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You’ve got to watch the bollards in the contra-flow of life: learning outcomes and the death of education?. Greg Hoyland: Senior Lecturer in Theology York St John University | www.yorksj.ac.uk. By the end of this session you will….
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You’ve got to watch the bollards in the contra-flow of life: learning outcomes and the death of education? Greg Hoyland: Senior Lecturer in Theology York St John University | www.yorksj.ac.uk
By the end of this session you will… • … have engaged for at least 5 minutes with your favourite fantasy while giving the appearance of paying full attention to the seminar; • … be able to answer a minimum of 5 pub quiz questions on cones (e.g. the specifications of standard BS EN 13422 relating to cones); • … be one hour older and not a jot wiser.
Invented in 1914 by Charles P. Rudebaker • First used in Britain to replace red lantern paraffin burners during the construction of the Preston bypass (opened 1958)
The design of the modern plastic cone was refined by David Morgan of Oxford in 1961 while working for ICI • Morgan currently holds the Guinness World Record for a collection of 137 different cones
Today all cones have to conform to the standard BS EN 13422 • This specifies a weight and vertical angle for every type of cone which ensures cones of different makes can still be stacked one on top of the other
Last year 2 million cones were made in Britain • 6,000 cones are stored or in use around the M25 – stacked on top of each other they would make a pile 10 times higher than Big Ben
Learning Cones and Traffic Outcomes • My inspiration • Stevens R 1978 Education and the Death of Love Peterborough: Epworth Press • My thesis • In their current form Learning Outcomes are past their sell by date. Born in Modernism, they need reappraising in a Postmodern context • Watch the bollards, miss the view • My question • How can we describe and measure what we want students to learn without it becoming formulaic and ‘tick box’?
Learning Cones and Traffic Outcomes “If we achieve them we have succeeded. If that is all we achieve we have failed”
Learning Outcomes – a child of the 60s? • Modernism – postmodernism • Modernism = the photo? Intimations of past and posterity? • Postmodernism = the re-writable DVD? Sceptical of past and posterity?
Learning Outcomes – a child of the 60s? • Modernism • Industrialisation • Urbanisation • Bureaucractisation • Democratisation • (and the invention of ugly words ending in ‘isation’)
Learning Outcomes – a child of the 60s? • Democratisation • Behaviourism • High culture = text and performance-based; popular culture = process and practice-based • “Commodities are consumed as much for their meanings, identities and pleasures as for their material function” (Philip Grey: Department of English, Umeå University, Sweden)
Learning Outcomes – a child of the 60s? • All learning is measurable (codes of practice) • All learners are the same (one size fits all) • There should be transparency in the learning process • Teaching (and teachers) should be accountable
Learning Outcomes – a child of the 60s? commodity process anenda staging post a policy an attitude
Learning Outcomes – a child of the 60s? • Learning as a commodity/Learners as containers leads to… • … learning and learners needing to be • Managed • Measured • Monitored
Models of Education/Educated • What we might have lost… • Risk taking/Mistake making • Mystery • Inquisitiveness/curiosity • Imagination • Journey • Draw out – disciple (lead out) • Vocation
Models of Education/Educated • “Higher education can never be reduced to an academic services industry mass-producing expert skills and useful research. But nor, in an age of mass access and a knowledge society, can it be a purely ‘donnish dominion’” (Peter Scott: The Guardian, Tuesday 16th March 2010)
Models of Education/Educated “… [a project Michael Rosen] undertook with a school in South Wales where books had been undervalued. He showed the children, and the teachers, and the parents the profound value of reading and all it could do to deepen and enrich their lives, and he did so not by following curriculum guidelines and aiming at targets and putting the children through tests, but by beginning with delight. Enchantment. Joy. The librarians there were practically weeping with relief and pleasure at seeing so many children now coming in to search the shelves and sit and read and talk about the books they're enjoying” (Philip Pullman: guardian.co.uk Sunday 21st February 2010)
