Last night was the first session of our ICT in Teaching and Learning module. The subject matter for the evening, once all the introductory bit was over, was around learning styles and how they can be supported/accommodated by the use of ICT.

I have trouble with the basic premise, since I have little faith in the concept of learning styles. There are so many different models, and much of the theory behind them seems either sketchy or suspect. So much so, that Becta came out with a rather skeptical report in 2005. My understanding is that National Strategies withdrew their material around learning styles last year, having lost faith in the concept. In my own community of practice, the concept has little currency.
Nevertheless, many schools are enamoured of the concept and some of my classmates have shared some anecdotes that reveal practices of questionable ethics in the adoption of one or other model of learning styles within the school.

As part of the lesson, we undertook the Felder Silverman questionnaire. I became increasingly frustrated that I was made to choose between pairs of options. In some cases, I was equally likely to do both things on offer. In others, I was unlikely to do either. Nevertheless, I could leave no blanks and I could only choose one option in each case. The implication being that the two options were mutually exclusive and that, between them, they covered all possibilities.

When the results were revealed, they were true to a certain extent of my behaviours – particularly in those instances where my score was decidedly one end or the other of the continuum in question. However, reading descriptions of the opposite approach, I related to many of the characteristics which were supposedly diametrically opposed to my own. As one classmate and I discussed after the lesson – it depends what I’m learning. I came out strongly global in style on one continuum, which is a fair description of the way I approach many tasks. However, I am an avid fan of cryptic crossword puzzles and sudokus and a dab hand at complicated knitting and the assembly of flatpacked furniture. All these occupations require a strongly sequential approach with which I am thoroughly content. To me, the explanation that I must have acquired coping mechanisms to be able to carry out these tasks is purely a cop out to explain away anomalies that would otherwise cast a question mark over the validity and reliability of the model.

Scottish teachers seem to have taken the social media bull by the horns and left their English counterparts behind. Here is an impressive collection of teacher blogs north of the border…

Hat tip to Doug Belshaw for this. The 2006-2016 Knowledgeworks Foundation and the Institute for the Future have published this map of future forces affecting education. It definitely needs to be explored online – I tried printing it out so that I could work through it offline, but it will take better eyes than mine to achieve that!

It looks at family & community; markets; institutions; educators & learning and tools & practices. Each of these is looked at from the perspective of grassroots economics; smart networking; strong opinions, strongly held; sick hero (increasing signs of distress and health problems); urban wilderness and the end of cyberspace (from physical v digital to physical-and-digital).

A lot of what is covered has been discussed on the blogosphere already and, of course, my own area of interest falls largely within the category addressing the move towards a seamless integration of physical and digital learning environments and tools. However, all factors impact one another, so there is a risk involved in focusing purely on my own area of interest, and taking issue with the predictions, without giving the other influences a fair hearing.

This is when I am frustrated by my big-picture limitations in respect of the big picture view. Oh, to have the kind of brain that is able to make all these connections and grasp the potential impact of one field on another!

As I mentioned last time, we recently had a guest lecturer in to give us some guidance on tackling our ER assignment, with a view to preparing for our dissertations.

These were his suggestions:

1. Stick to a field you’re interested in – you’re going to be steeped in it for some time
2. Keep a record of references from the outset, keeping extracts from interesting articles, and possibly photocopying front covers (copyright??)
3. Have a tutor/critical friend/proofreader
4. Set aside a time and a place
5. Indentify key authors in your field of research
6. Start and finish each chapter with a review
7. Create a thread through the project
8. Edit and proofread
9. Make sure all the chapters relate to one another and to the theme
10. DO something  – get started!!

He gave us some ideas about a process of tightening up the question:

1. Record initial thoughts: what, why and how
2. Find an article/publication to serve as your core and build around it
3. Define the terms of the question and create a rationale to form the basis of the question for the dissertation (perhaps use a mindmap to link ideas)
4. The ER assignment is a narrowing process which feeds into the dissertation, which in turn feeds into the wider subject as a whole.
5. Pilot the research methodology to make sure it’s going to work before going live with it
6. Find the faults in your own work and be transparent about them

Last night, we had our second ER session. To start with, we recapped postivist v interpretative research. We looked at the rationales of about 7 research projects and tried to place them on a continuum. My group’s notions of where the respective projects fell was at such wide variance with those of others in the class, that I seriously doubt my ability to tell positivist from interpretative. Back to the drawing board.

We then had a guest lecturer in the form of Gareth Alcott M.A. Having recently completed his MA, he came to discuss his approach to his ER assignment and, by extension, his dissertation. It became abundantly clear that it is essential to get the ER assignment absolutely right, since it is pivotal to the dissertation. If, for example, I finally home in on a question at the end of my ER assignment and then later have an epiphany about what I really want to write about for my dissertation, I will have to redo the work done in the ER phase. Not a prospect I relish.

Gareth gave us some very helpful guidelines, which I will record in more detail in a separate post. Two that stand out however, are:

• Start keeping track now of material that will be used and the references
• Find a core article

I have been doing the former with my Learning and Teaching assignment – an approach I adopted some time ago. It was, therefore, encouraging to find that the approach had worked for someone else.

With regard to the latter – one of my classmates was complaining to me just last week that she had found an article for her L&T assignment that said exactly what she wanted to say. Last night we both realised that she had inadvertently found her core material, and were able to look at her predicament more positively as a consequence.

The main message I took away from the session was that it is essential to find a subject I am passionate about, since I will be spending a great deal of time and effort on the subject. So I asked myself, what am I passionate about?

Since it is unlikely that I will be able to find a way to work chocolate into the material, the alternatives are:

• Adult learning
• Informal learning
• Lifelong learning
• Social media – especially blogs
• Relevance – do schools teach kids what they need to know when they go to work?

Of these, I am most passionate about the final topic, but this is very much on a personal level. Bearing in mind that I am not a school teacher, my passion is entirely related to the future of my own sons. It is difficult to imagine myself being able to adopt a sufficiently professional detatchment.

I foresee a fair amount of time spent in discussion with a tutor!

Last week I attended my first ER session. Until that point, I had been blithely telling everyone I hadn’t yet learnt anything new on my course. Things have changed!

Learning about research and setting out on the journey towards my dissertation is a scary underatking. The fact that I have no direct contact with my learners at the moment is going to be a bit of a hurdle, I suspect. Nevertheless, I suspect I would like to do something about the changing nature of learning materials under the influence of technology. I guess I could research that without access to learners. I do have access to learning providers, which is a start.

I suspect research into learning is a bit vague at best. Until the day we can put a drop of nailpolish onto a packet of information and track it through a person’s brain and beyond to their network, I don’t think we can say with any certainty how learning actually takes place and whether it takes place in the same manner in everyone’s head. It’s all informed (to varying degrees) conjecture. There, I’ve said it.

Reading Donald Clark’s blog, I get the impression that he deliberately sets out to create waves, and I’m not always convinced that he has thought a thing through before posting it. That said, he has recently pointed to a report from Frank Coffield on the future of education and skills. I have yet to read the whole report (it is some 28 pages long), but it promises to make interesting reading.

The post is well positioned to form a pigeon pair with the previous day’s take on Christine Gilbert’s report on the future of schools. Sadly his post contains no link to the original report, which can be read here. Scanning her report, she seems to be challenging a good few sacred cows.

One of the things she calls for is more involvement from parents. I’m not sure how well this will be received by said parents. For as long as the systems appears to be failing their children, I venture that parents will be reluctant to invest any more of themselves into it. If other parents are anything like me, they will be somewhat jaded by the lack of impact their involvement has had to date.