Human learning has been my favorite topic in this blog from the beginning. Now I meet this topic on edcmooc, which recommends a lecture of Campbell Gardner: Ecologies of Yearning. I studied psychology at a university since 1964- and know the learning theories, first behaviorism and then its critics. In the 1970’ies we Finnish university students learned to know Bateson and his levels of action/consciousness. We wanted be revolutionary and change the old frames and build up something new, our own perspectives. So does every generation and believes that it is the very first time. That’s life and so it must be, I suppose.
It was nice to meet Bateson again. The challenge is the same and the goal to think differently, is it nearer now? In my eyes, it was most convincing that the lecturer spoke at his edges, he was after something new, he was teaching himself via the many text slides. I loved the sayings: we don’t see things how they are – we see them how we are. Human learning is very limited without self- awareness. I do not like the way how Bateson’s double binds are transferred to education in a simple way. People were laughing at paranoids and other fool people, oh no. If a child meets these impossible double bind situations, its is not a right place to laugh at. It could be better to speak about stacked loops only: how many levels of one’s learning the student is aware.
The next phase in this way is in 1980’ies reflection-in-action and on-action (Schön). Kitchener and King built a Reflective Judgement Model, which opened my eyes again. They used concepts as Quasi-reflective reasoning and reflective reasoning. They described the continuous development from one frame to another, from narrow to broad, from concrete to abstract and so on.
What is the learning that is going on during this edcmooc? is not a question which can be easily answered. Many people have been thinking about it since the first moocs and I participated in a research meeting in autumn 2009 for the first time. One of the best research articles, I think; are written by Roy Williams and Jenny Mackness. They are developing a dynamic description about learning and I was happy to meet Roy in one of our edcmooc discussion forums ‘metaphors for opening education’. I put one image here, this describes learning in CCK08 and I can recognize some parts of it.
The dimensions are explained in their publications in IRRODL (March 2011 and October 2012). Trust and Risk can be seen here, also Campbell Gardner spoke about ‘feeling homely enough’. Both are needed, fear and safety.
I have printed the articles of Roy and Jenny in order to read them well, but the moment has not yet come. Actually. it is not a lack of time, it is lack of my understanding – how on earth do they build up this map of learning landscapes?
I am sure that during edcmooc many great descriptions about learning will appear and become published in different ways. This course has the right atmosphere, climate for supporting creativity. I am surprised how well this course is working. We have people enough so that diversity does not turn to like-mindedness. We can listen to each other and be curious about the differences we have. It is great to participate on this course.
At last I want to refer to one of my older posts: Dreaming about deeper learning, Apr 22nd 2012. There is a seven minutes video where Otto Scharmer says the words which I wrote to the heading of this post: Learning from the future as it emerges. Stop downloading the same stuff, observe, explore the future by doing something. Open mind, open heart, open will – a road less traveled. Please listen to Otto Scharmer.
I have to add here a link to another digital viking, Asbjörn. I have a feeling that his blog Digimatik deals with same questions as I try tto handle here. Actually, we schould explore how Bateson and Scharmer connect with digital viking lifestyle or mindset?
