This has some pretty sharp assessment implications. If we should* (in order to best support learning/students) slow down educational processes, then I'd think class size reductions would be in order. Because what's the right magnitude of "slow" for reading a student's paper?

Edit: Of course, one way of accomplishing this might be to assign only one paper for a course, with the slowness coming from an extended composition process.

impactful

Do they govern, or is it more contingent? More of an instantiation?

See the distinction between most institutions' "minors" and Grinnell College's "concentrations."

I think I prefer maybe "acclimate" and "orient," both of which do less to separate the immediate experience of the students from larger experiences that transcend institutions.

wtf? We talking academically?

I'm not sure even that is the case.

Heart heart heart.

It is a sadness and a resentment that I don't think any of my institutional educators engaged me as much of anything but a student. There are some exceptions, but they seem small. I do not have and have never had, I'd say, a mentor.

Finite and Infinite Games.

I'm a little fuzzy here on meaning.

Post-Babel? In pursuit of Babel?

Though SDT might offer a framework for situating embodied needs--deficit-based needs (I'm using this term here as technical term related to self-esteem rather than its typical use in the education discourse)--within a universal set of psychological needs common to all humans.

I think I disagree with this. Not because its referent is wrong, though, but because I'd probably stand behind the idea that no learning is done alone, with "alone" (and its opposite) being metaphors. Maybe I'd use the word isolation?

I'm uncomfortable with this idea--even as I think it's entirely a direction I want this piece to be heading. I think my discomfort is with the idea that communities can be designed. I think features--structures--of communities can be designed, but I would also lean towards categorizing a community as an emergent property arising from those features, rather than the structure itself.

Spatial metaphors may not serve us--or rather, transcending them (while still using them where appropriate) may serve our goals here.

Schools do this--regardless of whether they do it for all groups. In fact, the fact that they accomplish this so "well" (I'm thinking of Ivy League secret societies) for some is evidence that they could do better at it for all.

The concept of generativity continues to draw new lines to stars in my conceptual constellation. Well--that's note quite right. I'm the one drawing the lines, and generativity continues to receive new ones.

Creating Incommensurability could be a nice title for a post.

Rules already presuppose a particular relationship of power and enforcement.

There's probably some useful relevant ideas in the space/place paper from my grad class with Derek Furr.

I think I like the word constrained more here. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it might be tied to "bound" sometimes having the connotation of inevitability. 'Constrained' seems more likely to foreground that the sources of those limitations are contingent on human decisions.

If we want to serve our students as effectively as possible.

I have a guess which is more likely.

I am cautious about this. I think historically much of the pride people have--especially the pride of sports--is a flavor of conditional regard. Pride stemming from "my school was better than yours." But I also read that as contingent self-regard... my pride is contingent on this belief, and would collapse if that belief were shattered.

Maybe what I'd look for is a sense of satisfaction (or pride from the belief that the institution cared for and nurtured students' ability to come to that satisfaction).

Love this.

See also Sean's Twitter thread on outcomes.

If not consciously, tacitly. That goes for both.

Reductionism in the service of de-skilling the profession—the better to maximize profit. But you have to design with tolerances, if you're going to do that. And the parts that don't measure up? Toss them and get a new one.

Yes. And my other concern is that it resumes a likeness between engineering and teaching that I consider perilous—not just alignment with commercial interests, but alignment with scientism narratives of simple cause and effect relationships. Analogs to load bearing walls, where you just need to make sure you have the right number of struts and everything will be okay. There's an adjacent word, architect, that has some of the same resonance with skill, but also draws some of the same ire, because it's about more than distributing load amongst supports that are known quantities.

I think this mirrors a greater emphasis on education as an instrumental rather than an inherent good (e.g. employability arguments). This is the kind of motivational crowding I think SDT answers so effectively. Which isn't to say that instrumental values aren't entirely valid, but maybe to be more specific about what I'm trying to get at here, the kind of instrumental values are controlled (rather than autonomous/self-endorsed).

What exactly is financial diversity? Varying income streams? (Probably.)

Robin DeRosa's Keynote at DPL 2019 centered around commentary around outsourcing.

This is reminding me of the trichotomy theory (I think that's what they called it?) of something being neither greater than nor less than nor equal to--which strikes me as an appropriate description of the three different technologies mentioned in this sentence (the last being a pencil and paper summary).

How is it that this doesn't already have Hypothes.is annotations?!

Is this being represented as a positive?

Seems like a strange thing for a handbook to say, but if it's in there, seems kosher. More seriously, negative judgments attached to a student's request for instructors to follow administratively determined policy seem strange. Presumably those administrative determinations are codifications of institutional values?

SOUP.

FERPA

... more Kyriarchy.

Kyriarchy

...

Again, FERPA.

Takes good care of the book? (Which is, in the grander scheme, moralistic value neutral.)

Effort isn't quantifiable, I'd argue.

FERPA

Seems like a design challenge for instructors--what systems can be put in place to come to know students? (Ironically, the general thrust of this satirical article is a barrier as shaming motivates hiding behaviors...)

I think implied in these lists is a contrast, but interestingly there's no opposites included here. You're not claiming online as individualistic, even if campus learning is "communal."

Toward autonomy in what sense? It seems to me that representations of online, including many of yours, seem to cast it as structurally limiting autonomy. The LMS in particular presupposes or assumes certain kinds of relationships and pedagogical moves unlikely to be endorsed by students and educators alike.

Oof.

This.

Useful.

This seems of general value--a kind of mirror of the problem, perhaps? Curiosity over combativeness may help all managers, but especially URG managers?

Nasty problem.

Hell yeah captioning to promote accessibility.

Easy to say, but phrasing like this risks circularity. Still worth saying.

NVC / The Anatomy of Peace territory.

Seems right to me.

Orthogonally related to Schroedinger's Asshole?

Ooof.

Nope nope nope nope.

What I'm reading into this (or out of?) is trust in organismic development, which is of course part of OIT.

Disagree. Not to say that I believe the opposite--I just don't think this is perhaps a human answerable question. The better/worse dimension here also places things on a simple number line (though it may not have an interval scale) where I'd say the larger part of the answer is qualitative.

Did it, though? It enabled connection to distant others in a way that was previously impossible.

I don't love this as a totalizing answer--particularly when there are still uncontacted groups of humans that may not see any generational changes in technology whatsoever.

To a point.

Sensitivity as a valuable resource.

Such a trope I'm not sure it's useful due to its baggage. Is there other phrasing that might not have this problem?

Zeroth World, am I rite?

Ooooof. Yes. Of course, "For the first time in history..." here perhaps means the last, oh, 10,000 years.

And perhaps a different adult-to-child ratio than we see in most present child-development situations these days (more adults than children at any given moment).

Seems like we have relatively little control over the resilience of these systems. Maybe fertilizer, but it seems that much of the time we're adding fertilizer to continue unsustainable practices.

There's a lot of people who don't know to do with this word.

Waaaaaaaait a minute these seem like possibly very important decisions à la secure attachment...

Seems perhaps an improvable claim to begin with. There being a lack of counterfactuals and all... As such, this seems both trivially true and trivially false.

Yes. This too. I can pretty close to 100% accept parenting as something that is neither an activity nor a skill--perhaps an outlook, or a relationship (that corresponds to an outlook). Blah blah blah Max van Manen Blah Blah Blah.

Yes. I like this analogy. Better hope there isn't a drought.

Hard hitting sentence.

Hurt people hurt people.

Potential application of my earlier "isntitution" typo?

Not quite this either. I wouldn't want to send the message that we should develop and deploy face recognition technology that records and counts smiles during class.

Wellllllllllll, I mean, they're also on an educational macro-system that strengthens and reiterates these implicit messages about performance and achievement...

"Limited" and "Strong" though not opposite are contradictory in this context.

This framing risks control-based/objectifying thinking--"If I try hard enough, I should be able to make them interested."

Bahahahhahahahaaa

Ooof. And students will not have perfect insight into what's helpful. But that thought draws its own criticism, which evokes that (Harvard?) study on learning critiqued by Jesse among others.

I don't think there's much that's simple about "achievement outcomes" or "results"... (tough there doesn't seem to be much recognition of these as complex things...

OIT--going to have to go back and re-read this...

I think I have.

Inconsistence/incoherence are words that I think have a lot of relevance here, for sure. This seems related to memetics.

Yes.

I'm not doing well with this at a basic level in some close interpersonal relationships at the moment.

I want a word other than shame to describe this.

Judgments of worth are a cloud? I wonder if maybe they're hubris? These invitations are also stemming from judgments, just qualitatively different ones.

Link.

Or even harnessed, repurposed, put to beautiful work.

I'm good at this sometimes.

Echoes Brad Reedy.

I've long since noticed this and find it unhelpful.

Part of the memeplex--though perhaps the combination of cognitive and affective elements/dimensions may benefit from a superstructure relative to a memeplex.

I love this framing.

Unconscious.

And innately.

Gene drives.

Also, sometimes the knowledge of deeper causes doesn't change the surface features of our response. Force may still be required to rescue Olive Oyl, but that force will be subtly qualitatively different.

There is danger here in merely substituting "deeper" symptoms as the legitimate aim of war.

Hoooooold up. I just encountered Marduk in Snow Crash.

Is it just me or does this link not... link... to the intended page?

Edit: It does not. It got conflated with the below link on shuttle schedules. Maybe it was supposed to be this one?

Does it require conscious triggering?

Same as above re: must.

I think we should be more uncomfortable with any framing or concept of students that doesn't recognize their inherent agency, separate from whatever our thoughts about their agency. The passive voice here does move away from instructor agency dominating, but not as far as I want it to. Maybe: "There is also cognitive dissonance in designing courses that recognize and validate the agency situated in learners..."

I think I will always prefer "larger world impact" to real world impact.

Myth of the Separate Self. This is a place where interbeing shows through (or where I want it to, though the language shift might seem stilted).

Are you gravitating toward "Learning experience designer"? I've heard that bandied about.

When you put it that way it doesn't sound so easy.

I'm thinking OER.

This reframing is what I'm here for.

This language inadvertently obscures the source of the "must"--that it's an institutional requirement tied to job expectations.

You have to have read some works related to SDT.

I'm growing away from wanting to use this word. In part because I have less and less of a handle on what it means.

This is another possible Lakoff connection, I think, but I haven't read that book of his.

Assessment contains multitudes.

I think we underestimate our ability to play a role in shaping all of these--especially social structures. But also overestimate? Influence, facilitate; not control, dictate. Maybe what I'm getting at is that many of what are currently unconscious or flippant decisions have more impact than we realize while our conscious efforts at control have less. (That's not quite right either--but I worry that conscious efforts are often misguided.)

An underrated and under-explored idea.

We're missing John Dewey in this list.

This is the direction I want to grow into as well. Which is maybe unsurprising, since this is a shift toward ecological thinking.

What does entirety entail?

Nice Metaphor kick, HybridPedagogy.

I wonder if there's a layer that's deeper than the "problem-based" frame--I'm thinking of a "hope-based" one, where our hopes for the world shape the way we read problems into contexts (or not).

This is an interesting choice of metaphor. It hearkens back to a violent conflict--conquering and sacking a city--but is here used (I'm imagining) completely separate from that origin. I wonder, however, whether it can be fully separate from a meaning tied to a lack of knowledge (and consent) on the part of the person receiving it. Trojan Horses, for me, stand apart from self-determined action, so I doubt I'd choose this metaphor.

That said, I think the idea of subtle and implicit invitations to step into new and better relationships with the world absolutely matches with the larger project here.

Sigh. I'll get there.

Much of my thinking has been about how to renovate face to face.

OOoooooooOOOoooOOOOoOOOOOOOOooooosuchacana'worms.

But... Online is just like a horseless carriage, right?

Now this phrasing certainly has my attention piqued, given I've been reading about agentic engagement as a new addition to Self-Determination Theory constructs. (Plus dissatisfaction as a new need state, but I wouldn't guess that's as directly related here.)

The obvious answer to these questions is that someone might be untrustworthy... But in education, it seems like that's an occasion for problem-solving, because the reason will be idiosyncratic.

Is it clear what will be easy? Will the same thing be easy for all students? (Unlikely.)

The hierarchical conception of learning (Bloom) doesn't seem right to me.

This much I can agree with.

Behaviorism. Simply base behaviorism. Plus, not much thought for the intersection of privilege and academic expectations. How about students who have less time to devote to coursework due to financial pressures? All of a sudden, your grading scheme replicates larger inequities.

The uncritical use of phrasing like, "or doing whatever you'd like to reward," also grates on me terribly. Students as objects to be acted upon by professor-as-knower.

Nope.

Right, because economics (rational actor theory, commodification, etc.) is what we need more of in education.

I'm positively salty at the moment in response to this article--maybe because it's adjacent enough to things I think are vital that I have higher hopes/expectations to be dashed.

Wtf?

Single dimension conception of motivation...

This is... bad. Those are forms (video, dramatic performance, musical performance) but it seems of dubious possibility that "loose specs" can really capture what it means to "demonstrate" the "ability" to "explain and apply" the material.

This doesn't seem to be a serious grappling with the issues of grading given this cavalier attitude toward adding timeliness to grading criteria.

This perspective doesn't seem to allow for emergent properties of learning, particularly as they relate to writing on a particular topic, with needs for structure related to the unique content of said topic. This also locates the generation of "specs" in the educator.

My use of this phrase is highly influenced by the concept of collusion as it appears in The Anatomy of Peace (this blog post is a decent overview).

Also, as much as I'd like to move away from a metaphor that relies on reference to ableness not shared by all--and which casts (or risks casting) blindness as bad--I don't seem to have found a satisfactory alternative. Suggestions welcome.

Above and beyond a course where those expectations weren't set in the first place, that is.

This phrasing is why I describe the position here as disempowering--assigning students to the position of direct object in the sentence (grammatically/linguistically speaking) is to act upon students. Other examples: "make my students..." and "get my students to..."

That this phrasing is pervasive is all the more reason to resist it. Though it's something else that invites our humility--with lots of practice and intention in avoiding this language, I still use it from time to time.

It's hard to overstate how close a companion his article is to mine.

This links to a tweet (and a Twitter user) that appears to no longer exist. The gist: If a professor is a mandatory reporter for things like sexual assault, they should disclose that fact in their syllabi.

Hmmmmmmmm. What, pray tell, is this link to?

Some of my comments from the discussion on this section:

"I think this is more of an entreaty. Imploring is another word that comes to mind. The reduction of the infinite to the finite is a source of sadness. I think this is a moment where my critique of the contract paradigm takes (tries to take) the form of a plea for resistance to that diminution."

I think we should be careful not to see “black text arranged on a white page with no thought to design” as ineffective. An expansive view of design (or one not unnecessarily narrow) would be quick to recognize the contributions referenced at the top of this article, some masquerading as simple “black text” — or even blank space — as (potentially) profound changes.

For example: consideration, recision, offer, acceptance, competency, representations, terms, obligation, conditions (both precedent and subsequent), warranties, breach, remedy, duty to read, risk allocation, and relief, among others.

This list courtesy of a conversation with my father, a lawyer.

Hello! Welcome! I thought it'd be fun to add a dimension to the article via Hypothesis annotation.

wtf?

!

I'd answer no.

(5, unless you count the two forms of amotivation...)

Sure might (will for some students). What kind matters, though.

What's the brain got to do with it? I'm tempted to say that it's more about mind--which is more subtle of a distinction than this annotation probably makes it out to be.

Who holds ownership by default?

Framing things around incentives preserves a kind of rational actor theory approach.

This ignores motivation quality as a factor.

<3

Thou mayest?

Scoping?

"To lead is to serve." And to serve is to recognize and work to meet the legitimate needs of those in your care. To know those needs, we must listen--seeing them in outline, broad brush stroke, is here not enough.

Love this.

I wondered a while back where I encountered this quotation--I bet I'll have a mental pathway back to this from now on.

I wonder what my physical copy annotations are?

I'm convinced this is what we want to move toward, but I don't think I have encountered too much writing on the subject directly. The recent conviviality stuff strikes me as relevant, though.

Key assumption for this view of learning.

I like the ending of this.

I think Sara Goldrick Rab took this position.

Sacred Economics. The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. Climate: A New Story.

Attributing this to schools is a pretty stark example of schools as political--in what I'd call an unacceptable direction.

MWLB

I'd be more granular and attribute the problems to risk-free positive interest bearing debt--usury--and its necessary effect of the conversion of common wealth to private wealth.

I'm thinking of the argument in Barry Schwartz's Why We Work that impoverished (mentally, emotionally, socially unengaging) forms of work create the very culture of "laziness" and lack of motivation used as arguments against policies like a Universal Basic Income.

Per usual, I think this harkens back to a panoply of arguments made by Charles Eisenstein, The Myth of the Separate Self in particular.

Disagree. I don't think this pigeon-holing is helpful.

(Which isn't to say I think these groups aren't responsible for grave and pressing harms, only that there's more they could have done.)

Intervention evokes questions around default.

What exactly are those conditions? No thinking that falls short of recognizing at least a global whole has much hope, but no teacher has the kind of control (at least as I think the word is meant here) over whether a mass shooting takes place--but those events reach into and affect classrooms.

Maybe the reason that I'm pushing back is that I want more specificity around what "control" means--and maybe to move in the direction of the language of autonomy support over the language of control.

I think this is an in-born trait, so I agree with the idea that limits are coming from without.

MWLB--personification of an ideology as something that asserts dominance, rather than something that reflects dominance? The whole idea of domination is itself antithetical to mutual agency.

Strong language here, I'd say notably so. What work does this do?

I'm hesitant to call this a method. It certainly involves a correspondence, but I don't think method is the right word. It seems to imply something that's stable, where "teaching to the test" is by definition variable depending on the form of that test.

Following capital ($)? Some resonance here with funding "cuts."

Metaphors We Live By

Objectification--The Anatomy of Peace

I really like this potential exercise.

What Would Bob Shepard Say?

Fun irony?

MWLB again, as I mentioned above.

Agree strongly. More Bob Shepard about how these terms are much more specific and contextual than they're claimed to be...

MWLB - "hawking" as education-is-a-consumer-good metaphor.

Part of P.L. Thomas's arguments against Mindset Theory as it's often implemented.

This would be an example of an underlying process as mentioned in my above annotation/link.