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How to explain your lust for Openness using Border Pedagogy
- 1. How to explain your lust for Openness using Border Pedagogy http://worldcrunch.com/images/story/2f7b5301abcf8433d466a9df56b229ce_434 9202129_7ced4144d6_z.jpg
- 5. Henry Giroux McMaster University https://www.ucalgary.ca /news/files/news/image s/Henry-Giroux-350.jpg Giroux, H. (2005). Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education (2nd edition). Routledge Publishing. website: http://www.henryagiroux.com/
- 9. Structures are like ‘phrase balloons’ comprised of the Who, What, When, Where, How & Why related to an educational entity. Structures have both mechanical/ created aspects and human aspects.
- 10. Structures have edges, borders. http://successfulportfolios.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/castlewith-moat.jpg You can generally tell whether you’re inside or outside the structure.
- 12. Structural aspects that control access to the educational entity form a border around the entity.
- 13. Structures are important! http://www.enka.co.uk/getfile/fd77f959-e42d-47a5-8be7-fad5af011195/independatnt-scaffold.aspx Structures are the value we add as educators.
- 14. Borders can be fascinating http://blog.oikos-international.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/wagah-border-india-pakistan-300x364.jpg http://static.environmentalgraffiti.com/sites/default/files/imag es/Baarle-Nassau_fronti-re_caf-.jpg
- 15. Tom Heaney National-Louis University Heaney, T. (1995). Learning to control democratically: ethical questions in situated adult education. Originally published in AERC95. Available from the author. “ … adult educators [need to] recognize that the most intensive and potentially productive adult learning is situated on the edges of communities of practice” in the “…dynamic and at times chaotic energy which is experienced ‘on the edge,’ – where the frenzy of transformative learning is more likely to occur. ”
- 16. Your borders
- 18. …& engender strong emotions Scott Leslie, tweet response to YouTube’s copyright wall Aaron Swartz, 1986 - 2013 Angry post, response to San Jose State U’s decision to contract with EdX Beatrice Marovich: “The good thing about a MOOC is that it kicks open a door or two of that old ivory tower and freely lets hearty, tasty information into the world.” Online learning: More than MOOCs. From The Chronicle of Higher Education
- 19. Allan Lauzon University of Guelph Lauzon, A.C. (1999). Situating cognition and crossing borders: resisting the hegemony of mediated education. British Journal of Educational Technology 30(3), pp. 261-276. “The function of border pedagogy, then, is to challenge, transgress and redefine borders so that they are more inclusive and more just. (p. 269). ”
- 20. What’s this got to do with Open? http://www.flickr.com/ photos/mag3737/1913 781137/in/photostrea m/
- 21. Examples • Many educational access issues can be reframed as “border” issues; e.g. • The classroom in Kenya • Student services renovation • Examining, challenging the border between “teacher” and “students” • Plagiarism and the “academic essay”
- 22. Student Services •Educational planning •Academic assessment •Upgrading classes •Tutoring services •Disability services •Financial services •Friendly, helpful people! •Etc.
- 23. Student Services •Educational planning •Academic assessment •Upgrading classes •Tutoring services •Disability services •Financial services •Friendly, helpful people! •Etc.
- 24. ??? Student Services ??? Whatever the heck that is…
- 25. Ian Cook University of Exeter, UK Cook, I. (2000). ‘Nothing can ever be the case of “Us” and “Them” again’: Exploring the politics of difference through border pedagogy and student journal writing. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 24 (1), pp. 13 – 27. Traditional classroom Ian’s ‘border’ classroom Predictable schedule of topics Unpredictable, evolving discussion Rows of seats facing the lecturer Seats in a circle, teacher outside the circle Teacher assigns value to readings Students assign value to readings Writing in an academic style Writing in a personal, ‘situated’ style Teacher answers questions Teacher refuses to answer questions Rules Different rules Final exam No final; journal writing only
- 26. The Academic Essay From http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/nletta03/hu nt.htm The Crime of Plagiarism http://digitalcultures.wikispaces.com/file/view/EssayStructure.gif/1 13980165/EssayStructure.gif
- 27. How do you feel about the walls that defend your communities of practice? Protect them Protect them in spite of growing assaults, incursions, & requests for access Forget about protecting them. Blow them up!
Editor's Notes
- My name is Gina Bennett, I'm a faculty member at COTR & I'm interested in open: open source software, open textbooks, open educational resources, open research. In my institution, I promote Open opportunities wherever I can, I introduce others to Open resources, & I try to convey the marvellous potential for openness to change education. I consider myself a sort of 'Agent of Openness'. Do you see yourself as an Agent of Openness, in one way or another...?
- I was in Kenya on a consultancy several years ago. I was doing some training in curriculum development & this involved visiting quite a number of schools. The classrooms looked somewhat similar to this one [see slide]: dirt or cement floors, wooden benches to sit on, slightly higher wooden benches to write on, packed full of children in school uniforms. Many of these schools had no electricity, so no artificial light & no air conditioning. Consequently most had plentiful windows, all open to the outside.
- In one classroom I visited, I noticed a man standing outside, leaning against the back window. It's not something we'd see in Canada. So I asked one of my Kenyan colleagues, why was a man standing in the hot sun, leaning against the classroom window? My colleague explained that universal primary education was a relatively recent thing in Kenya; up until quite recently all education had been pay-per-view. When they abolished tuition fees for public primary school, the classrooms were (not surprisingly) flooded with children, there could be 100 children crammed into a classroom like this. But not just the children: thousands upon thousands of adults also wanted to take advantage of this access to free education as well. So the adults crowded the classroom doorways & stood outside the open windows, trying to soak up a bit of this precious commodity -- education - that they had been missing for so long. My colleague explained that gradually the system was meeting the demand in various ways but the practice of adults hanging around outside classroom windows to listen to the lessons was still seen sometimes.
- What I'd like to do in this session is to introduce you to the man standing outside the window, not personally (of course) but metaphorically. We'll also look at the classroom, the wall, & the window -- all metaphorically, because this is a "thinking session" after all. And the metaphor, or model that I'm going to introduce you to is border pedagogy. According to the dictionary, pedagogy refers to the way in which we connect the science with the art of educating & of course there are many different ways to do that. You've probably heard of competency-based learning or social constructionism or critical pedagogy. Some of you may remember that the first MOOCs were based on a pedagogy of connectivism. I think most educational innovations have their root in some 'signature pedagogy' that provides a theoretical framework for the unfolding of the movement. I haven't seen this connection made elsewhere but I think border pedagogy is a useful signature pedagogy for understanding & expanding Openness.
- How many people are familiar with Border pedagogy? ... if so, then you're probably familiar with Henry Giroux [pr. “Zheeroo”], the person who coined the term & developed the theory behind border pedagogy about 20 years ago. Giroux was (still is) an education scholar, an advocate of radical democracy, so along the same lines as Paulo Freire, bell hooks. Giroux looked at the school, the academy, as a socially constructed community whose borders are controlled by the ruling culture. He promoted a critical examination of the border & a more democratic approach as to who gets to decide who's in & who's out. Giroux is deep, very deep, & although I think his ideas are fascinating, he is not very readable.
- So what follows is a sort of dummies' guide to border pedagogy [& if you are already familiar with the subject then I hope you will forgive my interpretation]. And my take on border pedagogy starts with learning. Learning happens everywhere. Learning is what we do, it's part of being human. We can't NOT learn. Learning happens everywhere, but education is bordered. Education is bordered...? What do I mean by this?
- Well, educational items & events -- educational entities -- are structured. To take an example: Let's return for a look at the classroom in Kenya.
- What factors structure this class? Well, there are some immediately obvious ones: this class happens in a room, rectangular shape, outlined by walls, there are benches, arranged in rows,... It's filled with children, of age 9? 10? There's a teacher in here somewhere (I think that's her at the back)
- It's easy to put together a structure diagram [perhaps we can diagram this?] if you think in terms of who-what-when-where-why-how you might end up with a diagram something like this (see slide). In this simple diagram, we have the who & the where… Now we ask WHAT do the children learn in here? I can tell you: they learn reading, writing, arithmetic, English, Swahili. The curriculum is shaped by the state, the teacher, the community, by preparing for the final test. And we can ask WHEN does the learning happen? You can probably guess at a school schedule: days of the week, hours of the day, holidays, harvest days, etc. HOW do they learn? They read from & write in books. But books are scarce so they also write on the board, they sing, they copy from the board. WHY do they learn? Why are the children in school? State laws require it, they (& their parents) want a better life, there’s a cultural emphasis on education. Why is the teacher there? She needs a paycheque, perhaps she is also passionate about raising the educational level of children, of the country. All these things structure the classroom in Kenya. To create a structure diagram (which can be quite interesting to do) we just jot these down; there's no need for a mathematically engineered diagram here, just put it together in a sort of word (or phrase) balloon which represents this educational entity. So education happens inside some sort of structure. And you can probably imagine a similar structure for a classroom-based class at your institution. Some of the elements will be different, but not all.
- Now this next step may sound obvious: structures have borders. You can (usually) tell whether you're inside or outside of the structure. These Kenyan children, for example, can tell whether they are in class or out of class. So some of the structural elements serve to differentiate the insiders from the outsiders, they serve to border this structure. Borders are inevitable.
- So… back to the Kenyan classroom & let's do a little border pedagogy here. What elements will border this structure? Let’s brainstorm: Well, there's the wall, of course... This is a simple physical border What keeps the younger children out? (pre reqs – they must have completed Grade 3 before they go into Grade 4). What might keep children with disabilities from attending? Think about the time commitment: having to attend all day every day may keep out children with household or farm-related duties. Lack of washrooms keeps out older girls. The school’s location within the community means the children must be within walking distance Most schoolchildren need a uniform to attend & in some schools they must be able to bring a lunch Can you think about what factors keep the man on the outside of the classroom? i.e. why isn't he sitting on the inside, out of the sun? (could be there's some rules, perhaps cultural pressures keep adults from wanting to sit with children…).
- All of these elements that serve to border the classroom can be diagrammed, making a border around the diagram. You may notice that many more structural elements come to mind when you're sketching the border. How does one of our (your) postsecondary classrooms differ from this diagram? You can give this a try: just pick an institution, any educational institution. Any educational institution is a community of practice, with a structure or even a collection of complex structures. What does the border look like? What things (physical, cultural, policies, processes) exist to let some people in & keep some people out? How can somebody tell whether they're IN UBC or COTR or whatever, or NOT in? Does the border look different to people on the inside compared to people on the outside? Instead of an institution, you may wish to think about another community of practice: your library, your classroom...Take a couple of minutes to describe the border area around your institution or community of practice. How does a MOOC differ from a traditional institution or classroom?
- So to summarize: learning happens everywhere but educational entities (classes, resources, communities of practice) are structured. And structure's not a bad thing -- structure is the value we add, as educators, to the learning process! Structures have borders. (I know this sounds obvious!) Borders are inevitable. They may be obvious or a bit fuzzy, but borders are inevitable.
- I mentioned earlier that borders are inevitable: they're not only inevitable, they're fascinating places. Border areas have always been places of exchange, often tension, ... I think just about anybody who wanders or is dragged into a border area discovers that. The photo on the left shows the changing of the guard along the India – Pakistan border. The photo on the right shows a section of the unbelievably complex border between the Netherlands & Belgium in the area of Baarle-Nassau.
- Borders are also very interesting places in terms of education. Tom Heaney (see slide) says it best. When talking about the excitement that happens in the border area: he emphasizes the "dynamic and at times chaotic energy which is experienced "on the edge,"--where the frenzy of transformative learning is more likely to occur." & a little later, same paper: "adult educators [need to] recognize that the most intensive and potentially productive adult learning is situated on the edges of communities of practice.“ We can do some of our best work here.
- Let's look back at the border area around a typical postsecondary institution, at the structural elements that define the border. Probably anybody in your community is allowed -- perhaps even encouraged -- to come & visit your campus, come in the door, have a coffee in the cafeteria. Are they allowed to come into the library? Are they allowed to borrow books? How about borrowing equipment? Can they take a course? What are the conditions? Who can be admitted? Who can register for a course? Are there cultural elements that limit the access of people? The point is: some of these border elements are more defining than others. What you're constructing here is not just a border (in places) but a WALL. You probably make your physical space surrounding your institution as friendly & unintimidating as possible: you want the border area to be easy, welcoming to transverse. But your media equipment area probably has a much higher wall around it: Probably access to that is limited to certain staff, students in certain programs, faculty with special permission etc. Thinking back to that classroom in Kenya: the man is kept outside the classroom because of the physical wall, of course, but I'll bet that the cultural forces make an even stronger wall. Borders are inevitable but walls are not. Discussion: think about pre-requisites. Do pre-reqs form part of the border, or are they part of the wall?
- Walls are nuanced! You may have good walls & bad walls... But one thing to keep in mind is that people have strong feelings about walls.
- Walls create strong feelings & strong reactions. You can find many expressions of strong emotion when it comes to educational walls. For example, Aaron Swartz used JSTOR, a digital repository, to download a large number of academic journal articles through MIT’s computer network over the course of a few weeks in late 2010 and early 2011. At the time, Swartz was a research fellow at Harvard University, which provided him with a JSTOR account. Visitors to MIT’s "open campus" were authorized to access JSTOR through its network. The authorities said Swartz downloaded the documents through a laptop connected to a networking switch in a controlled-access wiring closet at MIT. Swartz ended up committing suicide & many believed his suicide was strongly influenced by MIT’s response to his ‘wall opening’ activities.
- So when doing border pedagogy, we first acknowledge that our educational entity is bordered, & then we study the border. Another key aspect is to identify who controls, who sets the rules about the border. As someone practising border pedagogy, our urge is to democratize the border. Alan Lauzon provides a sort of definition: "The function of border pedagogy, then, is to challenge, transgress and redefine borders so that they are more inclusive and more just" (p. 269). Lauzon, A.C. (1999). Situating cognition and crossing borders: resisting the hegemony of mediated education. British Journal of Educational Technology 30(3), pp. 261-276.
- So. Learning happens everywhere, education is bordered, some of those borders are built into walls. You may be starting to wonder: where does Openness come into this? As Agents of Openness, I think we are aware, on some level, that our educational institutions & products are bordered. We tend to be extremely aware of certain borders: the borders (or walls, actually) surrounding copyright works, scientific publications, tightly walled learning management systems or classrooms, research results, various educational resources. I don't know about you but when I hear about somebody who has been refused access to an educational activity or resource that I think they *should* have access to, I have a very visceral reaction to it. As Agents of Openness, we want to create openings. Openness is all about kicking holes in the wall. The better you understand the border area, the components & nuances of the wall, the better you're able to consider the rights of the people being kept out, all these things, the better you'll be able to open up that wall or even to decide whether or not it needs opening.
- Let’s visit that classroom in Kenya one last time to reframe the situation as a “border” issue. Remember how a bona fide wall plus strong cultural factors kept the man outside the classroom? But consider the ways in which the teacher lowers the wall, creates a sort of friendly border area by permitting the eavesdropping at the window. The window -- along with the teacher's tolerance or maybe even encouragement -- creates a genuine Opening. That teacher is an Agent of Openness. You can apply a bit of border pedagogy to all sorts of openness issues, looking at the structure, the border, & considering your relationship to the border. You may wish to consider your online class, your instructional design practice, your education technology support service, your own writing -- as educational entities & spend a little time thinking about the structure your work adds to the learning process & then studying whatever it is that borders them & controls access to that entity. You can consider the democracy of that border: do you think it is fair? Open enough? In need of some hole-kicking? And then you can think about your role as a border worker. Do you want to be the one to open some holes? Nicely or aggressively or as a stealth operation? In the following slides, I'd like to share a couple of maybe less obvious openness examples.
- EXAMPLE 1: A simple example: Student Services renovation 12 years or so ago, I was working on a project in the ABE/Student Services dept. Our function was to take in (mostly) adult learners & help them prepare for career-oriented programs & we wanted to increase traffic, especially new visitors to the SS centre. We re-designed the area to be friendly, open: sign over the door said 'welcome to student services! Please come in.' A waiting area, comfy chairs & brochures to read, private offices for assessment & counselling. Phone number, listed separately in the book, website, email address. but my boss was wondering: why is traffic so light? why are most of the visitors to SS existing students & not our primary target audience (for this project, anyway): adult learners new to the college? Hadn't we done our best to remove barriers? As a student of border pedagogy, I could see that the department saw itself as originally like this (see slide).
- (Student Services example, continued) Through the described Student Services enhancement/renovation project, the SS staff felt that we had transformed ourselves into this (see slide), with a much more open border I decided as a start to look at the most obvious part of the border area: the physical border that delineated the SS area. I went outside of the college. I imagined myself as someone OUTSIDE academia. so I'm a border-crosser, someone who exists outside the college but wants to come in. Say I want to upgrade my math so I can take a business course. I stood in the parking lot beside where the city bus stops, & approached the college. The bus stopped outside a door so I went in that door. there were no signs... the halls were mostly empty... a bulletin board was advertising textbooks for sale. I went past a classroom but the door was closed & the teacher was lecturing. I came to another hallway & headed down that... pretty much the same thing. I came to a hallway intersection & there I saw some signs dangled from the ceiling over the intersection: Library (this way), washrooms (that way), Student services (that way). I walked up to the student services area doorway. I could see people sitting in chairs. There was a stand full of brochures but nothing saying 'free' or 'help yourself'. There was a receptionist in there but she was on the phone. I could see some offices in there but their doors were closed. I want to take a course... not sure how or where to start ... is this the place? Hard to say.
- (Student Services example, continued) So although Student Services saw itself transformed into a service with an open border, it seemed to me that the target audience saw the SS centre like maybe this slide (see above) What we really needed to do was talk to our target audience, find out what their questions were, & then plan our signage etc. right from the doorway, the border, to let them know where to go & that they would be welcome. “Removing barriers" is an admirable thing to do, & it's a strategy that even those who are deep inside the community of practice can attempt. But unless they are familiar with that border area, they won't know what the real barriers are.
- EXAMPLE 2: A more complex example: Ian Cook's Transatlantic course Ian Cook is a teacher of geography & a student of border pedagogy. Ian was teaching a course about the transatlantic slave trade, wanted his students to develop a feel for geography that wasn't just about observing assigned borders & studying the sections within as if they were discrete entities. He wanted them to understand something of the ambiguity of borders. Not just understand but also FEEL the ambiguity of border areas. So he chose a border pedagogy approach. In this particular case, the entity that he was looking at was his own teaching practice, his role as 'teacher'. If you read his paper, you will see him sketching out the structure of that role: teacher as detached, in a position of authority, sole provider & interpreter of readings, the one who gives approval & decides what's 'right'. He sought to punch holes in this border as much as possible, as much as made sense to him. He also played with the departmentally/institutionally designed structure of assessment (final exams vs. journal writing) & with the physical structure of the classroom. “Once the session introduction was over, each group was asked to gather around one of the easel-mounted blackboards placed in a wide circle facing the centre of the classroom. Once seated, each member was asked to describe to the others what he/she had read, and what he/she thought was interesting and/or important about this. As all of this [discussion] was happening, I tried unobtrusively to wander around the outside of the room behind the boards, listening in on conversations to make sure that they were talking about their readings, trying to get a sense of the different issues being discussed by each group, and asking questions of groups who seemed to have run out of things to say to each other. ... The blackboards were placed as described so that each class member could theoretically see what was written on all of the boards .... To get the discussion going, I would circle the room behind these boards asking simple ‘starter’ questions to the whole class and/or asking individual groups about their [blackboard] conclusions. Once the discussion was up and running, I would interject to ask the students to clarify key points and/or to refocus the debate when necessary, and to try to make sure that as many of them who wanted to speak had the opportunity to do so. But the main reason that I did this while circling the outer edge of the class was to try not to be at the centre of the discussion. The room was set up so that the students were looking at each other, making arguments to each other. I did not want them to be able to check with me that they were making the ‘right’ points. So I avoided eye contact with whoever was speaking. If someone began to address their point to me, I walked around so that I was standing behind him/her or behind one of the blackboards. I tried to be an awkward moving target for those seeking my approval in these discussions. I hoped that they would give up trying to follow me around. I also asked them not to talk to me, but to each other. And I refused to answer almost every question aimed at me, preferring to deflect them back to the group. This was how I tried to take a back seat in class and to encourage the students to argue with, and learn from, each other. And this seemed to work.” And he talks about those magic moments when Teaching & learning occasionally became "indistinguishable" processes.
- EXAMPLE 3: Plagiarism Here's a somewhat different sort of example, but always a hot topic: Plagiarism. Is there a place for openness, for border pedagogy, when talking about plagiarism? The first thing to note is that border pedagogy is applied to educational entities & plagiarism doesn't quite fit: it's not the sort of learning we want to promote. Plagiarism is considered an academic crime against the sort of legitimate learning we hope to promote. What, then, is the specific sort of learning we want to promote when plagiarism gets in the way? Of course, students can commit plagiarism offences in a number of ways but for simplicity's sake, let's pick the academic essay. The academic essay is the educational entity, the learning tool, that we are promoting in this example. So what's the structure of an academic essay? Let’s examine it in the Who-What-When-Where-How-Why investigation we used earlier to develop the structure: Who: students, who are supposed to write it THEMSELVES What: it's an essay. The structure is often specified very precisely: e.g. number of words (range), or number of pages, double-spaced, font type specified. Follows a particular writing structure too: Introduction, Abstract, Literature Review, etc. etc. When: assigned throughout the semester but usually not at the very end. Nevertheless, there is usually some sort of time constraint. Sometimes used for summative assessment. Takes varying amounts of time (lots or not so much) Where: usually done outside of class time How: typed. Word-processed. Submitted online &/or on paper, in person. Research sources may be more or less prescribed. Why: an academic paper is considered in some ways the lingua franca of academic assessment. Even if the student never has to write such a paper again during their working life, they will need to know how to do this for the duration of their academic life. Teacher may assign it so as to better prepare their students for an academic career or to test for comprehension or originality or ...? Or it may be assigned for cultural reasons. What aspects of this structure form the border? i.e. which aspects might KEEP somebody from producing a successful academic paper? Consider: Not enough time inadequate access to a computer or the 'right' word processor students may lack easy access to the library or a quiet place to write Lack of word processing skills. Cultural misunderstanding about the value or meaning of 'original' or 'creative'. Lack of search skills. Lack of citing skills. How can you, as educator, punch holes in the ‘border’ that surrounds the academic essay? E.g. how can you reduce requirements for specific word processors, assist with search or citing skills, reduce cultural misunderstandings about what constitutes “original” work?
- I think the beauty (or utility) of border pedagogy is that it expands your openness horizons & doesn't limit your actions to the more obvious ones: freeing educational resources, CC-licensing your work, MOOCing your classroom. It encourages you to examine any of the educational events, resources, or communities of practice that you're involved in, to appreciate the structure that you add through your work, to examine the border, to meet the people on both sides & acknowledge the excitement of the border area. How can you further the conversation, reduce the walls? How can you create some openings and satisfy your lust for equity?
- Gina is a faculty member at College of the Rockies, where she supports distance learning and curriculum development for the institution. She first became interested in the Open movement 15 years ago, when her daughter gave her a Linux CD for Christmas & together they spent the entire holiday trying to install it. Besides a continuing interest in all things Open, she is fascinated by education, technology, & how the two work together to contribute to development at all levels at home & abroad. Gina is a long-time member of ETUG & currently serves on BCcampus's Open Textbook Subcommittee.