One thing I don't get pleasure from in regards to the training reform discussion raging across the region will be the polemical nature of your conversation. I value passionate individuals and their viewpoints. But I don’t like what I perceive at times as smugness, a lack of humility, the sense that the answers and paths are already known to us.
I feel this way concerning the standardized testing and accountability and value-added and corporate solutions camp, who have a very big and powerful soapbox – foundation and mayoral offices – from which to shout and cajole their arguments. But I also grow weary of those who blindly champion any solution as THE solution, including those who believe – as I do – that digital literacies and multimodal learning can provide all of us, students and educators alike, with the basis for a more informed, knowledgeable and participatory society.
I believe that last phrase to be true. My experiences so far tell me this future scenario is possible. I’m willing to discuss the reasons why, and have engaged in many conversations with educators about their experiences in the field. I’m interested in reading the research of others. But I’m the first to admit: I don’t know that the outcome of this work will be what I think it can be, let alone the answer to our questions about schooling in this region.
Bud Hunt touched on this notion of polemical debate,
Windows 7 Starter, quite eloquently, in his Huffington Post column from a couple of months ago.
We can perpetuate the binaries, or we can work to define the middle ground,
Windows 7 Professional DH - Food Section - Food additive code numbers - what do, the rich and full and powerful space between two extremes.
In my mind, the path forward is not just about finding a space between the “binaries” as articulated by Bud. It’s also being open to the notion that there are many possible paths and outcomes, most if not all of which we cannot even guess at the present moment, despite our strong desire and need to do so. It’s what the scientist Stuart Kauffman has called the “adjacent possible.”
In his Wall Street Journal piece, The Genius of the Tinkerer, Steven Johnson writes:
The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of your present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.
The strange and beautiful truth regarding the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations. Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors, each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Once you open 1 of those doors and stroll into that room, three new doors appear, each leading to a brand-new room that you couldn’t have reached from your original starting level. Keep opening new doors and eventually you’ll have built a palace.
What “adjacent possible” calls to my mind in relation to schooling is teacher inquiry and action research. Being open to experimentation, trying out new ideas, seeing where those ideas might lead, and reflecting upon the outcomes. Also, giving students opportunities to pursue ideas and see where those pursuits and ideas lead, rather than prescribing what they should know.
I will not shout you down if you disagree. But I will say, I can get behind adjacent possible.
Care to discuss?
(Special thanks to Diana Laufenberg and Katherine Schulten for pointing me towards the idea of “adjacent possible” and for making the work of Steven Johnson and Stuart Kauffman known to me via Twitter, the Holy Grail of adjacent possible when it comes to my work.)
Tags: adjacent possible, ideas, steven johnson, stuart kauffman
Windows 7 Starter dComposing adjacent possible.ht
Linear Mode
