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Is autodidacticism about how you get to know something? Or is it about what you know? It is who you know? Is it how you know? (Or rather how you demonstrate knowing?) Is autodidacticism an aptitude or an attitude? A behavior? A predilection? A performance? Is autodidacticism a signal of learnedness? Audrey Watters ‘How Do Schools Affect Autodidacticism?’

I was reading Laura Hilliger’s recent missive in which she shared her experience of overhearing the hairdressers at the hair salon talking about going to a conference. For Laura, this experience was a reminder of all the things she has no idea about and how lifelong learning is about more than just picking up new skills:

Lifelong learning isn’t just about skill development, you know? It’s also about becoming aware to the world around you and pondering the implications of what you haven’t thought about before. There are so many thoughts you haven’t thought.

Source: FBT on Complacency and Conferences

This got me thinking about what it is I talk about when I talk about lifelong learning. Here then are some thoughts on the matter.

Reflecting on a life lived, Wouter Groeneveld recently wondered about the idea of developing a personal philosophy to live by?

Now you know why my hopes of reaching eighty diminish by the day. But it’s not too late to create my own philosophy. I’ve never felt a more urgent need to do something than this. I have been taking notes on how to live and how great philosophers before our time approach life in general, but in 2025, it is time to grab those notes and rework them into something of my own. Then I too can rest assured that the remainder of my life, all I have to do is to live up to my own set of rules.

Source: You Should Compile Your Own Philosophy by Wouter Groeneveld

I wonder about this, is such a pursuit an example of lifelong learning or life learning? I wonder if a personal philosophy is itself a lifelong pursuit, something continually devised. Ideas “held tightly, let go lightly?”

In Pierre Bayard’s exploration of reading and identity, he argues that we are the sum of the accumulated books we have read.

For we are more than simple shelters for our inner libraries; we are the sum of these accumulated books. Little by little, these books have made us who we are, and they cannot be separated from us without causing us suffering.

Source: How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard

However, I don’t believe this is some Matrix-style “I know kung fu”, where we know everything about books, or anything for that matters. We do not take in books as an objective entity, some things stand out, other parts are missed, others are forgotten over time.

Gert Biesta talks about the shift when it comes to lifelong learning to be about being ‘productive and employable’:

In about three decades, then, the discourse of lifelong learning seems to have shifted from ‘learning to be’ to ‘learning to be productive and employable’. Or, as Peter Jarvis has put it:

“The lifelong learning society has become part of the current economic and political discourse of global capitalism, which positions people as human resources to be developed through lifelong learning, or discarded and retrained if their job is redundant. (Jarvis, 2000, quoted in Grace, 2004, p. 398).”

The question this raises is how we should understand these developments and, more importantly, how we should evaluate them.

Source: Learning Democracy in School and Society: Education, Lifelong Learning, and the Politics of Citizenship by Gert J.J. Biesta

This focus on the economic comes at the expensive of personal fulfillment and democratic understanding.

Aspin and Chapman make a distinction between three of such purposes which, in their words, are: (1) lifelong learning for economic progress and development; (2) lifelong learning for personal development and fulfilment; and (3) lifelong learning for social inclusiveness and democratic understanding and activity (see Aspin and Chapman, 2001, pp. 39­40).

Source: Learning Democracy in School and Society: Education, Lifelong Learning, and the Politics of Citizenship by Gert J.J. Biesta

Another consequence to the economic is the shift of responsibility to the individual.

Yet the point is not only that learning has become increasingly an individual activity. Under the influence of the learning economy learning has also increasingly become an individual issue and an individual responsibility (see, for example, Grace, 2004; Fejes, 2004). It is not only that under the imperatives of the learning economy only the economic function of lifelong learning seems to count as ‘good’ or desirable learning. There is also a clear tendency to shift the responsibility for learning to the individual ­or, at a larger scale, to shift this responsibility away from the state towards the private sector. In the learning economy learning ceases to be a collective good and increasingly becomes an individual good. In this scenario the state is less and less a provider and promoter of lifelong learning and increasingly becomes the regulator and auditor of the ‘learning market’ (see Biesta, 2004[a]).

Source: Learning Democracy in School and Society: Education, Lifelong Learning, and the Politics of Citizenship by Gert J.J. Biesta

This is fascinating to think about as the onus in the organisation I work in is for people to find their own professional development. Although there is money allocated, limited support or guidance is provided. What makes this even worse is that when you put in a request for professional development, you need to justify.

Reflecting upon lifelong learning and autodidacticism, Audrey Watters provides a series of questions to dig deeper:

what are the effects of an institution on an -ism?

Is autodidacticism about how you get to know something? Or is it about what you know? It is who you know? Is it how you know? (Or rather how you demonstrate knowing?)

Is autodidacticism an aptitude or an attitude? A behavior? A predilection? A performance?

Is autodidacticism a signal of learnedness?

Source: How Do Schools Affect Autodidacticism? by Audrey Watters

Thinking about this, maybe lifelong learning is actually people? This has me thinking about a post I wrote a few years ago wondering whether people not presentations make conferences and whether the power of a good PLN is the ability to bring in different ideas. I feel this is something I have lost with the changes in social media or maybe it reflects the changes in my work?

In the end, I wonder if the best lifelong learning is actually stopping and considering what it is we consider by lifelong learning? Learning about learning? Collecting and connecting the dots. To return to Laura’s point at the start, here is to more thoughts I haven’t thought.

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Are schools on the cusp of change? Will all jobs be transformed by 2030? And what is change anyway?

In the recent Google Education on Air conference, Jan Owens discovered that the biggest lesson learnt looking ahead to 2030 is that every job will be transformed. It would be easy to just add this as another Countrafabulist predictions. However, it raises wider questions associated with transformation and our role within it all.

During a discussion on the Modern Learners podcast, Bruce Dixon discussed the notion of ‘the end of school as we know it’. He shared an exercise where teachers are given three options to choose from in regards to the current state of education:

  • We are seeing the end of school as we know it
  • We are not seeing the end of school as we know it
  • We should be seeing the end of school as we know it

To me this touches on Audrey Watters’ discussion of the invented history associated with the Prussian origins of (American) education. In time we manage to bend the past into a linear narrative. One where all roads lead to innovation.

And so too we’ve invented a history of “the factory model of education” in order to justify an “upgrade” – to new software and hardware that will do much of the same thing schools have done for generations now, just (supposedly) more efficiently, with control moved out of the hands of labor (teachers) and into the hands of a new class of engineers, out of the realm of the government and into the realm of the market.
The Invented History of ‘The Factory Model of Education’

If I had to choose one response it would be that we are seeing the end of school as we know it. However, I also feel that this is that wrong question. Whether we like it or not, the world changes each and every day. For example, smartphones have had an impact on schools whether we allow them in the classroom or not.

Another way of looking at change is using Raymond Williams’ historical model where he differentiates between emergence, dominant, residual.

We can find terms which recognize not only ‘stages’ and ‘variations’ but the internal dynamic relations of any actual process. We have certainly still to speak of the ‘dominant’ and the ‘effective’, and in these senses of the hegemonic. But we find that we have also to speak, and indeed with further differentiation of each, of the ‘residual’ and the ’emergent’, which in any real process, and at any moment in the process, are significant both in themselves and in what they reveal of the characteristics of the ‘dominant’.

There is a constant flow of meanings, values, practices and relationships, where even if a certain aspect were to remain ‘dominant’, it cannot inoculate itself from new influences.

As I discussed previously, much is learnt as things are pushed to breaking point. The question is not whether we are seeing the end of school as we know it, but how do we want school (and society) to change for tomorrow? Gert Biesta uses a quote from Jacques Derrida which makes this point clear,

To live, by definition, is not something one learns.

Our focus therefore should be what education do we want and collectively work towards that.

So what about you? What is your choice? Is this the end of school as we know it? As always comments welcome, even better when they are from your own space.

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Not About the Tool? @peterskillen

“Not About the Tool? @peterskillen” by mrkrndvs is licensed under CC BY-SA

In a recent post, George Couros warned that technology in and of itself will not redefine education. Instead he argued that what really matters is agency. This got me thinking about all the things that get discussed as possible solutions. Maybe it is student action? Maybe relationships? Maybe passion? Maybe pedagogy? Maybe learning? Maybe trust? Maybe empathy? Maybe being a PIRATE? Or a champion? Or REAL? Maybe being based on evidence? Or being evidence-informed? These are just some of the solutions that seem ripe for the picking, but do they each in themselves redefine education?

On the question technology, I wonder if we need to reconsider what it might mean to talk about ‘technology’ and the ‘redefinition’ of education. I don’t think that the SAMR model has necessarily helped this. As Peter Skillen points out, the possibilities provided by technology have the ramification of inadvertently redefining the world that we exist in, whether we realise it or not.

Tools shape cognition. Tools shape societal structures in both intended, and unintended, ways.

The question then becomes about how technology changes things. It becomes a question of edtech ethics and technical democracy. For example, although a device like a Fitbit may provide instant feedback, that feedback in the form of data is a public commodity. Importantly seeing technology this way, it becomes a discussion about impact and influence. More importantly though it becomes a part of a wider conversation about education.

This all has me thinking, rather than worrying about the one thing, what if our focus was what constitutes a ‘good’ education? What if we considered choices more holistically? Although each part may play it’s part, maybe they all have some part to play in redefining schools of the future?

So what do you think in regards to schools of tomorrow? As always, comments welcome.

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flickr photo shared by mrkrndvs under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license

Today I was asked the question about which I thought was more important, what work I do or how I go about it? This made me reflect on some of the challenges that I have been faced with in education. Whether it be teaching music, business studies, organising reports or developing timetables, I am not sure they were all things that if I had my way I would have necessarily chosen. However, I did each of them to the best of my ability. What mattered more to me though was how I went about it. Whether it be creating a environment of inquiry when investigating business or given the autonomy to develop solutions that are inevitable when forming timetables.

Interestingly, Simon Sinek captures this conundrum, suggesting that what matters least in. He instead argues that how we go about what we do is far more important. However, what matters most is why we do what we do. In regards to education, this why is discussed by Gert Biesta in his investigation of a good education.

I will finish with a quote from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, which I have just started reading on the recommendation of a colleague:

“Inside-out” means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self—with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. It says if you want to have a happy marriage, be the kind of person who generates positive energy and sidesteps negative energy rather than empowering it. If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee. If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy. If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.

To me what Covey is touching on is that to deal with the what, whether it be marriage, parenting or being an employee, then you need to firstly deal with the how and why.

It is interesting when different people responding to disparate ideas come to the same conclusion.

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flickr photo shared by mrkrndvs under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-SA ) license

There are a lot of people who argue that the answer when it comes to transforming education is to start again. For some this is revolution, while for others it means starting again by building something new. Often the reason given is the opportunity to work with like-minded educators. The problem with this is that starting a new school is an exception to the case while revolutions are very rarely glorious. Another issue with this approach is that it often blames teachers for the state of education. If only we had the right people in the positions then everything would be ok, right?

This focus on the teacher could be construed as an influence of the work of John Hattie. For as Ivan Snook, John O’Neill, John Clark, Anne-Marie O’Neill and Roger Openshaw share in their analysis of Visible Learning:

There are; in fact, two different types of research on ‘school effects’. One compares the relative contribution made by social variables on the one hand and school variables on the other. The former includes social status, parental education, home resources and the like; the latter includes all variables within the school: curriculum, principal, buildings and the work of teachers. These studies typically find that most of the variance comes from the social variables and only a small part from the school (including the teachers).

As Snook and co explain, Hattie largely chooses to ignore socio-economic status and home background. This choice therefore places teachers front and centre.

So short of starting again with a bunch of like-minded teachers, here are five ideas for developing education without the blood and violence:

  • Student Action: So often people give credence to student voice, but as Nick Jackson explains that this is not enough, we need to be advocating for student action. For Jackson this comes in the form of the Digital Leaders movement, for Cameron Paterson it is involving students within faculty meetings.
  • Community Engagement: If a part of success is what happens at home, then one answer in regards to developing students is actually developing the whole community. Many schools offer literacy sessions to support migrant families, while others simply offer the means of gathering, therefore developing the school into a community hub.
  • Strong North Star: In many of the supposed innovative schools that I have either visited or read about, there is usually a strong vision that goes beyond the ‘learnification‘ of education. Grant Lichtman talks about having a strong North Star to drive change. This often starts with leadership, but goes beyond senior leadership to involve the whole staff school.
  • Distributed Leadership: A part of involving voices across the board is actually giving them some sort of autonomy. One model or method which does this is distributed leadership. This is not where menial tasks are delegated throughout the team, but rather where all members are given the chance to lead. This opportunity is as much about process and interaction as it is about formal titles.
  • Develop Capacity: To often I feel teachers stagnate because they neither know where to go next nor do they have the tools to get there. Fine we have standards to guide use, but they have their limits. They often lack context and nuance. It is for this reason that the Modern Learning Canvas is so interesting as it not only starts with a teacher’s own situation, but it also breaks teaching down into clear parts that can be developed further. Coupled with coaching, these the canvas allows for self-determined teaching.

Although working with an awesome group of like-minded teachers might seem like the best answer to fix our woes if this is not coupled with a clear understanding of the purposes associated with education them what is actually gained? In Good Education in an Age of Measurement, Gert Biesta explains how our focus on measurements has limited the conversation. As he states,

One effect of this redefinition process has been the depoliticization of the relationship between schools/teachers and parents/students, in that their interaction focuses primarily on questions about the “quality” of the provision (e.g., compared to other providers; an effect of league tables) and individual value for money (“Is my child getting the best out of this school?”), rather than on questions about the common educational good (“What is it that we want to achieve as a community for the community?”).

What is clear is that we are in a time of change and disruption with recent events only compounding this. So what about you? What steps are you taking? What dreams are you giving birth to? As always, comments welcome.

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flickr photo shared by mrkrndvs under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license

I have started reading Gert Biesta’s book, Good Education in an Age of Measurement. In the first chapter, he puts forward the case of three key arguments for a ‘good education‘: qualification, socialization and subjectification.

Qualification is defined as:

The qualification function is without doubt one of the major functions of organized education and constitutes an important rationale for having state-funded education in the first place.

Socialization as:

Through its socializing function education inserts individuals into existing ways of doing and being. In this way education plays an important role in the continuation of culture and tradition—both with regard to its desirable and its undesirable aspects.

And subjectification as:

The subjectification function might perhaps best be understood as the opposite of the socialization function. It is precisely not about the insertion of “newcomers” into existing orders, but about ways of being that hint at independence from such orders, ways of being in which the individual is not simply a “specimen” of a more encompassing order.

These, Biesta argues, are not to simply be considered in isolation, but in how they interact:

The three functions of education can therefore best be represented in the form of a Venn diagram, i.e., as three partly overlapping areas, and the more interesting and important questions are actually about the intersections between the areas rather than the individual areas per se.

This focus on purpose is in contrast to what Biesta describes as the ‘learnification’ of education. This is where the sole concern becomes the individualistic process of learning, rather than the intent that is actually associated with this.

This discussion of purpose made me wonder about things like learning walks and annual review processes. What if the success or failure of something like a learning walk was decided before anyone even enters the room? What happens if a coach considers qualification as being the primary purpose of education and inadvertently applies this lens to what they see. Yet the teacher in question’s primary concern is socialization?

I am wondering if it is for this reason that we need something more than a set of standards to improve education. We need a holistic approach, like the Modern Learning Canvas, that incorporates all the different facets.


flickr photo shared by mrkrndvs under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license

What about you? What tools and techniques have you used to capture a rich picture of practice? As always, comments welcome.