Nick Kearney

I am not certain that to comment is useful, since what I have to say is outside what I perceive to be the focus of this seminar, and there is a debt of respect that suggests to me that I should refrain from comment. All the same...

I wasn't able to attend the seminar yesterday. I wanted to because footprints seem to me to be a challenge in the sense that to me they seem to be an interpretive way of presenting data, insofar as they draw a picture that drags the mind. Words and numbers force the mind to engage. Pictures seduce. So I wanted to know more.

I missed it. So the thoughts I post here are from outside. Considered, but external. I work on the edge of research, I do it, but spend my life defending its relevance because that is where I work. I would have trouble getting people outside full time research to use this. Though of course this may not matter.

Personally I find footprints potentially useful. I can see a lot of ways of using them, within the research context. But I am always concerned by what research does to explain itself to the people that fund it (whoever). Footprints are a step in the right direction, in that they help to visualise the situation, but in the wrong direction in the sense that that serious engagement with them requires a whole new literacy.

So, I see it as a great research tool but forget ease of use. Just a quick look at this makes me think I would hesitate to use it even if I could dedicate a couple of months to it:) It is very very rich, but there are more than 20 elements to assimilate in this particular version, and then the way the data is visually represented. As you say you have spent serious time on it. That's fine, and it is a good tool, as long as it is clear that it is for use inside the field (with all that implies) and that later there will be a job of communication to the world outside. And that is the challenge.

These are impressions. As I say I may have missed something said in the session that clarifies this. But my perspective is that this, as it is, is unlikely to be comprehensible outside the "tower". That term may really rankle, and it may be seen a different discussion, I would argue that it isnt. Science happens in society. Our lives as researchers are funded by others. We have a duty to be able to explain what we do.

In other words, we are building the bridge as we are crossing it. In my doctorate I felt like the coyote most of the time, running across thin air (Where's that confounded bridge!!)

I have worked in a lot of fields, everywhere everyone is driven to innovate, to build that bridge and cross it at the same time, except education.

Ipsative as an educational innovation (in the public arena) seems weird, too resource intensive in times when education is not apparently worth the candle. But it could work in education, if teachers had manageable class sizes. That works, I have seen it work.

It is hard to put a finger on what the "learning" is anyhow, but moving beyond that Philip what you are doing is to move the goal posts. Shame on you!!! :)

The issue about emergent learning (or whatever you want to call it) is that it escapes the prior definitions we have worked with in the field. There are three reactions, and they are present in this debate.

One tries to lassoo the coltish concept and drag it back within the fold. Once the emergent learning generates evidence it becomes manageable within a system that fails fundamentally to trust the individual (this is so ingrained we mostly dont even notice it).

Another notices emergent learning as an interesting anomaly, something worth studying, and of course measuring, and scoping and observing. Welcome of course, but I dare say, eternally marginal.

Then there is the view (not a new view) that understands emergent learning, once it is recognised as existing, as a fundamental and profound challenge to the way our society understands learning, knowledge and socialisation. If you recognise it you have to rethink education.

In this rethink as Philip puts it, it is all about the learner and her reaction to the environment, that interaction is central. Schools are a relatively limited part of it, and most of the influences that shape our society could be construed as emergent (though in many cases not accidental). There is an urgent need to address the issue.

I would be interested in building footprints of emergent learning experiences around events such as any episode of  the X factor :) or CNN news.

what happens when the "emergent learning artefact" is a behaviour, or an attitude, or something so ingrained that the artefact is the learner?

to me the idea of evidence in relation to emergent learning is problematic

it feels like a parent saying to an adolescent "so you fell in love, prove it"

I would venture that all learning involves a transformation of identity. As it is mostly gradual this is not sufficiently recognised. Take a moment to think about it in your own terms.

Then think about the absurdity of assessing that change against externally imposed criteria. Who are you working for when you do that? Whose agenda?

Education should provide frameworks for emergent learning, In fact a curriculum is precisely that, it sets a framework. The problem is the belief that only one emergent result is valid. And this belief stifles identities.

Ipsative assessment approaches are arguably the only truly democratic way to go about assessment. They are the only way to respect individual freedoms and identities. However they require a lot of rigour and reflection to work (let alone to answer the critiques of the usual social engineers) and our systems are not used to that. But it is valuable to try.