On the capital 'I' Internet
and other technological phenomena that only exist in education
I remember when the Melbourne Declaration was a big thing. People were feeling (or projecting) a seismic shift in education in an increasingly digital age. It’s fair to say that the digital landscape has changed in relation to the ways that young people consume media, but I don’t think many of the crystal ball predictions have come to fruition. Take this, for example:
Rapid and continuing advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) are changing the ways people share, use, develop and process information and technology. In this digital age, young people need to be highly skilled in the use of ICT. While schools already employ these technologies in learning, there is a need to increase their effectiveness significantly over the next decade.
I don’t think the writer was envisioning such a disposable use of technology as the likes of TikTok or Snapchat. The HSC is still not online, due to the enduring digital divide, and touch typing is still the teaching and learning orphan. No specific or dedicated room in the curriculum has been made for the teaching of ICT, other than in elective courses. Another example:
Schooling should also support the development of skills in areas such as social interaction, cross-disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media, which are essential in all 21st century occupations.
Again, none of these obligations have been backed with rethinking of curricula, subject domain delineations, professional development imperatives or even initial teacher training. In many ways, and since there has been no material provision to create space for these 21st Century objectives that seemed so important at the time, the Declaration’s decline into obscurity has not been such a bad thing. It was not a huge surprise that when I searched Melbourne Declaration, these suggested links appeared.
Jennifer Buckingham tweeted recently about the persistent lack of consistency around evidence based practice in the teaching of reading, perpetuated by our universities, and I have to say it’s been pervasive in the leadership literature too. Take this distinctively progressivist passage from as recently as 2014. It’s classic ‘guide on the side,’ and full of the kinds of ‘just Google it’ aphorisms that stream from the Twitter accounts of ed/tech utopians.
The second major revolution affecting teacher leadership is the rise of the Internet and other information and communications technologies, and the way these give rise to much greater and more flexible opportunities for students to become autonomous learners. There is now a tsunami of information available to students. The rise of more autonomous forms of student learning has opened up new ways and new constraints by which teachers can exercise influence over students.
This is an opportune moment to re- examine teacher leadership, as, on the one hand, the unprecedented availability of knowledge via the Internet has created a situation where students no longer view teachers, or schools, as their primary source of knowledge1.
If only the authors could have seen the ‘autonomy’ of learners all over the world at work during remote teaching. Googling it has not worked out so well and teachers are still playing catch-up.
Another technological phenomenon that doesn’t exist outside education is the multimodal text. They seem to have been delimited by people who taught pre- and then post-Internet, as though some kind of line needed to be drawn. Arguments in favour of their inclusion seem to range from ‘they’re everywhere so we need to teach them’ to ‘they’re unique so we need to teach them.’ None of them are quality texts that have withstood the test of time - how could they?
Students are frequently asked to create multimodal texts by English teachers with no technical skill (I include myself in this group) and therefore with little direct instruction, as though digital natives are born fully formed bearing knowledge of filmmaking, code and design. It seems multimodal texts are exempt from questions about authorial purpose and appropriateness of form. Definitions of ‘authenticity’ are authored by people who have spent most of their lives in schools. If a student’s authorial purpose is to humour English teachers, then ok, multimodal texts are the perfect outlet.
Since the digital revolution has failed to take hold in any way that schools and teachers have been able to control or harness, I would ordinarily be prepared to let this one go through to the keeper. But one development in the US has me concerned. This position statement has been released by the National Council of Teachers of English, and it signals a worrying trend:
The time has come to decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education. The ability to represent one’s ideas using images and multimedia is now a valued competency in a wide variety of professional careers in the knowledge economy. It behooves our profession, as stewards of the communication arts, to confront and challenge the tacit and implicit ways in which print media is valorized above the full range of literacy competencies students should master.
It’s hard to imagine why an organisation for the teaching of English would argue against books, especially when they have very few bankable skills with which to teach multiliteracies. Again, these digital imperatives exist mainly in the imaginations of progressive educators. Not only do they grossly misrepresent the knowledge economy, where workers are increasingly specialised, but they reflect a characteristic lack of understanding about the world of work in both the present and the future.
Most educated individuals with a knowledge rich, liberal education and strong writing skills will outsource their design, coding and presentations, such will be the degree of specialisation in their work. Knowledge about Franz Ferdinand, T.S. Eliot and rhetorical persuasion will always trump Wattpad fan-fiction and amateur use of iMovie. Teaching is a zero sum game, instructional time is precious. We choose what we emphasise and attribute with value, and it’s important to remember that ubiquity bears very little equivalence with quality.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Teacher-Leadership-conceptions-autonomous-learning/dp/1138580120