Different ways of knowing

Dr Valerie Mannix1

Rationale

• Call by several academics in the field of education for an alternative view of learning i.e. Enabling learners to perceive themselves as creators of personal knowledge.

• Need to escape “a one size fits all approach to teaching and learning” (Gamache, 2002)

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Discussion Outline

• Draw on key PhD research finding- motivational self systems in a SLA context (Mannix, 2008)

• Explore the reconstruction of learner identities (habitus) and learner perceptions of knowledge, skills, dispositions and qualities via motivational self systems and life wide learning.

• Implications for curriculum development and learning facilitation

PhD Research Project

• Involved 49 student participants at WIT

• Investigated the perceived sources of language learner motivation and demotivation.

• Students were pursuing language studies across a wide range of disciplines – engineering, science, business, humanities.

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Academic Year Abroad/ Work Placement

• Students pursuing language studies were more motivated and self-determined in their learning and had developed a more defined sense of self or future self having spent an academic year abroad (alternative learning space).

Kind finding of the research

• Students were more inclined to relate aspects of their previous learning experience to their current one.

• Use creative strategies in achieving their learning goals (e.g. Tandem learning)

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Having spent time in a second language (L2 ) community:

• Students reported being able to identify more with the second language and culture and their attitudes towards learning other languages and other cultures (alternative spaces) had changed in a positive way (actual and future selves).

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Having spent time in a second language (L2 ) community:

Learners who did not partake in the academic year abroad:

• Perceived the value of learning and indeed the value of language learning to be purely instrumental, for example, the completion of an academic degree course in order to enhance their employment prospects

• Reported feeling anxious before assessments.

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Learners who did not partake in the academic year abroad:

• Reported less confidence or a lack of confidence in their own ability to succeed or to improve on their existing grades.

• More reliance on lecture notes and support from Lecturer.

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Studies in Second Language Acquisition

• Strong evidence that learners who encounter and draw on different spaces of learning are more self-determined in their learning and are more willing to engage in new and multiple spaces (also collaborative spaces) of learning.

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Motivation – Possible and Ideal Selves- Learning Spaces

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The notion of ‘Self’

• Traditionally self-representations were static concepts

• Self-theorists have become increasingly interested in the active dynamic nature of the self system reflecting changing realities (Leahy, 2007).

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Changing reality

• Globalisation• Widespread political and economic

migration• Increased mobility• Ever-developing media technologies• Electronic discourse communities.

The Notion of Self- Key Researchers

• Markus and Nurius (1986) Multiple Self Systems

• Higgins et al (1985) and Higgins (1987 &1996) – Self Discrepancy Theory

( One single ideal or ought self shaped by composite self guides)

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Markus and Nurius 1986Multiple Possible Selves

• Possible selves, “a future self state rather than a current one, represents the ideas which an individual has regarding what they could become, what they would like to become and what they are afraid of becoming”.

(Markus and Nurius,1986, 954)

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Markus and Nurius 1986 – Multiple Possible Selves

• Information derived from past experiences also plays a significant role in this regard.

• Markus and Nurius provide a broad outline of the scope of possible selves, that is, multiple future orientated possible selves, but do not provide a finite taxonomy.

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Markus and Nurius 1986Multiple Possible Selves

• The possible selves that are hoped for might include:

• the successful self

• the creative self

• the rich self

• the loved and admired self

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Markus and Nurius 1986

• The dreaded possible selves could be

• the alone self

• the depressed self

• the incompetent self

• the alcoholic self

• the unemployed self

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Higgins et al. (1985)

Self- discrepancy theory

• A systematic framework of the interrelations among the different self states.

• 3 Self domains – Actual, Ideal and Ought Self• 2 Standpoints- One’s one; significant other.

6 Basic Self States

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Domains of the Self

• Actual Self – representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) believes you actually possess.

• Ideal Self – representation of the attributes (hopes, aspirations or wishes for you) that someone (yourself or another) would like you ideally to possess.

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Domains of the Self

• Ought Self – representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) believes you should or ought to possess (sense of duty, obligations or responsibilities).

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Implications of Self State representations

• Individuals differ as to which self guide they are motivated towards.

• Individuals are motivated to reach a condition which matches their personally relevant self guides.

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Implications

• Applied to an educational context the motivation to learn involves the desire to reduce the discrepancy between one’s actual self and the projected behavioural standards of the ideal/ought selves

• This would imply that future self guides provide incentive, direction and impetus for action

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Implications

• Discrepancy between actual and future selves initiates self-regulatory strategies to reduce the discrepancy.

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Imagination- envisioning futures

“Imagination refers to a process of expanding our self by transcending our time and space and creating new images of the world and ourselves”.

(Wenger, 1998, 176)

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Imagination- Wide Array of Contexts- Life wide learning

The wider the array of contexts, (spaces for learning –past, present and future), the more capable and willing, people will be to generate possible selves.

Markus (2006, xii)The Searcher

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Life wide Learning (Liquid Learning)

• Learning in different and multiple spaces simultaneously (Ronald Barnett, 2008,1)

• Goes beyond the boundaries of disciplines

Learning Space

Learning Space

Learning Space

Learners drawing on various experiences in their learning

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Examples of Learning Spaces Barnett (2008)

Individuals inhibit created learning spaces• Work, non work, occupational networks.

• Family, leisure, social networks and engagements,

• Manifold channels of news, information and communication

• Physical and global mobility (actual and virtual)

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Examples of Learning Spaces Savin- Baden (2008,12)

Individuals inhibit created learning spaces

• Bounded learning spaces: days away in which to think and reflect as a group

• Formal learning spaces: Courses and Conferences

• Social learning spaces: dialogue and debate in informal settings

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Examples of Learning Spaces Savin- Baden (2008,12)

Individuals inhibit created learning spaces

• Silent learning spaces: away from noise that erodes creativity, innovation and space to think

• Writing space: Places not only to write but to consider one’s stances and ideas

• Dialogic spaces: critical conversations where the relationship between the oral and the written can be explored.

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Examples of Learning Spaces Savin- Baden (2008,12)

Individuals inhibit created learning spaces

• Reflective learning spaces: which reach beyond contemplation and reconsidering past thought, they are spaces of meaning-making and consciousness-raising.

• Digital learning spaces: where explorations occur about new types of visuality, literacy, pedagogy, representations of knowledge, communication and embodiment.

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Striated and Smooth SpacesDeleuze and Guattari (1998,487)

• Striated Learning Spaces: Characterised by a strong sense of organisation and boundedness- Spaces of arrival.

Strong sense of authorship. Clear definition of outcomes, of a point that one is expected to reach

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Striated and Smooth SpacesDeleuze and Guattari (1998,487)

• Smooth learning: Open, flexible and contested spaces in which both learning and learners are always on the move.- Spaces of becoming.

` Sense of displacement of notions of time and place so that the learning space is not defined but is defined by

the creator of the space.

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Categorisation of forms of Lifewide Learning

• The language of knowledge and skills is insufficient to capture the complexity of the learning processes that many are undergoing.

• These domains need to be supplemented with a sense of a student’s being, and indeed , their continuing becoming- dispositions and qualities.

(Barnett, 2008)

Being and Becoming

DispositionsQualities

SkillsKnowledge

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Being (Actual Self) and Becoming (Possible Self)

Being Becoming

Actual Self

Possible Self

Ideal/ Feared Self

Dispositions

Qualities

Skills

Knowledge

Dispositions

Qualities

Skills

Knowledge

Personal self guides + Formation of strategies

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Implication

Investment in learning through different spaces and in various forms is also an investment in the learner’s complex identity (habitus)

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Implication

Further exploration of the possibilities for the creation of smooth spaces in straited environments is required for higher education.

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Spatial Ecology

Idea that staff and students come to understand how they interact

with one another and the various learning spaces in which they live, work and learn.

Promoting Learner Systematic Reflection

(particularly n the creation andmaintenance of smooth spaces in

Straited learning environments)

Facilitator Awareness of ways in which straited learning environments mould their assumptions, perceptions

and pedagogies.

Pedagogical Implications and

Professional Development

Incorporating the Imaginative Capacity

i.e. Visual Learning StyleSelf and Social

Awareness and Management

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Pedagogical Implications and

Professional Development

Promotion of collaboration in learning

Utilizing approaches to learning such as problem-based learning,

project –based learning and action learning approaches

Robust assessment procedures

for liquid learning outcomes.

Design of curricula needs

to reflect learning intentions

as opposed to outcomes pedagogy.

Creating harmony

between

the ideal and ought selves

(learners personal and social identity).

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Thank You