“One can’t believe impossible things”. ‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice’, said the Queen. ‘When I was your age I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometime I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Shaw, 1995-2010).
Like Alice, many educators, policy makers and even the general public respond resoundingly with ‘that’s impossible!’ when challenged to adopt a new paradigm of education for the 21st Century. According to Shaw (1995-2010), most people today adhere to a paradigm of education that is strictly 19th century. But like the Queen, a growing number of educators are believing in and accomplishing ‘the impossible’.
My CLN647 peers, our assignment should we choose to accept it is to take education truly into the 21st century. According to Shaw (1995-2010) ‘technically it is the 21st century, but our schools are not there, and our challenge now is to reinvent schools for the 21st century – for the sake of our children, our students and the welfare of our world’. Making such a paradigm shift is not easy. After all, when any of us thinks of education, we usually think of what we knew as school – the way it has always been. That is how parents, policy makers, politicians and many students think of school. But we have to make the paradigm shift to 21st century education.
What is 21st education? Twenty-first education is bold, it breaks the mold. It is flexible, creative, challenging and complex (Shaw, 1995-2010). It addresses a rapidly changing world filled with fantastic new problems as well as exciting new possibilities. ‘Fortunately, there is a growing body of research supporting an increasing number of 21st century schools. We have the living proof, inspiring examples to follow, in schools across the United States. These schools vary, but are united in the fundamentals of 21st century education’ (cited by Shaw 1995-2010). Australia – if our classrooms are to be contemporary we need to adopt innovative pedagogies such as the 3 C’s: connected, creative and critical pedagogical frameworks, as presented by Dezuani (2010). In my earlier blog ‘Revolutionising homework for the 21st Century’ in an effort to engage students with homework tasks educators and facilitators need to utilise connected pedagogies to ‘bridge the gap’.
A light bulb moment occurred when reasoning if homework is designed to be done at home, an effort must be made by educators to engage students by utilising cultural and technological experiences young people are involved in. Twitter and Facebook are popular social forums that young people are already familiar with and tapping into frequently. Therefore students are more likely going to respond to a tweet or post than a traditional homework questionnaire for example. A colleague of mine uses Twitter to encourage patrons to discuss what they have borrowed from the library and explore issues/themes etc... This Twitter application is one I hope to use in my own school library. In agreement with Dezuani (2010) Twitter did not appear particularly helpful to use in the classroom until investigating its potential and possibilities, now I am sold. Homework that is presented in this way is a positive step forward in accomplishing ‘the impossible’ but it can’t stop there. It needs to be incorporated into the classroom so we no longer adhere to a paradigm of education that is strictly 19th century. Implementing innovative pedagogies will not be easy and involves risk. Dezuani warns there will be people encouraging you not to try, that the fight for ‘the impossible’ is too hard and too risky; however in these times it is important not to lose focus of what creative and critical pedagogies have to offer. Participatory culture allows students to be active contributors in personally meaningful ways. A recurring issue throughout the Youth, Popular Culture, and Texts unit reinforced that creative pedagogies involve young people in creative activities as producers of media and texts. This aspect is particularly appealing to young people as they become active agents in their personal learning process. The essence of creative pedagogy is well summed up by Willis (2003) when stated ‘young people creatively respond to a plethora of electronic signals and cultural commodities in ways that surprise their makers, finding meanings and identities never meant to be there and defying simple nostrums that bewail the manipulation or passivity of “consumers”. During my interview this semester I was asked by the teaching panel what does your library – classroom look like. I responded students are active agents in their own learning and are not only consumers but producers of media. Ideally students are using web 2.0 technologies such as YouTube, Blogger, Flickr, Comix - Quicktoons; to design, create and share their designs with others whilst believing their contributions matter. Critical pedagogies are a means of survival as it is a necessary life skill. The development of critical pedagogies enables pupils to interpret messages in the modern world through a crucial lens and challenge the power relations within those messages. I have been appointed a new fulltime position as a teacher librarian in a middle year’s school campus for 2012, hypothetically if I was working collaboratively with the civics teacher, I would incorporate film and television to ignite critical literacies as discussed in my earlier post. In doing so students develop their own perspectives as well as the perspectives of others, which are essential for success in today’s society.
Efforts in transforming institutions will begin by starting out small. As I previously stated I was recently appointed my first teacher-librarian role and part of the reason the panel was impressed with my interview was due to my interest in social media and the role it could play in the school. The principal and teaching panel were interested in starting a school Facebook page and I would begin my journey towards ‘the impossible’ by stirring discussions and hopefully designing and creating this forum for students, parents and staff. A personal interest lies in creating a library Twitter account for promoting new books, events, author visits and delivering class and homework tasks to engage students. Keeping in mind it is better to be successful at making one small change than unsuccessful at making one big change, or many small changes (Dezuani , 2010). As I embark my new position the practise of facilitation is preferred. In this collaborative context, ‘the world facilitator is more appropriate than teacher, for all concerned should be peers, engaged in a common effort towards a shared goal. Together they examine their own experiences and seek to come to individual conclusions. The goal is not some ‘right answer’ or even consensus, but the collaborative exploration of ideas and issues’ (Brown, 2000). Considering young people are much more technologically engaged today than they ever have been, knowing more about popular and participatory culture than their ‘teachers’, isn’t it time to hang up the ‘self as authority’ mask and allow students to do the teaching and sharing? As a new teacher it is especially important to keep abreast of new technologies and to stay informed, otherwise it is a matter of survival particularly in staffroom discussions.
Mapping future directions: plan for action- (Initiatives to realistically implement in new school 2012)
· Discuss and create Facebook or Yammer and Twitter account for school
· Keep abreast of technology; create accounts and experiment with devices (iPad, iPhone, Kindle) and web 2.0 technologies. This semester I signed up to Yammer, similar to Facebook in design and function but is used to communicate with work colleagues.
· Keep informed by staying in touch with major sources of research and innovation
· Last but not least-incorporate the 3 C’s – Connected, creative and critical pedagogies into the information hub.
Finally, my CLN647 peers do you accept the challenge to be risk-takers, to be facilitators rather than teachers, to question the block of sites –by asking are we enabling an anti-educational approach? Being a facilitator in a contemporary information hub; is it risky – yes, impossible – no.
References
Brown, A. (2000) Effective Practises for Learning, Action and Change. Available October 22, 2011 from http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/edumat/hreduseries/hrhandbook/copyright.html
Dezuani, M. (2010) CLN647 Youth, Popular Culture, and Texts: Week 11 [Lecture Notes]. Retrieved from http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_75617_1%26url%3D
Murray, M. H. (2007). ENB101 Engineering mechanics: Module 2 [Lecture Notes]. Retrieved from http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=%2Fbin%2Fcommon%2Fcourse.pl%3Fcourse_id%3D_35435_1
Shaw, A. (1995-2010). What is 21st Century Education? Available October 22, 2011 from http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/What_is_21st_Century_Education.htm
Willis, P. (2003) Foot Soldiers of Modernity: The Dialectics of Cultural Consumption and the 21st-Century School. Available October 22, 2011 from http://her.hepg.org/content/0w5086336u305184/
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