The Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction (MCLI) exists to support effective teaching and learning (ETL) at the colleges and continually looks at approaches to enhance ETL. The Forum/Labyrinth is one way our faculty can share their effective, innovative ideas. In this edition we focus on cooperative learning -- an issue that addresses several compelling instructional agendas.
But let me ask us to look beyond this, or any single ETL issue. I believe we need to examine the true nature of learning, not just for students, but also for us as educational professionals.
After hearing Dr. Russell Ackoff at the January All-Faculty Convocation and remembering last year's presentation by Bill Strauss on the 13th Generation, I began to think about the notion of learning at MCLI and how we treated it... whatever it meant! Learning, like many concepts and processes, means different things to different people. Simple as it seems, not everyone recognizes this.
Dr. Ackoff talked about teaching versus learning as competing forces and that we need to look at teaching as learning. I had not thought of them as dicotomous or opposing forces, nor had I viewed them as synonymous actions. In my role as faculty, I have always felt that I am teaching for learning and that is the joy of being in education. I love the dialogue and interaction with students and feel wonderful when "ahas" are evident in class or on examinations. In my other role as an educational director, I am also teaching for learning -- teaching to teach. So, Ackoff has motivated me to look at teaching and learning from different perspectives. This is good.
Both Ackoff and Strauss said the world is changing quickly so that "most of what is learned becomes irrelevant or obsolete" (Ackoff notes, 1996). In light of this, what are we, in MCLI and in Maricopa, doing about learning? Have we focused on teaching or instruction more than we have on learning? Do we know enough about learning yet?
Additionally, how do we practice being learners ourselves? Basho, a haikuist centuries ago said, "Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." Are we as educators so focused in our teaching the pathways or footsteps that we have forgotten the wisdom and beauty of learning ourselves?
I am asking that across Maricopa we begin a dialogue focused on learning to move us in a realistic, compassionate, and meaningful direction we can all understand and embrace -- perhaps to surface a clearer sense of what learning means and the different dimensions of It.
This is not to say that dialogues do not exist. I have had the privilege of being part of many learning dialogues across our district. In fact, we first became public about our Maricopa Learning Community several years ago when the Chancellor penned his first encyclical. And, magnificent examples, big and small, continue to grow in our community, often nurtured by lonely faculty and staff gardeners.
So, I hope that Forum/Labyrinth can foster the dialogue and the MCLI can focus support on the learning agendas as it did the instructional ones -- with strategic collaboration and energy from college faculty and staff leaders. One of our first changes is to move editing responsibilities of the Forum/Labyrinth to a faculty member, beginning with Jane McGrath, PVCC. I hope that MCLI will perpetuate a learning community as we blur the lines between dicotomous, static, and seemingly competing forces in the name of learning together. From the I Ching, "When the way comes to an end, then change -- having changed, you pass through." I hope you will pass through us sometime.
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Alan Levine --}
Comments to alan.levine@domail.maricopa.edu
URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/labyforum/win96/win96F1.html