Comments (3)

By Dan Pontefract, 11/29/2009 8:59 PM

It could be argued that however it’s referred to, wherever it’s offered, teacher preparation programs (sometimes referred to as ITE – Initial Teacher Education) are the cause of a continued reliance on the all-instructor-led model and less on a formal, informal, social mix of pedagogy or andragogy.

These programs are otherwise known as the gateway to the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) degree; the entitlement to professionally teach, at least in the K-12 arena.

My hypothesis is centered on a single argument:

• Where I reside (in Canada) provincial governments dictate ‘what’ is taught at K-12 levels; universities stipulate and dictate methodologies on ‘how’ to teach.

That’s it? Well, there’s more.

I graduated from a B.Ed program 15 years ago, and back then, educational technology or technology in education itself was thought of as something separate from the teaching methodology landscape. It wasn’t immersive because it didn’t have to be; computers, education media, and that of the same ilk were treated as subjects or at best, adjunct pieces to the teaching kit.

Like the teachers who graduated for decades before us, we were armed with a ‘sage on the stage’ mentality. Teach your individual subject, don’t deviate from the norm, don’t utilize technology as an enabler, don’t cross-pollinate subjects, follow the provincially assigned curriculum and certainly ensure you cram as much content as possible into your individual lessons over the course of the year/term. (and, if there is one, teach to the provincial exam)

Fifteen years later, there has been some improvement, but I don’t think it has changed in a way that benefits society.

I recently took a look at the programs, curriculum and overall structure of three B.Ed programs in Canada at University of Toronto, University of British Columbia and McGill University, located in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal respectively.

Each continues to offer teaching methodology courses for the aspiring new teacher, (as they should) however, none actually take the opportunity to introduce new bedrock to the teaching process, which should include the basic fact that we need to move the teaching model to a ‘guide on the side’ structure.

The K-12 classroom needs to become a thing of the past. We need a new model that catches up to the societal changes of an interconnected planet; a cross-functional, flat, wisdom of crowd type of configuration that revolves around a formal, informal and social learning theory. (taking into consideration diversity, special needs, and other pertinent requirements of course)

If we can reshape the B.Ed programs, it only takes a matter of time until the new graduates are in the classrooms engaging with not only their students, but students from other classes, grades, schools, cities, countries, etc. They could reform the way ‘teaching’ is supposed to happen. I would rename it ‘reaching’, as in reaching out and reaching to new worlds of thinking, and thus teaching.

And if this happens in the K-12 arena, expectations will become the same for the university setting and (egads) the corporate setting. Is it a stretch in thinking? Perhaps, however, one can cleverly make a connection between the antiquated model of K-12, to what happens in the universities of today (ie. individualistic rock-star professors teaching their theories in a ‘sage on the stage’ model) to the corporate setting where corporate citizens think an all-ILT model is normal, so why on earth change it now? (heck, we’re not paying for it – the corporation is, so we might as well find an overly expensive corporate training vendor to deliver what I need in a classroom, because that’s how it’s done in every other education setting)

 In a report (Characterizing Initial Teacher Education in Canada: Themes and Issues) prepared for the International Alliance of Leading Education Institutes,Mira Gambhir et al made three key observations related to the aforementioned:

• An ongoing challenge for ITE (Initial Teacher Education) programs is finding ways to build in opportunities for professional inquiry and collaboration in teacher candidates’ everyday experiences that inform personal practice and program improvement. 
• Most importantly, ways of understanding the core purposes and practices (e.g., transmission, instrumentalist and transformative) of ITE programs need to be critically understood as do ways of adapting to emergent needs, of both the individual and the communities served, from the local to the global. 
• Discussion persists about what ought to be considered core program subject matter (e.g. use of communications technology, inclusive curriculum, special education), ways of improving connections between theory and practice, and the appropriate duration of ITE programs.

New teachers, therefore, need the formal, informal, social learning mix to not only learn from one another (and get better at their profession), they need to apply their trade in a way that fits the world that has been reshaped over the past several years.

It benefits our kids, and … eventually, it benefits the universities and corporate settings.

This is why I believe the root of all evil is the B.Ed Program.

PS. See Dr. Alec Couros’ post entitled “Visualizing Open/Networked Teaching: Revisited“. We need this type of thinking to actually happen at all B.Ed programs.

Comments (1)

By Dan Pontefract, 10/04/2009 10:03 AM

Imagine you had the opportunity to design a conference from scratch, without ever having attended a conference in the past, without knowledge of what a conference actually is, without a clue as to what the expectations are of attendees at <ahem> the conference.

What would you do?

This is the challenge I’m putting out to CLO Magazine, and obviously by association, the CLO Symposium organizers for their 2010 event.

At the 2009 CLO Symposium in Colorado Springs, there are good things to report back with. There was no talk of corporate universities, competencies, Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation, ADDIE and thus instructional design, or ILT / classroom training for the most part. Hallelujah.

The discussions focused almost entirely on the ‘coming out party’ of informal and social learning, along with pertinent leadership opportunities for a flat-based connected workforce. It was fabulous, and I really enjoyed my time throughout the two days. (kudos to Cushing Anderson’s birds of a feather session – very engaging and interactive)

Now, the challenge for CLO Magazine the next time the conference is in the planning stages. In 2010, I’d like you to ensure every speaker (be it keynote or breakout) follow the guideline presented below:

In a world that is rapidly augmenting an all Instructor-Led (sage on the stage) approach to learning in favour of formal, informal and social learning concepts, why can’t the CLO Symposium adopt this model for the conference itself? A perfect example in 2009 was the keynote presentation delivered by Ted Hoff, VP of L&D at IBM. Whether on purpose or not, Ted spoke for roughly 20 minutes and the entire audience then became engaged in an interactive question and answer forum thereafter (and for roughly 30 minutes) that complimented his initial thoughts, and introduced new ones for everyone. In a nutshell … it was spectacular.

Imagine if every session was delivered this way. We, the attendees, would be able to engage in such rich and detailed collaborative dialogue (facilitated by the ‘speaker’) that our proverbial socks would be knocked off. Let’s drive towards this model for 2010 and act as ambassadors of an informal and social strategy, using the CLO Symposium as but one of many examples we should be employing as leaders.

(and I hope attendees are more versed in Twitter – or another micro-blogging tool – next year, because that needs to become a firm social learning extension of the CLO Symposium as well)

Comments (3)

By Dan Pontefract, 07/29/2009 9:29 PM

First of all, I hate the word training.

Each and every time I type those eight letters I cringe, harking back to seemingly endless drills during my soccer (football) ‘training’ sessions as a youth. Repetitive tasks that enhance or augment a skill – that’s training – although Google brings back over 1.4 million hits on “definition of training” so what do I know.

Learning 2.0, for me, is the switch from a ‘training is an event’ culture, to a ‘learning is a collaborative, continuous, connected and community-based’ culture. Think of it as ’sage on the stage’ to ‘guides & strides from all sides’.

I purposely titled this blog as ‘trainingwreck’ because I believe the corporate learning sector is in a state of disrepair and needs both a severe influx of innovation and a large dose of reality.

Which brings me to my point.

There are few training vendors out there, in my estimation, that are making the shift to becoming a Learning 2.0 partner. This is why I will continue to refer to them as training vendors. (there are notable exceptions of course, but they are few and far between)

I attended the ASTD International Conference in June, 2009, and was amazed — perhaps shocked — when I meandered a path through the exhibition floor only to find myself stuck in a time warp. Training vendors, for the most part, refuse to refine their business models due to what seems to be a fear of impacting the cash cow known as formal content. (ie. ILT courseware/delivery options as well as eLearning)

Well guess what folks … we all don’t have to believe in Kirkpatrick anymore or the fact it’s the 50th anniversary of an archaic model. There is more to this Learning 2.0 puzzle than a 4-level evaluation system linked to a formal piece of learning content, be it ILT or eLearning. (but I digress)

Training vendors need a new business model, and if I were running one of those companies, I would ensure my new business model included concepts such as:

• Virtual SME’s & Ambassadors
  • Become a virtual extension of our communities, learning org, etc. and provide your expertise in the form of informal and social coaching, mentoring, counsel, teaching, exchange, etc. to our organization (ie. embed your staff)
  • Do so not with your own collaboration systems, but through our system. (we want our employees to stay in our house – not venture out to yours – we don’t care about your fancy system if it means leaving the collateral and community that we have inside our VPN)
• Content Variation Model (aka Learning Nuggets)
  • Yes, we still need formal ILT and eLearning, but can you please finally sort out how you can break down your rather large formal courses into pertinent bite-sized learning nuggets
  • Short 5-7 minute videos, podcasts, screen-caps, articles, case studies, job aids, knowledge nuggets, etc. — all in the name of ensuring our employees can get a particular morsel of competence in a manageable duration, and not have to fight through a 5-day course or 6-hour eLearning module to do so
• New ILT Continuum
  • A formal course is just not going to cut it anymore – so please stop suggesting it as your only value proposition
  • Think of an ILT Continuum that starts with informal-social prework of some sort, that gets a community and the social collaboration aspect of learning in motion prior to the ILT start date
  • During the course itself, utilize the informal-social learning tools, processes, etc. that help students get the fact that ‘training is an event’ type of thinking is dead – and that learning is continuous and happens before and after a course
  • Ensure that there is post-course work that (again) embodies the informal-social aspects of a Learning 2.0 organizational model (how does the ILT content become reinforced post-course)
• New eLearning Continuum
  • An eLearning course of more than 1 hour is a waste of bloody money and development time
  • eLearning need not be fancy bells and whistles laden with oceans of content, simulations, etc.
  • eLearning needs to morph into a social learning paradigm – small bits of interactive content that can live and breathe within the informal-social learning ecosystem
  • The learner should not be simply clicking ‘next’ and then satisfied with ‘mark complete’ – where is the continuous improvement reinforcement? How will they interact with colleagues to reinforce the concept? (that’s why it needs to become part of the social learning ecosystem somehow – and not just an electronic page turning course full of fancy graphics)
    • We don’t need Playstation or XBox for eLearning – we need Wii

Those training vendors, whether large, medium or small, who display some of the traits above, in my opinion will ultimately prosper as we shift into a complete remake of the corporate learning sector under the Learning 2.0 banner.

TrainingMag, ASTD and CSTD should really think about changing their names. Training is a really awful word.