The Invention of Amateurs and the Uncertainty of Expertise

Brown UniversityCLIR Symposium

April 18, 2008

Randy Bass, Georgetown University bassr@georgetown.edu

Sir Ken Robinson

http://www.ted.com/talks

What’s on the Horizon?

• Horizon Report New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning

Initiative

1 year or less

• Grassroots video• Collaboration Webs2-3 years

• Mobile Broadband• Data Mashups3-5 years

• Collective Intelligence• Social Operating Systems

What’s on the Horizon? Horizon Report

New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative

1 year or less

• Grassroots video• Collaboration Webs2-3 years

• Mobile Broadband• Data Mashups3-5 years

• Collective Intelligence• Social Operating Systems

Consumers and Producers

Be Kind, Rewind

Wikipedia

Introduction to Biology of Global Health(Public Service Announcements)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=GRzIqgwrr1Q&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7yF6TztNNXw&feature=related

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yVeSYd1ojdU&feature=related

Introduction to Biology of Global Health(Public Service Announcements)

“Through making this film, I learned a lot about film editing and how one repackages a (potentially) very academic message into something that arouses both interest and emotion.”

“Overall, I believe the project was excellent in helping us learn how to communicate an issue. As a science student, I often feel that I have plenty of time in lab, but I do not know how to explain why I love science. Projects like the public service announcement encourage creativity and foster an understanding of how to talk to people. ... I want to be an undergraduate who knows about the problems and can efficiently communicate with my colleagues.

Introduction to Biology of Global Health(Public Service Announcements)

“Being a science major, it is often hard to distinguish between what is common knowledge and what is only well known to those within the field of biology. I truly gained a first hand look into the challenges that the public health officials must face in attempting to relay information to the general public.”

“The project was very frustrating at times, but I think it was actually a very valuable experience. I think scientists and health practitioners need to be able to better communicate with the public, as I think many of the problems of our day, from global warming to the spread of infectious disease, are the result of the scientific community not communicating a suitable message to the public. The project made me realize the difficulties in creating such a message.”

In Plain English (Commoncraft)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU

Learning and Social Practice

“Legitimate Peripheral Participation”

(Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger)

“To begin with, newcomers’ legitimate peripherality provides them with more than an ‘observational’ lookout post: It crucially involves participation as a way of learning—of both absorbing and being absorbed in –the ‘culture of practice.’ An extended period of legitimate peripherality provides learners with opportunities to make the culture of practice theirs” (95).

Threshold Concepts

“A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress….

Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines.” Occasional Report 4, May 2003. Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project. University of Edinburgh.

“Threshold Concepts”“As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view. This transformation may be sudden or it may be protracted over a considerable period of time, with the transition to understanding proving troublesome. Such a transformed view or landscape may represent how people ‘think’ in a particular discipline, or how they perceive, apprehend, or experience particular phenomena within that discipline (or more generally).”

Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines.” Occasional Report 4, May 2003. Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project. University of Edinburgh.

Threshold Concepts

Examples (acc to Meyer and Land)

– Economics: Concept of Opportunity cost

– Mathematics: Concept of a Limit

– Literary and Cultural Studies: Concept of signification

– Biology: Concept of Evolution

Threshold Concepts

• Transformative: may occasion a significant shift in perception of a subject (or even personal identity)

• Irreversible: unlikely to be forgotten or unlearned

• Integrative: exposes previously hidden interrelatedness of something

Threshold Concepts

• Troublesome Knowledge (Perkins, 1999):

– “A threshold concept may on its own constitute, or in its application lead to… troublesome knowledge.” (Meyer and Land, 1003)

-troublesomeness protracts or blocks crossing the threshold: liminality and stuck places

Threshold Concepts+

Electracy?

Gregory Ulmer, Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy

“The history of literacy shows that we may expect profound changes to result from the changes in the language apparatus of our civilization that have been underway at least since the invention of photography in the early nineteenth century…we should consider this moment as a time for invention.”

Threshold Concept: “Cultural Construction of Authenticity”

Theresa Schlafly, from ENGL723 The Problem of Learning and the Digital Humanities

Threshold Concept: “Cultural Construction of Authenticity”

Theresa Schlafly, from ENGL723 The Problem of Learning and the Digital Humanities

“My encounter with the Geothe House replica fits Bruner’s conception of a tellable narrative, which “must run counter to expectancy, must breach a canonical script or deviate from what Hayden White calls ‘legitimacy’. As a tourist to Goethe’s garden house I was following an implict, culturally normalized script of how to visit a historic site, and the last thing I expected was to be confronted with an exact copy of the site I was visiting…I felt not only disconcerted but also cheated by the replica, which led me to ask myself a series of questions about the site’s authenticity, ownership and value.”

Threshold Concept: “Cultural Construction of Authenticity”

Theresa Schlafly, from ENGL723 The Problem of Learning and the Digital Humanities

“As with the Goethe House replica, the lack of explanation of the Belchite ruins sets up…a dialogue with the visitor. Similarly, with the images I presented, I was hoping to lead the viewer to ask a series of questions about the origins and implications of the Belchite ruins.

The presentation of the series of Belchite images creates an overall emotional effect rather than a clear narrative--the viewer is left to construct the narrative for him or herself.”

Charea Batiste, CSUMB, Cultural History

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another response (faculty collaborator)

“I was watching the digital story, which I’d seen before, and I wrote in my notes ‘digital book report’. I mean, there isn’t anything there that you wouldn’t have learned from a couple of hours in the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham.”

From the Charea Batiste

interview

[19:41] Because I was never involved in the civil rights movement, as I said that was a long time ago for me. I feel that I don’t have… can’t in my own words describe what happened. I was never there, I didn’t experience any of those things, so my words are just from an outside point of view.

But the pictures are first hand. These are people who actually went through the pain, who went through the torture, and their stories are told through these still images.

My voice was used I guess to give life to those pictures, but the pictures itself they told the story.

And my voice, I remember listening, I would get very angry telling the story. And I think that’s what added to the images. Because the anger in my voice--although still in tune with the digital story--without being irate was enough to make the images real, relevant, so you could feel the anger that was, you know, produced from those acts of violence. [20:52]

“On the relationship of the images to her voice”

Greg Ulmer: “From Literacy to Electracy”

“For example, general education writing courses…serve at least the following consensus needs, listed in order of current priority—

methods for using the language to learn specialized knowledge;

practices of rhetoric and logic required for citizenship in a democratic society;

models of self-knowledge for living the examined life.

[Writing competency]

[Critical thinking]

[Capacity for reflection]

We may assume that these needs continue in electracy, but that they will be articulated differently. There will be an inversion of the literate hierarchy; the first communication of an electrate person is reflexive, self-directed” (5).

Rethinking…

• relation of learning to social practice

• how knowledge becomes embodied

• role and value of creativity, invention, innovation

• role of affect and self-knowledge

“Primal Fear”

Defense attorney: “Objection. The man is a police officer, not an English professor. His interpretation would be speculative and irrelevant.”

Judge: “I didn’t hear her ask for an expert opinion. The witness may answer.”

Expertise

(differences between experts and specialists/non-experts) • Yes, experts have more knowledge, but many different kinds of

knowledge– Formal, informal, procedural, self-regulating

• Experts are comfortable working at the edge of their competency

• Regularly master routines in order to have resources available for progressive problem-solving

• Experts reinvest in their own expertise

Carl Bereiter and Marlena Scardamalia, Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry into the Nature of Expertise

The Three Apprenticeships

• Habits of Mind• Habits of Practice (Hand)• Habits of the Heart

Across all the professions:

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Lee Shulman, President)

Professional Learning as Apprenticeship

• Apprenticeships of Thought: Learning to think and “profess” like a …..

• Apprenticeships of Practice: Learning to perform and practice like a ……..

• Apprenticeships of Formation: Learning to become a professional who acts with the integrity and moral/ethical commitments of a …..

• Apprenticeships of Critical Reflection: becoming a critical scholar of one’s own work…

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Lee Shulman, President)

Signature Pedagogies:What do students do?

• Routines, Habits, Practices• Public performance (visibility)• Accountable talk (active listening)• Make judgments under uncertainty• Critically analyze own performance• Experience risk, anxiety, at stakeness• Develop values, identity, commitment• Internalize new habits, practices, identity

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Lee

Shulman, President)

Signature Pedagogies:What do students do?

• Routines, Habits, Practices• Public performance (visibility)• Accountable talk (active listening)

• Make judgments under uncertainty• Critically analyze own performance• Experience risk, anxiety, at stakeness• Develop values, identity, commitment• Internalize new habits, practices, identity

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Lee

Shulman, President)

In Memory of James Slevin, 1945-2006English, Georgetown University

The Right to Literacy, with Andrea Lunsford (MLA, 1990).

Introducing English: Essays in the Intellectual Work of Composition (Pittsburgh, 2001).

Frances March Award, MLA

December 2005

digitalcommons.georgetown.edu/blogs/bassr