Damon Dash is one of the most successful independent businessmen of this era. He is well known for his efforts in projecting autonomy onto members of the millennial generation. He prides himself on being the ultimate visionary, challenging the status quo, and going against conventional methods. When this American Tycoon from Harlem speaks, I listen, and as a result, I’ve received a huge context shift.
Now, I’m sure you’re wondering, “How does this public figure and his works correlate to “The New Culture of Learning?” I remember watching an interview of the mogul, and he spoke on this term called “Art Detecting.” It’s when he takes himself out of the present moment, where his dreams originated, to the future where he materializes everything that he dreamt about. From there, he thinks about every single thing that could make that happen and every single thing that could prevent it from happening, this compels him to think of the best and worst case scenarios, and then he tries his best to eliminate those things that could serve as resistance to his vision, which is what he calls “Art Detecting.” Ultimately, it becomes easier for him to surround himself with the attitudes, people, and resources that he will need to culminate. Believe it or not as a “Serial Educator” who’s been fixated on implementing my INNOVATION PLAN throughout my tenure in this masters program, I’ve engaged in this process. Now with this assignment I’ve been asked to connect my response and reflection when it comes to “The New Culture of Learning” back to my INNOVATION PLAN.
Moreover, many traditional venues for teaching – have been predicated on what we would describe as a mechanistic approach: Learning is treated as a series of steps to be mastered, as if the students themselves were machines being programmed to accomplish. (Thomas and Brown, 2011). Learning in this manner would be okay if life was linear, but it’s not, it’s organic. As we go deeper into the digital age, it is becoming more necessary for our students to engage in learning that caters to real-life skill acquisition.
Ultimately, the old industrial manufacturing model, where standardization is the primary focus, should be dismantled. If we care about building leaders of tomorrow, we must adopt a more organic model, where students are given the chance to explore their individual talents. This better prepares our students for life.
According to anecdotes in The New Culture of Learning, adopting the organic model and establishing a new culture of learning, will ensure that our students share their interests, develop their passions, and engage in the play of imagination (Thomas and Brown, 2011). As an educator at the high school level, my goal has always been to maximize the learning experience of my students, while simultaneously inspiring my colleagues to take on a more innovative approach.
21st Century Approach
Accordingly, education has been seen as a process of transferring information from a higher authority (The Teacher) down to the student. This model however can’t keep up with the rapid rate of change in the 21st century (Thomas and Brown, 2011). As we move further along in the information age, this idea is becoming outdated. Thomas and Brown believe that learning should be viewed in terms of an environment — combined with the rich resources provided by the digital information network —- where the context in which learning happens, the boundaries that define it, and the students, teachers, and information within it all coexist and shape each other in a mutually reinforcing way. This proves that education has become much more than teachers imparting information to their students. In fact, it’s more effective now for teachers to focus on creating a learning environment, more so than lecturing and teaching to tests. While consuming my required readings, I’ve identified a couple of ideas, if implemented would more than likely yield great results:
Peer-to-Peer Interaction
In the new culture of learning, people learn through their interaction and participation with one another in fluid relationships that are the result of shared interests and opportunity (Thomas and Brown, 2011). I absolutely love this because I get a sense of meritocracy, where there’s equality amongst those who are members of a specific learning environment. An individual may assume the lead role temporarily if they’re more competent than the others in a specific area, but equity is the cornerstone of environments that are big on peer-to-peer interaction.
Challenges
The organization that continues to express only the ideas of the past is not learning (Organizational Learning, n.d.). In order to progress in the New Culture of learning as a collective there must be a collective endorsement. My colleagues must be willing to disenthrall themselves from the conventional methods that they’re accustomed to. “…for those that are already in it, you can’t push too far, because they like the genre. That’s why they’re here.”Those who have walked away probably aren’t just waiting around for you to fix it. Those who have never been, don’t think the genre has a problem they need solved” (Harapnuik). A large sum of teachers at the high school I teach, were there when I attended, they had long tenures then, so I can imagine how comfortable they are with the old industrial teaching model now.
Although my colleagues may not endorse the new culture of learning right away, they’d all still like to be on the same page. I believe they would abhor the idea that I’ve adopted this new profound approach, and they will struggle with allowing their students to engage in self-directed learning, as they are accustomed to guiding their student’s learning. This in terms will create a disconnection when we come together and share personal experiences in our PL.
Ultimately, I have strong aspirations of creating organizational change, so it won’t stop me from pitching ideas that I believe to be beneficial to our students. I also know that there’s a good chance that my colleagues will be reluctant to change because they’ll be unprepared and complete novices to this ideology, so I’m open to freeing my lines of communication and becoming more versatile with how I present this new information in hopes of appealing to my collea
Enhancements
I was looking through Twitter one day and I came across this tweet that stated “Education becomes a tool of indoctrination when our students are forced to disregard their need to fuel their imagination.” My primary goal coming into teaching was to maximize the learning experience of my students. I wish to incorporate curriculums or lessons that will cater to their individual passions. I truly believe that self-directed learners become life-long learners. I learned in my Disruptive Innovation course that if given full control over their eportfolios, students had a 75% chance of using their digital platforms beyond the course that required them to do so. Establishing a significant learning environment that will aid students in developing those hard, soft, and employability skills will increase students’ performance in school and propel them to excel in life beyond the realm of education.
Solution
When we choose to adopt the new culture of learning, we began to revolutionise an outdated educational model. Sir Ken Robinson stated in a Ted Talk that “We don’t need an evolution, but a revolution in education. It has to be transformed into something else.” This is the solution, we have to seek a more holistic approach when it comes to building a productive learning environment.
Impact
Applying the newly emerging “culture psychology” to education, Bruner proposes that the mind reaches its full potential only through participation in the culture — not just its more formal arts and sciences, but it’s a way of perceiving, thinking, feeling, and carrying out discourse (Jerome Butler, 1996). I was told that if you wanna see change, lead the change. This is why I’ve taken the initiative to impact the lives of those who I encounter. I intend to not only use these changes to propel my students forward, but to reshape the minds of my colleagues as well. When it comes to specifics, my innovation plan was created to help students get comfortable with peer-to-peer interaction and communicating on an interpersonal level. With the information age amongst us, I also wanted to make sure that students were being prepared to pursue higher education. The world is dynamic and it’s changing everyday, so it’s best that our students develop skills and become more versatile.
Learning Through Play and Imagination
Children use play and imagination as the primary mechanisms for making sense of their new, rapidly evolving world (Thomas and Brown, 2011). As a fairly new educator, I understood that I had to be creative. In my 10th grade Intensive Reading class we’re going over figurative language, such as similes and metaphors. I’ve instructed my children to find clean lyrics to songs of their favorite artist and identify the figurative language that the songs may possess. I ask that they present these songs and showcase their findings, so we could dissect collectively. Once they pinpoint those things, the floor is opened to dance, rap, and sing. After these projects my students will automatically identify figurative language on their own because the assignment has embedded this process in their mind.
The New Collective
Learning that occurs outside of schools or the workplace — through hobbies, reading, the media, and so — is almost always to a student’s passions. Yet although they are constantly learning about the things that really interest them, those things are rarely acknowledged in educational environments. (Thomas and Brown, 2011). This is why my innovation plan in conjunction with the new culture of learning is significant because it allows these kids to own their learning experience, where they could glean and use their imagination as they wish. Eportfolios will provide these kids with the privacy that they yearn for, as a collective they’ll be able to be radically transparent and censor any judgment that comes their way. Ultimately my students will have shared interests in identifying their purpose and passions.
References
Bruner , Jerome. “The Culture of Education.” Google Books, Google, https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7a978qleVkcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=info%3A0OuX9s6Q0tUJ%3Ascholar.google.com%2F&ots=A_UWnc6LJj&sig=ZQJ9hUbMYMNMEZAmTLL_CqLzcJs#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Harapnuik , Dwayne. “Synthesis of Effective Change .” Harapnuik.org, 29 Sept. 2021, https://www.harapnuik.org/?s=Change.
Organizational Learning. (n.d.). Google Books. Retrieved September 10, 2022, from https://books.google.nl/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5oThMT4XwqgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=challenges+of+implementing+new+culture+of+learning&ots=oBlDtIov4V&sig=SAsg8btPk7q1sHZ2sTq8g-YREOs&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=challenges%20of%20implementing%20new%20culture%20of%20learning&f=false
TED. (2010, May 24). Bring on the learning revolution! | Sir Ken Robinson [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_IBring on the learning revolution! | Sir Ken Robinson. (2010, May 24). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I&t=988s
Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change (1st edition).