This afternoon I had intended to attend the webinar with Will Richardson. Regardless, like many things this summer, I got the time wrong and ended up leaving the house during the presentation. @tmemann (Tannis Emann) tweeted me that it was going on and found out that the presentation was recorded and could be reviewed later. The presentation has been posted here. It’s worth checking out in that Will speaks highly to connecting leaners to real tasks through inquiry-based learning. Simply put, he was singing my song!
My favourite quote from the presentation was:
We are so focused on making sure that we get over this one bar, this one outcome, and we do this at the expense of a love of learning in out kids. Will Richardson 2011
Powerful stuff! This meshed really well with what I was reading earlier today. On the recommendation of @schwier, I checked out some stuff by Fredrick Herzberg a physiologist from the United States. A portion of his work was looking at workplaces in Pittsburgh to begin to better understand the sources of job satisfaction and dissatisfaction. One of the most interesting ideas from the wikipedia article was this:
Thus, if management wishes to increase satisfaction on the job, it should be concerned with the nature of the work itself — the opportunities it presents for gaining status, assuming responsibility, and for achieving self-realization.
With your permission I am going to disregard the business context of this research but adopt the finding into an educational context. The reason this excerpt is so interesting to me is because I have had a continued focus on engagement and motivation through my two last courses. This statement matches much of what Will Richardson stated above regarding killing the desire to learn because of the type of work and the way we assess students.
In previous posts and course essays I have proposed, much as does Will and others, that the solution is inquiry-based learning. Students who are able to explore their own wonderings, who find answers that are relevant to the world, who engage in the work of true practitioners, and develop meaningful 21st century skills exploring with learning experts are able to derive much greater satisfaction in learning and their formal education experience.
Check out this post by @Barclay_1 about photocopying. Without knowing it, we share many of the same frustrations about photocopying and the worksheet reality that exists in some classrooms. My favourite line from @Barclay_1′s post is:
If you take an average of 20 school days in a month and 20 students in each class and for argument sake 4000 pages a month, that leaves each student with 10 pages a day of photocopies.
Is that learning?Would this contribute to belonging in a classroom? If so, how?
When I think about learner’s lack of engagement in learning, and I juxtapose Will Richardson, Fredrick Herzberg’s, and John. M. Keller’s ideas about increasing satisfaction, there is no positive outcome from filling-out endless worksheets. Furthermore, this is a surefire way of killing the joy of learning in learners. Call me crazy but there are a small number of real-life tasks that require a person to be an expert worksheet fill-er out-er. It’s time to engage students in meaningful work that takes place outside of schools by real-life practitioners.
Thank goodness for Tannis. I ran back from a meeting thinking I was in good time for Will’s session too, and whoops, I logged in just as they logged off. Thank goodness for recordings!
Nice job of bringing together Will’s ideas and Fred Herzberg’s — something that never occurred to me, but I see your logic.
I think inquiry learning is one of several approaches we could draw on. For example, I would also argue for what we are calling authentic learning — building learning environments that pose real challenges in real contexts. We’re probably talking about the same thing in the end. But whether we call for inquiry learning, problem-based learning, authentic learning or similar approaches, we are all suggesting that our environments require more attention to self-directed learning in real contexts.
Rick,
After reading Herzberg, I tried to look at work and learning as being synonymous. Thus, the voice of employees and students could be considered to be equivalents because they both generally experience a top-down structure that defines their tasks and roles from day to day. Afterwards, my analysis was focused on understanding the experience of both and trying to understand what makes the biggest difference for all. The themes and findings started to fit easily!
I haven’t spent a lot of time exploring authentic learning, but trust that as you state, we are suggesting similar contexts and implications for learning. John Abbott (who I like to read) (21learn.org) talks a lot about the importance of the roles and experiences of masters and apprentices. Through the blogosphere and deriving directly from the SOS march I read many calls for schools and classrooms to evolve beyond the industrial model of education. I would love to see a working model of students working in the “real world” and learning in real contexts without having schools recreate artificial contexts for students. I understood there was a location on the eastern seaboard where high school students had to complete an internship and experience authentic real-life and real-work contexts to be able to complete their grade 12 program. Sounded really interesting!
I like the connections you make here. You should look into all of the office design and philosophy embraced by the tech boom of the 90′s. Google’s offices at the moment are a good example. When I think of the cool meeting places and environmental aspects they connect to motivation vs what our schools often look like I wonder why we have this gap. Here is a slideshow of Zurich office highlights. Why do we not create more engaging school environments?
Lets create engaging environments, then deal with ‘the work itself’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaGO7XlP2EU
Thank you for the feedback and the comment, Stephen!
I did look at and thought I blogged (although I can’t find the post which means I’m dreaming about what I have and haven’t blogged about) about the Google model of 80/20 time and found it being just as relevant to a corporate context as an educational context. I really liked what Chris Lehmann had to say in this TED talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS2IPfWZQM4. I like the message of go and create and then teach me as a means of demonstrating what you have learned and developed as skills. Really powerful stuff. It is in this context that I saw the 80/20 Google model being applied to education. I wonder what the impact and the perception (from the students and the relevant stakeholders) would be of telling students that they can experience autonomy and drive in their own personal learning with the support of a master learner?
Thanks for the video link. I really like the way they design the work/thinking/creating space for their employees. There is definitely a world of difference between corporate funds and public funds. I don’t think kids need a capsized boat to be able to experience Flow but I do think that rows and columns of desks aren’t ideal… as your blog name points out, the remnants of the factory model of education…
Thanks again for checking out the blog!