Situating Connectivism
From LTCWiki
Relation to Existing Theories of Learning and Knowing
Questions/comments? Please contact me at george_siemens@umanitoba.ca
Epistemology
Any discussion of learning theory seems to require at least a brief exploration of epistemology, or the nature of knowledge. I’ll present here four broad conceptions. The first is that knowledge is something that is objective – it’s “out there,” we discover it, and when we discover the entity, it retains its original shape – and learning, or our understanding, is a matter of aligning ourselves to what we have encountered.
The second type is “in here” knowledge, namely that when we do encounter these objects, we create mental constructs through the act of cognition where we change or adjust or represent – symbolically perhaps, if you will – the external element or knowledge source.
The third type of knowledge, which again is a function of knowledge that is “in here,” is through subjective representations. And as we’ll discuss later, Piaget provides a statement of “nothing exists” that captures this idea well, which is that the external entity is of little consequence, and what is of greatest value – and what is perhaps, in the eyes of some theorists, of only value – is how we create or how we construct knowledge within ourselves, bearing potentially no resemblance to what is external.
More recently in the field of knowledge there is the emerging concept of knowledge residing in the network, something that is beyond experience, but organization is assigned by a specific individual.” It’s distributed; it’s a function of connections that exist across a domain or across a network of individuals, possibly incorporating the presence of technology, as well, in aiding, filtering, and making sense of the knowledge that exists.
Knowledge as related to mind
If understanding of knowledge requires diverse perspectives or holds numerous theorists, the concept of knowledge relating to the mind is even more chaotic in understanding. Carl Bereiter has put forward an effective criticism of the “mind as container” model of learning and knowledge, which has been prominent throughout much of history and is still prominent in many of the theories of learning that we’ve come to encounter. Much of Bereiter’s work indicates that the distributed function of knowledge, or knowledge that exists outside of a human mind and within a network, certainly informs our later discussion in this topic.
A few questions, though, are worth considering, namely, to what degree is knowledge innate? To what degree does it pre-exist within our minds? And certainly theorists have varying viewpoints on this, from the notion that there are core structures of language, for example, that as we begin to learn and grow we simply discover those core functions that exist, that it’s partly formed within us before we begin. Or, the other perspective: that everything is a blank slate and that development and the process of development does not rely on pre-existing conditions in any regard.
Other questions also arise as to the degree to which it’s physically embedded in our minds. How is learning or how is knowledge represented in our minds? How does matter give birth to mind or to consciousness? As well, are we hardwired for certain functions? Are there certain types of knowledge, mathematical, for example, or if we consider Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligence–but are we, as individuals, hardwired to more effectively engage in certain types of knowledge? And this especially as we’re finding we’re converging within the fields of neuroscience. We start to look at what’s the role of free choice? How do our existing neural structures determine or foster our potential?
Discussions of twins that are separated at birth often lead to an understanding years down the road of driving similar vehicles, having married a similar types of personality, having chosen or designed a similar type of home, and we begin to wonder to what degree is knowledge something that we perform within our mind, or to what degree are our minds prominently in control? And the way we are genetically wired determines, really, the outcome of our lives, revisiting the age-old discussion of freedom of choice or nature and nurture. We won’t, obviously, find a simple answer to these complex questions, but as we move through our discussion, it’s important to be aware of these as a background to our discussion.
What is our mind like?
The question then arises, as we’ll move forward in our discussion of learning, is what is our mind like, because our theories of learning will stem from our view of what knowledge is and also what our mind is like and how our mind operates. Some theorists have suggested that our mind is essentially a black box: we don’t know what goes on on the inside, and it really doesn’t matter as long as we can change and alter behavior. Some have suggested that the mind is like a computer, essentially playing an information-processing role, where new information is taken in, coded and stored for memory, and retrieved in future points. Others have suggested that the mind is an entity that stands within a particular space or a particular culture or a particular social environment, and that the mind’s functionality is directly tied to the space which it inhabits. And also, with the growth of biology and the continued understanding of biology, the concept that our mind is more like an ecology or network, where we may not completely understand all the operations at this stage, but it’s not like a computer, it’s not simply modularized, it’s much more vibrant and much more adaptive than what we’ve put forward in our understanding.
Definition of Learning
Definitions of learning abound and often reflect more of an existing theorist’s viewpoints than a theory of learning in itself. Whether learning is a noun, a verb, a product, or a process, or all of the above, whether it’s something that is an active process of construction, whether it’s a passive process of reception, whether it’s active engagement in sense-making, all influence an individual’s perspective or definition of learning. Driscoll has put forward a notion that learning is a persisting change in performance or performance potential that results through experience and interaction with the world, encompassing a variety of viewpoints of what learning might be. The views that we hold of knowledge and mind obviously predispose us to the types of theories of learning that we’ll adopt.
As discussed in the previous slide, viewpoints of knowledge and perspectives of the role of our mind in acquiring or working with knowledge largely express for ourselves what we perceive the act of learning to be. I’ve defined learning in the past as actionable knowledge or knowledge that presents the potential for action. This certainly can include definitions of tacit or explicit viewpoints of knowledge, but more specifically is a tentative state that in our world today, in our society today, knowledge requires some type of action. The eras of leisurely consideration, of elusive philosophical concepts, has today been replaced by a desire for momentum, a desire for advancing, a desire for achievement. Whether this is appropriate or not, I’ll leave for philosophers to decide, but it is a representation of what is occurring today.
Additional challenges with learning also reflect on what is our relationship to the knowledge in terms of our ability: Do we internalize it? Do we hold it in external structures? Do we hold it within social networks? Can knowledge exist within a database, within a book, within a library? These types of questions hopefully will be clarified for each listener for themselves as we move through an exploration of the different theorists and history of viewpoints on learning.
What should a learning theory do?
Any learning theory should provide at least three functions. One is to explain and predict – to explain what’s happening today, what’s going on, why did an individual acquire a particular competence through utilizing a particular process? – as well as to predict – to state that because we’ve observed that when Joe and Mary are engaged in this particular learning activity, this is the particular outcome. A learning theory should be able to predict that if we take what happened with Joe and Mary and apply that to Beth and Bob, we will receive a similar outcome or similar result. So the explanatory and the predictability nature of learning is important in any theory.
Another aspect of learning theory is that it needs to advance the discipline. Beyond simply providing a way of understanding learning as it’s occurring in a particular space, it needs to advance the entire discipline and move it forward, much as we’ll see key theorists have done with learning in the past. And perhaps most importantly, especially today, a theory of learning should prepare us and meet our future needs. In the society that we inhabit today, where information growth continues to increase, where technology continues to complexify our landscape, where global conversations are stripping away the previous single-siloed discussions, we require more than ever a perspective of learning that prepares our learners and our society for the future that we’re creating.
A final point of consideration, though, and certainly, as you move through this presentation, is important to recall, is that different theories of learning don’t exist as rigidly as they will be presented here. There’s a lot of overflow into different theories and there are a lot of individuals that inform more than one particular perspective.
History's crime
One of the problems that we encounter when we look back on history is that we use terms and we use classification or categorization that wasn’t exactly intended by the theorists during their existence. So today we find – and as we move through our exploration of learning theories we’ll encounter this on several occasions – that the work of Vygotsky, for instance, is used to advance the theories of cognitivism, and at other times is used to advance the theories of social constructivism. It’s important to note that a theorist typically resists classification and it’s through the act of classification where we assign increased value to one aspect of their thinking to align with some type of an ideology or mindset that exists in a particular era. So while we may find value in saying that Vygotsky was a social constructivist, we find much more value in looking at – outside of the categorizations that we utilize – in looking at, specifically, what is it that Vygotsky said about learning and not framing it within an existing mindset or an existing approach.
"What aspects of learning are obscured by one theory may be illuminated by another." (Driscoll)
Before we begin exploring these learning theories and the theorists that have proposed them in greater length, it’s important to take a holistic view on the nature of learning, in general. And essentially, as Driscoll has stated, that what aspects are obscured by one theory may be illuminated by another. We may be further ahead, instead of posing theories in opposition to each other, that we explore instead where theorists agree and where the principles of Vygotsky or Piaget or Bandera or Bruner or Skinner or Thorndike begin to influence the theory and practice of learning in a technology-enabled environment as we’ve come to know it today.
Behaviorism
Behaviorism, in its initial form, can be traced back to the late 1800s with work that Ebbinghaus was doing on exploring the role of learning, coming out of the assumption at the time that ideas are essentially strengthened or are connected through some process of association and how frequently these associations occur, learning then being based on the ability to create those types of associations. This led into Pavlov’s famous experiments with dogs and salivation that dogs experience when exposed to certain types of stimuli, which has subsequently been known as respondent conditioning.
As a result of that work, Thorndike, Watson, and Skinner emerged as subsequent theorists, playing around with varying levels of understanding on what it means to know in relation to a stimulus that an individual encounters. The Skinner perspective really focused on learning as behavioral change and operant conditioning, namely that we exist in some type of an environment, and as a result of that existence we’re influenced by reinforcers so our actions in a particular space are then a function of how we are rewarded or punished for our conduct, and that results in some type of learning or shaping or strengthening of our behavior.
Now the theory of behaviorism was somewhat balanced with a Gestalt theory which was popular as well in the early 1900s and positioned itself somewhat in opposition to the black box model that behaviorism presented, where the mind essentially is an unknown entity and our focus with behaviorism is much more so on trying to moderate and change the outward behavior. The Gestalt theory basically presented that we are more than simply our experiences and part of knowing, and part of knowledge, is also a function of creating some type of perspective or actively organizing the environment in which we exist.
Cognitivism
The difficulty of assigning defined characteristics are most evident in the next two theories we’ll consider: cognitivism and constructivism. Both of these theories lead strongly into each other. Cognitivism essentially puts forward a variety of concepts involved in information processing, metacognition, the notion that thinking or learning itself is primarily a cognitive activity that occurs in our head, and that knowledge itself is organized in that process of learning. You’ll see some resemblance to the Gestalt theory that we discussed a little earlier.
The impact of these challenges in learning relate to what’s the role of short-term memory? How do we encode – to use the terminology of cognitivists – new learning so that we have it accessible for retrieval in the future? Another concept that is later on reflected more explicitly with Piaget is the notion of cognitive dissonance, where if we certain ideas that we encounter that don’t align with each other, that friction results in some desire to resolve what exists and that process of resolving the friction is where a portion of our learning occurs.
We also see emerging in cognitivism the notion of schema or a schematic approach to learning. This is also prominent in constructivism, but it’s largely a process where we have an existing thought structure and new ideas are considered or subsumed or combined with existing ideas to enlarge our existing schema. To teach in this particular space a variety of techniques are put forward. Gagne’s events of instruction are quite common in providing a sense of guidance for how to teach in this space. The theorists or figures that we see most prominent also overlap with we’ll encounter shortly in constructivism. Piaget, particularly, is prominent in this space. Vygotsky plays more of a secondary role, and others – Bruner, Ausubel, with his focus on schema learning, and Gagne’s nine events of instruction are prominent as well.
Motivation
Motivation is a prominent element in any theory of learning, but a few components are particularly evident in cognitivism. One, the notion of attribution, namely, to what do I attribute my learning? To what do I attribute my success in learning? The concept of learned helplessness, as an example, essentially states that the outcomes reside largely outside of my actions – a sense that it doesn’t really matter what I do, I don’t have the skills, the ability, the competence to be able to master this particular concept. If that particular attitude is held, or if my learning is attributed to lack of intelligence or any other such trait, my motivation will be significantly hampered in increasing my level of learning. The emphasis on instructors, then, is to ensure that learners have an effective model to which they attribute their effectiveness as learners.
John Keller’s model of ARCS as a motivational model is also utilized to engage learners and to provide a framework in which more effective learning will occur. Now this certainly isn’t an extensive exploration of motivation, but it does get into the importance of considering how is it cognitively that we are motivated to take on certain learning tasks? To what degree is it a function of our personality? If we look at some of the work that Goldman has done with emotional intelligence over the last decade, we’ll see again that principles of our emotions, not specifically just our intellectually based cognitivism, do play a vital role in our sense of self and in our ability to perceive new resources in a confident light.
Constructivism
Of the theories that we’ve considered so far, constructivism has perhaps the greatest momentum within educational climates today. It currently consists of multiple camps that are defined by various theorists. For example, from cognition we have the work of Piaget. Through the discussion of interaction and culture we have Bruner and Vygotsky. We also have the emergence of contextual-based learning, something that we’ll discuss shortly as situated learning. So from these various spaces we’re seeing an emergence of learning that has influence from Dewey, Von Glasersfeld, even Thomas Kuhn. It’s difficult in this light to provide a clear example of constructivism because it is being advanced on many fronts in many different disciplines. One of the primary assertions of constructivism is that knowledge is constructed by learners as they attempt to make sense of their experiences.
As we explore the social, the cultural, and the cognitive aspects of constructivism, it’s worth keeping in mind that the way we frame a discussion here is influenced heavily by the method of application. Some theorists have suggested that constructivism itself is actually not a theory of learning so much as it is a philosophy or an approach to be involved to active learning.
Piaget
Through this brief introduction, I’m sure you’ve noticed that two figures continue to stand out prominently. One is Piaget; the second is Vygotsky. Piaget’s contribution to the field is hard to overstate, simply because it has such a broad impact, and not specifically within learning theory, but within psychology and other disciplines as well. A few of the notions Piaget presented was the concept of stages of development. His views that these are fairly strong, static states have been challenged by thinkers like Vygotsky and others as well. But essentially he provided four stages of development, the first being sensory-motor, which occurs in individuals up until approximately the age of two, where they’re getting comfortable with, literally, the ability to react to the environment around them and behavior becomes progressively more goal-directed.
The second stage is the pre-operational, and at this point the individual is involved in beginning to understand symbolic images or language games. Then, moving into concrete operational, which occurs from the age of 7 to 11, according to Piaget’s distinctions, the more concrete elements of cognition begin to emerge, and logical thinking starts to become prominent.
The formal operational occurs from the age of 11 to adulthood where an individual is able to think more abstractly and to think more systematically and logically in achieving or solving some of their concerns or their problems, or literally to be involved in the stage of learning.
Now the process of learning and development according to this model is essentially based on a concept of equilibrium, where we achieve a certain state where our schemes of representation in the environment are fairly static and adjusted. Periodically, when we encounter something that disrupts or impacts negatively this space, we move to models of assimilation or accommodation to take and acquire or bring in these new elements. And as quoted here by Piaget, his ascension or his central philosophy was that “all structures are constructed and that the fundamental feature is the course of this construction: Nothing is given at the start except some limiting points upon which all the rest is based. The structures are not given in advance in the human mind nor in the external world, as we perceive or organize it.” Now from this quote it becomes quite obvious that his theory was quite radical in how it related to existing conceptions of knowledge, that there was a level of innate potential inherent in the human mind, or that there is a level of objectivity and that the world as we explore it around us where we symbolically or where we internally represent that world is challenged by Piaget’s assumption that essentially, nothing is given in advance.
Social constructivism
Social constructivism has many prominent theorists. Albert Bender, for example, has put forward a notion of a social cognitive view of learning. Jerome Bruner has also contributed significantly as well to our understanding of the social implications of how we construct our understanding. But most prominent in this space, and certainly not paling in comparison to Jean Piaget is Lev Vygotsky. Most interestingly, Vygotsky did the bulk of his work in the period of 1924 to 1934 in Russia. His work, however, has only recently gained prominence in Western culture since the 1980s. A lot of Vygotsky’s emphasis focused on language as being a symbol or some type of a cultural tool and that as we develop our intelligence, according to Driscoll, we’re largely focused on internalizing the tools of our culture. Vygotsky focused heavily on the nature of the space that surrounds us within our point of cognition and we see some of these ideas being extended later on when we start looking at situated cognition or situated learning.
Another significant contribution that Vygotsky provided is the theory or the viewpoint of the zone of proximal development, namely that as learners we should try to function at a space just beyond our level of personal understanding or competence, a significant implication for instructors involved in classroom activities, where encouraging learners to extend themselves beyond existing understanding can be a vital tool for individuals to continue to grow and to develop. An important consideration within Vygotsky’s perspective which differs substantially from Piaget is that the theories we discussed previously with Piaget’s developmental cycle are not as strongly or as significantly held in place as Piaget promoted them. Vygotsky holds to a much softer, or a much more fluid developmental cycle than what Piaget put forward.
Constructionism
Constructionism is a concept that is quite different from constructivism, even though we certainly may find some of the ideas of key theorists in constructivism informing the concept of constructionism. Constructionism is put forward by Seymour Papert, who co-founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab with Minsky. The central concept is that people learn through making things, creative experimentation, and there is very limited value in theorizing without practical application or without practical doing. In fact, theorizing itself may be entirely unnecessary when learners explore and create and through that process of creation achieve a deeper level of understanding than what could possibly be acquired through instruction. A key distinction that Papert puts forward is that between learning and teaching. Teaching as an instructional process pales in comparison to the vitality of learners doing things together, whether it’s building blocks with Lego, whether it’s being actively involved in creating a poster or an art project, or designing something – it’s the hands-on activity that is central to learning, and this is the activity that Papert focuses on extensively. And looking at finding ways that we can use technology to enable children to use knowledge. So the computer is not the passive model that it’s often conceived of as being today where a learner clicks through to the next slide and reads and passively absorbs information. A computer or any type of technology is one that has learners actively involved and engaged in doing something with that knowledge instead of simply being passive consumers or passive observers.
Connectionism
Connectionism, a term quite distinct from what we’ll be discussing as connectivism shortly, has essentially had two lives. On the one hand, the work of Thorndike in the field of behaviorism has played a critical role in looking at how items or components of knowledge or learning are related to one another through a process of association. More recently, the space has been inhabited by cognitive psychologists, neuro philosophers, and proponents of artificial intelligence. Essentially this is a confusing, chaotic, but rapidly developing space. The connectionists’ primary claim, as evidence by what we’ll look at recent or modern generation connectionists is that information isn’t stored in a symbolic sense the way that we’ve conceived it in past. Instead, it’s stored through some process of weights’ or connections’ strengths and that cognition, to a degree, is a function of digital processing, but is heavily reliant on the connections that are formed throughout that process. Quoting very briefly now from the text Connectionism and the Mind from William Bechtel and Adele Abrahamsen. They state that connectionism can be distinguished from traditional symbolic paradigm by the fact that it does not construe cognition as involving symbol manipulation. It’s actually a function that the basic idea is that there is a network of elementary units or nodes, each of which has some degree of activation and these units are connected to each other so that the active units excite or inhibit the other units. Now at this point we start to move a little bit into a statement that’s typically classified as Hebbian learning which states that essentially neurons that fire together, wire together.
Now it’s important to note, however, that there are numerous fields that are blurring here. Part of it comes from what we’re understanding through the field of neuro science and connectionism as a function of neural networks may play an active role in that space or may be representative of what happens in that space. We also have research – based more so in technology – that’s coming from the field of artificial intelligence that’s adopting some of the concepts of connectionism simply because neural networks more accurately portray the learning that we do as human beings than the cognitive structure of if-then-else functions that have been based on first-generation artificial intelligence.
Situated Learning
More recently, the concept of situated learning has gained prominence, particularly with organizations and corporations that are distributed. Situated learning states that learning is a function of activity that is heavily contextual and based in a particular culture. For example, communities of practice as promoted by Etienne Wenger have suggested that much of our learning occurs as we exist in these spaces, and even if we’re not active participants, the concept of legitimate peripheral participation, we are continually learning as we are engaged in or involved in observing what happens in this space, and as our competence and as our understanding grows within a particular community, we continue where we move to a level of greater contribution or greater competence as being actively involved.
So learning itself, then, cannot be separated from the environment in which it occurs, and theorizing or lecturing is particularly ineffective because the application of the learning – and this attaches back slightly to the discussion we’ve just had on Seymour Papert’s constructionism – the learning itself must be based in the doing of something or the observing of something that is practical and real life, essentially pulling learning outside of the classroom and into a context of actual use.
Activity Theory
As with any theory of learning, the backdrop consists of a blend of philosophers, theorists, and psychologists. Activity theory is certainly no different with roots in the theories of C.S. Peirce, Karl Popper, and most prominently, Vygotsky. To a degree, activity theory was based in Russian psychology, largely an attempt to use the work of Karl Marx as a means of creating a psychology that would work within that particular environment. An activity is essentially, according to Martin Rider, an engagement of a subject towards a certain goal or an objective. The intent is to use or blend the tools of a particular culture so that the relationship between a human agent and the object of an environment is typically, to use Engestrom’s concepts, mediated through some type of cultural tool or some type of signs. Stated simply, activity theory is tightly connected to the environment in which it occurs, but there is again, in Engestrom’s terms, a desire or a need for an approach that links the individual and the societal structure.
Biological Views of Learning
The mixture of psychology, philosophy, theory, and practice that we have explored thus far may well pale in comparison to what we’re beginning to understand as a result of advances in technology and a biological understanding of learning. Much of what others have done, as admirable as it is, has been done behind a curtain, where we have only recently, and even now only at a limited level, had the ability to understand, to map, to mirror, or to observe what occurs within the human brain. And as these imaging techniques become more effective and more sophisticated, we might yet find that our future provides a source to refute much of what we’ve come to know and understand learning as defined by the theorists we’ve considered thus far.
A biological view of learning, then, is based strongly on the biology of what it means to be a human, namely what goes on in our minds – at a physiological level, what’s happening. The concept of Donegan and Thompson is that it appears that complex and distributed systems of neurons are implicated in learning, with some systems being centrally involved in the development and representation of a memory trace and others peripherally involved in the expression of a learned behavior. Essentially, the functions and activities of a brain determine learning of a type, a level, and a degree.
The concept that we expressed previously, or that we encountered in discussing connectionism, namely the Hebbian concept, that neurons that fire together, wire together may well have greater application in a biological view of learning.
As has been discussed, a biological view of learning is based on our understanding of what actually occurs within the human brain, how language works, how we come to understand math, abstract concepts, metaphors, the modular nature of different aspects of our brain, how we focus, how attention exists, how nutrition impacts our functioning and our learning. These are all concepts that we now have imaging techniques to be able to observe what’s happening – what’s happening when we look at a certain image, how does a brain function in a state of limited sleep or sleep deprivation? And essentially the basis of biological views of learning is that certain areas or structures of the brain serve certain functions, so there are aspects of our mind that attend to mathematical issues or that attend to language. And surprisingly, as some research has indicated, when one area of the brain is impacted through an accident or through some type of damage to a brain area, other parts of the brain may acquire some of the functionality that was previously held by that area of the brain. So this understanding of the structural functions of different aspects of our brain is strongly influencing or has the potential to strongly influence what goes on in a classroom or what goes on in an online course.
So this view of learning is based on the neural architecture and on the emerging field of neuroscience. We’re also starting to understand that our emotions play a significant role in the learning process as well, and in fact, in certain agitated states we function at a certain level of our mind where we are not readily able to access the more mathematical or the more theoretical or the more cognitive aspects of our thinking. And this is something most students already recognize: when they stand in front of a group to present or when they enter a room to write an exam, suddenly what was known intellectually fades as they’re overtaken with a sense of fear or a sense of anxiety. So as we begin to understand more and to grow in this field, as stated previously, it’s quite likely that much of what we currently know about learning will be revised and adjusted to reflect a more scientific and less theoretical or philosophical approach.
Conclusion
So where does that leave us in our discussion of learning, knowledge, and learning theories? Well, as this imag,e taken from flikr states, “In Russia, there are only directions, no roads.” And perhaps that’s the point where we’re at now. We are seeing many who are trying to make sense of this space of learning, and we’re also seeing, as we’ll discuss in part two of this presentation series, that our society is rapidly changing. Individuals have a far greater level of control than they’ve ever had in the past. The impact of advancing research in neuroscience, the impact of tools that enable individuals to collaborate across large distributed geographical spaces are not to be taken lightly in what will end up reshaping our education system. So here we are at a point where a century and a half of theorizing with some research to support it and largely experiential activities based on observations of individuals or what occurs in a classroom – we’re still largely unsettled. Our future of theories as well continue to grasp, almost as if we’re attempting to define the color of someone’s clothing only through seeing their shadow. And as we understand this, we have to acknowledge the inefficiencies that exist in any theory of learning, and that the beginning of new stages of learning and the beginning of an understanding of advanced levels of cognition – the impact of emotions, the impact on a societal level to what we do within our classroom spaces – it’s important to acknowledge that these aren’t territorial issues. There’s no value in martyring ourselves to an ideology at the expense of relevance. And as we move forward in attempting to define and to create a theory of learning that’s representative of the environment that we exist in today, we will surely be building well on the foundation of theorists and philosophers that have come before.
Questions/comments? Please contact me at george_siemens@umanitoba.ca
Further Reading:
Learning and Instruction: Margaret Gredler
Psychology of Learning for Instruction: Marcy Driscoll
