A paper developed from a professional development module commissioned by the Department of Science and Mathematics Education, University of Melbourne in 1997 for inclusion in a CD-ROM intended for the re-training of primary school teachers in adopting and using computer technology.
The CD-ROM was published in May 2000 by Melbourne University Press as CLICK! Computers and Learning in Classrooms K-6.
Paper revised September 2000.

Author: Don E Tinkler

Abstract:
 

Technology has, regardless of its implementation, changed the face of education. Our teaching methods and our theories on learning are sorely pressed in trying to keep up. The author draws upon long experience as teacher, teacher educator, researcher, theorist, policy analyst, instructional designer and education consultant. He challenges educators to rethink many of the traditional positions concerning learning and teaching in the light of recent research findings, both in theory driving education and that underpinning the development and application of information learning technologies to education. As a pioneer in the field, he presents a constructivist model of knowledge acquisition and examines its implications for learning and teaching and its importance in generating a powerful new synergy through the convergence of ideas in education and information technology. Drawing on novice-expert research, he applies the conclusions to teaching computer competence. He argues that computers are but tools and for teachers to become lifelong learners, viewing themselves as "knowledge workers" in the new information age as they promote "information literacy". His claim is that increased levels of information literacy will enable students to more easily discern "signal" from "noise" and, hopefully, make more sense of the mass of data and information available to them by way of the convergent information and communication technologies.

  Key Issues:

Questioning of Educational Theory

Although no one can know the future, one thing is certain, the future will be far different from the world we know today. Whether or not such a world will demand everyone having a high level of competence with technology, it has been obvious for some time that there will need to be a re-think about the whole educational enterprise that takes society into the future.

For many teachers, it seemed that the 1960's theories of Piaget offered an appropriate way to approach education into the future. The theories had been introduced to the world at the 1957 Woods Hole conference in Massachusetts as a direct result of "Sputnik" being seen to put the USSR ahead of the USA in the "space race". Just as it did in America, the initial euphoria generated by Piaget’s "stages" theory swept Australian education and that of the rest of the western world. However, by the early eighties, those working at the leading edge of educational thinking and research began to suspect the foundations of Piaget's theorizing. Practitioners, too, were ready to agree that the theory just did not work in classroom practice.

In the mid 1980s when serious doubt was cast on Piaget's work, teachers justifiably began to question all theory. What emerged as a result could be described as "theory-less" practice in education. However, careful analysis suggests that there can be no such thing as practice without theory, all practice being based upon someone's theory—even the theory that there is no theory.

Re-thinking the Fundamentals of Learning

For years, schools have had to deal with the effects of social dislocation and the human consequences of dramatic technological, economic, social and political change taking place around them. In spite of this, delivery of programs in schools has remained remarkably stable. Many teachers continue still to teach as they were taught or follow outdated education mythology, ignoring several decades of sound educational research.

Any re-think concerning the work and place of schools and their educational practice into the future, whether or not it includes an emphasis on the use of information technologies, must come to the one conclusion—the re-think needs to be about "learning".

The emergence of information and communications technologies as an important new element with application across the whole educational sphere introduces a new urgency for teachers to reflect on the fundamentals of learning and ways to enhance student learning. In fact, information technology has produced a new imperative for pedagogical change, a pedagogical change that can, at the same time, generate greater levels of satisfaction for those engaged in the craft of teaching.

Possible New Synergy between IT and Education

The past decade has seen the ideas driving instructional design of educational electronic software drawn together with the ideas of those at the leading edge of educational thinking. The effect has been to suggest the possibility of a powerful new synergy that could significantly affect the delivery of learning services in all educational institutions, from pre-school to adult and continuing education.

The foundation of that possible synergy is "constructivism", a theory of how knowledge is acquired. Constructivism is already being used to underpin innovative approaches to school curriculum design, pre-service and post-service training of teachers, professional development programs in universities, and the design and construction of quality CD-ROMs and Internet Web pages.

Australia has built a reputation as a rapid adopter of information and communication technology. That reputation is being upheld in the sphere of education. In adopting constructivist approaches, some Australian educationists have already taken a lead in the global move towards applying information technology to achieve improved learning and teaching. Australia is thus well positioned to take advantage of the new synergy as it generates.

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"Mental Abstraction" and the "Constructivist" View of Learning

 The dominant theory driving educational practice in schools since the 1950s has been "behaviourism". Once referred to by Bob Samples (1982) as a "treatment of symptoms, not causes", behaviourist theory asserts that learning can only be said to have taken place if there is a measurable change in behavioural outcomes.

"Constructivism" goes beyond behaviourism and gives due recognition to the part played by the human brain/mind in the learning process.

As Lauren Resnick of the Learning Research and Development Centre at Pittsburgh, one of the pioneers of the notion wrote (1983):

We need a constructivist theory of instruction ... a theory that places the learner's active mental construction at the very heart of the instructional exchange.

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From a constructivist viewpoint:

the learner constructs his/her own world picture (reality) from individual experience

  • A limited experience results in a limited world picture.
• An expanded experience results in an expanded (elaborated) world picture.

Meaning is given through the connections that are made with prior experiences.

---

(Fig 1)

A very young child becomes aware of object "A" as her sense receptors inform her of a bundle of "cat" sensations. Those sensations establish an "identity" for that object. In Fig 1, identity "A" applies only to this special cat, the family cat.

Later, when the child observes a similar object, for example, the cat from next door that produces a similar set of sensory input, her mind becomes active on the new percepts, establishing a new identity "B". In matching and comparing the two identities and focusing on the similarities, the mind generates the idea of "catness"—a first-level category/ abstraction.

So it is with further objects producing similar percepts—the tabby or the ginger cat that crosses the garden. All come to be grouped by the mind under "catness"— still a first-level category/ abstraction.

At some time, the child may observe a tiger in a circus or at the zoo. Until her mind becomes aware of the dissimilarities between the tiger and those objects that have been lumped together under "catness" the likely inclination will be to group the new object in the same category as the family cat, the tabby and the Persian. The tiger is seen as a "cat".

(Fig 2)

 

The child may for a time retain "tiger" as a separate identity, but with further experiences the mind may focus upon the startling differences between what she has previously experienced as belonging to catness and what she is now experiencing, thus producing a new first-level category/ abstraction of "tigerness" (see Fig 2). Identities "D" and "E" then are seen as belonging to "tigerness.

Tigerness can itself be grouped under a yet higher-level category/ abstraction, "catness", which can now include both domestic cats and tigers.

Eventually, that same higher-level category/ abstraction "catness" may with experience be expanded to include such things as lions, leopards, pumas and jaguars.

In a similar way the identity "dog" and the first-level category/ abstraction "dogness" are formed by the mind as it sorts, compares, analyses, and synthesizes in a process of "mental abstraction".

From "catness" and "dogness" and similar first-level categories/ abstractions can be formed eventually second-level and even higher-level categories/ abstractions such as notions of "mammalness", "animalness", and "livingness"—all generated by the mind as it processes the individual's sensory input (see Fig 3).
 
(Fig 3)

There are no fixed, established hierarchical relationships. "Identities" and "abstractions" can be grouped or re-grouped under different higher-level categories/ abstractions. For example, an identity may be processed by the mind as a "cat", a "pet", an "animal", a "nocturnal creature" or a "living thing", depending upon the capacity of the mind for abstraction, the language ability, and the requirement of the person at a particular time.

The model does not assume that all people have the same capacity for sensory input from experience. Abstractions are formed using the input from whatever senses can be applied.

Even without the "tags" of language being attached to the identities or categories/ abstractions, the mind is capable of generating a series of higher-level abstractions. However, the symbols provided by language generally do play a significant part in the process of mental abstraction.

What should be pointed out is that a young child's "catness" would of necessity be qualitatively different from the "catness" of most adults. The more experiences and the richness of the experiences, the more elaborated will be the identity, and the greater will be the information available for constructing or reconstructing categories/ abstractions.

To put it another way: a veterinarian would carry a qualitatively different mental representation of "catness" from that of, say, the non-veterinarian, non cat-owning conservationist concerned about the destruction of small native fauna in the Australian bush by feral domestic cats.

Identities and various-level categories/ abstractions provide the raw material for thinking as the disparate images, ideas, memories and understandings are drawn upon to develop meaning and such other aspects from thinking as inferences, options and conclusions.

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While our world picture is constructed from the input of our senses,
our world view—the way we view the world— is constructed from the input of our senses, influenced and modified by the feelings or emotions such experiences generate.

A bite from a dog is likely to influence the way we will in future view all dogs.
An unpleasant later experience may become associated in our minds with something which, earlier, we found quite tolerable.

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Constructivist Theory and its Implications for Education

 In their contribution to the yearbook of United States Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), Teaching and the Human Brain: Making Connections , professors Caine and Caine of the Californian State University commented about the uniqueness of each brain (1991:87):

In an unpublished paper on constructivism obtained from the World Wide Web in 1996, Linda Mensing-Triplett drew on the work of Catherine Fosnot who argues that reflective abstraction is the driving force of learning. She quotes Fosnot (1996:170):

Because each of us a child (and throughout the whole of life) constructs a unique world picture, and carries a unique world view, it is easy to see why person to person communication is so often difficult and so easily breaks down. It also accounts for the difficulty teachers find in establishing the levels of understanding achieved by students in classroom interaction.

The wonder is that harmonious communication between different individuals can be achieved at all. The burgeoning industry providing professional advice in the handling of conflict resolution and personal counselling would hardly be necessary if everyone carried in his or her mind an identical world picture, a shared world view and a similar mind-set.

Mental abstraction as an idea, mentioned previously, led me in 1981 to look again at the 1964 theories of Piaget that had had such a dramatic impact upon educational theory. Particular attention was given to the four factors Piaget saw as affecting cognitive growth. Those factors in what I refer to now as the "autonomous" model were:

         (i)         total state of the brain and the central nervous system
         (ii)        level and quality of experiences
         (iii)       level and quality of social interaction
         (iv)      sound pedagogy — the art/craft of teaching

The important departures from the autonomous model of Piaget are the rejection of his invented term "equilibration" and the introduction of "sound pedagogy" a factor respecting the impact of good teaching.

"Sound pedagogy" is much more than "instruction". In applying sound pedagogy, the teacher's task extends beyond simply providing and managing experiences and includes all of the following:

• selecting experiences using "quality" as a measure of    appropriateness;

• organizing, timing, monitoring and managing the experiences;

• providing order in the experiences presented
(giving consideration to the scope and sequence in what is developed and presented as curriculum);
 
•  attempting to reduce some of the complexity of the material being presented
(The world for both children and adults is indeed complex, but if the complexity is reduced in presenting ideas initially, the learnings often make more sense when later placed back into their original complexity);
 
•  drawing learners into purposeful two-way communication
(generating a climate where learners are free to inquire, to explore issues, to formulate questions, to express ideas, to debate points of view, and to seek solutions to problems);

• extending the learners' interaction with the learning environment

             (expanding the range and variety of experiences presented in the learning   context).

 
 
 
 
 

General Comments

The human mind cannot be considered as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge as one might fill a bucket with water.

In looking at the way an educational task is perceived by novices and experts, the Learning Research and Development Centre at Pittsburgh came up with evidence suggesting that experts carry a different mental representation of a task to those considered as novices. Centre Director, Lauren Resnick (1983), concluded:

... the task of the instructor is not to search for ways of presenting information that directly match the thought or performance patterns of experts. Rather it is to find instructional representations that allow learners to gradually construct those expert representations for themselves.

(Fig 4)

Novice Representations                                                Expert Representations

<——————————————————————————————>

The novice must be met where the novice is, not where the facilitator or teacher expects them or wants them to be along the learning continuum.

The conclusions from novice-expert research have many implications for education in general. It accounts for the fact that certain teachers consistently seem to achieve success in classroom interaction and the findings  provide a foundation that could make good teachers even better teachers.

Competence with Computers

Conclusions to be drawn from novice-expert research carry a significant message for educators involved in teaching about computers. Unless the novice learner is met where he or she is along the learning continuum, it will be difficult for them to build sound understandings, whether  related to computers or other technologies.

The above comments apply equally well to situations where the novice is a mature adult, as is the case in teacher professional development activities.

There appear to be several phases leading to competence in the handling of computers and other forms of information and communications technologies. The novice moves through a phase of being aware to one of being conversant, to then developing confidence in using the devices. Only then can they move into a phase where they can be considered as competent. The sequence is illustrated in the following diagram:

aware ——> conversant ——> confident ——> competent

From such a position of competency, teachers could then become "facilitators" of learning, being prepared to explore new subject content alongside their students. Whether or not future learning-teaching interaction takes place in the formal institutional settings of schools as we know them today, teachers as facilitators of learning could thus continue to perform a vital role in society.

The traditional view has been that teaching is a process of transmitting knowledge, the extent of such knowledge being measured by its product, student achievement. However, research (reported Deakin ETL 821, 1981) now suggests that it is the student himself or herself that mediates the message coming from the teacher, the influences affecting that mediation being student behaviour, the capacity for mental or cognitive processing and the level of prior learnings.

To take this a little further and accepting the "constructivist" position, it is impossible for any person to perceive the total quality of the activity taking place in the mind of the student. An observer is restricted to reading certain of the signals (which may or may not be behavioural) transmitted by the student in the teaching-learning exchange.

(Fig 5)

 

Ubiquitous Use of Computers, But "Early Days" in Education

Across all education sectors, the computer is already a ubiquitous instrument. With the convergence of information and communications technologies the computer, in combination with other devices, is certain to become central to the delivery of learning across the curriculum. Reports from the United States suggest that in some schools teachers are being expected to use computers in all subjects. Becoming "central" should not mean that in future the computer would be the sole means of delivering learning programs. Rather the technology should be used where appropriate to the subject matter to supplement and complement good teaching practice.

Information technologies in whatever form should not replace the teacher, but if the use of technology is determined simply on the basis that the technology is available, it could prove to be problematic.
Teachers must continue still to ask the question: Will the use of this technology lead to greater learning with understanding, that is, will its use lead to enhanced learning?

Since the mid 1980's, vendors have been marketing computers to schools suggesting that it was up to the schools and teachers to find appropriate applications for their use. Practices developed that, in retrospect, seem now to have lacked real purpose. The early belief was that programming skills would be required of all computer users, so the arrival in a primary or elementary school of the first computers often led to the setting up of a separate computer laboratory where each class across the school learnt simple programming skills with their IBM clones and Apple IIEs.

In a few short years we have witnessed remarkable developments with word processing and spreadsheet packages and now animation and high definition coloured imagery, together with the ability to access information from CD-ROMs and the World Wide Web. In spite of the capacity of schools to publish in multimedia, it must be accepted that in terms of history, educational use of the computer is still at an elementary stage. As described by one senior educationist in a tertiary technology centre:

If we compare educational use of computer technology with the Wright brothers and their place in world aviation we are not much advanced beyond the stage where they achieved lift off with their fragile but cumbersome flying machine .

Microchip technology is integral to these convergent electronic technologies and the computer is basic to most applications.

The comment in the Ross Smith Report remains just as significant today:

Educators, along with the rest of society, have come to realize that in the words of Toffler in Future Shock (1970) "Nothing is permanent any more."

Paradoxically, many schools have proved that it is not necessary for students to have the latest, most powerful machines to gain some learning advantage from the revolution in information and communications technology.

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Learning Theory and IT Theory on Parallel Paths

The possibility of a powerful new synergy generating as ideas driving instructional design of educational software converge with those at the leading edge of educational thinking about "learning" was first reported in the 1994 Victorian Government Report, Technologies for Enhanced Learning (The Ross Smith Report).

The following diagrams may help to illustrate the notion further.

 (Fig 6)

 

(Fig 7)

 

When questioned by consultants for the 1996 National Board of Employment Education and Training (NBEET) Report, Education and Technology Convergence, respondents selected as being "leading edge individuals" in education or information technology often referred to the theory of constructivism as driving the successful application of information technologies to learning. It was also discovered during that same Federal investigation that a high proportion of educators involved in "exemplars of change", whether in elementary, secondary or tertiary institutions, claimed that a constructivist view of learning had influenced them in their successful application of various information technologies to education.

Instructional designers of educational software both within Australia and overseas are well advanced in developing CD-ROM and online products building on principles of constructivism. Unfortunately, a mismatch could occur and the synergy not be able to generate to optimum levels if these new products are used by teachers following a behaviorist teaching philosophy, unaware of the advantages of adopting constructivist principles in their application to the classroom.

Knowledge as Power in the New Economy

A new economy has emerged where knowledge means power. Whilst knowledge itself is important, it is knowledge about knowledge that has greater currency and carries an even higher status.

Teachers and trainers, as "knowledge workers", can be considered as part of the workforce trading in the new currency. In the new economy, data and information are the raw material. Value can be added through the application of higher order thinking skills to convert that raw material into knowledge, and through insight and foresight, ultimately to wisdom.

Skills in applying higher order thinking and the application of various information technologies contribute to enhancement of personal development and enable progression up the hierarchy of knowledge as in Fig 8.

 

(Fig 8)  An Hierarchy of Knowledge

Further value adding, it is suggested, can result in the conversion of that knowledge to higher levels of the hierarchy. Rather than suffering from an overload of information, the problem for this age is an oversupply of data, something becoming more apparent every day as the Internet expands and the World Wide Web, a phenomenon of only recent years, continues to grow exponentially.

No doubt, the impact of the information revolution on the way we learn, work and live will demand much more of learners than the minimal competencies in reading and handwriting that might have been accepted, even a decade ago.

There is therefore an urgent need for individuals to generate more highly developed capacities to be able to deal with the rapidly increasing amount of data and information becoming available. In addition to well developed traditional literacy skills, something that will always be needed, it is now necessary to be able to discern where value lies in the data and information coming by way of the new information technologies, that is, to separate 'signal' from background 'noise'.

The effectiveness of computers as tools for accessing or processing information can be enhanced if the user has developed the mental capacities for higher order thinking and an understanding of how data is gathered, analyzed and synthesized to become information and then, part of an individual's store of knowledge.

The challenge for teachers is to find ways to build in students those higher level skills so they can generate the capacity to separate what is important from that which is less important.

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"Information Literacy" and "Computer Competence"

It must be emphasized that computers are only tools, albeit sophisticated tools with multiple uses. Some uses require very little skill, while other applications may demand highly sophisticated skills and intensive training.

The term "computer literate" crept into the language in the early 1980s when educators considered that computer studies was an appropriate subject to be added to the school curriculum.

The question should be asked, how can it be logically said that one can become "literate" in the use of a "tool"?

Whilst accepting that there needs to be a level of skill in manipulating any computer and the software that rides on it, the authors of the 1996 NBEET report recommended that the term "information literacy" be used to describe the level of personal competence in handling the various information and communications technologies.

Today, we have become accustomed to computers as part of every-day existence. They may be used for such purposes as word processing, constructing spreadsheets, desktop publishing, establishing databanks, industrial design and manufacturing, in animation, as well as providing a conduit into the Internet and all that such a link may offer.

If the term "information literacy" were to be accepted as recommended in the NBEET report, then one could dispense with the term "computer literacy", using instead "computer competence" to refer to a particular skill in word processing or any of the various applications of computers mentioned previously. One could refer logically to a person having "computer competence" in such aspects as word processing, accessing the Internet or in industrial design.

" Information literacy" can be attained through:

•  application of higher-order language skills (literal, inferential and critical skills) in activities involving:

questioning
discussing
analyzing
synthesizing
criticizing
hypothesizing
problem solving
forecasting
conducting action research
decoding information—written, statistical, graphic

• retrieving information from a variety of communication media

• using information and communication technology to find relevant information

• critically evaluating information, exploring the interconnectedness of different fields of knowledge

• identifying, articulating and monitoring personal learning strategies;

•  using technology to analyse, present and communicate information;

Information from our senses is the raw material from which humans construct their "worlds". Each sense depends upon a receptor that provides a piece of the total experience input. Children need to learn about those receptors and the way they contribute to understanding. Because the sensory information is processed by the brain and the central nervous system, children should learn something of how the nervous system operates in carrying messages to the brain/mind and how in turn the brain/mind transmits signals by way of the nerves to activate the body's muscles.

Activities to develop the efficiency of each of the senses need not be limited to the junior levels of the school, but should be accepted as a sound base upon which thinking skills can be established throughout the primary school. While the ability to read well will be of increasing importance, the challenge will be how to cope with the mass of data and information being made available through the various new forms of convergent information technologies.

Books will not be abandoned overnight as a source of information and enjoyment. Printed material will long remain significant even though electronic information technologies may permeate the whole of our society.

Distinctions between Oral and Silent Reading

The following diagram illustrates some important distinctions between oral and silent reading and should stimulate thinking about the way reading is approached:
(Fig 9)

Navigation, Instructional Design, Interactive and Interrogative Multimedia

The ease with which a user can navigate content is one of the most important factors to be considered in design of educational software. Floppy disks and the early generation CD-ROMs were both linear and sequential in construction, very much like a book, and allowed little freedom for the user to navigate the content. That they resembled books should be no surprise since so many of them emanated from book publishing houses. Many of those earlier CD-ROMs are still being marketed for schools and could well be described as "electronic page turning". In considering information technology software such as CD-ROM or that available from the Internet, one should ask whether the same material might even be better presented in book form.
CD-ROM has a capacity for large volumes of text, graphics, animation, video clips and sound and promised much that so far has not been delivered. The World Wide Web and the general euphoria the Web has generated with the public and in schools has overshadowed the CD-ROM as a resource for transmitting knowledge in educational settings. The convergence and the new synergy referred to above may return the CD-ROM to prominence.

In the purchase of a CD-ROM there is but the one outlay for ownership, a cost that entitles the user to immediate access to 650Mb of content, although developments already in place promise to dramatically increase even that amount of capacity. Technology now allows computer users to access the World Wide Web while viewing a CD-ROM. Users are thus offered the best of both worlds, being able to supplement the fixed content on the disk with a universe of extra material drawn down from the Internet.

Multimedia software may be seen as fitting along a continuum from "passive" to "active", represented by a simple bank of data at one end and a truly interrogative experience at the other. In between there are varying levels of interactivity.

             Passive                                                                                                 Active

                bank of data   ®   electronic page-turning   ®    interactive   ®   interrogative

Interrogative products may be available as a CD-ROM or downloaded from the World Wide Web. These products generally are multi-layered in construction and provide multiple points of entry allowing users to self-navigate within the layers of data/ information to make the desired connections within the knowledge content. In a sense, the user in navigating the content interrogates the electronic courseware to gain specific information from the computer screen.

While an increasing number of CD-ROMs now becoming available provide hyper links and cross referencing within the material presented, that is, they are interactive, too few are genuinely 'interrogative'.

The NBEET report (1996:86), claimed that convergent technologies, applied in appropriate ways, can support a shift in emphasis from teaching to learning, but commented also:

  This  poses a challenge for the developers of multimedia to generate quality educational products that will fit towards the active end of the continuum, allowing students increased levels of choices to engage in activity that can enhance their learning.

The team working with the producer on One Destiny! included experts in instructional design electronic graphic art and animation, computer programming, and visual and sound media production. Research and content development was in the hands of senior academic historians and the educational input was facilitated by a consultant learning theorist and curriculum specialist. At no time was the project generated by the team considered as a money-making venture

Eight Defining Principles for the Future Delivery of Education

The report to NBEET (1996:79-91) listed eight defining principles that education services will need to meet to satisfy market demand in the knowledge economy. They were:

To these eight could be added a ninth defining principle — "anticipatory" learning.

"Participatory" learning has long been recognized as valuable in formal education. "Anticipatory" learning takes a different perspective.

Anticipatory learning refers to the learning that is considered to have some value into the future. Taking such a futures perspective requires teachers/ facilitators to attempt to distinguish the kinds of knowledge that would be desirable for students to have to be able to handle their personal and social "futures".

Teachers as facilitators of learning should be thinking ahead in time to the needs that are likely to emerge, or be thinking ahead to what the events of the present might mean to the future. By taking an anticipatory perspective, whether with or without information technology, education can truly become a "futures" enterprise.

The NBEET report (1996:123) drew attention to the following as three major concerns relating to professional development:

Some of the needs will be satisfied only by highly structured approaches, others may require a completely unstructured strategy such as peer support within a school. The latter type programs may prove successful in generating understanding through a process of osmosis with "know how" developing as teachers interrelate with others members of staff.

 To quote from the NBEET report (1996:124): "the evidence is very strong that if the skill training is provided too early, the information imparted is quickly forgotten." It should also be added that the learner needs to be given promptly the opportunity to rehearse and apply the newly learned strategies. Some programs may need therefore to be developed along the lines of the "just-in-time" industrial learning models so that schools can respond to new needs as they arise.

Teachers as Lifelong Learners

The emphasis in education generally is moving from "front-end loading" of learning to a situation that allows for a continuous development of ideas throughout each person’s career/careers. No longer is it considered satisfactory to saturate students in their pre-career years with learnings that can be expected to suffice for the rest of their lives.

Lifelong learning assumes that there will be different needs to be met at different points throughout a lifetime and allows for each individual to move in and out of formal or informal learning programs as the need or desire arises.

With regard to information technology, individual needs may be for a specific skill with a particular program such as composing a Web page, establishing a database, or may be for a more general competency in handling documents on a desktop personal computer. Whatever the case, all involved in teaching must consider at what time and to what extent they need a certain competence in using computers and associated technologies as tools for providing enhanced student learning.

For some years medical practitioners, civil engineers, lawyers, network engineers and other knowledge professionals have accepted lifelong learning as a principle in keeping themselves up to date with developments in their chosen professions. Teachers, learning facilitators and instructors in schools and other institutions can expect in the future that same principle will apply to them. Teachers must be prepared to take a systematic approach to their own professional learning needs as they might be identified throughout a lifetime.

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Implications for the Pre-School Period

• Provide activities to stimulate the senses.

• Provide a wide range of quality first-hand experiences.

• Encourage creative play (constructing, manipulating).

• Surround the child with language experiences (talk with them, read with them, allow them to hear general discourse).

• Play language games developing the use of common names for things in the child's usual environment, and terms for such as colours, shapes, dimensions (eg. large small etc.), and numbers up to ten.

•  Talk with the child about experiences, feelings, objects, toys, pictures, etc. (Respond to the child's statements. Do not simply repeat the words of the child)

• Encourage the child to think and reflect.

• Encourage curiosity and the asking of questions. Rather than always answering directly, help children to find answers for themselves. Avoid "closing off" inquiry and exploration.

• Provide the space and the time for children to explore their world. (Under appropriate supervision, children can and should engage in activities that involve a reasonable level of risk-taking.)

• Acknowledge effort and stimulate notions of self awareness that might lead naturally to high levels of self-esteem.

• Avoid forced and direct instructional "teaching". (Keep the context "natural")

• Adopt a positive approach to the future.

• Talk with children.

• Introduce a more formal approach to problem solving

A Six Step Approach to Problem Solving
  1. UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM

Is the problem understood? (Re-state if uncertain)
Why is the problem a problem?
Is there sufficient information available?
Are there subsidiary or prior problems to be solved?

2. INFORMATION GATHERING

What extra information is needed?
How to gather? Where to gather? Who to gather?
When to gather?

3. CLARIFYING ISSUES

Teasing out contributing issues.
Listing those issues.

4. SEEKING SOLUTIONS

What are the options?
Brainstorm alternative solutions

5. CHOOSING BETWEEN OPTIONS (The best choice)

Possible consequences.
What gains/ losses?
Who gains/ loses?

6. ACTION RECOMMENDED

What needs to be done?
Who? When? Where? How?

  Desirably, testing should be to establish prior understandings or levels of understanding achieved from the new experiences.

In the contrived environment of the school, teachers should provide experiences selected on criteria of "quality". Those quality experiences should be presented in multi disciplinary and cross-disciplinary activities to establish the interconnectedness of knowledge.

On entering the secondary school, students leave behind the primary school and the security many of them felt was provided in the close relationships with teachers and with their peers.

They also enter a phase where they undergo increased tensions to demonstrate their physical maturity and independence. Simultaneously there are personal, physical and emotional changes taking place that for many tend to undermine previous levels of self- esteem.

• Identify the issue for research.
• Establish the hypothesis to be tested. Keep the project relevant to the student, that is, within his/her personal ambit.
• Designing the project. What data is required? (Where to gather, how to gather, when to gather, who to gather?)
• Data gathering. (How to record?)
• Assembling data. (Ordering or re-ordering data)
• Interpreting data. (What messages may be read from the data)
• Drawing conclusions, if any.
• Writing the report. (The quality of reporting should increase as students gain experience)
• Suggestions for future action research.
 
Action research provides many opportunities for verbal reporting and arguing for a particular action.

Don Tinkler
 
 
  Freelance researcher/ consultant in education since 1984, former primary teacher and deputy school principal, teacher educator and consultant in education, Don Tinkler has made a study of learning theory, curriculum design and implementation and the administration of change over a period of thirty years. Since 1979 he has contributed significantly to the public discussion on Australia's social, economic and education futures. Author of the teacher handbook, Social Education for Australian Primary Schools: A Futures Perspective (1990), he has consulted widely across education sectors and presented on his research at more than forty national and international conferences. Since 1992 he has led commissioned investigations into the application of information technologies to support enhanced learning, first in higher education for the Australian Federal Government, then in school education for the Victorian State Government, and later, across the education spectrum for the National Board of Employment Education and Training (NBEET) examining the impact of the convergent information technologies on the future work of educators. From 1996 to 2001, he was consultant in education and instructional design to Global Vision Productions in developing an Internet-ready CD-ROM. One Destiny! The Federation Story telling the story of the people and the events leading to the federation of Australian states in January 1901. The project was based to a large extent on his developed theories of learning.  

Botkin J.W. et al (1971), No Limits To Learning: Bridging the Human Gap, A Report of The Club of Rome, Pergamon, Oxford.