Education for Well-being Education as if people and the planet mattered

The top-down, authoritarian model found in most classrooms today looks very different from the model many students experience when they learn online. The classroom’s hierarchical approach, with the sage on the stage, requires, (and, ultimately demands) passivity and deference on the part of the learner.  Informal, interest-driven networked learning, with its access to large stores of information and variety of opinion, on the other hand, takes a much different view of authority. It’s usually peer based, largely democratic, meritocratic, often creates dissonance due to variety and demands evaluation. Knowing what we do about active learning, one would seem clearly superior to the other.
 
Tim Clydesdale, in an article titled “Wake Up and Smell the New Epistemology” (The Chronicle of Higher Education), quotes one of his students, “I think this access to information seriously undermines this generation’s view of authority, especially traditional scholastic authority.” The recently published study Living and Learning with New Media states, “Youth using new media often learn from their peers, not teachers or adults, and notions of expertise and authority have been turned on their heads.” Online for several years now, students are deciding how to define expertise on their own terms and it looks nothing like what they are seeing in the classroom. Schools, in general, are not taking advantage of the power of peer-based learning or the benefits of a more decentralized type of expertise which lies outside of its ivory walls.

Many students, especially those who are participating in interest-driven networks, are more accepting of an authority which comes from the bottom up as opposed to from the top down. Credibility and reputation in networked publics is earned by high-quality, active participation.  In many cases, each contribution can be rated by participants, and the most prolific can earn titles such as “top reviewer”. This network-produced evaluation, coming from the bottom up, not only looks much different from what is happening in the classroom, but also motivates differently. The Living and Learning with New Media study found, “Our cases demonstrate that some of the drivers of self-motivated learning come not from institutionalized “authorities” setting standards and providing instruction, but from  youth observing and communicating with people engaged in the same interests, and in the same struggles for status and recognition, as they are.” The same study later describes a writer’s heightened sense of authenticity that comes from peer feedback as opposed to school evaluations: “It’s something I can do in my spare time, be creative and write and not have to be graded,” because, “you know how in school you’re creative, but you’re doing it for a grade so it doesn’t really count?” Opening up classes to genuine audiences seems like a worthy goal since it allows for a variety of feedback, often from peers, who by virtue of joining the conversation, show an extra-ordinary interest in the material–just the kind of person many would want to be evaluating their work.

It appears that most teachers today underestimate the amount of learning that is happening among youth outside of schools.  Since this informal learning sometimes dubbed “hanging out”, “messing around” or “geeking out”  happens outside of the classroom and doesn’t look like traditional learning, it’s easy for educators to miss. The quality and quantity of learning, the process by which it occurs, and the way authority is established in these informal environments, should be something that teachers become familiar with. Will Richardson, who writes extensively on these matters, believes that, “One of the biggest challenges educators face right now is figuring out how to help students create, navigate, and grow the powerful, individualized networks of learning that bloom on the Web and helping them do this effectively, ethically, and safely.” (see article)

In an age of vast, often dubious-quality information, learners interacting with decentralized networks will need to develop safe and effective ways of evaluating the information they consume as well as deciding on what information to make public. As today’s networked learners become less accepting of top-down authority, as barriers to publishing all but disappear, and as more students join informal learning networks, new pedagogies and literacies need to be developed by schools. Clay Shirky points out that when mass publishing was limited to a few, filtering of informaiton happened at the source of publication. Today, we need to learn how to effectively filter at the point of consumption. In a time when the emerging authority is potentially anyone, how can we not expose learners to these networks and, if needed, guide them along the way? But probably even more important, are the benefits this type of open learning offers to those seeking genuine feedback, authentic audiences, expertise, creative venues and the active engagement it requires from the participant. We should do all we can to better understand the benefits of informal learning networks and the potential contributions of bottom-up authority. It seems like they have much to offer traditional learning environments.

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