How do New Designs for Education and Education Leadership Include Concepts of “Least Intrusive Education (LIE)? Or other forms of student-driven curriculum?

A presentation at the European education research Association conference, ECER, 2009: Vienna, Austria, 28 September, 2009.

By E. Alana James, Ed.D.

Article Highlights

• Introduction of the Future(s) of Education Project and the ideas behind it that drive change.

• Discussion of the Hole in the Wall Project and its implications for the future of education.

• Conclusion outlines  a matrix of educational design choices between student/educator-driven curricula or processes

Abstract                                                                                            

The purpose of this study is to determine whether and to what extent ideas of student-driven curricula  or “Least Intrusive Education” are provocative or interesting to an international discussion on the future of education.  The scope covers one year of project development, and six months of online interaction.  Methodology is mixed, based upon participatory action research cycles, analyzing data from weblogs, e-mails, articles, and a triangulated with quantitative evidence from a online survey.  Findings suggest that the  international community are considering whether and to what extent schools meet the needs of young people Read More...

Education is not rocket science, it is much harder than rocket science.  No scientist would willingly take on an experiment with an unlimited number of variables in motion all the time. Prof. at Teachers College, 2004

The designers of education in the late 1800s saw the problem as relatively simple.  In their time, cities were flooded with children previously living in rural communities, allowed to run free, causing havoc when their parents were at work in factories.  Sitting children in rows, forcing them to adjust to timetables, and teaching them the basics of literacy and numeracy, made perfect sense.  They could not have imagined the complexity of the global technological world our children will inherit.

Could it be that the entire system on which education is based is outmoded and in need of revamping but, that because it is all we know, we have difficulty imagining anything outside this box?  These are not a new ideas, building as they do on Dewey, Illich and others who pointed to both the necessity of democracy in bringing diverse voices together in learning, and the ways in which schools fail to capitalize on that potential (Hickman, 1998; Illich, 1971)?  Indeed, even a quick perusal of current literature will show:

1) Education is a hard job, with little pay, and difficult work place environments.

2) Authors and publishers focus on efforts to improve schools Read More...

Background

It requires troublesome work to undertake the alteration of old beliefs. Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey

Schooling implies custodial care for persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by the simple fact that a school has been built to serve them. Ivan Illich

The two quotes above, introduce key considerations regarding the distance between education and schooling. Yet, it is commonplace, wherever one travels in the world to have people complain about their “systems of education” as though there were no difference between education and schools. Margaret Mead would suggest, as she did when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever does,” that while it is hard work, it is important that people work together and believe they can help change these realities. These are the key concepts behind the Future(s) of Education Project and my work as an independent academic.

For the last six years, I have been pursuing the potential of using participatory action research (PAR) online, in networked groups, as a means of moving forward on complex issues in education. I see two parts to the PAR process: First participants need to work together without hierarchy based on their other roles in life. Second the process they follow needs to support communication, action and reporting back so others can learn what they do. PAR does a good job of ensuring both as it guides participants through a three-part cycle: discovery, action- measurement and reflection.  Read More...

Context

This research project builds on the initial work by the Hole in the Wall Project (Mitra, 2007; Mitra et al., 2005) and seeks, in part, to discover whether and to what extent his ideas of least intrusive education (LIE) were interesting or provocative to online participants during the first year of discussion in the Future(s) of Education Project. For those unfamiliar with the Hole in the Wall Project, Mitra embedded computers in the walls of villages in rural India. Without instruction, 100% of the children in the villages learned to browse the Internet, learning an average English vocabulary of 200 words, even in locations where they have seldom, if ever, heard English spoken. The startling thing about the project, to educators, but perhaps not to parents, is the fact that this huge scale of learning was accomplished with no instruction. From this, Mitra coined the phrase “least intrusive education” (LIE) suggesting that children know how to learn and that we should not get in the way as they do so. The methodology employed in the study of the Future(s) response to Mitra’s work was mixed, based upon participatory action research cycles, analyzing data from weblogs, e-mails, articles, triangulated with quantitative evidence from an online survey.

Methods and Scope

Participatory action research (PAR) is as much a philosophy as a methodological choice (Elliott, 2003).  I see it as both.  Philosophically PAR promotes the democratic power of the voice of diverse peoples to design their own worlds.  Methodologically I adopt a three step cycle that assures I apply data collection and analysis techniques to the actions I take and forces me to formally reflect and use those reflections as data to drive future actions.  Figure 2, below, diagrams resources of data and communication.  Read More...

Findings

1. International survey respondents show an overwhelming willingness (88%) to consider and support alternative forms of non-traditional school education.  The caveat on this finding is that, as is frequently the case with PAR studies, motivation to participate in the survey was likely driven by dissatisfaction with the status quo.
2. The first year participatory groups tended to centre their conversation on tensions with schools rather than on more strength-based approach of considering “What do our children need to thrive?”
3. The Hole in the Wall material was popular.  Using a ranking system based on number of website hits, the Hole in the Wall video ranked 14out of 89 and documents about the project ranked 38 and 48out of 89.
4. When the Hole in the Wall Project came up during participatory discussions, it was linked with the work of Ivan Illich and whether or not schools were a useful design for education.  What emerged was the dichotomy in the belief of whether or not young people are able to contain themselves and move forward based on an internal reference of control, or to what extent do they require external guidance?
5. Figure 4 (below) diagrams the topics of discussion across the network for the first six months.  Many topics were covered, however all of the groups and individuals discussed the debate around this issue of the amount of guidance that children require.   Read More...
   

Conclusion

LIE is at the far end of the continuum of conversation about how much control a young person should have on their education.  Western educators entertainment versions of this idea when they discuss student-centred education, although in that case it is usually seen as a set of potential activities resulting from top-down curricular choices.  As with constructivist theory, student-centred work is contained within the context of some other force telling the student and teacher what needs to be learned.

I have come to describe the circumstance whereby students decide what they want to learn as student-driven learning.  In this model, educators/facilitators help provide processes and direction so that that learning is efficient and inclusive of commonly agreed upon basics.  The debate can be graphically organized across two continuums in a matrix as is shown in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3:  Educator/student-driven curricular/educational choices 

Next Steps

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