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!["Catholicism, with and against feudalism, but not against nature
and her bounty, gave us English a Shakespeare and era of
Shakespeare, and so produced a blossom of Catholicism."
(French Revolution, vol. i. 10.)
But religion, as we have said, does not occupy a prominent place in
Tennyson's pages. He is, in the main, like the great dramatist—a
poet of this world. Love and women are his favorite themes, but
love within the bounds of law, and woman strongly idealized.
License finds in him no apologist, while he throws around purity
and fidelity all the charms of song. The most rigid moralist can find
nothing to censure in his treatment of the guilty love of Lancelot
and Guinevere, the wedded love of Enid and Geraint, the
meretricious love of Vivien, and the unrequited love of Elaine. If
Milton had, as he intended, [Footnote 43] chosen King Arthur as
the subject of his epic, he could not have taken a higher moral
tone than Tennyson has in the Idylls of the King, and,
considering how lax were his notions about marriage, it is probable
he would have taken a lower one.
[Footnote 43: See his Mansas, and Life, by Toland, p.
17.]
King Arthur's praise of honorable courtship and conjugal faith is too
long to be quoted here, but it may be referred to as equally
eloquent and edifying. (Idylls of the King.)
The Laureate has learned at least one secret of making a great
name—not to write too much. "I hate many books," wrote Père
Lacordaire. "The capital point is, to have an aim in life, and deeply
to respect posterity by sending it but a small number of well-
meditated works." This has been Tennyson's rule. With six slender
volumes he has built himself an everlasting name. He has, till
within the last few months, seldom contributed to periodicals, and
when he has done so, the price paid for his stanzas seems
fabulous. The estimation in which he is held by critics of a high](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/39647-250302112540-539f2edc/75/Students-Experiences-of-e-Learning-in-Higher-Education-The-Ecology-of-Sustainable-Innovation-1st-Edition-Robert-Ellis-57-2048.jpg)
![order amounts, in many cases, to a passion and a worship. The
specimen he has given of a translation of the Iliad promises for it,
if completed, all that Longfellow has wrought for the Divina
Commedia. The attempts he has made at Alcaics,
Hendecasyllabics, and Galliambics in English have been
thoroughly successful, and stamp him as an accomplished scholar.
(Boädicea, etc., in Enoch Arden and other Poems.) As he does
not write much, so neither does he write fast. The impetuous
oratory of Shakespeare's and Byron's verse is unknown to him. He
never affects it. He reminds us rather of the operations of nature,
who slowly and calmly, but without difficulty, produces her
marvellous results. Drop by drop his immortal poems are distilled,
like the chalybeate droppings which leave at length on the cavern
floor a perfect red and crystal stalagmite. "Day by day," says the
National Review, when speaking on this subject—"day by day, as
the hours pass, the delicate sand falls into beautiful forms, in
stillness, in peace, in brooding." "The particular power by which Mr.
Tennyson surpasses all recent English poets," writes the
Edinburgh Review, "is that of sustained perfection. ... We look in
vain among his modern rivals for any who can compete with him in
the power of saying beautifully the thing he has to say."
O degli altri poeti onore e lume,
Vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore
Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. [Footnote 44]
[Footnote 44: L Inferno, i. 82.]
During a long period, the originality of Tennyson's verse was an
obstacle to its fame, and indeed continues to be so in the minds of
some readers. His use of obsolete words appears to many persons
affected, while others applaud him for his vigorous Saxon,
believing, with Dean Swift, that the Saxon element in our
compound tongue should be religiously preserved, and that the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/39647-250302112540-539f2edc/75/Students-Experiences-of-e-Learning-in-Higher-Education-The-Ecology-of-Sustainable-Innovation-1st-Edition-Robert-Ellis-58-2048.jpg)
![Professor Draper's Books. [Footnote 45]
[Footnote 45: 1. Human Physiology, Statical and
Dynamical; or, Conditions and Course of the Life
of Man. By J. W. Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor of
Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York.
New York: Harper & Brothers. 1856. 8vo, pp. 649.
2. History of the Intellectual Development of
Europe. By the same. Fifth edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 628
3. Thoughts on the Civil Policy of America. By the
same. Third edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 323.
4. History of the American Civil War. By the same.
In three volumes. Vol. I. 1867. 8vo, pp. 567.]
Professor Draper's works have had, and are having, a very rapid
sale, and are evidently very highly esteemed by that class of
readers who take an interest, without being very profoundly versed,
in the grave subjects which he treats. He is, we believe, a good
chemist and a respectable physiologist. His work on Human
Physiology, we have been assured by those whose judgment in
such matters we prefer to our own, is a work of real merit, and
was, when first published, up to the level of the science to which it
is devoted. We read it with care on its first appearance, and the
impression it left on our mind was, that the author yields too much
to the theory of chemical action in physiology, and does not
remember that man is the union of soul and body, and that the
soul modifies, even in the body, the action of the natural laws; or
rather, that the physiological laws of brute matter, or even of
animals, cannot be applied to man without many important
reserves. The Professor, indeed, recognizes, or says he recognizes,
in man a rational soul, or an immaterial principle; but the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/39647-250302112540-539f2edc/75/Students-Experiences-of-e-Learning-in-Higher-Education-The-Ecology-of-Sustainable-Innovation-1st-Edition-Robert-Ellis-62-2048.jpg)
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- 5. Students Experiences ofe Learning in Higher Education The Ecology of Sustainable Innovation 1st Edition Robert Ellis Digital Instant Download Author(s): Robert Ellis, Peter Goodyear ISBN(s): 9780415989350, 0415989353 Edition: 1 File Details: PDF, 2.32 MB Year: 2009 Language: english
- 7. Students’ Experiences ofE-learning in Higher Education Students’ Experiences of E-learning in Higher Education helps higher education instructors/teachers and university managers understand how e-learning relates to, and can be integrated with, other student experiences of learning. Grounded in relevant international research, the book is distinctive in that it foregrounds students’ experiences of learning, emphasizing the importance of how students interpret the challenges set before them, along with their concep- tions of learning and their approaches to learning. The way students interpret task requirements greatly affects learning outcomes, and those interpretations are in turn influenced by how students read the larger environment in which they study. The authors argue that a systemic understanding is necessary for the effective design and management of modern learning environments, whether lectures, seminars, laboratories or private study. This ecological understanding must also acknowledge, though, the agency of learners as active interpreters of their environment and its culture, values and challenges. Students’ Experiences of E-learning in Higher Education reports research outcomes that locate e-learning within the broader ecology of higher educa- tion, and: • Offers a holistic treatment of e-learning in higher education, reflecting the need for integrating e-learning and other aspects of the student learning experience. • Reports research on students’ experiences with e-learning conducted by authors in the United States, Europe and Australia. • Synthesises key themes in recent international research and summarises their implications for teachers and managers. Robert A. Ellis is Associate Professor and Director of eLearning at the Uni- versity of Sydney, Australia. Peter Goodyear is Professor of Education and co-director of the CoCo Research Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia.
- 8. Open and FlexibleLearning Series Series Editors: Fred Lockwood, A.W. (Tony) Bates and Som Naidu Activities in Self-Instructional Texts Fred Lockwood Assessing Open and Distance Learners Chris Morgan and Meg O’Reilly Changing University Teaching Terry Evans and Daryl Nation Contemporary Perspectives in E-Learning Research: Themes, Methods and Impact on Practice Gráinne Conole and Martin Oliver The Costs and Economics of Open and Distance Learning Greville Rumble Delivering Digitally: Managing the Transition to the Knowledge Media Alistair Inglis, Peter Ling and Vera Joosten Delivering Learning on the Net: The Why, What and How of Online Education Martin Weller The Design and Production of Self-Instructional Materials Fred Lockwood Designing Video and Multimedia for Open and Flexible Learning Jack Koumi Developing Innovation in Online Learning: An Action Research Framework Maggie McPherson and Miguel Baptista Nunes Distance and Blended Learning: Opening up Asian Education and Training Colin Latchem and Insung Jung Exploring Open and Distance Learning Derek Rowntree Flexible Learning in a Digital World Bettery Collis and Jef Moonen Improving Your Students’ Learning Alistair Morgan Innovation in Open and Distance Learning Fred Lockwood and Ann Gooley Integrated E-Learning: Implications for Pedagogy, Technology and Organization Win Jochems, Jeroen van Merriënboer and Rob Koper Interactions in Online Education: Implications for Theory and Practice Charles Juwah
- 9. Key Terms andIssues in Open and Distance Learning Barbara Hodgson The Knowledge Web: Learning and Collaborating on the Net Marc Eisenstadt and Tom Vincent Leadership for 21st Century Learning: Global Perspectives from International Experts Donald Hanna and Colin Latchem Learning and Teaching in Distance Education Edited by Som Naidu Learning and Teaching with Technology: Principles and Practices Som Naidu Learning with Digital Games: A Practical Guide to Engaging Students in Higher Education Nicola Whitton Making Material-Based Learning Work Derek Rowntree Managing Open Systems Richard Freeman Mega-Universities and Knowledge Media John S. Daniel Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers Edited by Agnes Kukulska-Hulme and John Traxler Objectives, Competencies and Learning Outcomes Reginald F. Melton Online Education Using Learning Objects Edited by Rory McGreal The Open Classroom: Distance Learning In and Out of Schools Edited by Jo Bradley Open and Distance Learning: Case Studies from Education, Industry and Commerce Stephen Brown Open and Flexible Learning in Vocational Education and Training Judith Calder and Ann McCollum Planning and Development in Open and Distance Learning Reg Malton Planning and Management in Distance Education Santosh Panda Preparing Materials for Open, Distance and Flexible Learning Derek Rowntree Programme Evalution and Quality Judith Calder Reconsidering Open and Distance Learning in the Developing World David Kember Reforming Open and Distance Learning Terry Evans and Daryl Nation
- 10. Reusing Online Resources AlisonLittlejohn Student Retention in Online, Open and Distance Learning Ormond Simpson Students’ Experiences of E-learning in Higher Education: The Ecology of Sustainable Innovation Robert A. Ellis and Peter Goodyear Supporting Students in Online, Open and Distance Learning (Second Edition), Ormond Simpson Teaching with Audio in Open and Distance Learning Derek Rowntree Teaching Through Projects Jane Henry Towards More Effective Open and Distance Learning Perc Marland Understanding Learners in Open and Distance Education Terry Evans Using Communications Media in Open and Flexible Learning Robin Mason The Virtual University Steve Ryan, Bernard Scott, Howard Freeman and Daxa Patel
- 11. ‘Ellis and Goodyearhave produced that rare thing – a book that makes genu- ine advances in an area of real importance, achieving this in a way that is both scholarly and yet entirely practical. Their ecological perspective not only introduces some powerful new approaches – such as “teaching as design”, or the relationship between virtual and physical spaces for learning – but offers something close to a new language in which to consider higher education policy in general. The book offers us a sustained attempt to bring the available evidence to bear on some of the most challenging issues facing universities, with a particular focus on technology. It is grounded in the practical experi- ence of the authors in teaching, research and management in global higher education, informed by a deep respect for research evidence, and balanced by placing the nature of the student experience at the centre of the enquiry. It is also elegantly and clearly written. If I were asked to compile a reading list for a new PVC Learning and Teaching of the half dozen most important books published in the last five years, then this would certainly be on my list.’ Professor Terry Mayes, Emeritus Professor, Caledonian Academy, Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland ‘Ellis and Goodyear use a powerful set of ecological metaphors to guide readers to understand the complex relationships between learning, uncertainty, environment and leadership in universities. Learning is neither merely local nor independent but is situated in interactions with others and relationships to the environment. This suggests a framework for rethinking and planning meaningful learning, teaching and information technology in contemporary higher education.’ Professor Chin-Chung Tsai, Chair, Graduate School of Technological and Vocational Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
- 13. Students’ Experiences of E-learningin Higher Education The Ecology of Sustainable Innovation Robert A. Ellis and Peter Goodyear
- 14. First published 2010 byRoutledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2010 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ellis, Robert. Students’ experiences of e-learning in higher education : the ecology of sustainable innovation / Robert Ellis & Peter Goodyear p. cm.—(Open and flexible learning series) Includes bibliographical references and index. Education, Higher—Computer-assisted instruction. 2. Computers and college students. I. Goodyear, Peter, 1952– II. Title. LB2395.7.E46 2009 378.1′7344678—dc22 2009011579 ISBN 10: 0–415–98935–3 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0–415–98936–1 (pbk) ISBN 10: 0–203–87297–5 (ebk) ISBN 13: 978–0–415–98935–0 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978–0–415–98936–7 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978–0–203–87297–0 (ebk) This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. ISBN 0-203-87297-5 Master e-book ISBN
- 15. Contents List of Figuresxii List of Tables xiii Foreword xv Acknowledgements xvii Acknowledgement of Copyright Permissions xix 1 Introduction 1 Contemporary Pressures and Tensions 3 Purpose and Perspective 5 Two Related Arguments about Learning 11 Overview of the Remaining Chapters 14 2 Thinking Ecologically About E-learning 16 Introduction 16 Ecological Perspectives in Education 18 Twenty-first Century Learning 21 Research on Student Learning in Higher Education 27 E-learning: Characteristics and Affordances 32 Uncertainty, Environment, Leadership 36 Concluding Comments 37 3 New Students, New Technology 39 Introduction 39 Do ‘Net Generation’ Learners Think Differently? 40 University Students’ Use of IT and their Changing Media Habits 42 Learning with IT 46 Implications and Concluding Comments 50 4 Student Experiences of E-learning in Higher Education: Learning through Discussion 51 Introduction 51 Learning through Discussion 52 Students’ Approaches to, and Conceptions of, Learning through Discussions 53 Associations Between Approaches, Conceptions and Academic Outcomes 62 Concluding Comments 71 ix
- 16. 5 Student Experiencesof E-learning in Higher Education: Learning through Inquiry 72 Introduction 72 Learning through Inquiry: Case-based Experiences 73 Approaches to Learning through Inquiry: Problem-based Learning Methods 77 The Student Experience of Internet Resources when Related to Learning Outcomes 83 Concluding Comments 86 6 University Teachers’ Experiences of E-learning in an Ecology 88 Introduction 88 Research into Conceptions of, and Approaches to, University Teaching 89 Approaches to Blended Teaching 96 Associations Between Conceptions of, and Approaches to, Blended Teaching 103 Concluding Comments 104 7 An Ecology of Learning: Practical Theory for Leadership, Management and Educational Design 106 Introduction 106 Managing and Uncertainty 107 The Idea of an Ecology of Learning 108 Leadership in the Ecology of a University 111 Design Knowledge for Leadership in an Ecology 116 Concluding Comments 116 8 Teaching-as-Design and the Ecology of University Learning 118 Introduction 118 The Idea of Teaching-as-Design 119 Focus on Learning: What Needs Designing? 120 Self-awareness, Feedback and Self-correction: Iterative Design and Sustainable Improvement 130 9 Leadership for Learning: Perspectives on Learning Spaces 133 Introduction 133 Relating an Ecological View of Learning to Leadership 134 Rationales for Investing in Learning Spaces 144 Challenges for the Development of Specifications of Learning Spaces 146 Concluding Comments 150 x • Contents
- 17. 10 Relating theIdea of an Ecology of Learning to Campus Planning 151 Introduction 151 Developing a Principled Approach to Managing Uncertainty 151 The Mission of the University as the Driver 153 Principles of Planning for Campus-based Universities 154 Identifying the Ecological Balance of the University 155 Self-awareness 155 Awareness of the Relationship Between Course Profile and Virtual Space 170 Feedback Loops about Learning Spaces 177 Self-correcting Mechanisms and Learning Spaces 181 Concluding Comments: Future Visions of Campus-based Universities 184 11 Concluding Comments: The Ecological Perspective, Balance and Change 186 Notes 190 References 191 Index 205 Contents • xi
- 18. Figures 2.1 The 3Pmodel of learning 27 2.2 E-learning in the student experience of learning 31 8.1 Learning outcomes depend on what the learner does 121 8.2 Tasks as set have an indirect effect on learning outcomes 123 8.3 Key influences on learning activity and learning outcomes 124 10.1 The structure of the learning space inventory in the ecology of a university 157 10.2 Unannotated map showing a global view of the city campuses (Darlington and Camperdown) 160 10.3 Centrally-managed large and small teaching spaces: Darlington and Camperdown campuses 161 10.4 Faculty-managed teaching spaces: Darlington and Camperdown campuses 162 10.5 Location and size of laboratories and ancillary rooms 163 10.6 Library spaces and collections 164 10.7 Audio-visual and information and communication technology (AV/ICT) facilities in centrally-managed teaching spaces 165 10.8 Central video-conferencing facilities 166 10.9 Wireless coverage 167 10.10 Learning spaces: cafés, lawns/forecourts, computer access centres 168 10.11 Course websites on enterprise Learning Management Systems by faculty 169 10.12 3D image from the iSpots project MIT 181 xii
- 19. Tables 2.1 Propositions aboutGood Learning Appropriate to UK Higher Education 23 2.2 Four Sub-classes or Types of Interactivity 35 3.1 UK First-year University Students’ Use of IT for Course Purposes 47 4.1 Relationships Between Approaches to Face-to-Face and Online Discussion in Engineering 63 4.2 Relationships Between Conceptions of, and Approaches to, Face-to-Face and Online Discussion in Social Work 64 4.3 Categories of Conceptions of Learning through Discussions in Social Work 65 4.4 Cluster Analysis of Parts of the Experience of Learning through Discussions 66 4.5 Correlations Between Elements of the Experience of Learning through Discussions and Performance Outcomes 68 4.6 Principal Components of Factor Analyses of Conceptions, Approaches, Perceptions, Performance 69 4.7 Items on the E-learning Scale 70 4.8 Correlations Between the E-learning Scale and the other Scales of the SCEQ 70 5.1 Associations Amongst Key Aspects of the Case-based Learning Experience 76 5.2 Relationship Between Conceptions and Performance of Year 2 Students 77 5.3 Relationship Between Conceptions and Performance of Year 3 Students 77 5.4 Associations Amongst the Different Categories of Approaches to PBL in Pharmacy 82 5.5 Relationships Between Approaches and Performance 83 8.1 Pedagogical Framework 128 8.2 Gibbons’ Instructional Design Layers 129 10.1 Growth of E-learning at the University of Sydney from 2002–2007 172 10.2 Categories of Description of Course Websites at the University of Sydney 173 10.3 Example of E-learning Coverage by Faculty in one Semester, University of Sydney 174 xiii
- 20. 10.4 E-learning Coveragein one Faculty during one Semester at the University of Sydney 176 10.5 TEFMA Breakdown of Different High-level University Categories by Space Type 179 10.6 North American Example of Sample Space Standards 179 10.7 Self-correcting Mechanisms in Relation to E-learning and Virtual Spaces 182 xiv • Tables
- 21. Foreword In the last40 years or so, universities have had to contend with many changes, political, social, cultural, economic and technological. The most dramatic of these is technological. In that time, a succession of educational technologies have been visited upon them, being the digital equivalents of all the edu- cational technologies ever invented over the entire course of the history of education. The digital equivalents of slate (word processor), chalk (mouse and keyboard), library (websites), blackboard (interactive whiteboard), classroom (online forum), printing press (internet) and so on, have forced us to rethink the way we do teaching and learning. In a digitally-connected world, the phys- ical boundaries of the lecture theatre dissolve into a hinterland of social and academic networking and global information access behind every student. In such a context, what must the physically-situated learning experience of a university become? The response of university communities has been to embrace all these tech- nology challenges, in the sense that these and others can all be found in active use on every campus now. But that is not quite the same as harnessing the technology to the educational ends and the fundamental values of academic life. We risk being led inexorably by the technology in its own ever-changing directions, as we pursue each new and intriguing invention. If we take this piecemeal approach to adopting each new invention as it becomes available, without a clear sense of the part it plays in the overall system, then we lose the power of the holistic approach, which knows why we are taking on a new technology, and what it means for it to succeed, and what counts as failure and the need for revision. The affordances of a new technology are not sufficient to judge its value. For example, online forums afford flexible student interaction, but the history of their research and evaluation is full of disappointment. They play a particular role within the rich mix of formal and informal learning experiences of a student, but without an appreciation of that, they fail. The decontextualised online forum is the digital equivalent of telling students to go to a seminar room at a particular time to discuss this week’s topic, and doing nothing else to guide or support them. In the pre-digital world we would not have done that. Digital technologies need the same understanding of their place if we are to use them well. But how complex it is to think this through. To become fully aware of what it takes for a university community to deal with new technologies, it can sometimes help to imagine the introduction of now familiar technologies. Consider, for example, trying to advise a university on how to make best use of xv
- 22. the new technologyof paper. We have the vantage point of our modern under- standing of its multiple affordances, and the variety of ways it supports the process of teaching, learning, management and administration, and even with this we can see the difficulty of working out the optimal way to introduce it into the institution as a whole. And paper is just one of the conventional technologies that is mirrored in our digital world. That is a thread that runs throughout this book: the importance of putting back together – conceptually, and in practice – what has been taken apart. The authors tackle the issue of how best to embrace digital technology by insisting that we must learn to understand its role, in all its complexity, in the internal relations within a university. Digital technology is sometimes described as ‘disruptive’, but education is one of the systems whose existing powerful ecol- ogy of conventional forces has most robustly resisted disruption of its working methods. It resists technology by compartmentalising it. Technology is made the responsibility of a department, a manager, a champion, an assistant, so that the rest of us do not have to worry about it. However, digital technology will not go away, and we cannot afford to separate it out. Its use in teaching and learning has to be woven into the fabric of the institution, manifested in every aspect of its activities, infrastructure and organisation, just as paper is. That is the most important message of this timely book, as we all try to face up to the onslaught of continual invention from the world of digital technology, learning as we go. Diana Laurillard London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education xvi • Foreword
- 23. Acknowledgements This book hasgrown directly out of our research collaboration at the University of Sydney, but has also been informed by many conversations with colleagues about the practical problems that the book sets out to address. It is a huge pleasure to be able to thank the people involved, for their stimulation and support, even if they may not endorse everything we say. At the University of Sydney we have benefited immeasurably from the vibrant intellectual environments provided by CoCo (the Centre for Research on Computer Supported Learning and Cognition) and ITL (the Institute for Teaching and Learning). In particular, we thank Peter Reimann, Keith Trigwell, Paul Ginns, Angela Brew, Simon Barrie and Mike Prosser. Mike Prosser has been a partner investigator in many of our projects and we extend particular thanks to Mike for his wise counsel. Ana Maria Bliuc has worked with us on many of the projects reported in this book and we extend special thanks to Ana Maria for her assistance in the final stages of preparing this book. Agnieszka Bachfischer has provided valuable research assistance and Shannon Kennedy- Clark also helped with the production of the book in its final stages. We have learned a great deal from our PhD students over the years, and particularly wish to thank Ann Applebee, Carlos Gonzalez, Susan Matthew, Karen Scott, Gillian Roberts, Daniel Sze and Dai Fei Yang, whose research has influenced our thinking in this book. A number of the ideas developed in the book, and findings on which they are based, have been presented and explored at conferences, workshops and through institutional partnerships between the University of Sydney and other universities. We are glad to be able to acknowledge our debts to colleagues who have discussed these matters with us, especially when they disagreed. Some of these colleagues have also been our partners in research projects and/or in joint writing. We would especially like to thank Mireia Asensio, Sue Atkinson, Marie-Therese Barbaux, Brendan Barrett, Sue Bennett, Martha Brillant, Rafael Calvo, Gráinne Conole, Andrew Cooper, Charles Crook, James Dalziel, Steve Draper, Helen Drury, Pierre Dillenbourg, Mark Freeman, Oliver Fulton, Viv Hodgson, Linda Hort, Jane Hughes, Chris Jones, Nerida Jarkey, Marianna Koulias, Ray Land, Diana Laurillard, Colin Lowe, Mary Jane Mahony, Terry Mayes, David McConnell, Mike O’Donoghue, Agi O’Hara, Ron Oliver, Mary Peat, Brigitte Picot, Dave Riley, Roland Rosner, Roger Säljö, Murray Saunders, Stephen Sheely,Mike Spector,Christine Smith,Fiona Strawbridge,John Sweller, Charlotte Taylor, Rosanne Taylor, Sue Tickner, Paul Trowler, Mary Helen Ward, Mark Weyers, Helen Wozniak, Denis Wright and Maria Zenios. xvii
- 24. Research reported inthis book has been funded by the Australian Research Council (Grants DP0559282, LP0562146). We would also like to acknowledge the support of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, whose award of a Senior Fellowship to Peter Goodyear helped accelerate the writing. The book would not have come into being without the encouragement and support of the series editors, and we are glad to have been able to work with Som Naidu, Fred Lockwood and Tony Bates. Their feedback at the start of the project was especially helpful. Thanks also to Sarah Burrows at Routledge. As is so often the case with the preparation of books of this kind, our partners and children have had to put up with our grumpiness and mental vacations. Special thanks, therefore, to Louise, Sonia, Jeremy, Emily and Michael. We promise not to do it again too soon. Robert A. Ellis and Peter Goodyear Sydney, December 2008. xviii • Acknowledgements
- 25. Acknowledgement of Copyright Permissions Weare pleased to acknowledge the kind permissions of Taylor & Francis and the editor of the journal Higher Education Research and Development, Ian Macdonald, for Figure 2.1, originally published in Trigwell and Prosser (1997); Blackwell publishing and the editor of the journal The British Journal of Educational Technology, Nick Rushby, for Tables 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6, originally published in Ellis and Calvo (2006); Carlo Ratti and Francesco Calabre and the team at iSpots at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for Figure 10.12; Professor Derrick Armstrong and the Chief Information Officer Bruce Meikle, both of the University of Sydney for the figures 10.2 through to 10.11; and Professor David Chiddick, chair of the UK Space Management Group for tables 10.5 and 10.6, originally published in SMG 2006a. xix
- 27. 1 Introduction Universities play apivotal role in society. They are hubs of innovation. They attract and develop talent. They provide a free and critical voice. They create and share new knowledge and enrich the arts. They are crucial assets in many metropolitan and regional economies. They link the local and the global. They do all these things with varying degrees of commitment and success, depending, in part, on the political and financial contexts in which they find themselves. No other institution provides this array of social bene- fits and few have shown comparable ingenuity and determination to survive (Smith & Webster, 1997; Bowden & Marton, 1998; Florida, 1999, 2003; Barnett, 2005). Not everyone speaks about universities in this way. Universities are often chided for being complacent, elitist, self-serving and detached from reality. There is more than a grain of truth in such criticisms. But there is no point in trying to arbitrate. There is very little value in saying or showing that universities are necessarily and essentially innovative or hidebound, use- ful or beyond use. Discourses of derision, just like complacency, obscure the view of what needs changing, and how it might be changed. And there is an emerging consensus, particularly visible in universities in the richer nations, about the necessity of certain kinds of change. Against a background of declining public funding and intensifying global competition for good staff and students, universities are asking how they can provide better support for the education of a growing, diversifying, time-poor student body. How can they enhance opportunities for all the students who might benefit from university education: helping to make wealth, class, gender and ethnicity irrelevant as predictors of educational attainment? How can they upgrade curricula, teaching methods, assessment regimes and course outcomes so that all students are equipped to meet the uncertain challenges of the 21st century? (Simons, Linden & Duffy, 2000; Barnett, 2007; Kalantzis & Cope, 2008). 1
- 28. New technology –especially information and communication technology (ICT) – plays a surprisingly important role in addressing these questions. ICT is intimately bound up with powerful processes of globalisation, as well as with re-engineering business processes, accelerating product cycles, breaking down the economics, practices and assumptions of mass production, shortening the distance between producer and consumer (cutting out intermediaries), etc. The influence of technology needs to be understood on two levels: it enables these changes to happen but it also affects people’s expectations about what is normal and possible. For example, the use of ICT in higher education makes it possible for universities to offer students much more flexible access to learning resources, administrative services and academic staff, but it also encourages students to expect such flexibility. Moreover, the use of ICT to increase educational flexibility raises funda- mental questions about what is essential to a university. It raises questions about the value of having a physical campus. By allowing teaching to be casual- ised and outsourced, it raises questions about the links between research and teaching, and about who should be seen as core members of the academic body. Blurring the boundaries around distance-learning – what is the distance? – makes some universities footloose; less attached to place, they face huge questions about identity, brand, market, loyalty and competitive edge. We have written this book to help sharpen thinking and discussion about technology and higher education. Like many people who research and write about this topic, we are fundamentally interested in the improvement of student learning through the enhancement of educational practice, including through better design and management of learning environments. But in tack- ling this we also raise questions about what 21st century students and teachers need and want, and about how universities should conceive of, and manage, their physical, digital and intellectual resources. ICT allows students and staff to change the ways they organise their activities in time and space. It is capable of supporting the development of new working relationships, from small groups to extensive learning networks and communities. Its management raises questions that are not merely technical: they go to the heart of what a university means to its students. Two main themes are woven through the book. One is concerned with a richer conception of student learning; the other with part-whole relationships. We aim to help all those who are in a position to improve university education to discuss and co-ordinate their work, based on a shared understanding of good learning and of how it sits within a web of relationships – within an ecology of learning. It is neither practically useful nor intellectually defensible to see technology as separable from the normal, everyday activities of university students and staff. ‘E-learning’ is part of their workaday experience. It is also novel, complex, slippery and likely to present itself in surprising ways, as technological developments continue to accelerate. 2 • Introduction
- 29. Contemporary Pressures andTensions Most universities are finding it hard to protect the quality of students’ learning experiences, especially when faced with worsening staff:student ratios and declining public sector investment. Yet defending the status quo is neither possible nor desirable. There are unacceptable differences in educational out- comes for students from different socio-economic backgrounds. The quality of educational provision, and outcome, varies substantially between uni- versities that are notionally equal. Variations in provision and outcome can also be found between departments in the same university. But unacceptable variation in outcome, using traditional measures of attainment, is only part of the problem. Even if these various levels of performance were brought up to the standards set by the best, we would still have to recognise that higher education is rather poor at defining, teaching and testing skills and knowledge fit for the 21st century. There have been radical changes in the nature of graduate employment. Even if the scope and scale of the knowledge economy is hard to map (Blackler, 1995; Brown, Hesketh & Williams 2003; Fleming, Harley & Sewell, 2004; Kenway, 2006), it is clear that the ways of defining and assessing graduate capabilities that crystallised in the industrial age are obsolescent, at best (Bereiter, 2002). Other powerful changes are at work.Student numbers have grown.Students’ needs, expectations and demands have diversified. Students have become more assertive, especially when they see themselves as paying customers. They have less time available for study and they have become more savvy about technology, even if they are not sure how best to use it for learning purposes. Governments, through various agencies, have become more intimately involved in regulating the quality of educational provision and its intended outcomes. In addition, academic work is changing. The processes of research, and knowledge-creation generally, have become more complex. University teachers, as researchers, perform on a global stage and engage, on a daily basis, with colleagues in other universities and other countries. Research for many academics, even in the humanities, is becoming more collaborative, team- based and dependent on technology. Disciplinary traditions have been chal- lenged by society’s demands for applicable knowledge that cuts across subject boundaries. Projects involving partnerships with non-academic users of research are becoming commonplace. Academics are under increasing pres- sure to carry out research that is judged to be of high intellectual quality and to be of demonstrable social or economic importance. Academic work is now more closely monitored and measured, and its pressures are more intense, than ever before. In the developed world, these pressures are being felt by an academic workforce whose average age has increased significantly in the last 30 years. It is becoming harder to attract good people into the academic Introduction • 3
- 30. profession and thereis a global war for talent, being waged around PhD candidates, first appointments and star researchers. Higher education is not collapsing under these pressures. For all its problems and weaknesses, the system is sustained by the ingenuity and passion of those who have chosen the academic life. Some would argue that more of this innovative spirit can be seen in research than in teaching. We would have to agree that universities tend to be better at recognising, rewarding and fostering excellence in research than excellence in teaching. In some institu- tions, it is possible to prosper as a good researcher while being only an adequate teacher. A good teacher who is only an adequate researcher is unlikely to make full professor. The cards are still stacked against teaching, but there are more opportunities for advancement through innovation in teaching than there used to be (Ramsden, 2008). It is becoming quite respectable to engage in researching one’s own practice – contributing to the scholarship of teaching. Funding sources for educational innovation and quality enhance- ment have expanded and diversified in universities and HE systems around the world. There are vigorous, high-profile, politically astute organizations committed to the improvement of university teaching and learning, that can now provide funding, resources, recognition and validation for the innovative work of individual academics as well as for teams engaged in curriculum reform. (The Higher Education Academy in the UK, the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, Ako Aotearoa in New Zealand, Educause in North America, are examples that come to mind.) This reading of the landscape of contemporary higher education sees: • universities and their staff as under huge pressure to demonstrate improvements in performance, across the board (even with declining resources); • employers expressing dissatisfaction with the knowledge, skills and attitudes of new graduates (even if they cannot say precisely what they need); • students demanding vocational relevance, flexible provision, good access to staff, timely responses and efficient systems (even if no-one is willing to bear the true costs); • university teachers as ingenious, committed, intrinsically innovative people (even though they are overstretched, prone to burn-out, quick to blame the system and suspicious of ideas from other disciplines). A growing cadre of university specialists – including educational designers, staff developers, pro-vice-chancellors for learning and teaching – find them- selves working in this complex landscape. They will recognise the problems that arise from the lack of a shared language for talking about the subtleties of learning and teaching (Hedberg, 2004). One of our goals is to help everyone 4 • Introduction
- 31. engaged in theimprovement of university education find ways to talk about what is important to them. Another is to help university leaders, at all levels, to develop strategies for the enhancement of learning and teaching that give due acknowledgement to the constraints mentioned above, and especially to the related constraints of burn-out and innovation fatigue. Purpose and Perspective This book will help to improve the quality of learning and teaching in higher education if it can convince you, the reader, of the following: 1. Enhancing student learning depends on understanding the relation- ship between the student experience of learning and the students’ learning environment. It doesn’t make sense to try to ‘fix’ the environ- ment or ‘fix’ the students – they are not independent of each other. 2. Teachers can work themselves into exhaustion trying to help students find and persist with better ways of studying. A system which needs continuing inputs of energy is unsustainable. 3. Clever leadership, design and management can create an ecosystem which adapts to change, improves through learning, learns through experience and can bring itself back into balance through the efficient working of its own internal processes. This book provides evidence for these claims and strategies for addressing the challenges they create. The evidence comes from a range of sources, includ- ing recent studies carried out by our research teams, including our graduate students. The strategy is really just a coherent way of thinking about a uni- versity as an educational ecosystem. Research involves learning. So do teach- ing, management and leadership. To understand a university is to understand an ecology of learning. Such systems can get out of balance, but with some careful attention to key internal processes, they are quite capable of looking after themselves. This book is one of many that discuss e-learning. It differs from most of these books in two main ways. First, it offers a distinctive combination of ideas and evidence: some fresh ways of understanding ingrained and emerging issues in higher education. Second, while the book has a sharp focus on e-learning, we argue that e-learning has to be understood and managed as part of the broader ecology of learning and teaching. Each of these claims merits some unpacking. Much of the evidence we present in this book comes from recent research into students’ and teachers’ experiences of using e-learning in situations where the use of technology is intended to be an integral part of the students’ learn- ing activity. Some of this research is our own. Some has been carried out with and by our research students. Some is reported in the literature. Introduction • 5
- 32. Our own recentresearch – and much of the research by our students – has taken a particular approach to understanding educational experiences. We believe this approach has the merit of being able to provide a unified account of learning and teaching in higher education – one which avoids the problems of taking either an individualistic, psychologically-oriented perspective or a more structural, sociologically-oriented perspective. The psychology of learning has made great strides in the last 60–70 years. It was particularly successful at modelling the acquisition of perceptual and motor skills (in the 1940s and 1950s) and of some cognitive skills (especially in the 1980s). Earlier work in the 20th century had provided a foundation for understanding the learning of simple concepts, factual knowledge and propositions. In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers using computer-based methods and analogies were able to model more complex cognitive achieve- ments, introducing ideas such as mental schemata, mental models and rule- based production systems. Painstaking research on human response times, research involving attention to multiple tasks and information sources, and some elegant computer-based modelling allowed researchers in the emerging field of cognitive science to map the architecture of cognition: positing a set of mental processes and mental structures that could account for observed regularities in human performance. (For excellent, accessible overviews, see Ohlsson, 1995; Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 2000; Sawyer, 2006.) Research on learning took a social or cultural turn in the early 1990s. In part, this was due to a drying-up of funding for computationally-oriented studies, especially in areas such as Artificial Intelligence, where some over- ambitious promises were made and not kept. In part, it was a response to a compelling critique of the computational, cognitivist approach, made most eloquently by Lucy Suchmann (1987/2007), Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (e.g. 1991). We do not have space here to trace the arguments. Suffice to say that some of the high ground in research on learning was taken by scholars who evinced no particular interest in the capabilities of the lone human, taken outside the contexts in which work or learning could be said to occur. For much of the 1990s, it became quite uncouth – in some circles – to talk about what might or might not be going on between a person’s ears. Learning came to be seen as a social or cultural practice. Competence came to be seen as situated in a context – emphasising that what one can do is very dependent on the tools and resources that come to hand, including the help available from other people. Alongside this socio-cultural work on learning, other researchers and commentators have continued to draw on broad areas of social theory and work out some of its implications for higher education. (Much of this writing has taken a critical stance, rather than engaging closely in the improvement of practice.) Of course, work in the cognitive tradition has also continued and it is very lively and influential in some places. Critics might say that it is telling us more 6 • Introduction
- 33. and more aboutless and less – that we are now getting some very detailed models of highly-specialised phenomena. But that would be to ignore the broad foundations provided by cognitively-inspired research of the last 30 years or so: foundations on which some influential ideas in the higher education literature are built. We will discuss these in more detail in Chapter 2, but should note, in passing, that we are thinking about such things as the signifi- cance of deep mental processing of information, making personal sense of information, the ability to monitor and manage one’s own thought and study processes (known as ‘metacognition’ and ‘self-regulation’) and the ability to activate prior knowledge when it is needed. In the last few years, it has been possible to detect an emerging consensus that neither psychological accounts of individual mental accomplishments nor the socio-cultural accounts that foreground social practice are – on their own – adequate ways of understanding learning (see e.g. Sfard, 1998; Shoenfeld, 1999). We need to be able to account for the characteristics and capabilities that someone can ‘carry with them’ from one context to another. We need a psychology that acknowledges the situatedness of human thought and action. We also need accounts of social practice that admit the importance of mental processes, mental structures and cognitive limitations. To say one understands learning, one needs an account which is cognitively plausible as well as rich enough to acknowledge the subtle influences of social and material context. But our preferred approach goes further than acknowledging the import- ance of the psychological and the social. Rather, it focuses on relations between (what is conventionally conceived as) the psychological and the social. This is easiest to explain by talking about our interest in experiences of learning and teaching. An experience is a relational concept. As Ference Marton and Shirley Booth observe, in talking about the dependence of learn- ing on experience: an experience has to be an experience of something. An experience has to be somebody’s experience. That is, an experience involves a relationship between a person and a phenomenon. It is neither mental nor physical but a relationship between the subject and the world (Marton & Booth, 1997). What is experienced is important, and the characteristics of who is doing the experiencing are also important in shaping the experience. (You and I will differ in how we make sense of things. But I also act and experience things differently in different contexts.) This relational mode of thinking turns out to be very productive. It sheds light on some potentially important matters whose character can be obscured by dualistic thinking. (Dualistic thinking is predisposed to separating and contrasting things, rather than seeing their interdependence. It is good for the kinds of analysis that reduce a complex system into a set of simpler component parts. It is less good at helping us see how the nature of some taken-for-granted thing is conditioned by the web of relations in which that thing appears to sit.) We are not trying to insist that the world is constituted Introduction • 7
- 34. one way oranother – real or imagined, objectively knowable or not – or even that one way of thinking is intrinsically superior to another. Our claims are more modest: that taking a hard look at how things are related offers insights that can sometimes be surprising, and often turn out to be useful. In Chapter 2, we use a relational perspective to talk about the place of e-learning in the broader ecology of university learning and teaching. We find it a useful way of stepping outside the classic line of thought about technology in education: that technology should be seen as a replacement for some established way of doing things (assuming it can be shown to be superior). Relational thinking can help us move from a mindset that is stuck on issues of comparison (of rival treatments) to one that addresses the challenges of integration in complex systems. The relational thinking exemplified by Marton and Booth can also be found in the work of the psychologist James Gibson. Neither refers to the other, though both are having a substantial influence on thinking about educational technology. Gibson’s conception of ecological psychology (see e.g. Gibson, 1986) rejects the dualistic notion that perception is essentially a transfer of information from a world ‘out there’ to an inner world of the mind. Percep- tion is not the work of a mind in a body but rather an intrinsic quality of the organism’s engagement in the world – engagement which is more accurately characterised as exploratory movement than static observation. Gibson rejects the notion that perception is somehow separate from, and prior to, meaning- making and the attribution of value. Rather, he uses the notion of ‘affordance’ to link sensation and usefulness. Thus we see that a solid flat surface affords being walked upon. A handle on a cup affords picking up. YouTube affords browsing through popular videoclips. Gibson’s notion of affordance is proving to be a powerful idea in educational technology, particularly since it offers a way of talking about the subtle influences of the features of a tool, resource, or environment without resorting to technological or environmental determin- ism (see e.g. Laurillard, 1987, 1993; Greeno, 1994; Norman, 1999; Turner, 2005; Conole & Dyke, 2004). A third strand of relational thinking that we need to weave into our account is best articulated in the writing of the anthropologist Tim Ingold (e.g. Ingold, 2000), though it builds on the work of Gibson and also on Gregory Bateson’s notion that ‘the mental world – the mind – is not limited by the skin’ (Bateson, 1973, p. 429). Over the last 20 years or so, Ingold has attempted to reconcile social and physical anthropology, with their separate concerns for mind-in- culture and evolutionary biology. He has achieved this in two steps: first, by showing that it is more productive to think of the (sociocultural) person as being simultaneously a (biological) organism, rather than the former being grafted onto the latter; second, by adopting a relational view of persons- organisms that sees them as nodes in fields of relationships rather than as discrete entities. 8 • Introduction
- 35. Instead of tryingto reconstruct the complete human being from two separate but complementary components, respectively biophysical and sociocultural, held together with a film of psychological cement, it struck me that we should be trying to find a way of talking about human life that eliminates the need to slice it up into these different layers. (Ingold, 2000, p. 3) such a synthesis would start from a conception of the human being not as a composite entity made up of separable but complementary parts, such as body, mind and culture, but rather as a singular locus of creative growth within a continually unfolding field of relationships. (Ingold, 2000, pp. 4–5) Ingold’s relational perspective is particularly useful in thinking about the term ‘environment’. From a relational perspective, it does not make sense to talk of an environment without reference to an organism. An environment cannot exist without an organism – whose environment it is. Every organism has an environment. Organism shapes environment; environment shapes organism. So it helps to think of an indivisible totality of ‘organism plus environment’ – best seen as an ongoing process of growth and development. This perspective also discourages the conceit that one can sit ‘outside’ one’s environment; adopting some dispassionate, objective, detached view (Ingold, p. 20). This has profound implications for how we think of leadership and management in relation to learning environments or to the broader ecology of a university. Our fourth and final strand of relational thinking refers to social structures and human agency. The starting point for this is the work of the sociologist Anthony Giddens, who uses a relational approach when introducing his struc- turation theory. Some writers have argued that social and economic structures determine human action. Others see social structures as mere aggregations of a myriad, freely-chosen human actions. Giddens (see e.g. 1984) uses the relational concept of structuration to show how social structures shape and are shaped by human actions. As with the notion of affordance, the idea of structuration helps deal with issues of freedom and influence. It also draws attention to the way in which social structures are sedimented from human activity. From a technological perspective, recognising that much human activ- ity leaves a digital trace, we can see how the contours of the digital world shape and are reshaped by the actions of myriad users. (Think of book recommenda- tions in Amazon, or the growing array of social navigation and social network- ing technologies.) Similar arguments can be applied in thinking about students’ use of learning technologies (e.g. Stubbs, Martin & Endlar, 2006), their use of built space and the various combinations of the physical and virtual with which they furnish their various learnplaces. We return to this in Chapters 7 to 10. Introduction • 9
- 36. It should comeas no surprise that Ference Marton’s work has had a strong influence on our research into students’ and teachers’ experiences of learning and teaching with new technology. We have borrowed from a rich tradition of research on learning and teaching, inspired by Biggs, Booth, Entwistle, Kember, Laurillard, Marton, Prosser, Ramsden, Säljö, Svensson and Trigwell. We expand on some of the key ideas and insights from this body of work when we discuss conceptions of, and approaches to, learning and teaching in Chapters 2, 4, 5 and 6. What may be more surprising is that we are also able to make productive use of relational ideas from the work of Giddens, Gibson, Bateson and Ingold. In particular, they have helped us pursue some of the implications of adopting an ecological framework for understanding a univer- sity’s teaching and learning activities. These relational perspectives help us to emphasise a. the centrality of experience (what phenomena students experience and how; how they interpret; what they decide to do); b. the importance of what is in the environment (what phenomena are available to experience); c. the fact that teachers, designers, managers and leaders – like students – are in the environment, not sitting (God like) above it. Hence sustainable innovation depends upon conditions of feedback and balance within the ecology. Innovation that depends upon regular injections of energy, funding, resources, etc., from outside the system will fail. Good design, teaching and leadership involve knowledge- able, embedded environmental management work. This brings us to the second of our distinctive themes: the need to see e-learning in the broader ecology of learning and teaching. Computer tech- nology presents opportunities and challenges for everyone working in higher education – whether they be students, teachers, specialist support staff, managers or leaders. As we noted above, there is a plethora of books on this topic – many of them having an evangelistic flavour. A new fleet of books appears with each new wave of technology. Most of these books are stronger on advice than evidence, and most focus on advancing claims for the potential benefits of a new technology, rather than on how it may become an integral part of the totality of provision for learning and teaching. The primary audience for these books consists, we suspect, of people who already specialise in educational technology rather than those who remain unconvinced. It would be good to be able to draw on the ‘mainstream’ literature on learning and teaching in higher education for insights about the place of new technology. Sadly, few of the really influential books have much to say on the subject, despite the scale and complexity of technology’s influence. This silence can be found in a lot of writing about education, in which technology is seen 10 • Introduction
- 37. as separable from– and even a threat to – human nature. In contrast, we would want to argue that tools, mind, action and language have evolved together and cannot be understood in separation from one another (cf. Säljö, 1999; Gibson & Ingold, 1995; Ingold, 2000). This gap is a serious weakness in the higher education literature: a major obstacle for teachers and managers who are looking for guidance about how to think about and deal with new technology. Studying the evolution and use of technology is difficult. It is easy to get things very wrong and for one’s mistakes to be engraved in the literature for all time. But there are some emerging frameworks that look very promising. These tend to deal with the role and function of technology using a liberal dose of abstraction – thinking about higher-level needs and capabilities rather than the ephemeral minutiae of specific tools or products. They also tend to take a systemic view – looking at interacting networks of people, tasks and tools, for example. The best of this work, in our view, manages to combine insights at several levels – picturing the broad sweep and general contours but also offering subtle vignettes of individual experience. (For examples of what we mean, see Nardi & O’Day, 1999; Agostinho, Oliver, Harper, Hedberg & Wills, 2001; Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006; Crook & Light, 1999, 2002.) Our book is intended as a contribution to ‘mainstream’ thinking about learning and teaching in higher education. It is no longer defensible, if ever it was, to ignore the involvement of new technology in the reshaping of edu- cational practices, expectations, assumptions and relationships. Technology is not going to go away. Nor is its use a solved problem. Two Related Arguments about Learning Threaded through the book are two intertwined arguments. One of these is concerned with what students do, with their conceptions of the learning affordances of each task they are tackling, and with their intentions and strat- egies for tackling these tasks. The second argument is also about learning, but it concerns learning at the various levels of an ecosystem. We argue that sustainable innovation in learning and teaching depends upon the existence of appropriate information flows within the educational ecosystem that is a modern university. An essential point to make here is that work on the design and management of learning environments – indeed all educational leadership activities – have to be seen as taking place within the ecosystem. Leadership and management are not command and control, or even coordination, activ- ities located above the ecosystem. They can only be effective if they are part of, and contribute to, the healthy functioning of the system itself. Let us look at each of these arguments in a little more detail. First, there is the argument about the importance of how students conceive of what they are doing. Introduction • 11
- 38. 1. The onlything that really matters in education is the quality of what learners do, including how they think. The actions, inten- tions, abilities and qualifications of the teaching staff are second- ary. A good university library is valuable, but only if students use it. Opportunities should be provided for students to work with and learn from each other, but they can’t be forced to do so. Curricula should be well-designed, relevant and up-to-date and they should offer appropriate levels of challenge. Assessment should support learning, rather than just attempt to measure its outcomes. Students should have access to the ‘tools of the trade’ and should not feel that there is an inexplicable discontinuity between their experience of technology in their studies and in the rest of their lives. But none of these considerations matter much if students’ activity does not result in useful learning. Outcomes depend on what students actually do. 2. A student’s activity is influenced by a number of forces. The most powerful of these is the student’s conception of what they are setting out to do – their sense of what can be learnt and how they should go about their learning, in each specific case. 3. If you ask a number of students (10–20), who are tackling the same task on the same course, about what they expect they will learn, you will get a number of different answers. The answers may differ considerably in detail, but there will turn out to be a manageably small set of distinctly different conceptions – more than two and less than eight, in our experience. The same will be true if you investigate what students say about their intentions and their learning strategies. 4. Taken at a broad level, students’ conceptions of learning, and their approaches to study, have a powerful influence on learning out- comes. (Looking at their activity in finer detail, the way they tackle a particular subtask, and especially the degree to which they are able to make connections with things they know already, have a strong effect on what they learn.) 5. Students’ conceptions and approaches have to be understood in a relational way. They are not intrinsic to a student or determined by the context. How a student conceives of the learning opportun- ities afforded by their current task is a relation between the stu- dent and the task. Different students may see the same task in different ways. The same student will see different opportunities afforded by different tasks. A practical implication is that students can be helped to approach their learning in better ways, but this is unlikely to succeed if the problem is seen as residing in the student. Changing the environment may well be part of the 12 • Introduction
- 39. solution: the essentialissue is the relationship between student and environment. We will examine these matters in greater detail in Chapter 2 and will present and discuss relevant evidence in Chapters 4 and 5. Turning now to the argu- ment about the broader ecology of learning, we need to make the following points: 6. The exercise of management and leadership in complex edu- cational systems, such as universities, is fraught with uncertainty. The global environment within which the university sits is charac- terised by periods of rapid change. Levels of student demand are very volatile, especially in international markets. The composition of the student body is becoming more diverse; expectations are changing but are voiced with greater conviction. The pace, scale and nature of technological developments are hard to predict, but technology is increasingly implicated in changing work and study practices. This has implications for planning the use of space. IT expenditure continues to consume a significant slice of the university budget, yet most students are now taking responsibility for meeting some of their own IT needs. Easy access to university- provided IT remains a priority – but for how much longer? And what are managers to make of all the talk of digital natives, unmet expectations, clunky systems and recalcitrant teachers? 7. Managing risk in such a complex, changing environment cannot be done through command and control. More flexible, responsive, embedded approaches are needed. In an age of uncertainty, resilience depends upon organisational learning and on what Karl Weick describes as a collective state of mindfulness (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2007). 8. The best approach prioritises the long term sustainability of the system, and it does this by attending to the smooth flow of accurate, timely, actionable information at and between each key level in the system (course unit/module; programme; school; fac- ulty; whole institution). Students, teachers, managers and leaders, individually and collectively, learn through experience and reflec- tion. Things which are unavailable to their experience will not contribute to their learning. 9. A core task – perhaps the core task – for senior management is to attend to these flows of knowledge. It is to ensure that those best placed to take the action needed to keep the ecology in good heart are getting the information that they require. The essence of successful management is to create the conditions in which the Introduction • 13
- 40. system can adapt,with minimum shock and effort, to each signifi- cant change in circumstances. In Chapter 7 we present a number of these ideas about ecology and management in more detail: examin- ing the notion of ecological balance, and its enabling constructs of ecological self-awareness, feedback loops and self-correction. We are aware of the dangers of romanticising the university and its manage- ment: ecological metaphors are powerful and seductive, especially in times of environmental crisis. A naïve ecologist might ignore the role of competition, predation of the weak, selection of the fittest, extinction of species. He might also ignore the role of power and established interests in distorting ecological relationships. That said, we remain convinced by the ideal of the university as a learning organisation. We acknowledge that universities are good at learning through experience – they have survived well beyond their expected life. But they have not survived without some rude shocks and unforeseen adapta- tions. They can be poor users of their own intelligence. We revisit some of this argument in Chapters 9 and 10, where, among other things, we examine issues of leadership and campus planning in relation to physical and virtual learning spaces. Infrastructure turns out to be a trickier topic than it might first seem. It can appear that infrastructure is a ‘given’ – when teachers, teaching teams and students are working out what to do, infrastructure is taken for granted as a source of constraints and enablers. But the question of what counts as infrastructure turns out to be another question concerned with relationships – infrastructure only has meaning in relation to concrete activities (Conole & Jones, forthcoming). Chapter 10 examines this in more detail, for managing the mix of virtual and physical spaces is not just a major challenge for uni- versity leaders; it raises deep questions about what a university is to its students. Overview of the Remaining Chapters In Chapter 2, we develop the conceptual foundations of the book using the umbrella concept of an ecology of learning. We examine a number of key ideas concerned with learning, technology and learning environments. We also look at uncertainty and risk, offering an ecological conception of leadership and management as a way of managing uncertainty. Chapter 3 surveys some recent research on students’ use of, and expect- ations about, new technology. There has been a great deal of commentary, but rather less empirical research, on the media habits of the incoming waves of ‘digital natives’. Chapter 3 concludes that there is strong evidence that stu- dents, however media-savvy they may be, are keen to see a good balance struck between face-to-face and technology-mediated activities. They are also look- ing to their teachers for guidance about effective ways to use technologies in learning. 14 • Introduction
- 41. In Chapters 4and 5, we introduce some of our own recent studies, carried out using qualitative and quantitative methodologies drawn from relational research on student learning. Chapter 4 examines students’ conceptions of, and approaches to, learning through discussion. Chapter 5 summarises our initial research on learning through inquiry. Both chapters report research that we have carried out in settings where use of technology has been integrated with other forms of learning activity. Chapter 6 turns to research on university teachers’ conceptions of, and approaches to, teaching with the aid of technology. Once more, the focus is on situations where ‘face-to-face’ and technology-mediated learning activities are blended together. Chapter 7 changes gear. We move from reporting empirical research to implications for policy and practice. Most of these implications are easier to explain if we have a shared way of conceptualising the problems and evidence. Chapter 7 does this by outlining some practical theory for management, leadership and educational design, picking up on the theme of design and management in an ecology of learning. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 are concerned with educational leadership, but at different levels of the university. Chapter 8 focuses on the work of teaching teams: groups of teachers who have a shared responsibility for a course or programme of study. While some of the issues covered in this chapter are of relevance to the solo teacher, we argue that sustainable development depends on collaboration in teaching teams. Lone enthusiasts can achieve a lot, at a local level, but the dangers of isolation and burn-out are ever present. Chapter 8 is about teaching as a design-like activity. We introduce the idea of ‘teaching-as-design’ and present some models and other intellectual tools that can help teachers and course teams to engage more efficiently and effectively in educational design. Chapters 9 and 10 shift the focus to senior managers – thinking mainly of people who have institution-wide responsibilities, or who work in units that have such scope. Maintaining the theme of leadership in a learning ecology, Chapter 9 surveys the various leadership roles that have a stake in the health of a university’s physical and virtual learning spaces. Chapter 10 outlines a principled approach to campus management for learning spaces, as a way of discussing the challenge of uncertainty that accompanies technological change. Finally, in Chapter 11 we summarise core lessons and themes: students, teachers, managers and leaders learn best those things which are afforded in their environment; conceptions of learning influence what is likely to be learnt; the ability to persist in learning is the best way to deal with uncertainty and change. Introduction • 15
- 42. 2 Thinking Ecologically About E-learning Introduction Recentresearch on student learning in higher education highlights the need for a richer conception of the aims and nature of higher education and of the influences upon what and how students learn. The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide the theoretical underpinnings needed to understand the research outcomes we present in the early chapters of this book, and to make sense of the practical implications of this research discussed in the later chap- ters. Our argument connects ideas about learning, e-learning, ecology and the management of uncertainty. It is important to avoid polarised thinking that makes apparently simple but logically indefensible contrasts: between ‘the new’ and ‘the traditional’, between cognitive and cultural, technical and human, etc. Indeed, as we will try to show, adopting a perspective that foregrounds relationships rather than differences turns out to yield clearer insights into a number of thorny issues about the place of e-learning in the student experience. Helping students learn, in contemporary higher education, involves an understanding of the complex web of relationships that give shape and mean- ing to students’ activity and experience. Much of the writing about the role of educational technology, and other pedagogical innovations, in higher educa- tion is based on a ‘compare and replace’ paradigm. In its discourse, if not in its routine practices, education has tended to deal with innovation by treating each new idea or technology as if it is a challenger – as if the new can only find a place by displacing something old. This competitive mindset of ‘replace or perish’ also encourages rituals of comparison: the new must be demonstrably better than the old or there is no rational basis for replacing the old with the new. Oddly, the educational technology literature is suffused with studies showing ‘no significant differences’ between old and new approaches, yet tech- nologies and other innovations continue to be adopted (Clark, 1983; Phipps & Merisotis, 1999; Ng & Cheung, 2007; Goodyear, 2006; Goodyear & Ellis, 2008). 16
- 43. Kulik, Kulik andCohen (1980) and Clark (1983) provide early, influential reviews and meta-analyses of the comparative benefits of ICT in learning. More recent data can be found in Ferrell et al. (2007). Clark is associated with the argument that ‘media will never influence learning’ – arguing that instructional treatments rather than instructional media are what influence learning. (On this point, see also Clark (1994), Kozma (1994), Phipps & Merisotis (1999), Conger (2005) and Oblinger & Hawkins (2006)). Taking this line of argument one step further, Goodyear (e.g. 2005, 2006) has suggested that instructional treatments (defined as ‘tasks’) do not directly influence learning either. Rather, students adapt task specifications in various ways and it is their actual activity which influences learning outcomes. This argument is developed further in Chapter 8. It turns out to be more productive to shift the perspective to one in which new and old entities find ways of co-existing. The shift is away from thinking of progress as something we can achieve by selecting the better of two rival ‘interventions’ or ‘treatments’ and towards thinking in more systemic or hol- istic terms: in short, towards a more ecological way of thinking. But this ecological perspective also has its own distinctive character, since we focus on the ways in which entities achieve joint success and sustainability within an ecosystem by co-operation rather than by competition. Overview of the Chapter We start with ecological perspectives on education. Such perspectives are not entirely new. The next section reviews some of the ways in which ecological metaphors and lines of thought have informed discussion in the literature. We then discuss learning itself. It is not hard to find agreement in uni- versities for the proposition that pedagogy should drive technology, even though the reverse sometimes seems to apply in practice. It can sometimes be very hard to create a shared understanding of what good pedagogy consists of, and to get people engaged in carefully-worded discussions of what should be learnt and how (Goodyear, 2005). In the section on 21st century learning we offer some ways of thinking about ‘good learning’ – appropriate to the ambitions of forward-looking universities at the start of the 21st century (Brew & Sachs, 2007). We draw on ideas about what should be learnt, as well as how good learning occurs. We pay particular attention to graduate attributes and the nature of knowledge work. Knowledge work, taken seriously, must involve the ability to improve and apply complex ideas – working with what Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia call ‘conceptual artefacts’ (Bereiter, 2002; Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2003; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). Learning to recognise, evaluate, improve and apply ideas is best done through direct experience – through apprenticeship in ‘knowledge-building’. And given the need to work with different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing, gradu- ates must – we argue – acquire a versatility in knowledge-building that can Thinking Ecologically • 17
- 44. best be describedas ‘epistemic fluency’ (Goodyear & Ellis, 2007; Goodyear & Zenios, 2007). We find this emphasis on the skilful side of knowing to be a useful complement to the emphasis on variations in understanding that have tended to preoccupy researchers in the mainstream of research on university students’ learning. Understanding, in practice, is skilful. In the section on research on student learning in higher education we intro- duce some key ideas from research into university student learning, summaris- ing a line of work constructed by Entwistle and Ramsden (1983), Marton and Booth (1997), Prosser and Trigwell (1999), Laurillard (2002), Ramsden (2002) and Biggs and Tang (2007). This section also introduces phenomenography: an approach to educational research that focuses on qualitative variations in the ways that people experience phenomena in the world (Marton, 1981; Marton & Booth, 1997; Prosser & Trigwell, 1999). Phenomenographic research has been particularly productive in revealing the importance of variations in the ways that students conceive of, and approach, learning. We summarise some of the achievements of this body of research, which has been growing in scale, scope and influence over the last 30 years, and explain some of the key analytic tools that phenomenographic research provides. We also draw on some of the phe- nomenographic research literature that deals with e- learning, as a preface to the research results reported in Chapters 4 and 5. The section on characteristics and affordances of e-learning shifts the focus to e-learning. Some people use this term in a very general way – to embrace all forms of technology-assisted learning. Others use it to denote something quite narrow, specific and rather routine. Our focus is specific, but ecological and, we believe, properly ambitious. In the section on uncertainty, environment and leadership we make links between student experiences of e-learning, and the work and responsibilities of university leaders. Drawing on leaders’ concerns about the management of uncertainty, especially in the light of rapid technological change, we begin to examine some of the issues involved in conceptualising the management of infrastructure. This introduces some of the ideas about co-ordinated plan- ning of virtual and physical spaces that we examine in much more depth in Chapters 9 and 10. Ecological Perspectives in Education The science of ecology studies interactions between individual organisms and their environments. In ecological research, the environment is usually defined to mean both other individuals, of the same species and of different species, and non-living phenomena, such as the availability of food, water, shelter and sunlight. The environment includes living and non-living things. On this read- ing, you are part of my environment and I am part of yours. The etymological roots of the term are in Greek: oikos (household) and logos (knowledge). By implication, oikos suggests notions of dwelling or habitat (Ingold, 2000). 18 • Thinking Ecologically
- 45. Ecological thinking alsoemphasises relationships and inter-dependence: fore- grounding the notion that a change in one part of a system can have unforseen consequences in other parts of a system, or for the system as a whole. Ecological thinking and research are not restricted to what is sometimes called the ‘natural’ world. Over the years, serious attention has been paid to human ecology (Hawley, 1950; Duncan, 1964), social ecology (Alihan, 1939), to artificial or ‘built’ environments and to the role of culture in mediat- ing interactions between people and their physical environment (e.g. Dogan & Rokkan, 1969; Steward, 2006). Ecological perspectives on human development have been particularly influential through the work of Urie Bronfenbrenner (e.g. 1979). Research in higher education, as well as in education more generally, sometimes makes use of the term ‘ecology’ because of the availability of the term ‘learning environment’. For example, Gale (2002) adopts an ecological perspective as a way of moving beyond what he sees as prevailing ‘neuro- psychological’ accounts of student abilities. He turns to ecological thinking as an approach which is ‘mindful of individuals, but also of learning environ- ments that frame both institutional practices and individual experiences’ (p. 66). Taking an ecological perspective in this case can relocate students’ difficulties so they are seen as arising from a mismatch with their environment rather than from intrinsic, persistent or context-free personal failings. (Gale’s use of ‘environment’ is, therefore, broader than the usage we prefer. His includes culture, tasks and practices.) Hannafin and Hannafin (1996) use the ‘ecology/ecosystem’ metaphor as a way of highlighting the complexity and interdependence of the many com- ponents and activities that make for success in a learning environment. Learning environments operate as ecosystems. Individual elements must function autonomously as well as interactively. In biological terms, each independent organism benefits from the mutualistic, symbiotic relation- ships among other organisms in the ecosystem in order to attain system homeostasis, or equilibrium. In learning environments, learners as well as facilitators observe, measure, test, listen and probe to assess the integ- rity and effectiveness of the environment and make needed changes. This may require the learner and facilitator to examine and adjust strat- egies, technologies or learning activities to achieve balance. It requires active teaching and learning to develop understandings of how each element, as well as the overall system, is functioning. . . . Ecosystems are judged successful when they promote equilibrium among their com- ponents and interact in ways that support their functions. Balance must be attained initially in order for the ecosystem to evolve, and must be maintained in order for it to survive and prosper. (Hannafin & Hannafin, 1996, pp. 52–3, our emphasis) Thinking Ecologically • 19
- 46. Two important sub-themesemerge in Hannafin and Hannafin’s analysis: the importance of balance, sustainability and mutual independence; and the dan- ger of seeking local solutions to problems that have systemic origins or con- sequences – of treating local symptoms as if they were root causes (see also Zhao & Frank, 2003). The issue of balance or equilibrium is an important one. It presents itself as an awkward concept when one is considering the management of rapid change. Indeed, much of the discourse around the use of technology in higher education is about breaking out of a stable state and making radical structural and cultural changes (Bates, 2000; Laurillard, 2002; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). We address this in more detail below, and again in Chapter 7. For now, it is useful to clarify key aspects of an ‘ecology of learning’ and how the concept is used in this book. The key aspects of an ecology of learning in the arguments put forward here are: maintenance of an ecological balance; the development of self-awareness of how parts of the ecology are related to the whole; the ongoing pursuit of feedback to inform self-awareness, and the capacity of self correction required to ensure (re)alignment in a rapidly changing world. To elaborate a little: • The point of ecological balance for a university most easily rests – amongst the trinity of learning and teaching, research and service – with learning, as it is in this concept that the other aspects of university work can find a home. Learning can enfold teaching, research and service to the community. • Maintaining an ecological balance on learning requires all the parts of the university to act in ways that demonstrate self-awareness of their function and purpose in relation to the mission of the institution. Every part of the university needs to be imbued with an understanding of ‘good learning’. • In order for the parts of a university to understand how they are functioning, in relation to the work and purpose of the whole, they need to engage in systematic processes of collecting feedback from stakeholders about the effectiveness of their operations. Student feedback is central to this, but feedback from other internal and external stakeholders is important too. • In a context of rapid change, self-correction by the parts of a university in order to align their operations to the mission of the university as a whole is constantly required in order to maintain an ecological balance focussed on learning. These aspects of an ecology of learning are used as a framework in the later chapters of this book to discuss the implications of research findings about student experiences of e-learning. They help the reader to shift from looking at 20 • Thinking Ecologically
- 47. the phenomenon oflearning through the eyes of the student (in Chapters 4 and 5), to considering the implications of the research for teachers who are designing learning tasks (in Chapter 8), and university leaders who are respon- sible for the campus investment supporting such experiences (in Chapters 9 and 10). Twenty-first Century Learning A number of commentators on the media habits of young people have argued that schools and universities will need to change to accommodate new learn- ing styles (e.g. Prensky, 2001a; Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). These new learning styles are held to involve a preference for multi-tasking, multimedia, bite-sized content and high levels of social interaction. As we will show in Chapter 3, there is actually rather a dearth of empirical research on the learning patterns and preferences of students who are making the transition to university. What we do see, from recent studies, is that students want their teachers to help them understand how best to use technology in their work as learners, and that many of the things that students have valued about good teaching in the past, continue to be of high value. Prensky and others have argued, stretching rather scant neuropsychological evidence, that the brains of digital natives are different from those of the digital immigrants who teach them: that learning is different. Bereiter (2002) and Kress (2003), among others, have cautioned that there is no reason to think that learning itself is changing. Rather, there are changes to learning contexts, expectations and practices. The increasing availability of ICT has widened the range of places in which students can learn, and they now expect greater flexibility in educational provision. While they don’t prioritise flexible access – anywhere, anytime learning – over the quality of interaction they can have with staff, students nevertheless express frustration if university processes are unnecessarily place- or time-bound. In this section, we focus on two related sets of issues. The first set of issues is concerned with the changing goals for, or expectations of, higher education. What are society, employers and others looking for in new graduates? What are graduate attributes for the 21st century? What should students be learning? The second set of issues is concerned with changing conceptions of learning processes and learning activity – with how effective learning takes place. Following Peter Knight, we use the shorthand ‘good learning’ to capture the essence of what is important here. What is Worth Learning in Twenty-first Century Higher Education? Learning is a second-order effect . . . it transforms a system capable of certain performances into a system of additional ones. . . . The study of learning, if carried out with theoretical precision, must start with a model of a performing organism, so that one can represent, as learning, Thinking Ecologically • 21
- 48. the changes inthe model. . . . If performance is not well understood, it is somewhat premature to study learning. (Newell & Simon, 1972, pp. 7–8) What, then, should successful university graduates be able to do? Answers to this question underpin much of the debate about graduate attributes (e.g. Barrie, 2007) and about the nature and purposes of higher education (e.g. Barnett, 1997, 2000a; 2000b; Brew, 2006; Taylor, Barr & Steele 2002). While it is sometimes possible to build a consensus around some specific answers to this question, for example, in relation to courses that are approved by an external professional body, more general answers tend to dissolve into vague- ness and ambiguity, offering little basis for serious discussion about capability or curriculum. This makes it particularly difficult to decide what learning activities are most likely to be appropriate for the development of each attribute identified. Since different kinds of knowledge are acquired in different ways, it is necessary to have methods of classifying desired attributes that are both (a) meaningful to the people concerned (employers, students, teachers, and so on), and (b) pedagogically coherent. An example of where universities often get this wrong is in their habitual talk about graduate skills. We have nothing against the notion of skill – far from it. But skill is best acquired through repeated practice with feedback and it takes a lot of time to acquire fluency. Outside of some specialised areas of higher education, for example, in music or language, it is very rare for there to be teaching activities that support students in acquiring a skill through repeated practice and timely feedback. A demonstration of the required performance and one or two supervised attempts is about all that teaching resources typically allow. But this does not dissuade those who write course outcome statements and lists of graduate attributes from making unrealistic claims about the skills successful students will acquire. Our point is not to discourage talk of outcomes and skills, but to encourage some pedagogical realism. Being able to talk with precision about the kind of capability needed, and how it can be acquired, is at least half the battle. We do not have space here to review all the kinds of things that employers, governments and others say that graduates should know and be able to do. Good summaries can be found in Knight and Yorke (2004) and Hager and Holland (2006). In broad terms, one could say there is some agreement about the importance of graduates who are taking up work in complex, knowledge- intensive organisations having intellectual flexibility, powers of logical analysis and an ability to conceptualise issues rapidly and to deal with large amounts of information. In addition, they need to be able to manage time, cope with pressure, understand organisational politics, forge effective working relation- ships with colleagues at all levels of seniority, listen critically and make a 22 • Thinking Ecologically
- 49. persuasive case. Thesecapabilities are rarely expressed with sufficient clarity and precision to allow confident design of appropriate learning activities or methods of assessment. Compounding the problem is the fact that employers underestimate the power of local knowledge and context. Their complaints about graduates not being ‘workplace-ready’ fail to acknowledge that capabil- ity has to be exercised in context – it needs to mould itself to the contours of each unique workplace, and this takes time. (Workplace capability is a relation between person and context.) Characteristics of ‘Good Learning’ in Higher Education Although there is considerable variation in the treatment of what constitutes ‘good learning and teaching’ in higher education, we think the propositions presented in Table 2.1 offer a reasonable summary. Table 2.1 Propositions about Good Learning Appropriate to UK Higher Education Proposition Explanation 1 Learning should be extensive It is no longer defensible, if ever it was, to define the outcomes of higher education purely and simply in terms of mastery of a subject. Outcomes now also need to include more generally useful skills, including so- called transferable skills, the capacity to act as an autonomous lifelong learner, a belief in one’s own efficacy, etc. 2 Learning involves constructing understandings that are acceptable within communities of practice Learning involves acts of sensemaking within a community that shares common interests, practices, language and other cultural artefacts and tools. Access to disembodied information has little to do with real learning. 3 Learning is a natural outcome of the normal workings of communities of practice Participation in the day-to-day life of a community of practice is inseparable from learning. If someone has a legitimised role within a community of practice – however peripheral that role may seem – they cannot help but learn. In HE, learning may best be seen as induction into one or more communities of practice. 4 Learning is situated and hard to transfer What is learnt in one context tends to be hard to transfer to another – indeed the idea of ‘transfer’ may be suspect. However, learning in HE does require learners to be able to recognise community boundaries and shift between communities. It requires use of knowledge abstracted from specific contexts and the ability to work with different ways of knowing (epistemic fluency). 5 Engagement and practice make for good learning Learning demands application (engagement in practice); skill-acquisition demands opportunities for repetition, feedback, fine-tuning, automation, etc. (Continued Overleaf) Thinking Ecologically • 23
- 50. Table 2.1 Continued PropositionExplanation 6 Learning involves challenge and scaffolding Learning can be a by-product of taking on a challenging new task; challenge and learning go hand in hand but challenge should not overwhelm. What one can do with others is in advance of what one can do alone – the scaffolding they provide helps one accept and overcome challenges. 7 Learning must embody an idea of progression Learning involves qualitative change in understandings rather than quantitative accumulation of factual knowledge. Learners in HE typically move from relatively simple to more complex beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning. Curriculum challenges need to reflect this. 8 Learning is conversational and interactive Learning and practice in communities is inseparable from discourse; generation of narratives and explanations are key to sense-making; understanding others’ accounts of the world is an important aspect of academic learning; sharing in the construction of knowledge demands communication and other forms of social interaction. 9 Learning involves effective use of reflection ‘Conversations’ can be with others but they can also be with oneself; self-explanations and ‘replaying’ and analysing one’s experiences are important parts of sense-making. 10 Learning is not significantly limited by fixed abilities IQ and other claimants to be measures of ‘general ability’ are poor predictors of complex learning or of successful progression within a community of practice; engagement/application entail hard work not good genes and are cultural not inherited; specific knowledge rather than general ability is a potent influence on learning; other so-called stable traits (e.g., learning style) are more context-sensitive than is often acknowledged. 11 Motivation is something designed into the curriculum, not something added by charismatic teaching People are motivated by goals they value, especially ones they have had chance to help shape; goals should be challenging but achievable; feedback aids persistence; intrinsic motivation accompanies a personal belief in the value of one’s efforts – overuse of extrinsic motivators can undermine intrinsic motivation. 12 Teaching contributes to learning, but in various ways Direct (didactic) teaching can be appropriate in helping learners reach mastery of tightly-structured subject matters – factual and rule-based material and skills coaching can be well served by direct teaching. But much of learning in HE involves uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, weighing of evidence and judgement. Here, direct teaching is much less useful than designing appropriate learning tasks. Source: Columns 1 and 2 adapted from Knight & Trowler, 2001, pp. 100–110, and Goodyear 2002. 24 • Thinking Ecologically
- 51. Another Random ScribdDocument with Unrelated Content
- 52. The theory andpractice of the wisest Catholics conform to the spirit and letter of this injunction. Their devotional life, too, is perfectly reflected in Tennyson whenever he writes of prayer. There is a depth of feeling in his expressions on this subject which reaches to the fact that prayer is the truest religion—that it is the link which unites man more closely to his Creator than any outward acts, any meditations, any professed creed, and is the spring and current of religious life. "Evermore Prayer from a living source within the will, And beating up through all the bitter world, Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, Kept him a living soul" Enoch Arden, p. 44. "Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers. Whose loves in higher love endure: What souls possess themselves so pure? Or is there blessedness like theirs?" In Memoriam, xxxii. Thus again, in the Morte d'Arthur, which was a forecast of The Idylls of the King, we are reminded of the efficacy of prayer in language worthy of being put into a Catholic's lips:
- 53. "Pray for mysoul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheep or goats. That nourish a blind life within the brain, If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer Both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." In the following lines, on the rarity of repentance, there is a reference to the coöperation of human will with divine grace, which equals the precision of a Catholic theologian: "Full seldom does a man repent, or use Both grace and will to pick the vicious quitch Of blood and custom wholly out of him. And make all clean, and plant himself afresh." Idylls of the King, p. 93. In the same poem we find lines of a distinctly Catholic tone on the repentant queen's entering a convent, and on a knight who had long been the tenant of a hermitage. Guinevere speaks as follows:
- 54. "So let me,if you do not shudder at me, Nor shun to call me sister, dwell with you; Wear black and white, and be a nun like you; Fast with your fasts, not feasting with your feasts; Grieve with your griefs, not grieving at your joys. Bid not rejoicing; mingle with your rites; Pray and be prayed for; lie before your shrines; Do each low office of your holy house; Walk your dim cloister, and distribute dole To poor sick people, richer in his eyes Who ransomed us, and haler, too, than I; And treat their loathsome hurts, and heal mine own; And so wear out in almsdeed and in prayer The sombre close of that voluptuous day Which wrought the ruin of my lord the king." Idylls of the King, p. 260. The hermitage is thus described: "There lived a knight Not far from Camelot, now for forty years A hermit, who had prayed, labored, and prayed. And ever laboring had scooped himself In the white rock a chapel and a hall On massive columns, like a shorecliff cave. And cells and chambers: all were fair and dry." Idylls of the King, p. 168. Among Tennyson's earlier poems, the picture of Isabel, "the perfect wife," with her "hate of gossip parlance, and of sway," her
- 55. "locks not widedispread. Madonna-wise on either side her head; Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity;" and "Eyes not down-dropt nor over-bright, but fed With the clear-pointed flame of chastity," Poems, pp. 7, 8, is worthy of a Catholic matron. The description of St. Stephen, in The Two Voices, has all the depth and pathos of the poet's happiest mood; and, though neither it, nor some other passages which have been quoted, contain anything distinctively Catholic as opposed to other forms of Christianity, it is strongly marked with those orthodox instincts to which we are drawing attention:
- 56. "I cannot hidethat some have striven, Achieving calm, to whom was given The joy that mixes man with heaven; Who, rowing hard against the stream, Saw distant gates of Eden gleam. And did not dream it was a dream; But heard, by secret transport led, E'en in the charnels of the dead, The murmur of the fountain-head— Which did accomplish their desire, Bore and forbore, and did not tire; Like Stephen, an unquenched fire, He heeded not reviling tones. Nor sold his heart to idle moans. Though cursed, and scorned, and bruised with stones; But looking upward, full of grace. He prayed, and from a happy place God's glory smote him on the face." Poems, p. 299. We are anxious not to appear to lay undue stress on these extracts. Let them go for as much as they are worth, and no more. We do not stretch them on any Procrustean bed to the measure of orthodox. Others might be adduced, of a latitudinarian tendency, but they are few in number, and do not neutralize the force of these. In view of many passages in Shakespeare of a Catholic bearing, and of several facts favorable to the belief that he was a Catholic, M. Rio has come to the probably sound conclusion that he really was what he himself wishes to prove him. We put no such forced interpretation on our extracts from Tennyson as M. Rio has certainly put on many which he has brought forward from the Elizabethan poet; but we think that they are sufficiently cast in a Catholic mould to warrant us in applying to Tennyson the words which Carlyle has used in reference to his predecessor:
- 57. "Catholicism, with andagainst feudalism, but not against nature and her bounty, gave us English a Shakespeare and era of Shakespeare, and so produced a blossom of Catholicism." (French Revolution, vol. i. 10.) But religion, as we have said, does not occupy a prominent place in Tennyson's pages. He is, in the main, like the great dramatist—a poet of this world. Love and women are his favorite themes, but love within the bounds of law, and woman strongly idealized. License finds in him no apologist, while he throws around purity and fidelity all the charms of song. The most rigid moralist can find nothing to censure in his treatment of the guilty love of Lancelot and Guinevere, the wedded love of Enid and Geraint, the meretricious love of Vivien, and the unrequited love of Elaine. If Milton had, as he intended, [Footnote 43] chosen King Arthur as the subject of his epic, he could not have taken a higher moral tone than Tennyson has in the Idylls of the King, and, considering how lax were his notions about marriage, it is probable he would have taken a lower one. [Footnote 43: See his Mansas, and Life, by Toland, p. 17.] King Arthur's praise of honorable courtship and conjugal faith is too long to be quoted here, but it may be referred to as equally eloquent and edifying. (Idylls of the King.) The Laureate has learned at least one secret of making a great name—not to write too much. "I hate many books," wrote Père Lacordaire. "The capital point is, to have an aim in life, and deeply to respect posterity by sending it but a small number of well- meditated works." This has been Tennyson's rule. With six slender volumes he has built himself an everlasting name. He has, till within the last few months, seldom contributed to periodicals, and when he has done so, the price paid for his stanzas seems fabulous. The estimation in which he is held by critics of a high
- 58. order amounts, inmany cases, to a passion and a worship. The specimen he has given of a translation of the Iliad promises for it, if completed, all that Longfellow has wrought for the Divina Commedia. The attempts he has made at Alcaics, Hendecasyllabics, and Galliambics in English have been thoroughly successful, and stamp him as an accomplished scholar. (Boädicea, etc., in Enoch Arden and other Poems.) As he does not write much, so neither does he write fast. The impetuous oratory of Shakespeare's and Byron's verse is unknown to him. He never affects it. He reminds us rather of the operations of nature, who slowly and calmly, but without difficulty, produces her marvellous results. Drop by drop his immortal poems are distilled, like the chalybeate droppings which leave at length on the cavern floor a perfect red and crystal stalagmite. "Day by day," says the National Review, when speaking on this subject—"day by day, as the hours pass, the delicate sand falls into beautiful forms, in stillness, in peace, in brooding." "The particular power by which Mr. Tennyson surpasses all recent English poets," writes the Edinburgh Review, "is that of sustained perfection. ... We look in vain among his modern rivals for any who can compete with him in the power of saying beautifully the thing he has to say." O degli altri poeti onore e lume, Vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume. [Footnote 44] [Footnote 44: L Inferno, i. 82.] During a long period, the originality of Tennyson's verse was an obstacle to its fame, and indeed continues to be so in the minds of some readers. His use of obsolete words appears to many persons affected, while others applaud him for his vigorous Saxon, believing, with Dean Swift, that the Saxon element in our compound tongue should be religiously preserved, and that the
- 59. writers and speakerswho please us most are those whose style is most Saxon in its character. If Tennyson has modelled his verse after any author, it is undoubtedly Shakespeare, and the traces of this study may perhaps be found in his vocabulary. Yet no man is less of a plagiarist; not only his forms of thought but of language also are original, and though he owes much to the early dramatists, to Wordsworth and to Shelley, he fuses all metals in the alembic of his own mind, and turns them to gold. His love of nature is intense, and his observation of her works is microscopic. Yet he is never so occupied with details as to lose sight of broad outlines. In 1845, Wordsworth spoke of him as "decidedly the first of our living poets;" but since that time his fame has been steadily on the increase. Many of his lines have passed into proverbs, and a crowd of feebly fluttering imitators have vainly striven to rival him on the wing. What the people once called a weed has grown into a tall flower, wearing a crown of light, and flourishing far and wide. (The Flower. Enoch Arden, etc., p. 152.) A concordance to In Memoriam has been published, and the several editions of the Laureate's volumes have been collated as carefully as if they were works of antiquity. Every ardent lover of English poetry is familiar with Mariana, "in the lonely moated grange;" the good Haroun Alraschid among his obelisks and cedars; Oriana wailing amid the Norland whirlwinds; the Lady Shalott in her "four gray walls and four gray towers;" the proud Lady Clara Vere de Vere; the drowsy Lotos-Eaters; the chaste and benevolent Godiva; Maud in her garden of "woodbine spices;" the true love of the Lord of Burleigh, and the reward of honest Lady Clare. The highest praise of these ballads is that they have sunk into the nation's heart. They combine the chief excellences of other bards, and remind us of some delicious fruit which unites in itself a variety of the most exquisite flavors. This richness and sweetness may be ascribed in part to that remarkable condensation of thought which enriches one page of Tennyson with as many ideas and images as would, in most other poets, be found scattered over two or three pages. "We must not expect," wrote Shenstone in one of his essays, "to trace the flow of Waller, the landskip of Thomson, the fire of Dryden, the
- 60. imagery of Shakespeare,the simplicity of Spenser, the courtliness of Prior, the humor of Swift, the wit of Cowley, the delicacy of Addison, the tenderness of Otway, and the invention, the spirit, and sublimity of Milton, joined in any single writer." Perhaps not. But Shenstone had never read Tennyson, and there is no knowing what he might have thought if he had conned the calm majesty of Ulysses; the classical beauty of Tithonus and the Princess; the luxuriant eloquence of Locksley Hall; the deep lyrical flow of The Letters and The Voyage; the 'cute drollery of the Northern Farmer; the idyllic sweetness of OEnone; the grandeur of Morte d'Arthur; the touching simplicity of Enoch Arden; the power and pathos of Aylmer's Field; the perfect minstrelsy of the Rivulet, and the songs, O Swallow, Swallow, and Tears, Idle Tears; and the sharps and trebles of the Brook, more musical than Mendelssohn. Far be it from us to carp at any poetry because it proceeds from one who is not a Catholic. We believe, indeed, firmly that, if Tennyson had been imbued with the ancient faith, it would have cleared some vagueness both from his mind and his verse. But in these days, when Socinianism, positivism, and free-thinking in various shapes are taking such strong hold of educated men, we rejoice unfeignedly to find popular writings marked, even in an imperfect degree, with Christian doctrine and feeling. The influence exerted by the Laureate in the world of letters is great, and we have, therefore, endeavored at some length to show how far it is favorable, and how far unfavorable, to the cause of truth. Though unhappily not a Catholic, we recognize with delight the fact that he is not an infidel, and we feel persuaded that some at least of our readers will be pleased at our having placed in a prominent point of view the redeeming features in the religious character of his poetry.
- 61. Poland When, fixed inrighteous wrath, a nation's eye Torments some crowned tormentor with just hate. Nor threat nor flattery can that gaze abate; Unshriven the unatoning years go by; For as that starry archer in the sky Unbends not his bright bow, though early and late The syren sings, and folly weds with fate, Even so that constellated destiny Which keeps fire-vigil in a night-black heaven, Upon the countenance of the doomed looks forth Consentient with a nation's gaze on earth: To the twinned powers a single gaze is given; The earthly fate reveals the fate on high— A brazen serpent raised, that says, not "live," but "die." Aubrey de Vere.
- 62. Professor Draper's Books.[Footnote 45] [Footnote 45: 1. Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical; or, Conditions and Course of the Life of Man. By J. W. Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1856. 8vo, pp. 649. 2. History of the Intellectual Development of Europe. By the same. Fifth edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 628 3. Thoughts on the Civil Policy of America. By the same. Third edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 323. 4. History of the American Civil War. By the same. In three volumes. Vol. I. 1867. 8vo, pp. 567.] Professor Draper's works have had, and are having, a very rapid sale, and are evidently very highly esteemed by that class of readers who take an interest, without being very profoundly versed, in the grave subjects which he treats. He is, we believe, a good chemist and a respectable physiologist. His work on Human Physiology, we have been assured by those whose judgment in such matters we prefer to our own, is a work of real merit, and was, when first published, up to the level of the science to which it is devoted. We read it with care on its first appearance, and the impression it left on our mind was, that the author yields too much to the theory of chemical action in physiology, and does not remember that man is the union of soul and body, and that the soul modifies, even in the body, the action of the natural laws; or rather, that the physiological laws of brute matter, or even of animals, cannot be applied to man without many important reserves. The Professor, indeed, recognizes, or says he recognizes, in man a rational soul, or an immaterial principle; but the
- 63. recognition seems tobe only a verbal concession, made to the prejudices of those who have some lingering belief in Christianity, for we find no use for it in his physiology. All the physiological phenomena he dwells on he explains without it, that is, as far as he explains them at all. Whatever his personal belief may be, his doctrine is as purely materialistic as is Mr. Herbert Spencer's, which explains all the phenomena of life by the mechanical, chemical, and electrical changes and combinations of matter. It is due to Professor Draper to say, that in this respect he only sins in common with the great body of modern physiologists. Physiology —indeed, all the inductive sciences—have been for a long time cast in a materialistic mould, and men of firm faith, and sincere and ardent piety, are materialists, and, therefore, atheists, the moment they enter the field of physical science, and deny in their science what they resolutely affirm and would die for in their faith. Hence the quarrel between the theologians and the savans. The savans have not reconciled their so-called science with the great theological truths, whether of reason or revelation, which only the fool doubts, or in his heart denies. This proves that our physicists have made far less progress in the sciences than they are in the habit of boasting. That cannot be true in physiology which is false in theology; and a physiology that denies all reality but matter, or finds no place in it for God and the human soul, is no true physiological science. The physiologist has far less evidence of the existence of matter than I have of the existence of spirit; and it is only by spirit that the material is apprehensible, or can be shown to exist. Matter only mimics or imitates spirit. The continual changes that take place from time to time in physiology show—we say it with all deference to physiologists—that it has not risen as yet to the dignity of a science. It is of no use to speak of progress, for changes which transform the whole body of a pretended science are not progress. We may not have mastered all the facts of a science; we may be discovering new facts every day; but if we have, for instance, the true physiological science, the discovery of new facts may throw new light on the science—may enable us to
- 64. see clearer itsreach, and understand better its application, but cannot change or modify its principles. As long as your pretended science is liable to be changed in its principles, it is a theory, an hypothesis, not a science. Physiologists have accumulated a large stock of physiological facts, to which they are daily adding new facts. We willingly admit these facts are not useless, and the time spent in collecting them is not wasted; on the contrary, we hold them to be valuable, and appreciate very highly the labor, the patient research, and the nice observation that has collected, classified, and described them; but we dare assert, notwithstanding, that the science of physiology is yet to be created; and created it will not be till physiologists have learned and are able to set forth the dialectic relations of spirit and matter, soul and body, God and nature, free-will and necessity. Till then there may be known facts, but there will be no physiological science. As far as what is called the science of human life, or human physiology, goes, Professor Draper's work is an able and commendable work; but he must permit us to say that the real science of physiology he has not touched, has not dreamed of; nor have any of his brethren who see in the human soul only a useless appendage to the body. The soul is the forma corporis, its informing, its vital principle, and pervades, so to speak, and determines, or modifies, the whole life and action of the human body, from the first instant of conception to the very moment of death. The human body does not exist, even in its embryonic state, first as a vegetable, then as an animal, and afterward as united to an immaterial soul. It is body united to soul from the first instant of conception, and man lives, in any stage of his existence, but one and the same human life. There is no moment after conception when the wilful destruction of the foetus is not the murder of a human life. As we said on a former occasion, or at least implied, man, though the ancients called him a microcosm, the universe in little, and contains in himself all the elements of nature, is neither a mineral nor a vegetable, nor simply an animal, and the analogies which the physiologist detects between him and the kingdoms below him,
- 65. form no scientificbasis of human physiology, for like is not same. There may be no difference that the microscope or the crucible can detect between the blood of an ox and the blood of a man; for the microscope and chemical tests are in both cases applied to the dead subject, not the living, and the human blood tested is withdrawn from the living action of the soul, an action that escapes the most powerful microscope, and the most subtile chemical agent. Comparative physiology may gratify the curiosity, and, when not pressed beyond its legitimate bounds, it may even be useful, and help us to a better understanding of our own bodies; but it can never be the basis of a scientific induction, because between man and all animals there is the difference of species. Comparative physiology is, therefore, unlike comparative philology; for, however diverse may be the dialects compared, there is no difference of species among them, and nothing hinders philological inductions from possessing, in the secondary order, a true scientific character. Physiological inductions, resting on the comparative study of different individuals, or different races or families of men, may also be truly scientific; for all these individuals, and all these races or families belong to one and the same species. But the comparative physiology that compares men and animals, gives only analogies, not science. We do not undervalue science; on the contrary, what we complain of is, that our physiologists do not give us science; they give us facts, theories, or hypotheses. Facts are not science till referred to the principles that explain them, and these principles themselves are not science till integrated in the principles of that high and universal science called theology, and which is really the science of the sciences. The men who pass for savans, and are the hierophants and lawgivers of the age, sin not by their science, but by their want of science. Their ideal of science is too low and grovelling. Science is vastly more than they conceive it; is higher, deeper, broader than they look; and the best of them are, as Newton said of himself, mere boys picking up shells on the shores of the great ocean of truth. They, at best, remain in the vestibule
- 66. of the templeof science; they have not entered the penetralia and knelt before the altar. We find no fault with Professor Draper's science, where science he has; we only complain of him for attempting to palm off upon us his ignorance for science, and accepting, and laboring to make us accept as science what is really no science. Yet he is not worse than others of his class. The second work named in our list is the professor's attempt to extend the principles of his human physiology to the human race at large, and to apply them specially to the intellectual development of Europe; the third is an attempt to apply them to the civil policy of America, and the fourth is an attempt to get a counter-proof of his theories in the history of our late civil war. Through the four works we detect one and the same purpose, one and the same doctrine, of which the principal data are presented in his work on human physiology, which is cast in a purely materialistic mould. They are all written to show that all philosophy, all religion, all morality, and all history are to be physiologically explained, that is, by fixed, inflexible, and irreversible natural laws. He admits, in words, that man has free-will, but denies that it influences events or anything in the life and conduct of men. He also admits, and claims credit for admitting, a Supreme Being, as if there could be subordinate beings, or any being but one who declares himself I AM THAT AM; but a living and ever-present God, Creator, and upholder of the universe, finds no recognition in his physiological system. His God, like the gods of the old Epicureans, has nothing to do, but, as Dr. Evarist de Gypendole, in his Ointment for the Bite of the Black Serpent, happily expresses it, to "sleep all night and to doze all day." He is a superfluity in science, like the immaterial soul in the author's Human Physiology. All things, in Professor Draper's system, originate, proceed from, and terminate in, natural development, with a most superb contempt for the ratio sufficiens of Leibnitz, and the first and final cause of the theologians and philosophers. The only God his system recognizes is natural law, the law of the generation and death of phenomena, and distinguishable from nature only as the natura naturans is
- 67. distinguishable from thenatura naturata of Spinoza. His system is, therefore, notwithstanding his concessions to the Christian prejudices which still linger with the unscientific, a system of pure naturalism, and differs in no important respect from the Religion Positive of M. Augusta Comte. The Duke of Argyle, in his Reign of Law, which we reviewed last February, a man well versed in the modern sciences, sought, while asserting the universal reign of law, to escape this system of pure naturalism, by defining law to be "will enforcing itself with power," or making what are called the laws of nature the direct action of the divine Will. But this asserted activity only for the divine Being, therefore denied second causes, and bound not only nature, but the human will fast in fate, or rather, absorbed man and nature in God; for man and nature do and can exist only in so far as active, or in some sense causative. The passive does not exist, and to place all activity in God alone is to deny the creation of active existences or second causes, which is the very essence of pantheism. Professor Draper and the positivists, whom he follows, reverse the shield, and absorb not man and nature in God, but both God and man in nature. John and James are not Peter, but Peter is James and John. There is no real difference between pantheism and atheism; both are absurd, but the absurdity of atheism is more easily detected by the common mind than the absurdity of pantheism. The one loses God by losing unity. and the other by losing diversity, or everything distinguishable from God. The God of the atheist is not, and the God of the pantheist is as if he were not, and it makes no practical difference whether you say God is all or all is God. To undertake a critical review of these several works would exceed both our space and our patience, and, moreover, were a task that does not seem to be called for. Professor Draper, we believe, ranks high among his scientific brethren. He writes in a clear, easy, graceful, and pleasing style, but we have found nothing new or profound in his works. His theories are almost as old as the hills,
- 68. and even older,if the hills are no older than he pretends. His work on the Intellectual Development of Europe, is in substance, taken from the positivists, and the positivist philosophy is only a reproduction, with no scientific advance on that of the old physiologers or hylozoists, as Cudworth calls them. He agrees perfectly with the positivists in the recognition of three ages or epochs, we should rather say stages, in human development; the theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific or positivist. In the theological age, man is in his intellectual infancy, is filled with sentiments of fear and wonder; ignorant of natural causes and effects, of the natural laws themselves, he sees the supernatural in every event that surpasses his understanding or experience, and bows before a God in every natural force superior to his own. It is the age of ignorance, wonder, credulity, and superstition. In the second the intellect has been, to a certain extent, developed, and the gross fetichism of the first age disappears, and men no longer worship the visible apis, but the invisible apis, the spiritual or metaphysical apis; not the bull, but, as the North American Indian says, "the manitou of bulls;" and instead of worshipping the visible objects of the universe, as the sun, moon, and stars, the ocean and rivers, groves and fountains, storms and tempests, as did polytheism in the outset, they worship certain metaphysical abstractions into which they have refined them, and which they finally generalize into one grand abstraction, which they call Zeus, Jupiter, Jehovah, Theus, Deus, or God, and thus assert the Hebrew and Christian monotheism. In the third and last age there is no longer fetichism, polytheism, or monotheism; men no longer divinize nature, or their own abstractions, no longer believe in the supernatural or the metaphysical or anything supposed to be supramundane, but reject whatever is not sensible, material, positive as the object of positive science. The professor develops this system with less science than its inventor or reviver, M. Auguste Comte and his European disciples; but as well as he could be expected to do it, in respectable English. He takes it as the basis of his History of the Intellectual
- 69. Development of Europe,and attempts to reconcile with it all the known and unknown facts of that development. We make no quotations to prove that we state the professor's doctrine correctly, for no one who has read him, with any attention, will question our statement; and, indeed, we might find it difficult to quote passages which clearly and expressly confirm it, for it is a grave complaint against him, as against nearly all writers of his school, that they do not deal in clear and express statements of doctrine. Had Professor Draper put forth what is evidently his doctrine in clear, simple, and distinct propositions, so that his doctrine could at once be seen and understood, his works, instead of going through several editions, and being commended in reviews and journals, as scientific, learned, and profound, would have fallen dead from the press, or been received with a universal burst of public indignation; for they attack everything dear to the heart of the Christian, the philosopher, and the citizen. Nothing worse is to be found in the old French Encyclopedists, in the Système de la Nature of D'Holbach, or in l'Homme-Plant, and l'Homme-Machine of Lamettrie. His doctrine is nothing in the world but pure materialism and atheism, and we do not believe the American people are as yet prepared to deny either God, or creation and Providence. The success of these authors is in their vagueness, in their refusal to reduce their doctrine to distinct propositions, in hinting, rather than stating it, and in pretending to speak always in the name of science, thus: "Science shows this," or "Science shows that;" when, if they knew anything of the matter, they would know that science does no such thing. Then, how can you accuse Professor Draper of atheism or materialism; for does he not expressly declare his belief, as a man of science, in the existence of the Supreme Being, and in an immaterial and immortal soul? What Dr. Draper believes or disbelieves, is his affair, not ours; we only assert that the doctrine he defends in his professedly scientific books, from beginning to end, is purely physiological, and has no God or soul in it. As a man. Dr. Draper may believe much; as an author, he is a materialist and an atheist, beyond all dispute: if he knows it, little can be said for his honesty; if he does not know it, little can be said for his
- 70. science, or hiscompetency to write on the intellectual development of Europe, or of any other quarter of the globe. But to return to the theory the professor borrows from the positivists. As the professor excludes from his physiology the idea of creation, we cannot easily understand how he determines what is the infancy of the human race, or when the human race was in its infancy. If the race had no beginning, if, like Topsy, "it didn't come, but grow'd," it had no infancy; if it had a beginning, and you assume its earliest stage was that of infancy, then it is necessary to know which stage is the earliest, and what man really was in that stage. Hence, chronology becomes all-important, and, as the author's science rejects all received chronology, and speaks of changes and events which took place millions and millions of ages ago, and of which there remains no record but that chronicled in the rocks; but, as in that record exact dates are not given, chronology, with him, whether of the earth or of man, must be very uncertain, and it seems to us that it must be very difficult for science to determine, with much precision, when the race was, or what it was, in its infancy. Thus he says: "In the intellectual infancy of the savage state, man transfers to nature his conceptions of himself, and, considering that everything he does is determined by his own pleasure, regards all passing events as depending on the arbitrary volition of a superior but invisible power. He gives to the world a constitution like his own. The tendency is necessarily to superstition. Whatever is strange, or powerful, or vast, impresses his imagination with dread. Such objects are only the outward manifestations of an indwelling spirit, and, therefore, worthy of his veneration." (Intellect. Devel. p. 2.) We beg the professor's pardon, but he has only imperfectly learned his lesson. In this which he regards as the age of fetich worship, and the first stage of human development, he includes ideas and conceptions which belong to the second, or metaphysical age of his
- 71. masters. But letthis pass for the present. The author evidently assumes that the savage state is the intellectual infancy of the race. But how knows he that it is not the intellectual old age and decrepitude of the race? The author, while he holds, or appears to hold, like the positivists, to the continuous progress of the race, does not hold to the continuous progress of any given nation. "A national type," he says, (ch. xi.,) "pursues its way physically and intellectually through changes and developments answering to those of the individual represented by infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death respectively." How, then, say scientifically that your fetich age, or the age of superstition, the theological age of the positivists, instead being the infancy of the nation, is not its last stage next preceding death? How determine physiologically or scientifically that the savage is the infant man and not the worn-out man? Then how determine that the superstition of which you have so much to say, and which, with you, means religion, revelation, the church, everything that claims to be, or that asserts, anything supernatural, is not characteristic of the last stage of human development, and not of the first? Our modern physiologists and anti-Christian speculators seem all to take it for granted that the savage gives us the type of the primitive man. We refuted this absurd notion in our essay on Faith and the Sciences. There are no known historical facts to support it. Consult the record chronicled in the rocks, as read by geologists. What does it prove? Why, in the lowest and most ancient strata in which human remains are found, along with those of extinct species of animals, you find that the men of that epoch used stone implements, and were ignorant of metals or unable to work them, and, therefore, must have been savages. That is, the men who lived then, and in that locality. Be it so. But does this prove that there did not, contemporary with them, in other localities or in other quarters of the globe, live and flourish nations in the full vigor of the manhood of the race, having all the arts and
- 72. implements of civilizedlife? Did the savages of New England, when first discovered, understand working in iron, and used they not stone axes, and stone knives, many of which we have ourselves picked up? And was it the same with Europeans? From the rudeness and uncivilized condition of a people in one locality, you can conclude nothing as to the primitive condition of the race. The infancy of the race, if there is any justice in the analogy assumed, is the age of growth, of progress; but nothing is less progressive, or more strictly stationary, in a moral and intellectual sense, than the savage state. Since history began, there is not only no instance on record of a savage tribe rising by indigenous effort to civilization, but none of a purely savage tribe having ever, even by foreign assistance, become a civilized nation. The Greeks in the earliest historical or semi-historical times, were not savages, and we have no evidence that they ever were. The Homeric poems were never the product of a savage people, or of a people just emerging from the savage state into civilization, and they are a proof that the Greeks, as a people, had juster ideas of religion, and were less superstitious in the age of Homer than in the age of St. Paul. The Germans are a civilized people, and if they were first revealed to us as what the Greeks and Romans called barbarians, they were never, as far as known, savages. We all know how exceedingly difficult it is to civilize our North American Indians. Individuals now and then take up the elements of our civilization, but rarely, if they are of pure Indian blood. They recoil before the advance of civilization. The native Mexicans and Peruvians have, indeed, received some elements of Christian civilization along with the Christian faith and worship; but they were not, on the discovery of this continent, pure savages, but had many of the elements of a civilized people, and that they were of the same race with the savages that roamed our northern forests, is not yet proved. The historical probabilities are not on the side of the hypothesis of the modern progressivists, but are on the side of the contrary doctrine, that the savage state belongs to the old age of the race—is not that from which man rises, but that into which he falls.
- 73. Nor is thereany historical evidence that superstition is older than religion, that men begin in the counterfeit and proceed to the genuine,—in the false, and proceed by way of development to the true. They do not abuse a thing before having it. Superstition presupposes religion, as falsehood presupposes truth; for falsehood being unable to stand by itself, it is only by the aid of truth that it can be asserted. "Fear made the gods," sings Lucretius; but it can make none where belief in the gods, does not already exist. Men may transfer their own sentiments and passions to the divinity; but they must believe that the divinity exists before they can do it. They must believe that God is, before they can hear him in the wind, see him in the sun and stars, or dread him in the storm and the earthquake. It is not from dread of the strange, the powerful, or the vast, that men develop the idea of God, the spiritual, the supernatural; the dread presupposes the presence and activity of the idea. Men, again, who, like the professor's man in the infancy of the savage state, are able to conceive of spirit and to distinguish between the outward manifestation and the indwelling spirit, are not fetich worshippers, and for them the fetich is no longer a god, but if retained at all, it is as a sign or symbol of the invisible, Fetichism is the grossest form of superstition, and obtains only among tribes fallen into the grossest ignorance, that lie at the lowest round of the scale of human beings; not among tribes in whom intelligence is commencing, but in whom it is well-nigh extinguished. Monotheism is older than polytheism, for polytheism, as the author himself seems to hold, grows out of pantheism, and pantheism evidently grows out of theism, out of the loss or perversion of the idea of creation, or of the relation between the creator and the creature, or cause and effect, and is and can be found only among a people who have once believed in one God, creator of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible. Moreover, the earliest forms of the heathen superstitions are, so far as historical evidence goes, the least gross, the least corrupt. The religion of the early Romans was pure in comparison with what it subsequently became,
- 74. especially after theEtruscan domination or influence. The Homeric poems show a religion less corrupt than that defended by Aristophanes. The earliest of the Vedas, or sacred books of the Hindoos, are free from the grosser superstitions of the latest, and were written, the author very justly thinks, before those grosser forms were introduced. This is very remarkable, if we are to assume that the grossest forms of superstition are the earliest! But we have with Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, no books that are of earlier date than the books of Moses, at least none that can be proved to have been written earlier; and in the books of Moses, in whatever light or character we take them, there is shown a religion older than any of the heathen mythologies, and absolutely free from every form of superstition, what is called the patriarchal religion, and which is substantially the Jewish and Christian religion. The earliest notices we have of idolatries and superstitions are taken from these books, the oldest extant, at least none older are known. If these books are regarded as historical documents, then what we Christians hold to be the true religion has obtained with a portion of the race from the creation of man, and, for a long series of years, from the creation to Nimrod, the mighty hunter or conqueror, was the only religion known; and your fetichisms, polytheisms, pantheisms, idolatries, and superstitions, which you note among the heathen, instead of being the religion of the infancy of the race, are, comparatively speaking, only recent innovations. If their authenticity as historical documents be denied, they still, since their antiquity is undeniable, prove the patriarchal religion obtained at an earlier date than it can be proved that any of the heathen mythologies existed. It is certain, then, that the patriarchal, we may say, the Christian religion, is the earliest known religion of the race, and therefore that fetichism, as contended by the positivists and the professor after them, cannot be asserted to have been the religion of the human race in the earliest stage of its existence, nor the germ from which all the various religions or superstitions of the world have been developed.
- 75. But we maygo still farther. The attempt to explain the origin and course of religion by the study of the various heathen mythologies, and idolatries, and superstitions, is as absurd as to attempt to determine the origin and course of the Christian religion by the study of the thousand and one sects that have broken off from the church, and set up to be churches themselves. They can teach us nothing except the gradual deterioration of religious thought, and the development and growth of superstition or irreligion among those separated from the central religious life of the race. In the ancient Indian, Egyptian, and Greek mythologies, on which the author dwells with so much emphasis, we trace no gradual purification of the religious idea, but its continual corruption and debasement. As the sects all presuppose the Christian church, and could neither exist nor be intelligible without her, so those various heathen mythologies presuppose the patriarchal religion, are unintelligible without it, and could not have originated or exist without it. The professor having studied these mythologies in the darkness of no-religion, understands nothing of them, and finds no sense in them—as little sense as a man ignorant of Catholicity would find in the creeds, confessions, and religious observances of the several Protestant sects; but if he had studied them in the light of the patriarchal religion, which they mutilate, corrupt, or travesty, he might have understood them, and have traced with a steady hand their origin and course, and their relation to the intellectual development of the race. We have no space to enter at length into the question here suggested. In all the civilized heathen nations, the gods are divided into two classes, the Dii Majores and the Dii Minores. The Dii Majores are only the result of a false effort to explain the mysterious dogma of the Trinity, and the perversion of the Christian doctrine of the Eternal Generation of the Son, and the Eternal Procession of the Holy Ghost. The type from which these mythologies depart, not which they realize, is undeniably the mystery of the Trinity asserted, more or less explicitly, by the patriarchal religion; and hence, we find them all, from the burning
- 76. South to thefrozen North, from the East to the West, from the Old World to the New, asserting, in some form, in the Divinity the sacred and mysterious Triad. The Dii Minores are a corruption or perversion of the Catholic doctrine of saints and angels, or that doctrine is the type which has been perverted or corrupted, by substituting heroes for saints, and the angels that fell for the angels that stood, and taking these for gods instead of creatures. The enemies of Christianity have sufficiently proved that the common type of both is given in the patriarchal religion, hoping thereby to get a conclusive argument against Christianity; but they have forgotten to state that, while the one conforms to the type, the other departs from it, perverts or corrupts it, and that the one that conforms is prior in date to the one that corrupts, perverts or departs from it. No man can study the patriarchal religion without seeing at a glance that it is the various forms of heathenism that are the corrupt forms, as no man can study both Catholicity and Protestantism without seeing that Protestantism is the corruption, or perversion—sometimes even the travesty of Catholicity. The same conclusion is warranted alike by Indian and Egyptian gloom and Greek gayety. The gloom speaks for itself. The gayety is that of despair—the gayety that says: "Come, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die." Through all heathendom you hear the wail, sometimes loud and stormy, sometimes low and melodious, over some great and irreparable loss, over a broken and unrealized ideal, just as you do in the modern sectarian and unbelieving world. But why is it that the professor and others, when seeking to give the origin and course of religion, as related to the intellectual development of the race, pass by the patriarchal, Jewish, or Christian religion, and fasten on the religions or superstitions of the Gentiles? It is their art, which consists in adroitly avoiding all direct attacks on the faith of Christendom, and confining themselves in their dissertations on the natural history of the pagan superstitions, to establishing principles which alike undermine both them and Christianity. It is evident to every intelligent reader of Professor
- 77. Draper's Intellectual Developmentof Europe, that he means the principles he asserts shall be applied to Christianity as well as to Indian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman mythology, and he gives many broad hints to that effect. What then? Is he not giving the history of the intellectual development of Europe? Can one give the history of that development without taking notice of religion? If, in giving the natural history of religion, showing whence and how it originates, what have been its developments, its course, its modifications, changes, decay, and death, by the influence of natural causes, science establishes principles which overthrow all religions, and render preposterous all claims of man to have received a supernatural revelation, to be in communion with the Invisible, or to be under any other providence than that of the fixed, invariable, and irresistible laws of nature, or purely physiological laws, whose fault is it? Would you condemn science, or subordinate it to the needs of a crafty and unscrupulous priesthood, fearful of losing their influence, and having the human mind emancipated from their despotism? That is, you lay down certain false principles, repudiated by reason and common sense, and which all real science rejects with contempt, call these false principles science, and when we protest, you cry out with all your lungs, aided by all the simpletons of the age, that we are hostile to science, would prevent free scientific investigation, restrain free manly thought, and would keep the people from getting a glimpse of the truth that would emancipate them, and place them on the same line with the baboon or the gorilla! A wonderful thing, is this modern science; and always places, whatever it asserts or denies, its adepts in the right, as against the theologians and the anointed priests of God! The mystery is not difficult to explain. The physiologists, of course, are good Sadducees, and really, unless going through a churchyard after dark, or caught in a storm at sea, and in danger of shipwreck, believe in neither angel nor spirit. They wish to reduce all events, all phenomena, intellectual, moral, and religious, to fixed, invariable, inflexible, irreversible, and necessary laws of nature.
- 78. They exclude indoctrine, if not in words, the supernatural, creation, providence, and all contingency. Every thing in man and in the universe is generated or developed by physiological or natural laws, and follows them in all their variations and changes. Religion, then, must be a natural production, generated by man, in conjunction with nature, and modified, changed, or destroyed, according to the physical causes to which he is subjected in time and place. This is partially true, or, at least, not manifestly false in all respects of the various pagan superstitions, and many facts may be cited that seem to prove it; but it is manifestly not true of the patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian religion, and the only way to make it appear true, is to not distinguish that religion from the others, to include all religions in one and the same category, and conclude that what they prove to be partially true of a part, is and must be true of the whole. That this is fair or logical, is not a matter that the physiologists, who, where they detect an analogy, conclude identity, trouble themselves at all about; besides, nothing in their view is illogical or unfair that tends to discredit priests and theologians. Very likely, also, such is their disdain or contempt of religion, that they really do not know that there is any radical difference between Christianity and Gentooism. We have never encountered a physiologist, in the sense we use the term here, that is, one who maintains that all in the history of man and the universe proceeds from nature alone, who had much knowledge of Christian theology, or knowledge enough to be aware that in substance it is not identical with the pagan superstitions. Their ignorance of our religion is sublime. We have thus far proceeded on the supposition that the professor means by the infancy of the savage state the infancy of the race; we are not sure, after all, that this is precisely his thought, or that he means anything more than the infancy of a particular nation or family of nations is the savage state. He, however, sums up his doctrine in his table of contents, chapter i., of his Intellectual Development, in the proposition: "Individual man is an emblem of communities, nations, and universal humanity. They exhibit epochs
- 79. of life likehis, and like him are under the control of physical conditions, and therefore of law;" that is, physical or physiological law, for "human physiology" is only a special department of universal physiology, as we have already indicated. It would seem from this that the author makes the savage state, as we have supposed, correspond, in the race, in universal humanity, as well as in communities, to the epoch of infancy in the individual. But does he mean to teach that the race itself has its epoch of infancy, youth, manhood, old age, and death? He can, perhaps, in a loose sense, predicate these several epochs of nations and of political or civil communities; but how can he predicate them all of the race? "Individuals die, humanity survives," says Seneca; and are we to understand that the professor means to assert that the race is born like the individual, passes through childhood, youth, manhood, to old age, and then dies? Who knows what he means? But suppose that he has not settled in his own mind his meaning on this point, as is most likely the case; that he has not asked himself whether man on the earth has a beginning or an end, and that he regards the race as a natural evolution, revolving always in the same circle, and takes, therefore, the infancy he speaks of as the infancy of a nation or a given community. Then his doctrine is, that the earliest stage of every civilized nation or community is the savage state, that the ancestors of the civilized in every age are savages, and that all civilization has been developed under the control of physical conditions from the savage state. The germ of all civilization then must be in the savage, and civilization then must be evolved from the savage as the chicken from the egg, or the egg from the sperm. But of this there is no evidence; for, as we have seen, there is no nation known that has sprung from exclusively savage ancestors, no known instance of a savage people developing, if we may so speak, into a civilized people. The theory rests on no historical or scientific basis, and is perfectly gratuitous. In the savage state we detect reminiscences of a past civilization, not the germs of a future civilization, or if germs—germs that are dead, and that never do or can germinate. There are degrees of
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