we try to reframe things, at least in small ways, every time we speak together.  And that is just as I am doing now.