Talking about knowledge

Derek's been blogging about knowledge management recently and particularly the contribution of a couple of Kiwis, Carl Davidson and Philip Voss. (As an aside their website contains useful responses to some KM and research FAQs.)

I was interested in their advocacy for narrative in the context of knowledge management. The argument parallels that for narrative pedagogy, that is, narrative techniques offer a bridge between traditional abstract thinking and the affective narrative mode. To quote Denning, "Storytelling can translate those dry and abstract numbers into a compelling picture of a leader's goals."

Synchronously Soulsoup served up a piping hot link to storyteller and knowledge manager Steve Denning's blog and indirectly to his website. Steve is holding a series of Australasian workshops in a little over a fortnight.

Update: For interested Kiwis, the Wellington workshops are being organised by Victoria University and the NZ KM Network.

Who says men can't multitask?

Jay Cross makes the most of his time and shares this interesting observation about open source software:

The fact that open source code is free delegates decision-making lower in the organization. You don't need a purchase order—or official approval—to use it.

Which reminded me of one of the distinctions between the industrial and information ages. The information-age, Reigeluth writes, favours autonomy with accountability rather than industrial-age centralised control. It would seem open source software is well suited to the new rules of the information-age.

In case you're wondering why, unlike Jay, you find it hard to handle two things at once, apparently we weren't made to multitask.

How to attract girls… to science

The BBC education news feed carried an interesting article on the gender split in science education which was based on research carried out by the Nestlé Social Research Programme. The main finding, rather unsurprisingly imho, is that girls like their science with a conscience.

From the press release:

…for girls, being more interested in science goes hand in hand with sensitivity to ethical issues, dangers, and the context in which scientific development happens.

More surprisingly:

…girls don't seem to equate science and technology in the way that boys do. Girls separate science, which they like, from technology, which they find much less appealing.

So what's this got to do with narrative? Well no post would be complete without a sprinkling of Jane Gilbert's thoughts ;-)

Science’s special status as ‘objective,’ ‘value-free’ knowledge is achieved through its (apparent) ability to split itself off from the concerns, feelings, and inner life of people: that is, from the very things that are the primary focus of narratives.

Jane then makes the point that "possibly because science is represented to students in the ways outlined above [‘objective’ and ‘value-free’] …it becomes unattractive to large numbers of students"—especially female students.

Narrative Therapy

Stephen Powell provides an interesting summary of Russell Bishop's keynote at the Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning. Bishop drew on the findings of his research on Maori students in New Zealand schools to highlight the fact that the teacher-student relationship is the single biggest determinant in student achievement.

These findings support the emphasis placed on the teacher-learner relationship in his book, Culture Counts, where Bishop suggests the counselling approach narrative therapy (not to be confused with narrative theory) as a useful model for building supportive teacher-pupil relationships. (Narrative therapy is also an approach Jane Gilbert believes is useful for developing students' identities with respect to science.)

Rather disturbingly, Bishop's findings are at odds with teachers' opinions which hold that students and home circumstances are most critical. A question asked by Powell illustrates this point:

If pupils ‘bunk off lessons’ do we use a discourse that describes this as in some way deviant behaviour or do we use a discourse that questions the relevance of lessons and the relationship between pupils and their teachers?

This lack of alignment represents a barrier to meaningful change and Bishop has identified critical reflection as a strategy to reposition teachers' discourse away from the pupil.

Sir, can we do an experiment?

…was almost an automatic greeting from students in my science classes. Another science education story provides further evidence for declining student interest in science noted in a previous post. Research suggests that science educators' heavy reliance on book work is having a negative impact on student enthusiasm. Apparently students would rather be experimenting or out on field trips—how surprising!

A Ministry spokesman responds: "We are aware of the pressure that teachers feel they are under to cover everything" which reminded me of a favourite extract from a Howard Gardner interview:

For me, the biggest enemy of good education in America today is the pressure to cover vast amount of material. Anybody who succumbs to this pressure converts school to a verbal memory routine.

Of course the crowded curriculum is only one part of the problem, teachers also need new ways of teaching science… cue Jane Gilbert ;-)

Update: It seems MPs were saying the same thing in the UK two years ago and the Government responded with a trial issues-based science curriculum—Science in the 21st Century.

Quiet Crisis

I finally found the time to read Jane Gilbert's paper Developing Narrative-based Approaches to Science Education: Re-thinking an 'Old Discipline' for the 'Knowledge Age' in which she argues that,

…if we continue to teach science in traditional ways, we are unlikely to be able to produce the kinds of 'new' knowers that, the 'knowledge society' literature argues, we need now, and the number of students choosing to study science will continue to decline.

Well that last statement appears accurate! No sooner had I put Jane's paper down than Ray Schroeder links to an article relating a "quiet crisis" in American science education, and closer to home, Stuff reports all too briefly on Walter Erdelen's keynote at the Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (PCF3) in Dunedin last week. Erdelen apparently lamented young people's disinterest in the sciences and held up technology as part of a possible answer. (Any PCF3 attendees reading who can comment more on Erdelen's keynote?)

Meanwhile Jane's answer to science education's "quiet crisis" is pedagogical, specifically the application of two concepts that have been proven useful in other curriculum areas—critical literacy and narrative theory—and both alien concepts to most science educators (including this one, but I'm working on it!).

Update: A not so quiet UK science education crisis.

Mirror, mirror on the wall…

I'm still reflecting on Marc Prensky's writing about digital natives, specifically where he identifies reflection as a key area lost in the "reprogramming" of the digital native. Prensky challenges educators "to figure out and invent ways to include reflection and critical thinking in the learning but still do it in the Digital Native language."

Thankfully several educators seem to have picked up the challenge. I like Helen Barrett's ideas (thanks to Jeremy for putting me on to her trail) about the role of portfolios in reflective practice. I especially enjoyed reading her quote Paulson & Paulson:

A portfolio tells a story. It is the story of knowing. Knowing about things… Knowing oneself… Knowing an audience… Portfolios are students' own stories of what they know, why they believe they know it, and why others should be of the same opinion. A portfolio is opinion backed by fact… Students prove what they know with samples of their work.

It seems to me that in adopting digital storytelling as a pedagogy we will also be teaching digital natives, in their own language, the art of reflection since as Barrett quotes Schön: “Stories are products of reflection…”

Update: Will Richardson too, is hot on Helen Barrett's trail, and as Will points out, you can substitute weblog for portfolio in much of this writing.

Sticky Stories

Martin Owen's criticism of Marc Prensky's digital native metaphor inspired me to read Prensky's original article, the second part of which outlines the evidence for his proposition that digital natives not only think differently, they have physically different brains. The paragraph that caught my attention was paraphrased from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. (I was sensitised to this because I am currently reading The Tipping Point following Derek's recommendation).

Prensky paraphrases Gladwell (p. 101) to make the point that digital natives do not have an inferior attention span, they just choose strategically that to which they attend. It is Prensky's submission that digital games, one such choice, are "one good way to reach Digital Natives in their 'native language.'"

Those who have read further into The Tipping Point, however, will know that there is another way of grabbing a child's attention—storytelling. To quote Jerome Bruner in Gladwell (p. 118):

They [children] are not able to bring theories that organise things in terms of cause and effect and relationships, so they turn things into stories, and when they try to make sense of their life they use the storied version of their experience as the basis for further reflection. If they don't catch something in a narrative structure, it doesn't get remembered very well, and it doesn't seem to be accessible for further kinds of mulling over.

This research inspired the children's television programme Blue's Clues which bases its format around narrative, presenting a 30 minute story to children which is repeated Monday through Friday. I can vouch for its stickiness, having carried out my own research; my two preschoolers sit in front of the television transfixed weekdays between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m.

The Myth of the Digital Native

Josephine Fraser links to this brief criticism of Prensky's digital native metaphor. I find the metaphor appealing, but as with all generalisations, it is not without limitation. For instance immigrants vary in the degree to which they assimilate into the prevailing culture, a fact which holds true for immigrants landing in a digital new world and it is here that Owen takes issue with Prensky's neat dichotomy.

Owen disputes Prensky's observations and contends diversity, rather than dichotomy, situates this cultural change and that digital technology will allow the customisation that will ultimately accommodate that diversity. All valid points, but has the simplicity and appeal of Prensky's metaphor obscured his main message—a call for educational change:

"…unless we want to just forget about educating Digital Natives until they grow up and do it themselves, we had better confront this issue. And in so doing we need to reconsider both our methodology and our content."

A message I have written about a lot recently. Prensky prefers computer games; I am curious about the potential of storytelling.

Connecting the Unconnected

I had previously only associated Charles Reigeluth with instructional theory, but as I discovered, he has written extensively on the need for systemic change in education. In The Imperative for Systemic Change he lists the major differences between the industrial-age and the information-age that affect education:

Industrial-age	Information-age
Mass production	Customization
Adversarial relationships	Cooperative relationships
Bureaucratic organization	Team organization
Autocratic leadership	Shared leadership
Centralized control	Autonomy with accountability
Uniformity	Diversity
Autocracy	Democracy
Representative democracy	Participative democracy
Compliance	Initiative
One-way communications	Networking
Compartmentalization	Holism
(Division of Labor)	(Integration of tasks)

I have found this list useful in identifying themes and making connections between several links circulating in the blogosphere recently:

Thomas Malone talking on decentralisation suggests the reduced cost of communication and ubiquity of information ensures employees are well-enough informed to "make decisions without waiting for someone above them to tell them what to do." The benefits of this shared decision-making are that employees are "…more motivated, creative, flexible, and often just plain like it better."

Marc Prenksy gives examples of just this sort of democratic decision-making when he speculates that "…the end of command-and-control management may finally be here" and observes that digital natives "don't need to adapt to fit into the agile, flat, team-based organizations older [digital immigrant] executives are striving to design."

Valdis Krebs writes about the importance of recognising the value of networks in managing an organisation's knowledge: "For the HR department it is no longer sufficient to just 'hire the best'. You must hire and wire! Start new networks, help employees and teams connect—connect the unconnected!"

Alvin Toffler

I appreciated this quote about schools from Alvin Toffler's 1995 book Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave as it succinctly summarises my previous post:

[schools]…still operate like factories. They subject the raw material (children) to standardised instruction and routine inspection.

Toffler goes on to remind us to question the intention of innovations:

An important question to ask of any proposed educational innovation is simply this: is it intended to make the factory run more efficiently, or is it designed, as it should be, to get rid of the factory model altogether and replace it with individualised, customised education?

e-Learning is such an innovation, although it offers both the tantalising promise of Toffler's relevant, learner-centered education and the all too common reality of simply increasing the accessibility of the assembly line.