Workforce Development in the Robot Age

Changes are needed in education and one aspect is to develop the creative capacities of students including students at the post-secondary level. But, creativity can not just be a bolt on to an existing program. I think an approach is needed to see creativity as a part of wider social cultural activities and not just make it an isolated skill.

This was a very needed article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed today: “Robot-Proof: How Colleges Can Keep People Relevant in the Workplace“.

This is a comment I made:

Great piece and concept, but there is a bit of a “build it and they will come” aspect. We act into a social cultural field and this field needs to change with education. First, creativity can only occur in a personnel context in which business is ready to accept it; to know what to do with it. Not addressing this just leaves students hanging while trying to exercise creativity. Second, creativity often needs a deep level of disciplinary or functional analysis, not just a surface level. A good example are design processes that get deep into the weeds to understand what is needed. Another example is Audrey Walter’s lament about the lack of appreciation for the history and theory of education by Ed Tech efforts:
“all around me, I see Skinnerism – click-for-immediate-feedback. People as pigeons. Zynga. Farmville. Gamification. But without the language and the theory and the history to say, “hey we recognized in the mid 1960s that this was a wretched path, one with all sorts of anti-democratic repercussions,” we’re not just making the same mistakes again, we’re actually engaging in reactionary practices – politically, pedagogically.”

Another critique I missed is the behavioral critique of big data that is implied by the author’s view that analysis will be the purvey of artificial intelligence. Analysis is necessary for creativity and this level of analysis is not part of robot capability.

Clarifying Concepts in Education and Pedagogy

This post is a preface to my post on Gergory Loewen’s hermeneutic pedagogy.

Much of the empirically based research in education seems fadish.  We must consider that the problem might originate in what Wittgenstein referred to as a conceptual confusion, based on a miss-understanding of how concepts relate to methodology.

‘The existence of the experimental method makes us think that we have the means of solving the problems which trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by.’   In the same way, using the techniques of  mathematical proof cannot solve the fundamental problems of mathematics.  In both cases we must turn back to a deep and sustained examination of the conceptual basis of each discipline. (Wittgenstein and Psychology)

In education today, what is it that we want students to learn, who do we want them to become and what pedagogy do we employ to those ends?  This question is at the conceptual core of education.  To this I have a 3 fold answer.

  1. We want to pass on to the next generation what it means to be a functional person in todays society.  To know the beauty possible in music, the complexity and competing claims in the development of democracy, the depth of self-understanding in Shakespeare, or the ability to evaluate scientific claims.  The beginning of these aims, the first steps, is to be found in the knowledge of facts, theories and disciplinary concepts and languages.  Skills in reading, in numeracy, and in using various discourses.  Histories, common narratives, and cultural traditions.  This is the goal of cultural transmission.  It is not the end, but understanding the culture into which we are immersed is the beginning of any educational journey.
  2. Second, we must do more than “parrot” this knowledge.  We must read not just for comprehension, but to interpret language in multiple way and to understand how it can be directed to different people.  We must have more that the ability to calculate, we must understand how numbers fit a purpose, whether it is making a budget, devising a mathematical proof or evaluating a statistical claim.  We must know more than historical narratives, we must know how they relate to ourselves and to others.  This is extending basic learning and making it function as practical knowledge.
  3. Finally, we must use this knowledge to carve out our own path.  To become the self-reflexive practitioners that are the creative innovators, collaborators, communicators and strategiers; able to solve the problems of  both today and tomorrow.

Once we are conceptually clear on the ontology our students, who we want them to be and to become, then it will be time to address the pedagogy.  How will we make it happen.  This is my corresponding pedagogy.

  1. Direct Instruction monitored for recall of basic facts and knowledge as well as the schema that allow us to efficiently categorize this knowledge base and retrieve it when needed.  (Including both the schematic conceptualizing and the technological scaffolding to enable us to access and find information when it is needed; i.e. Artificial Intelligence)
  2. Performance abilities and project methods that give us the opportunity to engage in practical activity using our knowledge and to be able to participate and be literate in disciplinary discourses.
  3. Opened Ended Projects involving complex problem identification and problem-solving.  The opportunity to demonstrate character and persistence.

 

Unpacking Ontologically Responsible Assessment

In this post I want to unpack the term Ontologically Responsible Assessment mentioned in this post

Why Develop an Ontology:

An ontology defines a common vocabulary for researchers who need to share information in a domain. It includes machine-interpretable definitions of basic concepts in the domain and relations among them.  . . .   There is no one correct way to model a domain— there are always viable alternatives. The best solution almost always depends on the application that you have in mind .  Source

When people say that students need 21st Century skills, what they really mean is that they want to change their ontological commitments as to what students are, and to what they will become.  When we move from a mechanistic factory model of education to a dialogic networked model; we are really changing our ontological commitments from components in a machine to actors in a network.  Ontologies try to clarify questions about the nature of being and becoming a student in the context of educational practice.  I would add (to the typical information systems objectivist account) that an ontology in educational practice also involves recognizing that students are constituted by networked relationships and the various domain discourses within which they interact.  The main difference in this ontology is that (in contradistinction to most information systems ontologies) its organization is not hierarchal and behavioral, but rather contexted, networked and dialogic.  This doesn’t mean there is no place for hierarchal behavioral objectives, just that they no longer form the core of our educational goals.

Why Responsibility:

Depending on whether one believes that reality is objectively given or subjectively / collectively constituted, the understanding of responsibility will differ. This, in turn, has a serious impact on how individuals and collectives can or should use IS (Information Systems).  . . . Reality is thus not given and open to objective discovery but outcome of the intentional activity of perception and interpersonal communication. This means that the dimensions of responsibility must be discovered through communication. (Stahl, 2007 Available from Research Gate or Ontologies, Integrated Series in Information Systems Volume 14, 2007, pp 143-169)

Education can’t be conceived through objective behavioral description, rather, it is conceived in the context of conversational realities.  Students are not cogs in a machine, but are people and the conversational realities where we meet them involves commitments, requirements, privileges, and various other high level latent traits that defy easy objectification.  To be responsible is to jointly actualize an educational program.

What Do I mean by Assessment:

What is the purpose of educational assessment?  Wikipedia speaks about documenting knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs.  Merriam Webster talks about making judgements.  Edutopia talks about assessment as a mechanism for instruction.  I want to focus on another aspects that may seem technical, but I believe gets to the heart of the matter.

What is it that we measure are latent constructs for the most part.  As Michael Kane (2013) frames it:

Test scores are of interest because they are used to support claims that go beyond (often far beyond) the observed performances. We generally do not employ test scores simply to report how a test taker performed on certain tasks on a certain occasion and under certain conditions. Rather, the scores are used to support claims that a test taker has, for example, some level of achievement in some domain, some standing on a trait, or some probability of succeeding in an educational program or other activity. These claims are not generally self-evident and merit evaluation.  Validating the Interpretations and Uses of Test Scores

More than anything else, assessment, at its core, is the process of estimating a latent trait and making it visible.  It is the first step in the analytic process of drawing connections, but we can’t connect the dots until they are visible to us.  There are 2 people for whom this is of primary importance: the teacher and the student.  If we observe the educational practices that involve testing, these are often the last 2 stakeholders that are given consideration, but they should be the first.

Conclusion

This 3 fold understanding of educational assessment includes developing an ontology where assessment practices recognize a full account of the being and becoming of students.  It does not restrict our view to what is easily measured, but essentially meaningless in the bigger picture or final analysis.  Secondly, it is responsible in that assessment is linked to an expectation for engagement that goes beyond behavioral description to fully recognize the full complexity of that student engagement as a dialogic and networked individual.  And finally, it does not use data in a mechanistic fashion, but uses construct measurement to make their joint responsibilities and ontologies visible to teachers and students in everyday educational practice.

 

Higher Education – is it worth it? Valuing Action over Thinking

George Siemens prompted these ideas when he asked the question: Higher Education – is it worth it? To answer this question, it is time to move to another metaphor.  From the idea of education creating a difference of thought to a difference of action.

This question was originally prompted by Peter Thiel (PayPal)  suggestion that people drop out of school and start companies.  George backgrounds his ideas by contrasting 2 thoughts:

The higher education model is antediluvian, it is no longer aligned with the information and knowledge ecology in which it exists (see Reinventing Knowledge and Reconstructing the University for more detail on this line of thinking). The fatal logic in education-abolisher’s, like Thiel, thinking is that a broken system is an unneeded system. Higher education needs to change. It needs to be more effective, more flexible, more cost-effective, more equitable (in terms of access), and aligned with the knowledge structures and spaces of today’s society. However, as Edgar Morin states (.pdf) the purpose of education is to prepare each individual for “the vital combat for lucidity”. Thiel’s model doesn’t achieve this. When we learn, we are not only fulfilling a responsibility to ourselves but to society and to the future. This learning need not be formal, but it needs to be broad, diverse, and non-utilitarian…i.e. not learning only to achieve a task or get a job but learning in order to increase our capacity for greater future options (or, for that matter, to become a better person).

I disagree with Morin, who’s first statement is:

The purpose of education is to transmit knowledge. . .

This puts us into Ann Sfard’s two metaphors of learning, the Acquisition and Participation Metaphors.  Sfard’s metaphoric analysis does not go sufficiently deep for this discussion.  The acquisition metaphor must assume that knowledge is stored in memory to be drawn upon and adapted to the context (transferred) when needed.  I have to research this more, but I don’t think cognitive psychology supports this aspect.  The acquisition metaphor still has some use, but this severely limits that use.

The  participation metaphor is based on Situated Learning Theory, which is based on Vygotsky’s idea of activity as the primary unit of analysis.  (Wittgenstein’s thoughts also support this view.)  Community participation is usually the location of that activity, but activity is the psychological and education unit to which attention should be paid.  Most of the criticisms Sfard makes of the participation metaphor do not hold up if you properly place activity at the center of that analysis.

Morin’s “combat for lucidity” happens in communicative actions.  Even in soliloquy, we posit an “Other” to which our active  is directed.  This is why my first response to George was to Quote Evans & Mackey in this comment to his blog post:

I would like to see universities organize around greater flexibility in learning communities so this (college vs. entrepreneurial activity) does not become an either or question. I noted Terry Evan and Julie Mackey’s article in IRRODL’s Special Issue on Connectivism

where they say:

(The) 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).

Higher Education needs to be re-structured so that it is imbedded to support our ongoing activities.  This fits with social-cultural, situated and connectivist perspectives, it fits with Hagel, Brown and Davison’s Pull metaphor of learning and it is not against Thiel’s idea at least from a learning theory perspective.  And ultimately, this question cannot be answered without referencing a theory about how we learn.  Why must you study than do instead of studying and doing as an integrated activity.

Again I am left with the impression that Higher Educations past is based on developing an educated class; creating a class distinction.  Morin’s lucidity was not practiced except in activity and that activity was valued by the educated class.  The value of education and lucidity of thought was the separation it created from the rest of the population, a difference that disappears as more and more of the population becomes educated.  If you want that distinction now you’ll need Harvard, Yale or Stanford, and maybe even not than.

How will Higher Education create value, how will it become worth it?

To answer this question, it is time to move to another metaphor.  From the idea of education creating a difference of thought to a difference of action.

The Focus of Education

American Design Schools Are a Mess, and Produce Weak Graduates by Gadi Amit

In this fast company article Gadi says:

The first five years in a designer’s career are absolutely critical and the true educational experience. A young designer must appreciate that opportunity to mature while on the job and take nothing for granted. A willingness to do anything and everything he or she can to get experience and learn, from the ground up, should be reinforced by the schools.  . . . — your first job is your true MA, your best chance to establish a career path, your opportunity to work on the coolest projects . . ..

First a revision to the thoughts behind my posts of 11-23 and 11-12.   Schooling and development are very important and much of the structure to our educational institutions is appropriate.  We need to introduce students to traditional ways of thinking and knowing and then help them find new ways of thinking and knowing.  But this is the beginning of education, not the end.  Students, and indeed, all of us need support as we address real world context and achieve Morin’s contextualization principle of knowledge.  This is what Gadi is referencing, contextualization from the ground up.  This is where we need personal learning networks in the broadest of conceptions.  Peers, mentors, coaches, customers, digital acquaintances from around the world, textual friends from our readings; we need all kinds of help to find our ways and we need institutions, learning structures, designed environments and the like to help us achieve this type of learning network.

This is the task assigned to us by Hagel and Brown: to find a new common sense for how to operate in this 21st Century Economy.