Scaffolding for Systemic Change

Chapter 23

Sharadna Mungur0919052

John Seely Brown:

“open source is an institutional innovation, not just a technological one”

He calls for an “ecology of experiments and systems for the learning landscape.”

Thinkers of ‘open source’

Such a model requires

building social networks,

developing ways to accelerate capabilities

assuring staying power.

Projects that characterizes these are:

The Urban Universities Portfolio Project (UUPP)

The Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL)

The Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research (Inter/National Coalition)

Steven Weber:

“criteria for entering (and leaving), leadership

roles, power relations, distributional issues,

education and socialization paths, and all the

other characteristics that describe a nascent

culture and community structure” (2004, p. 15)

Reflection Interaction Knowledge

Building Social Networks

Information

Knowledge building emerge from social

interaction where people build knowledge

within their social group first and then

extending this to others.

Features:

Intermediaries

Continued Invitation to Involvement and Cultivation of Emergent Leadership

Intermediaries

Intermediaries are knowledge-builders that are essential for a social network involving

education.

They support open education by providing

the environment necessary for

wide-scale knowledge-building

Purpose of Intermediaries:

1. Provide coordination

2. Collaborative research

Continued Invitation to Involvement and Cultivation of

Emergent Leadership

Change initiatives

often choose or invite a set of players

willing to work toward mutual educational

objectives but also structure future entry

points into the project.

Interaction of Individuals, Campuses, and Organizations, Both

Nationally and Internationally

“Sometimes the nature of the work itself

elicits interaction.”.

In fact, this interaction helps in the

knowledge building-community of practice.

Requirement of open source

Courage to change

The Value of a National Context

1. Provides a “demilitarized zone.”2. Disparate achievements can become

more than the sum of the parts.

Sharing and Assessing Process and Findings

“Build in assessment at every stage”

i.e. formative assessment to provide

useful feedback to correct errors and

thus building up successful projects.

Ensuring Staying Power

“Incorporate the means for ensuring

staying power,” advise Bacchetti and

Ehrlich (2007, p.27)

One means for ensuring staying power is

technological support for communication

and dissemination of ideas and findings

Building on the Shoulders of Giants

“Building on the shoulders of giants entails

benefiting from ancestors but also

contributing to the next generation”

Learning theory and practice confirm that

scaffolding supports learning

in an open-education environment in

important ways