I’ve commented many times that the pedagogy is always more important than the technology, and it’s a common statement from many folks in the training and education field. However, I’m wondering if that’s not quite correct. Perhaps it’s all about the technology.
Consider the classroom. The technologies that are selected have a direct impact on the learning context. Desks, whiteboards, curriculum, class duration and tests are all technologies. By limiting access to certain technologies and adopting others, one makes decisions that strongly influence learning. Some technologies empower users while others empower administrators. If it wasn’t about technology, then the best education venue would still be a cave wall and we would not have made any progress since then.
The industrial schoolhouse was a technology designed to educate more students and prepare them for an industrial workplace. Some technologies we use, others we ignore and some we ban. These decisions indicate where we stand in terms of our ideas about individual rights, democracy, critical thinking and education itself.
Unless you’re teaching in Plato’s cave, you’ve made decisions about technology; implicit or explicit. Anyway, I’m starting to think that it’s all about the technology, or the technology choices that we make.
Go read Jeff Utecht’s contribution to NextGen Teachers:I don’t care if you have 20 computers in a classroom or 20 pencils. They can not do or change education without the instructor understanding what can be done with the tool they have been given. The computer is… a new tool. You can give one to every child in your school, but if the instructor does not know what the tool can and can not do, how can you ensure that the tool will be used, used properly, and used to it’s fullest extent?
The computer is just hardware, I don’t care if it is branded Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, or Lenovo. It will not revolutionize education…that’s what educators are for.
I guess folks might argue over the “that’s what educators are for” bit: some might say educators are supposed to just transmit the information and make sure the kids learn it, not revolutionize anything, but that’s for another time.
Since I am reading Senge’s “Presence” right now, I was also taken with the discussion of how modern classrooms were set up to model assembly line environments, with a predetermined plan, and bells and whistles marking time, and tests and plans to keep things moving like one giant assembly line throughout each hour, day, and year.
As a facilitator and learning practitioner, I asked myself what kind of an environment I could set up for learners that modelled more the work environment that we have currently. Then I noticed, most of our work is done at individual desks (in cubicles), or in meetings where people sit in the same kind of sterile rooms (Has Ray Sims painted his office his deep creative red yet?) at mass produced tables and uniform chairs.
The nature of our work has changed, but a positive feedback loop has been set up here that is resisting significant change in our workplace environments. We have created our new, non-industrial work environments to match our education system, which was initially created to match our industrial workplace. And if people need to learn differently today, and work differently, how can both of these environments change structurally?
We are thinking about this in our organization now, and pitching a new Learning Centre for a new building, we will be taking all of this into consideration. Let’s hope that an institutional immune system (one that potentially rejects change) does not react against it!
Who says cave walls and language aren’t technology?
Is ‘pedagogy’ a meaningful discourse outside of technology? I think its hard to disentangle the two. Pedagogy is as much about the contextual use of technology (that is, innovation rather than invention) as anything else. And the ‘anything else’ is more closely related to the fields of management and resource planning than anything to do with ‘learning’.
However, my colleague presented a Hegelian argument for dissolving an alleged false dichotomy of pedagogy and technology at an eLearning conference a few years ago and got a combination of bewilderment and outright hostility for his troubles, so I wouldn’t wonder too loudly about this around people who’s livelihoods depend on the distinction.
Personally, I think from what I’ve been observing as to what happens in the field, the technology pushes and the organisational structure alternately pulls and resists. Pedagogy (or at least, pedagogic argument) sometimes is used as grease or as spanner, but its not the driving force.
I’m going back and forth, Harold, as to whether you wrote with tongue in cheek or with new found (and frustrated) curiosity.
All of this requires defining terms — and ultimately, that’s moving soil for most of us. Yes, we use the same terms (“techology” or “pedagogy” for ex) but rarely do we mean precisely the same thing from a personal bias point of view.
IF “technology” in the classic tense means a “tool” which provides a way to engage the world “outside” of our independent selves, and “pedagogy” suggests a formal/informal way of framing learning as the ‘teacher’, one should argue that BOTH are equals. As far as the learner is concerned, technology is merely a form of pedagogy; likewise, pedagogy a form of technology.
It’d be quite different if we were arguing the chicken-n-the-egg ratio if it was tech-vs-learning or pedagogy-vs-learning, but we’re not, so I’ll just allow the Vegas odds makers call it a push.
On the other hand, I’ll call on Winston Churchill who offers about architecture (the school design side of my soul, which lies in the “technology” side of things that Harold laid about above):
“First we shape our buildings; then our buildings shape us.”
Perhaps we can nod at this point and then realize that as the future and social networking tools (as they currently stand in their early days) are concerned, it should be further argued the that the tools/pedagogy are morphing more and more into an intuitive learner-driven issue which makes the “pedagogy” less and more important all at one times. But the “pedagogy” becomes centered in the learner rather than the teacher, and thus the ultimate issue becomes whether the “learner” or “pedagogy/technology” is of greater importance in the years to come.
And I think we’d have a much more intriguing debate altogether.
Great prompt, Harold!
Christian, I have to admit that my tongue was quite near my cheek but given some recent comments, I was definitely feeling some frustrated curiosity. I think it was an “in the shower moment” that went straight to the blog (usually my posts stew a while before posting).
Considering how little I wrote on this post, how could I have adequately covered all of the facets on this issue anyway? However, Scott has added much insight to what started as a fairly minor, “well, what would happen if I wrote …”
Finally, you have to admit that it is a chicken & egg situation and that “I only focus on the pedagogy” just doesn’t cut it, does it?
Always enjoy your contributions to the conversation.