Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Investing In What Works: Teachers, Learning Environments, and Passion Communities

better mistakes Angela Maiers tweeted this news story from EdWeek, Obama Links Ed Tech to Economic Growth, which caught my eye this morning.

My favorite line in the article, "Although the details have yet to be revealed..." is reason to be concerned by all parties interested and invested in educational reform.

I re-read through the Obama-Biden campaign plan for education (linked in the EdWeek article) which provides a clear direction for change and investment in teaching and learning, but alas, provides no clear sign of how the mission will be accomplished. It is not clear in this age of high stakes assessments if we will be shifting away from the current focus on rewarding those who preform well on standardized measures/instruments.

The EdWeek article itself mentions the new administrations desire to place more computers in schools, which is clearly not the solution, as any reader of Seymour Papert can attest. Linking broadband access to competitiveness is also shy of the mark especially as pundits and technocrats still seem to be putting the cart (money) before the horse (teacher).

It's not just about the Internet
It seems the medium is still being confused with its message. The Web is only as useful as the minds accessing it. Technology writers and pundits are still confusing information with data. While the Web fills up exponentially with lots of new content daily, it's only data until somebody uses it for a specific purpose.

obama Obama, bless him, used technology and the Internet to market himself better than his competition. People took his marketing data and converted it into information that informed their vote one way or the other. The critical role technology played for the president-elect was based on his teams' understanding of media literacy, i.e., knowing how to use the tools and the data and to get into peoples' heads and wallets and getting them to act. Perhaps the question is, can we teach educators this same bag of tricks? And if so, how much time and money is he willing to put into it?

STEM is the Word
As far as one can see, most calls for grant proposals in education are related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Naturally, one can teach reading and writing as an embedded component of this focus. However, finding qualified educators to support this effort is clearly the larger issue. The cost to recruit, educate, and train talented, motivated people in this endeavor is still the $64 billion dollar question.

What I would Like To See
To borrow liberally from James Gee, teachers need to be rewarded for innovating themselves, for bringing new tools into play in meaningful ways. The problem is, somewhere between 1960 and 2009, teaching became de-professionalized. Many school districts across the globe allowed textbooks, tests, politicians, and schools of education to supervise teachers, create curricula for them, in ways that take away teachers' professional responsibilities to build their own curriculum and to think strategically about how learning works in their classroom, school, and community.

The Learning Environment as a Passion Community
What if teachers learn along with their kids and focus on modeling learning? One can learn a lot from an expert. However, you can often learn even more doing it yourself and/or with somebody else. Learning communities, communities of interest, or as Gee refers to them, passion communities, engage in this collaborative learning style of mentorship. In such a community you get to watch other people learn and you get to try it yourself, and one is able to give and received meaningful feedback. There's no reason we can't put teachers in this domain.

science fair Sexy Time
Adopting this type of learning environment stance will lead to us to making teaching a more sexy job. Most schools I see and work with are not cool. And what teacher or student wants to spend time and effort in conventional learning environments? If we are going to invest billions in our infrastructure, let's create spaces that are cool, inviting, where one can experience life/learning in different physical spaces, with different types of tools, working side by side, solving real problems.

I expect such a shift will start in colleges and eventually trickle down to the primary schools (because if students aren't getting this treatment in college, they certainly won't be getting in high schools and primary schools, which, for the most part, model themselves as small colleges).

The challenge of technology education and change is here. I'm happy to see the new administration starting the conversation. I believe it's up to us to make it a reality.