Learning technology theory
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The document discusses several key issues in learning technology theory: 1) Herman and Mandell argue that technology allows anyone to learn anything at any time, but it also makes it difficult to distinguish truth from fiction. This epistemological dilemma necessitates the development of learning technology theory. 2) Noble asserts that the trend of automating higher education is a battle between students/professors and university administrations/companies seeking to commercialize education. 3) While technology permeates education, political agendas reinforce links between education, employment, and individual responsibility for attaining them, undermining benefits of viewing learners as agents of their own development.
![Taylor goes on to say, "If this is true, then the very nature of literacy has changed and we are
forced to consider the possibility that literacy cannot combat Oppression, precisely because it
is literacy which gives Oppression its voice" (p. 139). What, then, can be a different literacy: a
literacy of liberation? Taylor distinguishes between the literacy of reading, which "... creates
the possibility of consensus or convergence... [that] educate[s] the citizen into orthodoxy, into
that governability, even that vulnerability to governance and to media and myth, which are the
signs of an ‘educated person’", and the literacy of writing that "...raises ... the possibility that
something can be ‘said against’ ... it is the creating of a response which is counter-hegemonic
... fundamentally iconoclastic ... that encourages heresy, even deviance..." (p. 146). But, he
only touches on the problem at the heart of writing. He says "The paradox of Writing, which is
one of the most refined symbolic systems created by humankind, is that it has the power to
be anti-symbolic..." He doesn’t explore this dilemma.
But, Julia Kristeva does. Kristeva (1989, pp. 23-30) introduces a discussion of the
characteristics of writing by stating that "...current science has not yet proposed a satisfactory
theory of writing." For Kristeva, "Writing is an act of differentiation and of participation with
respect to reality..." She illustrates the inadequate state of writing theory and observes, "The
science of writing seems therefore the prisoner of a conception that confuses language with
spoken language, which is articulated according to the rules of a certain grammar." She
concludes:
In our time, under the influence of philosophical research and the knowledge of the logic of
the unconscious, some researchers consider the various types of writings as languages that
don’t necessarily "need" "phonic expression" ... They thus represent particular signifying
practices that have disappeared or been transformed in the life of modern man. The science
of writing as a new realm ... of linguistic operation; of writing as language, but not as vocal
speech or grammatical chain; of writing as a specific signifying practice that enables us to
perceive unknown regions in the vast universe of language - this science of writing has yet to
be developed.
This is the science of writing we need in order to discover Taylor’s anti-symbolic, iconoclastic
writing-as-liberation, and, arguably, also to engage through learning technology with literacy
in its widest sense. Our condition with respect to digital literacy is analogous to the condition
of pre-literate peoples whose un-written beliefs descend through mythology and folk tales.
Like children to whom all things are new, it appears that we are only now learning to read
(and write) the Internet and hypermedia in as fundamental a way as we learned to read (and
write) writing, perspective or the movies. That is, the Internet is one of those watershed
technologies that has had the power to make children of us once again.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/robertslearningtechnologytheory-110108081824-phpapp02/85/Learning-technology-theory-3-320.jpg)
Learning technology theory
- 1. Learning Technology Theory George Roberts, 2001 (This is a version of the Positional Paper included on the ALT-SIG Learning Technology Theory site) The territory represented by learning technology is contested but the contest is complicated and multi-faceted. Herman and Mandell (2000) take constructivism to its extreme: By transcending the limits of space, time and situation, technology makes it more likely that any person, of any status, in any place, can learn anything, at any time. ... But an epistemological change also occurs. In virtual reality, because all words, images and sounds can be easily altered, everything that is "given" ... can be taken as tentative or "made." ... The medium that gives us so much power to present ourselves as we choose and to access such presentations of others, leaves us helpless to distinguish between the authentic and the inauthentic. The state of nature in virtual reality, a nature so entirely comprised of information, forces us to be uncertain about the truth. This epistemological dilemma lies at the heart of - and necessitates - learning-technology theory. Learning technology practice is so mediated by policy, distance and technologies that truth is called into question. Noble (1998) puts forward a simple good vs. evil proposition: the trend towards automation of higher education as implemented in North American universities today is a battle between students and professors on one side, and university administrations and companies with "educational products" to sell on the other. It is not a progressive trend towards a new era at all, but a regressive trend, towards the rather old era of mass-production, standardization and purely commercial interests. While technology continues to permeate education, the political agenda continues to reinforce links between education and employment on the one hand and individual responsibility for attaining these goods on the other (see, e.g. Hodgson & Spours 1999, Avis et al 1996, and DfEE 1999, 64-68). According to Bates (1995, p. 15), "Society is faced with a struggle for economic survival, where the future of the developed countries depends on large numbers of people being educated to a high level... throughout their lives." Discourses on globalization are typically oriented in one of two ways. One posits globalization as an inevitable part of the historical process over which we have no control but to which we
- 2. must adapt or be swept aside, while the other asserts that globalization is the aim or result of consciously implemented policies promoted by those who most benefit from globalization. It is a characteristic of the education and employment debate that globalization is presented as inevitable. According to Esland (1996 a&b) If globalization is accepted as an inevitable part of the historical process then there is little that a nation can do to plan its internal economics. As Carnoy (1997) suggests, all the state can do is best prepare individuals to operate within the paradigm. However, any benefit of positing the individual to be the agent of his or her own learning and development (Freire 1970, pp. 53ff) is undermined by a rhetoric, which, while professing freedom from external control, simply substitutes the authority of those who manage capital and the larger markets for the authority of those who manage the state (cf. Ball 1990). This agenda prefers the employer over the employee, the centre over the periphery, and is concerned with validating authority. Where the political agenda is concerned with transferring responsibility (blame) to the individual, the managerial agenda is concerned with transferring rights (power) away from the individual. Educational policy has encouraged the adoption of an instrumentalist, competency-based curriculum intended to be closely aligned to the needs of industry. This has been presented as a solution to relative economic decline in the face of "inevitable" globalisation (Field 1995). The positivist rigour of competency frameworks makes them uniquely suited as components of technology-assisted learning programmes, which in turn lend themselves readily to a managerial agenda. Technology-assisted learning also supports the move to an administered market in education (cf. Ranson 1994). By increasing the granularity of "education consumables" learners are able to buy ever-smaller "chunks" (DfEE, 1999, 66). But how are we to understand, to read, what we buy? In his essay "Oppressive literacy: a new definition" Taylor (1993) addresses key issues of critical theory. "Society," says Taylor, requires literacy (which is literacy rather than a literate person) because in the power-knowledge relationship of the modern world, literacy defines who controls the means of production, that is the means to produce wealth (industry) and the means to reproduce knowledge (education)" (p.139). Education policies adopted by successive British governments in response to globalization have been focused in two conflicting directions: the desire to stimulate the growth of autonomous, entrepreneurial, IT- literate, multi-skilled individuals capable of creating and taking advantage of the opportunities inherent in a post fordist economy; and the desire to create a compliant low-expectation labour force inured to the demands of flexibilisation in order to attract inward investment not on the basis of high skills available but on the basis of low costs.
- 3. Taylor goes on to say, "If this is true, then the very nature of literacy has changed and we are forced to consider the possibility that literacy cannot combat Oppression, precisely because it is literacy which gives Oppression its voice" (p. 139). What, then, can be a different literacy: a literacy of liberation? Taylor distinguishes between the literacy of reading, which "... creates the possibility of consensus or convergence... [that] educate[s] the citizen into orthodoxy, into that governability, even that vulnerability to governance and to media and myth, which are the signs of an ‘educated person’", and the literacy of writing that "...raises ... the possibility that something can be ‘said against’ ... it is the creating of a response which is counter-hegemonic ... fundamentally iconoclastic ... that encourages heresy, even deviance..." (p. 146). But, he only touches on the problem at the heart of writing. He says "The paradox of Writing, which is one of the most refined symbolic systems created by humankind, is that it has the power to be anti-symbolic..." He doesn’t explore this dilemma. But, Julia Kristeva does. Kristeva (1989, pp. 23-30) introduces a discussion of the characteristics of writing by stating that "...current science has not yet proposed a satisfactory theory of writing." For Kristeva, "Writing is an act of differentiation and of participation with respect to reality..." She illustrates the inadequate state of writing theory and observes, "The science of writing seems therefore the prisoner of a conception that confuses language with spoken language, which is articulated according to the rules of a certain grammar." She concludes: In our time, under the influence of philosophical research and the knowledge of the logic of the unconscious, some researchers consider the various types of writings as languages that don’t necessarily "need" "phonic expression" ... They thus represent particular signifying practices that have disappeared or been transformed in the life of modern man. The science of writing as a new realm ... of linguistic operation; of writing as language, but not as vocal speech or grammatical chain; of writing as a specific signifying practice that enables us to perceive unknown regions in the vast universe of language - this science of writing has yet to be developed. This is the science of writing we need in order to discover Taylor’s anti-symbolic, iconoclastic writing-as-liberation, and, arguably, also to engage through learning technology with literacy in its widest sense. Our condition with respect to digital literacy is analogous to the condition of pre-literate peoples whose un-written beliefs descend through mythology and folk tales. Like children to whom all things are new, it appears that we are only now learning to read (and write) the Internet and hypermedia in as fundamental a way as we learned to read (and write) writing, perspective or the movies. That is, the Internet is one of those watershed technologies that has had the power to make children of us once again.
- 4. Bates (1995, p. 22) recognises the difficulty in positing ideological neutrality for any educational use of technology: "... there is a direct link between the use of technology and different ideologies of teaching and learning." The transformation of "student-centred learning" into "client-centred learning" by corporate-focused training service providers, and the appropriation of the forms and rhetoric of a leftist humanist pedagogy by a right-leaning corporatism can be set against an equally inimical knowledged-based instructor- institution- centred pedagogy as practised in, for example, the former Soviet Union (Roberts, Dingle & Milovidov, 1996; Nove, 1990). In contrast, the 1976 inception of the current phase of competency-based education and training systems owes as much to the left putting forward a challenge to the elitism of the educational system then, as to any business-dominated agenda. As Beetham (Beetham et all 2001) argues, the debate must move beyond simple behaviourist-bad : constructivist-good positions. For Boyle (1997 p. 45), "A central challenge for these approaches is to incorporate expert guidance without undermining the creative initiative of the learner." But, the very suitability of learning technology to managerialism is cause for at least interested concern and suggests that theory might be useful for those striving within the "tense new reality" of the "democratic academy" (Herman & Mandell 2000). References Avis, James, Martin Bloomer, Geoff Esland, Denis Gleeson and Phil Hodkinson, 1996, Knowledge and Nationhood: Education, Politics and Work. London, Cassell Ball, Stephen (1990) "Industrial training or new vocationalism? Structures and discourses", from Balls, S (ed) Politics and Policy Making in Education, London, Routledge, cited in Flude and Sieminski 1999, pp 57-77 Bates, A. W. (1995), Technology, Open Learning and Distance Education, London, Routledge studies in distance education Beetham, Helen, Tom Boyle, Grainne Conole, Cathy Gunn and Bruce Ingraham (2001), No blue skies without firm foundations: developing theory for learning technology. Panel discussion at ALT-C, the Association for Learning Technology conference, Edinburgh, 12 September 2001 Boyle, Tom, 1997, Design for Multimedia Learning, London, Prentice Hall Carnoy, Martin (1997), The great work dilemma: education, employment and wages in the new global economy. Economics of Education Review, 16(3) pp. 247-54 DfEE, 1999, White Paper, Learning to succeed a new framework for post-16 learning Esland, Geoff (1996 a), "Knowledge and Nationhood: The New Right, Education and the Global Market", ch. 1 in Avis et al. 1996 Esland, Geoff (1996 b), "Education, Training and Nation-State Capitalism: Britain's Failing Strategy", ch. 2 in Avis et al. 1996
- 5. Field, John (1995), "Reality testing in the workplace: are NVQs ‘employment-Led’?", from Hodkinson, P and M. Issitt (eds) The Challenge of Competence: Professionalism through Vocational Education and Training, London: Cassell, cited in (Flude & Sieminski 1999), pp. 124 – 142 Freire, Paulo, 1970, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, translated by Myra Bergman Ramos, London, Penguin, 1996 (Freire 1970) Herman, Lee and Alan Mandell (2000), "The Given and the Made: Authenticity and Nature in Virtual Education", First Monday, Volume 5, Number 10 - October 2nd 2000, http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/herman/index.html, accessed 31/03/2001 Hodgson, Ann and Ken Spours, 1999, New Labour’s Education Agends – Issues and Policies for Education and Training for 14+, London, Kogan Page Kristeva, Julia, 1989, Language, the Unknown: an Initiation into Linguistics, Translated by Anne M. Menke, New York, Columbia University Press (Kristeva 1989) Noble, Dave, 1998, Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education, First Monday, Vol.3 No.1 - January 5th, 1998 http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_1/noble/index.html Nove, Alec, 1990: An Economic History of the USSR, second edition, Penguin, Harmondsworth Ranson, Stewart (1994), "Markets or Democracy for Education", British Journal of Educational Studies (42), pp. 333 - 351 Roberts, George, John Dingle and Konstantin Milovidov, 1996, "Training Professionals in the Former Soviet Union", Energy World no 241, pp 11 - 13 Taylor, Paul V (ed), 1993, The Texts of Paulo Freire, Open University Press, Buckingham (Taylor 1993)