Doug Belshaw's Ed.D. Thesis Proposal Outline (expanded)

(see my Ed.D. blog for my latest/ongoing thoughts and this for my latest brainstormed ideas and links...)

In my initial thesis proposal outline I stated that my guiding, over-arching idea was to examine 'changing conceptions of, and reactions to, the nature of knowledge by educational institutions.' This was prompted by feelings that the nature of knowledge is changing - or least our attitude towards it as a globalised, networked society. To quote George Siemens (2006), 'knowledge has broken free from its moorings, its shackles'. This, I believe, is evident in some recent initiatives in education and is reflected in the increasing use of educational technology in schools.

In my thesis I hope to look at four main areas:

These areas are inextricably linked, so to approach them in separate sections of my thesis implying some sort of causation would be anachronistic. Instead, whilst I hope to demonstrate some sort of flow of ideas in education and investigate their origin, I hope to employ an approach that looks at the interplay and 'messiness' of educational reform and thinking. This, I believe, will avoid a simplistic, procrustean analysis, instead probing the ways in which educational thinkers and practitioners have approached the changing learning landscape.

There has been increasing talk over the past five years about the 'changing nature of knowledge' and the fundamental shifts happening in how we interact with one another in the world. A large part of this is due to the opportunities afforded by technology, but some of it has to do with societal trends and attitudes. In Learning Throughout Life, a 2002 publication by UNESCO, Robert Carneiro (p.64) identifies some of the resulting tensions in education:

  1. The interplay between tradition and modernity
  2. The trade-offs involved in public policy-making
  3. Strains between the long and the short term
  4. The search for increased equity in a world dominated by fierce competition
  5. The need to reconcile global (universal) approaches with local (individual) needs
  6. An ever-growing expansion of knowledge with limited human capacity to assimilate it
  7. The delicate interplay between the spiritual and the material

Schools and educational institutions are shielded from some of the difficult decisions caused by these tensions by policy-makers. However, they still have to translate policy into practice and some of the smaller decisions are indeed left to each institution to decide.

To begin with an example of these smaller-scale decisions, my current school - along with a good many others - is currently reviewing its Key Stage 3 (KS3) provision in light of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority's (QCA's) Futures in Action initiative. This seeks to investigate ways in which the multitude of directives, advice, legal requirements, and initiatives from various bodies can be synthesized. To this end, they have produced the Big Picture, a diagram which is hoped will gives schools a helping hand in developing, modifying and enhancing their current KS3 programme(s) of study.

Recently, I looked at where educational ideas come from, prompted by my work for the school's steering group on the QCA initiative. I was expecting the flow of ideas to look something like this:




Instead, to my surprise, I found that the origin of ideas for initiatives in the British education system was a lot more 'messy', conflicting and confused. It looks something like this:



In fact, the picture would have included even more aspects - including arrows coming from (and returning to) schools - but the diagram was already becoming unwieldy. Concerned that my school was not 'getting' the Big Picture, I got in touch with the Head of Programme, Futures, Innovation and E-Learning at QCA. He indicated that the English education system learns much from observing other countries' education initiatives:
In your blog I note you’ve picked up the influences on our work from Scotland and UNESCO. You might want to look at the curriculum models in Northern Ireland too. Also take a look at the IB curricula, The Curriculum in Finland (the top performing system across OECD surveys) and any number of other approaches to curriculum design and renewal from around the world. Some of these include “Teach less, Learn more” in Singapore, The Adelaide Declaration of national Goals for Education in the 21st Century, The ‘new basics’ from Queensland etc.. etc.. - QCA regularly welcomes visitors from around the world who want to look at best practice in England too. It is increasingly important to take a global perspective.
This global perspective that interests me, especially given the more immediate and real political and socio-cultural pressures inherent in the English education system. Educational bloggers such as David Warlick are talking about the idea of 'flat classrooms', spurred on by Thomas L. Friedman's assertion that The World is Flat. Just as the label 'Web 2.0 ' has been used to describe ways in which people across the world can use the Internet now as a read/write medium - i.e. be active creators of their own (online) world - so too moves are being made towards 'Learning 2.0 ' (Wikipedia definition)where learners and what we mean by 'knowledge' become increasingly connected and teachers become more like lifeguards .



New practices need new pedagogies, and this is where a need for the discussion of connectivism will arise in the thesis. Connectivism is a theory which takes as read the multitude of ways in which individuals can learn and prioritises knowledge creation through each learner being a node on a network of co-learners:
Connectivism is a learning theory for the digital age. Learning has changed over the last several decades. The theories of behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism provide an effect view of learning in many environments. They fall short, however, when learning moves into informal, networked, technology-enabled arena.
A network, as Stephen Downes has pointed out, is different from a group. Whereas a group is co-ordinated, closed and united (often under the supervision of some type of authority figure), a network is diverse, open and autonomous. It is the belief of adherents of connectivism, as far as I see it, that learners should be prepared in schools to become nodes on networks and therefore independent learners.



Educators are conversing with one another via various means, creating networks of professional development and learning in order to make sense of the world for which they have to prepare their students. As Sir Ken Robinson mentioned in his presentation to the TED Conference, children who are entering school for the first time now will retire around 2065. Schools more than ever have to prepare young people for a world that is in a constant state of flux where we do not know what society and the world will be like in five years' time, never mind sixty years' time.

One way in which schools and the education system in general can react (and in some cases have reacted) to these wholescale changes is in a reactionary and 'back to basics' manner. However, as Kathy Sierra points out, retreating to traditional, left-brain (logical, rational, objective) approaches rather than exploring the opportunities by embracing more right-brain (intuitive, holistic, subjective) modes of thinking is to do learners a disservice. She sums this up in a diagram that has been cited widely since its publication on her blog:



As she states in the writing which accompanies this diagram, the knowledge and skills that enable people to become experts in an area, become lifelong learners, and to become flexible workers tend to be ignored by schools and educational institutions in general:

What experts use to do their work are the things we don't teach. We focus almost exclusively on how to talk about the work. Obviously this doesn't mean nobody learns to do it... we have plenty of expert engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, who become great either in spite of faulty teaching or because they lucked out and had excellent, clueful instructors and mentors. But we also hear more and more teachers, experts, and employers railing against the sorry state of our advanced technical educations today. The problem is, many of these same teachers, experts, and employers have a tough time articulating what's wrong, let alone how to fix it.


And what do we do to try and improve things? We just do MORE of what's wrong. We redouble our efforts. We drill and test students even harder in facts and rote memorization. We work and test them even harder on using the tools for communication (e.g. code) rather than the tools for thought (e.g. intuition, visualization, etc.)


Such ruminations on the discrepancy between our current systems of schooling and those necessary to produce sucessful 21st century learners go deeper than mere tinkering with the curriculum. The talk is of new literacies - and by this much more is meant than the overused phrase in the 1990s of 'computer literacy'. Although of course educational technology (and technology in general) is at the heart of a connected society, it is the uses of these connections which stretch our current meaning of 'literacy' breaking point and demand new (multiple) definitions. Given that knowledge is now 'free from its shackles', and much of the information (and knowledge) of the human world is but a mouse-click away, what is the 'core' of what students should be learning? How does one distinguish between 'good knowledge' and 'bad knowledge'? Is there a definite line between inspiration and plagiarism? What value does knowledge have when everyone becomes content producers? What does 21st century wisdom look like? (c.f. Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century , Stephen Downes on the New Literacy, Stephen Downes on Things You Really Need To Learn and The Five New Literacies of Web 2.0)

Each generation has to reinvent schooling but does so in its own image. It seems that arguments about the nature and purpose of schooling will never go away, especially given the importance of education to society as a whole. The issue arises, states David Carr (2003, 16) due to a confusion between confusing notions of education and schooling:
In one sense, education is more than schooling: we can speak meaningfully of life-long education or learning, but not so sensibly of lifelong schooling...

But in another sense, education (even in schools) is rather less than schooling. It can only be part of the business of the institution of schooling to initiate young people into an appreciation of the flower of worthwhile human literary, artistic and other achievements for its own sake...
As Guy Claxton comments (2002: 22-23), the education of the next generation involves moral decisions, as educators are deciding how learners' minds are to be shaped:
Education is essentially a moral enterprise. It maps out courses of learning that are designed to give people knowledge, skills, attitutudes and qualitiies that are deemed to be worth having. Educators are in the business of making value judgements about what kinds of minds people need, and are therefore to be cultivated... At root, school exists to equip young people with the knowledge, capabilities and dispositions which they will need to cope well in the world that they are going, as adults, to inhabit.
The solution to many of the problems of schooling has been to define curricula that seek to guarantee a uniform minimum standard (or 'entitlement') of education for all young people. However, as Davis & Williams point out (Blake, et al., 2003: 268), the answer to successful curricula is not content:
It is one thing then to prescribe a curriculum based on a rich conception of knowledge; it is another to ensure the richness of this learning. We cannot guarantee a minimum education, let alone a rich quality of engagement with curricular pursuits or practices. We can prescribe a right or entitlement to receive schooling and do our utmost to ensure that young people profit from it but it is impossible to ensure the success of our efforts. Analogously, perhaps, we can prescribe a minimum wage but we cannot guarantee a minimum quality of life; we can prescribe minimum standards of health care but we cannot guarantee health. Educational expectations must not therefore be extreme and unrealistic.
This also goes for assessment: whilst some assessing of learners is a useful and worthwhile thing to do, it cannot tell us as much about a person as our society seems to demand or expect.

The crux of the difficulties in education, as far as I see it, is that in any perceived tension between tradition and conservatism on the one hand, and radical change and new opportunities on the other, educational policy makers and institutions favour the former. The role of teachers needs to change for the 21st century, as it still stuck addressing problems and needs from fifty years ago. Knowledge is no longer a privileged commodity. Learners can easily become overwhelmed by the information, opinions and biases they encounter in everyday life: teachers, as stated above, need to become more like lifeguards. To put it another way, they should seek the 'guide on the side' rather than the 'sage on the stage'. New technologies have, and will, fundamentally change the role of teachers and they must adapt or die, a point to which Delors (1996b: 174) alludes:
A crucial point worth recalling... is that the development of the new technologies does not at all diminish the role of teachers - quite the contrary - but it does change it profoundly and it offer them an opportunity they must seize. True, in an information society teachers can no longer be regarded as the sole repositories of knowledge that they have only to pass on to the younger generation: they become as it were partners in a collective fund of knowledge that is up to them to organize, positioning themselves firmly in the vanguard of change.
The correct response to a changing world is not reactionism or standardization. It is diversification and the embracing of the new opportunities offered by the changing landscapes. Whilst learners need a broad education without specializing too early, we should nurture and develop the talents and interests of each individual. As Delors (1996a: 95) puts it:
In an ever-changing world in which social and economic innovation seems to be one of the main driving forces, a special place should doubtless be given to the qualities of imagination and creativity, the clearest manifestations of human freedom, which may be at risk from a certain standardization of individual behaviour. The twenty-first century needs this variety of talents and personalities; it also needs the exceptional individuals who are also essential in any civilization.
As mentioned above, much of the literature seems to bemoan the fact that schools have almost exclusively focused on 'left-brain' approaches to education. As Thomas Friedman (2005: 307) quotes Daniel Pink as saying the capabilities fostered under such a system - those measured by SATs, etc. - are still required in teh 21st century world, but they need to be supplemented by right-brain thinking: 'artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.' At present, schools are run somewhat like factories: students come in, are packaged up with 'learning' whilst moving along the conveyor belt, and then leave the factory. Some have also called this the 'vaccination theory of schooling' - you are given your shot of Maths, History, English, etc. and then are in some way immunized against ever having to look at them again. Instead, implores Lemke (2002: 35-36) we must learn to work in a connected world, with schools being more like 'villages' than factories:
We may prefer one particular way of working, but because we must work together, we must also learn how to collaborate. Some of us prefer telling stories, others like to argue; some like to draw, others prefer building things; but we must all learn how our words and their pictures can be combined, and how building gets connected to drawing and to telling. We become individuals who like and prefer, but we always also gradually become in a larger sense the whole village. We learn to take part by learning how parts fit together. Over time we learn that there is nothing worthwhile we can do without a tool someone else has made, without combining ways of working we're comfortable with and ways we're not but others are, without taking into account viewpoints that are unfamiliar or unpleasant, without finding a way through conflict. What we do when we learn is to enter into social activities.
Schools almost exclusively ignore the 'softer' skills of human relationships and understanding, despite research showing the ineffectiveness of whole-class teaching methods as opposed to smaller, relationship-based learning approaches.

To draw all this together, then, I envisage that the structure of my thesis will be along the following lines, framed by key questions:


Coming back to what I stated in the introduction, my focus throughout shall be 'changing conceptions of, and reactions to, the nature of knowledge by educational institutions'. The aim of my thesis is to identify a possible (theoretical) way forward for institutions to rationalize their current practice with future tensions and opportunities.




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