Roy Williams

Peter, thanks, you articulate it so well: 

I believe the plan and design can create the trajectory of the learning, just as MOOCs have created the trajectory for many emerging pedagogies, etc... and it is the MOOC that brings things back to alignment with the trajectory. Emergent learning often strays, it is the plan and design that brings it back..

We came across a lovely metaphor in Rose Luckin's work, on 'lines of desire' ...  

which seems to capture some of the interaction between design, alignment and emergent trajectories.  See more here ...

Next paradox ... arising from what you write ... Agreed, "a number of people are not social", but ... they too use social media, like this, to forage for nuggets that they can take away and 'think on' and 'think with', no?  I do. 

I am not a great fan of the term 'heutagogy' (although I support the concept, like you do) but I must admit that I do like playing with the mashed up term 'heutaculture', which is the best (obscure, unfortunately) term I have for designing for emergence.

Kathleen -love WAITer.  I also use Vygotsky's 'ventriloqising', i.e. following and practising the way other people have articulated issues and concepts as a way into conversations and discussions.  

And in the footprints we first concentrated on all the interactive stuff, but then (Jenny) realised that there was a huge gap, and we needed to add 'solitude and contemplation' as a key factor in emergent learning - just as important as all the buzz and social network affordances. 

Peter and Jenny ...

I would like to hear more about what you mean by saying that emergent learning needs a plan (or design), Peter.  We are trying to describe what we need to put in place to encourage and enable emergent learning, which as Jenny has said above, is almost a contradiction in terms.  (If emergence is unpredictable, how can we design for it?) 

Looking forward to exploring this (and other paradoxes) in the coming days ... 

Scott and Jenny and Deirdre ...

Receptivity to emergence can, in the first instance be lost (as children are 'socialised' into conventional schooling) - I think it's innate in young children, as in your great example, Deirdre.  

Once children become settled and successful at school, they probably have to re-learn what they prevously knew (how to trust their creative, curious instincts), but this it requires a move on their part back into a more uncertain and risky learning environment, away from the 'comfort' and 'certainty' of schooling. That's a big ask, and must be quite confusing. 

Does this make sense? 

Deirdre, agreed. When we first formulated our framework on emergence, and developed the footprints visualisation tools, we deliberately tested our ideas against open learning - as broadly as we could, and Montessori preschools were one of the key examples (alongside higher education, etc). 

Our generic footprint of Montessori preschools is here: http://footprints-of-emergence.wikispaces.com/Montessori+pre-school

And we used Montessori (as well as the interactive space, MEDIATE) as key examples in a further paper (forthcoming, 2014, in Leonardo) on synaesthesia and embodied learning - this is the abstract: 

ABSTRACT: In an integrated view of perception and action, learning involves all the senses, the interaction between them, and cross-modality rather than just multi-modality. In short: synesthetic enactive perception, which then forms the basis for more abstract, modality-free knowledge.  This can underpin innovative learning design, and is explored in two case studies: children in Montessori preschools, and in the MEDIATE interactive space (for children on the autistic spectrum) in a ‘whole body’ engagement with the world. The challenge is to explore the rich opportunities offered by these modes of learning, and understand the transcriptions and transformations between them.