WiserEarth Group Support
Help and advice for WiserEarth groups, discussions about groups and examples of successful groups.
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Feb 20, 2008
Updated: Nov 19, 2009
Membership: Open
Public
Curriculum/Module Evaluation
Curriculum/Module Evaluation
This Wiki reports on our progress relating to these activities, cited from the NSF grant:
- Module evaluation production: A team will organize learning and teaching success rubrics for each learning module to serve as measures of success. A variety of pre- and post- measures should be developed beyond examinations that reflect the creativity of ethnobiology (cultural and biological diversity).
- Module evaluation evaluation: The term 'evaluation evaluation' literally means assessment of the evaluation system. A team will evaluate rubrics and measures of outcomes in order to improve learning and teaching success.
Our task team will use a variety of creative and mutually collaborative ways that will integrate well with the work of the other groups within the Open Science Network.
Team Leader: Jeanine Pfeiffer
Team: Cissy Fowler, Laura Weiss Shiels, Linda Different Cloud-Jones
VISION:
We’re very excited about this! Because evaluation is such a critical part of learning and evolving.
We want to create a self-sustaining evaluation methodology, i.e., something that can live on its own, be replicated and modified without the need for continued oversight.
We plan to conduct quarterly online & teleconferenced meetings to report on our individual tasks, compare notes, and ensure we have substantive progress on our action items.
We will recruit additional people from our own local/institutional networks to help with our action items, and invite incoming participants to join our quarterly meetings.
ACTION STEPS:
1A Complete background research on evaluation methodology (rubrics and protocols); distill key points and post on this Wiki
RESOURCES
Create Your Own Rubric: rubistar.4teachers.org
UHM rubric bank: manoa.hawaii.edu/assessment/resources/rubricbank.htm
Dr. Stevens' PowerPoint presentation and handouts are available at the Assessment Office website in the "Workshops" section: manoa.hawaii.edu/assessment/workshops/index.htm
1B Post examples of different styles of rubrics on WiserEarth including those currently used by OSN participants (Summer 2009)
- We’ll be encouraging creative approaches
2A Create a draft evaluation methodology (rubrics and protocols, including feedback methods and protocols) (Summer 2009)
*We propose that our OSN curriculum modules should develop their own rubrics, and the Curriculum Evaluation Team will evaluate those rubrics
Each module’s rubric can include logframes that delineate goals/objectives, outputs (e.g., assessment tools) outcomes and impacts; pre-and post-surveys of participants using the curricula; the format of the module (e.g., lectures? Guest speakers? Experiments? Field trips?); the accessibility of the material, etc.
The team’s evaluation rubric will include the history of the rubric (where it was derived), the transparency and complexity of the rubric, etc.
Re: feedback – our team notes that current evaluation methods used in academia can be deeply flawed, and thus hope to develop alternative mechanisms that are more holistic, positive, and inspirational. We see this as a lengthier discussion, including the questions such as “who has the authority to evaluate”?
3A Post the methodology on WiserEarth and solicit feedback on the methodology from within our network (Fall 2009)
4A Solicit feedback on our methodology from an external team of advisors (Fall 2009)
4B Create a team of “Evaluation Evaluators” from our team of advisors (DEADLINE: December 2009)
* We think it's important that our EEs come from outside the network, for a fresh perspective.
5A Pilot our newly developed methodology with a small group of OSN participants (Winter-Spring 2010)
Comments (1 - 2 of 2)
|
|
|
A GAIAN PARADIGM CHAPTER #1 -- THE FOUNDATION
For some 2,000 years or more, civilization has been ruled by a social paradigm on which all aspects of the EuroAmerican cultures are based -- the “dominator paradigm.” In the past two decades a new social paradigm has been emerging that could have the most profound and fundamental impact on human civilization since hominids first came down from the trees.
The old paradigm placed humans in a purposeful universe created by some supernormal power for the domination and use by man. The new paradigm we, call “A Gaian Paradigm,” suggests a spontaneously self-organizing universe in which humanity is but one of the created tightly linked, interdependent webs of being.
THE DOMINATOR PARADIGM
The “dominator paradigm,” has had a long evolution. It evolved from the Jewish creation myth that held that the earth was created for the use of and domination by man. It was strengthened by Greek philosophy with the postulate that man is the measure of all things. The early Church held that a chain-of-being put man at the top of a hierarchy with only a few celestial beings above.
The “dominator paradigm” was imbedded in the minds of Europe by the thousand-year Inquisitions that burned thousand of heretics, mostly women, at the stake for believing in Earth as our creator. It was spread to the East by the crusades that destroyed “infidel” humans, cities and nations. During the Age of Colonization and Discovery it was perpetuated and made worldwide by the sword (technology), the flag (nationalism), and the cross (Christianity).
Newton’s clockwork concept of that cosmos, and Darwin’s theory of evolution were interpreted to “prove” the validity of the dominator paradigm. It was fixed in our secular moral system by the acceptance of Adam Smith's economy that human "self-interest," competition and materialism should, and do, dictate all human actions. This abomination as the essence of humanity now rules the world.
A GAIAN PARADIGM
A Gaian paradigm not only has many roots but can be, and is becoming, the underpinning of a new global network of cultures replacing the now dominant and domineering man-centered industrial cultures. Like all cultures, the new cultures will be, holistic and unified coherences of interdependent components -- religion, economics, social and others.
The emergence of a Gaian paradigm is resulting in a deep fundamental transition of our world view, our social institutions, our cultural norms, and our lifestyles. The need for this transition is being made obvious by the growing numbers of dangers inherent in industrialism including endless wars and economic breakdowns. But the transition is happening, and being made real by the introduction of many positive and creative social innovations.
This millennium is being looked upon as a time of radical and fundamental change. Minds are opening to new ideas. People are looking for new actions. It is in this spirit of a hopeful, deep, fundamental social transformation that this book is addressed. These are the concepts we’ll explore in the next few chapters.
FOUNDATIONS FOR A GAIAN PARADIGM
Many basic scientific observations led to this new scientific/social paradigm. The advancement of the Gaia theory, the establishment of Chaos and Complexity theories, and new concepts of evolution were among them.
New observations that biological evolution did not progress, as Darwin predicted, in a series of minute changes which led over time to the emergence of new species. Rather, biological evolution happened in quantum leaps. Major biological changes and new species are created in relatively short periods of time after long periods of stability. This observation was designated by Stephen Jay Gold as punctured equilibrium.
James Lovelock, a scientist working for NASA, observed that the biosphere of the Earth was radically different from all other planets. It stayed amazingly constant within ranges which supported life.
At the same time Lynn Margulis, a microbiologist, was studying the evolution of microorganisms over the billions of years before animals appeared on the face of the Earth. She found that life forms were interdependent. Life was able to exist on Earth because of a symbiosis among all life forms and the geological Earth. Everything was interdependent with everything else. Life created its own biome.
Lovelock and Margulis proposed that the whole Earth was a self-organized, self-supporting ecological system At the suggestion of a neighbor of Lovelace, William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, they termed this living Earth system Gaia, after the Greek Earth goddess.
A theoretical understanding of how Gaia, or in fact any system, might spontaneously self-organize came from other fields of science including mathematics, physics and particularly computer science. Chaos and Complexity theories (made possible by computer modeling) have moved science beyond the limits imposed by linear mathematics, algebra and calculus. Study of the transition of order into chaos, or chaos into order, and the formation of complex systems from simpler ones has opened a whole new area for science. Two particular breakthroughs in the field are relevant to the Gaia concepts.
Self-organizing criticality is an idea proposed by Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist, Per Bak. His first computer model representing self-organizing criticality was of a pile of sand. As you pour grains of sand on a spot it slowly builds into a stable inverted cone. As you continue pouring, the cone becomes unstable until sand slides and avalanches restore a new larger stable cone. Bak showed that biological evolution occurred in such bursts. Simple entities formed more complex systems, which remained stable until internal pressures built up and caused a rapid reorganization. There seems to be a law of nature, self-organizing criticality, by which new forms come into being.
Autocatalysis, developed by Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute, is another concept which provides a theoretical base for the evolution of Gaia. Autocatalysis holds that systems of biological entities may promote their own rapid transition into different forms. Kauffman uses the simple example of the slippery-footed fly and sticky-tongued frog. The mutation of slippery footedness gave no environmental advantage to the fly until the mutation of the sticky-tongued frog. Only then did Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest come into play. Networks of potential mutations may develop and remain dormant until triggered by an environmental change or another phenomenon that brings on the avalanche of transition. Autocatalysis, linked with-survival-of-the-fittest. explains how complex organs like the eye, or new species emerge.
Self-organizing criticality and autocatalysis are among the scientific concepts that show how biological entities spontaneously self-organize in quantum-like leaps from simple cells to linked complex networks of cells, organs, plants and animals.
More than that, physicists like Lee Smolin and Nobel Laureate Murray Gellmann, have extended self-organizing back to the beginning of time at the Big Bang, suggesting that the same principle may apply to the self-organizing of fundamental particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, and molecules into galaxies, solar systems, planets, and life.
At the same time economists like Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, Brian Arthur, and Jon Holland have extended the new paradigm in the other direction, to include economics, social organization, and human consciousness.
This new scientific-social paradigm suggests that people have no superior divine mandate within a universe created for them. They are not independent of, above or beyond the natural world in which they are imbedded. They do have the unique ability to understand, through science, the laws that govern them, to envision future worlds, and to co-create those future worlds within the laws of science.
CYBERSPACE AND THE NETWORKED UNIVERSE
“Everything is connected to everything else” is one way of stating the Gaian paradigm. It is a fact of science, and is a social mindset.
In addition it is more than those; it is a fact of technology. “Networking” was identified by John Naisbitt in Megatrends as one of the major rends of the age. It was a social and political as well as a scientific trend. It was made possible by the major new findings of the twentieth century. As he saw it, networking was like roads, the automobile, the telegraph, airplanes, the telephone, and computers. Each of these technologies made the Earth smaller and put people in more rapid and reliable touch with one another.
The real quantum jump in networking is only now before us. Computers and the Internet are providing a challenge that has hardly been explored. Cyberspace is a global phenomenon providing humanity the opportunity to work globally in real time. This takes networking well beyond the concept about which Naisbitt wrote only a few years ago, or the concept of transnational networking which was the root of the formation of TRANET, the organization with which I’ve been working since 1976.
The Gaia hypothesis, the theories of chaos and complexity, the Gaian concepts, and the computer technologies which now face us grew independently of one another. But they form a unity. They, in themselves, are an example of the self-organizing principle which shapes all of cosmic evolution. Together they make up the Gaian Paradigm. They challenge us to prepare ourselves for an avalanche of social, political and economic change in the years ahead. This millennium is evolving radically differently from anthropocentric (man-centered) paradigm which has dominated the past 2000 years.
********** END CHAPTER 1 ************
What change in your life style do you see coming from Gaia ? 22 speculation are listed on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AGaianParadigm/files/
|
A Gaian Paradigm
Chapter 17 --- Life-Long-Learning an option to educating
THOUGHTS ON THE TRANSITION
Our current society is too enmeshed by its current in the dominainator paradigm and its cultural blinders to see that options to our cultural norms exist. The daily practices of our families, our schools, and our churches, our stores, and our work teaches us that the way we do things and the way we think is “normal” and natural. Not doing any of them is an abnormal as eating horse meat in the USA, or not saying “please” and “thank you” in Amish societies. We take the values of self-interest, competition, and materialism as merely the way things are, not a value system that we could give up even if we wanted to. The transition to a new paradigm is not normal. It is a rejection, or at least an open reexamination of all that we take as inalienable truths.
Manish Jain has opened that door in India with his concern for “unlearning.” School leavers, or homeschoolers as we would call them in America, are encouraged and helped to erase what and the way they learned in school, from their minds. Ivan Illich in Deschooling Society (see chapter 6) urged EuroAmericans to do the same. He went further to show that the cultural norms of our current society that are being emphasized in our schools, perpetuates the illnesses of our current society that so many recognize but iyt of which can not see their way out. The cry for “change” in President Obama’s campaign hit a very responsive chord. But the definition of the change that was needed has not yet been enunciated by any of our political leaders. The word “change” hangs in a fog that everyone can see and agree with, but which no one articulates clearly.
Trying to fix the organizations that now make up our society is helping to maintain the status quo. Yet, ambitious programs rave on about “fixing the schools,” “fixing the government,” “fixing the market,” fixing the social infrastructure,” “fixing the health system” and “fixing” all the other aspects of our culture. All of these not only harmonize with but are dependent on all of the others. All are based on the same values of self-interest, competition, and materialism. To rise above these limitation and open ourselves to real social change means rejecting the foundation as well as the superstructure.
As we have shown throughout the first two sections of this book a Gaian paradigm and Gaian cultures give us optional goals for our lives. What we need now is some ideas on how we can bring the transition about. The first requirement may be to reset out vaues. Rather than expecting self-interest, competition, and materialism to bring us the good life we might set our new goals on public interest, cooperation, and The health of Gaia.
Public interest is the true meaning of democracy. It refers to the "common well-being" or "general welfare." Under law these terms become almost meaningless since almost any action can be defended in terms of public interest. Corporate greed to some is in the public interest. In terms of materialism this is easy to defend. However as a personal goal within the concept of Gaia it can become clearer. Public interest is whatever improves the well-being of Gaia including other people.
Cooperation, as we have discussed, is human nature and the core of the successful evolution of humans. A cooperative society is, like a reciprocity culture, one in which life’s purpose is the well-being of all of society. It is the recognition that we are all interdependent. And the well-being of all is the well-being of each. Within a Gaian society that moto extends to all of nature as well as all of humanity.
The health of Gaia is the active part of this trio. A society steeped in and practicing life-long-learning instead of the accumulation of material wealth is a radical departure from the status quo. Large mansions, speedy cars, and conspicuous consumption are no longer accomplishments to be sought. Accumulating knowledge and skills and using them in the public interest replaces them.
No one of this trio alone sets out a new social order. Their interdependence does. The question we need to address is how can life-long-learning create a cooperative society that puts public-interest cooperation, and the well-being of Gaia. ahead of self-interest, competition and material accumulation.
WHY WE LEARN
The industrial worker of the past is no longer of value in the Unites States. Menial boring jobs are done by machines or by the poor in other countries for far less cost than would support a family in America. What is needed, if the United States is to remain viable, is creative individuals inventing new kinds of goods and services. Locking young people up in schools during the most formative years of their lives to be taught skills and life styles no longer of value to society is destructive not only of the individual’s own self worth, but also of the nation's potential future. The time when graduating from school provided graduates with enough memorized knowledge to live a comfortable long life has passed. The future industry requires life long self learning.
Not only is the industrial need for workers radically different than in the past, but learning must be transformed to meet humans’ psychic and social needs as well. There is no personal satisfaction now, if there ever was, for the self-interest, competition, and materialism of industrial society. As Alfie Kohn in No Contest: the case against competition," [see Chapter 6] so well points out, that the competition we take for granted is destructive of both individual and social well-being. Kohn argues that the cultural norm of competition must be transformed to cooperation. Ivan Illich enlarges the position in making the case that both learning and living should be convivial. That is, we should all learn and live in joyous collaboration with family, friends and colleagues.
The present education system limits its concern to pre-society individuals. It has not given up the old dominator motivation for learning in spite of dramatic social changes and social needs. Young people are still isolated in schools to be taught the mechanics and life styles they would have needed for jobs no longer available in this nation. EuroAmerican societies no longer need automatons to work rote jobs in the boring production lines. Even industry now sees its needs creative critical thinkers able to invent, innovate and imagine new concepts, new systems, and new designs. They need workers able to keep current with the rapidly change of inventions and innovations A new learning system must be designed for the future of industry as well as the psychic well-being of the life-long learners themselves.
HOW WE LEARN
Brain Research
Not only is the reason to learn radically differently, for both the individual and society, but also brain research has revealed how the human mind learns. No two minds are alike, nor is any one mind prepared to absorb and organize the same information as any other at the same time and in the same way. Trying to teach 20 or more people at the same thing ant the same time in the same way is an inefficient if not impossible, task.
Brain research sets a new foundation for understanding learning. It tells us that learning is a nonlinear function of the mind. That is, the input to the brain is not organized. It includes a chaotic jumble of unorganized sounds, sights, feelings, smells, tastes and ideas. It is the mind that organizes the scattered inputs into logical and useful order. The ability to learn anything new is unique for each person. Learning is something each mind does for itself
As Roger Sperry pointed out, all steps in evolution include three new properaties -- physical forms qualia, ahnd "downward causation." "downward causation." Sperry also recognized that the brain, triggered by the senses, is always feeding new data for the mind to organize and use. We are learning all of the time,. [See Sperry in Chapter #06].
The educate/teach/school syndrome with its government designed curriculum taught by authoritarian teachers by rote memory, is not only inadequate but even destructive for the the process of learning. Manish Jain in India has initiated a new program of “unlearning” for school graduates and school leavers to enable them to become creative members of society. Roland Meighan in England has organized a “Personal Learning” movement to recognize and meet the unique needs of each individual on a personal path. In America some families have moved beyond homeschooling to “unschooling.” They learn with their children whatever and whenever a child expresses an interest in any topic. A small booklet, “How School Affect Your Kids,” from The Consumers' Association of Penang in Indonesia explores “why schools make students ill.” It questions why students are “cut off from reality,” and wonders how they can exist in the world having been taught that “only what is authorized is accepted.” The booklet ends with a long list, and some stories of great men and women who have become leaders because of their refusal to be schooled. Among them, are Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Ansel Adam, Joan of Arc, Edison, the Wright Brothers, Benjamin Franklin, Steven Spielberg, Mozart, and Albert Einstein.
We will see later in the book how a few organizations have moved beyond education and adopted program to help learners learn without schools.
WHAT WE LEARN
What we learn is the central concern of the current education system. In the K-12 system the curricula are given undue attention by educators, bureaucrats, and legislators. Even at best a curriculum is broken down into subjects. Each subject is taught as if it had no connection with others. The products of ur scools may be graduates who have gotten straight As. But who are not able to synthesize the courses into an integrated view of the whole. They may have skills, facts, and data but they have no wisdom and little participation in the world in which they live.
Higher education is likewise carefully proscribed by degree granting institutions as well as is the schcled advance of students. I recall my own university education that as a engineering physics student I was discouraged from taking courses in theater. It was argued. probably correctly, that I had only 4 years to accumulate all the credits needed for my degree and a job in science. Even in graduate school the proscribed courses narrow one’s choice of learning. Education is very Newtonian, that is, it is atomized by topics and sub topics. Very much as the dominator paradigm suggests. A Gaian holistic approach to learning is taboo.
I found this approach to education limited the breadth of the physicists I met while in the physics program of the National Science Foundation. Most of them knew all there was to know about their very narrow limite specialty. But were woefully uninformed in other areas such as the fate of the Earth or the beauty of nature, . A few, like Einstein, Max Born, Eddington, Russell, and Murry GellMann are able to become specialists in their professions and still have a deep and broad understanding of other fields. In my university teaching of physics I insisted that each of my classes read a couple of the more philosophical books of some of these expert scientist. The dean of my university soon reminded me that I was hired to teach only physics. This may, of course, be just the way the fields of knowledge are, but it may also be that the system of education requires limits to wisdom.
Certainly in all levels of learning and all levels of life, society can and must develop a broader view of learning than now exists. New concepts of Life-Long-Learning must be freed of current strictures. Learning must be viewed as the purpose of life, replacing work, jobs, and material accumulation. Each person must be free to learn anything at any time in any way from the vast world of knowledge without being limited to small hunks of that world determined by governments, religions or other outside forces. The major work of learning is learning how to learn. Our mantra should be “ freedom to learn.”
WHEN WE LEARN
The current system of education concentrates on the K-12 ages with a passing interest in preschool training or in the values for life. Higher education can be painted with the same brush. Learn to get a job, not to improve life on Earth. At one time, that may have been a somewhat justified assumption, as was the accompanying assumption that one can be taught, in the k-12 years, all of the information needed for a full life of work earning a living. Both the current social needs and the new brain research give the lie to these assumptions. To say nothing about the psychic needs of the individual for a pleasurable, creative and fulfilling lifetime of learning. Add to that the new techniques and technologies, including the Internet, that make communication around the world possible in nanoseconds, and its easy to see why schools at all levels are failing to prepare students for the future.
Social needs, human capabilities, and technologies make it necessary as well a possible to design a learning system that betters serves both individuals and society. The holistic Gaian concept implies that we are all integral parts of nature and society from birth. New information is flowing endlessly and being organized in our brain/mind continually. We are, whether we plan for it or not, life-long learners.
Life-long-learning is more a change in philosophy, or world view, than merely a change in how we do things. It is first the world view that we are an integral par of the Earth and all life on Earth. It is then the view that all people should, or must, be open to new ideas, new experiences, new behaviors, and new skills throughout their lives. This not only leads to a more satisfying life, but is also necessary today and will be more so in the future. The world of knowledge is growing so fast that even in the fading industrial world no one alone can keep current with all the knowledge they need. No one can get enough knowledge in their heads to serve them for more than a few years. A few years ago the turn of time for knowledge was 25 or more years. In the past decade or two it has shortened to 5 or 10 years. This speed up in the growth of knowledge needs to be accounted for not only to maintain the skills one needs for a series of ever changing jobs. But also for rapid change in all aspect of our cultures -- music, art, services, goods, leisure, religions, foods, medicines, and others. Today with computers the transformation of knowledge is rapidly getting even shorter.
For this reason alone it is clear that the school system is inadequate and that a learning system must provide more flexibility so that each person can learn at any time what they need and want at that specific time. This fact drives many families to take their children out of school and become homeschoolers. In doing so they also take their children out of the learning environment, and away for learning peers.
In cooperative learning with peers a learner gains from the interest, knowledge and help of others. The breadth of the topic studied comes not only from what other know but also from what they don’t know and the questions one learner asks that might never come to another one’s ind. In addition comrades in study fill in the basic human need to belong. That feeling of friendship, conviviality, cooperation, and sense of belonging last well beyond a session in math, english, or nature study. It is usually a lifelong enjoyment.
End Chapter 17
Life Long Learning if
A Gaian Paradigm