Online education has forced educators to reevaluate their teaching philosophies, and there is much discussion about the various pedagogical philosophies and how to integrate/synthesize them. It seems we are on the verge of identifying a new approach to online education that attempts to bring the pendulum back into the middle, with behaviorism on the one side and connectivism on the other (see George Siemens’ brief summary of Connectivist Learning Theory), and cognitivism and constructivism somewhere in the middle. All of the readings this week seem to address the tension between the various pedagogical theories and how this tension may be resolved.
The readings also debate the revolutionary qualities of using the Internet for education and the potential it has for turning students into mindless robots with the ability to use technology for the purpose of accessing and obtaining information, but with little ability for self-invention.
My beliefs about education tend to fall somewhere in the middle of this continuum. I agree that there is a place for traditional approaches to education (e.g. memorization and lectures), and I also believe that knowledge may be constructed and obtained socially and externally. Interestingly enough, this has been a topic of discussion among the parents at my son’s elementary school as they introduce the Common Core State Standards that California and a number of other states have adopted. Parents were recently given an opportunity to observe a sample math lesson designed to meet the Common Core standards. Much of the focus was on getting students to identify patterns and develop strategies to solve problems. While it was obvious the students were using their critical thinking skills, a number of parents (myself included) questioned why the students weren’t also being taught how to add double digit numbers using the old-school column method (remember to carry the one!). We felt that students needed to learn BOTH in order to both arrive at the correct answer to an easy-to-solve problem quickly and to apply strategies for solving new types of problems.
It seems to me that if education continues to go the way of connectivism, the knowledge we have as instructors of a specific discipline will diminish in importance. Will instructors and good old-fashioned books become irrelevant as Sanger suggests? Or will the knowledge we have obtained benefit our students because we can guide and redirect them when their self-constructed knowledge goes awry? I hope I won’t just become a “classroom guide” to my students, showing them how to use various Web 2.0 tools and connecting them with other students in the class. My hope is that I will continue to play an important role in sharing information with my students, while simultaneously learning with them and from them.