Something of a synthesis

I attended and wrote about four professional development events this week.

• Oxford Brookes University EdD colloquium. Saturday 28 June 2014.
• The ALT MOOC SIG. Blog here.
• an online conference: Giving Feedback to Writers Online. International and Virtual Conference 26th June 2014- 9.30am-2pm BST. Blog here.
• JISC Learning and Teaching Experts Group, 24 June 2014. Storify here.

And I gave a keynote at the Solstice Conference at Edge Hill University on 5 June 2014. Slides are here.

In this post I begin to instrumentalise my synthesis of critical educational development points, which I suggest are underpinned by and support the themes (possibly threshold concepts)  that emerged from the events above. [You might like to watch this video by Doug ward on Synthesis as a threshold concept.]

There is strong empirical evidence for the benefits of dialogic: epistemic and suggestive feedback. Deliberative reflection arises from and is a skill for distributed collaboration. Peer writing, co-authoring towards shared understanding, is participatory, dialogic, epistemic and may be suggestive. Through interior dialogue and the essentially dialogic nature of literacies  we have dialogue with the past: teachers, writers, memories, culture. Curricula, too, are participatory, evaluative, dialogic, social and self-determined. The convener, participants and curriculum are in tension in an environment of ambiguity, concern, community, power and politics. Methodologically, critical ethnographies provide the essential richer picture and learning needs stewardship.

The framework looks like this:

Dialogue is at the heart. There are three axes running through dialogue:

1. experience and activity
2. participation and outcomes
3. reflection and community.

And there are 12 further triads, each with dialogue at their apex:

1. experience and reflection
2. reflection and outcomes
3. outcomes and activity
4. activity and community
5. community and participation
6. participation and experience
7. experience and outcomes
8. reflection and activity
9. outcomes and community
10. activity and participation
11. community and experience
12. participation and reflection.

In each section that follows, I state the principle and then pose the questions, mostly in a “How do you …” style; “Have you considered …?”

Learning is active

Learning is active, an aggregation of multiple individual and unique actions and interactions of people with knowledge, tools and contexts. How do you:

• incorporate activity into any learning design?
• decide what activity is useful?
• engage “micro” activity patterns (e.g. 20 minute cycles) with wider (session, course, life-course) activity patterns?
• select appropriate tools?
• use frameworks (approaches, templates, learning plans, etc.) to support activity design and implementation?

Learning is dialogic

Learning is dialogic: individuals share, negotiate, discuss and contend with texts (multimedia), self and others (peers, hierarchies). How do you:

• facilitate conversation and collaboration with and between students (student-tutor and student-student contact) face-to-face or at distance; one-to-one and in groups?
• develop academic discourse (multimedia/multimodal, writing/producing) and give feedback for learning in all modes?
• encourage interior dialogue?

People are different

People are different (diverse identities) in many ways: demographically (age, sex, national origin, etc), as well as culturally and epistemologically (education tradition, world view, doer/reflector, multiple intelligence, multiliteracy, learning preferences, etc). How do you accommodate learner and learning diversity?

• Demographic (legal, language, social, accessible)?
• Epistemological (orientation to knowledge and learning)?
• Identity and community?
• Goal orientation?

Learning is experiential

Learning is experiential, it draws on everyone’s experience. How do you incorporate:

• Work-based learning?
• Life-wide learning?
• Transitions?

Learning is reflective

Learning is reflective. Reflection happens in cycles (dialogue with self and others): student life-cycles, action learning cycles, assessment and feedback cycles. How do you:

• Incorporate reflection, individually and in groups (professional, academic, ad hoc)?
• Help students have a voice for their experience and outcomes?
• Acquire peer and colleague contribution and feedback?
• Include practice and theory?

Learning takes place in communities

Learning takes place in communities or groups of people (institutions, disciplines), settings (classrooms, work-places, online, etc) have community development aspects where there are roles (teacher, student, admin), and rules (tacit and explicit). How do you:

• involve prior learners, disciplinary colleagues and trans-disciplinarity in programmes of study?
• Incorporate wider notions of identity and citizenship, and shared (or examined) values?
• Include core texts and narratives of the community of inquiry?
• Develop role-based competencies?

Learning is participatory

Learning is participatory: Everyone is learning. How do you:

• Encourage differential participation: peripheral, core, guest, “lurker”?
• Acknowledge your own and your students’ memory, feelings and opinions?
• Ensure authenticity to learners points of origin, disciplinary knowledge base, and practice as it is in the field?

Learning is outcomes-led

Learning is outcomes-led. There are curricula (No curriculum is a curriculum.) Many curricula are underpinned by wider professional and regulatory frameworks codified in law and customary practice. Outcomes are assessed and evaluated, often by other agencies. There may, of course be many “unintended outcomes”, many of which may well be beneficial, though not necessarily expressed in the curriculum. How do you:

• Refer to benchmarks and standards; codes of practice?
• Assess your learners?
• Engage learners with criteria?
• Develop communities of assessment practice?