Learning, Knowledge and Wisdom for all in Late Modernity Bob Fryer, Campaign for Learning, United Kingdom

1. Learning, Knowledge and Wisdom for
All in Late Modernity
EDEN CONFERENCE PLENARY SESSION
Porto, 7 – 9 June, 2012
Professor R. H. (‘Bob’) Fryer CBE
Chair, National Campaign for Learning (UK)
Former Chief Executive of NHS University

2. Agenda
 What is the nature of the ‘late modern’
(contemporary) world?
 Divisive learning in a divided world
 What kinds of learning and learners have a
chance of thriving in the emergent world
(and what will not)?
 How can new technologies help?
 One example – Using Web 2.0, “WebWise”

3. An era of widespread economic, social,
political, technological & cultural change
x Global & national financial crises, the ‘credit crunch’ &
‘Euro crisis’ – where next after more than 3 decades of
neo-liberalism?
x Long-run changes in social, political & cultural
institutions (Family, Politics, Consumption etc)
x Some disillusion with ‘conventional’ politics
x Restructuring of work, employment & industry
x Shifts in personal & group identities & aspirations
x A growing tendency for ‘choice’
x An information & knowledge revolution
x Continuing technological innovation
x Greater localism within globalisation
x Social fragmentation & division
x New forms & expressions of citizenship

4. Towards ‘Risk Society’ (Beck)
Ubiquitous
Change
Unreliability Uncertainty
Unpredictability Un-sustainability
Risk Society
‘Fuzzy’
Boundaries Choice
Multiple & Beyond
Contested Information Conventions,
& Knowledge Rules & Structures

5. Even City Financiers & Journalists are
begining to realise
”Our New Age of Volatility Defies
Spreadsheeet Strategists”
“What really matters now … are non-
quantitative issues, such as political
values, soal cohesion and civic identity”
Gillian Tett, Financial Times, 5 June, 2012

6. The contradictions of learning
 Is engaging for some, but a nightmare for many
more
 Distributes both achievement & failure
 Rewards the successful, punishes those who
don’t succeed
 (Mostly) leads to good jobs & social mobility for
some, a life of drudgery for others
 Begins a lifetime of learning & discovery for some
(a minority?), but exclusion for most
 Is beset by, & often reinforces, social divisions -
social class, race & ethnicity, gender, disabilities,
region, religion, identity & age

7. Current or recent participation in UK adult
learning 1996-2012 by social class
70
60
50
TOTAL
40 AB
30 C1
C2
20
DE
10
0
1996 1999 2002 2004 2007 2008 2010 2011 2012
Source NIACE Annual Surveys

8. Current or recent participation in UK adult
learning 1996-2012 by age group
Source:NIACE

9. What can be done to change this?
Educational solutions
 Improve, reform or diversify institutions
 Provide additional resources for ‘deprived’ or ’excluded’
 Improve access/widen participation/better opportunities
 Modify curriculum
 Enlarge ways of measuring learning and/or achievement
 Value/introduce more forms, modes, locales & styles of learning
 Change/enrich pedagogy
Social/political solutions
 Redistribute wealth, income, status & power
 Implement ‘positive’ action/reverse discrimination
 Enhance social mobility

10. Varieties of Learning, Knowledge &
Wisdom
 Learning occurs in a variety of ways; in many
different locales, through many different modes, for
many different purposes & the manner in which it is
funded & otherwise supported also varies
 Similarly, the sources, generation, validation &
transmission of knowledge are both varied & often
fiercely contested
 What constitutes wisdom in any given context, &
how it is acquired, is also open to debate

11. An Analytical Framework for Adult Education &
Lifelong Learning
Formal Learning
National Programmes
Public Funding Qualifications &
Focus on InstitutionsTargets Economy & Labour Market
Citizenship Mix of Public, Corporate &
Individual Funding
Inclusivity/WP
Work-based Training
Welfare State, Social Welfare to Neo-liberal,
Collectivist Purpose Work Market &
Public Funding Individualist
Leisure, Pleasure & ‘ Increasingly Private
‘seriously useless’ Funding
‘Big Society’ Emphasis
Community , Regeneration
More Voluntary, Community, &
Capacity Building
Non- Institutional Locations
Incorporation & Control
Focus on ‘Local’ &
Personal
Informal Learning

12. An emergent model of learning
Domain Traditional Emergent
Study Education Learning
Locale School/other Everywhere – work,
institution home etc
Time Childhood/early Lifelong & life-wide
adulthood
Style Teacher centred Learner-driven
Delivery Face-to-face Distance & ‘e’
Target Group Universal to max Specific & mass
school age -elite
Curriculum Expert/pro- Joint production &
fessional user generated
Focus Theory/abstract Practice
Discipline Single Multi-disciplinary
Mode Learning by rote Reflective
Form Instructional Constructivist
Purpose Qualification Action/
application

13. Reconciling Max Weber with Pablo Picasso
In the emergent , late modern world of risk society,
in order to thrive, citizens need a subtle and
developing combination of:
Technical, specific, bureaucratic & accredited skills
and competences; and
Creativity, imagination, flexibility , spontaneity and
intuition

14. Enhancing Learners’ (People’s?)
‘Digital Literacy’
Source: Wayne Barry, “The Generation Game”

15. Critical pedagogy
Critical pedagogy aims:
“to enable learners to go beyond thinking in
order to enable them as citizens to act as
engaged agents in their various worlds, giving
voice to their hopes and ambitions for change
and improvement”. (Giroux 2007: 1-5)
It is about fostering “a language of critique and
possibility”. (Giroux 2005: 211
It promises to engender what Barber (1998)
regards as the true mark of an activist
democracy - a “noisy and fractious citizenry”.

16. Making a contribution with
Web 2.0
 The ‘WebWise’ project – a European Union
funded collaboration
 Six countries, 9 partners, focus on ‘Public
Health’
 Making use of Web 2.0 in formal & informal
educational settings
 Pilot schemes:
 Bulgaria
 Germany (2)
 Greece
 Slovenia
 UK

17. Meaning of ‘Web 2.00’
(per Bonder Updohn 2009)
 Collaboration and/or distributed authorship
 Active, open-access, “bottom-up” participation
& interactive multi-way communication
 Continuous production, reproduction, and
transformation of material in use and reuse
across contexts
 Openness of content, renunciation of copyright,
distributed ownership
 Lack of finality, “awareness-in-practice” of the
“open-endedness” of the activity
 Placed on the WWW, or to a large extent
utilising Web-mediated resources and activities

18. Why Web 2.0?
 Many of the students/practitioners were already
users ‘socially’
 Could be especially appropriate in the field of public
health:
- for ‘reaching out’ to individuals/groups in the
community;
- overcomes some problems of ‘face-to-face’
- enables a degree of individualisation or
‘personalisation’
- mitigates some causes of inequality in learning
 Scope for engaging a wider community of
participants, including professionals
 Would allow user generated content/knowledge to
shape programme
 Might lend itself to development of independent &
‘critical’ perspective of participants

19. One Researcher’s answer
“Web 2.0 technologies and practices are being introduced into teaching and
learning activities. The reasons for doing so are many: For one thing, employing in
the service of learning some of the communication practices that young people
are already using voluntarily in their spare time arguably will help them enter
the learning practices of the university, both in respect of their motivation
and of the skills required of them. Related to this, for another, in both a lifelong
and life-wide perspective (Jarvis 2007), the user-centred focus of Web 2.0
activities supports the learner in transgressing and resituating content and
practices between the formal and informal learning settings in which s/he
participates. An important third reason is the didactic potential of Web 2.0: The
centrality of participation, production, dialogue ,and collaboration in Web 2.0
practices seemingly make them ideal as elements in programmes focusing on the
learner’s active engagement, individually and/or collaboratively, as a
prerequisite for learning. From yet a fourth point of view, many of the possible
future jobs of the students will require competence in the use of Web 2.0—for
example, skills in navigation, communication, and critical evaluation—and,
therefore, a new task of educational programmes is to support the acquisition of
such competences along with other subject-related competences.” Bonderup
Dohn, N. , 2009, “Web 2.0: Inherent tensions and evident challenges for
education,” International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative
Learning

20. A Web 2.0 Conception of Knowledge (&
Wisdom)
Wenger’s concept of learning stresses the continuous negotiation of
meaning and identity in practice in the mutual, though not necessarily
harmonious, engagement with others. This closely corresponds, at the
general level, to the dynamicity, open-endedness and flexibility of the
Web 2.0 practices and more concretely to the centrality in these practices
of “bottom-up” knowledge production, construction, and
transformation; of communication and collaboration; and of use and
reuse of material across contexts. Such characteristics point to an
implicit understanding of knowledge and competence as dynamic,
transitory, and situated phenomena. In accordance with the internality
of the basic Web 2.0 goals, knowledge, and competence are
phenomena of participation—they are only fully realized,
ontologically speaking, in the acting in concrete situations. In the
words of Wenger, “[k]nowing is a matter of participating in the pursuit of
[valued] enterprises, that is, of active engagement in the world” (Wenger
1998, p. 4).
Source: Bonderup Dohn, 2009

21. Source: Wayne Barry, “The Generation Game”

22. Average Age Group Use of a Range (19)
of Social Networking Sites
Source: Pingdom/Google

23. Age Distribution in Use of Various Social
Networking Sites
Source: Pingdom/Google

24. Average Age of Users of Different Social
Networking Sites
Source: Pingdom/Google

25. Growth of Facebook Search Traffic
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight& Adplanner.

26. Age of “Facebook” Users (2011)
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

27. Growth of “Linkedin” Search Traddic
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

28. Use of “Linkedin” by Age Group

29. Briefly, what do the case studies suggest?
A long way to go?
A “The exercise failed and showed that {Masters} students are mostly not
familiar with the web 2.0. tools (they are also not familiar with the
terminology). Only few are using FB for personal purposes, fewer (1/10)
have twitter accounts and nobody writes blog (or uses them as a study
material). ... The challenge of using web 2.0. as integral part of educational
process remains open and unaccomplished.”
B“Content is usually adapted from well-known sites (e.g. Wikipedia) …
Usually, no clear definition of quality criteria is given by teachers and/or
institutions… There is little interest from students’ side to develop their own
quality criteria. “
C “Students were very reluctant to participate at the beginning, although
they were offered detailed written guidelines on how to use the web 2.0
tools. Although they mentioned the extra work load required, as the main
reason, they reported that they would be “happier” if this extra load would
include more “traditional” forms of academic tasks (i.e. essay).

30. Some positive signs?
C “Different web 2.0 tools attracted different levels of participation. Blog
seems to be used more often than the twitter. A potential explanation
could be the structured character and the orientation of the tool. {Using
the} Blog seems to be more attractive to students as it gives
opportunities for academically familiar tasks” … The role of the web 2.0
developer (expert) as a facilitator, who creates a friendly environment,
as well as the educator’s positive attitude towards the use of these
innovations and – most importantly – his continuous active participation
seem to inspire participants..”
D “Both students and faculty need support to gain knowledge and
experience, and develop strategies for teaching and learning with
Web 2.0 technologies in a constructivist environment. Because
traditional, teacher-centered teaching and learning approaches are
consistent neither with the dynamics nor with the philosophy of
Web 2.0 community building such support ought to be provided
through in-service faculty training, as well as workshops for
students and faculty.”

31. Towards good practice…?
D. “When the inclusion of Web 2.0 innovations is planned {attention should be paid
to} the development of constructivist teaching and assessment strategies in the
“traditional” FTF courses – such as learner-centered instruction, peer-interaction,
peer-evaluation and scaffolding in the process of learning, ongoing non-formal
assessment, project-based learning etc.”
D “The specifics of blended and on-line learning require revisiting the normative
and organizational guidelines for educational institutions. These specifics include
factors such as:
a. Time necessary both on the side of the educator and the learner for the
development of effective learner-centered process with the active inclusion of
Web 2.0 technologies.
b. Pedagogical, communication, and technical skills necessary for the
development of learning materials for constructivist, Web-based 2.0
environments.
c. Learning and communication skills necessary for active and effective
participation in Web 2.0 and constructivist-based learning process
Learners’ and educators’ participation in the learning process happens at
different times and different places.”

32. Student perceptions of HEIs’ Use of
Technology to Support Learning
Source: Wayne Barry, “The Generation Game”

33. Source: Slideshare

34. Realising Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Capabilities’ for Everyone
For democracy to thrive, Nussbaum suggests developing ten capabilities that
determine ‘what people actually are and what they are able to be’
Life – able to live a full human life of normal length;
Bodily health – able to enjoy bodily health, including adequate nourishment and
capacity for reproduction;
Bodily integrity – able to move freely and safely from place to place;
Sense, imagination and thought – able to make full use of the senses to
experience, think, reason, imagine and create;
Emotion – able to experience attachment to people, things and experiences and to
express feelings of love, longing, grieving and justifiable anger;
Practical reasoning – able to conceive of the good life and to engage in critical
reflection;
Affiliation – able to live with others in mutual respect, understanding the position
of and worth of ‘others’, and establishing the basis of self-respect and non-
discrimination;
Other species – having respect for animals and plants;
Play – ability to laugh and enjoy recreational and playful activity; and
Environmental control – able to engage with the processes and choices that affect
our political and material lives, including rights of political participation, property
holding and employment

35. Some supplementary data on the
growth and use, by age-group, of a
range of Web 2.0 applications

36. Growth of “Twitter” Search Traffic
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

37. Use of Twitter by Age Group
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

38. Search Traffic for “Flickr”
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

39. Use of “Flickr” by Age Group
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

40. Growth of “YouTube” Search Traffic
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

41. Use of “YouTube” by Age Group
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

42. Growth in “Weibo” Search Trafffic
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

43. Use of “Weibo” by Age Group
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

44. Decline of “My Space” Search Traffic
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

45. Use of “My Space” by Age Group
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

46. Use of “Badoo” by Age
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

47. Use of “Badoo” by Educational
Level/Qualification
Source: Ignite social media/Google Insight & Adplanner.

48. Source: Ignite social
media/Google Insight &
Adplanner.