Essential instrumental constructivism….
A few questions and thoughts about:
Hamilton; Friesen (2013): “Online Education: A Science and Technology Perspective”
One of the first premises laid out in the abstract, states that implicit philosophical perspectives on technology limit research into the pedagogical value and potential of new technologies. The article explores, in some depth, the differing perspectives of two schools of thought: essentialism and instrumentalism, and argues that these are reductive and limiting when it comes to potential technological development.
The article was clearly pursuing the merits of a constructivist argument, by putting forward the idea of harnessing technology to attain an authentic pedagogical experience, which neither makes the teacher’s role obsolete, nor isolates the technology from social needs (in this case in education).
I came to the conclusion that I am neither an essentialist nor an instrumentalist. Or perhaps, more accurately, I do not view technology in such simplistic terms. I do not believe that technology is an independent force for the realisation of pedagogy. It may have been 20 years ago, but time and necessity means that the two are increasingly intertwined. I think there is huge potential in the ‘release’ of learning digitally. Students who are learning in a virtual world are not being judged in the same way as one might be in a face to face classroom situation. They find learning digitally to be liberating.
However, online education / technology has its disadvantages too. Today I watched my 17 year old daughter, doing her A Level French grammar work on OneNote. Because there was no face to face experience, she was able to cut all sorts of corners. She couldn’t be bothered to put in any accents. The teacher hadn’t bothered to learn how to enable writing French on the platform. The platform is very clunky for inputting written work (especially in French). Had Eppie been in a face to face class, the teacher would have picked up immediately on her corner cutting and re-directed her to producing more beneficial, accurate written language. The pedagogical value of OneNote is definitely in question when compared to its functionality. And I have no doubt that the teacher when marking my daughter’s work will allow her minor errors to slip through because ‘she was learning online’. This, I think is a good example to downplay the merits of the instrumentalist viewpoint which ‘equates the educational value of technologies with use, rather than attempting to see how pedagogical concerns might be built in to the technology itself at the level of design’ Hamilton; Friesen (2013): “Online Education: A Science and Technology Perspective” (p.7).
On page 10, Hamilton; Friesen argue that ‘we need to integrate questions of pedagogical significance into technology’. Absolutely, yes and to do that, I believe we have to involve the educators.
I have a sense that a lot of educational research is examining systems and perspectives already in play. The article alludes to the premise that we should now be working to define what might exist in the future in terms of online education; this is crucial.
The final thing that I took away from this article is that essentialism and instrumentalism both fail to recognise the pedagogical potential of technology. Constructivism, on the other hand, recognises the interplay between human values and technology far better.
I would like to put forward the idea that rather than make education mould to the technology, which seems to be the case at the moment, we should make technology better mould to education. This is starting to happen, but is still not a mainstream concept.
What do you think?
Essentialism and instrumentalism are not really two separate schools of thought but rather are key concepts and/ or discursive and analytical positions. A key point of the article is to recognise and be able to critique essentialism and instrumentalism in digital education policies, strategies, or research. I would also be cautious about thinking of these concepts as unique to digital technologies. You can imagine how workplace practice both shape and are shaped by something as simple as the layout of a paper form, or the physical layout of a classroom has some role in shaping the pedagogies performed in that space.
Your example of teaching and learning French as mediate through the joys of OneNote is an interesting one. However, you should explain a bit further about how this is an example of instrumentalism (rather than poor teaching or a poor technology choice). Instrumentalism would suggest OneNote performs as a simple instrument for the teacher. The key question from instrumentalism is whether a technology performs its intended function not what pedagogies OneNote mobilises or excludes. A question on Hamilton and Friesen’s paper is on what they mean by design and whether educators should avoid technologies that don’t have a pedagogical intention (Twitter or WordPress, for example) or whether educators can bring in such technologies in to their teaching and learning practices?
A position that’s advanced in the Manifesto for Teaching Online is that technology and pedagogy mutually shape on form (co-constitute) one another.
Its also important to recognise that the H&F paper is discussing different concepts used in the analysis of technologies for learning. Their main position is that constructivism (as a social science concept, not to be confused with constructivism the pedagogy!) is the better way of understand and analysing technologies for learning. For the authors, its not a question of whether technology should shape pedagogy or that pedagogy should shape technologies but that technology and pedagogy are co-constructed together.
I hope that makes sense as these are not straightforward concepts and arguments and if you have further questions do let me know either in a new post or comments on this post.
Good Morning Pete:
You say, the Hamilton and Friesen paper argues that technology and pedagogy are co-contructed together. As you say, this is also a position advanced in the Manifesto for Teaching Online. This is something that we should be working towards, but I do not think we have yet achieved. My example of OneNote was to back that up. The technology is a tool for the pedagogy, but has not yet managed to seamlessly fulfil the needs of the pedagogy. In fact, the more I think about it, most technologies present some sort of a hiccup in terms of providing pegagogy with what it needs. We resort to technologies that exist and make the best of them. Whereas, we should be working towards co-construction, but we are not yet there.
What about technology getting in the way of learning? How we can forget about the actual pedagogy and get bogged down in technological logistics, kidding ourselves that we are making good use of our time.
An example of learners trying (and not necessarily being very efficient) to make the best of technology:I am on a student WhatsApp group created by some of the IDEL students. Within a week, somebody (rightly so) started critising WhatsApp as the most ergonomic means of informally discussing and communicating. Somebody then critiqued moodle. They then mooted using Teams for the students to have an informal forum for discussion. There then followed agonising WhatsApp conversations about logins and logistics. Then silence. Technology can impede learning as well as facilitate it.
“This is something that we should be working towards, but I do not think we have yet achieved.” This is an important point here. H & F are not advocating co-construction as a better *practice* but as a better *theory* to explain and analyse practices. This can be tricky to grasp because we tend to be engaged in education and tend to be looking for ways of doing it better. But H & F are interested in the research paradigms or perspectives on how we think about, analyse and understand education (they would also argue that chalk and a blackboard are co-constituted technologies in the classroom). So your phrase “to make the best of technology” does reflect what they are arguing in that technologies will shape our pedagogical practices but also our pedagogical practices will shape how technologies are used (beyond the intentions of the technology designers) and the practices of the students will shape both how the technologies are used and our pedagogical practices as well as be shaped by both. The WhatsApp example is a good one as the general discussion is designed for informal student chat but that function is ignored in favour of an alternative platform. This may influence our teaching practice as discussions become invisible to the teaching team, but will also shape student learning practices as you may discuss the course content on there rather than the discussion boards. MS Teams fails in being mobilised as part of this education entanglement because of some unintended effects of the software design – the dreaded log-ins. So for H & F, this is an example of technologies and social behaviours coming together that co-constitute an educational experience (just one that didn’t work at this point).