Observing Learning and Life

By Pam Moran

Circadian rhythms. Seasons. Climate.

Lake Turkana. Beringia.
China. Greece. Mesoamerica.
East. West. Expansion.
Outer Space. Inner Space.
Change. Continuity.
Learning.
Digital learning.

The ritual sitting on my screened porch to read news - now on my phone not as paper news -
provides me with the opportunity to creature-watch, to observe just as surreptitiously as the best
of people-watchers on the downtown mall. On a recent, almost-warm spring day, bumble bees
lumber their way around redbuds in bloom, mumbling to each other about who knows what. I
lowered my cell phone, struck that today’s headlines on the screen mean nothing to the bees or
the redbuds. The bees and the redbuds just keep doing what they always have done, day in and
out, seasons coming and going in circadian rhythm, unaware of our research, our travels, our
connections to their world or theirs to ours. Or are they?

In an article in the journal, Science (May 9, 2008), Anne Chartamantier, a scientist at France’s
National Center for Scientific Research, and co-author of a bird study used five decades of data
to reach a conclusion that despite global warming, members of at least one England bird
population appears to have adjusted their breeding season earlier and earlier so that chicks
hatch when their key food source, winter moth caterpillars, are in greatest supply. However,
while this could be good news for some bird species, plenty of evidence exists according to the
authors that many other bird populations will not make similar survival changes as temperature
rises. Rather, they may be more like the proverbial frog sitting in a cold pot of water who
continues to sit there as the temperature rises towards the boiling point, oblivious to an
imminent demise. So what drives recognition of the need to change, and the capability to do so,
or not? This question, I believe, is as relevant to the eco-learning systems found today in our
schools as it is to the natural systems found in my backyard, your backyard, and elsewhere
around the world.

Today’s learners live in an alien world in which they communicate with each other in all ways not
paper. Many of their teachers still live in an alien world in which they communicate with learners
through paper books, worksheets, and email. These two worlds crash together and bounce
apart, barriered by a physical world we call school and buffered by a virtual world we call
technology. Caught between these two worlds lives a tweener generation of pioneer teachers
who must interface with colleagues in a paper world and teach their not quite peers who live in a
tech world. These worlds, and the space between, result in what may be the critical teaching
and learning issue of the 21st century: how to unite the disparate worlds of educators who
change too slowly and learners who cannot change fast enough.

We educators attend workshops, conferences and staff meetings where we spend a lot of time
admiring the problem of preparing our young people to work in jobs that do not now exist to
solve problems of which we are not yet aware with tools that can not be imagined by us. We
give lip service to the need for educational change in response to the different learning needs
being defined by a generation of young people who desire learning on their own turf, with their
own tools, in their own time. We also believe that the concept of a teacher as a key facilitator of
transformational learning remains important, even to this digital generation.

Another question emerges from the conundrum of living in an educational world where both
continuity and change are essential. How do we affirm the continuity of best educational
practices that have stood the test of the millennia and change past practices that no longer well
serve 21st century learners? In any ecosystem, it is mass customization, or evolution of flora and
fauna that defines its potential to thrive over time, from my backyard bumble bees to the English
tit birds. The 20th century United States represented a time in which politicians, educators, and
vendors organized and standardized school resources, structures, and pedagogy; classroom by
classroom, school by school, division by division. This routine mass standardization of all things
educational became the norm for decision-making, narrowing the boundaries of acceptable
instructional practice and leading to a belief that the learning process could be reduced to a
teaching recipe made simple by one-size-fits-all textbooks, curriculum notebooks, and teacher
workshops.

This leads to another critical question, one of survival. Can we traverse this challenging pathway
that represents the need for education to both change and maintain continuity- simultaneously?
The 21st century represents a complex ecology of learning- one in which the explicit hierarchies
of 20th century school environments are rapidly losing viability. Displacement of traditional
learning in “old-century” environments by virtual eco-learning systems redefines the meaning of
teaching in a time when more and more young people thrive as virtual learners, independent of
the world we baby boomers call school. Yet, we also know from our students that excellent
teachers who engage them in processing great ideas, evaluating critical knowledge, and
applying essential skills still transcend all the techno learning gizmos we can place in their
hands, or ours. In the 21st century end game, I like to think we will find that both great teachers
and great learning gizmos are essential elements of a viable eco-learning system.

The mindless mass standardization of 20th century education mostly has led to stagnation of
creativity rather than vigorous idea-generation, hierarchical independence rather than system
interdependence, and limited learning environments rather than dynamic, open eco-learning
systems in which all young people gain access to and achieve rich learning.

I fear if we choose to not customize the elements of our eco-learning systems, we will lose the
potential for today’s learners to thrive in a place called school. America cannot afford to
endanger a strong public education system because we educators are unwilling to mass
customize to better meet the needs of a new generation of student-customers and workforce
clients. Today our customers expect our services to be differentiated to meet their varied
interests and needs. Our workforce clients want potential employees who have portable,
adaptable soft and hard skill sets that allow them to adapt to changes in the marketplace. I
would hate to find out ten years from now that the decoupling of the United States from the
global economy was never the biggest challenge for public educators, but rather it was our own
resistance to leaving behind the mass standardization model that dominated our schools long
before the standards movement emerged.

Some might ask, “are we doomed just like the frog in the pot of cold water, risk averse to leaping
when the water feels as comfortable as back in the pond?” The message from the digital
learning generation, the consumers of our work, is that we need to leap quickly.

Fortunately, we educators can make survival changes while maintaining continuity in those
practices that have served generations of teachers to engage young people as learners. In
doing so, we may well find the balance of continuity and change essential to uniting today’s
worlds of teachers and learners. The final question is not one of whether we can adapt? For us
humans, it has always been a question of will.

Pam Moran, Ed.D

pammoran@socolmoran.com
Socol Moran Partners, LLC
https://www.socolmoran.com/