Stephen Downes recently referred to a paper written by Kelvin Tan and Cynthia Lim Ai Ming, entitled No Subjects, No teachers, No Schools, No Peers – Just problems: Arguments for a minimalist approach for maximising the scope of problem-based learning (PDF). This paper is a good review of why the process of learning, especially problem solving, should be separated from subject-based curricula, teacher-assessors and peer pressure in education.

My only criticism is that the authors have not referred to the excellent work conducted by Dave Jonassen, author of Learning to Solve problems: An Instructional Design Guide. One of Dave’s remarks that has stuck with me is that as adults, most people are paid to do only one thing – solve problems. Neither our school systems nor most of our training programs prepare people to solve problems.

Tan and Lim Ai Ming make some very strong comments in favour of the separation of content (subject & disciplines) and process (learning & problem solving). They begin by stating that, “The authors of this paper suggest that the retention of subjects or disciplines in PBL is an unnecessary obstacle to students’ learning”. The paper is then structured around these premises:

• Learning should be based on problems, not subjects.
• Subjects stress content rather than process
• Individual learning is authentic [and group work may hinder this learning]
• When the teacher is also the assessor, then the power to fail students may be detrimental to self-directed learning
• Teachers as content experts (such as at a university) may be detrimental to self-directed learning.
• Scheduled class times, as in any regulated school, are not supportive of problem-based learning.

In a recent interview on EdTech Talk, David Warlick talks about how the web has greatly increased the amount of available information. No one can master any content field any more. Now we see students having better access to information as well as access to more people than many of their teachers. I am referring to students who may be using IM and VoIP to chat with their friends in Asia, while the teacher is covering Asian social studies in class. The student just checks with the online friend and gets the information in context. Which information is correct – the textbook or the online peer? It doesn’t matter. What really matters, for their lifelong needs, is that students are learning how to learn and how to solve problems. However, mastery of the curriculum (content) is what the school administration assesses.

A similar content focus is seen in corporate e-learning. “Let us put your content online” some vendor may cry. We also have industry shoot-outs; to see who can convert PowerPoint content into e-learning courseware. It’s all about content because it’s easy to build a course based on defined content since there are no messy, individual, radical learners to get in the way. Only a fictional, generalized target population. My experience is that neither the public educational system, higher education nor the corporate training business have made any great achievements in facilitating learning. In many cases learning occurs in spite of the obstacles presented by formal training and education.

A shift in emphasis away from content delivery changes the role of the teacher/trainer. As Tan and Lim Ai Ming note, teacher as assessor and teacher as facilitator may be conflicting roles. The same goes for teacher as expert and teacher as guide. The separation of trainers and assessors is common practice in the Canadian military, where the trainer is responsible for assisting each learner, and a separate group (the Standards Section), confirms that operational standards are met through summative evaluation. When properly implemented, it is a good training system.

Today there is no shortage of information on most subjects. However, many graduates lack critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Facilitating the development of these skills, not mastery of a defined subject area, should be the role of educators and trainers. I believe that this will only happen when they abandon the roles of assessor and expert and become true learning facilitators.

Via Will Richardson is this post from Dave Weinberger on the State of Maine’s laptop in schools initiative for every student in Grade 7 & 8, as well as this comment about a high school principal:

On Will’s post there are comments that this kind of approach to education is too narrow and students will burn out. Thinking a bit more on this, I don’t see this as a critical problem. The schools that I see have already reduced physical education and art to such a lowly state that concerned parents have to supplement them with outside activities anyway. If the school only focuses on one area, that may not be so bad, as I don’t believe that public education can solve all of our problems. I would recommend that you read all of Weinberger’s post and follow the links. Again, there are no easy answers.

I participated in the EdTech Talk today that featured Jay Cross and George Siemens. The conversation flowed and the chat room stayed active with Stephen Downes and many others adding additional perspectives. The initial conversation centered on Connectivism and Informal Learning but meandered to many other corners of the learning field.

Some of George’s comments about learning and education and the conflict around what a good education should be, got me thinking about the work of Kieran Egan. His book, The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape our Understanding, begins with the statement that Western education is based on three conflicting premises which compete for dominance. These three premises are:

• education as socialization
• education as a quest for truth (Plato)
• education as the realization of individual potential (Rousseau)

Since no one premise can dominate without precluding the others, we continue to have conflict in our education system. Our public education system was created to give equal access to all (a good thing) and to prepare workers for industrial jobs (a self-serving thing for the corporations). Public education was embraced by reformers as well as factory owners.

The problem is that education has become all things to all people, and this conflict is clear in Egan’s book. You cannot socialize, seek the truth and realize individual potential all at the same time — within a single, enclosed system.

This lack of agreement on what our education system should be, is also muddying the waters in our discussions about learning. My experience is that few people disagree with any one of these premises on its own. So which one is the primary premise? Should there even be a primary premise? Without one, we keep bouncing around like pinballs, addressing symptoms but not root causes.

When reduced to the basic process, I believe that learning is an individual and personal activity. Learning has social aspects and can be helped or hindered in many ways. How we build systems to nurture, support or coerce it, are the issues that we can address as a community. First though, we have to have a common understanding of what we’re trying to achieve.

Brian Alger [dead link] has an excellent article on the key role that curriculum plays in the development of education. Anyone involved in learning, whether as a designer, teacher, faciliator or administrator, should read this article which describes in clear terms that education is not learning and that curriculum is a constraining force that must be understood if we wish to foster learning. I found the link between curriculum and bullying especially enlightening, as my wife has been studying, writing, and presenting on bullying in schools for the past several years:

One of the effects of curriculum design of any kind is confinement. And the confinement of human experience is an act of violence. A common example of this confinement via curriculum leading to violence is bullying.

On the question of, “Do we need curriculum?”, these additional questions show its mind-numbing effects:

When we ask the question we are also asking if we need the concept of the prerequisite, imposed forms of content, sterile classrooms as a primary location, fragmented schedules of time, as well as impersonal and ineffective forms of testing and evaluation.

Curriculum development is an enormous industry in our public education systems, and moving away from curriculum design and on to the greater task of fostering learning will be a huge, but worthwhile task.

Challenging the validity of curriculum in any form means to challenge people’s jobs whether they are political officials, school administrators, consultants, teachers, students or parents. Part of the immense control and authority that curriculum has is that it provides careers and therefore sources of income. This, in my own experience, is where I have found the most significant roadblock to change and innovation.