Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Crossing the Chasm: Reflections on the Future of Education and Participatory Culture

While I’m a bit late on the Jenkins/Convergence Culture scene, several ideas noted in Jenkins’ text have leapt out at me that I wanted to consider in greater detail as it relates to the teaching, learning, and computing.

As more and more Internet applications enter the market allowing consumers/users to engage “old media” (e.g., books, newspapers, television, etc.), the Read/Write Web is readily framed as a “vehicle for collective problem solving, public deliberation, and grassroots creativity” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 169).

What many of us focused on teaching, learning, and computing are currently experiencing is a certain tension between top-down structures (“school”) and bottom-up forces (“learners”) that ultimately requires us to begin rethinking what the future of education should look like.

Throughout Jenkins’ work, participation is the key ingredient in the mix. Educators and educational researchers have described this similarly over the years in terms of constructing a “student-centered” or “learner-centered” approach to teaching and learning as opposed to a teacher-centered approach.

And like the tension surrounding the integration of new media with the old, this learner-centric/participatory concept has been surrounded by conflicting expectations from administrators and teachers who hold close to a more prescriptive/prohibitionist stance and those who subscribe to a collaborationist stance that seeks to empower learners in ways heretofore considered rare or experimental.

Clearly, the closer we examine these two positions, the more complicated they become. As such, many scholars and writers argue that we are in a period of transition where one educational paradigm is being nudged out by another. While this premise can be argued ad infinitum, the Read/Write Web is indeed gaining a foothold in educational circles and will continue to challenge the ways in which learners learn and teachers teach.

To quote Jenkins directly, “None of us really knows how to live in this era of media convergence, collective intelligence, and participatory culture. These changes are producing anxieties and uncertainties, even panic, as people imagine a world without gatekeepers…” (p. 170). I love it: a world sans gatekeepers! Can you imagine?  [Indeed, this leads to a host of governance and equity issues that deserves more attention.]

Any early adopter of educational technology can easily agree with Jenkins’ assertion above. We are looking at a new way of thinking and engaging one another that does not map easily onto the conventional forms of teaching and learning as we know it. There is no consensus on how to work this thing, no right answers, no way to tell what far reaching effects this new media will have.

Jenkins frames this struggle in terms of what it means to be “literate” in this era of the Read/Write Web. In other words, who has the right to participate and on what grounds? Who has a voice and what rights do learners/speakers really have given current institutional constraints? Who determines how we educate our young thus determining how we shape our collective future?

Are you feeling it yet? The anxiety, the perturbation?

The Read/Write Web stands at the cultural and educational crossroads. New media like weblogs, wikis, online social networks, virtual worlds, et al., are enabling participation in ways never before dreamed. We have expanded our ability to pool our collective intelligence, collaborate, share and compare value systems, make connections across scattered bits of information, express our interpretations and feelings toward news, entertainment, popular culture, our daily professional practices, and circulate our creations that can be shared with others. Yet this may only be the tip of the iceberg.

What makes all of this all the more striking is, as noted above, that these processes enabled by the Read/Write Web are mostly beyond any direct control. As long as current educational policies constrain the ability for learners to tap into their passions, the more valuable the Read/Write Web becomes. “Affinity spaces” like fan sites or even the edublog’sphere itself offer tremendous opportunities for teaching, learning, and understanding that are sustainable precisely because people can participate in so many different ways regardless of age, class, gender, race or educational level. Learning in these spaces is based on peer-to-peer interactions, it’s based on intrinsic motivations of individuals wanting to know more, of wanting to build or refine their skills. And again, we’ve only just begun….

The reality is, we will probably remain in a state of transition and transformation for some time. The uncertainties surrounding the convergence of old and new approaches to teaching, learning, literacy, and participation empowered by technology will continue to challenge us on many cultural fronts. When asked what I feel about this state, my response is generally “Embrace the confusion!” I believe, like Jenkins and others, that those who fail to “make peace” with the affordances of the Read/Write Web will face a relatively shallow existence in a world that will always be defined by our level of participation.

I read somewhere that the future depends on what we do in the present. So, early adopters, keep rocking the boat! Eventually, all your hard work will pay off.

Reference:
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.