Victim culture

Continuing (after a fashion) my theme on air travel, this article in Time struck a chord with me. We the people rock.

There is a limit to what the state can do in terms of an individual's personal safety. To protect people completely is to disempower them. Surely I have not yet lost the right to make stupid choices and endanger my own hide in so doing? Surely when said hide suffers damage, I have to deal with the consequences of my own actions, take a big girl pill and suck it up?

I'm more than a little tired of attempts to legislate against all potential sources of harm.

People are wonderfully creative, resourceful and imbued with a survival instinct and a sense of self-preservation that is astonishing to behold. Read the article. I mean... go us. Really.

In a weird way, the article reflects where I am trying to go in terms of organisational learning provision. We need to stop looking on ourselves as having the answers. We need to acknowledge that 'the people' are not something other than us. That we are, in fact, all the people. That people have skills and abilities that they are not getting to use because we are so busy trying to teach them something. Sometimes we need to let them get on with the job and, when we do, we will find ourselves astonished by how much they can achieve without a single intervention from us.

Perhaps we just need to get over ourselves.

Can we agree to find new ways to empower people to 'do' this year, instead of being so flipping focused on what we want them to 'learn'? Let's stop throttling the life, the zest and the uniqueness out of people by shoving yet another learning solution down their throats, huh?

Jumping back up on the 'mandatory' soap box

Last time I addressed this issue, I got into serious trouble and wound up having to delete the post. But a presentation at the recent Learning Technologies conference has once again raised this matter on my radar, and I'm sorry, but it has to be said. Again.

In the L&D business, we are dealing with adults!

"Well, duh!" I hear you say. Except that it's nowhere near as well duh as I would like.

One of the primary reasons I didn't become a school teacher (in spite of an aptitude test that returned a massive spike for teaching) was because I didn't ever want to be faced with a group of people who were there against their will. I wanted all my learners to be there by choice.

So why oh why do we try to force adults to complete our learning programmes?

The presentation I am referring to covered the learning support provision around a change programme within an organisation. They made it mandatory.

Now, I don't know about you, but my experience of making things mandatory with busy adults is that they have the power of veto. They just say no: either explicitly or tacitly. I have been in several meetings over the years when I have pointed out that the worst culprits for not completing 'mandatory' programmes is senior management. I have asked what they plan to do do address the fact that the SMT might simply opt not to complete the learning programme and have lost count of the number of times the response has been of the order of "Well, they just must". Oh yeah? Or what?

Well, the answer in this particular organisation is that they linked completion of the training programme to departmental budgets. No training completion, no budget approval. And for good measure, no bonuses either.

The presenter seemed to see this as a good thing and referred to it as the 'carrot'. Sorry, but to me, that looks like a stick. A carrot would be an increased budget, a team weekend away, an increased bonus, new laptops... something along those lines. A carrot is a reward, not the threat of loss of standard affordances.

But surely the best thing you can do is develop a resource that is worth their while to use? And by involving the user community/target audience along the way, the resource is already on its way to being owned by the community by the time it is launched. And if you build in ways for the community to contribute to the material, it becomes even more theirs.

Now I'm not that naive. I have built facilities for user generated content into solutions I have designed in the past, and they have been used very little and then fizzled out. But I don't believe that this reduces the validity of the approach. We simply need to sell it better. To get more buy-in. To get the comms people on board. To have a few evangelists out there among the general populace. And the issues we address need to be important to the community. We will only identify those with any accuracy if we involve them in the solution itself, instead the whole 'done to' thing.

Making a thing mandatory is not the way forward. Think about the longer term. You might be able to claim a 98% take-up rate for your solution, but how much learning actually went on? How much change will you see in the workplace? And how much damage have you done to people's attitudes to learning solutions? As if our jobs weren't tough enough as it is!

I know that you could stop reading this blog at any time. You have that freedom. And I wouldn't deprive you of it. I'm thrilled that you're here, but I'm not going to force you to stay. I simply have to work hard to make sure that you want to stick around and see what I have to say tomorrow.

I like to approach learning solutions in the same way. There are going to be all sorts of recommendations to you to swing by. All sorts of signposts that tell you this is a good place to come for help. And when you do, I'm going to bust a gut to make sure that your experience is such that you'll stick around. That you'll come back. That you'll tell the guy at the next desk about it.

Because you're a grown-up. A busy one. And I respect that.

Learning to read

Konrad Glogowski touches on an issue that is like a thorn in my side.

I won't repeat my comments on his post here, but his post set me to thinking back on the TV series Can't read, Can't write that I posted about previously.

It seems to me that there is a dearth of literature in any language that is embedded in that culture and is fit for an audience of mature-yet-poor readers.

Adults who are learning to read do not wish to know that Spot is running or that Janet and John are going to the circus.

When we design elearning resources, we're all about engaging the learner. Finding a hook that will capture their attention, their interest and make them want to explore further. Songwriters even call it that "the hook".

So where is the "the hook" for a person who is learning to read in adult years?

In Can't read, Can't write, one of the learners was a highly intelligent woman who wanted to be able to read Hemingway. She wanted to acquire the key to that lock. And that was what reading was to her.

So where is the accessible Hemingway?

And where is the culturally relevant stuff? Where is the story that makes sense to a Kenyan tribal herdsman and does not patronise him with some white-as-snow, ever-so-English children going to the... what was that thing again?

Every time I bump into this topic, it fills me with a sense of urgency that hurts. I feel like I want to do something about it. Now.

But while I might be able to try my hand at accessible English language materials, I suspect that someone is already doing that - just without enough people knowing about them. It's the other languages I worry about, and I have no means to write a culturally relevant tale for any of them. The hook is beyond my capacity to bait.

Aargh!

Learning styles... again

Clive Shepherd has broached this much visited this subject, and Stephen Downes (among others) has weighed in with his views. My own contribution takes the form of a paper I wrote some time ago, reproduced here verbatim. Apologies - it's a lot longer than my usual offering (it was originally submitted on my MA programme, which required 3000 words give or take 10%):

I am aware that when I state my view on learning styles, I am greeted with consternation that borders on accusations of heresy. Perhaps with this post (an adaptation of a paper I submitted on my MA programme) I can account for myself. I apologise that it is somewhat lengthy, but, if you are at all interested in the topic, I urge you to stick with it to the end. I have also included a list of links and reference in case your curiosity is sufficiently piqued to want to investigate further for yourself (which I hope it is!).

Background - personal stance

I first encountered the Peter Urs Bender personality styles model (original source unknown) in 1990 as a freelance training consultant in South Africa. It had become a popular feature of customer service and management development training programmes, and had been passed from hand to hand so many times that the name and underlying theories had become separated from the model itself. It did not occur to me to question its validity, since it seemed to make sense on an intuitive level. Like many others in my profession, I familiarised myself with the model and its application and jumped on the bandwagon.

I was introduced to the concept of learning styles as a formalised theory when I undertook a City & Guilds Certificate in Further Education Teaching at a further education College in 2000/2001, where it was taught as if it were fact.

The college itself was unswervingly committed to the Dunn and Dunn VAK model (1984), and every new student undertook a test known as QuickScan to identify their preferred learning style. The results were included on every student’s file and tutors were expected to show an awareness of the balance of styles represented in each class. Furthermore, lesson plans and schemes of work had to indicate where provision was being made for each learning style. (Note: at the time of writing, this approach was still in place)

Once again, because I found the material logical and easy to understand, it never occurred to me to question the validity of the theories or the research. I embraced it enthusiastically, to the extent that I developed a resource for my students at the IT learning centre, by means of which they could identify their own learning style and adopt some tactics that would enable them to maximise their learning experience at the centre.

In the intervening years, I have encountered an increasing number of anomalies to both the VAK and Kolb-based models (including Myers-Briggs and Urs Bender). I became concerned at the infallibility which appeared to be imputed to these models, when in fact few people seemed to be a perfect fit on anything more than a superficial level.

It should be known from the outset that my current stance is diametrically opposed to that held up to and somewhat beyond 2001 – although I would be hard pressed to name a single date or incident which marked the reversal.

Situation 1: Cert Ed case studies: deaf student

One of the assignments for the second phase of the C&G certificate involved learning style case studies. Of my four chosen case studies, one was deaf with attendant poor oral communication skills. I was surprised at the time that her QuickScan test showed her to be an auditory learner, and discussed this with the staff member responsible for testing. I was categorically assured that it was impossible for a deaf person to be an auditory learner, since they lack an auditory faculty. The test supervisor ascribed the anomaly to the student’s poor reading skills. It is true to say that, like many deaf people, her reading age was well below her chronological age (Brown and Adams, 1990), however, I was unsatisfied with this explanation, since she had had a reader for the test, who signed the questions to her.

The following is an excerpt from an email exchange between Dr Gemma Calvert[1], and me during July 2007 (Dr Calvert is the Reader in Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Bath):

KR: Do deaf people use the same areas of the brain to process sign language as hearing people do to process spoken language?

GC: The answer to the first question is yes, in part. Deaf signing activates some of the same auditory speech areas that hearing people use when listening to speech.

In research conducted by Mairéad MacSweeney, it was found that “the left posterior perisylvian cortex is of fundamental importance to language processing, regardless of the modality in which it is conveyed.” (MacSweeney et al, 2004). If the identification of an individual’s preferred learning style as auditory is an indication of brain area activity rather than of dominance of a sensory organ, this would imply to my (admittedly limited) understanding that a deaf learner is as likely to have an auditory preference as any other learner.

Situation 2: inconsistency of style

By 2001, I had identified myself by means of the QuickScan questionnaire as a primarily kinaesthetic learner, and by means of the various models based upon Kolb’s learning cycle diagram (DeBello 1990) as an activist (Honey and Mumford model – Honey and Mumford, 2000) and an expressive (Peter Urs Bender’s model, year unknown).

Superficially, this would account for my extrovert nature and my tendency to start activities without first taking time to familiarise myself with instructions and constraints. However, this failed to account for the fact that I was able to make perfect sense of the pictorial instructions that came with flatpacks whereas my husband, purportedly a visual learner, was not. Nor did it satisfactorily explain my skill and preference for quietly contemplative, reflective activities such as reading, sudoku and cryptic crossword puzzles.

Niggling doubts

As I see it, the following shortcomings need to be considered:

1. The very method of test completion immediately disadvantages certain people. For example, is a written test appropriate for a person with severe dyslexia? Even when the services of a scribe are engaged, is there certainty that the introduction of a third party in no way influences the outcome?
2. The circumstances under which the test is taken may influence the outcome. If the test is taken at the start of what is to be an academic course of study, the learners are likely to be mindful of their approach to classroom based learning as they respond. However, if the test is taken as part of a management development programme, the learners are likely to be mindful of behaviours and habits in the workplace.
3. A single individual is likely to adopt widely differing approaches to different learning activities – almost certainly within the course of a lifetime, but even possibly within a single day. For example, consider the learning approaches that may be adopted in the following circumstances:

• Acquiring fluency in a language
• Learning to drive a car
• Memorising the highway code
• Gaining proficiency in the use of a new software application
• Mastering a new piece of piano music
• Learning to sing a new song
• Recognising “what not to wear” as identified in the popular television series of the same name.

As long ago as 1948, Bertram Forer had begun to conduct experiments that cast doubt over the validity of the concepts of learning and personality styles. The Forer effect “is the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people.” (Wikipedia, 2007). This is closely related to Marks’s theory of subjective validation, which “occurs when two unrelated or even random events are perceived to be related because a belief, expectancy, or hypothesis demands a relationship” (Wikipedia, 2007)

There is not even the convenience of a single ontology when it comes to discussing learning styles. Coffield et al identified no fewer than 71 models (2004), each of which identifies learning styles according to a different set of criteria. Whilst there is commonality and overlap between some models, there is no mapping the VAK model to the MBTI model, for example: a visual learner is no more likely to test as any one of the many possible Myers-Briggs combinations than any other. And again, there is no way of predicting whether an auditory learner is more likely to be an expressive, analytical, driver or amiable on the Urs Bender model.

Into this minefield, the teacher or corporate trainer (referred to collectively as teachers from here on) is often expected to venture by a management totally unaware that their own understanding of the field is not unlike that of the Indian fable about three blind men describing an elephant, each only touching one part of the animal. Teachers appointed to an organisation are presented with the functionality of the organisation’s chosen model, and are thereafter expected to comply with this model, conducting tests few are qualified to conduct and basing their teaching approaches on deductions that few are qualified to make.

In the formal education sector, learning style models have been widely adopted as a top down measure from the state. Some schools are still adhering rigorously to the tenets of the VAK model, in spite of the fact that (to my firsthand knowledge) the National Strategies have been instructed by the DCFS to withdraw all their learning materials on the subject. This was as a consequence of a report called About Learning submitted In June 2004 by the Demos think tank to Schools Standards Minister David Milliband. The report declared learning style models to be of “doubtful reliability and validity”, pointing to a lack of evidence that teaching practice was in any way improved by their use – even suggesting, in fact, that the converse was true.

They know not that they know not

The level of commitment to the model of choice in various organisations appears, in some cases, to have reached almost mindless proportions. Witness the following accounts:

1. A recruitment advertisement listed as ‘essential’ the ability to deliver learning which engaged “all four learning styles”. When I enquired about the learning styles model being applied, it became clear that there was an underlying assumption that there was only a handful of models to choose from and that “everyone knew” that MBTI was accepted as the industry standard. It also became clear that the model being referred to as MBTI was, in fact, Honey and Mumford’s model.
2. Holly Lodge Girls’ School in Liverpool has introduced a colour coded system which identifies learners’ according to their learning styles (DfES website August 2007).
3. A fellow student on my MA programme indicated that tests had been conducted at his school using one of the Kolb-inspired quadrant models. Results showed that the largest proportion of children in the school belonged to one quadrant, while success within the current assessment system had been identified as being largely the province of children belonging to the diametrically opposed quadrant. The head teacher instructed teachers to find means of converting children from one learning style to the other.

Where teachers are expected to draw up lesson plans that cater to each of the styles of their organisations chosen models, they are at risk of building up expectations of which learners will engage with which activities. It is undeniably useful that teachers are encouraged to plan lessons with a wide range of activities, rather than the monomodal “chalk and talk” approach of years gone by. It is indubitably true that learners are more engaged with the learning in such instances. However, one wonders whether it is it not just as likely that the learners are able to remain interested due to the changing “scenery” in the form of media and delivery mechanisms rather than because a particular learning style is being addressed.

The subject of learning styles crops up in repeated debates in the edublogosphere. In Educause Connect in June 2008, Catherine Howell opines that “what they actually offer is less than a theory of learning than a caricature of learners”. Her contention is that “researchers can’t agree on “what” learning is (neurophysical? social? psychological?), second because they can’t even agree “where” it occurs (in the teacher-student relationship? in the classroom? in the student’s head?).”

In his “x28’s new blog”, Matthias Melcher reflects on his abortive attempts to find recent online resources about cognitive styles, and observes that online aggregator searches are conducted mainly by non-English speaking countries, where the concept still appears to have more currency (5 July 2006). Since his profile includes links to his own results from a variety of such tests, one assumes that he sets enough store by this information to regard it as meaningful to his readers. This is borne out by the opening sentence of a later post on the same blog (the emphasis is his): “C. Quinn and H. Jarche have one word on learning styles: “rubbish”. I do not agree.” (2 July 2007). Sadly, he has not provided a link to the offending posts by the two authors. In his view the fault lies in that adherents of learning style theories tend to overload the concept with the classification of personality styles in addition to cognitive styles of learning and, moreover, fail to distinguish between styles and abilities. In his view “as long as style is confused with ability, teachers and researchers won’t admit to themselves that they also belong to one or another style, or they will take it for granted that they belong to the “superior” one”. (Melcher, 2007)

I have not found any evidence of one style being put forward as superior to another in any model.

Donald Clark – admittedly a well-known iconoclast, and something of a sensationalist in the edublogosphere – describes an instance where he “presented the Coffield research on learning styles at a coaching conference” after which he “received an abusive email from Peter Honey (who was in the audience)”. Allegedly, at some point during an exchange of emails between the two parties Honey “did admit, however, that there was no scientific evidence to back up his theory – the famous Honey and Mumford model.” (Clark, 2007)

I think I could do no better than to end with an (unfortunately lengthy) extract from James Atherton’s Heterodoxy blog, in a post unequivocally called Learning Styles Don’t Matter (2007) in which he describes the members of a class:

In this class there is a serialist pragmatist kinaesthetic learner (who is also field-dependent, not to mention his MBTI) primarily a convergent thinker, high on logico-mathematical intelligence but low on linguistic intelligence, sitting next to a holist, reflector, primarily visual and field-independent... who is also chronically shy (no-one mentions that). Even assuming that such things can be assessed with some validity and reliability, which is itself far from clear — what are you going to do about it? There are after all thirty other students in the class, each of whom could be described in similar terms. And two-thirds of them are female, and one-third male (two of whom are gay). Five of the class are from ethnic minorities, two are dyslexic, one is visually impaired, and three are clinically depressed (although only one of them knows it). Six are "mature" students — at least, they are chronologically over 25.

In other words, a fairly typical class, composed of people. (One of them has his Yorkshire terrier in a holdall, but perhaps we can ignore that.) You, of course are...

References

Atherton, J S (2002) Heterodoxy: Learning styles don't matter [On-line] UK; Available: http://doceo.co.uk/heterodoxy/styles.htm Accessed: 2 July 2007

Bender, Peter Urs (1997) Leadership from Within. Stoddart. ISBN 0773759034. Questionnaire originally undertaken (source unknown) 1990 – extract reviewed online at http://www.peterursbender.com/quiz/swtable.html 29 September 2007.

Bishop, D. V. M. and Adams, C. (1990) A Prospective Study of the Relationship between Specific Language Impairment, Phonological Disorders and Reading Retardation Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 31 (7), 1027–1050. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.1990.tb00844.x

Clark, Donald (2007) Professor pans ‘learning style’ teaching in Donald Clark Plan B 12 August 2007. Published online at http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2007/08/professor-pans-learning-style-teaching_12.html. Accessed 15 August 2007.

Coffield, F.; Moseley, D.; Hall, E.; Ecclestone, K. (2004) Learning Styles and Pedagogy in Post-16 Learning. Learning and Skills Research Centre.

DeBello, T.C. (1990) Comparisons of Eleven Major Learning Styles Models Journal of Reading, Writing and Learning Disabilities, 6:203-222. Accessed online at www.ldrc.ca/projects/atutor/content/7/debello.htm 4 July 2007.

Demos think tank (2004) About Learning. Published by Demos. June 2004. Accessed online at http://www.demos.co.uk/files/About_learning.pdf on 15 August 2008.

DfES (DCFS) website (2007) Case study: Holly Lodge Girls’ School accessed online at http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/sie/documents/hollylodge.pdf on 15 August 2007.

Dunn, R., Dunn, K., & Price, G. E. (1984). Learning style inventory. Lawrence, KS, USA: Price Systems in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles accessed 29 September 2007 and Learning Styles and Pedagogy in Post-16 Learning (2004) Coffield et al.

Forer, Bertram R. (1949) The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility". Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 44: 118-123. In Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect) last accessed 29 September 2007

Honey, Peter and Mumford, Alan (2000) Learning Styles Questionnaire (80-Item). ISBN 1 902899 07 5.

Howell, Catherine (2005) Do learner profiles enhance learning? In Educause Connect 8 July 2005. Accessed online at http://connect.educause.edu/blog/catherine/dolearnerprofilesenh/730?time=1191104571 2 July 2007.

MacSweeney, Mairéad et al (2004). Dissociating Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Gestural Communication in the Brain. NueroImage 22 (2004) pp 1605-1618.

Marks, David F. (2000) The Psychology of the Psychic. Prometheus Books ISBN 1573927988. In Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect) last accessed 29 September 2007.

Martin, Isabel (date unknown) Helping Students to Learn More Effectively accessed online at http://www.quickscn.com/studyscn/WKCQS1.htm 29 September 2007

Melcher, Mathias (2006) Cognitive Style Theories in x28’s new blog. Online at http://x28newblog.blog.uni-heidelberg.de/2006/07/05/cognitive-styles-theories/ Accessed 2 July 2007.

Melcher, Mathias (2007) Learning Styles called Rubbish in x28’s new blog. Online at http://x28newblog.blog.uni-heidelberg.de/2007/07/02/learning-styles-called-rubbish/ Accessed 2 July 2007.

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[1]My thanks go to Professor John Geake for putting me in touch with Dr Calvert

Knowledge does not equal skills does not equal behaviour

This post and the ensuing comments had previously been removed at the insistence of my manager. Since I no longer work for them, I feel no qualms about reinstating the post. Unfortunately, I am unable to reinstate the comments.

One of the things that really bothers me about compliance type training is the whole assessment model and the conclusions that are drawn from it.

Increasingly, it seems to me that the way we demonstrate to the marketplace our excellence in a particular area is to acquire accreditation. We acquire accreditation by complying with the stated behaviours as laid out by the accrediting body. We demonstrate compliance with the required behaviours by... well by passing a multiple choice test, of course!

The thing is, the multiple choice test is usually so facile that pretty much anyone can pass it, so essentially is assesses nothing. Well, that's one of the things anyway.

The other is that a multiple choice test... or any written test for that matter, is not evidence of behaviour.

Let's say the matter at hand is people management. We can put our manager through any number of training interventions, ranging from boring to highly engaging. What we test at the end (if the test is written) is knowledge. As I have said several times in meetings over the past few days - if knowledge equalled behaviour, our jails would be empty.

Let's say we really branch out and devise a role play test of some sort, presenting our friendly manager with a whole bunch of scenarios in which he must acquit himself. Even supposing some of those tests are blind, they test skills. Being able to do something and actually doing it are not always the same thing.The only way to assess whether behaviour matches up to standards/expectations is through on the job assessment, which brings us back to our performance review process.

Far too often, the appraisal/review/call it what you will process is seen as something that a manager does to a staff member. Almost as often, the manager resents having to take the time away from the day job to carry out these reviews.

Over the past few days I have had to look at ways that make clear the following two points:

• A manager is supposed to manage people. A manager is not just an operative with a higher salary. Supporting the personal development of staff members is the day job. Sadly, managers' own KPIs seldom reflect this.
• Managers do not review staff members' performance. Managers and staff members discuss past performance, future development and long term career planning together and set in place together some objectives to help each staff member realise their potential.

In the movie Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman's character is a numeric savante. He can perform the most spectularly complex numeric calculations in his head. He knows numbers. But when asked how much change he should get from a simple purchase, he didn't have a clue. He simply could not transfer his numeric knowledge into a practical skill, let alone a behaviour.

Knowledge ≠ skill ≠ behaviour.

Speakeasy learning

This post and the ensuing comments have been removed by the author. I apologise for any inconvenience caused if you have followed a link to get here.

Learning as a journey

Apologies for those who will see this as a "well duh" post, but I was struck afresh by the analogy of learning as a journey this weekend.

On Sunday afternoon, my husband and I suddenly decided to head for the coast. I needed to feel the sand between my toes. I was born and raised within earshot of the sea and, until we left South Africa, lived at most half an hour's drive from the ocean. Since our arrival in the UK, we seem to have been moving further and further from the sounds, sights and smells that go together with coastal life. So, green or not, and in spite of the cost of fuel, off we set.

We had never previously visited the stretch of coastline that is closest to our current home, so we picked a coastal town that seemed reachable. John did the driving, and I did the navigating (whatever some people - severe language warning - may say on the subject, I am an excellent navigator).

I began to see the partnership as being analogous to that of student and teacher:

• If we see John as the student, I was going along on his journey and had a vested interest in its success.
• If I was in the role of teacher, I was the one telling him where to go and how to reach his objective, even though I had never been there before.
• Because I had the map, I could have told him the entire route he needed to take when we set out, but he would simply have found this confusing. Instead, I would give him the information he needed just as he needed it: "Straight over here, and then left at the next exit onto the A14"
  
• Maps are not infallible (neither are people) so there were one or two surprises along the way. We dealt with them as they arose.
• We reached our destination together.

I got to feel the sand between my toes and stood with my feet in the (surprisingly warm) Atlantic... just as the rain came lashing down.

On the return journey, we switched places and I drove while John navigated a different route back. Long ago we realised that it was not good for our relationship for him to teach me anything. He gives information in the order in which he thinks it ought to be given. I get impatient, because I want it in a different order, and he gets impatient because I keep interrupting him with questions.

As we drove, he would tend to give me longer term instructions than I had given him: "Straight over here, then straight over the next two. Junction 21 could be complicated, but you need to go straight over it and keep going till we get to junction 9." When we passed junction 13 and it had a sign that pointed to our home town, he had wasn't following the map, so there was a period of uncertainty as I worried I might have missed the off-ramp, and he struggled to find our position on the map.

Now, I'm not trying to diss my husband here. I just think I might be the better teacher. He has other skills. But the difference in approach reminded me somewhat of the difference between just-in-case information and just-in-time learning.

Just in case tells you everything long before you're going to need it. Then when you do need it, you have to sift through your memory to find it again, by which time, the moment may have passed. Just in case also leaves you high and dry when the unexpected takes place. Just in case makes no allowance for the gap between head knowledge and practical application.

Just in time tells you what you need to know when you need to know it. Just in time keeps pace with you, so that the information you need is on hand when the unexpected happens. Just in time reflects what is happening now, so it directly addresses the practical application.

Of course, you could argue that both approaches worked equally well, since we arrived home without incident. I will say, though, that I found a way to convert the just in case to just in time. At each roundabout, I would ask "I assume I go straight over here?" John would answer the question and then follow it up with a long stream of additional information. I paid attention to the next 'to do' on the list and tuned the rest out so as not to muddy the waters of my understanding.

For me the interesting thing is that we were both working from the same map. I'm not sure how practical this is for people who work with a pre-established national curriculum and 'achievement' targets to meet. But in a corporate learning environment, the analogy follows more readily.

Can't read, can't write

The first episode of the TV series Can't Read, Can't Write was aired on the BBC tonight. It should be compulsory viewing for every teacher.

My brain is fizzing.

The utter inadequacy of the adult literacy programme is astonishing... and scandalous! Just the way that prospective learners have to enrol on the programme is in itself a barrier (which I learned from a radio interview with Phil Beadle earlier this week, rather than from the TV series).

I think what struck me most and left me gasping with disbelief was the reaction of a woman who heads up one of these programmes when Phil Beadle (what an apt name) found fault with the system and the materials. She didn't like his maverick resistance to and criticism of the curriculum. She said repeatedly that her teachers followed the government curriculum which bore results. Her idea of results? The students passed the exam at the end, "because that's what it's all about, isn't it?"

No, it flipping isn't. Who puts people like this in charge of learning programmes?

It's all about releasing these people from the prison of adult illiteracy in a world which does not cater to them. It's about empowering them.

How do you catch a bus if you can't read a timetable? How do you open a bank account if you can't fill in a form? How do you prepare even a heat-and-eat meal if you can't read the instructions? How do you learn to drive if you can't read the roadsigns and master the highway code?

Phil was dismayed and discouraged every time he looked at the curriculum and spoke to its proponents. But, when he spoke to the learners, he was ignited and the light went on in his eyes. My kind of teacher. A true wild-eyed zealot.

Some of the people had become ingenious at hiding their disability (because disability it is). One woman in particular seemed incapable of attaching sounds to written letters. She was a bright, cultured woman who wanted to read Hemingway.

She tried to run her fingers over the letters and could only make sense of them if she could feel their shapes. Not much help with current printing technologies. You could tell her that this was the letter T, and she would repeat that. She could tell you all sorts of words that contained that sound. She could recite Shakespeare sonnets. But show her the T again and she had no idea what it was. There just seemed to be a wire in her brain that wasn't connected the same way as everyone else's was. I found myself shouting at the TV, "Teach her braille!" It didn't matter that she wasn't blind - she might as well have been for all the sense she could make of the squiggles on the page.

Phil didn't teach her braille, and he did have her reading her first words (albeit slowly) within 3 weeks. I still think braille would have been a good starting point for her, but the rest of the series will reveal whether or not I am right.

If there is any way you can get your hands on this series, please, please watch it. It will stir you, infuriate you, inspire you. It will remind you how 'unflat' this world really is - even in our educated societies.

Sharing what we know

How many people can lay claim to having taught Stephen Downes something new? I have often wondered where he goes to learn new stuff. Then as I commented on this photo of his on Flickr last night, it occurred to me that this was the second time I had been able to provide him with a piece of information. It looked similar to the sort of thing my stepdad grows, so a little bit of rooting around provided a likely answer.

Oddly, the previous time was also to provide the name of a plant. This plant: I say oddly, because I am the most botanically ignorant member of my family (my parents are complete botanical and ornithological 'anoraks', as are all my aunts and uncles and most of my cousins). This one was dead easy, though, since the plant is one I grew up with and which abounds in South Africa and other hot climates.

The hibiscus (bottom picture) came to my attention when Stephen mentioned on his OLDaily blog that he had uploaded the photos from his trip to Southern Africa. Of course, a girl from southern Africa could be depended on to make a beeline for them! The aeonium (top picture) I found because Stephen linked to it on his Facebook status last night, saying that he wondered what it was. Not thinking for a moment that I might know, I followed the link out of idle curiosity... et voila!

Somehow the thought that someone as knowledgeable and highly regarded as Stephen can learn something (two somethings, mind!) from li'l ol' me puts things in perspective.

Social learning. Connectivism. The network. We all have something to give and something to gain. Some will give a lot and gain a lot, some will give a lot and gain less, others will give little and gain little, still others will give little and gain much.

But no-one is keeping score.

Cool, huh?

Photos by Stephen Downes can be seen, with many others on his Flickr photostream.

You gotta have mojo

I've lost my mojo. Last seen hightailing it out of the door of my office towards the end of March this year. If anyone sees it, please return it to me c/o The Learning Doldrums.

Since I escaped the tyranny of the formal education system (with apologies to all you wonderfully dedicated, overworked, underpaid teachers), I have been the most driven, self-motivated, passionate learner I have ever encountered. I love knowing new things.

But a strange thing happened to me on the way to an MA award which served to remind me of the importance - nay criticality - of one characteristic of the successful learner: motivation.

Because I want to know stuff, I process it and assimilate it at an alarming rate. Because I want to remember people's names, I can match more names to faces than most people I know. Because I want to. Because I am motivated.

Usually.

Then, just before we left for our holiday in South Africa, I finally received the results of an independent studies paper I had submitted in January. The university commits to returning results within 4 weeks of submission. It had taken 8 weeks for these to come back, during the last four of which I had made a pest of myself with repeated emails and phone calls, requesting my feedback.

I had failed!

I had never failed an assessment in my life. I even passed my driving test on the first attempt. It's true to say that I scraped through history in high school by the skin of my teeth, but I did scrape through. This time I had failed. Failed, I say!

The feedback said that I had submitted what read like a lively presentation but did not qualify as a piece of academic writing. Also, I had not cited enough references.

I felt hollow. Deflated. And it was at that moment that my get-up-and-go got up and went.

You see, other than the independent studies module, all that remained was my dissertation. As I began writing the IS paper, it dawned on me that I was doing very well on my MA programme. I had passed all but one paper with merit or distinction. I realised that I stood a chance of coming out of this with a merit, maybe even a distinction overall! Wow! What a thought for a girl who had to wheedle her way onto the programme without a B degree. I decided I might as well give it a shot. So I figured it out. If I scored 82% for the IS paper, and got a distinction for my dissertation, that would give me an overall distinction.

I worked harder on that paper than all my others put together. I put in far more work than a 3,000 word essay warranted. I was pretty sure I'd get at least a merit, probably even a distinction, but would I hit that magic 82%?

Erm... no.

To make things worse, I had chosen to do a case study on a failed project (looking into whether it had failed because corporate trainers don't know enough about learning). Because it had failed, the staff had been re-deployed. Some had moved out of the business altogether. A rewrite was out of the question. Also, a rewrite would garner me a "pass" at best. No merits, no distinctions.

I was astonished at the extent of my demotivation. Not only did it impact the module I had failed, but it spread to the dissertation as well. It has been nearly two months, and I haven't touched it. Not a word.

I'm really struggling to pull myself together to care. In my head, I know I want to finish this. But my heart just isn't in it.

I know we tend to pooh-pooh old Bloom and his domains, but let me tell you that the affective domain has overridden the cognitive in this instance, even though the cognitive is trying to fight back.

Maybe you've got some learners who've lost their mojo, too. Maybe they need a little help getting it back. But don't give them mine! I need that back, please.