What is my philosophy of education?
(not me) https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2582/4101971040_9dae655973_z.jpg?zz=1
How can I be an educator without sharing my vision of what an educated person should be able to do?
Well, surprisingly, just as it is true of many critics of education, it is typical for educators to have no clear, rational, effective vision of what education should be or what high school graduates should be able to do. A number might say that education is more than the 3Rs (reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmatic), but saying education should teach the 4Cs (communication, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking) isn’t actually saying very much. Nor is it saying much to focus on semantics and syntax.
For example, in terms of communication, it might seem obvious to explore the writing of essays—narrative, persuasive, compare-contrast—we often do not explore context and objective beyond the essay. We don’t ask the question, or develop a decision-making protocol for answering the question: What medium is most appropriate for the message you are sending? Sometimes, a text is effective and appropriate. Other times, a face to face conversation is most appropriate. So, the medium must fit the message—although sometimes, there may be a few media that are appropriate.
However, we must also look at the conversation, itself (aka—discussion or dialog). The conversation can be classed in different ways just as essays are different. After reading Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, I became interested in the philosophical discussions in the book. I’ve also become interested in dialog, having been sensitized to the term after reading Crucial Conversations. So far, according to McBurney and Parsons, Walton and Krabbe) there are seven basic types of dialogue: persuasion, inquiry, discovery, negotiation, information-seeking, deliberation, and eristic.
Very often, problems are created when one person approaches their conversation using a different approach than the other person engaged in the conversation. For example, one person may have approached the conversation as a debate (persuasion or deliberation) while the other person was hoping to dialogue in order to gather information (information-seeking or inquiry). Cross-purposes are confusing and frustrating.
Transparency is more complicated than people would have us believe as well. I will save these topics to go into later, but let’s just say, transparency leads us down the rabbit hole of constructivism, epistemology, media richness theory (again), engagement, and the restrictions of time.
My list of skills every secondary school graduate should have to meet the challenges in the next decade or two:
1) Students need to develop design thinking. Grads should be able to approach unstructured problems effectively. Dave Jonassen says, though, that “Usually, most design problems have multiple if not infinite solutions. The criteria for the best solution are not always obvious, so skills in argumentation and justification help the designers to rationalize his/her design. Although designers always hope for the best solution, the best solution is seldom ever known. In addition to ill-structuredness, most design problems are complex, requiring the designer to balance many needs and constraints in the design. The importance of design problems cannot be diminished.” This could be explored or demonstrated in technology, engineering, inquiries into community program needs, etc.
2) Students can identify cognitive biases and rhetorical fallacies based on examples and to explain why the statement or article is based on a fallacy or why the argument is fallacious.
3) A secondary school grad can understand a scientific study then validate (or invalidate) a scientific study by identifying fallacies in the reasoning or by research (that other scientists performed the same studies but did not observe the same results), or that the experimentation itself appeared to have (or not have) technical errors, issues with variables, population size adequate or inadequate, etc. http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/top_science-fair_how_to_read_a_scientific_paper.shtml,
4) Students need to learn STEAM (sciences, technologies, engineering, arts, and maths). Students need opportunities to “survey” these areas. Then they should, at levels of challenge, focus on the topics and skills.
5) Secondary school grad can identify and explain the complexities of one of these: poverty, unemployment, the relationship of art and society, high-quality healthcare for all, etc.
6) A student can describe the differences of various kinds of problems and various kinds of solutions to problems. See “Toward a MetaTheory of Problem Solving” by Dave Jonassen (retrieved from http://web.missouri.edu/jonassend/problems.htm) for more detail and the direction education should be moving.
7) Graduates need to learn to communicate effectively and appropriately based on objectives and medium. In essence, they should be able to explain and defend reasons for using email, blog, social networking, texting, podcast, video, slide presentation, proposal, study/report/thesis, etc. Should have a developed portfolio of writing samples in each medium. Should reference ideas similar to media richness theory or to public engagement approaches.
8) Health Curriculum should support and encourage resilience development: With this in mind, today’s students need to learn how to focus attention (mindfully?) on important personal relationships (partners, friends, family, self, etc.) and will need tips and practices for recreational activities to effectively “re-create” themselves, de-stress, increase adaptability, etc. These are important skills and processes already referred to as resilience, but an actual curriculum should have those skills and objective targets. In some states, this may be addressed in part in their health and physical education curricula, but I don’t think “health” should continue to be what it is/was. After all, most of humanity will be competing against machines that won’t need sleep and will not be distracted from their tasks. Increasingly, more machines will take over what people call work.
9) Projects and Inquiry. Students need to experience this. Teachers should be prepared to explicitly teach these skills involved, but must also provide scaffolding and practice. The “training wheels” should come off as students master the needed skills.
I have since come across powerful ideas for education reform that include mentoring and coaching opportunities and effective internships. I agree with these ideas.
To Talk Like This and Act Like That 