Response to Aaron's ICT in Secondary Education Blog: Aaron's ICT VELS Reflection

Please refer to http://deathtoluddites.blogspot.com/2011/09/v-behaviorurldefaultvml-o.html for the original post by Aaron Walker.

Aaron, your review of "ICT providing a rich and flexible learner-centered environment in which students can experiment and take risks when developing new understanding" is very well put together. It raises many concerns surrounding the use of digital tools in teaching subject content.

WOW. What a blog ... really comprehensive and enjoyable to read!

You have sparked many, many thoughts in my mind. In the interest of time, I'd like to focus my reply on ideas surrounding student performance. ICT, in some areas of education, can undoubtedly allow students to take risks and experiment more than they would normally, but I see the challenges related to successful use of ICT grounded in the 'bigger picture'.

It is worth mentioning that whenever a broad set of guidelines, such Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS), are provided for use in a society, inevitably inequality arises. It is my experience that guidelines are statistically unable to benefit all; and therefore, address majorities while tending to neglect minorities.

Take our federal taxation laws as a comparison. They are a set of guidelines (rules) that all Australian's must adhere to. Clearly, they are unable to advantage everybody in all situations, but as a whole work to benefit society. This is an important consideration, because it sets the scene for a number of both good and bad outcomes resulting from, in this case, the incorporation and use of ICT (or digital technology, as I prefer to call it) in secondary education.

Digital technology is merely a platform for teachers to utilise; it is a tool. Like every tool, success lies squarely with the operator. This is apparent in your account of what happened during the open learning experience. The learner, or operator, even though informed of the specific use of the tool, was ill informed of the bigger picture. If you teach a student how to use a drill, then ask them to help build a house, they may initially struggle with the value the drill brings. What do you think?

That said, it is challenging to define with any great accuracy what is happening with the students you mentioned because the example provided took place in an open learning environment. Having not personally experienced this type of teaching, I need to assume that it played an insignificant role in the outcome. However, instinctively, I feel that such an environment would abound with distractions and make learning more difficult for the non-gifted group. Let me explain why I feel this is relevant.

Research conducted by Kirschner, Sweller & Clarke (2006) discusses the impacts of inquiry based learning with minimal guidance. They argue that the brain processes information in a serial manner. Stimuli which is provided to the brain is processed in this manner and either stored in the memory or compared to pre-existing memories. In the situation where minimal guidance/background is provided to students undertaking a (new) task, or one they have not yet made meaning of, the brain is pre-occupied with processing inputs and making memories and is less capable of the cognitive demands of the expected learning task. Perhaps this architectural limitation provides an insight into why Scenario 2-4 did not work, and why the geography excursion did work? Students need to have a framework from which to call on.

In the context of completing the task, but doing so without mastery of the content, Scenario 3 and 4 are very interesting. I have experienced this behaviour many times in my classrooms. I'm not convinced it relates to the students abilities; in fact it may be the opposite. Using the Dreyfus taxonomy of learning, the students may be operating at the Advanced Beginner level for the output, but they may be operating at a higher level in their awareness of what needs to be completed in order to 'pass'. Again I refer to an analogy. In my experience as a sales manager, it was very apparent that the behaviours of talented staff could be steered based on the financial incentives provided to them.

The modern education system has a similar effect on students. For the most part, school is geared to advance students to university. As such, students are indirectly 'trained' to respond to tasks in a way that fulfills requirements, and are not necessarily rewarded grades commensurate with demonstrating mastery.

VELS provides a set of guidelines which make it unlikely to benefit all learners across all developmental continua. Add to this the fact that these guidelines will be deployed in a manner dependent on the teacher; they will be delivered with varying levels of expertise, consistency, enthusiasm and rigor. All of these factors must be considered while focusing on the most crucial ingredient - the subject content. With so many variables, it is easy to discern how students may become disengaged, or more realistically, confused.

Where to from here? Andy Lewis also writes about this topic and I've raised a few questions in his blog: http://mothernaturemeetsmotherboard.blogspot.com/. I guess the key is to encourage all students to learn. Building self-efficacy, as Albert Bandura points out, is a critical component of learning. So, if digital technologies facilitate this - great! But, even though digital technology is embedded in our lives and an awareness of its use is becoming essential, I think education must be balanced with traditional tools also.

Reference:
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., Clark, R. E. (2006). Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86.