Remodelling Education

Moira Monteith

The concept of flux has existed ever since Heraclitus put his leg into a river in 513 BC to show people how things keep changing. 'Management of change' in education has been discussed perhaps for three or four decades. Recent research papers and government initiatives, particularly those concerned with the use of ICT, pelt us with facts on the inevitability of change. Undoubtedly ICT brings changes, some expected, others quite unexpected. This chapter suggests ways of using IT to help us understand what is happening within our classrooms, to gain knowledge of ourselves and our teaching.

Modelling is a learning strategy included within National Curriculum guidelines and considered conceptually useful in terms of planning, deciding which techniques to use in problem solving, and developing new designs and ways of looking at past events.

Oldknow and Taylor (1998) propose two definitions: 'the development of a hypothesis to explain the connection between variables in a system ... in a vaguer sense the word "modelling" is used synonymously with "What if..?"' I suggest modelling may provide a useful strategy for looking at our own practices in teaching and learning. In particular, our behaviour with ICT reflects our practices, both in the use of ICT and whatever else we do in education.

Oldknow and Taylor's definition above indicates that we might be dealing with one or several hypotheses to explain the connection between variables. However, many computer-based models are in fact the hypothesis stage and suggest what might happen with a given set of variables, perhaps sequentially changing the variables. Such models achieved public prominence in the UK during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth infections in livestock. Various outcomes were plotted and results shown on national TV newscasts. One particular model which involved the quick slaughter of herds diagnosed as infected, appeared to have a considerable effect in terms of how the outbreak was dealt with. Since speed was one of the important factors in this model, suspect animals were slaughtered as quickly as possible, some animals before subsequent tests proved the diagnosis to be mistaken. Similarly, within most models, certain features will become foregrounded and their prominence can skew what happens when we attempt to replicate the model in a slightly different context.

The model previously cited, concerning the foot-and-mouth epidemic, implied quick action. Some models seem comparatively static, particularly if they are considered the 'ideal'. In Victorian schools, children had 'model' lessons describing, for example, exotic animals when a model of the animal would be shown to the class. In a Derbyshire village school the inspectors of the day found fault with a school's resources: there were insufficient models to give children opportunities to understand the world outside their county. The governors clubbed together and between them bought a few more models, including one of a whale. In a school with no TV, few photographs and not many books it must have been difficult for children to imagine what whales are like. The model in this case remained the same for succeeding intakes of children over many years, enabling the children to widen their knowledge of the earth and its creatures. However, it was only one model of one kind of whale. A prescriptive model often implies a static viewpoint. The National Curriculum cannot be the same in all the contexts of all the schools there are in England but we have endeavoured to make it so. There are signs, however, that this policy is changing and schools will be able to look at curricula in a more independent manner, developing a number of different curricular models.

Information technology and history

Using different variables we can plot the past in a range of models. We do not need to alter facts as Orwell suggested might happen in his novel 1984. We merely foreground one or more specific features in which we are interested. Simplistic but fascinating. Early accounts of history were modelled on the life and death of various kings and queens. Economic history, on the other hand, considers factors other than just the sovereign's life and his/her management skills. If we examine history from the point of view of where information came from and who knew what about its flow (Rodriguez and Ferrante, 1996), then we end up with a rather different view of what was and might be happening.

In agrarian societies, information tends to come from the top heirarchically, and is passed down through social layers. Knowledge held by those at the bottom of the social pyramid, though essential for their survival, perhaps about which herbs to eat, how to cultivate certain foodstuffs, was often neglected in the past by those at higher social levels, sometimes to their cost. Usually there are few past records of what people at the bottom of the social pyramid did know.

Social layers change when industrialisation occurs within a country. The people with new knowledge are those who understand how to run and maintain factories, mills, mines and other industries. Managers become important, receiving information from above, passing it down and training people to work in new ways. Still the information flow remains predominantly one way and problems experienced by people at the bottom are never realised or even known by those at the top. Strikes and withdrawal of labour occur, even riots and rebellions, situations which might have been avoided had their employers and governments understood what was happening.

Currently, we are living in what is claimed to be an Information Age, where information is deemed pre-eminently important. Middle management has lost some of its power since top social layers can communicate more easily with those way beneath. Consequently, there are fewer layers to the now flatter social pyramid. Those without appropriate information can fall outside the model altogether and become a new version of underclass. Sovereigns no longer seem very important as such, and even those people apparently running multi-national companies are only as good as their information. Consumer groups...