Jenny Mackness

Hi Deidre - it's interesting that you bring up medicine as a subject. We have often discussed whether medicine, nursing, teaching (i.e. those subjects in which what people learn can have such a profound effect on other people's lives) are subjects which need to be prescriptive. They certainly seem to be subjects in which there is a lot of standardised testing.

Is diagnostic reasoning the same as emergent learning? Can we afford to have our doctors' knowledge be emergent as they practice on us? I'd be interested to hear what you think.

I like the idea of adding a bonus area to a rubric to allow for emergent learning.  

Hello Jaap - great to see you here. I like the idea of Emergent Learning Artefacts, which could then be assessed. It makes me wonder if the arts subjects lend themselves more to this than other subjects.

I am thinking here of one of my sons who has just completed a Masters in Music Technology. I think there was lots of emergent learning in that course because the students decided on their own research projects, which ultimately, in their final performance, had to demonstrate the knowledge and skills they had acquired over the course.

I went to see the final performances and they were all completely different. The tutors couldn't have known before hand what to expect - but presumably they had some sort of rubric to assess these performances.

This is a fascinating discussion and what comes out of it for me is something to do with readiness for learning.

I think that comes through in Roy's description of how little children learn to read and write. The problem is that here in the UK little children are often 'forced' into reading and writing far too early when they are not ready. The number of times as an early years teacher I had to say to parents ' do you really think that at the age of xx your child is not going to be able to read' - in other words - what's the rush - but they wanted fluent readers by the age of 4 or younger - and as we know many countries do not start formal reading classes until after the age of 7.

So is there a relationship between learning readiness and emergent learning - both for adults and children?

Absolutely Deidre. I can completely relate to this. My eldest son was very very slow to read - He struggled right through school - but now at the age of 36 he is an avid reader. For him school, just like for your daughter, but for different reasons, was not the right environment. I never thought of schooling him at home, probably because I had a full time job.

I think these experiences speak volumes about what we mean by learning environment and the influence that the environment has on learning.

I wonder if you would be able to draw a footprint of your home schooling learning environment. That would be fascinating.

Hi Kathleen - no this is not irrelevant - quite the opposite - because you have highlighted so clearly the relationship between the environment and emergent learning - which is what our research is all about.

You have also provided a very clear example of circumstances in which emergent learning might not happen and have raised the question of whether some learning requires a prescribed approach.

The question of early years reading is such a good example of all this. Years ago I was an early years teacher and have been through the 'should we let reading emerge through a real books approach to reading?' i.e. just let children handle and browse through books they like and learn to read because they love books - or should we teach them to read through a structured introduction to phonics and a decoding approach?

The link you provide as to why natural learning fails in classrooms definitely fits with my experience. Many, but not all, children simply did not learn to read 'in school' with the 'real' books approach and needed something more structured - although I so wanted them to learn through the 'real' books approach.

This relates to our thinking about getting the balance between prescription and emergent learning right for purpose.

Thanks so much for this great example Kathleen. Can you tell us more abut your experience with this?