John Abbott and Terence Ryan
Iin the January 1998 edition of The American Administrator.
For more than a decade politicians, business leaders and educational leaders have assumed that their education systems needed reform, not re-design. On both sides of the Atlantic reformers have insisted that young people can be successfully prepared for the challenges and opportunities of the Knowledge Age by getting systems of education designed for the Industrial Age to work more efficiently and towards a higher standard. In taking this stance, much of the emerging body of research into the nature of human learning that challenges the underlying principles of the systems that reformers have taken for granted has failed to be fully appreciated.
New forms of education await development through exploiting the new insights emerging from an ever increasing array of research into just how it is that people learn-how-to-learn (and thereby develop real understanding and transferable skills), and then merging these insights with best practice from around the world. If learning is the critical issue for the future, and not simply more schooling, then a transformation of the life of the community is as essential as any restructuring of formal educational arrangements.
Learning and schooling are not synonymous. No form of schooling can continuously compensate for a dysfunctional community; perversely, the harder the schools try, the less incentive communities have to help themselves. At the most fundamental level, it is impossible to bring up children to be intelligent in a world that appears unintelligible to them.
Key Elements of a Learning Community
Details of the proposed redesign should be determined by the members of the particular communities involved. The broad outlines, however, include:
- new relationships between young people and the adults in their communities, replacing the isolation from real life that makes current schools so ineffective;
- much greater investment in the personal, social, and intellectual development of young children; leading to
- assumption by adolescents and young adults of greater responsibility for their own learning and for contributing to their communities.
- a new unit of change; something smaller than most current educational administrative units, but larger than a single school. This would be coterminous with what people feel to be the place where they belong, and for which they feel a sense of identity and hopefully responsibility.
Sources of Knowledge Compelling a New Approach
The proposed redesign should be based on four bodies of knowledge derived from recent research in the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science, anthropology, sociology, the evolutionary sciences, and related fields:
- knowledge about the biological nature of learning,
- knowledge about the impact of information technology,
- knowledge about the relationship between thinking processes (meta-cognition), and the development of expertise, and
- knowledge about how we construct our systems for learning.
New Knowledge About the Biological Nature of Learning
Until recently the study of learning was largely the preserve of philosophers and psychologists, and latterly of cognitive scientists. Neurologists, as a result of functional MRI and CAT scans, are now able literally to watch specific patterns of activity within the brain light up on a computer screen. The unprecedented clarity that this technology reveals about brain function is causing scientists to revise many of their earlier assumptions about how individual learning actually takes place.
- Neurology challenges the metaphor frequently used in recent years that sought to compare the brain to a linear computer in favor of a far more flexible, self-adjusting, biological metaphor - the brain as a living, unique, ever-changing organism that grows and reshapes itself in response to challenge, with elements that wither through lack of use. Insights from the evolutionary sciences are starting to show how brain function has evolved over eons of time in ways that equip every new-born child with a kind of biological "power pack" of potential social and intellectual predispositions. Predispositions are best described as encoded sets of processes, ways of thinking, or of doing things which, through a set of mechanisms and processes as yet only partially understood, represent a set of inherited "appropriate practices" which are transmitted from generation to generation. Whether or not these are used within a specific generation depends entirely on the environmental challenge and other intrinsic motivations. Predispositions open up like "windows of opportunity" at stages of life which evolution has found are the most appropriate to the individual's development. If not used at that stage then the window closes, the easy option is lost, and the brain grows in a different way.
- Human babies are born with an innate ability to learn language (any language) through "immersion" in the first four or five years of life. They have particular predispositions to learn social and collaborative skills by seven or eight and, we suspect, to carry out calculations shortly thereafter. We have evolved big brains so we are able to talk a lot, share ideas and develop fields of knowledge in common. With use our brains grow. Despite our dexterity with language we still seem to think in pictures - hence the significance of stories. We understand immediate crises better than long-term problems. We have at least seven forms of intelligence that help us make sense of our environment in different ways.
- The brain is adept at handling a variety of situations simultaneously. This makes it possible for each of us to react, moment by moment, to our immediate environment whilst also thinking about a number of abstract matters, while concurrently keeping ourselves alert to peripheral activity. The brain handles this complexity through several layers of self-organization whereby vast interconnecting networks are established; it is as if the brain is constantly "re-tooling itself" to work effectively in new and emerging situations. Once established, traces of these networks appear to survive almost indefinitely, and are frequently used as solutions to new problems. It is these earlier traces that give the brain its ability to build new ideas.
- The process of learning has passed from simple self-organization to a collaborative, social, problem-solving activity much dependent on talk, practical involvement and experimentation. We work better collaboratively than alone. We endlessly imitate people we respect. Unless we are able to form strong emotional bonds with relatively few people when we are young, it is probable that most of us will find larger, more loosely structured groups difficult to relate to. We relish the feeling of being part of a team. We are endlessly adaptable but, it seems, only up to a point. Driven to live in ways that are utterly uncongenial to our inherited traits simply drives people mad.
Information Technology
Just as we are undoubtedly on the brink of new understandings about learning, so too are we on the brink of radical developments in technology which are so fundamental that they hold the power to alter, not merely our education system, but also our work and our culture. At its roots, however, this technological revolution puts learning and conventional education systems on a collision course. The traditional role of education has, for too long, been predominately instructional and teacher moderated, but the essence of the coming integrated, universal, multi-media, digital network is discovery - the empowerment of the human mind to learn spontaneously, without coercion, both independently and collaboratively.
Knowledge About the Relationship Between Thinking Processes (meta-cognition), and the Development of Expertise
The process of learning is as old as life itself. It has passed from simple organization to a collaborative, social, problem-solving activity much dependent on talk, practical involvement and experimentation. If adults assume that learning and schooling are synonymous, young children certainly don't. To them the world is open to endless investigation, and questioning, any of which they regard as legitimate. That is why streets that are unsafe for children to play around are as much a condemnation of failed policy, as are burned out teachers or inadequate classrooms.
Good as they are our natural predispositions to learn are no longer adequate to the needs of our present world. Ways have to be found of extending them so that we can "go beyond what comes naturally."
This has to be the central issue. It is called meta-cognition, the ability to think about your own thinking, and the development of skills that are genuinely transferable and not tied to a single body of knowledge, and can therefore be applied in different settings. It is linked to a form of intelligence that is becoming known as reflective intelligence. In a world of continuous change this has to be the fundamental factor, so fundamental that it all too easily gets taken for granted...every learner has to be a reflective practitioner.
For years educationalists have debated the rival claims of so called progressive experiential-learning (assumed to be on the political Left), and discipline content-specific directed study (assumed to be on the political Right). Such polarization for too long has obscured the broad middle course which utilizes key ideas from both. Expertise is difficult to achieve without being a specialist, but it is much more than simply specialization. It requires the knowledge of much content, and the ability to be able to think about this both in the specific and the abstract. It is essentially that deep reflective capability that helps people of all ages break-out of set ways of doing things, unseating old assumptions, and setting out new possibilities.
Children, from a very early age can progressively come to understand that a lesson about learning something, can also be made into a lesson about how to "learn-how-to-learn" and remember something. They can become more and more their own teachers. This is the key to instilling the intrinsic motivation necessary for life-long learning.
Knowledge About How We Construct Our Systems for Learning
Formal schooling world-wide is largely the creation of the last 100 years. Its achievements have been immense, and it has been widely replicated around the world. Yet, for all its achievements, it is eventually limited by the technology of the classroom, formal instruction, uniform stages of progression, prescribed knowledge, and a curriculum of self-contained bits.
The needs of the emerging knowledge economy go far further than the industrial economy that preceded it by requiring that young people possess, in addition to a range of basic skills (numeracy, literacy and an ability to communicate), personal competencies such as the abilities to be self-starting, quick-thinking, problem-solving, risk-taking individuals who can operate in collaborative situations. Young workers need the transferable skills of the "quizzical craftsmen;" the ability to go beyond their own expertise and thoughtfully evaluate new domains and problems. Such skills and attitudes are more naturally developed in the rich, collaborative problem-solving and uncertain world of apprentice-type learning (not to be confused with 20th century industrial apprenticeship) than ever they can be in the formal classroom with its inevitable emphasis on tasks, schedules, measurable results and manageable disconnected activities.
Social, economic and technological changes in recent years have posed two direct challenges to the industrial model of schooling; 1) the need to move from relatively precise skills - the trained specialist - to the skills of adaptability and enterprise, and to do this not simply for the few but for the majority; 2) the declining sense of community, of family, of inter-generational dialogue, and the fractionalization of employment have reduced the opportunity for intrinsic motivation (informal learning). As the fiber of the community has deteriorated, societies have found it less contentious, and politically expedient, to pass an ever increasing responsibility for the experience of young people to the schools, rather than to reassess its own social priorities.
Faced with the dilemmas this creates governments have attempted to define evermore closely what is taught within school, and have started to assume either that informal learning is largely insignificant, or that such learning as takes place in the community can be inappropriate. Not only, therefore, have schools to teach the basics during that 20 percent of a child's waking time between the ages of 5 and 18 spent within a classroom, but increasingly they are being required to substitute for what, in a healthier society, would be provided by a range of community and family functions.
A New Proposal: The Creation of Learning Communities
Within a society dependent as never before on the intellectual and practical capabilities of people to demonstrate creativity and the mastery of a variety of skills, the key object of formal schooling has now to be to give every child the confidence and ability to manage their own learning as an on-going lifelong activity. Schools, therefore, have to start a dynamic process through which pupils are progressively weaned from their dependence on teachers and institutions and given the confidence to manage their own learning, collaborating with colleagues as appropriate, and using a range of resources and learning situations within the entire community.
To achieve this, the formal school system and its use of resources has to be completely reappraised, and effectively turned upside-down. Early years learning matters enormously; so does a generous provision of learning resources. The formal education system has to be redesigned broadly on a cognitive apprenticeship model, which will involve an eventual redistribution of resources away from much secondary and tertiary provision towards the elementary sector. This will need to be accompanied by new forms of instruction which from the earliest possible years make it obvious to the learners that, as they progress, they will be held ever more responsible for the development of those skills they already have, while being supported in higher order skills (how to reason, solve problems, and develop strategies for thinking ahead) only until such times that they can perform these themselves.
The smallest classes and the greatest availability of teacher support should be with the youngest children. It is critical that this support is used both for the development of basic functional skills, as well as building the foundation for an approach to learning that gives the child an ever greater sense of mastery over the skills which he or she can effectively develop. As children are held evermore responsible for their own development (and effectively work much harder), an increasing proportion of their time should be spent working in non-classroom type learning environments supported by information and communication technology, and the greater community.
Conclusion
If a nation or a state accepts that its economic and social well-being will increasingly be determined by its citizens' ability to continuously learn and adapt to change then the issues addressed above need to be at the center of all discussions on education reform. Focusing on the structures of formal education alone will not lead to successful long-term solutions.
It is now possible to help the majority of young people, rather than the gifted few, become successful learners who will then relish the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. There is now enough evidence about how effective human learning takes place, and internationally there are examples of all this at small scales, that new models of learning can begin to be discussed and debated at the highest political levels. For such models to emerge the whole system must be changed significantly, and such change is not likely to happen of its on volition. If change were as simple as applying what we know, the researchers, educators, and policy analysts would have arrived at large dissemination plans long ago. Radical new ways of education entail very long and hard pathways in order for change to be widespread. This is the challenge.