Unlearning How to Teach

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Unlearning How to Teach

• Erica McWilliam
• QUT

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The critics say

• Schools are squelchers
• Richard Florida

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The critics say

• Schools are places where young people go to
  watch old people work
• Viv White

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The critics say

• Schools serve an important social function in
  turning most people off learning
• Michel Foucault

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The core accusation?

• The deadly habitude of an educational world
  that is tired and increasingly out of touch with
  cultural processes for creating and disseminating
  knowledge.

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The Double Bind

• importance of taking risks (learning is risky,
• needs a culture of experimentation)
• AND
• importance of not taking risks (child protection,
  risk-averse policy setting)

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Questions

• What habits have we acquired to date?
• What new habits do we need to develop and
  practise?
• Where do we start?

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Teacher as master

• all-knowing
• guru status
• charismatic
• the expert
• the sage on the stage

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Teacher as facilitator

• focus on the learner
• teacher as helper
• student becomes the master
• guide on the side

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Feminism and teaching

• focus on the (power) relationship
• mentor/mentoree
• awareness of unequal power

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Mass education

• Diverse populations
• access
• flexibility
• new roles

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Technology and Teaching

• no body teaching no body?
• cyborgs in cyberspace
• information literacy

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Education as a marketplace

• student as client
• teacher as service provider
• gloss, energy and optimism
• awards, shopfront activity
• user pays

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Auditable Education

• Accountable systems
• Teachers as system
• managers
• Learning output is measurable
• Whats counted counts
• Measures become targets

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lifelong learning or sentencing learners to
life?
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What holds people back is - often as not - their
knowledge, not their ignorance Charlie
Leadbeater
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The new habit of unlearning

• Why unlearn?
• Learning itself has lost much of its survival
  value
• because
• routine (habitual responses to repetitive
  situations) is no longer central to social
  practice.

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• Your guess and know-how are as good as their
  last application
• (Zigmunt Bauman, 2002)

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Beyond orthodox habits

• Habits too tightly embraced now burden the social
  instead of value-adding (Zigmunt Bauman)
• Need to invest in processes (not structures) to
  assemble and dissemble cultural forms
• Flexibility is the name of the new rationality

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Teaching

• the capacity to judging the right mix of BOTH
  learning and unlearning to create new value.

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Teachers and students - co-creators of value

• Shift from idea of consumer to co-creating value
  (eg, IKEA build it and add value)
• Shift from supply chain thinking to value network
  (teachers can and will be by-passed)
• Shift from firm level thinking to system level
  thinking schooling frame too narrow
• (adapted from Hearn, 2005)

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user input
value add
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New teaching habits

• Remix is an ordinary practice part of our
  choices, our consumption patterns, our talk
• New digital technologies make for less text-
  dependant remixing - these are the preferred
  tools of the young
• The new habit of engaging in remix activity with
  students to assemble and dissemble new ways of
  representing reality

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New remix capabilities

• The editing and re-organisation of reality is a
  genuine skill (Sir David Hare)
• The core of education exists in optimising the
  capacity to re-express ideas freely through
  remixing the culture. (Lawrence Lessig The
  Future of Ideas, 2001)

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The re-mixable curriculum

• Content to be meddled with and the pedagogical
  skills to cut-and-paste in ways that add value to
  knowledge and social relationships.

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sage on the stage
guide on the side
meddler in the middle
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• Position Vacant
• Team leader for exciting new e.business.
  Successful applicant should be disloyal, break
  rules, resent authority, ignore punctuality and
  flout dress codes. CBD. 150k options

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collarless work
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There is no going back
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Multi-platform simple design that unpacks a
complex set of things

• ScionSpy contest
• HazeRetrospective graffiti artist
• Scionware
• Shirts
• Polo
• Pullovers
• Key chain
• T shirts
• Skull caps
• Basketball jersey
• Sunglasses
• Camouflage bag

• Web Casting
• Installation Art Tour
• On-line chat
• Desktops
• Screensavers
• Graffiti tool
• Scion Music Urban music
• Sound engine
• Scion Exposed massive group photo

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Keep it simple when designing learning
activities

• Simple designs are more robust
• Evolvable, parallel experiments
• Simple interfaces for combining and recombining
  normal activities
• Clear strategies for knowing what to do when you
  dont know what to do
• Assessment systems that value collage building,
  co-created cultural products and the ability to
  solve problems and generate new ones.

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Teaching as a palimpsest

• Not about abandoning old teaching practices
• but
• including new editorial and collage making skills
  and mobilising traditional forms for optimising
  learning and unlearning.

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I can ignore all this and hope it will go away