Collaboration | Interdisciplinary integration | Reconciliation of perspectives and methodologies
Interdisciplinary integration. The trend in the social sciences is towards greater multidisciplinarity. In line with the expectation for 21st century skills which largely focuses on practical problem solving and collaboration (ATC21S), researchers will collaborate in addressing a problem as are teaching programs. Research programs will go cross borders as the focus will be on solving practical and anticipated problems or addressing a big issue (e.g., global warming). Implementation of research outputs may be a requirement. In the teaching dimension, even what are considered relatively more structured areas such as engineering are being organized in some universities by projects rather than by “disciplines” such as chemical, civil, or industrial engineering. Learning Sciences is another example. The divergent terminologies that are used in different disciplines will merge through collaboration. Mutual understanding and mutual valuing of the various disciplines' research will be attained through a shared understanding, and a shared vision on issues common to all the learning sciences. Access to the communities in terms of establishing trust and working together will develop through outreach, building trust, adopting worthwhile and relevant research goals, and the increasing uses of technology. These measures will bring people with different perspectives to an understanding of our discipline as a whole for better inter-disciplinary cooperation.
Technological advances. The rate of technological advance is projected to continue unabated. Processing speed and storage capacity will grow exponentially but most importantly, our world will become ever more interconnected, enjoining the powerful systems that already exist to take on ever more complex tasks. Its presence in school, work, and home environments will become more integrated. Ever increasing integration will facilitate collaboration and access, providing increasing support for learning. These advances will provide opportunities to customize and to use technology in a way that will benefit learning and research. We will witness an increasing use of data mining techniques to predict human behaviour and to tailor products and services to each individual, similar to how insurance and credit card companies already operate today. This will be facilitated by the massive amounts of user data already being collected, which is projected to continue growing. For example through connective mobile tools, location data such as GPS on smart phones, search records/history, social interactions/networking, etc. All this could be investigated in formal and informal learning situations, effectively bringing the laboratory into the world at large. This raises the problem of large-scale modeling, and management of massive data. The solution to which could lend itself to distributed processing projects like the one initiated by SETI, leasing computer space to needy organizations by high-end processing centres.It can also be possible to have computer-based “pedagogical agents” that may help learners in self regulation and learning. The net generation will be in a position to impact the work environment not only through the use of technology but also through awareness about world situations.
Methodological diversity. Research methodologies are more and more diversified. It is projected that there will be integrated use and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. The trend seems to be that there will be better situations to analyze qualitative data quantitatively in designs of greater complexity. There will be more streams of data (audio like think-aloud, video such as observations or focus groups, trace data such as face reading or eye-tracking, text, or quantitative data). Researchers will be expected to come up with more “accurate” and more “complete” understanding or characterization of phenomenon, which in turn requires, not just using two or more data sources for triangulation, but more comprehensive and “complete” data and conclusion. In order to do so, researchers will need access to greater data stores, some already exist, ex: data.gov, ciqss.umontreal.ca. It is projected that policy advances will make possible the ethical and safe and secure us of public data. In a way, it may not be enough to do what one can do, but what the problem or the situation requires. This may result in pushing the limits of existing “constrained” research designs and there may be new designs to surface. We may see the integration of longitudinal designs familiar to other areas of the social sciences. We can use other disciplines as guidance, namely, economists can look back for 100 years.
Bridging theory and practice | Re-culturing
Collaboration. The persistent dilemma on how to effectively integrate research findings into classroom practice may be mediated by developing a better understanding of teacher characteristics and the nature of teaching. This understanding would be an outgrowth of a knowledge building community that brings together researchers, policy makers, practitioners and teachers. The community’s objectives would include creating education policies informed by and informative to the broader society. Success would rely on a shared mindset that partnerships positively impact research and teaching. This view may begin to challenge the belief that research can be produced by researcher and exported to teachers and curriculum developers. The erosion of the belief that researchers and teachers are separate entities may better connect research and practice. Example: PDS (professional development school). It would be wise to include teachers and students with different conceptions, sharing and negotiating research agendas and questions, to better connect research with schools. Stronger communities of practice will develop as a result of the development of an efficient mechanism of dealing with data: Teachers and researchers will be able to work with authentic data. They will have better resources for dealing with the data, both in terms of tools, and labor.
Praxis. A challenge that education has always faced, and that has become increasingly noticeable in the past decades, is the difficulty of changing teachers’ practices. One reason, among others, is that policymakers lack knowledge of teachers’ needs and of their day-to-day activities. Much research has been done to improve learning in different educational settings. However, very little has been put into practice. Far too often, the application (or shall we say “interpretation”) of theoretical ideas fail to generate the anticipated results. For example, many secondary classrooms have desks arranged into small groups, supposedly to encourage collaboration. Unfortunately, in too many of these same classes, students are discouraged from talking so that the teacher can “teach” at the front of the room. The research necessary in the following decade should concentrate on creating alignment between researchers, teachers and curriculum designers. This alignment requires overcoming an existing power difference between researchers and practitioners. This means researchers must value teachers in order to foster a better understanding to change practice: change, not just at the individual level, but whole scale change. In order to bring about the required change in mindset, we need to bring people with different backgrounds together. We need to start looking at teachers as pedagogical and disciplinary learners. We need to learn about the process of change.
Capacity for innovation. With the rapid advancement of technology, which brings innovative forms of pedagogical approaches to the education system, schools are no more in a position to adhere traditional didactic ways of teaching. These advancements will demand the redesigning of teacher education programs as well as professional development programs that are in line with the new pedagogical approaches. Teachers cannot successfully enact new pedagogical innovations within their existing capacities as teachers, caregivers, activity leaders, community organizers, etc. More extensive support either from all levels of society is needed: the whole society, from the policy makers on top, to the community members at the grassroots. The value of research needs to be measured in terms of its relevance, meaningfulness and timeliness. The speed with which research findings inform practice needs to keep up with technology in order that research remains relevant to practice. However it is important to find that balance between using technology for technology's sake and using technology because it is useful.
Questions raised
Assessment. The issue of how teaching and instruction should be assessed will continue to take prominence in research and policy discussions. Given the increasing integration and interconnectivity of technology and the increasing complexity of research models, constructs will be expected to be more objective, more multi-dimensional, and more scalable. that should be assessed, scalability of objective assessment: cognitive processes, affective processes. Assessment will be viewed not as a driving/summative force of learning but as a formative process in the learning process. How should teacher should be involved in self assessment, guiding learning, as a constructive process?
Technology. Another possible challenge may be in relation to adapting technological advancements for teaching and learning purposes. Technological advancements primarily occur in order to improve working conditions and life in general. The advancements are not usually done by taking the betterment of education as a central focus. When computers are invented, they were not primarily designed to foster the education process. We feel that it is the responsibility of educators/instructional designers to think of how new technological innovations can be adapted to teaching and learning. So keeping pace with the rapid change of technologies to make effective use of them for educational purposes may be a challenge. Furthermore, there may be a mismatch in the speed at which technological advances are occurring and the speed at which we can get teachers trained with the new innovations, i.e. by the time we get graduates from teacher education programs, the innovations that were existing when they start the programs may become obsolete. Teacher beliefs, values and attitudes also play a key role in whether in the successful integration of new technology into the learning. Synchonized notion between technology and practice, make it remain relenvant and current.
Globalization.Another question we might need to ask is: Are research universities globalizing? A global vision is needed to achieve more cooperation worldwide and to achieve greater openness in higher education. As a community, when we can learn together, and share resources, we can meet grand challenges together. However, the pace at which technological advancements are undertaking and being incorporated as part of education systems in general and the teaching learning process in particular across nations is not same. With the presence of disparity in such respects, achieving a global vision will be a challenge. A great challenge will be making education more locally relevant. Re-culturing.
Some more can include
Learning could be inquiry based as it involves more of question raising rather than question answering.
The system will be more and more encouraging and rewarding for innovative approaches in research and teaching.
More support and guidance will be available for self learning and for learning outside of the classroom.
Learning may be more related to work.
There can be more collaboration between schools and the community.
Interdisciplinary integration. The trend in the social sciences is towards greater multidisciplinarity. In line with the expectation for 21st century skills which largely focuses on practical problem solving and collaboration (ATC21S), researchers will collaborate in addressing a problem as are teaching programs. Research programs will go cross borders as the focus will be on solving practical and anticipated problems or addressing a big issue (e.g., global warming). Implementation of research outputs may be a requirement. In the teaching dimension, even what are considered relatively more structured areas such as engineering are being organized in some universities by projects rather than by “disciplines” such as chemical, civil, or industrial engineering. Learning Sciences is another example. The divergent terminologies that are used in different disciplines will merge through collaboration. Mutual understanding and mutual valuing of the various disciplines' research will be attained through a shared understanding, and a shared vision on issues common to all the learning sciences. Access to the communities in terms of establishing trust and working together will develop through outreach, building trust, adopting worthwhile and relevant research goals, and the increasing uses of technology. These measures will bring people with different perspectives to an understanding of our discipline as a whole for better inter-disciplinary cooperation.
Technological advances. The rate of technological advance is projected to continue unabated. Processing speed and storage capacity will grow exponentially but most importantly, our world will become ever more interconnected, enjoining the powerful systems that already exist to take on ever more complex tasks. Its presence in school, work, and home environments will become more integrated. Ever increasing integration will facilitate collaboration and access, providing increasing support for learning. These advances will provide opportunities to customize and to use technology in a way that will benefit learning and research. We will witness an increasing use of data mining techniques to predict human behaviour and to tailor products and services to each individual, similar to how insurance and credit card companies already operate today. This will be facilitated by the massive amounts of user data already being collected, which is projected to continue growing. For example through connective mobile tools, location data such as GPS on smart phones, search records/history, social interactions/networking, etc. All this could be investigated in formal and informal learning situations, effectively bringing the laboratory into the world at large. This raises the problem of large-scale modeling, and management of massive data. The solution to which could lend itself to distributed processing projects like the one initiated by SETI, leasing computer space to needy organizations by high-end processing centres.It can also be possible to have computer-based “pedagogical agents” that may help learners in self regulation and learning. The net generation will be in a position to impact the work environment not only through the use of technology but also through awareness about world situations.
Methodological diversity. Research methodologies are more and more diversified. It is projected that there will be integrated use and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data. The trend seems to be that there will be better situations to analyze qualitative data quantitatively in designs of greater complexity. There will be more streams of data (audio like think-aloud, video such as observations or focus groups, trace data such as face reading or eye-tracking, text, or quantitative data). Researchers will be expected to come up with more “accurate” and more “complete” understanding or characterization of phenomenon, which in turn requires, not just using two or more data sources for triangulation, but more comprehensive and “complete” data and conclusion. In order to do so, researchers will need access to greater data stores, some already exist, ex: data.gov, ciqss.umontreal.ca. It is projected that policy advances will make possible the ethical and safe and secure us of public data. In a way, it may not be enough to do what one can do, but what the problem or the situation requires. This may result in pushing the limits of existing “constrained” research designs and there may be new designs to surface. We may see the integration of longitudinal designs familiar to other areas of the social sciences. We can use other disciplines as guidance, namely, economists can look back for 100 years.
Bridging theory and practice | Re-culturing
Collaboration. The persistent dilemma on how to effectively integrate research findings into classroom practice may be mediated by developing a better understanding of teacher characteristics and the nature of teaching. This understanding would be an outgrowth of a knowledge building community that brings together researchers, policy makers, practitioners and teachers. The community’s objectives would include creating education policies informed by and informative to the broader society. Success would rely on a shared mindset that partnerships positively impact research and teaching. This view may begin to challenge the belief that research can be produced by researcher and exported to teachers and curriculum developers. The erosion of the belief that researchers and teachers are separate entities may better connect research and practice. Example: PDS (professional development school). It would be wise to include teachers and students with different conceptions, sharing and negotiating research agendas and questions, to better connect research with schools. Stronger communities of practice will develop as a result of the development of an efficient mechanism of dealing with data: Teachers and researchers will be able to work with authentic data. They will have better resources for dealing with the data, both in terms of tools, and labor.
Praxis. A challenge that education has always faced, and that has become increasingly noticeable in the past decades, is the difficulty of changing teachers’ practices. One reason, among others, is that policymakers lack knowledge of teachers’ needs and of their day-to-day activities. Much research has been done to improve learning in different educational settings. However, very little has been put into practice. Far too often, the application (or shall we say “interpretation”) of theoretical ideas fail to generate the anticipated results. For example, many secondary classrooms have desks arranged into small groups, supposedly to encourage collaboration. Unfortunately, in too many of these same classes, students are discouraged from talking so that the teacher can “teach” at the front of the room. The research necessary in the following decade should concentrate on creating alignment between researchers, teachers and curriculum designers. This alignment requires overcoming an existing power difference between researchers and practitioners. This means researchers must value teachers in order to foster a better understanding to change practice: change, not just at the individual level, but whole scale change. In order to bring about the required change in mindset, we need to bring people with different backgrounds together. We need to start looking at teachers as pedagogical and disciplinary learners. We need to learn about the process of change.
Capacity for innovation. With the rapid advancement of technology, which brings innovative forms of pedagogical approaches to the education system, schools are no more in a position to adhere traditional didactic ways of teaching. These advancements will demand the redesigning of teacher education programs as well as professional development programs that are in line with the new pedagogical approaches. Teachers cannot successfully enact new pedagogical innovations within their existing capacities as teachers, caregivers, activity leaders, community organizers, etc. More extensive support either from all levels of society is needed: the whole society, from the policy makers on top, to the community members at the grassroots. The value of research needs to be measured in terms of its relevance, meaningfulness and timeliness. The speed with which research findings inform practice needs to keep up with technology in order that research remains relevant to practice. However it is important to find that balance between using technology for technology's sake and using technology because it is useful.
Questions raised
Assessment. The issue of how teaching and instruction should be assessed will continue to take prominence in research and policy discussions. Given the increasing integration and interconnectivity of technology and the increasing complexity of research models, constructs will be expected to be more objective, more multi-dimensional, and more scalable. that should be assessed, scalability of objective assessment: cognitive processes, affective processes. Assessment will be viewed not as a driving/summative force of learning but as a formative process in the learning process. How should teacher should be involved in self assessment, guiding learning, as a constructive process?
Technology. Another possible challenge may be in relation to adapting technological advancements for teaching and learning purposes. Technological advancements primarily occur in order to improve working conditions and life in general. The advancements are not usually done by taking the betterment of education as a central focus. When computers are invented, they were not primarily designed to foster the education process. We feel that it is the responsibility of educators/instructional designers to think of how new technological innovations can be adapted to teaching and learning. So keeping pace with the rapid change of technologies to make effective use of them for educational purposes may be a challenge. Furthermore, there may be a mismatch in the speed at which technological advances are occurring and the speed at which we can get teachers trained with the new innovations, i.e. by the time we get graduates from teacher education programs, the innovations that were existing when they start the programs may become obsolete. Teacher beliefs, values and attitudes also play a key role in whether in the successful integration of new technology into the learning. Synchonized notion between technology and practice, make it remain relenvant and current.
Globalization. Another question we might need to ask is: Are research universities globalizing? A global vision is needed to achieve more cooperation worldwide and to achieve greater openness in higher education. As a community, when we can learn together, and share resources, we can meet grand challenges together. However, the pace at which technological advancements are undertaking and being incorporated as part of education systems in general and the teaching learning process in particular across nations is not same. With the presence of disparity in such respects, achieving a global vision will be a challenge. A great challenge will be making education more locally relevant. Re-culturing.
Some more can include