CCK08: Reflection on Week 6

Tennis, bisociation, desire lines…and seeding the space

1. Tennis

This morning I played doubles tennis with my wife and kids. I have a tween and a teen, and they are both getting pretty good at the sport. It’s getting harder and harder for my wife and I to “hold our own” against the kids when we play with them. So today I was compelled to really try and place my serves well; to aim for exactly where I wanted the ball to land in the serving box. On my first shot, the ball landed where I had aimed it! “Holy…” I thought to myself, and continued to experiment with the exercise of narrowing my field of vision, my “viewfinder,” if you will, to place my shots with greater precision. It worked quite well, and I was consistently staggered with the results of this simple exercise (even though we lost that particular game). 

“The new dynamics of strategy: Sense-making in a complex and complicated world” by Kurtz and Snowden was important for me, because it demonstrated in turn how introducing the Cynefin “sense making framework” (468) for understanding to a group can potentially alter the mindset of the individuals therein. Radically unfamiliar scenarios were presented to a group of people that was in turn required to try and make sense of the information provided. Because they were operating in a chaotic environment, the group members reacted in ways in which they would otherwise not necessarily react. Consequently, they experimented with new tools, new ways of seeing the world, which they were then able to bring back to their organizations. The extent to which these skills are transferrable may remain questionable, but the exercise in and of itself is intriguing to me, and I can see the benefits of the Cynefin framework in terms of the expansiveness with which the model can be applied.

2. Bisociation

In the authors’ description of complexity science, the authors mention Poincaré, as did George Siemens in this week’s paper on Complexity, Chaos and Emergence.

DIGRESSION: Whoaaa…One hour later…So I go to the Connectivism & Connective Knowledge blog homepage to link to the wiki to find the link to George’s paper referring to Poincaré, end up reading Stephen’s most recent blog post, click on the response to a discussion post link, and then end up linking to the Trolling for Trolls post and reading most of that thread. Talking about spinning off…what was I doing again? Oh yeah! Looking for the link to George’s paper!

Mention of Poincaré reminded me of the book The Act of Creation written by Arthur Koestler, in which Poincaré’s sudden discovery of the resolution to a complex mathematical problem suddenly occurred to him when he was stepping onto a bus:

At the moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformation that I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-euclidean geometry (O’conner, Robertson, para. 20).

Koestler uses the term “bisociation” to describe the act of creative realization:

‘The basic bisociative pattern of the creative synthesis [is] the sudden interlocking of two previously unrelated skills, or matrices of thought.’ The more unusual, the bisociation, the more scope there is for truly creative ideas. Various types of unconscious thinking may be involved, including visual imagery; concrete (sometimes personal) exemplars of abstract ideas; shifting emphasis; reasoning backwards; and generating analogies of diverse kinds. In addition, he emphasized the importance of long apprenticeship and expertise, whether in science or in art (quoted from Boden, 23, para. 4).

I’ve been thinking about throwing Koestler into the mix even previous to the Poincaré reference, because I am interested in how creativity is understood in Connectivist terms. It seems especially appropriate to be bringing this up now, to the extent that chaos, as the term is being used in the context of the Connectivism & Connective Knowledge course, has a bearing on how creative thought processes may be explained. Kurtz and Snowden point out that:

• Humans are not limited to one identity (464).
• Humans are limited to acting in accordance with predetermined rules (465)
• Humans are not limited to acting on local patterns (465)

The authors differentiate between two domains, described as either ordered or un-ordered, and two states that can be found in each: complex states or chaos in the un-ordered domain, and knowable or known states in the ordered domain. 

With reference to chaos, the authors mention,

Chaos is also a space we can enter into consciously, to open up new possibilities and to create the conditions for innovation (469).

I would like to see a more specific treatment of creativity in the Connectivist framework. Maybe it’s out there already, and I just haven’t found it…

3. Desire Lines

Kurtz and Snowdon quote “Kostof…in his description of cities:”

…the two primary versions of urban arrangement, the planned and the ‘organic,’ often exist side by side…Most historic towns, and virtually all those of metropolitan size, are puzzles of premeditated and spontaneous segments, variously interlocked or juxtaposed…(466).

This quote reminded me of desire lines, the ‘organic’ paths that are carved into the earth by animals and people. Someone pointed out to me that children often choose to walk in the grass directly beside a sidewalk, given a choice between the pavement and the earth. I have since observed this behaviour time and time again. The wikipedia post suggests, “Many streets in old cities began as desire lines which evolved over the decades or centuries into the modern streets of today.” 

I was intrigued to find a link from “desire lines” to “wayfinding,” a term that George Siemens has brought up in the context of this course. Originating in traditional navigation, the term now may also refer to “signage and other graphic communication, clues inherent in the building’s spatial grammar, logical space planning, audible communication, tactile elements, and provision for special-needs users.”

4. Seeding the Space

Every once in a while I am reminded some of the transferable skills that I am fortunate enough to have brought from my teaching experience with kids to project management in the field of distance education course development. The following quote from Kurtz and Snowden was a case in point:

…A group of West Point graduates were asked to manage the playtime of a kindergarten as a final year assignment. The cruel thing is that they were given time to prepare. They planned; they rationally identified objectives; they determined backup and response plans. They then tried to “order” children’s play based on rational design principles, and, in consequence, achieved chaos. They then observed what teachers do. Experienced teachers allow a degree of freedom at the start of the session, then intervene to stabilize desirable patterns and destabilize undesirable ones; and, when they are very clever, they seed the space so that the patterns they want are more likely to emerge [my intalics] (466).

Beautiful…

CCK08: Reflection for Week 5: Part 4

The Virtual Self: Further notes from Franciso Varela’s Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition

In George Siemens’ Articulate presentation “Groups and Networks,” multiple references to “the self” are made without any formal definition of the term to which Siemens is referring. Below are excerpts from the presentation with transcriptions of some of the commentary accompanying each slide included in italics.

Basis of collective intelligence is “the self” (slide 7)

As we begin to integrate our ideas and concepts with others and we extend themselves into some sort of a group activity, there is an important protection of self that needs to occur where we retain our identity or where we retain our contributions.

The self is not created through socialization. (slide 12)

It is shaped and expressed through socialization (slide 13)

The self is not something that is created through socialization. Instead, it is something that is shaped and expressed through the act of socialization, through the act of negotiation, through dialoguing with, and sharing in conversations with other people.

Connectives: autonomy of self (mosaic) (slide 14)

Individuals then, in some type of a connective relationship to each other retain a high autonomy of self. Rather than blending, they exist in a mosaic. Namely, they retain their identity, even though they contribute to the larger whole.

Collectives: subsumption of self (melting pot) (slide 15)

In contrast, a collective is a subsumption of self. An example that is often used is the notion of a melting pot, where our individuality is absorbed as we contribute or become part of the larger whole.

 The previously listed tenets adhere to a notion of selfhood in which\ the autonomy of the self is highly valued. Selfhood may also be understood, however, in terms of assuming a position of groundlessness, or homelessness, out of which spontaneous action arises in terms of one’s moment to moment co-creation of the world. From within this constantly changing frame of reference, uncertainty guides action and response, and one’s decisions are made in relation to the specific contexts in which one finds oneself.

 The core proposition of Franciso Varela’s Ethical Know-How is:

Ethical know-how is the progressive, firsthand acquaintance with the virtuality of the self…If we do not practice transformation, we will never attain the highest degree of ethical expertise (63)…The analytic stance of ethics…proposes that we suspend the temptation to be identified with the other and, instead, undertake a journey of learning to see ourselves and others as inescapably transitory and fragmented (65).

 The nature of the identity of the cognitive self…is one of emergence through a distributed process. The emergent properties of an interneural network are enormously rich and merit further discussion at this point. What I wish to underscore here is the relatively recent (and stunning!) conclusion that lots of simple agents having simple properties may be brought toether, even in a haphazard way, to give rise to what appears to be an observer as a purposeful and integrated whole, without the need for central supervision…. A selfless (or virtual) self [is] a coherent global pattern that emerges from the activity of simple local components, which seems to be centrally located, but is nowhere to be found, and yet is essential as a level of interaction for the behavior of the whole (52-53)

 Applied to the brain, this new model explains why we find networks and subnetworks interacting promiscuously without any real hierarchy of the sort typical of computer algorithms. To put this differently, in the brain there is no principled distinction between software and hardware or, more precisely, between symbols and nonsymbols… The cognitive self it its own implementation: its history and its action are of one piece (54).

 This continual redefinition of what to do is not at all like a plan selected from a repertoire of potential alternatives; it is enormously dependent on contingency and improvisation, and is more flexible that any plan can be (55).

 Distinction between “environment” and “world”

Here we must sharply differentiate between “environment” and “world,” for the cognitive subject is “in” both, but not in the same way. On the one hand, a body interacts with its environment in a straightforward way. These interactions are of the nature of macrophysical encounters—sensory transduction, mechanical performance, and so on—nothing surprising about them. However, this coupling is possible only if the encounters are embraced from the perspective of the system itself. This embrace requires the elaboration of a surplus signification based on this perspective; it is the origin of the cognitive agent’s world. Whatever is encountered in the environment must be valued or not and interacted with or not. This basic assessment of surplus signification cannot be divorced from the way in which the coupling event encounters give rise to intentions (I am tempted to say “desires”), and intentions are unique to living cognition (55-56).

Cognitive intelligence…resides only in its embodiment. It is as if one could separate cognitive problems into two types: those wihch can be solved through abstraction and those which cannot. Those of the second type typically involve perceptual and motor skills of agents in unspecified environments. When cognitive intelligence is approached from this self-situated perspective, it quickly becomes obvious that there is no place where perception could deliver a representation of the world in the traditional sense. The world shows up through the enactment of the perceptuo-motor regularities. As Brooks puts it:

Just as there is no central representation there is no central system. Each activity layer connects perception to action directly. It is only the observer of the creature who imputes a central representation or central control. The creature itself has none: it is a collection of competing behaviors. Out of  the local chaos of their interactions there emerges, in the eye of the observer, a coherent pattern of behavior (60).

What we call “I” can be analyzed as arising out of our recursive linguistic abilities and their unique capacity for self-description and narration. As long-standing evidence from neuropsychology shows, language is another modular capacity cohabiting with everything else we are cognitively. Our sense of a personal “I” can be construed as an ongoing interpretive narrative of some aspects of the parallel activities in our daily life, whence the constant shifts in forms of attention typical of our microidentities. Whence also is the relative fragility of its narrative construction (61).

Varela remarks that ethical conduct arises and deepens through the cultivation of a “more open-ended and nonegocentric compassion (71). Similarly,

 It should not be surprising at this point that one of the main characteristics of spontaneous compassion, which is not a characteristic of volitional action based on habitual patterns, is that it follows no rules [my italics]. It is not derived from an axiomatic ethical system or even from pragmatic moral injunctions. Its highest aspiration is to be responsive to the needs of the particular situation [my italics]…Urealized practitioners, or course, cannot dispense with rules and moral injunctions (71).

 How can such an attitude of all-encompassing, decentered, responsive, compassionate concern be fostered and embodied in our culture? It obviously cannot be created merely through norms and rationalistic injunctions. It must be developed and embodied through disciplines that facilitate the letting-go of ego-centred habits and enable compassion to become spontaneous and self-sustaining. It is not that there is no need for normative rules in the relative world—clearly such rules are a necessity in any society. It is that unless such rules are informed by the wisdom that enables them to be dissolved in the demands of responsivity to the particularity and immediacy of lived situations, the rules will become sterile, scholastic hindrances to compassionate action rather than conduits for manifestation (73-74).

Varela’s comments regarding responsivity align themselves very nicely with Siemens’ characterization of decision-making as central to Connectivism: 

Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate impacting the decision (bullet #12).

 

CCK08: Reflection for Week 5: Part 3

A Year Without Reading?

As passionate as I may be about critical theory and pedagogy, educational theory, e-learning and philosophy in all of its manifestations, sometimes I wonder when it will all end. The reading and the learning never stops. Am I just aspiring to follow in the footsteps of my father, a retired professor? Is this an attempt to distance myself from my spouse and my children, out of an inability to relate to them on a profound level? What of books (and now the Web!), learning and knowledge anyways? So what? Who cares?

In 1972, following the death of Paul Goodman, Susan Sontag wrote about her relationship to Goodman, and in particular her relationship to his work. During that year, Sontag did her best to spend a year without books.

 On Paul Goodman: “Under the Sign of Saturn”

 Although I am trying to live for a year without books, a few manage to creep in somehow.  It seems fitting that even here, in this tiny room where books are forbidden, where I try better to hear my own voice and discover what I really think and really feel, there is till at least one book by Paul Goodman around, for there has not been an apartment in which I have lived for the last twenty-two years that has not contained most of his books (para. 13).

 Did Sontag end up better hearing her own voice, to discover what she really thinks and feels? Perhaps ironically, more research on my part would be required to find out. Or I could attempt to do the same, to see how I might be affected.

 Charlotte Joko Beck is a Zen teacher and longtime practitioner. Some of her public talks have been transcribed and are available in book format. In an interview with Donna Rockwell called “True Stories About Sitting Meditation,” the author mentions having read Beck’s books. It would appear that she is seeking confirmation or affirmation:

Donna Rockwell: I read your books.



 Charlotte Joko Beck: Oh you read. Well, give up reading, O.K.?



 Donna Rockwell: Give up reading your books?



 Charlotte Joko Beck: Well, they’re all right. Read them once and that’s enough. Books are useful. But some people read for fifty years, you know. And they haven’t begun their practice.

 The “practice” to which Joko Beck is referring concerns working to train one’s mind through meditation. Through meditation practice, one’s ability to see clearly in the present moment can be improved, to the extent that one is not as consumed by one’s own thoughts (hangups, obsessions, storylines). By extension, when one is less self-absorbed, the ability to be present for others is increased.

 While considering the abandonment of reading, why not consider abandoning writing as well? Inasmuch as the act of writing can help clarify one’s thoughts, when we name our world we perceive it through those names, rather than through a purely phenomenological lens. Learning by example and learning devoid of a pre-established framework (learning by doing, creative learning) are both valuable forms of learning in which formal theory does not necessarily precede and inform practice. The following excerpt, taken from the endnotes of Celia Haig-Brown’s (2000) “Taking down the walls: Communities and educational research in Canada’s 21^st Century” relates to this notion:

 Writing as a “tool of forgetting”

 Lori Moses, the research assistant for the Pedagogy of the Land project described later in the paper, writes the following:

 Learning by example, Kaaren Dannenmann said during the summer course, is an important aspect of traditional knowledge. She cited Daniel Quinn’s discussion in My Ishmael of writing as a tool of forgetting. I myself experienced the perils of writing in a context of practical learning. To give one example: on the day we collected plant specimens by canoe, I wrote the names as we gathered them one by one. But the more I recorded the less attention I could pay to actual identification of the plants in their own habitat. Learning was constantly “postponed” to a time and place separate from the context (10).

 With Connectivism, learning can be resituated within the broader domain of experiential knowledge and informal learning. Haig-Brown’s formulation of 21^st century education has strong ties with Connectivist learning as described by George Siemens.

 Education is concerned with the act of becoming. As with classical Greek educational objectives, learning assists individuals in coming to understand the world, to contemplate worthy and significant ideas and concepts, or, as conceived in a liberal arts education, learning is the process of coming to understand the world broadly and from many perspectives in order to see one’s role in advancing the needs related to ethics and humanity [my italics]. While this need has been well-served by traditional education, the forces of technological change, new opportunities to create and share information, and increased ability for interact with peers globally require a new model based on networks and ecologies. The current age should be one of throwing open doors of learning to bring as many potential contributors to our future as possible (Concluding Thoughts, para 2).

 

CCK08: Reflection for Week 5: Part 2

Notes on Taking down the walls: communities and educational research in Canada’s 21st Century by Celia Haig-Brown, Ph.D

Yesterday I stumbled upon a working paper called “Taking down the walls: Communities and educational research in Canada’s 21st Century” by Celia Haig-Brown (2000). In it, Haig-Brown cites the work of Eleanor Godway and Geraldine Finn in which the authors

…claim that community is catechresis, calling on Gayatri Spivak’s definition whereby “catechresis means that there is no literal referent for a particular word; that its definition comes apart, as it were, as soon as we begin to articulate it” (2).

Wittgenstein revisited, perhaps. Haig-Brown continues:

…In looking historically at the effects of community building, Godway and Finn question the possibility of event trying to construct such a place:

It is up to us to make community: to find it, build it, or encourage it to grow in our fragmented world. But can we? Or should we even try, when in spite of good intentions, the effects of community are often more divisive, more exclusive, and more oppressive, than the absence of community it originally intended to remedy or remove? (1994:1)

In an endnote, Haig-Brown explains her attraction to the word:

I realised that it is its refusal of “thingness” or reification of that which is in motion that appeals to me. Catechresis, even as it is a noun, works to address the transience of notions such as community. As as we name it and define it — or even try to do so — it becomes something else (10).

This reflection lends itself well to the group-network distinction:

Despite such warnings or perhaps because of them, I am committed to trying. If we keep in mind the dangers of past efforts, perhaps we can do a better job of creating spaces which allow difference to be a constant, unpredictable part of who we are together. Striving to work respectfullly with difference may broaden our work in ways that serve to enrich what I am coming to see as the limitations of centralized theorizing whether it is within disciplinary walls or university walls. Confining ourselves to particular and familiar theoretical or material contexts leads to impoverished and/or obscure theory based too often in work we do primarily with and for people just like us. Outside the university, taking community seriously addresses the other kinds of walls, the ones which we cannot wish away, the borders of our physical plant: it may mean getting out of our offices and into the schools and into the streets. Sometimes, it even means getting in a boat or onto a snowmobile. Ultimately, it means learning to listen [my italics] just when we thought our positions in academe, whether as graduate students or faculty, gave us the credibility to speak and be listened to [my italics] (6).

Haig-Brown’s work has stong ties to design-based research, and in her own context pertains to the development of A Pedagogy of the Land. In this capacity, Haig-Brown is committed to bringing researchers into Anishinaape communities in Northern Ontario to structure a curriculum and research based on that curriculum:

The Pedagogy of the Land is a pilot project which involves traditional indigenous knowledge keepers who have some fluency in their language and whose knowledge arises from traditional Anishinaape world view in a programme that allows them to build on one another’s knowledgee and to prepare to pass it on to others who know less than they do (6-7).

In terms of curriculum development, the Pedagogy of the Land project contains elements that are also found in a Connectivist pedagogy:

The curriculum which must have endless flexibility is based on what people do as they live together in a place. So much for minute by minute lesson plans and predetermined performance indicators: one does not set a net if the wind is blowing too hard (7).

Siemens’ reflections on contextuality in terms of the Connectivist framework are worthy of consideration here, as they relate to local knowledge, culture and custom, and their places in a connected world.

CCK08: Reflection for Week 5: Part 1

Nonline Learning

 I am experiencing some kind of inner revolt this week. The Internet feels like a dead metaphor for connectedness, and the use of the word in an online context is cold, tired and empty. Nonetheless  the reality of connectedness via the Net is also a literal truism that cannot be denied. That doesn’t change my feeling today I want to look into another person’s eyes and experience that I am being acknowledged on a visceral level.

 Stephen Downes’ Seven Habits for Highly Connected People promotes the maximization of efficiency in the online arena. It’s hard to argue that one would benefit from doing otherwise. By contrast, Downes himself suggests, “It’s good to take a break and go out camping, or to the club, or whatever. But the idea of replacing your online connecting with busy-work is mistaken (#3, para 2).”

 Yes, spending time in a natural setting is good, but being present in that setting is even more important. If in our minds we are still back in the office or the classroom, then we are missing out on the wealth and abundance that can be found right in front of us, and which can take us out of ourselves. In Groups vs. Networks, Downes states “I’m most at home when I’m in a forest and there’s nothing around me, there’s no walls or no barriers.” (para 16) Toward this end, being highly effective in one’s connectedness is highly desirable: “If you make connecting a priority, you can take that walk in the forest on vacation in Cadiz without feeling you are not caught up.”

 Today the luddite in me want to start a nonline learning movement, a reinfusion of the sacred and the sane into this high-paced, frenetic life that so many of us lead. Something akin to the slow food movement in the culinary arts. To point to the interconnectedness and interrelatedness of all creation is to emphasize that sacredness. I just started reading Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. His book is testament that important meaning-making and learning arises out of experiencing contact with nature. This is not to suggest that anyone is arguing otherwise; however striking a balance between the online and the natural worlds is imperative to our collective well-being.

 In Terry Anderson’s Elluminate session this week, Anderson pointed to the means by which networks may improve our current relationship with one another and our world.

 I think that we are collectively managing the planet earth and that being aware of each other in multple different dimensions is an important evolutionary step for human beings…and I don’t mind having part of my individual, my group, my network activities aggregated to draw meaning and to try to better manage our networks and our communities and our world.

 Kudos to Dr. Anderson for providing a practical spin on that unwieldy beast that is the Internet.

 

CCK08: Concept Map

 

A first and incomplete attempt. This was an intriguing and frustrating exercise.

CCK08: First Assignment

Connecting the Dots

Strongly suggested through the readings is the view that information growth, technology, developments in social learning theory, and advancements in our understanding of minds and cognition require a reconsideration of learning theory (Downes and Siemens, 2008).

I do not disagree with this assertion. However, I am less convinced than ever before that this reconsideration requires the replacing or reformulating of existing learning theories with a new one.

Terry Anderson’s presentation for the Online Connectivism Conference includes the following realization:

…Put your thinking caps on for a moment and talk about what educational research has really made a difference for you as an educator or as a learner. I got asked this question in Hong Kong one time when I was on a panel at the International Council of Distance Ed. about what’s the one thing that really education research has contributed. I was blindsided. I thought, here am I, big researcher, and I can hardly even think of one thing that has really made a difference (Anderson, 2007, para. 7).

In my own experience there are many educators who express disdain towards theory in general for its lack of practical, pragmatic applications in the classroom. Formal theory can inform practice, but especially with informal learning, it does not always.

In response to criticisms levelled by Bill Kerr on George Siemens’ Connectivism blog, Siemens states:

…I don’t imagine too many theories today gain value based on philosophical grounding. Our world asks for proof…evidence…history…or in the term you use, “practice”. I don’t imagine too many people will be satisfied with me saying “well, connectivism has merit because it’s what bloggers and social networkers are doing all the time.” Intuition doesn’t sell well as a theory . On this front in particular, more formal research and publication is needed…At this stage, I know I’m providing an unsatisfactory answer to an important question (Siemens, 2007, Comment #5, para. 7).

Certainly more discussion has ensued since Siemens first posted this reply to Kerr. Is the Connectivism & Connective Knowledge course an example of connective practice? Undoubtably.

Is Connectivism a new theory of learning?

In the paper Connectivism: Learning Theory of the Future or Vestige of the Past? [Hill and Kop, 2007, pp. 4-5; pending publication] Connectivism is characterized as best fitting the description of a developmental learning theory. That having been said, I agree with Mathias Melcher, however, that

Connectivism would, IMO, suffer from restricting definitions such as being a learning theory, which has to obey traditional criteria of an empirically provable but very narrow scope of application (Melcher, 2008, para. 3).

Connectivism, as formulated in the course, is a living curriculum to the extent that the Connectivist stance resides in the “diversity of opinion” (Siemens, 2008, para. 8). Earlier position papers on Connectivism and connective knowledge are relatively succinct. For example, the principles listed on Siemens’ Connectivism blog [Ibid], and Downes’ (2006) delineation of the properties of effective networks are useful points of entry into an understanding of knowledge and learning in Connectivist terms.

Now that such a huge number of people are grappling with what Connectivism might be, a whole range of positions are informing what Connectivism looks like. This is consistent with a networked view of knowledge, and it lends itself to a decentralization and redistribution of power, since for each learner the Connectivist model will look different. This is a strength in terms of the stranglehold with which traditional knowledge brokers have approached the development of curriculum and canonical thinking. I also think that it is a weakness in that this approach to teaching and learning may lend itself to confusion, though confusion can lead to important breakthroughs in learning.

Connectivism absolutely resonates with my learning experiences. I am a student of philosophy, and speaking broadly, the associations that can be drawn between Connectivism and Continental philosophy and critical theory, as well as Buddhist philosophy, are numerous.

The two questions that I would like to continue to try and answer in this course are:

• What might a Connectivist ethics look like?
• To what extent can work on the biology of cognition (namely, the principles of autopoeisis, structural coupling and natural drift) inform an explanation of Connectivist philosophy in terms of evolution?

 

CCK08: Reflection for Week 3

Further Connections

In the second Ustream discussion, Dave Cormier asked for practical examples of Connectivist learning in action. George Siemens suggested classroom correspondance between students who are remotely distanced from one another; Stephen Downes suggested that students who are actively involved in communitiy initiatives, for instance, learning about building a house on-site, is a more apt example.

Though Connectivism does not claim to be replacing its theoretical predecessors, it is worth pointing out that both of these examples were around long before Connectivism, and not necessarily in the form of an activity designed to support a theoretical framework. That having been said, Glasser has already suggested that students should be involved in house-building as part of the Quality Schools initiative. Similarly, Celestin Freinet, an educator from France who was largely unknown in the English-speaking world up until recently, initiated classroom correspondances between village schools in France prior to World War II. Freinet’s students also learned how to run a printing press, in order to run off copies of a newsletter that was distributed in the the local village.

The description of Connectivism as a “way of seeing” or a “way of understanding” resonates strongly with me. Though it appears to me that Connectivism is predominantly grounded in philosophical discourse, there are certainly numerous practical and pragmatic examples of experiences and activities that align themselves with Connectivist principles of learning. Downes’ assertion that there is no such thing as an ideal learner suggests a careful avoidance of any utopian vision underlying the Connectivist framework. Certainly, as he points out, it is empirically obvious that learners learn differently. In its simplest terms, I believe that this is the underlying message of the theory of multiple intelligences.

Downes describes Connectivism as a complex theory. Given the breadth of topics that are being addressed in this course, it would be difficult to argue otherwise. The diversity of points of view of course participants is indicative of the Connectivist principle that “networks are best understood as patterns of phenomena, and that what counts as a pattern to one person may not be so for another.” This statement certainly lends itself to complexity. But for all of the complexity of our world, what of Occam’s Razor? This maxim suggests that “assumptions introduced to explain a thing must not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Explained differently, Occam’s Razor posits “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.” Is Connectivism the simplest solution? Perhaps at this time, but perhaps not—I personally believe that the theory would benefit from greater simplification, or at least clarification.

Downes’ distinction between networks and groups was an important and useful one for me. Whereas the network is defined by the connections of which it is comprised, the group is defined by the nature of its membership. This brings me back to questions pertaining to the nature of membership in rhizomatic educational communities. To a certain extent I believe that Cormier has addressed this point in his article on Membership, Collaboration and the Interwebs, and they have been applied to the Connectivism & Connective Knowledge course, in the course blog description of varying degrees of participation in the course itself.

Knowing as Being

It was also stated during the discussion that “What we know and how we know are questions that are fundamental to what we learn and how we learn.” In Francisco Varela’s Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom and Cognition (1992), the author reintroduces Dewey’s distinction from Human Nature and Conflict between know how and know what. Varela’s interest in Ethical Know-How is in exploring the relationship between theory and praxis, wisdom and action as it applies to ethical conduct:

We may be said to know how by means or our habits…We walk and read aloud, we get off and on street cars, we dress and undress, and do a thousand useful acts without thinking of them. We know something, namely, how to do them…[If] we choose to call [this] knowledge…then other things also called knowledge, knowledge of and about things, knowledge that things are thus and so, knowledge that involves reflection and conscious appreciation, remains of a different sort.

In summary, then, my main point is that most of our mental and active life is of the immediate coping variety, which is transparent, stable, and grounded in our personal histories. Because it is so immediate, not only do we not see it, we do not see that we do not see it, and this is why so few people have paid any attention to it until phenomenology and pragmatism, on the one hand, and new trends in cognitive science, on the other hand,  brought it to the fore. Yet the question remains: how can this distinction between coping behaviors and abstract judgment, between situatedness and morality, be applied to the study of ethics and the notion of ethical expertise? (19) [my italics].

If Connectivism promotes a “shift from epistemology to ontology, knowledge not as knowing, but being,” then how how we conduct ourselves in the world, the decisions that we make, are of crucial importance to the Connectivist framework. To refer back to a comment made earlier in the course by Siemens, activity influences the function of our brain, which in turn influences what our brain is capable of in the future. This development offers the possibility of new opportunities for personal agency.

Varela does not propose a normative ethical framework for moral agents. Rather, he describes his vision as:

…a plea for a re-enchantment of wisdom, understood as non-intentional action [my italics]. This skillful approach to living is based on a pragmatics of transformation that demands nothing less than a moment-to-moment awareness of the virtual nature of our selves (75).

Further, Varela suggests that expansive awareness, in its fullest realization, is akin to nothing less than “authentic caring.”

In Downes’ recent post on Intentionalism and Meaning, he describes Connectivism as a “non-intentional theory of learning and knowledge.” Both approaches describe agency in terms of a non-representational engagement with the world.

 

CCK08: Reflection for Week 2: Part 2

Two weeks ago, the rhizomatic education discussion resonated with me for two reasons; first, because I think that there is great strength in using analogies from the biological sciences to understand learning, and second, because I was pleased to hear Stephen Downes discuss motivation as a key factor in motivating learners. Related to the material that I will discuss below, I have found Downes’ subtle and articulate elaboration on his views about homeschooling vs. community schooling (see the video post included about halfway down the page) most intriguing. 

Part 2: Motivation is Key

Prior to my present job, I worked part time as a Learning Consultant (LC) for the SelfDesign Learning Community (SDLC). SDLC is a K-10 Distributed Learning (DL) program, funded through the Independent Schools Branch of the BC Ministry of Education. The program began as a pilot project with 100 children and their families participating, and now supports over 900 learners. FirstClass is the platform that is used for the SelfDesign Village of Conversations, the locus of dialogue and online interaction between parents and children enrolled in the program. The network is secure, and blog and website functionality exists within the FirstClass environment.

No formal grades are applied to students’ learning progress as it is tracked in the program, nor are any formal credits provided for learning that is realized along the way, unless a learner chooses to formally register for a class. Parents are able to invoice for learning activities and materials that are used during the year, up to the total amount allocated to each learner as part of the program funding. LCs in turn can approve or decline allowing funding to be applied towards these expenses, according to the soundness of the request in terms of its educational relevance.

Brent Cameron, Michael Maser and Kathleen Forsythe were awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence in BC for the creation of the SelfDesign Learning Community program. Cameron is the longtime director of the Wondertree Foundation for Natural Learning, a learning centre, which advocates a deschooled or unschooled approach to learning consistent with the work of the Sudbury Valley Schools, among other similar venues.

At the beginning of the school year, Learning Consultants go into the homes of participating learners and develop a SelfDesign Learning Plan with the children and parents with whom  they are working. The children are free to identify whatever learning experiences or activities they desire to realize during the course of the year, in as much or as little detail as they wish. Generally speaking, the Learning Plans are an educational Magna Carta or sorts, a manifesto of living and learning, a declaration of wonder, passion and play.

As the year unfolds, parents communicate regular (generally weekly) Observing for Learning reports to LCs, and it is the LCs’ job to then identify whatever alignment can be conducted between the learners’ learning activities and experiences, and the formal curriculum documents mandated by the Ministry of Education as the intended (and expected) deliverables of the school system. SelfDesign learners, however, are afforded the flexibility to realize outcomes using as much of an ad hoc, chaotic approach as they choose.

One of my learners, with whom I worked for four years, chose not to read until she was ten years old. When she finally began learning to read under the tutelage of her mother, she went from identifying single syllable words to reading young adult fiction in the span of three months. Some learners were especially strong in some areas, and weak in others. So long as the assessment for learning conducted by the LCs (all of whom are certified teachers) is rigorous in these cases, and so long as demonstrable educational support is being provided, the learner is free to pursue his or her interests without intervention over and above that of the parents themselves, in communication with the learning consultants.

This is one of the few programs of its kind that is (in this case, partially) government funded. The attraction to the program for parents and learners is their ability to transverse geographical boundaries and communicate with one another in a secure network environment, on the subject of their personal and collective passions.

The SelfDesign methodology draws inspiration from the work of Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana in The Tree of Knowledge:The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, among others. It assumes love, the acceptance of the legitimacy of the other, as the starting point of the program, and the basis of natural learning. This is not to be confused with the characterization of being in love described below (although there can be overlap and similarities, to varying degrees) by Marvin Minsky. I would describe this state as grasping and pathological, and to an extent, perfectly normal for human beings:

Wonderful. Indescribable. 
— (I can’t figure out what attracts me to her.)
I scarcely can think of anything else.
— (Most of my mind has stopped working.)
Unbelievably perfect. Incredible.
— (No sensible person believes such things.) 
She has a flawless character. 
— (I’ve abandoned my critical faculties.)
There is nothing i would not do for her.
— (I’ve forsaken most of my usual goals.)

Here is a quotation from Kathleen Forsythe, one of the founders of SelfDesign, on this subject:

 The Natural Way of Learning

by Kathleen Forsythe

 At birth, for a moment, two persons exist simultaneously as one physical embodiment. Birth separates, distinguishes as persons-the parent and the child-a composite unity. From this moment, the human infant, as a whole unity, constantly unfolds a world through making distinctions, cleaving into relevance whenever he is moved to act by the disposition for wonder. It is the unique history of these distinctions both within the child’s structural organization and within her actions as a living system that define the child as a unique person.

This dynamic web of events which produces a new person from the distinction and coherence of two other persons demonstrates the mutual consistency of the pattern that is at the heart of the natural way of learning.

…The natural way of learning of human beings is to compose new patterns through making distinctions and forming coherences in a self-organizing manner. From what we know, we are always constructing new “knowing” by seeing how what we know is different or the same as what we have known before or what another knows or what a new situation or context suggests.

Love is the emotion that generates the social space of coexistence with others. This space is one of trust, safety and openness that leads to self-awareness and self-respect. At the same time it leads to respect for others, the basis of community.

In Africa, there is a saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Inherent in this proverb is the description of th environment, necessary to unfold our natural way of learning – the interactions in the intimate, tender and consensual domain of the family, the interaction of the self and others in the consensual domains of community. We are forming our village of conversations to support children and their families to nurture natural learning and to conserve the disposition for wonder within a space of love (1).

This is not to suggest that “love is all you need.” However, I feel that there are tremendous similarities between the approach that is being advocated by the SelfDesign methodology, and the Connectivist framework for understanding learning. I also think that a powerful ethical framework for Connectivism can be posited, treating love as the the foundation for learning, its origins existing as part of our fundamental biology and cognition.

Recall one of the main tenets attributed to Connectivism:

 

The integration of cognition and emotions in meaning-making is important. Thinking and emotions influence each other. A theory of learning that only considers one dimension excludes a large part of how learning happens.

More on this subject in future posts…

Okay, I think we’ve got the confusion part…

Notes and Reflections on Selected Self-Organization and the Semiotics of Evolutionary Systems

by Luis Mateus Rocha

“You have to be confused before you can reach a new level of understanding anything” – Dudley Herschbach – Nobel Prize winner (Chemisty).

This quotation can be found at the end of George Siemens’ article, Connectivism: Learning as Network Creation. I came across it last week, right about the time that Siemens also mentioned, I think in the first UStream weekly discussion for the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course, that he would be concerned if participants in the course were not experiencing confusion.

Looking through the bibliography for the article mentioned above, I noted an article by L.M Rocha called Selected Self-Organization and the Semiotics of Evolutionary Systems. The following quotation is especially relevant to my interests, and I think that it also intersects with suggestions that are being brought forward by Stephen Downes in Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge, namely, that knowledge is subsymbolic, and that knowledge is distributed:

…Varela, Thompson, and Rosch [1991] have proposed an embodied, inclusive, approach to cognition which acknowledges the different levels of description necessary to effectively deal with emergent representation…

In this case I believe that the different levels of description to which the author is referring are namely the biological and the conceptual. To continue:

Cognitive science used to be traditionally concerned solely with those aspects of cognitive representation which can be described as symbolic. In other words, it was concerned with semantic relation between cognitive categories and their environmental counterparts through some direct representational relation (intentionality), without taking into account any sort of material or internal organizational constraints: real-world categories directly represented by discrete symbols which could be freely manipulated. The connectionist, emergent, or self-organizing paradigm has changed this focus to the lower level of attractor behavior. That is, cognitive systems are defined as those systems capable of self-organizing their components into discrete basins of attraction used to discriminate the environment they are able to construct. Classifications become subsymbolic and reside in some stable pattern of activation of the dynamic system’s components, instead of based on some higher level symbols (emergent representation) (3). 

Here is Rocha’s definition of self-organization:

…the spontaneous formation of well organized structures, patterns, or behaviors, from random initial conditions. The systems used to study this phenomenon are referred to as dynamical systems: state-determined systems. They possess a large number of elements or variables, and thus very large state spaces. However, when started with some initial conditions they tend to converge to small areas of this space (attractor basins) which can be interpreted as a form of self-organization (3).

What I find interesting in terms of this formulation is that when we discuss self-organization, we are talking about its emerging from an initially chaotic state. When “some initial conditions” are present, there is a movement towards self-organization. From what I can ascertain, “very large state spaces” according to this model may be suggestive of a pre-network “container,” and “attractor basins” may be understood as the starting point for early nodes in a network.

Consider the following: 

This process of self-organization is also often interpreted as the evolution of order from a disordered start. Self-organizing approaches to life (biological or cognitive), in particular second-order cybernetics [see Pask, 1992], take chaotic attractors as the mechanism which will be able to increase the variety (physiological or conceptual) of organizationally closed systems. External random perturbations will lead to internal chaotic state changes; the richness of strange attractors is converted to a wide variety of discriminative power (3).

Let’s try to apply this description back to the framework being used to realize this course. There are “some initial conditions,” i.e. there is a syllabus, there are readings, there are daily updates and weekly discussions, there are individual blogs being maintained by course participants, there is a course blog and there are Moodle fora for discussions. There is certainly chaos. And there are certainly also “random perturbations” impacting individual learners, inducing “internal chaotic state changes”, each in (presumably) very different ways. 

Learning is described by Rocha in terms of its relation to memory:

The dynamical approach of von Foerster [1965] to cognition emphasized the concept of memory without a record…Today, we name this kind of memory distributed, and the kind of models of memory so attained as connectionist. As previously discussed, for a self-organizing system to be informationally open, that is, for it to be able to classify its own interaction with an environment, it must be able to change its structure, and subsequently its attractor basins, explicitly or implicitly. Explicit control of its structure would amount to a choice of a particular dynamics for a certain task (the functional would be under direct control of the self-organizing system) and can be referred to as learning (4).

Creativity is described in terms of the ability of a dynamical system to experience structural perturbation:

…Self-organization alone cannot escape its own attractor behavior. A given dynamic system is always bound to the complexity its attractor landscape allows. For a dynamic system to observe genuine emergence of variety can only be attained by structural perturbation of a dynamical system. One way or another, this structural change leading to efficient classification (not just random change), has only been achieved through some external influence on the self-organizing system (4).

In other words, chaos is a predecessor for introducing learning and adaptation into an organism. 

Kauffman [1993, page 232] further hypothesizes that “living systems exist in the [ordered] regime near the edge of chaos, and natural selection achieves and sustains such a poised state”. This hypothesis is based on Packard’s [1988] work showing that when natural selection algorithms are applied to dynamic systems, with the goal of achieving higher discriminative power, the parameters are changed generally to lead these systems into this transitional area between order and chaos. This idea is very intuitive, since chaotic dynamical systems are too sensitive to parameter changes, that is, a singlemutation leads the system into another completely different behavior (sensitive to damage). By contrast, ordered systems are more resilient to damage, and a small parameter change will usually result in a small behavior change which is ideal for smooth adaptation (hill-climbing) in correlated fitness landscapes (4). 

The Connectivism & Connective Knowledge course could be characterized as a system precariously balanced on the edge of chaos, teetering on the edge of coherence.

It is here that systems at the edge of chaos enter the scene, they are not as sensitive to damage as chaotic systems, and thus, some mutations will accumulate (by causing minor changes) and some others will cause major changes in the dynamics allowing more distant searches in fitness spaces. These characteristics of simultaneous mutation buffering (to small changes) and dramatic alteration of behavior (in response to larger changes) is ideal for evolvability [Conrad, 1983, 1990]. 

Is the course intentionally being framed in these terms towards the end of fostering the greatest evolvability of its participants? The answer is entirely possibly in the affirmative.