Learning Environments, and last week on Info Literacy

Hey!  I'm going to condense my posts into one for this week due to time crunch.  Sorry, I know smaller bite-sized posts are easier to scan and comment on. 

First of all, I just want to remark how refreshing it is to read concise, straightforward literature like this which obviously affects my future directly.  I spend so much time reading stuff by academics on academia, sometimes I forget that I'm not training to become an academic (thank goodness.)

Breaking down learning environments into four areas was very helpful.  It did take me a moment to realize that the chapter was implying that learning environments should be learner, knowledge, assessment, AND community centered.  That's quite a challenge. Here's how I felt about each:

(Oh, first I agree that standards for education are through the roof.  This is the price we pay for progress I suppose!  I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on how or if standards should be reeled in.)

Learner-centered:
Clearly, learning environments must take into account the culture and personality of students.  To link to what we've been talking about, this is where using "prior knowledge" comes is; that is, teachers need to frame classes so as to work with rather than against what students already know or have been cultured to assume.  By that I don't mean that teachers shouldn't challenge bad assumptions (they should) but rather that they need to be keenly aware of them. 

Knowledge-centered:  I agree that education is set up to be too broad, and not deep enough.  I even must challenege our own U of M somewhat, particularly LSA.  It's well and good to pride oneself on being an extremely "liberal" program, forcing students to take classes in a wide range of areas, and there are clearly benefits.  However, while being well-rounded is important, employers want expertise.  It seems that you get your foot in the door by having an obsession with a certain thing, getting references and connections, getting one's foot in the door, and THEN being a well-rounded, well-adjusted person helps you on your way.  It kind of gets back to standards....what is demanded is both breadth and depth.  A lot of places do well on breadth, but how can we get depth as well?

I like the notion of realizing that young kids are capable of doing more than we once assumed, and that realizing this may be to their benefit.  However, I would also caution that any statement about "what students can do" is very tricky, as age doesn't go too far in determing "what students can do."  Still, good notion in general.

I also like the idea of attempting to make curriculum more natural, allowing motives or providing needs for students to actually use skills and knowledge, rather than just having fractured chapters and units.  This is somewhere information literacy could possibly fit in, as it focuses on not just finding but being able to apply knowledge.  I can see it working particularly in humanities classes, as kids are asked to challenege or corroborate their ideas with information in the world.

Assessment-Centered:
I agree that formative assessment is lacking at all levels of education, even here at SI.  One has to make a real effort and make time to get a lot of personalized feedback from professors beyond a few major assignments often, so I'm glad KF seems to be periodically checking and commenting on our blogs, for one thing.  One does also have to realize that a large part of education is to rank and judge aptitude of students, rather than actually educate!  It's going to take a massive political and cultural shift for this to change significantly and quickly.  I think when this does change, Information Literacy will find its way into curriculums more systematically.  I was remarking with my group in class that one reason its tough to get info lit classes is beacuse there is no AP Information Literacy, and its not explicitly addressed on standardized tests.  It's easy to explain "when am I going to use this?!" to students inthe case of info lit, but more difficult to say "this is going to get you a high score on the SATs."  Colleges should make a point of judging information literacy in applications, and then maybe schools will have to do a good job of teaching it.

On a personal note, I have to disagree very much with the assertion that Japanese culture makes students feel OK about making mistakes in class.  I taught English in Japan and this couldn't have been further from the truth.  It was like pulling teeth to get students to speak in class for fear of making a mistake, and this was particularly grevious in English because learning a language isnt something you can just study at home for and then ace.  It actually requires active use, and is very much a trial and error proccess.  So I dont really know what that study was getting at.

Cultural-centered:
Part of this seemed very much to overlap with user-centered in that it talked about taking culture and background into account.  More interesting was the idea that the world outside of school is very important to successful education.  This is where libraries come in!  Libraries need to strive to be a place where education happens outside of school, as they always have, and work to promote themselves as legitimate and crucial places of learning.  This probably means working with current education systems, flawed as they are, while trying to steer it in a better direction.  Info lit is one thing, but we also have to facilitate more mainstream subjects to be sustainable.

Information Literacy in class:
Normally I despise talking a lot about definitions for vacuous terms, like information literacy.  I very much believe that language is reflexive, not referrential, so I tend to look at definitions as arguing semantics.  However, when looked at as a way of talking about what students need to learn, and how libraries are specifically suited to the task, I found the discussion to be extremely helpful.  So in general: I don't care what the definition of information literacy is.  I don't think it will ever be well defined.  That's fine.  What's important is all the myriad assumptions, problems, and trends that come out in the discussion.  So.