Who should control education?

1. Who should control education? Prof. Oleg Liber Institute for Educational Cybernetics University of Bolton

2. Education is a Human Right • "Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit” • Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26

3. Education is a Human Right • "The States Parties ... recognize the right of everyone to education.... Education shall enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society, promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among ... racial, ethnic or religious groups.... Primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all... Secondary education ... including technical and vocational secondary education, shall be made generally available and accessible to all.... Higher education shall be made equally accessible to all....“ • --International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 13

4. Shared Understanding? Primary Education: • In UK ends at age 11, but in Denmark at age 16!

5. Shared Understanding? Secondary Education: • “Secondary schools have been generally the great disappointment of the 20th century. They have been too big, too demoralised, distanced from true learning by the national curriculum and the hurriedness and uniformity that it imparts, too restricting for young adults.

6. Shared Understanding? Secondary Education: • “The time will come when the compulsory school age is lowered to 14 and… more teenagers averse to school will be coupled with an older person as their education companion to introduce them to learning.” (Young, 2000)

7. Shared Understanding? Technical and Vocational Education • …contrasted with theory and abstract conceptual knowledge, characteristic of tertiary education.  • i.e. not Law, Medicine, Engineering, Dentistry, Teaching, Nursing… ? • Countryside Recreation & Tourism • Food and Drink • Heritage Management • Casino Operations Management • Golf and Sports Turf Management • Outdoor Adventure Management

8. What is Education for? • .... Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among ... racial or religious groups.... • Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26 • …Education shall enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society • International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 13

9. What does Education do? • …for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school • … attempt to expand the pedagogue's responsibility until it engulfs his pupils' lifetimes • …the search for… educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. • Illich (1972)

10. Everyone knows that… • Education spending is huge in the developed world • The developing world cannot match this but is forced to try • The Education system reinforces the cycle of disadvantage • This is systemic

11. The promise of the computer:1980 • “…the computer will enable us to so modify the learning environment outside the classroom that much of not all the knowledge schools presently try to teach with such pain and expense and limited success will be learned, as the child learns to talk, painlessly, successfully, and without organized instruction” • Seymour Papert (1980) Mindstorms, Harvester, Brighton p.9

12. The promise of the computer:1985 • Interactive content on CD ROM (or Videodisk, or CDi…) • Intelligent tutoring: • “the acme of all the educational media if they existed” (Laurillard 1993) • The end of school? • The end of courses? • All we need is more computers!

13. Villemard postcard from 1910 depicting education in the year 2000; Bibliothèque National de France

14. The promise of eLearning 1990s • The WWW • Content distribution (and sharing) • Online discussions • Online assessment • The end of the campus? • VLEs (LMS) • All we need is bandwidth and standards

15. The promise of eLearning, 21st C • We have the technology • bandwidth • standards • software for collaboration • What’s the problem? • Why is education so unchanged? • Why has Lifelong learning come to mean training?

16. It’s the system • “Study the theory of a system” (Deming 2000) • POSIWID – the purpose of a system is what it does (Beer 1985) • “…we have forgotten that education had any other purpose than to promote growth” (Wolf 2002)

17. What is to be done? • Understand (model) the system • what does it do and how? • Recognise and acknowledge the importance of non-formal modes of learning • Promote and support self-organised learning • give the people the tools • Invert and find a new role for institutions • re-design the meta-system

18. Modelling the Education System • Beer’s Viable System Model (VSM) • Establish the identity (purpose) • Agree recursions of the system • Model each recursion Five Four Three

19. Establishing the identity • Transformation: what is being transformed? • Actors: who effects the transformation? • Suppliers: who supplies the inputs? • Customers: who benefits? • Owners: who controls the system? • Interveners: who else matters? • Espejo, R. (1990)

20. Examples • T: Learner’s ability to control their future • A: Learners • S: Teachers • C: The population • O: The community • I: Other institutions – work, arts, leisure • National economic growth • Teachers • Publishers • The national economy • The state • Competitors

21. State State State State State The State Dept Institution HE Education Programme Institution Dept. Education HE Recursion in the Education System

22. Recursion is important • “…fundamental processes are causing… loss of control… processes… are needed to contain explosive disorder. Management will need to work at the metasystemic level. We can no longer afford to tinker with the internal mechanisms of established institutions.” • Beer (1975) Platform for Change. Chichester, Wiley p.117

23. Environment System Mgt Viable System Model (VSM) Ve >> Vs >> Vm

24. The VSM and Education New Education KE Learners Education Management Old Education Ve >> Vl >> Vt

25. Mgt System Env.

26. Environ- ment Mgt. Organization

27. 5: IDENTITY 4: INTELLIGENCE 3: OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT Environ- ment Organization

28. 5: IDENTITY 4: INTELLIGENCE 3: OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT Environ- ment Organization

29. 5: IDENTITY 4: INTELLIGENCE 3: OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT 2: coordination 3*: monitoring Rules & Resource bargain MA Environ- ment A MB B

30. 5. Policy Five The Full Viable System Model 4. Strategy Four 3. Control Three

31. 5. Policy Five 4. Strategy Four 3. Control Three Variety Variety

32. How the Education System attenuates variety: knowledge • Implied stability of knowledge • Knowledge divided into academic subjects • Institutions into subject based departments • Subjects into courses • Courses have linear curricula • Curricula into lessons

33. How the Education System attenuates complexity: institutions & people • Sectors are similar • Institutions are similar • People are similar • grouped by ‘ability’ • attend lessons • learn content • tested on content before they can move to the next course

34. Systemic implications • What? • Syllabuses require transmission • Courses require timetables • People are partitioned by lessons • Why? • It simplifies matters • It works (so far) • It is the way it has always been

35. Pedagogic limitations • People have unique histories, aptitudes and desires • People have different learning approaches • People have different time availability • Designed for transmission of pre-defined content • Difficult to organise • Individualised learning • Small group learning • Problem based learning

36. The costs of traditional education • Difficult to develop process skills • Team skills, problem solving skills, creative skills, conversational and social skills • Overspecialisation • No space for polymaths

37. Examples • Framework for evaluating e-Learning • VSM to model teaching • Identify key amplification/attenuation • Propose technological interventions

38. Env. Students on a course Teacher 5. Steering 4. Development 3. Delivery Negotiation 3* Monitoring 2. Co-ordination Learner Self-organisation

39. Proposed criteria • 3. How does negotiation of learning take place? • 2. How can a unit of learning be structured sequentially and / or hierarchically over time? What facilities are there to organise learners in a variety of ways in the module (whole group, small groups, individuals)? • 3*. What facilities are there to monitor the success of the unit of learning as it runs? • What can learners do on their own, outside of the purview of the teacher?  • 4. To what extent is it possible for the teacher to adapt the module structure once teaching is underway? • Britain & Liber (2004) A Framework for pedagogical evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments. JISC Report http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/VLE%20Full%20Report%2006.doc

40. Example • Personal Learning Environments • Start with the whole person as a viable system • Identify where new technological interventions can help amplify • Join up fragments

41. Course 3 Course 2 Course 1 Our Student Multiple learning contexts

42. Joining up the fragments

43. Env. Student on many courses 5. Self-steering 4. Self- Development 3. Self-delivery Negotiation Co-ordination Monitoring Self-organisation

44. Steering Env. Development Delivery Self management • Negotiating Learning: • Commitments to different activities • Coordinating courses: • Managing time, scheduling, resources, materials, colleagues, reading, activities, making overall sense • Monitoring: • Am I making progress on each course as I expected? - reflection • Self-organised collaboration • Finding synergy between courses & activities • Development: • New courses? New materials? New colleagues? Where next? PDP

45. University University Provider VLE VLE VLE Social networks Web Knowledge Personal technology

46. University University University Serv-ices Serv-ices Serv-ices Personal technology Serv-ices Social networks Web Knowledge Personal technology

47. Real Possibilities? • University as service? • Customers or apprentices? • Separate teaching and certification? • different products • Encourage and nurture inquiry • Inquiry-based learning at the workplace • Ensure high level interoperability • provide information, not tools • Use models and real data to manage our work • no more blame Co-educate

48. Universities and students • Are learners part of the institution? • Is the learners part of the institution’s environment? • Are institutions part of the learners’ environments? • Are all these “true”? • How do they affect the design of technical systems?

49. Challenge for institutions • What is their purpose given modern information environment? • Re-think education – all recursions • Make lifelong learning real • Promote and facilitate self-organised learning • Institutional inversion (Illich)

50. Alternatives • Full deschooling? • 100% self organised online • Resourced how? • The digerati • New elites… same elites? • Return to participative education - WEA • State operate as metasystem • Democratic control over our futures