Practising Professional #468123

Essay: Task A&B

Professionals' practices inevitably construct the learners identities - often unwittingly With reference to the above statement, I would find it hard to argue that the professional practice of teaching does not, at least have the potential to impact on the student's personality and sense of self. I will argue that there is little doubt that the profession practice of teaching will always have the potential impact on the student's personality and sense of self. The simple act of turning up to a class and getting involved with the social discourse of the classroom may well change the way we think or act in some little way, the same way as a conversation that we overhear on a train might or seeing an item on the evening news. It forms part of the accumulated knowledge and experience that constructs our self image. The question is really one of degree and internationality on the part of ourselves as professional practitioners To what degree really depends on: - the susceptibility of the student; whether the student has such a low or confused sense of self that they can easily be "constructed", (perhaps inadvertently) - the students' willingness to have their values and beliefs challenged and debated or to examine and learn about themselves. - whether the subject matter requires the student to question his or her own existing values and beliefs in any substantial way. The real question is whether, we as professional practitioners should actively pursue teaching strategies that have more impact on the student's sense self by challenging their core beliefs and values. In this essay I will attempt to explore these issues from within the context of my own professional practice and drawing on writings of relevant writers and theorists, Jack Mezirow in particular. My particular concern is the role of culture(s) and how limiting or otherwise they can be to a student. Aims of my practice My approach to teaching has, to an extent, been coloured by debate that I had with a friend of my father's about "the unemployed" and what they could (should) be doing with their time. He maintained that there is no reason why the long term unemployed should be bored or lack direction because they have access to all the learning and culture of our society through public libraries. In his words: "They could be reading Proust or Shakespeare". I responded by stating that most people simply wouldn't understand the language. He then pointed out there are books that would teach you how to understand this literature. My exasperated reply was that even if the unemployed could teach themselves to understand the language, most simply would not understand why it should be important them. Only after I made this impromptu statement did I realise that I had articulated fundamental concept that is very important to me and underpins the rationale for my teaching. There just isn't a meaningful framework that would put these works into any personal context. There is no sense of relevance. Consequently in my professional practice I place a great deal of importance on establishing a fundamental understanding and interest in the ideas 1

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themselves. This, I believe, can create a kind of learning autonomy, a sort of selfsustained, self-perpetuating learning. But it relies on student developing an underlying interest . This whole process, it could be argued, results in (or is contingent on) changing the learner's fundamental perception of the world and there by changing their personality. I teach interactive multimedia and graphic communication to TAFE students. The students come from very different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and some are international students with limited English. There are three essential outcomes that are required. Firstly, competence to operate the respective applications. Secondly, a basic fundamental technical understanding. And finally, being able to demonstrate the principles of effective communication through the use and manipulation of images, text and sound. It is this last objective that it the most important and problematic. It is important primarily because all the other objectives are useless unless the student is able to put them to some meaningful use. But also because these abilities empower the students in being able to express their own ideas and cultural identity in the public domain. Multimedia and the World Wide Web in particular are still relatively open (not dominated by establishment interests) and inexpensive ways to express ideas and creativity to potentially large numbers of people. This is problematic because we are dealing with creativity which is very subjective, culturally specific and difficult to explain. It is also hard to assess or quantify objectively, especially as I am aware that I might not have the necessary sensitivity to other cultural and ethnic aesthetics. There are a number of different aspects that effect how or whether the learner can get "into" the subject matter. There is inevitably a self -judgment on behalf of the learner as to their own capabilities as a prospective learner. There is their attitude to authority of the teacher. And finally, as I've already mentioned, the meaning and perceived relevance of the material itself. Andragogy Many writers on the subject argue that there is a natural resistance to learning (particularly with adults) because they can find it uncomfortable to have our assumptions and cultural values challenged. Knowles (1984) divides the process of teaching into two different models. On the one hand there is the traditional pedagogical approach that presupposes that the learner is a kind of neutral being that will absorb new information at its face value, as does a young child who has little experience of her own. Under this model, if the learner has any preconceived ideas at all, then they can and should suspend those ideas while the information is being absorbed. This new information will not be inflected. The other model which he has labelled the andragogical learning, places a great deal of importance in the learner's (adults in particular), desire to be seen as being responsible for their own learning and have their experience recognised as valid. Knowles also points out that an adult's self identity is linked to what he terms their experiences. "Because of their experience, adults have often developed habitual ways of thinking and acting, preconceptions about reality, prejudices and defensiveness

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about their past ways of thinking and doing" (p 10). He goes on to say that the learner's experience becomes increasingly a part of his identity and that it is important for the learners sense of dignity, that this experience be recognised and valued. Importantly, this model posits that learners will bring with them a set of experiences that will effect the way that they view the world and that the learner must be able to reconcile their new learning with their established experience. Knowles explicitly designates pedagogical teaching as being appropriate for teaching children (who have few experiences to draw on) and the androgogical model for teaching adults. These models, however, are not mutually exclusive, according to Knowles, but run in parallel where sometimes one model will be preferable depending on the context and requirements of the learner. Interestingly, Knowles and most other writers on this subject make this clear distinction between adults and children with out exploring the possibility that there might be an interim stage. A stage that I think most of my students and a large percentage of late secondary/early tertiary level students, are at. This is a time the student is moving away from dependence on their parents and their values and trying to establish their own identities and individuality. It is a stage where they may be particularly vulnerable to being "constructed". Transformative learning Knowles' concept of a learner's experience serves his purpose: to differentiate teaching styles appropriate for children and adults but it doesn't explore the concept in any detail. With his theories of transformational learning , Jack Mezirow explores the notion of the learner's acquired knowledge and perception in more detail and he attempts to delineate the intricate ways that we process and validate new information. He maintains that over the years, we have all subconsciously accumulated set modes of thinking and concepts that can be quite self-limiting. These what, he calls, meaning perspectives are acquired unconsciously as part of our socialisation. Mezirow classes his theory as being allied with those of contextual or Gestalt theorists who see memory and learning as being about the students ability to see new experiences within the context of other previous experiences as a whole. Contextual theories work on the basis that we "contextualise" information and that the essence of our experience and understanding of the world is continually being cross referenced with previous experiences and the meaning and relevance negotiated. The value and retention of this meaning is dependent on how intricately it has been cross referenced with other information and experiences. Mezirow readily acknowledges the work of Karl Popper and the othr Gestault theorists, as being the forerunner of transformative learning. Their theories, he maintains, challenged the idea that learning was simply about filling gaps in knowledge with pre packaged knowledge with its own discrete meaning. Instead, they argued that new knowledge builds on or refines existing knowledge. Like the transformational learning theorists, they believed that knowledge is inflected or interpreted by the learner but their scope of inquiry was limited very much to learning or thinking at a conscious level.

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Essay: Task A&B

Transformational learning theory holds that we learn in both a conscious way and an unconscious way. The first, Mezirow calls reflective learning; where we can recognise and acknowledge what (and that) we are learning. Then there is what he calls non-reflective learning; where we absorb and retain information and attitudes without realising it. This knowledge and these attitudes constitute the meaning perspectives, mentioned earlier. When we learn or experience something new it is important for this new knowledge to be integrated into the existing meaning perspectives for it to be "meaningful". This process he calls critical reflection . If the new experience is incompatible with the existing meaning perspectives then the meaning perspectives have to changed at some level or the experience is rejected as invalid. This is a very simple and bland description of a sophisticated and intricately worked through model that can be used to isolate and articulate problems that students (and professional practitioners) might be having. Many of my students have decided, or have come to believe, that they are not "creative". Some have grown up in cultures that do not value creativity. One of my electronic engineering students told me that growing up in Nigeria in a middleclass family, you were expected to go to university and study either medicine or engineering and nothing else mattered. He went on to say that he had always suspected that he was creative but he knew that his family be furious and his friends would ridicule him. He hadn't closed off the idea but he was still reticent expressing himself or even being seen to be doing something creative. In class he was intensely protective about people seeing his work and eventually dropped out of the class. This is what Mezirow would call a distorted assumption, which he describes as "one that leads the learner to view reality in a way that arbitrarily limits what is included, impedes differentiation, lacks permeability or openness to other ways of seeing, or does not facilitate an integration of experience" (Mezirow 1991, p 118). Interestingly from a transformational learning point of view, this student was able to recognize and even articulate the problems that he had. This perhaps suggests that critical reflection alone, cannot change deeply held meaning perspectives or distorted assumptions. I regularly encounter distorted assumptions that are limiting the students. Many students particularly those coming from humanities subjects such as Professional Writing & Editing have firmly held convictions that they will never be able to do anything complicated with computers. They believe that the way computers think and the way that they think are totally incompatible. To some of these students it is almost seen in terms of conflicting ideologies. Computers and creativity are mutually exclusive. When I point out that computers don't think but are in fact, dumb number processors that have been trained to do things that look smart then this starts a process where they stop thinking of computers as being in competition to their way of thinking. This is what Mezirow would call a premise reflection; it's where the problem itself is redefined in more constructive terms. In my professional practice, it is important that students to be able to develop an intuitive sense of what works and what doesn't work. One of the ways that I do this is to expose them to other people's art, some of which might be quite challenging to them. I also, periodically, get students to show their work to the rest of the class and we have a discussion about what is working and what is not. This is also a method

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that I use to help dissipate my own cultural values from controlling the assessment and direction of the class. It is also a good way of acknowledging the cultural values of the students and recognising that they are, in a sense, more qualified (in that they are younger and more in tune with contemporary values) . This form of peer assessmen helps the students develop a sense of what Mezirow calls consensual and reflective judgement. One distinctive factor in dealing with "creative" subjects like graphic art and multimedia, is that there isn't any real objective or absolute standpoint. How the students view and validate their knowledge and skills is very important. We can try to articulate whether or not it works but our feelings about it are subjective. The only way we can reliably judge whether something works or not, is if enough people agree that it works. This we can call consensual validation and is an important part of reflective judgement. Mezirow refers to the work of K S Kitchener who has developed a scale of reflective judgement that measure degrees of what she calls epistemic premise distortions. These are meaning perspectives that relate to how we judge and value what we know or think we know to be right. The scale ranges from one to seven with one being the most dysfunctional and limiting and seven being the ideal. Mezirow provides us with detailed descriptions how two fictitious characters representing each extreme think about how they can know something. Harry, representing stage one, believes the following:
"If an individual is not in a position to perceive the answer to a question directly, he or she can learn the absolute truth from authorities. Truth is not problematic: right answers exist and information or points of view that disagree with it are simply wrong". (Mezirow 1991 p125).

This is a starkly polarised outlook on the world that is bland and limiting. Jane on the other hand, coming in at seven, has mastered the skills of critical judgement. "For Jane, knowledge is the outcome of a process of reasonable inquiry that, because it is fallible, may not always lead to the correct claims about the nature of reality. Knowledge statements must be evaluated as more or less likely approximations to reality and must be open to the scrutiny and criticisms of other rational people". (Mezirow 1991 p125). The five interim stages change by degrees in how and under what conditions the person can know what is reliable and knowable. The variants hinge around how long and under what conditions things become unknowable; and importantly, what recall the person has to "authorities" to arbitrate what is truth and what is not. The lower three stages of the spectrum all believe that authorities (whoever they are) do know "the answer". This kind of reliance on an external higher being or beings is very counterproductive to the establishment of self-reliant critical thinkers. This attitude became apparent recently in a class where I was trying to get the students to articulate different textural and tonal qualities that a piece of art work might have. I got them thinking about (and suggesting) binary opposing adjectives that could be used to describe different qualities. I started them off with concepts like hot/cold, wet/dry and wrote these up on the white board and the students took it from there. When we got to concepts like "fluffy/solid" and "greasy/silky", this line of enquiry proved too much for one student who was incensed that we were "making it up" and that these

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words weren't "real words from books". I was extremely surprised by this outburst and so (fortunately) were most of the other students who had been responding well to the exercise. In the ensuing discussion the protesting student, somewhat begrudgingly, conceded that it was OK for me as a teacher to "make up" words but she couldn't see how the students could contribute because they don't know. This is attitude perhaps a hangover from the pedagogical style of teaching that she was exposed to in high school but it represents a seriously limiting meaning perspective. I'm inclined to think that there maybe there are degrees of dysfunction that extend outwardly (upwardly in number) from Jane at stage seven. At the extreme edge of this extended scale, say ten or eleven, would be someone who is completely passive and non-judgmental. A kind of polar opposite of Harry at number one. This hypothetical person, let's call him Craig, sees that there are so many conflicting interests in the world and that they are fundamentally irreconcilable. He believes that authorities are irrelevant and that nobody else really cares about the truth, so why should he. He can see many social narratives from different perspectives and they are all equally irrelevant. The world, for Craig is too complicated. This, sadly, is where many of my students could be coming from or (hopefully not) going to. My extended model places Jane (the ideal seven) in the middle and Craig as a polar opposite of Harry. The gradients between Jane and Craig (ten +) could be distinguished by the persons sense of self worth and ability to impact on the world combined with the person's belief or other wise that other people are concerned about his well being. This would essentially scale the person's sense of relevance to any epistimistic knowledge. I think that this could be an interesting area to explore further because it would take into account post modernist theories something which Mezirow fails to do. In Mezirow's illustration of Kitchener's scale his description of Jane mentions that " she assumes that there is an objective reality against which ideas and assumptions must be tested" (Mezirow 1991: 124). My extended scale, however, pushes out into postmodernist territory where the concept of one fixed objective reality cannot be presumed. For someone like Craig objective reality, if it exists at all, is not relevant. Recently Taylor (2001), reviewed Mezirow's theories in the light of recent neurological studies that used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to monitor the brain's activities during learning. He was able to confirm the validity of transformational learning theories and the value of critical reflection in particular but concluded that a lot more activity goes on at a subconscious level than previously imagined ,and that the value of emotions in critical thinking has been significantly undervalued. Both these findings could have major implications for us as learning practitioners. If transformational learning takes place at a subconscious level then the student does not have the ability consciously to accept or reject the learning . They have lost their power of veto. Also if learning is happening at a deep emotional level does this imply that the effects on the students personality and emotional make up are much more direct and potentially profound? Culture(s) in my practice The subjects that I teach also require the student to have (or develop) a sensitivity and appreciation of "good" aesthetics and effective visual communication. I am, however,

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Essay: Task A&B

acutely aware that I am teaching to very different cultures (ethnic and otherwise) . One of my computer graphics classes has a only one student of Anglo-Saxon background out of twenty one students. They are Khmer, Thai, Chinese Indonesian and Vietnamese. On the first day that I taught this class I wanted to get everyone away from the computers and to gather around me so that I could talk to them all face to face. They wheeled their chairs closer and closer until they were jammed up around me in a very tight group in the middle of this large, now mostly empty, room. That's when I realised that they have quite a different concept of personal space than I do. Since then I am continuously reminded about this every week. This really just serves to show how profoundly different culturally programmed norms can be. I have noticed in their work most of the students in this class will use different saturated colours together in combinations that look quite disturbing to my eye. Generally these students don't like empty space in a picture and they will place lots of little stars moons and faces or whatever they can find in the picture were ever they can. These tendencies have been noted by other practitioners teaching similar subjects and would appear to be culturally specific. I believe that it is incumbent on me to get these to realise that this might not be in line with acceptable "international" standards or tastes. While this implies a hegemony, it is a hegemony that can be challenged and shaped gradually over time. I stress that the students should value their own intuitive tastes but they should also see it from the point of view of how the majority of viewers will see it. Mezirow doesn't deal with cultural values as discreet forces in establishing learning perspectives but sees same background forces or sociolinguistic factors, such as rules roles and conventions that potentially construct cultural values as constructing meaning perspectives. There's an ethical question as to whether we have the right to challenge or deconstruct someone's cultural beliefs and assumptions. Merriam & Caffarella (1991) illustrate this quandary by referring to the movie Educating Rita, where the title character comes from a working class English background but is in the process of successfully studying a degree in literature, There's a sequence where she has been asked to a party at her professors but she feels uncomfortable in this environment and leaves. She then goes to a boisterous working class pub with her husband where she sits broodily alone, unable to get involved in the merriment. Later she expresses how she can no longer relate to her family but also feels uncomfortable and out of place in the professor's intellectual circles. The effects of the character's transformation are very profound and painful for her. Along similar lines we might say by teaching evolution to fundamentalist Christians or exposing Muslim women to the theories of Freud we are devaluing, if not deconstructing their cultural heritage. Essentially this question revolves around whether we believe eduction and its values somehow transcend all other cultural values after all the idea that we must constantly challenge our assumptions and be open to new ideas is itself a cultural value that is valued by a particular sub-culture of intellectuals. I am now using the word culture, not just in the limited sense that would distinguish between different ethnic or high profile sub cultures but in a broader or looser sense

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that could distinguish any shared value system. For instance, a large number of people in this country place a great deal of importance on their motor vehicle as a cultural symbol or artefact and they can (and do) talk about cars in great detail. These people are frequently referred to as petrolheads in the current vernacular and I would argue, constitute a legitimate culture. Another similar group who we could call sports nuts , understand the details and intricacies of different sporting codes. Kalantzis defines this issue well: "As people are simultaneously members of multiple lifeworlds, so their identities have multiple layers that are in complex relation to each other. No person is a member of a single community. Rather they are members of multiple and overlapping communities - communities of work interest and affiliation, of ethnicity of sexual identity, and so on" (Kalantzis in Cope & Kalantzis 2000 p 17). From this perspective we can see that any hegemony of a particular culture in a paricular individual is unlikely. Even aggressively prescriptive cultures such as the extreme forms of Christianity or Islam, have to coexist within a frame work of other cultures. We are all, in the course of our day to day activities, exposed to different, sometimes competing cultural values that we have to reconcile. The intellectual/educational values that prompt us to recognize and understand this dynamic is helping us to negotiate an appropriate balance and use these different cultural values in their context. We as teachers have a fundamental responsibility to give students the abilities to function as constructive and valued members of society and within their chosen profession. Therefore, if we attempt to ignore Teachers act unethically, however, when they promote their cultures as being superior or devalue a learner's culture. We may very well do this unconsciously and should try to recognize and reinforce the learner's values. Rita (of Educating Rita) clearly perceives her professor's culture as being superior to her family's more spontaneous working class culture. It is unlikely that her teachers ever stated this but it is almost implicit in the concept of high art or literature that other forms of cultural expression are not nearly as valuable. Rita should be able to recognize that neither value is an absolute value in itself but exist in parallel.

Conclusion As I said at the beginning of this essay, I would find it very hard to argue that teaching does not impact on the personality of the student in some way and that it is a matter of degree and intent. I have found in conducting my professional practice, that there are many situations where I believe that it is essential to challenge the students preconditioned assumptions and that the theories of transformational learning are a handy tool for this end. Although these theories are based very much on the supremacy of logic , that rational internal conscious reflection will overcome preconditioned assumptions that are false or limiting. There is however evidence One of his essential arguments is that if we as learners can consciously recognise and accept these

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Transformational theory is very much based on the supremecy of logic. There's an assumption that there is one real experience that our meaning perspectives distort.

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References: Knowles, M. (1984). Andragogy in Action Jossey-Bass Publishers San Francisco Mezirow, J. (1991) Transformative Dimension of Adult Learning Jossey-Bass Publishers San Francisco Taylor, E. W. (2001) Transfornative learning theory: a neurobiological perspective of the role of emotions and unconscious ways of knowing. Institute Journal of Lifelong Learning, Vol 20, No. 3 218-236 Cope, B & Kalantzis, M. (2000) Multiliteracies Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Macmillan, Australia

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