Dewey and Education in the 21st Century
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Dewey and Education in the 21st Century

Ruth Heilbronn, Christine Doddington, Rupert Higham, Ruth Heilbronn, Christine Doddington, Rupert Higham

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eBook - ePub

Dewey and Education in the 21st Century

Ruth Heilbronn, Christine Doddington, Rupert Higham, Ruth Heilbronn, Christine Doddington, Rupert Higham

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About This Book

This book makes a strong case for the abiding relevance of Dewey's notion of learning through experience, with a community of others and what this implies for democratic education in the 21st century. Its first section addresses the experience of today's generation of so-called 'digital natives' in terms of how we should now understand 'knowledge' and how their online experience creates opportunities and challenges for the curriculum, such as schools linking internationally to study classical texts; an exposition of why makerspaces, hackerspaces and Fab Labs might support Dewey's democratic communities in our time, with on-line affordances of 'a commons', a space to use imagination and invent and share with others. The book's second section is original in its focus on the central Deweyan idea of 'embodiment' with chapters on Dewey and the Alexander technique and on experiences of Afro-American students, in public schools, especially those situated in multi-racial, multi-ethnic countries like the U.S. with deep, racial divides and tensions. The section ends with a chapter on the somaesthetic, educational value of learning outside of buildings. A third section on experience related to democracy and education, has chapters on Dewey and the democratic curriculum, experience as a preparation for democracy, communication and the critique of individualism. Dewey's notion of interest is analyzed and questioned as to whether it is a sympathetic notion for educational development. With contributions from Spain, Cameroon, the US and the UK the book ranges across varied curricular and policy contexts to explore what reading Dewey can contribute to contemporary education studies.

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PART 1
DEWEY, EXPERIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY

Chapter 1

Preserving Rich Experience in the Digital Age

Bob Coulter

Abstract

Many educators fear that proliferating digital technologies in school and at home create an artificial barrier to young people from having a meaningful direct experience with the world. At the same time, others argue that ubiquitous access to these same technologies is essential if young people are to make sense of the increasingly complex information space characteristic of the twenty-first century. In an attempt to bridge this gap, the chapter draws on Dewey’s frame of experience as articulated in Democracy and Education and Experience and Education to craft a framework by which uses of digital technology can be assessed for their educational value. Characteristic features of experience-rich, growth-promoting uses of technology include support for both the active and passive dimensions of experience, as well as the ability to support continuity, interaction, purpose and progressive organization of experience. These (arguably) better uses of technology are in turn linked to broader concerns for young people developing the capacities needed for citizenship in a creative democracy. Numerous examples of youth projects facilitated by the author are provided to illustrate how the framework is applied in practice.
Keywords Dewey; experience; digital technology; creative democracy; growth

Introduction

Many educators and parents fear that children today suffer from an increasingly sterile form of experience. With less direct engagement with the natural world (Sobel, 2008), and with increasing screen time (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2015), they feel that we are fledging children ill-equipped to grow into contributing citizens. To borrow a cute turn of phrase, these critics fear that we are creating a generation of game-obsessed ‘homo zappiens’ (Veen and Vrakking, 2007) very different from ourselves. With this, there is often a sense of alarm, captured in apocalyptic images such as that generated by the book titled Grand Theft Childhood (Kutner and Olson, 2008). Even if we don’t run to media-fuelled extremes like this, there is still a pervasive sense that something is different – that growing up in the twenty-first century is qualitatively different than it was ‘when we were young’. One of the most common distinctions drawn in this regard is between young people who are thought to be ‘digital natives’ who run ahead of us into a technological future and the rather troglodyte-like ‘digital immigrant’ adults destined to be left behind (Prensky, 2001). In my experience, this distancing between the generations is too easily drawn in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, as evidenced by the many kids who struggle with technology, and the many adults of all ages who are quite proficient with a range of technology skills. Still, it’s a pervasive and persistent image that creates an artificial divide between generations that we will need to bridge if we are to carry out the age-old – and very necessary – process of acculturating the young and guiding them toward a responsible citizenship. Quite simply, children mustn’t be seen as an alien species if we are to nurture their growth effectively.
Fortunately, there are many positive models of technology use that enable rich learning opportunities and which counter the generational separation. With careful planning, digital tools can be an integral part of a fertile, experience-based learning environment. Used in the right context and for pedagogically sound reasons (and not simply for their own sake in pursuit of some vague idea of being a ‘twenty-first-century learner’), tools such as data visualizations (MaKinster et al., 2014) and computer simulations (Begel and Klopfer, 2005) can be essential learning resources. Specific benefits that might be realized include enhanced engagement with the phenomena at hand, stronger connections with peers and adults (both locally and beyond), scaffolding that supports reflection on what is being experienced, and with this scaffolding, opportunities to revise and extend emergent thoughts. While each of these benefits can, of course, happen without digital adjuncts, we will see in the discussion below how strategic use of digital tools can actually enhance students’ experience in ways that are harder to achieve without the technology. But, this will only happen with nuanced judgement.
In an effort to better guide our use of technology in educational settings, I offer a framework for preserving rich experience in a digital age. More specifically, in the pages ahead I will sketch a path showing how a Dewey-inspired approach toward experience and thinking enables us to support young people as they engage with the world around them. Working within this framework, aesthetically enriched experience is not only preserved but also in fact extended through positive use of technology. With this, deep and complex thinking can be scaffolded with strategically deployed technology resources. When these threads of experience and thinking converge, we can nurture active youth participation, with a goal of setting them on a path toward fulfilling the challenge toward democratic living that Dewey (1939) issued in his essay ‘Creative Democracy–The Task before Us’.

Framing Experience

Starting at the most foundational level, Dewey’s (1916/1966) framing of experience in Democracy and Education offers a benchmark against which uses of digital resources can be assessed. By defining experience as ‘an active and a passive element peculiarly combined’ – or in other words, as an iterative process of doing something intentional and then experiencing the results before staking out a next action – we can start our analysis. As Dewey points out, neither activity done for its own sake nor passive reception of information conveyed to us constitutes an experience. It’s the intentional fusion of the two that we need to be working toward. Phrased more simply, intentional action and a thoughtfully considered reaction need to work together to create an optimally engaging learning experience. While this pairing would seem self-evident based on our life experiences, the norm for too many schools is a curriculum designed simply to pass along information and to practice skills in contexts over which the students (and often the teachers) have no say. This lack of intention is well captured in the euphemism ‘delivering the curriculum’ and is raised to an art form in Pring’s (2013) term ‘deliverology’. In these dystopian learning environments, no one chooses. Rather, we just follow along in a perverse rendering of the etymology of the term curriculum as a course to be followed, all too often in a lock-step fashion with little consideration of whether this path is best for all students (or, for that matter, even good for any students). Within this sterile process, we assess students’ progress and then rank them (and in turn, their teachers and schools) by testing for recall on demand, almost always in the absence of meaningful context. In a school we work with, I’ve actually had an administrator challenge me about why we spend so much time trying to get the kids thinking when it is more efficient just to tell them what they need to know for their tests. Fortunately, many teachers push against this approach and try to go beyond the dull litany of deliverology by jazzing up the learning environment a bit. Still, this poses a problem if they resort to projects that privilege activity over experience, a phenomenon Moscovici and Nelson (1998) have aptly described as ‘activitymania’. Viewed in a Deweyan context, if too much priority is placed on the doing without the associated reflecting, little growth is nurtured. In fact, holding kids’ attention through contrived means deflects their attention away from having real experiences. As Dewey (1938/1963) described them in Experience and Education, these overwrought activities are ‘miseducative’ in that they serve to block future growth. Common examples might include science classes which are populated by pseudo-events like fake volcanos made with baking soda and vinegar, or math classes in which students collect meaningless data simply to check off ‘making graphs’ from the curriculum scope and sequence. We can – and need to – do better if we want to build positive learning environments.
In some ways, forging an alternate path is not hard, in the sense that moving toward an experience-driven learning environment resonates more fully with normal human behaviour. Anyone who works with kids know that they are capable of much more creative and thoughtful engagement with the world than one might expect from looking at scripted curriculum paths or from observing poorly thought-out lurches into activity. Unless they have been schooled into disengagement (which, sadly, is a common affliction of the young), the vast majority of kids want to be involved and want to be challenged. Working toward increased competence is an integral part of being a human. As educators, we need to leverage and channel this impulse, not work to stifle it. To see the contrast in how people act in different contexts, notice the passive students who miraculously come alive after school as they play (and perhaps design) complex games. Even within school, there can be quite a range in levels of engagement depending on how effectively we invite participation. The following vignette shows students actively engaged in a digital experience which fostered deeper and more complex thinking than their normal curriculum allowed.

Like Clockwork: Digitally Enriched Experience in Action

A colleague and I were recently working with a group of 10 and 11 year olds as they worked to design simulated clocks using computer modelling tools. As part of this, the kids worked as a class to act out the motions of the minute and hour hands of an analogue clock. From there, the kids worked to create models of that motion on screen. As they did this, they had to draw on several key math concepts such as the radius, diameter and circumference of their clock face, and use this information skilfully as they encoded formulas within their models. Key questions the students faced included: How long of a distance does the tip of the minute hand travel as it goes around the clock face? and How can we model that movement on screen? While each student was working on their own clock, they readily shared strategies with their peers – offering ideas and responding thoughtfully to what others suggested. As the project progressed, the students employed relatively complex skills such as computational thinking as they broke the problem down into small steps, and proportional reasoning when they had to figure out how to programme the hour hand to travel in a path similar to the minute hand, but exactly 1/12 as quickly. The only evaluation of their work was self-imposed: Did the hands move (literally) ‘like clockwork’, and did the hour hand move one hour on the clock face for each sweep around the clock face by the minute hand? If not, something needed to be fixed. Recall here the fundamental premise of an experience: a pairing of active and passive elements. More colloquially, the students’ clock-making interwove action and reaction as ideas were developed, tried out and revised based on how well they served the purpose. Animated by the challenge of designing a clock that mimicked real-world ones, student engagement was quite high throughout the process. And, most strikingly, not once over the course of several work sessions did a student ask about project requirements or a grade. Instead the kids were internally motivated, basing their work on higher standards than they would face in their normal curriculum. This contrast with their regular school environment became clear one day when they had to leave the computer lab to go to math class, which the kids characterized as dull and repetitive, ‘doing the same things we’ve done since third grade’. These are kids who were leaving an experience where they were challenged to apply a set of math skills well beyond the expectation for their grade level, dreading having to return to a math environment where they will be less challenged, and with that, less fully invited to participate in their own learning and growth.

Framing the Work in Broader Contexts

My experience with the clock project largely mirrors what Melissa Gresalfi and her colleagues (2012) found when she compared the learning environment in two middle school classes in the same building, who were using the same curriculum. Given this pairing, the student ability and curriculum variables were about as controlled as you will get in a natural setting. The striking findings were in the ways in which the students seem to have absorbed very different norms for learning within each class. In the class where the teacher held expectations for higher-level inquiry, students rose to the challenge and asked comparatively higher-order questions. Overall, they displayed a level of real engagement. In the other class, where simply covering the curriculum seemed to be the primary goal, students adopted a much more passive demeanour in keeping with the norms established within that class. Instead of active engagement, classroom interactions followed a much more traditional pattern of teacher-initiated, low-level questions to which the students gave pro forma responses. In both of these classes, the students were smart enough to ‘play the game’ that they were being offered. Our challenge as educators is to be sure that the game we give them is worthy of their engagement.
Before moving forward, I feel compelled to offer a cautionary note here. While I have been critical of some of the classroom environments described in the previous pages, I’m well aware that they don’t emerge out of nowhere. They get that way for complex reasons and are quite challenging to change. In an earlier study – No More Robots: Building Kids’ Character, Competence, and Sense of Place (Coulter, 2014) – I reported on how teachers go at their work in very different ways, often emerging from very different ways of seeing learning and even the fundamental nature of childhood. Aside from these individual differences in how teachers approach their work, many operate within a system that makes it very hard to break out of the mould. Where test scores and other discrete, context-free measures are used to rate and rank schools (and with that, the teachers and students who make up the school), there is great pressure to conform with established models of teaching. In these settings, following the curriculum script with fidelity to pre-approved teaching techniques offers a degree of cover that isn’t there if the class goes off-script. If you innovate and the scores aren’t good, teachers assume – often with good reason – that dire consequences will follow. When this narrowing of pedagogy happens, teaching is reduced to a technician-level task with no room for nuanced judgement. Echoing Pring’s deliverology imagery noted earlier, teaching moves uncomfortably close to the work of a delivery driver who is being monitored and rated for efficiency in driving and in getting a load of packages delivered. Just as drivers are rated on how they use every minute of the day based on an wide array o...

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