When most people mention the word “pedagogy,” they are likely to think of it within a temponormative framework. It is a framework that embraces linear time and Cartesian thinking. This continues to be the most prevalent framework within Western educational contexts. A linear conceptualization of time ensures that the learning process has a beginning and an end, with predictable (and measurable) waypoints between. The causal linearity of the temponormative frame allows for the developmental procession of teaching and learning that is often best suited for transmitting explicit knowledge to learners.

The temponormative approach has worked well in the industrial era, but afforded the purposive use of technologies, can we break away from this old framework to one that is organic and synergetic, rather than mechanical — one that supports the creation of knowledge workers and innovators over factory automatons? Pekka Ihanainen (at HAAGA-HELIA and Ihanova) and I think we can. To start the discussion, in a paper we submitted for a special issue of time in Studia Paedagogica, we propose three alternatives to break us away from temponormative pedagogies: pointillist, cyclical, and overlapping. The following text is excerpted and adapted from the paper.

Pointillist learning

Elements for pointillist learning are masses of fragments and pieces – i.e., as used within Twitter messaging. They transmit, separately, beginnings for events, middle-points of events and endings of events in an order that may seem perceptibly vague. Among others, they comprise experiences, opinions, perceptions, comments, and “what if” scenarios.

The spontaneous nature of pointillist learning has always been a natural part of everyday human activity. When pointillist learning is examined from a pedagogical point of view, it opens itself as an anti- or a de-pedagogy. The greatest challenge for de-pedagogy is that we must trust that learning actually takes place, and that de-pedagogical learning is both valuable and significant. For pedagogical activity, de-pedagogy means that, as facilitators of learning, we have to give up our role as teachers and to start being and working as co-learners and peers within the pointillist environments we are involved.

Cyclical learning

In online forums, where participation (usually discussion) occurs within threads as a more or less dialogical activity, densification and diffusion of learning intensity are present to experience and take part in. The cyclical activity and learning is connected with an ability to observe intensive periods of online interaction and to join them. New competencies emerge in the perception of pulses from within emerging processes of thoughts, emotions, and understandings (among others). Often times, people wish to continue their explorations and re-understandings of pointillist events and contextualize the knowledge to better suit their own needs and interests. For this reason, we label this phenomena a re-pedagogy.

Overlapping learning

The above three frameworks do not necessarily exist exclusive of each other, but can coexist and overlap within simple or complex relationships. Overlapping may occur as 1) fragments within fragmentary entities; or, 2) waves within pulsating content processes. In regard to the former, for example, it recognizes the ability to move from pointillist activities to cyclical learning and vice versa. In regard to the latter, this includes an ability to construct new insights, conceptualizations, and contextual applications for knowledge given pulsating waves of cyclical, pointillistic and/or temponormative pedagogies. Overlapping pedagogies may be expressed through the overlapping uses of technologies. For example, in online education, microblogging (a pointillist activity) may be layered with intense activity within discussion forums (a cyclical activity).

Overlapping learning is knowledge building of everything/anything, everywhere/anywhere and at all times/anytime. In other words, overlapping learning is boundless in its scope and capabilities. When the learning of everything/anything, everywhere/anywhere and at all times /anytime is examined from pedagogical point of view, it can be seen as pedagogy of encoding. The overlapping education is therefore labeled en-pedagogy.

Our challenge

The problem is, although we are familiar with many of the technological tools that enable these pedagogies, we still view the process and the experience through the lens of temponormativity. Recognition of this framework with expanded temporal characteristics calls on us to develop new, purposive approaches that embrace and maximize the best of any configuration of de-, re-, and en-pedagogies.

Afforded the post-temponormative capabilities of online environments, how can we best leverage these multidimensional understandings of pedagogical time to facilitate multidimensional learning and meaningful new knowledge production?

[...] the U.S. Education Department quietly revealed this week that the Fund for the Improvement in Postsecondary Education will forgo its main open grant competition. The main reason: The program’s funds have been drained by “special focus” competitions mandated by the Obama administration and by Congressional appropriators, as well as by pet projects imposed on the agency by members of Congress, for the second time in four fiscal years (it also happened in 2005).

[...]

A spokeswoman for the Education Department said on Tuesday that the Web statement about FIPSE had been posted accidentally, and that the cancellation of the competition was a “non-story” because Congressional appropriators, in crafting the department’s budget for the 2009 fiscal year in an omnibus spending bill in February, had essentially left no funds for what is supposed to be FIPSE’s general competition.

Read the full article at Inside Higher Ed…

An innovative program offered in some Massachusetts elementary schools is giving kids a chance to become bilingual early—and learn from each other.

This story in the Boston Globe describes how the program, which begins in kindergarten, mixes native English speakers and native Spanish speakers and teaches all subjects in both languages. The article states:

According to parents and educators, two-way foreign-language immersion is giving students a rare opportunity to break down social barriers. And although test scores are likely to lag in the early grades as students grapple with grammar, vocabulary, and math in two languages, they are more likely to outperform other students on high-stakes tests in middle and high school, educators say.

Let’s look at what we already know:

1) Kids learn new languages at the age of six far more easily and quickly than at 16.

2) About 45 percent of all kids in US elementary schools are minorities—and that number will be growing in the years ahead.

3) School districts across the US are recruiting teachers from abroad, many of whom are native speakers of languages other than English.

4) An increasing budget item in many school districts is the ESL program that focuses on teaching non-native speakers of English in a setting separate from the native English speakers.

5) As a nation, we recognize that having our kids speak a foreign language fluently will be a distinct advantage in the global economy.

6) Introducing foreign language instruction in high school rarely results in fluency.

7) Developing a greater awareness and appreciation of other cultures at a young age results in a more global perspective and better communication skills.

At a time when we are facing overwhelming challenges and budget cuts in our schools, we need to look at new ways to both support and leverage our key players–teachers and students. If we want our kids to have an education that provides them with relevant skills, we need to start by recognizing that we have a remarkable resource for language and cultural learning in almost every school in the country: kids who are native speakers of other languages. By using bilingual curricula and native-language teachers in the early grades and encouraging kids to communicate with each other in two languages in all subjects, we can easily expand the number of US students who become both fluent in a foreign language and fully cognizant of the cultures represented right in their own community.

Some solutions are just so darned obvious. By relaxing our ideas about early achievement testing, reconsidering our emphasis on high school foreign language requirements and focusing instead on two-way language immersion in elementary schools, we can create a generation of kids who are beautifully prepared for life in a multicultural world—whether they stay in the US or choose to live and work abroad.

(Guest post by Maya Frost, author of the forthcoming book, The New Global Student:  Skip the SAT, Save Thousands On Tuition, and Get A Truly International Education)

On her blog, Elena Benito-Ruiz shares a draft chapter on “‘Infoxication 2.0′ as one of the main downsides to Web 2.0 and its educational application.”  Infoxication is a state of intoxication of the mind, caused by an overload of information. Although centered around technology, this is thought to contribute to a decline in intellectual performance. The problem is increased in Web 2.0 environments as such environments require both a push and pull of ideas.

Currently, she suggests, RSS readers (when used properly) provide a remedy for teachers and students. That’s a good way of compiling and simplifying information, but what can be done about new knowledge generation in the Web 2.0 world? Perhaps something beyond RSS tools are needed?

Read her text here…

Media guru Griffin Gardner forwarded this article from ScienceDaily, which suggests that calculators are useful tools in elementary-level mathematics classes.  Citing research by Bethany Rittle-Johnson and Alexander Oleksij Kmicikewycz at Vanderbilt, and recently published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, ScienceDaily writes:

“So much of how you teach depends on how you market the material – presentation is very important to kids,” Kmicikewycz added. “Many of these students had never used a calculator before, so it added a fun aspect to math class for them.”

“It’s a good tool that some teachers shy away from, because they are worried it’s going to have negative consequences,” Rittle-Johnson said. “I think that the evidence suggests there are good uses of calculators, even in elementary school.”

From the JECP article:

The impact of prior knowledge on the benefits of generating information highlights an important constraint that teachers should consider. Initial practice in generating answers seems important to support procedure acquisition; once procedures are learned, the benefits of generating answers may be reduced or eliminated. This converges with teachers’ beliefs that ‘‘calculators should be used only after students had learned how to do the relevant mathematics without them” (Ballheim, 1999, p. 6). Reading answers from calculators does offer some potential benefits for higher knowledge students; it increases opportunities for practice of individual items and removes exposure to incorrect answers. Associative memory models predict that greater exposure to problems and their answers improves recall of the answers and that exposure to incorrect answers decreases recall of correct answers (e.g., Shrager & Siegler, 1998; Siegler, 1988). In the current study, using calculators increased the number of times the problems were practiced and decreased the number of errors during the study session. This may explain why higher knowledge students did not seem to benefit from generating answers. Over additional study sessions, benefits of calculator use for learning arithmetic facts may accrue. More generally, teachers should consider the potential trade-off in practice using procedures and frequency of exposure to correct information and should consider that this trade-off may vary for students with different knowledge levels. (p. 80)

The Chinese are using hand-held learning devices to help them pass English exams, and the U.S. is starting to see the benefits of the use of calculators in the classroom.  Is “ethical cheating” becoming mainstream?

• The role of Leapfrogging in the future of youth work and workforce preparation by George Kubik
• Leapfrog principles and practices: Core components of Education 3.0 and 4.0 by Arthur M. Harkins
• The Leapfrog Principle and paradigm shifts in education by Xian-rong Wang
• The significance of Leapfrog education development in China by Changde Cao
• Four scenarios of Leapfrog for teacher training curriculum in China by Hongzhuan Song
• Utilizing digital technology to achieve leapfrog learning by Jun ma
• Technological applications of Leapfrog by John Moravec
• Leapfrog Education: An alternative present and future for Chinese tertiary education by Yi Cao

David Brooks wrote an excellent op-ed piece in today’s New York Times. He states that individuals cannot be successful in a globalized world without building advanced capabilities to transform information into meaningful knowledge:

The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called “the Chinese” or “the Indians,” are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy — the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner.

This is one of the few articles in popular media that effectively ties globalization with the need for revolutionizing human capital development. And, it is one of the very few articles that contain the words “globalization” and “pedagogy” together in the same paragraph.

Read the entire article…

To remain competitive in the global economy, we must build on the success of such schools [as High Tech High] and commit to an ambitious national agenda for education. Government and businesses can both play a role. Companies must advocate for strong education policies and work with schools to foster interest in science and mathematics and to provide an education that is relevant to the needs of business. Government must work with educators to reform schools and improve educational excellence.

American competitiveness also requires immigration reforms that reflect the importance of highly skilled foreign-born employees. Demand for specialized technical skills has long exceeded the supply of native-born workers with advanced degrees, and scientists and engineers from other countries fill this gap.

Read the full editorial…

• Tenured Faculty and Industry Scholars: Publish only in open-access journals.
• Disciplinary associations: Help open-access journals gain traction.
• Tenure committees: Recognize alternate venues and help the universities follow.
• Young punk scholars: Publish only in open-access journals in protest, especially if you’re in a new field.
• More conservative young scholars: publish what you need to get tenure and then stop publishing in closed venues immediately upon acquiring tenure.
• All scholars: Go out of your way to cite articles from open-access journals.
• All scholars: Start reviewing for open-access journals.
• Libraries: Begin subscribing to open-access journals and adding them to your catalogue.
• Universities: Support your faculty in creating open-access journals on your domains.
• Academic publishers: Wake up or get out.

(The above list is abstracted from her original post.)

I probably fall under the “young punk” category in her list, and publish in both traditional and new media as an attempt to compromise and appeal to both conservative and cutting-edge scholars. How can we move away from a culture of appeasement of 20th century academic culture and refocus our knowledge diffusion toward media formats that are more appealing to younger and more tech-savvy academics –such as blogs, and the spaces where open access journals and other, new, open media interface? How long until the academy will finally accept highly commented and linked blog posts as legitimate, peer-reviewed articles in a tenure review?

Mike Elgan beat me to the punch, though, and posted this article at Computer World. An excerpt:

Half of Japan’s top 10 best-selling books last year — half! — started out as cell phone-based books, according to the New York Times.

The books-on-phones genre started when a home-page-making Web site company realized that people in Japan were writing serialized novels on their blogs, and figured out how to autocreate cell phone-based novels from the blog entries.

The popularity of these blog novels on cell phones sparked huge interest among readers in writing such novels. Last month, the site passed the 1 million novel mark.

Some of these amateur writers become so famous on the cell phone medium that the big publishing houses seek them out and offer lucrative deals for print versions. The No. 5 best-selling print book in Japan last year, according to the Times, was written first on a cell phone by a girl during her senior year in high school.

In this brave new world of literature where anybody can become a best-selling author using mobile technologies, we need to rethink what a “book” really is. Instead of blocking mobile technologies in schools, what if schools allowed them so that kids could produce their own books?