Re-imagining learning design

So here's the challenge. I am heading off to Singapore in a month's time for a project in their continuing education sector (vocational training). It involves working with trainers, curriculum designers, trainers of trainers and curriculum designers, managers and hopefully the quality assurance people. This group represent the key people in the process of learning. Each level experiences constraints from other levels.

This project gives us the opportunity to make these dynamics visible. Through a shared process of exploring and visioning about education we hope to create new imaginaries about learning design not just within the existing constraints but to challenge those that are counter-productive. Such visioning will be grounded by inquiry and development of new practices.

Constraints

Many trainers are part of a quality assurance program. They are quality assured on whether students have gained the required industry standard of the set learning competencies. Some trainers are also assessed on whether they have followed the curriculum design to the letter - did they conduct a role play and a case study, and do each activity at the designated time? In Australia the competencies are set, but the way to get there through curriculum design is up to the teacher. In Singapore curriculum designers are not necessarily the same people as the trainers; they therefore need to create something which not only provides a learning journey for the students, but is also achievable by trainers with a variety of background experiences and skills.

Curriculum designers may feel constrained by the structuring of the courses, for example, the heavy use of modularisation into "flexible" bits. The use of reductionistic competencies reduces learning into more behavorist concerns, rather than humanist which is concerned with developing adult learners. (See Taylor, Marienau, Fiddler, 2000.)

So where is the creativity, humanity in this? Is there another way while still ensuring standards are met in terms of the professions?

The project is Tools for Learning design. What do you think of when you see this? Perhaps a nice model or heuristic device to help create that effective learning experience, whether in designing curriculum or an activity? Yes, there will be those, but there is a bigger tool - our own minds and how that shapes our view of the world. In particular we are interested in our conceptions about what teaching and learning is and what it can be, what it means to be human and what our "subject" is. Can a wider view help us see into other possibilities?

Widening our view to open up for innovation

What might it mean to re-imagine our conceptions of teaching and learning?
In the project we first aim to move into an explorative space to surface our own beliefs and assumptions and to see how these might be on different spectrums - curriculum metaphors, teaching metaphors, and learning theories.

Vocational training relies heavily on teaching as instructing (cognitivist) and teaching as training (behavorist). Curriculum metaphors include curriculum as set tasks, as learning outcomes, as learning activities and as social reproduction. There is a movement to more constructivist ideas and more student-centred learning but the scope of these, particularly into student-directed learning are restricted by the constraints. I am hoping that exploring other possibilities (e.g. curriculum as currere, as connectivism, as complexity, or as conversation) may generate creative ideas for thinking about curriculum enabling and / both solutions at all levels of the system. It is important to recognize that we need many different ways of thinking about learning - the key is making the choices visible rather than promoting one as better over another.

What might it mean to re-imagine one's subject?

I teach science. Or do I? Perhaps I teach students to inquire into the universe with wonder in their eyes? Perhaps I am inducting them into different lenses of science, and encouraging them to use them critically to understand how our tools and thinking shape the way we see and interpret our world. How does my reconceptualising my "content" change who I am as a teacher? How might we reconceptualise the teaching of massage, cooking, game design, curriculum design?

How do we reconceptualise our view of humans?

People are more than just learners. How might our view of people effect how we choose to listen, for example. Perhaps as teachers we find ourselves listening out for whether our students are learning what we are intending (Evaluative Listening). Or maybe we are curious to understand our students thinking and processes (Interpretative Listening) - by understanding this we can help them learn more effectively. Or perhaps we are really listening to what our students are saying, and allowing it to change us, to inquire into who we are, who they are, and become imaginatively engaged in participation into something greater than us (Hermeneutic Listening).

How might we use such ideas in the thinking of curriculum design?

The project

The structure of the project is over a 15 week period starting in early August with 3 workshops and inquiry in between which will involve trailing innovations and collecting data. Participants will frame their own questions after considering system contraints and dynamics and wider views of education. I am hoping to team Singapore participants up with Tasmanian Polytechnic people who are working at similar levels of the system. By enabling a thoughtful cross-cultural conversation I am hoping that assumptions might become more visible as well as the development of ongoing partnerships. There are a lot of commonalities but enough difference to make things interesting!

If you want to participate contact me susan.stack@utas.edu.au

Photo: CC - Fever Avenue

Taylor, K., Marienau, C., Fiddler, M. (2000) Developing Adult Learners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass