Questions to Ponder. Dr JeKan Adler-Collins. Week 2
As no statement requiring formal academic writing has been made, I wish to respond to items that have caught my attention during reading the Chapter.2
· Is there value in student-to-student and student-to-instructor interaction in all courses regardless of discipline?
· What role does interaction play in courses in which the emphasis is on declarative knowledge (e.g., introductory “survey” courses at the lower-division undergraduate level) or, similarly, in courses that cultivate procedural knowledge (e.g., technical courses requiring the working of problem sets)?
· As you consider designing a blended learning course, what kinds of interactions can you envision occurring face-to-face, and how might you use the online environment for interactions? What opportunities are there for you to explore different instructional strategies in the blended course than you have in the past?
· What factors might limit the feasibility of robust interaction face-to-face or online?
Reflecting on these very good question requires me to move deeper into what I see they are meaning to do that I need to relook at the process of knowledge.
Multi-aspectual knowing and intuition
Two interesting themes for exploration in this chapter on blended learning are the different types of knowing and different aspects of knowing. Our knowing, in everyday living, is integrated as one whole in a matrix of constructed images processed from our sensory data; yet that very wholeness has aspects within aspects. By ‘aspects’ I am thinking of the multi-aspectual form of knowing. For example, a pen is an inanimate object, but it has the potential to be used not only as a tool for making marks on paper but to formulate the written word. Such symbols (words) are more than the object (pen), rather they are abstract extensions into concrete form via the object. Not only are they abstract expressions but they have a purpose, and that is to convey meaning. They in a sense are contained in the potential of the pen. Such thinking can be applied to any form of concrete expression in any medium, a pen, a brush, a word processor. Therefore to call a ‘pen’ a ‘pen’ is to include the higher aspects of knowing the potential properties associated with the praxis of a ‘pen’. The boundaries of understanding the form and function of the object are restricted to the cognitive and psychomotor skills of the user and the ability to write and read in the language of the context.
In Buddhism, we are taught form, function, purpose. The pen has form, the form’s function is to hold ink and enable a mark to be made, its purpose is open to the individual’s intuition but the pen holds the potential to be used for writing, and writing has the potential to convey and praxis meaning when read in the social and cultural context from within which it is written. Another element is that the skill of writing needs to have been mastered and also that the context within which the writing is used is socially understood. In many ways a blended form of learning..smile.
Early human cultures had no written tradition and even today, in our Westernised high-tech world, some indigenous cultures still do not possess formal written languages, relying instead on centuries of oral knowing and intuition that have served them well. This moves “intuition” out of the realm of complete mystery into something rich and tangible and yet ultimately beyond our full understanding. Let’s take for example an Amazon Indian shaman whose memory and knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants is extraordinary, and his immersion in the rhythm and harmony of his environment gives rise to a different form of knowing that we as Westerners, should we go into his domain, could never achieve or understand.
[I recognise that I can never completely know the context of another. By this, I mean that I will never understand completely the full experience of being Japanese. This suggests that culturally bounded forms of knowing exclude all who are outside that culture from a shared wholeness of knowing. I can, for example, have a deeper communication with another soldier about fear only if that soldier has experienced the same fear. If this is so, the situational knowing is stronger than that of any cultural boundaries that might otherwise come between us. I suggest that a bond exists in knowing, especially if shared at the same time. In advanced Buddhist teachings, such a problem is overcome by mind-to-mind contact where it is claimed that an instant and total form of knowing occurs. Such contact is not mind-reading or telepathy but a complete union of minds.]
The same thinking can be taken into my understanding of my domains of praxis, those of nurse, teacher, farmer and priest. Each requires an engagement with different forms of knowing, and each has a body of theory that has to be learned as the accepted benchmark of what is correct or acceptable knowing and practice in context. Some cameos of my own intuition can be seen, for example, in my nursing: when I come on shift and greet the patients, I use a form of intuitive knowing that is like radar, scanning the patients’ vital signs and taking on board their spoken and unspoken signals - assessing the words used, the voice stress, the silences, and tone delivery.
In my classroom, I am using the same process, but this time I am looking at and paying more attention to my students’ eyes as they speak to me of their confusion, enquiry, understanding and sometimes shining with comprehension. The class or lesson dynamics has a feel about it. I am mindful that this dynamic, for which I hold in high esteem, could be diluted or even lost in blended learning if the relationships of engagement are not tended to and nurtured closely. All these inputs are continually assessed against the database of my knowing, my experience, my learning. Sometimes a sense of unease flags my attention as I intuitively sense that something is wrong but actually do not fully know what it is that is bothering me. Heeding such intuition requires me to look deeper and investigate further. Perhaps this could be the seeds of blended knowing?? Smile.
As I write I am conscious of the problem that my thinking may cause my profession in terms of the current trend towards evidence-based practice. However, considerable evidence indicates that much professional decision-making is not based on the best evidence but instead on an individual’s subjective intuitive judgements concerning the appropriate actions to take for a given clinical challenge. This intuitive approach has resulted in wide variations in clinical practice and the outcomes associated with it (Tinkler et al. 1999). Nursing has embraced this stance positively and has used intuition as the mark of an expert in the field (Benner 1984; Benner et al. 1999).
How such intuitive decisions are made is an area of concern for healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the recipients of these decisions. I believe that embracing intuitive judgements is a positive strategy of being professional. However, this has to be balanced with scientific praxis. In my curriculum, I highlight the use of intuition and professional scientific judgement based on practice, experience and intuition. I advocate that these three stances need not be exclusionary; rather, each informs the other, giving a broader sense of knowing and thereby a more informed sense of praxis. Ways of knowing our self can be described as aspects
If each aspect provides a meaningful way of knowing, and is thus a meaningful part of what it is to know, in what way does each aspect make its contribution? Bateson (1979) says of knowledge:
We can continue to discuss the relationship between knowledge [multi-aspectual] and reality. . . . I take the stance that it is not possible to perceive [aesthetic] reality directly. . . Thought [formative] can be about pigs or coconuts, but there are no pigs or coconuts in the brain; and in the mind, there are no neurones, only ideas [analytic] of pigs and coconuts. . . . The name [lingual] is not the thing named, and the idea of pig is not the pig (p. 205).
http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/COW_VS_PIG. Accessed 2320 08/03/2017
The complexity of knowledge can not be underestimated and the philosopher Louis Arnaud Reid in the 1960s pointed out differences between;
Know that - propositional or declarative knowledge.
Know how - procedural knowledge - knowing how to do something.
Know this - knowledge with a direct object such as responses to music or the direct tacit knowledge that I and others have in practice.
· As you consider designing a blended learning course, what kinds of interactions can you envision occurring face-to-face, and how might you use the online environment for interactions? What opportunities are there for you to explore different instructional strategies in the blended course than you have in the past?
Photograph A. Normal classroom layout in the university. Consent to use these images and academic papers for research were given by all the members of this group. This is the case for all images used (Copyright Adler-Collins 2004)
Photograph B. Layout of healing theory classroom after we had negotiated the classroom formation and layout (Copyright Adler-Collins 2003).
A comparison between the two pictures shows a marked difference in body language. Picture A was a formal environment controlled by the power of the establishment and the teaching style. Picture B suggests, through the body language, a more relaxed approach to space and power relationships. For example, the positioning of the two students on the left shows them to be comfortable with each other as they are leaning towards each other, combined with open body gestures. The gap between the two students in the middle of the picture suggests that they are not yet fully comfortable with each other. (Group members were selected at random deliberately to show the students that they have to be flexible as nurses. This is important, as a nurse may well find that he or she is moved from their team or ward as staffing and circumstances dictate in the work environment. The ability to form effective team relationships and exercise flexibility is, I believe, another basic nursing skill). The students are smiling in this picture and there is a look of engagement and fun on the students’ faces suggesting that they are relaxed with each other, the environment and the task at hand (Krebs, 2000; Jordon, 2001).
I taught and designed web-based courses to support the practical hands-on work that there was never enough time for. Changes I am making as I design a blended Learning course is the inclusion of a coffee shop clinic. In my doctorate, I was very concerned about spaces that were healing and supported learning. The blended learning course challenges keeping spaces safe as the students are creating their own route to the learning outcomes. The coffee shop space is informal, a free cup of coffee and a chance to socialise, decompress and talk about issues that are concerning them. Having this type of space, for me is sustaining my responsibility to facilitate learning that has to include elements of socialisation in it as socialisation is very important and organised inJapan. Photo credits https://www.flickr.com/photos/thompsonrivers/4584346739/.
Chapter 2 was a thought provoking exercise and in revisiting my previous works. I was struck by the complexity of the philosophy of blended learning. Mor on that later.