Active Learning

I was surprised by the point of view in Louise Williams’ article in Saturday’s SMH, The slow collapse of the ivory tower (16/4/11). She argues that recent developments in technology, such as the accessibility of information and the multitude of online lectures, are ‘challenging centuries old academic structures’, and that by default, universities are losing their primacy as the ‘ultimate arbiters and repositories of knowledge’.

I challenge this argument because at its centre is the idea that learning is the equivalent of reading or listening. This argument suggests that learning is merely ingesting content and that students are receptacles waiting to be filled with relevant content. Since Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, content/knowledge became available the world over, and the ‘repositories of knowledge’ were libraries where books were stored. Now, with the advent of the internet, content is ubiquitous. However, we have always known that accessing information is not equivalent to learning. If that were the case, then all we would have to do is read as many books as we can and we would have learnt everything the books had to tell us. The writer’s argument seems to rest on the concept that learning is just like her description of the 20^th century model of education, ‘a largely one-way transmission of facts, theories and ideas’.

If only learning was that simple.

All educators know that learning occurs when the student changes. This change takes place in the student’s knowledge, in attitude, in skill, in perspective, in behaviour. All educators, from early childhood to post-graduate level, design thinking and learning activities so that the new content (knowledge, skills, values or processes) doesn’t just pass through the brain but is learnt. Educators provide opportunities for students to discover new knowledge themselves, to test it, to share it and then even to question it. Educators offer students opportunities to contextualise and personalise the new knowledge, to process it. Educators provide the means by which students activate their new knowledge, apply it to situations, consider how best to use their new knowledge, and consider its value, if any.

Educators open the dialogue which is learning. Education is not, nor has it really ever been, ‘a largely one-way transmission of facts, theories and ideas’, as Louise Williams describes. Learning is not just reading or listening to a lecture. Students are not receptacles waiting to be filled with knowledge. They are human beings who think and feel and engage with the world individually. Thus, students will always need educators, whether in schools or universities, to help them learn. 

The Reading Revolution 2

I haven't time to write a full post today but I had to make a quick comment about Malcolm Knox's essay in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald. It was called Driven by Distraction and its core argument echoed some points I made in my previous post.  He uses evidence from the work of Nicolas Carr and Susan Greenfield to argue that the decline in book sales is a result of people no longer being interested in deep reading, thanks to the changes in our brains as a result of the reading and viewing practices that the internet encourages . It is an excellent read for those who might have missed it. 


For those with more time on their hands I highly recommend the interview with Nicholas Carr about his book The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way we Think, Read and Remember. I have put in my Book Depository order for this one!

The Reading Revolution

Everywhere I turn, experts and pundits are espousing new technology, constantly urging us to experience the digital education revolution, BYOT, and replace books with the internet. We cannot hold back the tide of technological development and we shouldn’t even try. Because surely there is another, possibly bigger issue here. Soon it won’t matter what device you use to read - paper or screen - it will matter whether you are capable of reading.

Recent articles have suggested that reading patterns have changed as information is gleaned from digital sources. As on-screen information is blended with graphics, space, and moving images, the eye moves around more than its traditional left to right, top to bottom movement familiar in English and other Western languages. Let’s not forget the kind of writing many students are reading in their social use of media – short sharp tweets or facebook posts. 

Many scholars are discussing how these reading practices will impact on sustained reading of the ‘long-form text’. Just because novels, essays, manuals and textbooks can be displayed in digital form, does not mean that they have become simpler texts to read. Modes of educational delivery are also changing with technology. A number of Australian universities and schools have given students iPads or other mobile devices to use to access information, and one can only assume that this means the information/content will not be delivered in a lecture or class. Consequently, students of today (and the future) are going to need to be able to comprehend all of the information which is now at their very fingertips, and this will involve reading.

So what is my point in all this?

Instead of simply assuming all students will be able to access meaning in texts (digital or paper) once they have completed Primary school, we will need to be more active in our teaching of reading, particularly encouraging students to engage with long-form texts. If an essay takes 4000 words to successfully argue its point, then the reader needs so many skills and strategies to follow the logic of that argument and ascertain its merit in their search for information. This is the same with a novel or textbook. And it is this kind of sustained reading which invites all learners into more complex thinking. Whilst I have no data to offer here, it is my belief that reading and thinking are interdependent.

Thus, all teachers, of all subjects, need to share the responsibility for the literacy of our students. And whilst this is happening on a number of levels, it seems time to deepen our understanding of the following:

• How reading operates
• How it is taught (and sometimes even re-taught)
• How it is assessed
• How we can teach useful strategies to access meaning in all texts. 

(My thanks to Jenny P for her recent inspiration for this blog post.)