There are several people that have made their mark communicating this point. Clayton M. Christensen, author of the Innovators Dilemma, and more recently, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, has made the case that new products emerge and take off where they are competing against .... nothing! In educational terms, innovative approaches to teaching can't take off and become more widespread when there is are existing alternatives. Dislodging the predominance of lecture, for example, is very difficult because:
- there are some lecturers who are captivating (though a small percentage)
- it is perhaps the most inexpensive large class delivery method that stills involves a live body
- it is for some very easy (those that don't really try to remain contemporary and see it as a necessary evil to get through to get back to their research)
- it is very familiar -- tradition --
Introducing Change: What are conditions that foster change?
- Catastrophe,
- marginality,
- perceived irrelevance,
- no compelling alternatives exist (not to the status quo - the status quo is itself powerful & compelling).
It just so happened that about the same time that these improvements in drive dimensions were being developed something else was going on. A personal computer was in the works - that, like 3 in. disk drives was slower than minicomputers, had less graphical capabilities, had next to no applications written for it, and was expensive on a price/performance basis. And we know where minicomputers are today... What happened? Both the 3 in. disk drive and the microcomputer created new markets, addressed capabilities and in the process needs that existing computer hardware manufacturers didn't see and their customers who were buying their products didn't want.
There is the argument that incremental change is better than no change at all. And that perhaps, with time, the accumulation of small steps will, looking back, cover an enormous distance. It's the chinese proverb about a long journey starting with a small step.
I have deeply mixed feelings about this. Good colleagues have made this approach a central tenant in their approach to technology and changing pedagogy.
Sometimes it takes a good tag line: Recently Steve Gilbert (of the TLTGroup) sent around survey about 'nanovation' (Roly - are you getting this one?) This is an evolutionary step from the long-standing theme among "the Steves'" (Steve Gilbert and Steve Ehrmann) advocating LTA's (another TLA I know, this time Low Threshold Applications), defined here as
A Low Threshold Application (LTA) is a teaching/learning application of information technology that is reliable, accessible, easy to learn, non-intimidating and (incrementally) inexpensive.
The admonition is to not raise unrealistic expectations, don't add to the hype or the work, and
Sounds pretty much on the money to me.
I understand this but I also find myself disturbed by it. Partly it's the sense of surrender - don't rock the boat too much you'll just get dumped. I may be more sensitive to this lately being in the land of the 'tall poppy syndrome'.
A more central concern is based around the idea that we live on a topology, a surface of possible maximas (local summits, if you will) but that the landscape of our learning environment is much broader than the hill on which we presently sit. In fact, if you strive to carefully work you're way to the top, you may get there. But as you peer out you're just as likely to find there is another hill, another higher summit, just over there. But the only way to get there is accept going down for a bit, slogging through a trough and struggling up the other side.
Or maybe not. Maybe one can jump to the slope on the next hill. Maybe you won't land as far up it as you'd like, but at least you avoid the "pit of despair" (A Princess Bride supplies lots of wonderfully descriptive dialog at times).
And that's the part the worries me most, the bit about being unwilling to jump. Of course it could all be a matter of scale. The little step being a jump of heights for some. But I don't think so. Of course the discussion is obviously more nuanced than I'm treating it here. And there no doubt has to be a mixture of leapers and incremental climbers. Analogies abound but I won't go there now.
Perhaps the latest book by Daniel Pink, Drive, will shed some insight into this one. It's scheduled for late December 09 release, but it's thesis is about what motivates us to learn or to succeed. In it he does the usual review of contemporary neuroscience and cognitive psychology to derive the following principles for what makes people strive to succeed:
*Autonomy- the desire to direct our own lives
*Mastery- the urge to get better and better at something that matters
*Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
*Mastery- the urge to get better and better at something that matters
*Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves
--pdl--
4 comments:
Right on. But there is the concept of punctuated equilibrium. The accumuation of small steps brings a mass of people and expectations and new habits to a point of pressure where the innovation-resistant forces give way. And there is also cultural pressure toward more natural communication styles -- a cultural rhetorical shift -- that makes the ritualistic lecture seem more and more antique.
-Trent
I like Trent's point about punctuated equilibrium. It fits what I've seen in the past. Some of the most exciting transformations in higher ed have emerged from patterns of incremental, pervasive change laying a foundation for a sudden leap forward under pressure. Both are necessary for transformation. The former (alone) can be quite valuable. The latter (alone) usually fails: I can't recall any programmatic transformation that succeeded from a standing start. Steve Gilbert and I (we're the Steves that Phil cites) have been arguing that most institutions could do a MUCH better to supporting mainstream, incremental improvement of teaching and learning with technology. One reason institutions have done comparatively little: it's a counter-intuitive strategy that at many points violates traditional common sense. For an outline of this nontraditional perspective on making major improvements in teaching and learning with technology, see http://bit.ly/ten_things_table. Write a comment and point out the flaws in the argument!
Interesting that you should raise this issue. It happens to one of the areas that have driven my thinking. I'm sure you're aware of that though. So let's put this in context.
Punctuated equilibrium, was first introduced by Ernst Mayer in 1954 (Mayr, Ernst (1954). "Change of genetic environment and evolution" In J. Huxley, A. C. Hardy and E. B. Ford. Evolution as a Process. London: Allen and Unwin, pp. 157-180.) when he argued that evolution was strongest and likely to achieve the most rapid change in peripatric populations (small isolated populations which have reduced or no gene flow to larger their allopatric brethren). No one has argued that change is constant - not even Darwin! In the first edition of the Origin of Species Darwin wrote, "Species of different genera and classes have not changed at the same rate, or in the same degree. In the oldest tertiary beds a few living shells may still be found in the midst of a multitude of extinct forms." (Darwin, Charles (1859). On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray. p. 313).
The issue isn't just small steps, per se, the issue is the rate of change and where they are made. Mayr argued gene flow tended to homogenize a population, making changes dilute and ultimately maintaining stasis. Eldredge and Gould, credited for naming "punctuated equilibrium" (Eldredge, Niles and S. J. Gould (1972). "Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism" In T.J.M. Schopf, ed., Models in Paleobiology. San Francisco: Freeman Cooper. pp. 82-115). really brought this to light. Gould later came to realize what Darwin didn't (and couldn't) conceive - there are other processes of change as well that effect evolution, making it much more complicated and richer. For example, mutation, recombination, gene flow, isolation, random genetic drift, the many forms of natural selection, and other factors still.
Ironically the issue that was being explained by punctuated equilibrium wasn't change at all, it was stasis. Why do things remain the same for such long periods in geological time and then rapidly morph into new forms and new species? Recall that this is an argument in geological time, not generational time.
The idea has been applied to organizational theory, political economy other fields. It’s related to the Kuhnian notion of scientific revolution through paradigm shifts. In these applications, as in the one I was trying to make, the there are relatively speaking sudden bursts of change when there had been continuous gradualism or no change at all for a prior extended period.
While the incremental changes are potentially helpful, there is literally no guarantee of that. More importantly to the argument I was making there is no predictable way of knowing that small steps will in fact lead anywhere. More likely the issues isn't just the size of the step at all. It's as much where it is taking place.
In the field of evolutionary developmental biology, particularly in studies of the origin of morphological novelty, there is increasing evidence that change can in fact happen both rapidly and in large increments (step sizes can be large - see Origination of Organismal Form: Beyond the Gene in Developmental and Evolutionary Biology, Gerd B. Müller and Stuart A. Newman Eds., MIT Press 2003.)
Your point (both SE and TB) about continued pressure for change by gradual small steps isn't a bad thing. However, it's not the only thing that induces change and often isn't the main thing that results in radical change. That can and does happen when either the iteration time is significantly reduced, so that small steps happen in what seems to be overnight (the transition from a network of networks to the Internet comes to mind), but also when big steps happen (the transition from the internet to the WWW perhaps?).
I'd rather be trying and failing at boulders (windmills to mix metaphors) than then next pebble in the stream on my journey onward.
-- PDL --
Here's an attempt to summarize how Phil, Steve Gilbert and I differ on these questions: http://tlt-swg.blogspot.com/2009/10/improving-teaching-and-learning-with.html. I've got to admit that all three viewpoints sound reasonable to me, but they certainly have different implications for how to foster meaningful improvement in teaching and learning with technology.
Post a Comment