An Equal Voice

Learners in Kilmarnock College

Dr.Anne Pia

Learningvoices UK

The Demand for Change: professional aspirations

“Teaching is a performative act. And it is that aspect of our work that offers the space for change, invention, spontaneous shifts, that can serve as a catalyst drawing out the unique elements in each classroom…

to embrace the performative aspect of teaching we are compelled to engage “audiences”…

….to consider issues of reciprocity

…teachers are not performers in the traditional sense of the word…(our work) is meant to serve as a catalyst that calls everyone to become more and more engaged

The Demand for Change: professional aspirations

…to become active participants in learning

…the engaged voice must never be fixed and absolute, but always changing, always evolving in dialogue with a world beyond itself (hooks;1994)

…there is an aspect of our vocation that is sacred; there are those of us who teach who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students.

…to teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential…

Demand for Change: Learners’ perspectives

“but my personhood is intact. My selfhood undamaged. I find value and meaning in life, and I have no wish to be cured of being myself. Grant me the dignity of meeting me on my own terms…recognize that we are equally alien to one another, that my ways are not merely damaged ways of yours. Question your assumptions. Define your terms. Work with me to build bridges between us” (Powell;2000)

Demand for Change: Learners’ Perspectives

• Learners’ enormous investment in the learning process

The “unfinished me” (Anthea) and “finding me” (Karen)

“no space for identity”/personal qualities and skills often untapped in the learning space

“you learn more from people who show you respect; with teachers, there should be no tensions, no negative environments, no struggle”

Welcome -research-based learning, peer and tutor dialogue as a learning tool

Learners’ Perspectives

Welcome -ability to lead in the classroom/lecture theatre

- opportunity to bring other knowledges, skills and experience to their learning experience

-making connections with their wider professional, social, personal lives

- to locate their learning in the world they experience through media/music

“workmanlike partnerships” (Coffield’s learners; 2009)

The policy landscape we work in

Skills for Scotland (SG, 2007) –skills agenda

-”a Scotland where people can work in teams, are creative and enterprising and hungry to continually learn new skills… entrepreneurial and innovative”

- a literate and numerate workforce with ICT literacy and problem solving skills

SFE/HMIE a new Review Model

Learner Engagement – a key strand – all sectors

CfE schools and colleges –relationship between learning, social responsibility, participation, and confidence.

Are we witnessing social disintegration and the creation of a new order in society? A re-emergence of old values?

We are witnessing mass re-skilling of the old workforce

Giddens (1991) norms and traditions we have known are subject to “disembedding mechanisms and the individual is thrown back on personal dispositions and has to look inwards to discover a self in a broader and novel environment. Nothing can be assumed any longer, nothing taken for granted. In a search for personal meaningfulness, we must re-invent our daily social lives”

Societal Imperatives for change to our practice

Societal Imperatives

Old knowledges, new knowledges, finite knowledge, negotiated knowledge, useable knowledge.

Technological advance and speed of change

Pressure to acquire new skills, new approaches, new thinking in our own fields very quickly

Changing balance of world power

• Gary Marx (2009) The Sixteen Trends that will Profoundly Impact Education and the Whole society in the 21st Century.

Societal Imperatives

A world of uncertainty (employment, skills, economy, identity, lifestyle, social and personal relations)

Need for mobility – physical, intellectual

Environment of both choices and constraints

Need for flexibility

Adaptability

Openness and vision

Reflection skills/ability to communicate and network

Social Imperatives

Fullan and the dynamics of change:

“the key is for teachers to see themselves and be seen as experts in the dynamics of change” (1992)

Teachers’ role in helping people “find and give meaning to life” (1992)

Educators preparing learners for workplace we cannot envisage

For lives that we cannot configure

Seeing Learning as Transformation

Paulo Freire (2003) : Learning as transformation of the individual and therefore of a radically changed society

Transformation and humanising vs.. the banking model

Growing literature on and from the adult and FE sectors of education (Gallacher et al.,2004;Hodkinson,2000)

Literature on literacies

Raw accounts from learners from every sector

Seeing Learning in terms of Identity

Compelling and emerging evidence of connections between learning and identity

Gallacher (2002) “Identities can be fragile, contingent and vulnerable to external changes

Gallacher (2006) construction of learning identities by vulnerable adults in FE community settings

Gover (2006) “…..learning in schools and identity construction are essentially and inextricably linked to one another”

Wenger (1998) education as social practice deriving from deeper transactions

Seeing Classrooms as Sites of Change: The Status of Emotion

• Goleman (1996); Gardner (1989) – personal intelligences

-emotional readiness to learn

-ability to work co-operatively with others, understand others, motivations

-leading to self-definitions and self-understandings

“…it’s brought me confidence ad something I’ve not ad before – stability”

“feeling it’s ok to say”; “that’s it! I feel like I’m growing

from inside”

Classrooms as Sites of Change: The Small Group

Collins, Harkin and Nind (2002) “..learning should be transformative,active and interactive, intrinsically motivating and lifelong”

Learning takes place in the context of “nurturing relationships and rich communications” (2002)

Markova (1978,1995,2004) – work on dialogicality in learning and identity strongly linked to emotional connection and disconnection.

Classrooms as Sites of Change: The Small Group

Excellent examples in content- rich disciplines and humanities

Social Work Education – managing relationships in small group learning

Change from whole-group to small units of learning/learning teams

Goodlad (1994), Garfield (1993) the learning settings “we have now are not necessarily those we have known in the past”

ESRC projects – stable and well managed groups

Individuality and Biography in Classrooms

Haggis (2002) emphasises the individuality of learning and impossibility to generalise

Biography and autobiography as useful in building Identities:Traue & Pannebaker (1993); Josselson & Lieblich (1995)

Highly successful use in Humanities as a means of engaging learners

Life-history work in primary classrooms and in social workers practice with clients

Change and Engagement Through Dialogue and Communication

Education and Social Sciences literature – Vygotsky (1961), Bruner (1996) and Rodgers (1983)

Dialogue a means of bringing about deep change and a representation of live change and change which has happened

Graumann (in Marková 1995): Difficulty of providing “the full picture of what we share in dialogue either as a common or mutual world”

Different dialogues within learning settings

Learners accounts confirm

Learning Settings which Engagage

Space for change active, deep, trialled and enacted

Relationships are enhancing of individuals

Safety and security in silences, misdirections and failings

Individual freedoms of movement, intellect, speech, bringing histories and articulating futures

Change, new learning, applied knowledges are managed and aired

Dialogues including about learning are central

The Importance of Reflection

“Our understanding of student motivation is limited because learners themselves have rarely been encouraged to reflect, in a flexible and longitudinal way, on their reasons for educational participation and learning in the context of past and present lives” (West;1996

An Equal Voice

Learners in Kilmarnock College

Dr.Anne Pia

Learningvoices UK