28 September: The idea of education and prep. for observation and micro-teaching

On reflection, I don't think I gave you quite a clear-enough steer for the Unit 1 material yesterday. Peter H had told me that he did not really get a chance to go through the unit content, because of the need to get you registered, but I did not properly check what you did know about the unit, at the start of the session; nor did I explain how what we did fitted into to the whole sequence. Elementary errors on my part, which I blame on unusual circumstances (of course) but which just go to show that we can make them too... And that is not at the level of compliant ritual about reciting objectives, it is at the severely practical level of not confusing you any more than necessary.

This unit is "synoptic". It is designed to provide an overview of a lot of content and to give an idea of how it all fits together, so that when we re-visit it in more detail later, it will make more sense. And I didn't tell you that (although Peter H may have done last week...). And it so happens that the starting-point, the meaning of "education" is what you will re-visit in unit 7 at the end of the course.


So we started by exploring the meaning of the term, "education". What it means to you. Which is much more important than learning a set of sterile definitions in the literature. (More important? Yes, because you can move, as we did, from specifics to principles, more easily than applying principles to practice. We'll revisit this in unit 6 next year, and touch on it in unit 2 next term.)

The exercise was of a kind outlined here. (You may recognise the second example).

Your response and discussion of contested items suggested:

"Education" implies formality, in your view; informality means "learning" rather than education. That's an interesting distinction because it implies that "education" is learning with baggage, which takes the form of values and assumptions which are built into the selection of topics to be taught, the way learners are treated, what kind of thing counts as evidence of learning (assessment) and so on. We returned to that point later in the presentation.

You also made the point that education requires a degree of engagement with a topic; it is not enough just to go through the motions by "attending" a class. You need to "attend to" the subject. And people emerge from education different from the people they were when they went in.

I wonder to what extent this discussion was informed by your own baggage, in terms of your educational background and current practice. Would an engineer have taken the same line?

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The presentation in the second half was based on this:

Nature of education_web_2011

• The Riesman model is discussed briefly here. 
• There's more on cultural influences here
• The code of practice from the Institute for Learning is here

...and having got to that mind-map of all the organisations telling us what to do, at the end, we had the quiz, the point of which was just to underline how horrendously complicated all this is.