Open Ed Conference: Cognitive and Cultural Barriers to Openness

Speaker: Steve Hargadon

Image by jdlasica via FlickrWhat are the cognitive and cultural barriers to openness, and how does understanding them help to promote broader openness?

A conversation with the desire to identify the core ways in which people are naturally or culturally conditioned to be suspicious of or opposed to openness; then to use that information to think about ways to build bridges to individuals or institutions locked into closed mindsets.

Notes: 
He open talking about all the open projects that he has participated have folded up due to lack of interest, funding, and institutional support. His favorite quote is Jefferson's "My sharing my light does not diminish my own." Why do we close off when we feel that there is no trust? He feels that on some level that he failed with open source software.

He used the example of an online Facebook study group in Chemistry who was busted by the instructor for starting an online study group.

What are the cognitive biases around how people feel about open eductation?

• Competition compensation
• Cowboy culture
• Cultural influences (vs. Rationhality)
• Narrative driven

Possible Examples of Solutions

• What has OCW done

Conclusions/Ideas to Encourage Understanding and Adoption

• Acknowledge and address proprietary concerns (OCW)

More at http://opencognitive.wikispaces.com

There are also selfless acts, cooperation, and sharing as motivations. There are also those who use seemingly altruistic acts as self-promotion.

Related articles

• Libraries and crowdsourcing - 6 examples - Library 2.0 (library20.com)
• Microsoft donates open source bio project to Outercurve (fiercebiotechit.com)

A Note on Learning Styles

I want it to be clear that I do not think that I have the all the answers about learning styles theory and pedagogy. I wrote about this earlier in the year here. Learning styles theory is an extremely complex subject that covers psychology, sociology, neuroscience, epistemology, and pedagogy. Notice all the soft sciences in this list. That said, in my own practice in special education in the k-12 realm, my work as a tutor and tutor trainer, and as an English teacher has benefitted tremendously from these tools. I have seen students who were tested as auditory learners begin to use recorders in the classroom and I have watched their lives turn around, but that is not research. The learning styles theories as they stand cover too much ground and are too broad to determine (at this point in time) solid empirical testing. Many of the theories are too simplistic to cover the complexity of the human mind. The research questions in some cases have to be narrowed. Researchers have to continue to define and test the theory, and explore - there is a lot to be done. There have been numerous attempts - many, to my way of thinking, have been successful. What happens though is that contra learning styles educators simply change the definition of learning styles to dismiss the conclusions of the research or weaken the argument by narrowly define what the theory should predict.

An example of that is a video by Daniel Willingham that has gained some traction on YouTube that declares that learning styles is bunk. It is filled with lots of unsupported phrases like "that is not how the brain works" as if we had a really clear picture of how the brain works (never mind how we learn). The only thing that can be said definitively is that more research needs to be done. Another really big problem with the video is that it ignores any research that has been done and there is a lot of it out there. To say that there has not been any research that supports the idea of learning styles means that Willingham has not done a thorough review of the literature.

Willingham says that "lots of people have performed that test" as if there was one way to test learning styles. He also talks about "meaning based" as if we are meant to take it for granted that "meaning based" learning is the final obvious word in epistemology and language. That is just not the case. Willingham narrowly defines learning styles and what it "ought to predict" and then takes the theory (as if there were one) to task.

The claim, for instance, that teachers have to change how they teach is just wrong - not everyone who supports learning styles makes that claim. The idea is that yes, we can teach to a broader spectrum of learning modalities. But learning styles theory is there to help the students understand why they may not be getting it. There are good, solid criticisms of learning styles theory and this ain't it.

Learning styles is still being defined as a theory. In this sense it is a lot like string theory - there is some decent math and models in there but a lot more work needs to be done and should be done. No one is going to through the theory out because it is accurately modeling what is happening in the real world. We don't even know how many strings there are! I consider the learning styles to more of a model like string theory rather than a full blown theory yet. But we cannot just discount research that supports the theory out of hand.

Some References That Go Beyond Personal Beliefsd (even mine)

1. Learning Styles and Pedagogy in Post-16 Learning by Frank Coffield, et al.

If you want to look at how complex this question is, check out this paper that is really critical of the theories and is in depth. (Notice that I don't just choose research that supports my world-view or research bias.)

2. Christy Tucker's blog has some excellent summary of the research.

3. Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized: A New Model for Liberal Education By Robert J. Sternberg

4. Comparing Student Learning Styles in an Online Distance Learning Class and an Equivalent On-Campus Class by David P. Diaz and Ryan B. Cartnal, Cuesta Community College

5. One Size Does Not Fit All: Learning Style, Play, and On-line Interactives, David T. Schaller, et al.

6. Ability, Demography, Learning Style, and Personality Trait Correlates of Student Preference for Assessment Method
"More than 400 students from four universities in America and Britain completed measures of learning style preference, general knowledge (as a proxy for intelligence), and preference for examination method. Learning style was consistently associated with preferences..."

Wisdom Cries Out in the Streets...

Image via Wikipedia

A in the "60 Seconds Science" column in Scientific American there is an interesting note about Jest and Meeks' attempt to map "wisdom." They have looked at 10 scientific papers that have attempted to define wisdom and believe that they have found its seat in certain areas in the brain.

"Jeste and Meeks concede that some might call their conclusions reductionistic because they based their 'map' not on the idea that wisdom is a single trait, but a collection of attributes. But Jeste said that similarities between how wisdom was portrayed thousands of years ago in the Bhagavad Gita (a Hindu scripture) and in the West today — as well as the tale of Phineas Gage, a railway worker whose allegedly wise attributes such as amiability and good judgment were said to vanish after a spike penetrated his left frontal lobe — 'makes you think it's not a cultural phenomenon but biologically consistent.'"

Image via Wikipedia

First off, I have to say that my amiability might suddenly vanish if I had a railroad spike through my head. What makes me a little less cranky but cranky none-the-less is the illusive definitions of "wisdom," "knowledge," "memory," "ideas," and "information." I do like that they refer it to a collection of attributes. When we talk about learning and our relationship to knowledge and information, I think we are looking at a similar problem. When we use taking notes to learn, I think it is important to remember that that action includes the movement of the hand and the feel of the pencil. In other words, thinking and cognition may not reside in a single organ. Until we understand how all of the parts work together, I am not really sure if we have a working definition of knowledge epistemologically.

One of the weaknesses of the cognitive approach to pedagogy is that there is a false correlation between how the brain functions and how we learn. This cognitive approach is found in many theories of learning whenever the researcher wishes to put the stamp of legitimacy on a project with Real Science. Thinking, memory and learning are a little messier than the fMRI's would lead us to believe. Neuroscience is going to tell us how we sense the world around us and how currently measurable systems function in the brain but that is as far away from knowing how we learn as the Hubble is from answering cosmological questions about the origin of time. We are learning valuable things but we do not know enough about all the interrelated complex systems that go into creating a single thought to make any conclusions about how we learn.

I hope we read more about an accounting of Eastern systems of epistemology and ontology as they relate to learning. The current thinking about education is decidedly Cartesian. Ironically, Leibniz read a Latin translation of the I Ching which if it did not influence his exploration and invention of binary numbers, it certainly led him to strongly consider the the archetypal significance of a numbering system (as seen in his writings) which led to the modern computer.