Second Life and Dissertation, 5/6/08

I've been very busy with Second Life for 2 weeks. We read some very interesting readings and webpostings for learning communities and global citizenship. I've written the following paper for the first module.

I also am trying to catchy up on my mind maps. Here is the latest one for:

Ahuja, S., Smith, A., & Justice, N. C. f. C. a. (1999). Intergroup relations in the United States : Seven Promising Practices. New York: National Conference for Community and Justice.

Learning Community Critique

Who am I in the world?

J. Klein
Fielding Graduate University
Educational Leadership and Change

Who am I in the World?

The readings for this module are very relevant to my dissertation and thus very interesting to me. I have also just returned from the AERA (American Education Research Association) conference in March 2008 and the WASC (Western Area Schools Conference) in April 2008 where I focused on diversity, multi-cultural, intercultural, global citizenship and cosmopolitanism topics. I am delighted that this module allows me to reflect on where we can use these new technologies to furthering learning in these areas.

Developing the ability to recognize cultural differences and use them as a resource for learning

Victor Friedman and Ariane Anatal argue that cultural conflict can be a resource for learning to be culturally competent and that cultural competence is now a requirement for becoming an effective manager in the global business environment. (Friedman & Antal, 2005). Analysis of who we are in our own worlds is not something we often take time to reflect on, particularly as adolescents and young adults. How do we develop this competence? I will cover several avenues for developing experience where the opportunities for reflection and learning can occur.

Self Reflection

Your own personal characteristics are hard to notice when one is by yourself. However, when in a group these characteristics become magnified because one can now notice the different points of view. In order to understand another’s viewpoint of requires self-understanding and reflection. Questions like what is my culture and where am I coming from? Am I actually a multi-cultural person that makes me unique? Friedman and Antol defines culture the visible and non-visible norms that people create to answer the following questions:

Culture answers the following questions

1. What is the character of human nature

2. What is the relationship of humans to the environment

3. What is the temporal focus of life

4. What is the modality of human activity

5. What is the relationship of humans to other humans.

(Friedman & Antal, 2005). It is important to strive to understand one’s own culture and how you fit into that view, along with your individual communication style and how your gender and other attributes affect that communication style so that you can move to understanding others. There is research to suggest that this is the beginning of empathy – understanding yourself well enough to recognize when ones on views are getting in the way of understanding someone else.

Dialogue

The World Trust defines dialogue as: “an exchange of ideas and opinions”. It goes on to say that “Dialogue is a form of communication that teaches people how to listen deeply to themselves and others. It promotes a more authentic exchange of ideas, leading to true learning and change.” I believe that dialogue is the root cause of all substantial change and the beginning of solution building no matter the context.

In Friedman and Antal’s model, “advocacy with inquiry” is a requirement for developing an effective strategy for engaging intercultural interactions and generating richer action strategies (Friedman & Antal, 2005). Advocacy with inquiry is defined as suspending judgement, experiencing doubt, and the willingness to accept uncertainty. Their model links dialogue with action strategies and specifically how to engage people in dialogue to further learning and change.

Opportunities to develop skills – Learning communities, Service Learning and the Wisdom of Crowds

On the website Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate education, they had an occasional paper titled Approaching Diversity through Learning Communities, by Lardner, E. D. (Lardner, 2003). In this article, Lardner elaborates on how learning communities can be used to invite students from under-represented groups to participate in its interdisciplinary focus on issues that matter in the world, including multiple world views and histories. Their three central elements for approaching diversity are:

1) Designing learning communities for particular groups of students;

2) Using learning communities as sites for curriculum transformation;

3) Developing pedagogical practices that support diverse learners.

The article cites studies that show that retention is a function of several strategies including a) integrating social and academic activities, b) addressing academic preparedness, and engendering a sense of belonging to a community of campus. This article brings to mind a keynote speech at the WASC ARC conference in April 2008. Iris Prettypaint, Co-Director, Research Opportunities in Science for Native Americans (ROSNA), University of Montana, presented her dissertation work in creating The Family Education Model. Prettypaint found that the most dramatic and persistent changes to retention were achieved when the principles of empowerment, family support, and resilience were brought into the curriculum. Prettypaint found that the Native American students needed a place that would become their new “family”. Efforts to be welcoming and create learning communities used were similar to techniques used in the HeadStart program, where families were brought onto the campuses participate in the student’s education. In the Native American college student population over 80% of the students are first generation college students and many parents and grandparents had lived next to the college but had never been inside. The model was so successful that retention was increased in one year from the low 50 percentile to the mid 80 percentile and has been adopted by non-Native American student universities as well with great success.

On the Washington Center site ("Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education," 2008) I found several more articles that I have not read yet, but plan to. I also found a link to the DiversityWeb, a collaboration with the Association of American Colleges and Universities ("Diversity Web," 2008). The DiversityWeb is “designed to provide a comprehensive compendium of campus practices and resources for campus practitioners seeking to place diversity at the center of the academy's educational and societal mission”. On the DiversityWeb site, I found a book that looks really interesting called Making a Real Difference with Diversity: A Guide to Institutional Change by Alma R. Clayton-Pedersen, Sharon Parker, Daryl G. Smith, José F. Moreno,and Daniel Hiroyuki Teraguchi. I found the Washington Center a very good site for research and links to other valuable websites.

Young people today want more than mere lectures, more than what Paulo Freire defined as the “banking” method of teaching. They expect and often demand by their lack of attention an interactive learning environment with multiple choices for learning the same material at any time. At WASC ARC in April 2008, they had a session on Reaching and Understanding Millennial Students by Nina Bakisian, Adjunct Professor, University of San Francisco and Colin J. Marlaire, Assistant Professor, National University. These professors believe that the students entering this space possess skills and expectations that must be better understood and that we must identify new educational practices that exploit the benefits and overcome the weaknesses of new technologies. By creating a culture of evidence supported in a digital environment we can positively impact student learning. These students are growing up with images of war from “embedded” reporters, scenes of the 9/11 disaster broadcast over and over, YouTube, reality TV, facebook, and Wikipedia and Google. They also are very interested in social justice and global issues more than the previous generation because of their exposure. Given this environment, I believe that these students not only understand service learning and the wisdom of crowds, but will change the world because of their understanding and willingness to act. At least, that is my hope for the future.

The wisdom of crowds, or the ability for large numbers of people to come up with solutions that could not or would not have been created by a small group of people, is very evident if you watch TV or read the media: American Idol, the rise of Linux, Moodle and other open source software platforms, Wikipedia, Google vs. Yahoo and the potential takeover by Microsoft, Amazon books and their rating systems for vendors and products, etc. The list of examples is very long, and it did not take those lucky enough to be connected to the internet to quickly change to using these very useful references and services instead of paper based and land based services. Creating learning communities is an extension of the concept of the wisdom of crowds. If you combine a learning community with a vehicle like the internet, you have the potential to create powerful information gathering tools. Second Life and the influx of companies into that space to try to get market data from users is a good example of how a learning community can be useful to large institutions as well as the inhabitants.

Service Learning is becoming increasingly more popular at undergraduate institutions. Many universities have Service Learning Centers that offer to the professors willing to work into their curriculum the concepts of community service, global citizenship and social justice. Saint Anselm College and UCLA are two examples of schools that have embraced service learning and created successful centers with support staff on their campuses. Saint Anselm’s Meelia Center for community service has the mission to “cultivate and maintain a relationship of engagement between Saint Anselm College and the larger community. Led largely by students, the engagement will be sensitive and responsive to community needs, and contribute to the education of Saint Anselm students as they strive to lead creative, generous, and civically engaged lives.” Neither university makes service learning a requirement for graduation and both universities find difficult the assessment of whether their goals have been achieved because of the difficulty of tracking alumni, but their programs are growing in number of courses and professors interested in incorporating a service learning component and also the number of students participating. As these students leave the colleges to pursue their interests, it will be very interesting to see if they are drawn to learning communities and continue their commitment to community service.

Global Citizenship

Global citizenship is a very appealing concept to me. The recent war in Iraq combined with the growth of China as an economic power and how America has reacted to both so far have intrigued and frustrated me at the same time. I have discovered recently that I live in a bubble in California and specifically in Silicon Valley. What we have access to in terms of technology, material wealth, education, and services and most importantly, diversity and acceptance of rapid change, is not true for the rest of the country. The US is heavily populated along the coasts, and sparsely populated in the middle states. Our behavior in response to international issues in recent years have shown us to be very conservative and in many ways ignorant of the larger world around us. Unlike Europe, we have not had to deal with many countries invading our borders for thousands of years, so we have chosen to focus on Americans and hope that everyone else learns to speak English and deal with us on our terms.

The article Expanding democratic choices: Schooling for democracy: Toward a critical utopianism by Gustavo Fischman quotes Paulo Freire who describes democracy as a process that requires reflection and practice (Fischman, 2000). Schools like other social institutions have power structures that devalue those who are not in the majority. Pierre Bourdieu popularized the term cultural capital referring to ways of talking, acting, and socializing as well as language practices, values and styles of dress and behavior. In order to teach democracy to our students, our schools need to change to become more flexible and not devalue the perspectives of those not in the majority and their cultural capital. This utopic-heterotopic space requires a crucial role for the teacher and they believe teacher education can help to achieve democratic processes in the classroom. Recommendations include empowering teachers to reform their own classrooms and schools to include:

1. Supporting diversity so that teachers can move away from the Anglo-Saxon, middle-class, and heterosexual educational norms and incorporate the knowledges of women, minority groups and indigenous groups.

2. Cooperating with colleagues and the community to build open forums about race and gender

3. Build learning communities

4. Acquire the skills of researchers and teach them to the students

5. Support continuous learning

6. Improve assessment methods

No matter what political system you come from, if young people are educated in democratic institutions that encourage these principals of critical thinking, the job of educating our students around social justice, ethics and global citizenships becomes much easier. According to Oxfam, the global citizen must have knowledge, skills and the appropriate values and attitudes. Citizens will require substantial knowledge around topics like social justice and equity, diversity, globalization and interdependence. It also requires skills like critical thinking, communication skills, co-operation and conflict resolution skills, and a respectful demeanor. And last but not least, the appropriate values include the senses of identity and self-esteem, empathy, a commitment to social justice and equity, respect for diversity, concern for the environment and sustainability and a belief that people can make a difference. Teaching to this objective in our schools will require new ways of teaching that will create transformational learning. The World Trust defines transformational learning as education that involves deep, structural shifts in thought and feelings that will help people to live more meaningfully. Kitano presents a useful framework for thinking about teaching for transformative learning.

· Transformative content: Reconceptualizes the content through a shift in paradigm or standard; presents content through non-dominant perspective

· Transformative instructional strategies and Activities: Change in power structure so that students and instructor learn from each other; methods center on student experience and knowledge such as: analyzing concepts against personal experience; issues-oriented approaches; critical pedagogy

· Transformative assessment of student knowledge: Alternatives that focus on student growth: action oriented projects; self-assessment; reflection on the course

· Transformative classroom dynamics: Challenging of biased views and sharing of diverse perspectives while respecting rules established for group process; equity in participation

(Lardner, 2003). A student who is immersed in this type of learning for 4 years will be very likely to know more about who they are in the world, and to appreciate others and where they are in theirs. The more people in the world with this perspective, the more likely we can prevent conflicts because of misunderstandings in culture. Here’s to the hope that this idea takes off in all educational institutions.

References

Diversity Web. (2008). Diversity Web, An Interactive Resource Hub for Higher Education Retrieved 5/1/08, 2008, from http://www.diversityweb.org/

Fischman, G. E. (2000). Expanding democratic choices: Schooling for democracy: Toward a critical utopianism. [feature]. Contemporary Sociology, 29(1), 12.

Friedman, V. J., & Antal, A. B. (2005). Negotiating Reality: A Theory of Action Approach to Intercultural Competence. Management Learning, 36(1), 69.

Lardner, E. D. (2003). Approaching Diversity through Learning Communities (Occasional Paper): Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education.

Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education. (2008). Learning Communities National Resource Center Retrieved 5/1/08, 2008, from http://www.evergreen.edu/washcenter/project.asp?pid=73