Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

I have spent some time this morning thinking about the Mozilla Open Badges and assessment project, spurred on by the study group set up by Doug Belshaw to think about the potential of the scheme. And the more I think about it, the more I am convinced of its potential as perhaps one of the most significant developments in the move towards Open Education. First though a brief recap for those of you who have not already heard about the project.

The Open Badges framework, say the project developers, is designed to allow any learner to collect badges from multiple sites, tied to a single identity, and then share them out across various sites — from their personal blog or web site to social networking profiles. The infrastructure needs to be open to allow anyone to issue badges, and for each learner to carry the badges with them across the web and other contexts.

Now some of the issues. I am still concerned of attempts to establish taxonomies, be it those of hierarchy in terms of award structures or those of different forms of ability / competence / skill (pick your own terminology). Such undertakings have bedeviled attempts to introduce new forms of recognition and I worry that those coming more from the educational technology world may not realise the pitfalls of taxonomies and levels.

Secondly is the issue of credibility. There is a two fold danger here. One is that the badges will only be adopted for achievements in areas / subjects / domains presently outside ‘official’ accreditation schemes and thus will be marginalised. There is also a danger that in the desire to gain recognition, badges will be effectively benchmarked against present accreditation programmes (e.g. university modules / degrees) and thus become subject to all the existing restrictions of such accreditation.

And thirdly, as the project roils towards a full release, there may be pressures for restricting badge issuers to existing accreditation bodies, and concentrating on the technological infrastructure, rather than rethinking practices in assessment.

Lets look at some of the characteristics of any assessment system:

The proliferation of new technologies and internet tools is fundamentally changing the way we live and work. The lifelong learning sector is no exception with technology having a major impact on teaching and learning. This in turn is affecting the skills needs of the learning delivery workforce.

Last September, together with Jenny Hughes I undertook a literature review on new pedagogical approaches to the use of technologies for teaching and learning. You can access the full (86 pages) document below.

The research was commissioned by LLUK to feed into the review then being undertaken of teaching qualifications in the Lifelong Learning sector in the UK. The review was designed to ensure the qualifications are up to date and will support the development of the skills needed by the modern teacher, tutor or trainer.

However, we recognised that the gap in technology related skills required by teaching and learning professionals cannot be bridged by qualifications alone or by initial training and a programme of opportunities for continuing professional development (CPD) is also needed to enable people to remain up to date.

The literature review is intended to

• identify new and emerging pedagogies;
• determine what constitutes effective use of technology in teaching and learning
• look at new developments in teacher training qualifications to ensure that they are at the cutting edge of learning theory and classroom practice
• make suggestions as to how teachers can continually update their skills.

Pedagogical Appraches for Using Technology Literature Review January 11 FINAL 1

All software is a beta. And we are forever messing with the structure of the Pontydysgu web site. So here is a new innovation. We are going to use the front page right hand column for short news items and announcements (please feel free to send in anything you would like to be posted there). And that frees up this news column. For what? For an editorial column, I think. Or an excuse for a rant.

And here goes rant number one. I am ever more dismayed by projects claiming to use technology to measure competence. Why? Because firstly I think we should be using software to develop imagination, to let people play, to encourage creativity, not restricting the idea of what is or is not legitimate learning or achievement. And secondly simply because I don’t think we can measure competence through software. Inevitably such attempts become just lists of tasks or formal knowledge which can be ticked off – with or without the help of evidencing. Such check box lists tell little of what people can really do and next to nothing about their ability to use skills and knowledge in real world situations. It was that approach which led to the near demise of the first wave of e-Portfolio development. And it is time we learned from that lesson.

Here endeth the first rant

An important article in the Guardian newspaper entitled “The awful truth: education won’t start the west getting poorer”. The article challenges a number of assertions which seem to have become accepted ‘facts’ over the last few years.

Anyone who has written proposals for the European Commission will know the mantra of the Lisbon Agreement. By the year 2010 Europe will be the most advanced knowledge economy of the year. Now quietly forgotten , this bombastic policy goal was based on a number of unproved assumptions. First was the nature of the economy itself. Yes, we may have a greater proportion of knowledge as capital in the production process than in previous times and the numbers involved in service industries have increased but the capitalist economies remain relaint on production as the primary source of wealth and indeed of employment.

And whilst the number of occupations and jobs requiring higher skills and knowledge levels has increased, there remain many low skilled jobs, especially in the growing services sector.

There were two main ways Europe was to achieve its preeminent status in world economies. The first was through implementing ever higher levels of technology. Once more the link between technology, productivity and economic growth are contestable and difficult to measure. technology can increase productivity and lead to growth. however, there have been a number fo studies showing that the implementation of new technologies has actually reduced productivity, at least in the short term. And if technology merely reduces the workforce, this can inhibit economic growth and stability.

There has also been a long running assumption that higher levevls of education and qualification will also lead to higher productivity and higher wage levels. Botha re unproven. And as the data quoted in the Guardian shows real wage levels in teh UK are actually falling.

In fact it is some of those occupations lauded as the jobs of the future that pay rates have fallen most dramatically in comparative terms. Computer programmers pay has been steadily falling for the last five years in the UK.

The Guardian also points out how so called knowledge jobs are being deskilled “They are being chopped up, codified and digitised. Every high street once had bank managers who used their discretion and local knowledge to decide which customers should receive loans. Now software does the job. Human judgment is reduced to a minimum, which explains why loan applicants are often denied because of some tiny, long-forgotten overdue payment.”

The Guardian quotes Brown, Lauder and Ashton who call this “digital Taylorism”, after Frederick Winslow Taylor who invented “scientific management” to improve industrial efficiency.”

And of course with Globalisation and new forms of communciation many of these jobs are simply being shifted or outsourced to workers in other countries, especially to lower wage economies. At the same time, countries such as India and China are rapidly expanding their education systems, with a dramatic growth in science and technology graduates.

In many ways this is a perfect storm, hence the title of the Guardian article. it certaibly adds focrce to teh growing debate about the Purpose of Education abd challenges the idea that educations hould merely focus on so called employability skills. Secondly it may lead us to rethink what sort of jobs we want in society? I am interested in the survival of the craft sector in gemrany, depsite the assumption in the UK that such jobs had no future. Indeed its eems that thsoe countries with strong apprenticeship systems, valuaing handicraft and applied skills and knowledge may be better placed for the future than thiose such as UK which went down the road of developing a mass higher education system for the knowledge society.

There is an interesting debate taking place on Steve Wheeler’s blog about disruptive technologies. Steve says:

Disruptive technologies are those that change the market and in most cases replace an existing technology. They are characterised by their capability to do so over a relatively short period of time. Some are known as ‘killer applications’ because they completely wipe out the opposition due to their placement in the market, their greater appeal, availability and lower price, to name just a few of the key factors.

Welcome though the debate is I think it is overly simplistic and veers towards technological determinism. Technology progress is seen as an inevitable and to take on a life of its own in terms of social impact. In counter to this there is a long tradition or research and thinking, especially in The Nordic countries and in Germany which sees technology as being ‘socially shaped;. Researchers such as Engestrom, through activity theory, have seen technology as a mediating factor within a human activity system. German researchers have referred to the idea of ‘Gestaltung;, a difficult word to translate, but variously used to refer to ‘social shaping’ or ‘design’. Technology is designed by humans and has social impact. In the area of vocational education, researchers form the University of Bremen have pointed to the interaction between ‘competence is use’ (Beruf – another almost impossible term to translate) and work organisation in shaping the use of technology. This is an excerpt from a paper called “The social shaping of work and technology as a guiding principle for vocational education and training” which totherw ith Gerld Heidegger I wrote around 200) and was subsequently, published by CEDEFOP, I think.

Social shaping and the perspective of an open future

An important counter-argument against the shaping approach challenges the supposition of the possibility of influencing production technology as well as the concomitant work organisation.

Very often, and currently again with increasing intensity, technical change, or technical innovations, are thought to be determined solely by the progress of knowledge within the technological and natural sciences. Such a technological determinism would signify that only the most effective path existed for the development of production technology, for technical progress, and it would also determine the path to be taken to the future of work. Such a view is one-sided, as has been shown from historical studies (Kuby, 1980; Hellige, 1984; Noble, 1984). If one looks at technical development, one sees there were situations with forks in the road in the past where development could have taken different directions. The development of technology is also a social process (Bijker et al., 1990). In other words, technology is influenced by social conditions, both in its application and in its inner principles. As far as applications are concerned, this topic was discussed some time ago (Cooley, 1980). It seems apparent that the economic conditions of capitalism have influenced the specific way of applying technology in the production process. And this is, of course, still the case. But relating only to this would mean maintaining an economic determinism. There are, however, other societal influences that have tended to be consistently overlooked in recent discussions. According to the view of the authors cited above, that which can be considered to be a ‘successful’ technical solution – there is no ‘right’ one, though there are a lot of wrong ones – depends on cultural parameters; that means, it is also influenced by the form of human social life.

Hellige (1984) in particular introduced the concept of ‘horizons of technological problem solving’ which vary during historical development. This means that the engineers themselves take into consideration only the restricted set of criteria which lies inside their horizon of thinking. This horizon, however, varies according to ‘industrial culture’ (Ruth & Rauner, 1991). If the shaping of technology aims at really new solutions it is necessary to overcome these boundaries. Here non-experts can show considerable imagination because they are less influenced by the ‘normal’ thinking of the community of engineers. Therefore, devising new technical ‘outlooks’ might well be possible in secondary education. At the very least, future skilled workers should be able to discuss certain aspects of technology with the engineers. The same should be true for the participation of persons as non-experts in general discussions regarding technological policies.
Speaking within the scope of a more theoretical orientation, the development of technology not only owes a debt to a ‘material’ logic, ‘techno-logic’, but at the same time to the opposite element of social ‘development logic’, with this the former forms a ‘dialectical unit’. One cannot refer to social ‘development logic’ until one also assumes an ‘inner logic’ of development for social conditions. But, on the other hand, in the social field the unforeseen is a daily experience.

According to Luhmann (1984), this can be attributed to a basic condition of human communication, ‘double contingency’. In the case of communication between two people, this means that ‘each of them knows that each of them knows that one can also act differently’.
Technology in its interaction with chance results in a partially predetermined, partially unforeseeable progress that can be termed technical change. Accordingly, the interaction of social development logic with ‘contingency’ leads to social change. The latter takes place on a less spectacular, though no less profound scale than the former, especially since it is a question of interpretation whether one attaches greater weight to the persistent or to the changing aspects. This becomes plain particularly for the goal of social shaping of work and technology. Rauner & Martin (1988) interpreted socially shaped technology as a unity of the elements of that which is technically feasible and that which is socially desirable, as a regulative principle at any rate. That which will be feasible is, even in the case of technology, not that much a question of forecasts; because there, too, is great uncertainty concerning the change in this field. Therefore scenario pictures of the future can mislead. Just think of some of the grotesquely exaggerated forecasts of the past, prepared by ‘scientific futurology’.

What is desirable, however? The answer is the subject of controversy and will probably remain so. Is it, at the same time, that which is reasonable? And what is then the latter? An attempt will have to be made to obtain, as has been said, compromises between different wishes (Romanyshyn, 1989). This does not mean harmonious assent, but rather a restructured dissent which has to be discussed and disputed over; from there on, one should hope, one would become able – to some extent – to act jointly. For the task of shaping work and technology this perspective does not allow for objectively valid criteria. Instead teaching should aim at developing orientations for deciding on different alternatives, and to enable young people to develop their own orientations.

The point we were trying to make is that vocational educatio0n should provide young people with the ability themselves to shape technologies for the future. Such ideas are not a long way from recent work by Ceri Facer looking at the future of education. Ceri says:

The developments in remote interactions and in disaggregation of content from institution; the rise of the personal ‘cloud‘; the diagnostic potential of genetic and neuro-science; the ageing population; all of these, when combined with different social, political and cultural values lead to very different pedagogies, curriculum, institutional arrangements and cultural dispositions towards learners.

She suggests that

the coming two decades may see a significant shift away from the equation of ‘learning‘ with ‘educational institutions‘ that emerged with industrialisation, toward a more mixed, diverse and complex learning landscape which sees formal and informal learning taking place across a wide range of different sites and institutions.

Rather than try to develop a single blueprint for dealing with change we should rather develop a resilient education system based on diversity to deal with the different challenges of an uncertain future. But such diversity

will emerge only if educators, researchers and communities are empowered to develop localised or novel responses to socio-technical change – including developing new approaches to curriculum, to assessment, to the workforce and governance, as well as to pedagogy.

Thus rather than view technology as inevitable and to wait to see what disruption it brings we have the ability to shape its future. But this in turn depends  on reshaping our education systems and pedagogies to empower both educators and worker to themselves co-determine their futures.

I don’t normally post press releases on this blog. But I think the ideas in this preview of the keynote presentation at the forthcoming UK Jisc online conference is important and deserves wider dissemination. The text is based on a podcast which can be found on the Jisc web site.

“We need to re-engage civil society in a debate about educational purpose.  These are the powerful words of Professor Keri Facer, keynote speaker at the forthcoming JISC innovating e-learning conference. According to her, we need to stop using qualifications as a proxy for a debate about educational success – “how many people need to get up to Level Two skills, how many people need degrees” – and instead start really thinking about the  competencies, skills and attributes students may need to thrive in uncertain times.

In the context of the row over HE funding the UK has neglected the fundamental question about what institutions are for and instead has focused simply on the issue about how to pay for universities as they currently exist.  Facer puts this in the context of the uncontested idea of the knowledge economy which has dominated the discussions about the future of socio-technological change. “For me the critical issue is that we have been working with one idea of the future for nearly twenty years.  The idea of the knowledge economy seems to imply that if only we make sure everybody is educated enough and ensure that they have enough technological skills then we will have a future where everybody will be economically secure.  I think this is contestable when we look at some of the economical and environmental developments that are likely to come about in the next ten years.  If we look carefully at the lived reality of a future ‘knowledge economy’, for example, it may be one of radical polarisation, inequality and injustice.  This is not necessarily an empowering future. As educators we need to start thinking about the other sorts of futures we may want to support our students to create and inhabit.” Facer encourages the audience to start imagining different futures and to examine the kinds of future lives that are offered by this widespread discourse of the knowledge economy.

She urges universities in their governance to be much more closely tied to the needs and aspirations of their communities and to set in place mechanisms for engagement in real debates about how to build sustainable economies. “If we want to imagine different futures we need to create the right kinds of spaces to be able to debate those, public spaces where people are equipped to get into a serious debate about the sorts of socio-technological trajectories that we will be looking at over the next ten to twenty years.”

I am writing a report on new pedagogic approaches to the use of technology for teaching and learning. In particular I am looking at three key issues:

The report is divided into a number of different sections. And at the end of each section I am attempting to identify a series of ‘highlighted issues’ requiring more attention, thinking or action. I will publish the entire report when it is finished. But in a short series of posts this week, I will publish the highlighted issues in the hope of gaining feedback from the wider community.

The first section deals with how young people (and teachers) are using technology for teaching and learning. It also looks at new and extended definitions of digital literacy.

Here are the issues I have identified as coming out of that section:

Should learners or schools determine the adoption of particular technologies for teaching and learning?

There has been concern expressed that educational institutions are failing to meet the expectations and practices of learners in their use of technology for teaching and learning. Equally, some research has pointed to the requirement to use technologies and forms of communication and expression that may lay outside learners’ everyday practice and experience. To what extent should educational practice change to adopt to the expectations and practice of learners in terms of technology? And to what extent is it appropriate for educational institutions to recommend or make compulsory the use of particular technologies.

The changing contexts of learning and the social context of literacies.

Research evidence suggests that computers and mobile devices are being used for information seeking, communication and knowledge acquisition in different domains and contexts, including in the home, in the community and in work. How should educational institutions react to these different contexts for learning and how can informal learning and learning outside the institution be linked to educational programmes and courses?

Learners’ experience

Instead of a digital divide based on generation, research suggests a far more complex picture, with wide variations in skills, interest and practice in the uses of technology even by younger people. Access to technology and to Internet connectivity would also appear to remain a critical issue. How can educational institutions and teachers manage these different levels of expectation and experience and at the same time ensure a minimum level of digital literacy for all learners.

Managing myths

The continuing dissemination of myths and moral panics around the adoption and use of practice around new technologies is disturbing? How can we ensure teachers (and teacher trainers and managers) have access to timely and accurate research around these issues?

Digital literacies for teachers

Research is leading to wider ideas of digital literacy. How can we ensure that teachers themselves are digitally literate and that Initial Teacher Training and Continuing Professional Development is based on these ideas, rather than the older and more restricted digital skills agenda?

The autumn conference season is in full swing. One  of my favourites is Online Educa Berlin - this year being held on 2 and 3 December. If nothing else Online Educa is a great social event – a chance to catch up with friends from round the world. Online Educa also organises a series of pre conference workshops on 1 December. and this year we are organising a workshop for the European funded G8WAY project on educational transitions. Whilst there is a fee for many of the workshops, the G8WAY event is sponsored by the project and is free to participants.

The workshop will focus on the issue of how educational transitions can be made easier for young people through Internet-based services (e.g. career advice, information and guidance).

According to the workshop website the importance of helping young people in their quest to find employment is widely recognised and there is growing interest in the potential of technology-assisted learning when it comes to helping young people make the transition from education to employment. However, this area of learning remains in its infancy and throws up a series of issues for policymakers, researchers and practitioners alike.

The European project G8WAY: Enhanced Gateway to Educational Transition is investigating how social software and Web 2.0 applications can be used to help young people in make transitions.

The following key issues will be explored in the workshop:

• What are the challenges of educational transitions – how can young people start a career in recession-hit European societies?
• What is the potential of social software and Web 2.0 tools in the context of transitions?
• What role can careers guidance and support play in this process?
• What is the future of technology-based learning regarding career education?

The active involvement of participants, exchange of expertise and creation and further development of ideas will be the key elements of this pre-conference workshop.

whilst the workshop is free places are limited and pre registration is necessary. If you are going to be in Berlin, don’t miss our workshop.

I am doing a literature review at the moment focused primarily on pedagogic processes for using technology for learning in vocational education and training and in adult education. In particular I am interested in how we can provide both initial training and continuing professional development for teachers and trainers in teaching and learning with technology. I think such a study is apposite – whilst previously teachers have been often seen as a barrier to the introduction of Technology Enhanced Learning because of their perceived lack of skills in using such technologies, we are now coming to realise that the need for new pedagogic approaches is perhaps the biggest challenge, especially since most new teachers are confident in their own use of computers.

Here are some of the issues I am looking at:

• Teacher training and continuing professional development
• eLearning and pedagogic approaches to the use of technology for learning
• The development and use of social software and web 2.0 technologies and its impact on education and learning
• Future technologies and trends and their possible impact within education

Specific issues to be examined may include (but will not be limited to):

• Pedagogic theories of use of technologies for learning and implications
• Effective Pedagogic practices of use of technologies for learning and implications
• Effective Practices in different sectors / subject areas
• Use of technology for initial training of teachers and CPD
• Impact of technologies on pedagogy in practice
• Digital literacies and digital identities for teachers
• Present qualifications for teachers and approaches to pedagogy and use of technology for learning
• Effective practices in initial teacher training and CPD in use of technology for learning
• e-Assessment and evaluation

I would be very grateful for any references, reports or other materials you think I should include in such a review. I would be particularly grateful for references to studies or reports on the training of teachers in other countries than the UK. All help will be gratefully acknowledged and in due course I will publish the results of the review on the Pontydysgu web site.

Ludger Deitmer has drawn my attention to an interesting article in yesterdays edition of the Weser Kurier newspaper (sadly the article does not appear to be in the online edition). The article was based on interviews with young people undertaking apprenticeship in Bremen in north Germany.

I have previously written in Wales Wide Web about the advantages of the apprenticeship system in Germany as providing high skills and socially prestigious training for young people. Indeed over 50 per cent of school leavers in Germany progress through the apprenticeship system, spending part of their time in companies and part in vocational schools.

In recent years the system has been under pressure due to a shortage of training places, but recent figures suggest this is changing. In Hamburg and Munich there are now surplus apprenticeship training places, in Bremen there is about a balance between places being offered by companies and young people seeking apprenticeship places.

However, attention is now turning to the quality of the training on offer. And Marius Fischer, an apprentice in the logistics industry, was fairly scathing. Apprentices, he said were just given menial work to do, referring to one period of three weeks spent scanning documents into a computer. The so called company training was boring with few learning opportunities. He rarely saw a trainer. Apprentices, he said, were just being treated as cheap labour. “This work is so stupid, a chimpanzee could learn to do it”, he said. A further complaint was that apprentices were not given sufficient experience in different areas of the company to understand the entire social and economic process.

Although there has been some attention paid to quality of training, in Germany and in the European Union, little attention has been paid to the quality of the teaching and learning process. Work based learning can be a powerful form of learning. However, for this to happen it requires the work place to be designed for learning with challenging work and learning tasks. And although managers may play an important role in that workplace and word process design, possibly more important is the role of trainers. A series of research studies have indicated that more and more people are taking some responsibility for training as part of their job. But despite this, and despite a number of well sounding policy initiatives,  little attention has been paid to the training of trainers. Whilst the subject of teacher training is a high priority, there almost seems an assumption that skilled workers can automatically provide training.

Of course Marius Fischer’s experience does not reflect apprenticeship training as a whole in Germany. But is is a reminder of the importance of teaching and learning processes for young people and that the development of rich learning processes cannot be left to chance be it in the school or in the workplace.