GOOD Education

Just read a fascinating article in The Australian. A quote:  "By 2025, there will be more Australians with degrees than ever before. This is an important first step, but it will be wasted if graduates haven't also been skilled to be the leaders and the thinkers of the 21st century. Achieving prosperity aspirations will require far-sighted reforms beyond a policy of funding universities on student demand alone."Another plea for thinking outside the square. I am not quite sure though whether this has to solely start with (university) education. Of course we still have not figured out what the essence of the good in education is (some claim it's the toolbox approach that is the substance of good education, others claim there is more to it, that is is about world citizenships etc. e.g. Nussbaum), but still I wonder: is that the only way to allow society to change? Because if you think outside the square, you still have to be able to find a relation with existing squares, so to speak. So not only the current generation of students has to learn how to be the leaders and the thinkers of the 21st century, also the current generation needs to be trained, educated, reshaped, whatever the wording. Otherwise we end up with a new generation that is disconnected and thus not capable of transforming. Because transformation needs connecting, of that I am convinced.

Also I am convinced that education needs philosophical scrutiny. Very few sector experience as many reshapings, innovations, new methods and experiments as the eduational sector, but compared to the intensity of experiments the theorectical foundation is rather poor. What is it that as a society we expect from education? What do we want our children to learn? What do we - grown ups (apparently:-)) want to learn? Who do we want to teach our children, our parents and ourselves? And where do we want to learn? Is the geography of learning and teaching, the where, important? Are schools the right form to work with for children? And if not, what, where and why then? Are schools on their way to museums as a form of education that we at one time thought was elementary to what we wanted to teach, be taught, learn and be educated in? A first grasp of questions that we by now quite desperately need to pay attention to. Starting with: what now is good education? Any thought anybody?

On teachers and teaching in higher education

In an interview with Loek Nieuwenhuis on BNR newsradio he ponders how teachers can be remotivated for their profession. Government thinks about financial incentives, Nieuwenhuis thinks about creating teams of people and a closer connection between education and the workplace. Whereas he mainly focusses on the vocational education, I think that remotivation of teachers on an academic level is also an issue to be taken into account.

Teachers on an academic level are either Phd students or people with Phd. But with no special didactical skills, training and at times even without any special inclination or ambition for teaching. The reasoning is probably that it is all about the content, but aren't we by now beyond that, I wonder? Can't we make more of academic teaching and training, get more out of academics and academic students if we pay attention to training academic teachers? And wouldn't that also be a simple first step towards knowledge valorisation? It is one of those items that I always wonder about. Lost of energy concerning education goes to primary, secondary and vocational training. Primary and secondary because they are the basis for all higher education. Vocational education takes in the majority of the people. But does that justify the little bit of energy that goes into professionalizing academic teaching? What constitutes good academic teaching? What is a good teacher? And what is good teaching? What is a good academic learning and teaching environment?

My own inclination would be that the answers to these questions are not only found by academic thinking and by thinking within the box of the academic system. Answers are to be found in practices on all levels of teaching, in cross overs between teaching and learning environments on different levels. In thinking and acting across existing boundaries and systems, so that new ones will evolve. Over the next weeks I will blog some more about this, as the ethics of education have my profound interest!

Yes, still here!

It's been quiet on my blog for a while. I am still here though and MK5060 is up and running with the first clients a fact again. But I am in the process of developing not one but even two new lines of business, each together with a partner. And I am writing my articles, with one completed in draft version and sent out for comment, the other one in the near final stage and then there is the book on bike2culture that is close to the first draft. I hope to be well underway to a new blogpost here at the end of this week!

FLL Benelux final

Yesterday was the day of the FLL Benelux final. The FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) is a competition that challenges kids in the age of 8 to 15 to undertake research into the role technology plays in society. This years theme was Body Forward and so a heap of teams presented solutions for heart failure, night vision,artificial limbs, wheelchairs with gearshifts, cool braces for kids with scolioses and other problems. The finals were held in Continium, the recently redone and re-openend science center in Kerkrade. I was part of the team jury judging the team work and that was nowhere near as easy as it looked! Quite a few schools and teams are by now experienced and it is hard to judge the authenticity and truthfulness of everything and everybody I found. And with some teams you feel that they did a great job, but it just doesn't show. And then there are the teams where it all comes together and they give you energy to move on in the wonderous field of science education. As always the entire event was presented by Hidde en Thomas, who outdid themselves once again as far as I'm concerned. And I even got to hand out an award, the one for best team coach. We wholeheartedly and uninanimously decided that it should go to the 13 year old who had coached her team of 13-15 year olds without help of any grown ups. She and the whole team did a wonderful job and it was my pleasure to give her the award. Although we were knackered by the time we got home, we totally enjoyed the experience and the warm hospitality of Continium. Thanks to the entire organising team! 

A few impressions (and yes, as we are getting close to Carnival in the South of Holland, Prince Carnaval was in attendance!):

The Green Coach from the German team

Prince Carnival in attendance

LEGO Basketball player

at the end of the day.....Packed and ready to go home

Higher education: on dialogue and real choices

The pressure on higher education is becoming unbearable and requires fundamental change. Higher education is stretched past its limits of what the current budgets and coming budget cuts allow. That is how I read the message of the Dutch secretary of state for education. I am aware that it is a consicously positive way of reading this message. And that there is another way of interpreting it: politics, "The Hague" comes up with everything without listening to the ones involved. Two world colliding: the managers, politics, money and result drivenness versus the world of emotions of teachers who passionately want to teach, of the students, involved in a system they cannot control and of which they are insecure whether it will help them form their future. Whether the leadership they feel is necessary for the future is awakened in them in this system. But can they see a viable alternative future? The clash between the worlds is evident. But necessary. Because neither the solely managerial perspective offers a fruitful path nor does the alternative offered by teachers and students.

And that is the downside of this process, no matter how positive the interpretation of the message. There is no proper dialogue. No dialogue between the personal, emotional, the passion and the experience from practice on the one hand and the managerial, alsmost technological policies that are now voiced. This dialogue is necessary. Because to proceed how we have been doing of the past decades will not help us to create the future we envisage. This dialogical way of thinking and working, of looking at organisations I think is making progress in a number of areas, notably health care. Or at least in thinking about health care with Kunneman as one of the leading thinkers on the subject (sorry, article in Dutch).

Dialogue in this matter requires true leadership. Leadership that recognizes the value of both perspectives but that is also capable of thinking past the existing frameworks. That is capable of dealing with the emotions involved. Emotions that are valuable and hold a truth that is equal to the managerial perspective. Leadership that enables to mould the future of education, that moves education into the future with a clear idea in stead of merely managing on surviving the future. Leadership that is based on listing and dialogical thinking.

My contribution: this week and next week I have a number of conversations planned with new parties and old friends where this will be on the agenda and where we will seek to find out what we can contribute together to organising and enabling this dialogue. In addition I have submitted a proposal along the lines of action learning for Informatie aan Zee regarding this topic, but then of course focussing on the choices that information and documentation organisations see themselves faced with. Not everything is possible anymore (if it ever was:-), but vis-a-vis a multitude of ambitions, possibilities, demands and budget cuts how do you deal with the inevitable dilemma's? And what are ways of dealing with these dilemma's knowing that whichever way you go there will be fundamental and substantial loss, change and gain?

Please contact me if you want to think and work on these questions!

Physical and virtual learning environments

Will we still have a need for libraries in the future? This article on the BBC site gives one of the best summaries of the main arguments in the debate on access to information that I have seen for a while. It does give a clear picture of where libraries need to develop. In the western world that is. Because the eIFL.net experience taught me that in the south and east matters do look dramatically different!

Author of Things and Stuff wins Herman de Coninck debut prize!

Annemarie Estor, with whom I devised and wrote my company fairytale (Things and Stuff), won the Herman de Coninck price for her poetic debut Vuurdoorn me. A personal and professional achievement and I am so incredibly proud of her and happy for her! Above all it is a true compliment for her determination to follow her passion and dream.

For me personally I take it as an inspiration today to work on the books and articles I have started to write. Articles on entertainment and education, on ethics in training of (young) doctors and on using dilemmas in science and technology education. My book on conference management which is still in the very early stages but begging to be taken that step further and on our epically disasterous journey bike2culture. Inspiration for a day of writing thus. With the sole ambiton of getting everything that one step further towards publication. Getting myself through this solitary work singing Dory's song from Finding Nemo: "Just keep swimming". just keep writing, just keep writing....

The same goes for Annemarie: whatever you do, keep writing, keep composing poems. We need your written children for inspiration and enchantment.