Responding to Nowhere & Everywhere -- Social Practice, Culture, and Learning

Social practice is the sequencing of actions that allow us to function in the material world. We need to be able to understand what is going on in a society to effectively function within it. Actions are not only interpersonal but are constituted in a society. They are patterns of actions--practices. As a society we must be able to understand these actions, such as hide and seek a game not a way of avoiding police.  

Education is a vital part of creating and interpreting social practice. When we share knowledge there are a number of paths it can take. We can see our goal as trying to add to the cumulative knowledge of each individual and/or the distributed knowledge within a given community. That is to say that the cumulated knowledge of the individual, when shared as the distributed knowledge (what all the individuals of a community know) becomes something a lot more powerful. Distributed knowledge is more diffuse and generative.  In the education system, we tend to assess knowledge only in its individual cumulative form (testing an individual) when a more accurate evaluation might be how a community solves and anticipates problems through distributed (accumulated social practices) knowledge. Distributed knowledge is a lot more powerful and radical because it implies that when we share knowledge we help each other solve problems, both personal and societal.

A sophisticated society uses all its media to distribute knowledge. Music, literature, this is what a culture does, it attempts to distribute knowledge. Some cultures/societies might try to block the distribution of knowledge, especially when technology has created so many ways for people to distribute (pool) their understanding and problem solving capabilities. Knowledge is not cumulative in the individual but distributed to the community. This is how it should be judged and evaluated.

When we talk about a particular culture/society we might say we are talking about the dominant culture mostly, but there are also so many subsets that also work within this framework. The subsets (ethnic communities, subcultures, others with under narrated stories) operate within the greater community but also have their own distribution systems, some more effective than others. These subcultures often struggle mightily to develop and distribute information that is important against the barriers/colonialism of the dominant culture. When unique wisdom is distributed from a subgroup or an individual into the wider culture that is reason to celebrate. It is the Black Fantastic of Richard Iton, who posits that the solution for a culture that is denied love from the greater community is to distribute/generate it and then share it outwards. Music is a prime mover in this effort. We must use our own indigenous culture and thought to fight against the cultural colonialism of the dominant power (s).

The politics of difference and how cultures interact in a dominant society describes both the modernistic progression and also a postcolonial phase where there is a disruption between what is defined and how that is changed. These interventions by the subset can be seen as not only being black, but feeling black. That the change agent is the idea, not the person behind the idea. The feeling not the feeler. The artist does not only describe or show what is "real" but responds to it and agitates for or against it--when they do this within capitalism they might be described as capitalistic orphans. The instrumentalized roles that the system wants us to portray or complete without an understanding versus the autonomous roles that we can do more creatively.

For Iton and others, this struggle for distributed knowledge is an attempt to redefine personal and collective histories and bodily descriptions. The ego is not that important collectively but individually it might be important as a generative agent-- so we can experience and embody ourselves and our communities differently. It is all about agency and grooving until the end of time.

By turning the colloquial into the academic, we can work towards getting social practice more tightly woven into the curriculum. We can also use this understanding to improve our teacher intelligence, that is our ability to turn authentic and applicable objectives into engaging activities and assessments and then letting our students build on that, free of unnecessary power relationships.

In terms of what this force of integrating social practice might look like in the classroom, we can use some of the description of Bell Hooks from the Wikipedia article about her "In her book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Hooks investigated the classroom as a source of constraint but also a potential source of liberation. She argued that teachers' use of control and power over students dulls the students' enthusiasm and teaches obedience to authority, "confin[ing] each pupil to a role, assembly-line approach to learning.”^[16] She advocated that universities encourage students and teachers to transgress, and sought ways to use collaboration to make learning more relaxing and exciting. She described teaching as “a catalyst that calls everyone to become more and more engaged”.^[17]" 

One way to liberate learning from some of the inherent contradictions and limitations of the classroom (and expose learning to different contradictions and limitations to further its growth) is to blend together the academic and vernacular. That is to try and build learning experiences into content rich experiences from day-to-day experience. We can use activities that create content that the students have a role in describing. In that way we can build social practice into the education process in a more dynamic way then simply reinforcing cultural tropes. For example, we can have students use an online source like the Wall Street Journal to identify a current event article and then have the student use that article title to find full text of the article in a library's Wall Street Journal index. In this way we are introducing the concept of using both public and private databases to create value. Students (and faculty) see the benefits of using both types of resources, and librarians create learning objects to reinforce this relationship and teach students how to do it, as shown through this tutorial. We use the social practice of scanning the Wall Street Journal homepage for news into an academic exercise of using library databases to build on the value. 

When I thought of Jorge Luis Borges' quote about heaven being a library, I imagined it was an expression emblematic of the instructivist notion that wisdom is inside a source outside oneself and you acquire this wisdom (a little bit of heaven) through absorption and application. The author is the teacher and the reader is the student. It made me a bit melancholy but also helped me understand that many librarians saw themselves as traditional teachers, presenting information/library collections and reference service in an objective way as our main educational goal. Helping students and others know about and find books and presenting programs about subjects and strategies for acquiring learning. 

As I read a little bit more about Borges and his poetic representations of learning and knowledge I thought perhaps he did embrace the constructivist notion that I am more comfortable with, as this quote makes clear: "the fact is that poetry is not the books in the library … Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book."  This suggests Borges had a more constructivist model of engagement/learning that it is not the book that is heaven (or knowledge) but rather our interaction with the book that creates the paradise. This suggests that librarians can take their spot along with other activists and educators as creating programs, content, and other teaching/learning opportunities that encourages engagement with knowledge and formulation of content and relationships that not just reflect the world (past, present, and future) but can actively encourage people to change themselves and the world (past, present, and future).  Librarians are not objective teachers only presenting content and programs through books and other materials and programs but can be engaged in presenting scenarios to be solved through interaction with knowledge and tradition but also, perhaps, to transcend it. 

This is, for me, the essence of constructivism, as the instructor identifies key objectives, develops activities that develop those objectives, and then create the mechanism so that participants can construct their understanding of the objectives based on the activities and feedback from themselves and others, with oversight of the instructor.  

Education and the Social Practice  

Research skills initially mirrored the information skills necessary to participate in the economy/politics of the time (Prussian). These skills included: to evaluate information, to compare it with other information, to synthesize information from different sources, to identify the most crucial pieces of information available (critical thinking). These were the skills needed by citizens (white male landowners and perhaps a few others) to give them the skills to fully participate as citizens.  

Today, those participatory citizens skills are no less important, but they have gotten more expansive, as society has become more advanced technologically and culturally.
These skills are necessary not only for those involved with traditional higher education, but also for self-directed/self motivated learners that might not be looking for a graduate degree. 

Here are some questions around the contention that education mimics the culture that creates it:

What are the privileges of learning and how are they distributed? Do the right people have access? do others have access? Amount of free time. Economic creativity. Why should capitalism have all the options of solving the problems? Who has access to the tools of learning -- production of learning opportunities. Always the power, the instructor. Should students create an assignment for the next class.  Do we need to have technology skills as well, not just to learn, but to create knowledge, which is becoming increasingly important?   

Subject specialist changes meaning when there is so much knowledge available on the Internet. We will need our instructors to guide much more in the shared economy and often this will include guiding us to other experts. There can be no fear of job replacement in this scenario as it is wealth creation. No one way to have fun and learn.

The educational possibilities of the shared economy are very deep and varied. For example, Air BNB opens up travel feedback to a whole slew of the population that before did not share their views with other parts of the population.

One of the challenges of online/blended learning is to appeal to the sense of place that f2f has. People want to come together.  In Boston, for example, there are so many people that want to see and experience the Harvard campus (such as rubbing the foot on the statue of John Harvard). Blended and online will become less foreign as they develop their own emotional centers with their traditions and their own sense of place.

Social practice and learning can also interact around the concept and process of the question. The question is a time-honored part of any traditional learning structure. An expert/speaker presents information/analysis and then the audience has a time for questions. This questioning is an important part of the process as it gives the audience a chance to connect thoughts and ideas, interact with the speaker and each other, and add content to the gathering.

Generally in the question and answer period, there is a question or series of questions and then a response. How powerful it was when there was a presentation and there was a whole series of questions that did not necessarily get responded to by the speaker, as there would not have been time for all of the questions if matched with a response. The questions stood as content on their own, as the audience and speaker treated them as content on their own. Some audience members responded to other people's questions and in this way it became more like a discussion board in an online environment.  In this regard, questions are not a source of confrontation or clarification, but of audience members contributing to the creation of knowledge.

Social Practice is also deeply involved with unsuccessful learning. Administrators and others may be quick to focus on outside interventions, such as tutoring, bridge programs, and the like. And, these are all good as long as these practices are sustainable and do not detract too much from the teaching and learning in the classroom. After all, learning and teaching were the original interventions to the challenge of progress. We can not water that reality down too much.

We tend to view research as being good for academic grades and life-long learning, but it turns out that there are cognitive reasons to do research. The brain loves to adapt and learn new things. It turns out that research is the type of active learning that increases brain functioning over time, with skills like memory, critical thinking, and word skills. So, when you think you are doing something for the present, it turns out that we are doing something for our cognitive futures as well. 

Problem-Based Learning; Curriculum as Problem Solving

One way to strengthen the current learning model based on subject content is the integration of problem-based learning. This is obviously not a new idea as schools like MIT give their students problems that they have to solve based on available resources/new ideas.

Problem/Scenarios work, I think, because they create a tension that participants have to solve and therefore helps students see and apply relationships or develop their own. If we look at subject content as the "notes" then the learning becomes the "space between the notes." Scenarios, based on subject content, then becomes the vehicle for participants to engage with the content and create their own ways of expressing and modifying their learning.

Scenarios are effective because they build on the reality that our brains have more capacity than our ears/eyes. We process information faster than we can express it. Our brains are always trying to fill in the gaps and scenarios let us experiment with solutions while we are still listening/reading. Mind the gap is where the learning is.

We might rather look at issues around problem solving. Problem solving, I think, has a more specific application in terms of situations. What do I need to do and then how should I do it. Helping our students to correctly identify a problem and then solve it in an academically appropriate and sophisticated way is still a challenge. But, when we view our classes as a series of problems to be solved (in creative ways) as we provide the tools for solving the problem, this can help us communicate challenges in a clear and solvable way.

The key would be devising interactive relevant problems to solve. Interdisciplinary instructor teams would set these up and then market the problems to the students to convince them they were the ones that were needed. Instructors would use statistics, their personalities, logic, etc. to show students why their problems were necessary for the present and future. History instructors would justify their curriculum to the community (rather than a curriculum committee) based on what their problem was, how important it was, and how qualified they were to solve it. Instructors could also set up interdisciplinary teams to address these issues collectively and in some ways help the students visualize a path towards a solution.

One possible problem might be to develop a database for other students to use. The students would have to get others on their team to help with the skills they need or acquire the skills themselves. They would have to justify what they were doing within the time and expense of doing it. A final solution would be evaluated based on how well it responded to certain parameters. These problem sets would give students more value than a traditional class.

The problem-based approach helps us see the distinction between learning and work. Some of the most effective learning I have done is when I am tying disparate ideas together to create something new. That is not work in the traditionally academic meaning, in my opinion. It is doing my own personal blending of ideas. Kind of like putting together a puzzle may seem like a lot of work but in actuality it is a series of inspirations followed by looking for new patterns.

In his book The Rise of Superman Steven Kotler posits that achieving the state of "flow" is the way to get optimal creative and athletic performance. There are many words for flow, but it constitutes the ability to focus our attention and effort in such a concentrated way that we optimize performance. We can not perform miracles in this state, but we can steadily improve about four percent each time if done properly. In the radio interview I heard, Kotler explained that a surfer could go from a 20 foot wave to a 25 foot wave in a series of flow event trainings, eventually leading to more better performances.

Kotler says there are 17 trigger events for flow and they are tied to our biological survival urge. When we can channel this energy, we can grow physically and intellectually. The events need to draw us into the now as we challenge ourselves to improve our performance through concrete physical and mental goals. We need to create tension and then resolve it.

The key to these trigger events is that they should not really create fear, etc., but get our minds to mimic and respond to these situations. We need to be stimulated and this is why learning environments need to challenging and stimulating without being too much so.

In "Why Jim Harbaugh is Still Throwing" in the Wall Street Journal coach Jim Harbaugh talks about how he plays a game of catch with prospective quarterbacks to get a sense of their competitiveness and other intangibles. This reminds me of the biblical story of how a leader will evaluate potential warriors by watching them drink water from a stream and judging potential warriors with how they drank, either by cupping their hands so that they are always ready or by putting their mouths in the water, which left them vulnerable.

Scenarios as a method of solution visualization worked for me as I was trying to figure out how I felt about the situation in Gaza, with the conflict between Israel and Palestinians. I could not describe how I felt, but rather came to a greater sense of equilibrium through a series of questions I asked myself. Do I want a long term solution? Does this seem like part of a long term solution? Is war preferable to dialogue? As I asked myself these questions, I became more comfortable with how a felt about the situation and how to describe where I wanted to be going with my thoughts and feelings. I did not feel trapped into an either/or proposition or solution.

We might also think of curriculum development as a form of problem solving. We can develop activities and learning objectives to help people gather information and make decisions. I was talking to someone about an interpersonal situation where people were not jelling as a team. I suggested some processes/activities that would get us working together or at least possibly working together. Once the process starts, we can use reflection and other strategies to modify or change the curriculum.

Dualism and the Open Classroom --Different Ways of Seeing?

Adopting and/or changing narratives to create a dualistic approach has important implications for education.  I am thinking that at first in the United States we had the theory of the melting pot, where different nationalities/people gave up something of themselves so that the greater good would function. This was followed by the concept of multiculturalism, where different nationalities/people would each contribute what they are, what they have, without sacrificing who they were. We would become a collection of identities. Now, perhaps we need to come to the point where we need to be able to hold dual narratives spontaneously. We need to be both individuals and collectives simultaneously.

I heard a speaker on critical theory, Professor Jürgen Habermas, University of Frankfurt, discussing how we have both a civic solidarity and an informal solidarity and we need a way to expand our consciousness to include both as with a nationalism (dedication to the state as our collective/democratic problem solving entity) and also a supra state that  exists beyond our state to enable us to resolve those collective problems that can't be solved on the national level. His example of this supra state would be the European Union, a collective. The United States, is, of course, a federal system, which brings together states in a power sharing arrangement. A federation of states.  Whereas France was created as a unity state. He suggests we need a transnationalization of democracy to address the systematic problems that nations can not solve independently. I suppose he means things like climate change, nuclear proliferation etc.  The nations would still enforce laws, as they do in the EU, but there would be an avenue for solving problems based on a common overarching model.

A speaker on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict,  Dr. Yakir Englander  also talked about the importance of living with dual narratives. This for the different nations but also for the different communities within Judaism. We must not try to solve another's problems directly because that solution might create dangers for those more intimately involved with the struggle. For example, it is not helpful when an American Jewish tourist goes to Jerusalem and wears an IDF t-shirt. This is hurtful to the Palestinians. We need to be careful with our holiness because there is violence in holiness.  Englander has set up an organization that works with Palestinian and Israeli youth to help them develop this dual narrative.  There is also this need for separate groups to create a dialogue with each other -- women in Judaism, denominations within Judaism. Is is a chutzpah for people to try and solve others problems without first developing an ability for this kind of dualism. Not all issues can be resolved through fundamentalism -- as with accepting gay Jews while also accepting Torah's teaching on the lifestyle.

This duality will help us see that there are two areas of conflict that need to be resolved. The actual conflict, those lived by the people engaged in the situation, and our image of the conflict. Dialogue in these situations is vital but only if seen within the context that dialogue is part of action. Action is the way to resolve conflicts. People with a different image of the problem are the ones most likely to call others naive or more derogatory names; those involved with the actual problem are more open to different types of solutions.

Often these dualities can be upsetting because they can represent many aspects of a situation. Rather than adopting them completely we might consider using them as simulation exercises. Taking data and putting it into a scenario in our minds -- much like scientists use simulations of data (such as years of coordinates of the movement of planets) to help them see where things are going. We might play these dualities into the future to see which might lead to the best results.

In education, perhaps we can see this narrative in terms of the open classroom, where individual teachers and local schools retaining curriculum control is one side of the coin where the common core, with national control of curriculum being the other side of the coin. We must, I suggest, be able to integrate these two narratives in a way that is authentic. We can focus not on self improvement but on selves improvement.

In the education sense, perhaps libraries can show the way as resource sharing, where one library holds an item and shares it with other libraries and other techniques might be adopted by colleges/universities whereby we integrate instructors from one college into another college or have instructors from two (or more) institutions teaching together in an expanded notion of classroom. There would be an open classroom motif, where we stitch together a collective from the accepted notion of individual control of the classroom. We grow through some of the issues of curricula prerogatives because we need the collective dynamism without giving up the individual responsibility.

The common core curriculum might be expanded to the common core resource pool. Perhaps everyone would accept Google (or another search engine) as the common resource pool and then create subsets of data (databases) to supplement and add to the classroom.  Google as the master index (common core) but create subsets of this index to build local control (information of specific concern to a teacher or set of teachers).

Dualism is a good tool as we go forward into the shared economy. Where we can accept people both as they are and as we want them to be. Where a wide variety of sources can be seen as legitimate and authoritative.

What better tool to carry with us into the shared economy than information and access to it in such a variety of situations.

Dualism is not new. We have had conflicting political social ideas as cultures have evolved and in many ways, it is our ability to work with and accept dualism without resorting to judgement and control that leads to a flowering of ideas and culture. Jane Addams, the social and peace activist, spoke of "tolerated puzzlement," which was a way to encounter new ideas and people without the need to be judgmental. It is this spirit of openness and acceptance that creates the creative infrastructure we need to peace and learning to flourish and forms as a foundation for the American Pragmatism movement that holds a key as we continue to encounter (radical) uncertainty. We can confront uncertainty with ideas not impulses. You don't need to change people, you need to hear them.

Perhaps "tolerated puzzlement" was a precursor to the "Yes, and .." theory of improv as a way to create linkage between people and ideas.