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.

It was some five months ago, that with this sad event Nonformality went on hiatus. It was not really planned, but there was no way we could have just kept on blogging as if nothing had happened… The grief was still too near.

«Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.»

Samuel Johnson

∞

«Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.»

Mark Twain

So in the end, we do come back at last to share our joy in
writing, discussing, thinking and (of course) provoking.

What can you expect?

A few surprises, for sure. We used the previous months to work hard on our first book – hopefully the announcement will appear here before too long and should already be reason enough to stay tuned!

We will also pick up our series on intercultural learning by Lene from «The Sparkle». The previous three articles of Lene were always greeted by many opinions and discussions, and we are confident the coming three articles will do no less.

To get you started again or afresh or at all:

The Derdians. How to build bridges when the ones who need the bridges have a culture?
Celebrating Experiential Learning. But what if Kolb was misinterpreted?
Intercultural Learning. One concept to embrace it all?

We hope it will be fun!

Obviously, asking questions remains part of our writing and thinking on this site. We will, for example, ask ourselves and you why first mornings of so many training courses and seminars are so dreadful – and why intercultural evenings commonly are a parody of the concept of intercultural learning. And our thoughts and eyes are on much more…

From everybody here at Nonformality,
thanks for paying attention. Love,

Dig into the archives until our frontpage reappears.
All pictures courtesy of the great CARF @ FLICKR.

Peter Lauritzen, Head of the Youth Department at the Council of Europe, contributing author at Nonformality, but especially a beloved friend and mentor, passed away on May 29, 2007.

You will be missed, Peter – here, there, everywhere.

The EU is celebrating its birthday, but it’s not quite sure of its identity. Might be true, but is this bad?

Anyhow: Dive into the EU. One way or the other!

Young people at the youth summit say: This is the Europe we want! And soon gather again at the European Youth Week to request “Nothing about us without us: give us more democracy!”

300 young journalists take hold of the European Parliament: Release youth media!

Philosopher and social scientist Jürgen Habermas proposes for citizens to vote on a democratisation referendum in 2009. “The governments have to recognise their own powerlessness and dare to use democracy.”

The Guardian finds it’s harder to look forward.

The Pope thinks the EU is on the path to oblivion. There are others who think the Pope is really Oblivion.

Europe and Islam: What are we talking about? Discover the Muslim World! In depth.

Unfortunately, not completely unrelated: Alana Lentin questions and explores racism and human rights and their relation: “Towards a new humanism?” and “Multiculturalism or anti-racism?”

No offence, but why are all white men so aggressive?

Europe needs to re-engage with imagination: But who and how?

At 50, the European Union – America’s pampered godchild – is overweight and badly dressed.

“Like it or not, if we have a united Europe we survive. If not, we are dead.”, argues Romani Prodi. His successor, Jose Manuel Barroso, contends that “Europe needs a vision to inspire its citizens in the next 50 years”.

Europe has a much longer history, of course. And an older institution.

A sequence of 21 cartographic snapshots showing the history of Europe as a whole. More early maps. And an excellent overview of different maps. Plus a cool interactive European map.

Poland is the new Spain.

50 reasons to love the European Union. Number 50: “Lists like this drive the Eurosceptics mad.” Good!

Quotes on, about and related to Europe. “Morality in Europe today is herd-morality”, said Friedrich Nietzsche. More here or here.

Very different things can happen in two different places within the same 10 minutes.

The European Parliament has a better website than you would think. Admittedly they are Muggles though, so it is fair enough that this website is much more magical.

For that, the European Parliament looks great.

Have an idea or two about the future of Europe? Make them heard at the first pan-European citizens’ consultations. Debate Europe!

Inside Europe: The European Radio Weekly. One of the best podcast about, on and in Europe.

Eurotopics. Excellent daily press review following the most important political, cultural and social debates.

Europhobia is the blog of Nosemonkey. I’m not joking. It’s good!

There is so much to see in Europe…

Interesting? Exciting – enjoy!

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.

The most important resource of the twentyfirst century, politicians say, is education. How fatally wrong: The most important resource, being the most scarcely one, is willpower.

In a nutshell, the article argues that transformation and change will happen not through education alone.

So how do we reach for the stars now?

Pictures courtesy of Lida Rose and Carf.

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

The main objective of youth work is to provide opportunities for young people to shape their own futures.

Youth work is a summary expression for activities with and for young people of a social, cultural, educational or political nature. Increasingly, youth work activities also include sports and services for young people. Youth work belongs to the domain of ‘out-of-school’ education, most commonly referred to as either non-formal or informal learning.

The general aims of youth work are the integration and inclusion of young people in society. It may also aim towards the personal and social emancipation of young people from dependency and exploitation.

Youth Work belongs both to the social welfare and to the educational systems. In some countries it is regulated by law and administered by state civil servants, in particular at local level. However, there exists an important relation between these professional and voluntary workers which is at times antagonistic, and at others, cooperative.

The definition of youth work is diverse. While it is recognised, promoted and financed by public authorities in many European countries, it has only a marginal status in others where it remains of an entirely voluntary nature. What is considered in one country to be the work of traditional ‘youth workers’ – be it professionals or volunteers – may be carried out by consultants in another, or by neighbourhoods and families in yet another country or, indeed, not at all in many places.

Today, the difficulty within state systems to adequately ensure global access to education and the labour market, means that youth work increasingly deals with unemployment, educational failure, marginalisation and social exclusion. Increasingly, youth work overlaps with the area of social services previously undertaken by the Welfare State. It, therefore, includes work on aspects such as education, employment, assistance and guidance, housing, mobility, criminal justice and health, as well as the more traditional areas of participation, youth politics, cultural activities, career guidance, leisure and sports.

Youth work often seeks to reach out to particular groups of young people such as disadvantaged youth in socially deprived neighbourhoods, or immigrant youth including refugees and asylum seekers. Youth work may at times be organised around a particular religious tradition.

Peter Lauritzen works at the Council of Europe’s Directorate of Youth and Sport as the Head of the Youth Unit.

You disagree? Have something to add? Wanna argue? Fire away!

See you back in a few short days.

Enjoy Easter, Passover, Vacation, Holiday, Family, Food and Love.

All Yours,
Yael, Andreas and 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

Technology wasn’t there yet, of course. Only in recent months and years software has evolved enough to survive the missing physical presence of the other. Coming to think about it, this geeky stuff actually almost renumerates, because you can have decent discussions and exchanges with people you have never met and never would. Quite amazing, really.

Technology wasn’t the only problem, though — the people weren’t there either, were they? Just remember the resistance of so many, refusing to use the internet… Let alone go beyond consumption to a more pro-active approach. And still today, on this blog and elsewhere, there are some who cannot or would not post their article themselves — they submit their stories and contributions in Word documents, as handwritten scripts, or typed with a good old typewriter.

Writing had to come a long way, too. How do you write for the world wide web — for a virtual audience? The same way one would write for print media? Certainly not. The same way one would talk with their friends? Even less so. Like a book? A radio show script? A cartoon?

It seems though that we live in a priviliged time in which things, at last, come together: The technology exists to allow for a discourse of high quality. People think and increasingly use the internet to share their thoughts and observations. And more and more often they do so in ways which are readable, sometimes even more than that — enjoyable, provoking, thoughtful, inspiring, arguable.

And this is exactly what Nonformality is here for: to provide technology and space for meaningful thinking and constructive discourse on learning.

Come in and enjoy to think, disagree and discuss!