venerdì 4 febbraio 2011

About taxonomy of Learning Theories

My experience of teacher
in a vocational school made me think a lot of use on the approach proposed by the theory of network connectivity and I feel close to the critical Antonio Calvani.

The basis of our society is made up of people who have very little technical expertise, technical, cultural and motivational why I think that only after great efforts by teachers and appropriate support will be able to acquire the minimum skilss and awareness that, perhaps, allow them to use the net benefit of an intelligence and connective knowledge.

"A wild transfer of connectivism to school would lead to think that putting
students on the net is enough to produce knowledge, thus consolidating that
widespread harmful cliché according to which the more technologies we use,
anyway we do it, the better it is for learning.
The undervaluation of the complexity of technical and cognitive operations
is however a form of egocentricity peculiar to expert methodologists. They
forget that they have become familiar with these operations after a long, tiring
training pathway in which there is usually also a deep contribution of traditional
Je-LKS
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— Communications - Vol. 4, n. 1, febbraio 2008
culture: they project their own expert world thinking that students can become
part of it in a natural or intuitive way.
Trying to get down to facts with more precise references:
when it is assumed that children learn spontaneously to act in the net,
we should remember that this concerns only the lowest levels of technical
functionalities. Continuous observations coming from teachers and also
from recent researches, such as those on cognitive load, highlight how the
capacity to move consciously on the net, to filter and manage information,
to make an inquiry calls for metacognitive abilities, a conceptual horizon
that young people usually do not possess, even more so if they have grown
up exclusively in the digital culture; their activities in the net remain in the
end mainly unorganized, extemporary and superficial. The construction of
a mind capable of using consciously the net is not a datum that emerges
from a simple frequentation with technology; it is a task that school must
intentionally and gradually attain through modalities and forms to be sought
partly also outside the technological dimension;
when emphasis is laid on multi-perspectivity as a fundamental element
of a new idea of knowledge, we should remember that most people possess
a rather limited level of epistemological development and remain attached
to a substantially transmissive view of knowledge: they prefer to have certainties.
Knowledge as conversation is disturbing and destabilizing for the
majority, it is a route fit for intellectual minorities;
when, using the taxonomy about/to do/to be/where/to transform, it is
asserted that our current structures of knowledge memorization (books,
libraries, museums, etc.) are limited to the first two levels and that competences
of higher level are built through reflection and informal learning, we
should not forget that the (static) basis of the pyramid enables individuals to
develop the highest competences and that the role of school – just because
we are living today in the complexity of a reticular society in continuous
motion - is, in the first place, redefining clearly and giving prominence to
the foundations, basic competences and knowledge in their graduality and
propaedeuticy."

A. Calvani "Connectivism: new paradigm or
fascinating pot-pourri?"

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