More than a thousand methods are listed in Europe’s largest toolbox for training and youth work at www.salto-youth.net/tools/toolbox/. More than a thousand tools, with new ones being added constantly. More than a thousand!

They stand for a growing dilemma and an increasingly frustrating conflict in our work as youth trainers and youth workers – the demand that methods must always be effective, evidence-based, creative, participatory, empowering, stimulating, exciting, new, crazy, surprising, powerful…

Is there a method in the madness?
Photo by Tim Chaborski

Is there a method in the madness?

The more methods you know the better you are. Methods have become a marketing tool, a part of our identities as youth trainers and youth workers. Some of these methods may even become our trademark – when you think of Madzinga, with how many trainers do you associate it? And yet, at the same time, it almost seems as if only a new method is a good method.

We are afraid of repeating ourselves. We don’t want to bore ourselves with what we do. But more importantly: frequent seminar-goers might recognise a method and consider us boring as well… Oh no!

Are we afraid of the medicine?
Photo by Winona Wilhelm

Why are we so afraid of repeating ourselves? Have you ever heard anyone say that you shouldn’t take Aspirin to fight off your headache because, you know, you took it last time already? Nobody gets excited about taking Aspirin twice. Why then are we so often afraid of using the same energiser twice? On the other hand, when in need of more complex medical treatments nobody receives the exact same dose and mix of medication, operation and/or therapy – too much depends on the situation, its circumstances, possible side-effects… It’s too complex to be simplistically repeated. Why then are we so often afraid of adapting a complex simulation exercise to our needs?

The comparison is both far-fetched and lopsided – after all, we are not trying to cure a disease through our youth work and youth training. But both the Methods Fatigue Syndrome (MFS) and the Methods Obsession Syndrome (MOS) appear to be growing stronger among youth trainers and youth workers across Europe.

In the wake of these two syndromes, methods are often fetishized and given fancy names and undeserved status. Over time, their original contexts, meanings and purposes get lost and are replaced by common beliefs and shallow clichés.

Open Space and World Café, Appreciative Inquiry and The Art of Hosting have not only become synonyms of processes for discussions that matter, they have also become catchwords with an almost exclusive focus on their possibilities, power and potential and little to no awareness of their preconditions, limits and weaknesses.

Peter Senge, in his afterword to the World Café Community‘s book “The World Café. Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter,” observed that

“the World Café is not a technique. It is an invitation into a way of being with one another that is already part of our nature.”

And yet, a technique is what the World Café is often downgraded to. We like the atmosphere, we like the idea, we like the potential of the approach – but we do not spend enough time on considering context and contents, on developing excellent questions and connecting diverse perspectives. And so, instead of discovering collective wisdom, we discover how boring and uninspiring the mechanical process of people talking and moving and reporting back can be, even when arranged in a café setting.

The World Café is only one of many examples of potentially great approaches, which require plenty of hard work to make them powerful, being reduced to a technique of seven quick steps. It’s a symptom of a spreading weakness in youth work and youth training; a widening gap between our ambitions and claims, on the one hand, and our practice and authenticity, on the other hand. Strongly overshadowed by the much-demanded efforts to document and validate learning outcomes, we are increasingly reverting to fixed curricula and reproducible sequences, to known recipes and documented techniques.

On the pathway to the recognition of youth work and non-formal learning, the pressure grows to make our work recognisable. We are writing down what we do more than ever before, and the resulting wealth of material available fuels our temptation to revert to what is already there. In doing so, we quietly open the doors for myths about training and learning to take hold.

The most prominent example is quite likely the learning style myth. Ruth Clark summarises this in her book “Evidence-based training methods: a guide for training professionals:”

“Learning styles represent one of the more wasteful and misleading pervasive learning myths of the past 20 years. From audio learners to visual learners or from ‘sensors’ to ‘intuitive,’ learning styles come in many flavors. (…) For some reason, the idea of a learning style has a kind of cosmic intuitive appeal that is very compelling. (…) The learning style myth leads to some very unproductive training ap-proaches (…) The time and energy spent perpetuating the various learning style myths can be more wisely invested in supporting individual differences that are proven to make a difference—namely, prior knowledge of the learner.”

Ruth Clark makes, beyond her efforts to debunk learning styles as a myth, a fundamentally important observation: what makes most difference to the impact of learning – and should, therefore, make most difference to our design of learning processes – is the prior knowledge of learners.

What is the prior knowledge of our learners?
Photo by Tobias Mittmann

We know this, of course – there is a reason why we are, often intuitively, a little afraid of people joining our workshops, seminars and training courses who (believe to) know a lot about what we do and what we talk about. And indeed, this often complicates our work tremendously, because those participants are way beyond the reasonable variety of levels of prior knowledge that our methodology usually caters for.

This observation – that there is a limit to the deviation of prior knowledge that our methodology can typically handle – is also not exactly new. There are reasons why we normally publish a profile of participants with the announcement of a seminar or training course. One of those reasons is to limit the heterogeneity of the group, also in terms of prior knowledge and experience.

But the connection of cause and action usually stops one step too early in our educational practice as youth trainers and youth workers: if we know that prior experience plays such an important role, why do we still assume that methods, tools and techniques can be universally effective?

They never are. Methods are developed for a specific reason, in a specific context, for a specific group of people and a specific purpose. Within limits, they can be transferred and applied elsewhere. With creativity, their usefulness can be extended by mashing and remixing them. But none is ever universally effective.

Here are the good news: methods are usually not even developed to be universally effective. Their feverish transformation into half religion, half occult happens much after they have proven to be powerful tools. Methods are usually developed in response to a set of questions such as:

• What are our political and educational aims and objectives?
• Who are our learners, what are their needs and their experiences?
• What are our, and their, expected and desired learning outcomes?

These questions stand representatively for the fourfold, progressive sequence of planning and delivering educational experiences: (1) shared learning aims and objectives (2) learners’ needs and prior experiences (3) expected and desired learning outcomes (4) methodology and methods.

Will the cake become stale?
Photo by Livia Kpunkt

There is no reason to be afraid of devising your own method, whether or not it has been used and written down elsewhere: we know what makes a good ice-breaker or energiser; we have learnt how do develop and run a simulation exercise; we are familiar with theatre methods in their various forms… Our collective knowledge, even in small teams of two or three youth workers and youth trainers, is amazing. Let’s use it! And let’s put methods back to where they belong: at the end of our learning design process.

Only a method that serves an objective, responds to a need, takes into account prior experience and works towards a learning outcome can be what it should be: the jewel in our crown of non-formal education, the dot in the i, the icing on the cake. If methods become all there is to our cake, it will start tasting mouldy and stale in no time at all.

Palomar5 Education organised a small, conspiratory event in reponse to Sir Ken Robinson’s call to bring on the learning revolution, a great opportunity to get some glimpses of how we will learn in the future through the lenses of Basti Hirsch, who went on a five-week education expedition through the United States; Aron Solomon, who is busy creating a boarding school with wheels, the Think Global School; and Margret Rasfeld, who founded a protestant reform school in Berlin. What have I seen?

I am here for the learning revolution.
And you? Photo by wfryer on Flickr.

I have seen three very different approaches to and understandings of learning and education by people who share the belief that—while public education remains a fundamental cornerstone of democratic societies—much of what happens in our institutions of formal education is wrong and represents a broken system.

I have also seen a few shared principles underpinning three schools that are so very different –

• the Science Leadership Academy, “an inquiry-driven, project-based high school focused on 21st century learning in Philadelphia,”
• the Think Global School, “a global, private and non-profit high school that travels the world and tosses educational sterotypes out of the window,”
• the Protestant Reform School, “a Berlin-based reform school aiming to introduce a radical change of learning culture.”

Many of these shared principles, I would guess, are key to most of the innovative education endeavours I know. Add to the list and share what you think in the comments!

We will learn in the future by

• following rhythms of inquiry and learning rather than rhythms of compartmentalised structures and times,
• moving away from memorising and teaching towards exploring and learning by doing,
• turning away from sitting and listening passively to constructing and collaborating actively,
• facilitating learning from failure instead of punishing every little mistake,
• accepting uncertainty as the only certainty there is within the complexity of learning,
• relating learning and living in ways that are fruitful and enriching both ways,
• not teaching what to learn and think, but by teaching how to learn and think,
• inventing and facilitating new and integrated learning formats, combining subjects and approaches,
• turning away from instruction and control towards facilitation and support,
• moving away from spaces controlled by educators towards spaces controlled by learners,
• providing encouragement and support instead of criticism and barriers.

Admittedly, this list is generic—quite possibly, too generic—but it’s a start. Wir fangen schon mal an.

Well, I don’t know about the University of Pennsylvania, but where I live and work, brainstorming sessions always combine different elements that seek to benefit both from the creativity of individuals and the collective wisdom of the group. Against this experience, much of the study itself is pretty unamusing, but the graphical illustration of applying extreme value theory to processes of idea generation is interesting nonetheless:

In looking at the best idea generated—rather than the average quality of ideas—the authors identify four factors underlying the performance of the idea generation process:

“We build theory that relates previously observed group behaviour to four different variables that characterize the creative problem solving process: (1) the average quality of ideas generated, (2) the number of ideas generated, (3) the variance in the quality of ideas generated, and (4) the ability of the group to discern the quality of the ideas.”

Yet, it also is a somewhat mystic text – Bloom himself considered the original handbook “one of the most widely cited yet least read books in American education” – Bloom, Benjamin (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals New York: David McKay.

And indeed, while the 1956 publication (subtitled: Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain) focused on cognitive aspects—the first of Bloom’s three domains: affective (attitudes), psychomotor (skills) and cognitive (knowledge)—much of the discussion and application ignored and continues to ignore that Bloom et al. looked at the cognitive domain only, to begin with.

Below are two visualised revisions of Bloom’s taxonomy. The figure on the left illustrates a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy in the context of 21st century learning. The figure on the right illustrates the cognitive process dimension of Bloom’s taxonomy: Anderson, Lorin and Krathwohl, David (2001) A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing — A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York: Addison-Wesley Longman.

Yet, allow me to whisper in this tiny little corner of the world wide web: before embracing our new, shiny, buzzy concept it might be wortwhile to consider—at least—three fundamental dilemmas.

The first dilemma gravitates around conceptual confusion.

There is, quite simply, no agreement on the meaning of learning to learn. The Union attempts to elegantly ignore that little glitch by descri­bing learning to learn as “the ability to organise, pursue and persist in one’s own learning.” [01]

But no matter how much policy-makers would like to (make us) believe that there is a universal understanding of learning to learn – there simply isn’t. Definitions and descriptions differ funda­mentally and significantly across research, policy and practice and include

• the ability and willingness to adapt to novel tasks [02]
• a complex mix of knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and dispositions [03]
• a collection of good learning practices [04]
• a developmental, fluid and multidimensional lifelong process [05]
• a mixture of acquiring competences and developing qualities [06]

How these different approaches relate to or complement each other, remains confused and confus­ing. (And, unfortunately, it doesn’t help much that not even two scientists—or practitioners, for that matter—could agree on what the underlying notion of learning should really mean or be.)

The second dilemma gravitates around political confusion.

Our generation is possibly the first—and definitely not the last—to experience the limits of the antiquated learn first–work later logic that has now been officially stamped as obsolete by the EU.

Learning – the solution for everything?

On a silver platter, we have been presented with the solution to our problems: “Learn more and longer and better, yes: learn lifelong and lifewide,” the Union roars, “and you will surely be well prepared for the fast-changing world and the insecurities of the future, including the high risk of unemployment [07]!”

It is sadly typical for our times of individualisation—and trust me, this is far less cynical than it seems at first sight—that the European Union believes it can get away with attempting to pomp­ously drop the responsibility for lifelong learning in the lap of each and every individual citizen.

Thanks, but no thanks. We may agree that formal education no longer fulfils its prescribed function of providing knowledge sufficient to last a life-time, but nobody has to fully comprehend Zygmunt Bauman’s ideas around liquid modernity and the privatisation of risk and ambivalence [08] to under­stand that this responsibility-shift is a dungbomb.

The third dilemma gravitates around philosophical confusion.

The Knowledge Society is about sharing!
Photo by Ben Foertsch | youthphotos.eu

While literacy and knowledge have both spread immensely in the past centuries, in particular due to the impact of Gutenberg’s seminal invention of the printing press, industrialisation has also led to a narrowing understanding of learning as an instrument to equip (young) people with the knowledge deemed necessary for a successful work life – an idea now widely acknowledged to be failing.

And so, the Union would like to limit knowledge societies to a world in which lifelong learning merely guarantees “more flexibility in the labour force, allowing it to adapt more quickly to constant changes in an increasingly interconnected world.” [09] Quite consequently, learning continues to be treated as a functional process, not more than a commodity.

In a knowledge society that understands itself as “a space to co-create, share and use knowledge for the prosperity and well-being of all its people” [10], however, lifelong learning is a deeply collective and mutually rewarding process not merely at the service of gathering yet more knowledge to remain a flexibly adaptive particle of the industrial—or academic—workforce.

So, why is it that a conceptually, politically and philosophically confused, confusing and contested approach as learning to learn has earned itself such noncritical prominence in educational research, practice and politics alike?

Shouldn’t policy-makers who pride themselves in being critical do more than quickly turn away, muttering half-hearted praise about the Union’s educational policies just because everyone else seems to be doing so?

Shouldn’t researchers who claim to engage in dialogue do more than turn a blind eye when politics shamelessly abuses the empty space left void by academics arguing about definitions of learning to learn?

Shoudn’t practitioners who claim to empower (young) people do more than embrace dubious concepts—in the hope that they will find the space to be critical from within—just because there is project funding to be had?

Time to dance? | Photo by Pedro Simoes

Shouldn’t we all, much rather, be honest and admit that such limited understandings insult much of what we know and believe about learning – our intellect as much as our intuition?

Shouldn’t we all, much rather, laugh at and dance around such shortsighted concepts and—in one happy triangle—empower (young) people to think, to think critically, to question, to discover when their thinking is about to be abused, to think freely and act for change? [11]

Time to re-think
learning to learn…
Don’t you think?

_________
01. Education and Culture DG (2007) Key Competences for Lifelong Learning – A European Framework. Luxembourg: European Communities. ↑
02. Hautamäki, Jarkko (2002) Assessing learning to learn: a framework. Helsinki: National Board of Education. ↑
03. Hoskins, Bryony and Crick, Ruth (2008) Learning to learn and civic competences: different currencies or two sides of the same coin? Ispra: CRELL. ↑
04. James, Mary et al (2007) Improving learning how to learn. London: Routledge. ↑
05. Candy, Philip (1990) How people learn to learn. In Smith, Robert (ed) Learning to learn across the life span. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ↑
06. Chisholm, Lynne (2006) On defining learning to learn. Ispra: CRELL. ↑
07. On October 30, 2009, Eurostat has reported the youth unemployment rate at 20.2% in the European Union, up from 15.8% in September 2008. ↑
08. Bauman, Zygmunt (2006) Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity. ↑
09. No, I am not making this up – I don’t have to: it’s as surreal as it gets. ↑
10. Source: Glossary of Key Terms | Digital Strategy Government New Zealand ↑
11. Thought so. ↑

At first sight, the famous circle of chairs pretends that non-formal education is an orderly system, full of predictable harmony. What an illusion!

» Non-formal education is chaos at its best.

The contrast between the image and the core of nonformal learning is a wonderful illustration of the dialectics between order and chaos, harmony and disorder. And indeed, educators have much to gain from chaos theory.

In Greek mythology, the world wide web reveals to us, khaos meant “gaping void” or “nothingness” and was — at least by some — thought to be the primary source of all things.

In contemporary mathematics, chaos describes dynamical systems with a sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

More commonly, this is described as the butterfly effect, a term coined by mathematician and meterologist Edward Lorenz:

«Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?»

Lorenz described how small changes in the variables of his computer weather model grossly changed the predicted weather patterns and developed a model to calculate how even the tiniest variations of initial conditions can amplify and induce large variations in a system’s behaviour.

With his discovery he — according to the committee that awarded him the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic sciences —

«profoundly influenced a wide range of basic sciences and brought about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind’s view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton.»

Discovered by Henri Poincaré in 1890, chaos boomed after Lorenz stumbled over it with his attempts at weather prediction in the 1960-ies. Chaos is now believed to have been observed in fluid dynamics, in magnetic fields, in molecular vibrations, and the solar system.

» Nonformal education needs to added to the list.

What makes a system chaotic?

To be classified as chaotic, a system needs to be not only sensitive to initial conditions, but also nonlinear. What is a nonlinear system you ask?

That might be understood easiest by looking at linear systems, so by looking at what nonlinear systems are not. A linear system always responds predictably: at a given place and time, several independent impulses always trigger the same reaction — whether they were applied separately or jointly. The sum of the responses is equal to the sum of the stimuli.

In nonlinear systems, this is not the case. The response of a system largely depends on the timing, order and combination of inputs. Clearly, for nonformal education this is the case.

Another way to approach the differentiation between linear and nonlinear systems is by their appearance. Linear systems appear the same, no matter how they are looked at. Nonlinear systems look different depending on your perspective. Again, this is true for any learning situation — how close or distant you are, or how involved or excluded in the proceedings, greatly determines how it all looks.

Nonlinear dynamical systems often behave in ways that seem completely random and are (seemingly) unpredictable — at least we cannot predict their behaviour with what we know. This unpredictability is called chaos.

To the day, weather systems remain a perfect example for such dynamics. Weather forecasts also help to clarify a common misperception of chaotic systems: chaos can, many people believe, not be determined. After all, how often has it rained when Mr Weatherman told us it wouldn’t?

But chaos can be understood. Or could be — if we knew enough about initial conditions, stimuli and responses; and if our knowledge was precise enough. Theoretically, chaotic systems are completely deterministic!

Again, this holds true for non-formal education. If we knew enough about the people in advance — say about their history, their patterns of behaviour, and their ways of thinking, to name but a few aspects of relevance — we might be able to determine how a learning situation evolves.

To a certain extent we try this, of course: we ask particular questions in application forms, we develop pre-course questionnaires, we build curricula in certain ways and run complex, challenging activities not on the first day of an activity.

As in mathematics, we are not trying to find precise solutions or perfect responses (how hopeless would that be!), but rather to determine how the system depends on (which) initial conditions and whether the system can be transformed to a steady state, whatever that may look.

If we knew exactly the personalities and behavorial patterns of participants AND the entire range of external influences AND the complete diversity of deterministic factors, we might be able to predict better how a learning situation evolves.

But how silly would that be? Nobody wants that. And even if we ever knew all these things, we would still only know the starting point — approximately. Our knowledge of the complete set of influential conditions for a learning system will never be exact enough; the complexity is simply too large.

I am not complaining: one of the principles of non-formal education is anyway to not control, but facilitate; to not demand, but offer; to not enforce, but enable.

In other words: prediction is, in our work, not only theoretically impossible, it is also philosophically not wanted. Nonformal education is deliberately fortuitous. But while things may be chaotic, they are certainly not random.

What can we learn from all this?

First thoughts go to the attempts of defining quality factors of non-formal education.

Seeing the wide range of factors that influence any learning situation — and there is not even agreement on what these factors are, not to speak of what their influence may be — it seems almost silly (and certainly vain) trying to define an endless list of quality criteria.

Can this be done at all?

Some people, for example, pay great attention to the quality of the venue. But haven’t we all experienced shitty courses in gritty places, and witty courses in shitty places?

Second thoughts go to toolboxes and the attempt to standardise educational methodology.

Keeping the unpredictability of learning systems in mind: can our response really be to have a limited set of tools at the ready?

I think not. A criteria for quality — returning to the previous question — emerging from this discussion may well be the ability of teams to develop new methodological approaches in response to a particular situation.

Third thoughts go to attitudes of educators.

What we do, at all times, is chaos control — no more, no less. Don’t we too often pretend we control the entire situation? We do not; we merely influence some aspects of a learning system’s chaotic behaviour.

A new, appreciative openness to surprises is needed. But being open to the unexpected is not enough: the unexpected is part of any learning system’s inherent logic — it makes these complex systems functional.

Final thoughts go to evaluation.

A defining characteristic of chaos is that the sum of the total is not equal to the sum of its different parts and their interaction. There is more to chaos than the naked eye can see.

Why then, do I ask, do we continue
to dissect educational activities?

Why then do we continue to look at the different aspects of a training — aims, objectives, outcomes, competences, methodology, support — and pretend that all of this taken together fully captures the activity?

It doesn’t; and according to chaos theory it never can.

It is the chaos of learning that makes our work so difficult and beautiful, and it is the ability to deal with chaos, complexity and ambiguity that makes for a good educator.

Chaos is a multidisciplinary science — it has been useful in such diverse disciplines as biology, economics, chemistry, physics, and more — and I believe that education has much to learn from (and give to) chaos theory.

How do you approach and experience chaos in learning?

She suggests that the target-driven approach of New Labour is the reason why the British education system fails more than 150.000 school students every year, who leave primary school without understanding even the basics of numeracy.

«The fact that so many pupils aren’t grasping maths is just one symptom of a much deeper problem. There’s a great deal of determined teaching going on in schools, but much less learning. The way lessons are constructed leaves huge numbers of children baffled, disengaged, bored or angry. [...] Education is not about discovery, but the dutiful repetition of precisely what you have been told.»

Russel goes on to observe that

«the problems in schools stem from the conveyor-belt attitude to education. The curriculum and the literacy and numeracy strategies have been developed in the belief that children can be stuffed with a little more information every day, and that this amounts to education.»

She describes that

«lessons are structured so rigidly that teachers must move on to the next topic, regardless of whether it’s been understood. An experienced primary teacher has a despairing analogy for what she feels forced into. “It’s as if a train is leaving the station at the end of every lesson, and every time some of the children are being left behind.”»

According to Russell, the number of NEETS — «teenagers not in education or training» — has not really changed despite millions the government has poured into education:

«[...] there’s been no improvement in literacy or numeracy scores for several years, and half of all children are still leaving school at 16 with no worthwhile qualifications. Truancy has not fallen.»

Russel quotes Geoff Mulgan, a former head of the policy unit at No 10, who says that «schools aren’t developing the abilities people need for their lives or for their work.» She concludes that

«what’s needed is an honest evaluation of the limitations of our target-driven, exam-dominated, box-ticking system, and the development of a much more productive model.»

In a letter to the editor, Professor Michael Bassey from Nottinghamshire observes that

«it is the whole educational experience, not just numeracy, that should concern him [Gordon Brown]. Our young people need much more than the government’s obsession with numeracy and literacy: they also need to learn to be supportive of each other and able to work cooperatively; to develop their intelligence, creativity and other talents to their full potential; to be immersed in the culture of our time and to become proficient in branches of knowledge according to their aptitude and interests; to be adventurous and self-confident; to understand themselves and through all this to be joyful.»

The professor goes on to say:

«This kind of preparation for the future can only come from the humanity, insights, values, culture, empathy and hard work of dedicated teachers working in schools that are free to think about the future, make their own assessments of pupils’ needs and construct their curricula accordingly. If even half the money spent on assessment and inspection instead went on increasing the numbers of teachers and improving the resources of the more challenging schools, so much would be achieved. Accountability should be local, not pseudo-national.»

And he concludes that

«the next education act should free all schools from government interference, release the creativity and insights of their teachers and foster the all-round development of young people.»

Well said, Professor. Thank you.

Marc Prensky started it here at «Educause Review», Dennis Fermoyle over at «In the Trenches of Public Education» picks it up here, and Chris Lehmann of «Practical Theory» puts his two cents in here.

Quite interesting discussion, really.

Does learning always have to be fun?
Can it all be done by playful exploration?

I wonder.

Sometimes, let’s be honest, learning stinks and sucks. Doesn’t it?

And despite all the sweet stereotypes about non-formal education being all games and fun, learning also stinks and sucks in any experiential learning activity – no matter how funny it might be to watch.

Chris brings the discourse a little closer to non-formal education and learner-centredness:

«What we have to gain from Prensky’s argument isn’t that we should use games to teach, even if that is what he suggests. What we have to gain from the argument is this — what is it that our hobbies have in common that engage us? What is it that causes us to fall in love with doing something such that we can do it for hours?»

And he adds elsewhere that

«in all the writing we do about 21st Century tools and new ways of learning, it’s important to remember that, in the end, it’s still about the personal connections we make. It’s about connecting with our students, sharing our passion for learning with them, and sharing their energy and their ideas.»

Something which is indeed forgotten far too often.

What makes this study so interesting from my humble perspective is that the four regions covered are Latin America, Asia and Pacific, Arab States and Africa. You see Europe here anywhere? Well, I’d say enjoy the change of perspective.

Because what the work of UNESCO and UNLD-LIFE shows (beyond all which it shows anyhow) is how particular and constrictive the European discourse on non-formal education and learning tends to be. It exemplifies some of the issues evolving around non-formal education as a policy in development aid, as a prevention tool, as the only alternative to learning there is.

Surely this perspective brings its own limitations but is very well worth your valuable time!

From the abstract:

“Until recently, education planning tended to disregard the non-formal education sector that most successfully meets the needs of marginalized and vulnerable populations around the world. This report is a first step in showing how national Ministries of Education in four regions (Latin America, Asia and Pacific, the Arab States and Africa) are beginning to create “synergies” with non-formal education providers towards bridging that gap.

In light of the research outcomes, this report has been able to take stock of a broad range of implementation arrangements, concerns and achievements in relation to the synergy between formal and non formal education. Case studies and field experiences highlight models of good practice while reflecting the dynamism, richness and enthusiasm of NFE interventions in different countries.

This report however does not provide any one interpretation of synergy nor does the study claim to be exhaustive. Instead, such relationships are situated against the socio-economic and cultural contexts and challenges facing different population groups.

Challenges are formulated for both streams – the formal and non-formal – to improve the overall conditions for participation in, and relevance of national education systems. In particular, we hope that it will encourage all actors to consider questions such as:

• How can learning within formal education systems take into account the diversity of learning situations, and the urgency of the specific needs of socially excluded communities and individuals, while paying respect to their social practices and cultural traditions?
• How do we ensure representation of the most vulnerable and encourage their participation?
• In what ways are partnership arrangements helpful?
• What are the innovative elements in different types of synergies?
• What may still be missing from the reform process in terms of advancing the broad aims and improving access to education and educational management?

In several countries, the drive to improve the quality of education, within a context of poverty reduction and broader labour markets, has opened the way for a more innovative use of both formal and non formal education and the creation of mechanisms through which they can interact. These developments in thinking can be seen as a response to fundamental labour, social and cultural changes transforming societies around the world.”

Download the publication over at UNESCO’s website (careful, the pdf is 19 MB heavy).

See you back in just a few short days on September 1.

Enjoy …

… Summer,
… Swimming,
… Vacation,
… Holiday,
… Family,
… Food,
… Cocktails
… and Love!

All Yours as always,
The Nonformality Team

Why would a perfectly decent professor of education make such a radical statement?

Well, you may have noticed that learning styles have become very fancy these days.

“What’s your learning style? Find out in 2 minutes.” That’s just one of the slogans with which millions of websites and thousands of books try to catch the attention of whoever is interested in learning and education. A wide array of abbreviations such as MBTI, LSP, CSA, ASSIST, TSI or HBDI suggest scientific reputation and acceptance.

In the UK, the Government’s Department for Education and Skills (DFES) has picked up this steadily-growing trend and decided that all school students shall henceforth be categorised as either kinaesthetic learners (they learn by doing) or auditory learners (they learn by hearing) or visual learners (they learn by seeing).

I don’t know about you, but I have — in 25 years which I have spent in formal and non-formal education in different roles and capacities — not met one single person who is exclusively what the DFES calls a kinaesthetic, auditory or visual learner. Yet, in the UK this dangerous simplification is pushed forward by the so-called “Innovation Unit” of the DFES and widely supported by politics and administration.

On the website Teachernet, the education department provides 15 tips on teaching which caters the three learning styles – five tips for each of the three, containing hints like ‘practise active listening’ or ‘ask pupils to see words with their eyes closed’.

A leaflet-style ‘Quick Guide on Learning Styles’ for teachers and educators explains that there are a few common-sense ways of ‘diagnosing’ students’ preferred learning styles. One of them is called the IKEA-Test and goes like this:

Ask your pupils: If you buy something that you have to assemble when you get it home, do you:

a. open the package and try to put the item together without reading the instructions?
b. read all the instructions before you attempt to assemble the item?
c. hand the instructions to someone else to read them to you?

You may have guessed that option a. makes you a kinaesthetic learner, option b. a visual learner and option c. an auditory learner.

Congratulations.

Now, please don’t make the Obelixarian mistake (Ils sont fous, ces Britons!) and brush the British example aside. It is by no means a particular case, on the contrary: The UK just picks up on one of the most popular learning style theories around these days; the model is more commonly known as the VAK approach and widely used in and beyond education.

A research team led by Frank Coffield, Professor of Education at London University’s Institute of Education, has identified 71 different learning style theories and scrutinised the 13 most popular and influential of these in a major research project lasting 16 months.

The researchers’ assessment of the VAK model shows how dangerous and simplistic the pruning reduction to kinaesthetic, visual and auditory is. Professor Coffield says: “The real danger is that if learners are made to believe they are a kinaesthetic learner, they might see little point in reading a book or listening to anyone for more than a few minutes.”

While not all models promote such simplicity and ultimate one-sidedness, very often they are — deliberately or unintentionally — understood and (mis-)interpreted that way. One prime example is the reference publication of the DFES for teachers in the UK. As part of the series Pedagogy and practice: Teaching and Learning in Secondary Schools they published a 27-page booklet entitled “Unit 19: Learning styles”. Professor Coffield called upon the DfES to withdraw its publication: “The booklet is woefully uninformed about research. It is also impractical, patronising, uncritical and potentially dangerous to students.”

Two other models analysed in the framework of the same research — and using the same approach to ensure consistency — we all know very well: It is (1) Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (LSI) and (2) the Learning Styles Questionnaire (LSQ) of Honey and Mumford. Both are frequently and enthusiastically used in non-formal education and referred to, amongst other places, in the Training Kits 1 “Organisational Management” and 6 “Training Essentials”.

Kolb has one category more to offer than the VAK-model: he divides learners into convergers, divergers, assimilators and accommodators. Honey and Mumford developed Kolb’s thinking a little further and identified activists, reflectors, theorists and pragmatists. Unlike Kolb, whose LSI basically asks people directly how they learn, their LSQ probes general behavioural tendencies rather than learning.

While Kolb’s thinking on learning styles certainly was the first and very important step in challenging the (then common) reduction of learning potential to one dimension, the instruments LSI and LSQ are both far away from being adequate to portray the reality of learning — a deficit they share with most other models and theories on learning which currently exist.

Or as Frank Coffield puts it: “This field suffers from serious conceptual confusion and a lack of accumulated theoretical knowledge.”

Yep.

The following table presents an overview of the analysis carried out by Coffield and his team, clearly showing that there seems to be only one model fulfilling even the most basic criteria (and the expectations raised by own claims, at that):

As you can see, the vast majority of currently (also in non-formal education) employed instruments to analyse learning styles and their underlying theories are seriously flawed.

Yet, let me suggest that we not only wrinkle our collective nose, shake our heads and laugh about the British government’s ludicrous attempts to address an increasing gap between learner’s needs and pedagogical responses in formal education, but that we also give ourselves the necessary push to be more critical and aware of current research.

The minimum we can do in appreciation of the work of Frank Coffield and his colleagues is to have a thorough look at Allinson and Hayes’ Cognitive Styles Index next time we would like to write about learning styles or we would like to use an instrument to analyse the learning styles of our participants.

At least.

Related documents
Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning: A systematic and critical review (pdf, 1.2 Mb)
Should we be using learning styles? What research has to say to practice (pdf, 530 kb)
Quick Guide on Learning Styles – Leaflet (pdf, 170 kb)
DFES Booklet on Learning Styles – Unit 19 Pedagogy and Practice
T-Kit 1 Chapter 2 – Honey and Mumford (pdf, 170 kb)
T-Kit 6 Chapter 3 – Kolb (pdf, 520 kb)

Related Links:
Institute of Education @ University of London
Learning and Skills Research Centre
Learning and Skills Development Agency
Infed’s review and criticism of Kolb’s LSI
Wikipedia on Learning Styles
Wikipedia on current criticism of learning styles

In short the story is this: Because of a growing frustration of political actors, media and people with the complicated decision-making system in Germany, the two major political parties (SPD – Social Democrats and CDU – Christian Democrats) set out to plan a master reform of federalism.

Wikipedia explains here that federalism is an organisational principle which gives a certain amount of sovereignty stays to states or provinces, but at the same time binds them together with a governing representative head. The encyclopedia points out that in recent years federalism has come to mean something closer to confederacy.

(Why does this word sound so much like conspiracy?)

The German Master Reform seems to give up the original logic of federalism. Annoyed by the constant incompetence and inability to arrive at any decision through the current system, politicians have figured it must be better, then, to separate responsibilities in order to avoid conflicts and compromises alike.

WTH?

In a power game unrivaled in recent German history, politicians are fighting — with no other interest than increasing or at least retaining own power — about something they have called ‘disentanglement of responsibilities’. Education is one of the areas most fought for: Since the disastrous slapping of the German formal education system by PISA, IGLU, PIRLS and TIMSS (to mention just a few) public attention has skyrocketed and with educational reforms elections can be easily won – or lost.

Since the foundation of West Germany in 1949 the main competence in all cultural and educational issues has rested with the federal state level, and the federal level was restricted to negotiating multi-state framework agreements on issues relating to quality, comparability of degress, access and mobility. After PISA has concluded that the socio-economic background of families has an extremely and unacceptedly high relation to access to and chances within education AND that the differences between the federal states are enormous in many aspects except this most fundamental one — so after these conclusions have been drawn: what are German politicians coming up with?

Exactly: Let’s give the small portion of influence that the federal level has at the moment away as well. In other words: The states have failed so far despite their far-reaching educational autonomy, but they surely will do better in the future.

Well I don’t believe in that promise. I think formal education in Germany (and elsewhere) is in desparate need of fundamental reforms anyway, a situation in which constitutionalising separatism and manifesting injustice and inequality is certainly not going to help.

Welcome back to the times of lords, vassals and fiefs.

At least I am apparently not the only critic, and voices are increasing these days to re-negotiate the ‘package reform’ as it has been conveniently called.

Consequently, wherever you look you’ll find politicians pleading, begging, conjuring and threatening to not open up the package again.

Yet I hope the pressure will be high enough so that exactly that happens.

I’m glad to do my share in unsealing Pandorra’s box.

Then I read the report called “Informality and Formality in Learning” and it shook up my world. By giving me a much more differentiated view of what we are trying to do. What Helen Colley and her colleagues from the Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Leeds make quite clear to me is that we are too anxious to separate the different forms of learning into little boxes. The temptation is obvious: if we put them in boxes then we can easily say one form of learning is better than the other; then we can put up arguments for more resources and funding and recognition.

It is difficult, if not dangerous, to try to summarise the report in this small space and the authors are very careful in framing their conclusions.

Nevertheless, it seems useful to highlight some of the points which made me put my thoughts into question, in the hope that you might go and have a closer look:

1. One of the major findings of the research was that it may well be more sensible to see attributes of informality and formality as present in all learning situations. Attributes can be looked at in four clusters: process; location and setting; purposes; and content.
2. Those attributes and their interrelationships influence the nature and effectiveness of learning. Changing the balance between formal and informal attributes changes the nature of the learning.
3. All forms of learning have the potential to be either emancipatory or oppressive. This depends partly upon the balance and interrelationships between attributes of in/formality. However, the wider contexts in which that learning takes place are crucial in determining its emancipatory potential.

So, we need to look very carefully at the aims of the learning we are encouraging, look at the context and reflect more on the balance between the different attributes present in our planning. The report can help us to analyse what we do and be more explicit about what we are combining – and the authors are currently busy designing an analytical tool to give us further assistance. If we go deeper into this analysis, it helps to see that, for example, when we add attributes of formal learning to non-formal learning (such as certification) we change the nature of the learning.

Even though I have read the report a few times and thought about it a lot, I’m still not completely clear about all of the consequences of looking at different attributes of learning in this way. But it sure is liberating to break open the box I had constructed for myself! Discussing these ideas with a friend as I wrote the draft of this article, we thought it could be helpful to think of learning as a stream. A stream whose flow also depends on the conditions surrounding it. Maybe we can find some nice ways to extend the metaphor in the future… Or, like Bob Dylan, just sit here and watch the river flow.

Read more about the report Mark refers to here at the UK National Guidance Research Forum; or simply download the entire report (660 kb) or its summary (120 kb), both in pdf, directly from our site.

Enjoy discussing!