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Between the chapters, a weekly podcast discussion focusing on a chapter of the book, 25 years of edtech, written by Martin Weller. here's your host, Laura pasquini.
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Welcome to Chapter Four. I'm still Lord screenie, the host, no one's kicked me off. It's 1997. And we're gonna talk about constructivism, and my guests. I have Joining me today is Josie stone.
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How are you? It's good to hang out with you. I'm excited to have a conversation.
0:36
Me too. Um, this is the first chapter in the book of the 25 chapters that dives into like theory. So who better to talk about critical theory, pedagogy? And more than you I thought, I thought Jesse for
0:51
Oh, well, that's nice. All right.
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expert in those things.
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But one might say that that's your jam. I don't know you have a hybrid pedagogue? You have a digital pedagogy lab? Maybe a hashtag. So I don't know what, what do you think about constructivism being wrapped into this education technology book?
1:13
Well, you know, what's cool about this book, I was just rereading. I read several chapters, before just in the hour before we joined. And what was interesting to me is almost every part of this book ends up being a Rorschach test for all of the stuff that's going on in education. I was gonna say all the shit that's going on in education, but I don't know if that's allowed on the peninsula. But okay, good. Good. Because I need that word, I think for this conversation. The so in some ways, it's interesting, because I thought, Oh, are we going to have a conversation about constructivism? Are we going to have a conversation about everything in the universe of education? And I sort of feel like, the latter is probably what's necessary. And I think that that's an interesting thing that this book does is it opens up those conversations, for example, the, well, I'm going to use that word again, that the shit that's going on right now with remote proctoring software, and how that conversation really is never about remote proctoring software, it's about how we treat students and how we treat each other. And it's also just about why we even are engaged in the project of education. And so yes, let's talk about constructivism, but I also feel hopefully we can talk about everything in the known universe
2:32
Make sense? It's absolutely for why not? Let's dig in. Let's get into it. That'd be helpful to define what constructivism is first, and then we'll do all the things. I'm just going to quote what the principle concept of constructivism that is that learners construct their own knowledge based on their experience and relationship with concepts, often through some form of social interaction. That's what Martin said, page 28. But you're right, I do think that these ideas, and some of the theory chapters in this book like this, do wrap around. What we need to talk about Jesse and I are recording in late November 2020. It's been a year is an understatement. But I think it is drawing out some of the issues that undergird all of these edtech and learning aspects of where we are in the remote emergency remotes teaching learning space, and I knew that you'd be a good person to bring about this concept, but also the shitstorm that we're dealing with in higher ed really
3:34
well. And I think one of the things I was thinking about as I was rereading this chapter is I was thinking about I mean, there's a there's a strand that runs throughout the book about a failure to acknowledge the very, very long history of educational technology and the complicated history. And he says, I think in the introduction, or at some point, he talks about how edtech is always about just what's happening right now and never looks back at its history or never looks back enough at its history. And he quotes folks like Audrey waters, who do in fact that work of unearthing the weird, bizarre histories of edtech and laying them out. The thing I was thinking about as I was reading this chapter is the way in which that that problem is is I would say doubly or triply so true of pedagogical history, thinking about the work and the craft of teaching and what that history looks like and who's been talking about education who's been talking about the practice of teaching and when and how. And so to some degree, it becomes really hard to talk about digital pedagogy because you have this double layer of the failure to acknowledge the history of educational technology, but also the failure to acknowledge or even recognize the history of pedagogical thought, because in higher education, particularly pedagogical thought just isn't a thing. It doesn't matter. even exist as a thing. The ad tech at least is recognized as a field, higher education pedagogy, not a field, which means there isn't even a locus from which to have the conversation. And he points out that that's true to some degree about AD tech as well. Because even if there is a field, it isn't a field that gets turned to or gets. Yeah, he gives the example of the MOOC and what happened with the MOOC, which is that people started to say, Oh, my God, we're discovering all of these new things, while failing to recognize that edtech is a field and a field that has discovered many, many things, and commented and critiqued and you know, in fact, invented the MOOC, even before people thought the MOOC was invented. So So
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yeah. what ways do you think that I do think that critical pedagogy does creep in and I will recognize, like our hashtag, and other folks that did pet hashtag, and some of the work that you do, it is there, but maybe it's not formalized? Is that the way to kind of how you're seeing it as a foundation of critical pedagogy.
6:08
You know, I actually just saw a some someone tweeted a history of pedagogical theories or learning theories recently, and they had this long list constructionism, constructivism connectivism, all of the different see words and all of the other words that start with other letters. And, and critical pedagogy was oddly missing from this list. And the person who was very good natured, and when, you know, people brought this up, they, you know, they took the critique extremely well, and you know, talked about how they're going to revise the list. But their response was, while I was looking at formal learning theories, and I thought to myself, Hmm, I wonder why not just this person, but I wonder why so many people don't think of something like critical pedagogy, which has been along around so long was so such a long history, why they don't think of it is a formal learning theory. And I think one of the things that critical pedagogy has never done is it is never laid out or not in quite the way that something like connectivism constructivism has laid out here are the very clear defined tenets from me all knowing white dude, who's going to tell you what this thing is, and then you're all going to rally around it and bow at my feet. In fact, critical pedagogy resists that kind of idolatry right from its very start and origins at the point that you think you understand what it is, the rug gets pulled out from under you in a really productive way that forces you to ask more hard questions. And I think that that ultimately is the work of pedagogical thought. That is the work of thinking through the the complicated, weird craft of teaching, which is always changing, always idiosyncratic, always depended on who the specific teacher in the classroom, and the specific students that are are and the specific learning space that you're in constantly moving changing, you can't reduce it to a series of, of clearer tenants or best practices.
8:24
There you have it. That's the definition right there. I think you've just described two things, critical pedagogy and also my state of my job, um, when just when you think you know, something you don't know and it is funny, that's constructivism, like throws back, yes, the white dudes Piaget the gods, Gabe Bruner, right and social learning. And what is interesting to me in this being the first kind of chapter that goes through one of the quote unquote, formal education pieces is their bits and pieces that are borrowed and being pushed against with critical pedagogy that what you know about that thing is only in this one context versus it's going to shape and shift and change in the critical pedagogy world. And I don't know, I think you and I are kindred spirits, where we'd like to buck back against some of those norms. And I think to your own grading, movement Manifesto, action book, it's probably all the above. And I think that to the other things that we don't continue to push back against is informing how these theories also add to the construction of the tools, practices and methods of teaching and learning. We sometimes keep them as separate entities for some reason, and I'm glad that this is in the book, I will say thank you, Martin for including something the book even if it's not prepared. Just it's gonna write that chapter for you next. I really am impressed that we were talking around some of the things I guess constructivism has laid out and he brings up some examples around resource based learning problem based learning committees of practice, but that's just like the tip of the iceberg, really, for some of what you're thinking about.
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or that you know, the other thing that I think is missing from at least from this chapter and it isn't missing in such a way that the fact that he doesn't mention it makes it a terrible chapter. This is a useful primer on constructivism and he pushes on it in some in some interesting ways. But also, Dewey is a is seen as a precursor. Dewey's work is seen as a precursor to constructivism and also Evelyn Dewey, his daughter there and their work together, is seen as a precursor to constructivism, and that's not really mentioned here. And honestly, I think, john and Evelyn Dewey, but you know, john, by himself and john with his daughter are more interesting to me than some of the precursors mentioned here. Piaget and certainly Bruner I am not a fan of the concept of scaffolding. You may know this about me. But I absolutely cannot stand the concept of scaffolding. And so even seeing the words on the page in this book gave me the gave me the
11:05
heebie jeebies. What, what do you love about do the Dewey's that you'd write about in this chapter if
11:11
you had to include? Well, I mean, the Dewey, john Evelyn Dewey, it's a piece called schools of tomorrow, we're thinking I mean, so many of the things like I went back to that, that piece. And when I was reading it, the thing I was struck by was how many of the things that I find myself saying right now and that I feel are so novel, so much of the critical push on educational technology? Is there right in this piece from? I think it's over 100 years old now. And so this idea that we think that technology, educational technology is always new. And then we often think that our critiques of educational technology are also new, something like critical digital pedagogy, which, you know, seems so last 10 years, you know, coined by someone who may be talking right now that we but in fact, what we find out is the idea isn't that, that new and in fact, we don't have to have new ideas and give them names and be white dudes and put a capital, you know, capital C, and a capital D, or whichever other capital letters in front of them to make them real, that in fact that unearthing some of these histories and realizing what the foundation for our beliefs are. And what the foundation for our pedagogy is, what the foundation for our critique is, is a really useful thing. academia pushes on this idea of you have to have an original thought, as as though there is such a thing. I mean, I can't imagine what it would be, I can't imagine what thought I've had that isn't in some way borrowed or influenced by everything that I've read everything that I know, the long histories and the various fields that I dabble in.
12:57
Yeah, I think you're right. And the critical pedagogy approach, which is what we now this episode will be out in December, people will be coming to the end of the year, that felt like five, or 15. And we'll also be thinking of 2020. Yeah, 20 years. I think going into their next if you're in higher ed going to your next semester is going to be more of the same, but really doesn't have to be and what are the questions you would encourage instructors and faculty or instructional designers, faculty developers to like, push forward as they think about their teaching and learning because I don't think it's been working from what I've seen, I'm just an outside observer. But it seems like it's been pretty tough.
13:44
I think that we need to make sure that our practices line up with our ethos, and that we need to be doing that work constantly and actively. And scaffolding is a perfect example. There are lots of people who love the idea of scaffolding because it makes it makes learning supposedly makes learning accessible to groups of people facing particular challenges scaffolding suggesting that each person might enter the work at a different a different place, and that you need to scaffold the work so that it guides the learner into the process. It's a great idea in theory, and yet if you if we look back at some of the first things that Bruner at all wrote about scaffolding, it's also extraordinarily authoritarian. It makes assumptions about who people are and who people want to be. Rather than asking them most scaffolding is done in advance of students even arriving upon the scene. And, and so instead, what we need to think about is if our goal is actually to be compassionate to students to recognize their challenges to help address those challenges in the way that we structure education. We maybe should start by talking to Students. And I mean, it seems like such an obvious easy thing to do. And it is so extraordinarily rare that the process of constructing learning environments, the process of building education begins with talking to students and having their voices. Um, you know, interestingly, he also in this chapter talks about the idea of student centeredness, and the way that constructivism and he pushes back rightfully so on the idea of student centered he says, Wait, is it student at the periphery? Like, what's the opposite of student centered? No one says, Yeah, I'm constructing learning so that students are at the periphery. So in some way, students are always at the center. The question is, are they at the center with all kinds of robots and cameras trained upon them, surveilling their every move, there are, there are points at which you wouldn't want to be in the center, you know, in the pan, Pan opticon, you're in the center. So I don't necessarily know if student centered is the thing that we want to valorize what we want to valorize is student contribution, and not just student contribution to like content. You know, it's one thing to have students helping devise content, it's another thing to have students helping structure their learning environment. So you know, it capital C, constructivism, I hope that a key piece of this would be having students are building their own learning spaces, not imagining that we know who they are and what they need before they've even arrived on the scene.
16:40
Yeah, it gets complex as we think about, we have instructors out there that are in different disciplines and domains, and honestly, were thrown into a digital space. And so I think a lot of that is coming to whoever's supporting them. There's the scaffold at the at the universities and community colleges that they're at, I think about, like I was just reading the God's keys zone of proximal development sounds like the worst name ever. ncpd sounds like another sort of virus that might be out there. So I really think it's not like what the lyric can do help and unaided, what they can't do, it's, we've never given that choice. And I really think the autonomy and the self directedness that I think most of our learners can do, and want to do and be a part of, don't get to make that decision, because the spaces are already decided, or they're told to come to a Zoom Room synchronous, or they're just working with whatever instructor basically knows how to support and it's, it's, I think we're thinking to high tech in some of these examples, and I love tennis was one of them tans, Morgan brought up, could we not go back to 1990? And think about email, and just delivering content by email or phone, if people had to? What would be the ideal way to strip away some of these things, the robots and the watchers and the panopticon, that we could create space, that students could get a decision on where they're learning, what do you think about in a hopeful way for 2021?
18:15
Well, I mean, to start to go back to what I said, you know, start by, you know, start by talking to students and start by trusting what they say and what they say about their own learning. I think the conversation also has to be more complex than that. The conversation because you just said, If you ask students, well, what do you want? They might say, well, we want to be back face to face. Well, of course, you want to be back face to face? Don't we all? Yeah, but is there a more nuanced conversation we need to have about that? So you know, my institution, University of Mary Washington, where you know, where I'm still teaching a class, they asked the students, what do you what do you want, and the students wanted to be back face to face, and and so they brought them back face to face. And I just didn't like that the series that like the complexity of that interaction is not nearly high enough to get real information about what kinds of action that we should take. And so if I think about like, what we can do, we can start by really getting into the thick of these conversations where there where there isn't an easy answer. And we're sometimes what we're talking about, doesn't even point at a specific answer. Because we really are at this. I think we're at a stage with education with online education. With the pandemic, we're what we need to do is sit down and have the hard conversations that don't have answers, and do a lot of listening, do a lot of listening to one another, and also do a lot of emotional work because I think one of the things that students are facing and educators are facing is the complexity of dealing with something that we don't know how to deal with and that we Don't see an end in sight, and figuring out how you know how we just deal with the emotional registers of that. And that, again, not not easy answers. So I guess what I'm, what I hope for is I hope that what we can do is empower students, but also, you know, empower students to make complex hard decisions. And not just, I don't know, not just follow the whims of focus groups. I mean, that's what it often feels like, it feels like we're pulling students and then the survey of 62% of students want to be that bat back face to face, then we better be back face to face. And instead of thinking, Well, is there some thing new that we can create some new way of interacting, you mentioned email. And I find that what I've seen so many institutions do is beef up their LMS, contract, purchase proctoring solutions per purchase plagiarism detection solutions, get a zoom contract, put cameras in classrooms, all making learning so much more like a pan opticon at each step, rather than just saying, Wait, how do we already talk to one another a whole bunch online, we're I mean, we're doing this work together online, I think I'm pretty sure that I've only been with you a single time face to face maybe twice. Now I think twice, twice. Both times were at
21:32
least four years ago,
21:35
maybe four years ago was one and the other was seven years ago or something like that. But you may not remember better. But the key is that it was it was hyper minimal. And we've had to figure out ways to stay connected, seeing new faces in person on video right now. I still feel connected to you. So whatever we did four years ago, seven years ago, and then whatever we've done since then, has has succeeded in a way that I don't think the LMS does that the alerting you know, that the proctoring software certainly doesn't help with. And so I think that is it. Email is a text messaging, is it? Is it, chatting on Twitter? I don't think it's the tool. I mean, ultimately, I think it's that we've opened up space for us to have a relationship that isn't predicated on a specific stack of rules about how we engage one another, which is what most of those systems construct.
22:35
Yeah, I think you're right. It's not this or that. It's not a focus group. Like we need to get out of these stupid binaries. Like, I think we need to go to like the third space, the murky space, we don't know what is. And it's not created something entirely new. It's because people have been having conversations for years, they are really good at being social. It's not the media that makes us social. And the reason why, like an example United States connected, there's been an interest point. So why wouldn't we create spaces that have, you're gonna have a little bit of hybridity to it? I think we will have some in person. But does it have to be that way anymore? I really think about how we learn and work. I don't use zoom a whole lot. I use it for podcasting. That's vital, Jesse, because I'm not allowed to use it. And do we need to always sync up in the ways that we think we do we don't? And do we always have to assume that alerting management or web software system or something else is actually teaching and learning when it isn't. And I think I really hope we take lessons from this pandemic that remind us that teaching or learning has happened for years, even before we had like, the tool of even a pencil. So what would that look like? Now, if we were to recreate it with these other things we have, that we don't always have to use, like, hey, let's throw in a smoke signal. If we have to. I want to get back to oral traditions. Because I'm biased, I have a podcast, I want to get back into other creative collaborative things that do real work in the world. So I don't know maybe there's like another space that we could start thinking about in forming. Somehow. It's just about getting the right people on board to do it, I think are willing to take the risk, and it's our learners. But I don't always think our faculty and staff have the autonomy to make those decisions either. So leaders listen to the people doing the work. That's all I have to say. That's all I have to say. It's over.
24:32
I'm thinking about I'm going back to scaffolding. And I'm thinking about one of the problems of scaffolding is that we Is that too often and in its initial proposition, it over architectures engagement or over architectures, a learning environment, not which isn't to say it's interesting because oftentimes when I talk about this people think, oh, you must want wild chaos. And I'm like, No, no, that's way like no my classes and chaotic, I actually think structures good I like structure. But I think that I think that we take structure and architecture and rules and rules of engagement way, way, way too far. If you and I sat down for coffee, and we had a list of 10 things that we had to do, in order to have a successful coffee date with one another, we're not going to have a good coffee date. On the other hand, there are a set of practices and social contracts that go into that interaction. So it's not like there are no rules and no structures. We're sitting in chairs, we're sitting across from one another. There are lots of structures that help guide our interaction, but we don't need a list of 10 things. So I'm just going to read a quote from Bruner at
25:45
least get a little joke my to do list for talking to you. No, just kidding. I'm just kidding. It's my to do list at now in Portland.
25:53
I love that it's on a sticky note and scribble. I'm going to read a quote from Bruner at all on scaffolding. They This is from a piece called the role of tutoring and problem solving published in child psychology. well executed, scaffolding begins by luring the child into actions that produce recognizable for him solutions. There are six steps for scaffolding include, quote, reduction in degrees of freedom, and direction maintenance. And, and later they write that the scaffolding process, quote, enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task or achieve a goal, which would be beyond his unassisted efforts. This scaffold against this essentially, of adult controlling those elements of the task that are initially beyond the learners capacity, thus permitting him to concentrate upon and complete only those elements that are within his range of competence. So sure, there is unadulterated chaos on one end, but there's also that authoritarian garbage on the other end. And so if we think about a concept like scaffolding, which has a history, it has an origin, and it has a really kind of gross origin, honestly. And so if we think about currently, how do we use scaffolding, I know lots of great teachers and educators who use scaffolding really productive ways to meet the needs of diverse students. That's what we need to be doing supporting compassion. But if we if we understand the origin of something like scaffolding, and then when we're devising a way to use scaffolding, we can ask ourselves, hmm, am I falling into these authoritarian authoritarian traps where I presumed to know what the students need? Were I presumed to know that I'm the person who can give it to them. And I presume to even z P. D. 's epd presumes that I would know what a student is capable of what they're not capable of what they're only capable of with help. How is it that I come to know that how well do I know these people in my inside their brains? And so I think that that I mean, something that I think is really so so important is that we recognize that students need to have the space to make those decisions for themselves, even if they're wrong, because they will be wrong. Of course, we're wrong. Of course, we don't always know what we're capable of. But the only way we find out what we're capable of is by asking ourselves and experimenting and trying. So I think that I guess my whole point of my little rant is that there is a space between authoritarian garbage and complete and utter chaos, there's a way to structure learning without veering off into garbage.
28:46
I'm still creeped out by the word Laureen children in, okay, so, what I am taking from all of this, in this chapter, the end of the chapter, does touch on an area that I love communities of practice. I think communities that come together intentionally over a thing and work together has an opportunity. I also think I want to have a band name called legitimate peripheral, the band that's going to be on the outside. I think there's aspects of constructivism that I think are really clever, but we don't really get out like that self directed learner. The idea of moving towards the social aspect of it and what attracts them is more interesting to me than the earlier scaffolding because I don't want the word Laureen and controlling anywhere near my theories and when it comes to learning. I don't know about you, Jessie, so
29:39
I do not
29:40
sound safe. take that step away from the van. Don't take the candy get away from constructivism and zbd. So, thinking about this chapter, it's it's one of the four and I guess to be clear, I
29:54
don't think Martin does either. No,
29:55
no, it's not Laureen children into any band either. Clear um, But it does talk about the components of where people tag on these technologies for learning and teaching and why they had become. And we'll see in later chapters in the conversations I have regulated, examines constructed thinking about standards and moving on into elearning. I think it's just very, very interesting that the works that you've mentioned, and other great colleagues like Audrey waters, tying to the past of how these were developed, we do have a failure to forget where they hang on, and some of its hierarchical scaffolding for a reason. It's control. It's supervision. It's all the things you said, what are some things we can remind ourselves going forward? Beyond questioning some of the nature of constructivism that you're hoping you're being more hopeful with, I guess, in the works that Martin has put forward, a holster helpful. Alright, fearful we'll go with ways
31:02
he doesn't he end the book with like the dystopian ad tech at the end
31:09
to the next year's podcast episodes, but Yes, that's true. Spoiler alert,
31:15
I think I mean, I think one thing that underlies this chapter, certainly, but so many of the other ones is that there's the presumption often that, that we can take the stuff that works, and that we do in face to face environments, and neat and tidy really poured into online environments. And I don't think that that's the way that this works, I think, and he makes the case about really sort of surveying your learning environment, and thinking about what its capacities are, what its affordances are, and using those as a way of having a really critical dialogue about something like something like constructivism, asking hard questions about which pieces of this work when we start to do this in online environments, and which pieces of maybe don't work quite so well. And I think I'll go back to scaffolding, I guess, because I've talked about it almost this entire episode, but
32:14
build that scaffold go. But I mean,
32:15
I think it's a perfect example of where I'd where a component of constructivism has really been distorted, when we start to do that work online, there is nothing more panopticon like or authoritarian than a learning management system. And the way that it tries to take scaffolding to the nth degree. And or even to go back to something like you mentioned on grading and talking about grades, and rubrics and what has become of rubrics, especially inside of learning management systems, where you take something that is a nice visual representation. I don't love rubrics, but I get I get what they do and what they're capable of, you take it in, you move it into a learning management system. And all of a sudden, you have all of these little boxes, a five by five grid, 25 boxes, all mapping to every which thing inside of your system. And you basically you realize that that point, technology is capable of things, it's capable of controlling for learning in a way that ceases to be useful. And so instead, I think that what we do is we say, hey, what, what are the affordances of this space? And how can we use this space for good? And how can we not come up with the most extreme distorted example of things that may have worked outside of online learning environments?
33:48
That's a great question. There you go. Community repurposing back to you. Thank you. Thank you Professor stoma for a lesson in this. I really am grateful for your time on thoughts. Are there any questions that you have for Martin about this chapter besides wanting to write in the crip pedagogy, or questions for the community that we should think on ourselves about constructivism?
34:11
No, I actually found myself thinking, thinking about paper and constructionism. And thinking about the idea, you know, paper argues very famously that the that the child should child should program the computer rather than the computer programming the child. And I feel like paper is kind of a almost like the add the more complex answer to this and not answer in the sense that paper somehow exactly gets it right either. But that's what I found myself being left with, with wondering how someone like Papert fits into this conversation.
34:54
That is a great question. I'm going to leave it at that for our audience, and maybe Martin if I haven't back on but thanks. Join me for a conversation candid conversation with this Jesse, appreciate.
35:03
Thanks. It was super fun
35:05
than I actually am up optimistic I am sort of pathologically optimistic, which becomes hard sometimes, especially in moments like the one we're currently in.
35:17
Well, we need that. Thank you for carrying the optimism forward. I will stay jaded. And that's why we're here working you down on the podcast, so I appreciate your time.
35:31
You've been listening to between the chapters with your host, Laura pasquini. For more information, or to subscribe to between the chapters and 25 years of ITT tech visit 25 years dot open ed.ca