Category Archives: Social and emotional learning

Numbers

  By laurelfelt | January 2, 2012 - 10:37 pm | , , , ,
Leave a comment
“A dominant group, controlling the production of knowledge, shapes the construction and distribution of numbers, in order to convey authority and legitimize certain perspectives” (Wilkins, 2008, p. 17).
“Dating is a numbers game” (conventional wisdom).

Our country may be terrible at math and lousy when it comes to balancing its checkbook — but boy does it love numbers! Numbers are messianic; numbers are truth. And, in certain circumstances, numbers can be bought and sold to the highest bidder! Step right up, step right up, shape em, bend em, bring em home to your kids. Insignificant details or calls to action — pick your flavor! They can even julienne fries!

The problem, of course, is there might be no “there” there. Not only do I distrust the methods that produced most numbers, but I distrust the interpretation of their significance. An unpublished manuscript by Dr. Karin Wilkins (2008) urges numerical literacy: “This literacy needs to advance us toward asking the fundamental questions that resist obedient acceptance of numbers as objective truth” (p. 21). A recent (and heavily trafficked) Op-Ed by Paul Krugman declares plainly, “nobody understands debt.”

In other words, the emperor has no clothes on; and who made him emperor anyway?

My colleagues and I have been on a literacies quest. We’ve been crusading for the new media literacies, which is related to media literacy and social and emotional literacy; now I think we have to add numerical literacy into the salad bowl (don’t you call it a melting pot!).

I also might have to launch my own Torpedo of Truth Tour when it comes to dating. Through literature reviews and participant-observation, I can affirm that dating is not merely a “numbers game.” Its sampling frame, communicative modes, discursive material, and experimental activities differ widely according to participants’ narratives or “dating scripts.” Thus, driving up your numbers will never produce the desired outcome if you’re fishing in the wrong pond, or dangling the wrong bait, or misunderstanding the nibble on the line. Considering contextual variables is more demanding to do, and more tongue-twisting to mention, than parroting a pithy formula, but them’s the breaks. Reliable facts rarely make good soundbytes.

We need to stop valuing mnemonics above reality. The world is gray; accept it. And somebody get that emperor a robe, for crying out loud. It’s getting embarrassing…

Permeability

  By laurelfelt | December 30, 2011 - 11:01 pm | , ,
Leave a comment

A few ex-pats of the theater have (re)entered my life of late. So have some notoriously hard to shake habits.  The former hasn’t provoked the latter, but it has inspired a theatrical metaphor (and a public timestep or four).

I’m struggling with boundaries, striving (and lately, failing) to discern the limits between transparency and oversharing, relating and overidentifying, performing my front region role vs. overexposing my backstage sweating (Goffman, 1959). To cast it in terms of the theater, I don’t know how to light my scrim.

A scrim is a piece of material that boasts the following phenomenal qualities:

A scrim will appear entirely opaque if everything behind it is unlit and the scrim itself is grazed by light from the sides or from above.

A scrim will appear transparent if a scene behind it is lit, but there is no light on the scrim.

–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrim_(material)

How much do I show? When? To whom? And for whose benefit? Is it selfish to let it all hang out, an irresponsible liberation of self from the burden of exercising judgment? Is it courageous to tell the whole truth, a risk to place faith in both parties involved? Is it generous to surrender the keys to the castle, a magnanimous invitation for the other to feel at ease?

And what are the consequences of this permeability? How, if at all, does this fickle wall leave me ill protected? Sometimes, you can see right through a scrim, even when a spotlight’s shone on its face. Sometimes, pulling a solid curtain at just the right time is better for all parties involved — respects both privacy and surprise.

We talked about Les Miserables (Les Mis) last night. I saw the show in 5th grade at the Chicago Auditorium Theater and it changed my life. Truly. We also performed a concert version at Glenbrook South High School and I was cast as one of the narrators… I was so proud. If memory serves, that 1989 production of Les Mis had a scrim. I think that all of the villagers were frozen behind it at the top of the show, during the initial scene where Jean Valjean is graciously abetted by the priest from whom he stole…

Like me, Jean Valjean also grappled with a moral conundrum. While his problem was more cut-and-dry (steal bread vs. let his family starve), he still paid for his “crime.” Right and wrong isn’t always black and white (is it ever even mostly black and white?); it’s shades of gray. How does his wrong stack up relative to his right? How does mine? And how, like Valjean, will I learn from my transgression and try, in the future, to do right as much as possible? Valjean became a mayor, philanthropist, and adoptive parent, finally dragging Marius through the sewers of Paris to please the lovely Cosette (sorry, Eponine, you’re on your own).

What will be my penance? My legacy? And how will I maximize the potential of porousness? Theoretically, one of its greatest assets is its capacity to let go. Yet I’m remarkably bad at that, at least as far as personal exculpation is concerned. Let myself off the hook? Not if I can get in two solid days of intestine-knotting first!

So how do I stop singing the same old song, tapping the same old step? How do I jumpstart my rhythm, become the triple-threat I’ve always dreamed of? And to what extent do I need to consciously critique vs. peacefully accept vs. obliviously overlook?

I need better walls and better releases. I need to emulate the character of Jean Valjean, avoid the role of Jean Dujardin, and maybe, like Ginger Rogers, do it backwards and in heels…

P.S. This photo is thematically rather than chronologically appropriate. It was taken by my dear friend Mark in South Africa, 2007.

Abstracts

  By laurelfelt | October 1, 2011 - 2:21 am | , , , ,
Leave a comment

One day. Two abstracts. Pray to the guest editors of Learning, Media, & Technology…

SPECIAL ISSUE: Digital Literacy and Informal Learning Environments

Vartabedian, V., Felt, L.J., Literat, I., & Mehta, R. Explore Locally, Excel Digitally: A participatory learning-oriented after-school program for enriching citizenship on- and offline.

KEYWORDS: participatory learning, digital, citizenship, after-school, pedagogy

Following Jenkins and colleagues’ elucidation of participatory culture and new media literacies-enriched education[1], this article argues that facilitating a culture of participatory learning stimulates the development of 21st century social skills and cultural competencies. To support this argument, we examine the components of a new pedagogical framework designed for participatory learning and explore a case study in which this framework was implemented — an after-school program in digital citizenship for Los Angeles public high school students.

A culture of participatory learning (often found in informal learning environments[2]) respects and nurtures: heightened motivation and new forms of engagement through meaningful play and experimentation; learning scenarios relevant to students’ realities and interests; creativity with a variety of media, tools, and practices; a community designed for co-learning; and contexts that are situated within a larger learning eco-system. Such a culture empowers learners to practice new media literacies (NMLs) and social and emotional learning skills (SELs)[3] because it allows for the expression of all voices and multiple ways of knowing.

How one negotiates digital tools and norms impacts citizenship on- and offline. As such, the after-school program “Explore Locally, Excel Digitally” (ELED) used hardware (iPod Touches, desktop computers), software (mobile apps, Twitter, GoogleMaps, Prezi), and team-building activities to investigate ethics, mapping, and their intersections. Students examined the characteristics of their own communities and the nature of their participation within these networks, looking at ELED, their friendship circles, their schools, and the neighborhood surrounding Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Using ethnographic fieldnotes, video footage, student-generated multimedia content, and baseline and endline survey measures, we found that this pedagogical framework supported a participatory learning culture in which students practiced NMLs and SELs. Importantly, it also facilitated students’ development of self- and collective efficacy.

[1] (Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2006)

[2] Recent studies have established a relationship between out-of-school spaces and learning outcomes (Bell, Lewenstein, Shouse & Feder, 2009), as well as urged schools’ integration of Web 2.0 participation (Schuck & Aubusson, 2010). What facilitates learning in these informal, physical and virtual sites?

[3] (Zins, Weissberg, Wang, & Walberg, 2004)

———————-

SPECIAL ISSUE: City Youth and the Pedagogy of Participatory Media

Felt, L.J. & Rideau, A. Pedagogy for appropriation: How Sunukaddu supports youths’, instructors’, and communities’ development by amplifying voices in Senegal.

KEYWORDS: Dakar, youth, pedagogy, media, voice, sustainability, skills

While the world’s urban population is expected to skyrocket 41% between 1950 and 2050, Senegal’s rate of urbanization has outstripped the average and is projected to ascend even more sharply, growing by 48% over that span[1]. Therefore, as global citizens consider how best to manage youths’ education within the volatile contexts of rapid urbanization, economic uncertainty, public health challenges, and technological shifts, a case study from Senegal can offer potentially useful insights. This article examines Sunukaddu[2], an instructional program in producing civic-oriented multimedia for Dakar youths.

Non-profit organization Réseau Africain d’Education pour la Santé created Sunukaddu in 2008 to support youths’ creation of digital HIV/AIDS messaging[3]. During the summer of 2010, staff redesigned Sunukaddu to facilitate its ease of appropriation. First, they established a collaborative curriculum design process that boosted instructors’ teamwork and ownership. Second, they increased participants’ hands-on exploration and access to local role models. Third, they adopted smartphones and encouraged sharing content online. Fourth, they addressed participants’ communicative capacities by harnessing new media literacies[4] and social and emotional learning skills[5].

Analysis of ethnographic photographs, participant-generated multimedia content, baseline and endline survey measures, participant focus groups, and instructor interviews suggests that Sunukaddu participation supported instructors’ professional development and facilitated youths’ holistic growth. This article argues that Sunukaddu’s design explains its success. Asking instructors and participants to personalize content and raise their voices[6] enriches the learning experience and helps to bridge the “second digital divide”[7] or the “participation gap”[8].  Nurturing fundamental skills[9] prepares individuals for productive negotiation of varied contexts. Finally, leaving open-ended specific activities and technology requirements respects the unpredictability and/or modesty of funding streams as well as the swiftness of social and/or technological change. Thus, Sunukaddu’s adaptable format should ensure its long-term viability — both an important ethical consideration and key development imperative.

[1](WORLD: 1950: 29% urban, 2050: 70% urban; SENEGAL: 1950: 17% urban, 2050: 65% urban; (United Nations Population Division, 2009)

[2](“Our Voice” in the indigenous language of Wolof)

[3](For a review, see Massey, Morawski, Glik, & Rideau, 2009; also Massey, Glik, Prelip, & Rideau, 2011; also Felt & Rideau, in press)

[4](Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel, & Robison, 2006)

[5](Zins, Weissberg, Wang, & Walberg, 2004)

[6]via writing curriculum and producing documentaries, graphic novels, posters, songs, news reports, etc

[7](Somekh, 2007)

[8]which Jenkins et al (2006) define as “the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow” (p. 3)

[9]e.g., NMLs and SELs

Failure

  By laurelfelt | September 24, 2011 - 5:26 pm | , ,
Leave a comment

Is there anything more provocative than failure?

By definition, we can’t have success without failure. How could we recognize either if there were no standard against which to pit them? “You wouldn’t appreciate the sun if we didn’t have the rain!” a belligerent character in a Weather Channel commercial once shouted. Yin and yang. Of course, this situates success and failure as binaries when a continuum is probably more productive and accurate. Still, the poles are out there. And like Harry and Voldemort, without the one, the other can’t survive (unless one sacrifices himself to kill the other and then comes back to life because he isn’t a gross baby in a train station. But anyway…).

According to research from resilience and positive psychology, in order to realize success, individuals don’t just need failure to exist conceptually — they need to experience it personally. Failure delivers a context for developing coping mechanisms, such as self-regulation, grit, and innovativeness. Too much success might set us up for failure for, when an all-mighty challenge rears its ugly (I mean, opportunity-studded) head, we gifted coasters will be tool-less, sans skills for managing. And down we will tumble (activating our panic attacks, eating disorders, and control issues along the way…).

How do we establish space for failure when the stakes are getting higher, the margins for error slimmer? How, then, with this pressure and such a narrow definition of success, can we expect anything BUT failure? We set the conditions for failure — then punitively disallow it. Yet we demand innovation!

I read a book last year, Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss. This interesting albeit somewhat superficial text was part travelogue, part treatise on cultural definitions and strivings for happiness. From its New York Times book review:

“Icelanders relish personal failure and “indulge in ‘enjoyment of misery,’ ” while “Moldovans derive more pleasure from their neighbor’s failure than their own success.” … Denmark’s key to happiness is lowered expectations” (Paul, 2007).

How do we rationalize failure? And how do we go about developing the character traits necessary for surviving its visitation and ultimately enjoying our lives?

The New York Times Magazine recently featured an article by Paul Tough entitled What if the secret to success is failure?. I highlighted the text, pasted it into a GoogleDoc, highlighted sentence fragments and passages that resonated, and inserted my comments. This document is open for you to edit and I would love it if you would do so. What are your thoughts on this (admittedly lengthy) piece? What resources can you point me towards, as I have added in for you?

[Seligman] “…identified a set of strengths that were, according to his research, especially likely to predict life satisfaction and high achievement. After a few small adjustments (Levin and Randolph opted to drop love in favor of curiosity), they settled on a final list: zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity” (Tough, 2011, emphasis added).

What do you think about the items on this list? What, if anything, does it say about our culture and/or the culture of our schools that these principals chose to replace “love” with “curiosity”? Isn’t what the world needs now love, sweet love?

Looking forward to our dialogue!

P.S. I’d also like to point you towards an online conversation amongst students on the topic of character. Fascinating!
P.P.S. I’d also like to welcome you to read my notes from Thursday’s Ken Auletta talk. In addition to exploring Google and the digital age, he talked a lot about what makes people tick…

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BFkTxCdgS3ElU3TUhHlf5JlgTgMB8aXwg8ozBu4_1Mo/edit?hl=en_US

Brainstorm

  By laurelfelt | September 22, 2011 - 11:24 pm | , , , , ,
Leave a comment

It was sunny in Los Angeles, 12 noon, and I’d just eaten a wedge of cheese. But still. I was cold. I was tired. And I was hungry.

While the prospect of going home and taking a nap enticed me, especially after I got lost looking for Ollin Cafe, then arrived only to find that it’d been transformed into a Mexican bakery, I pushed on. I found another coffeeshop (run by a Ghanian man whose grant for a non-profit African culture youth program I offered to edit) and read about pedagogy. When Don had to close his shop early, I again stifled the impulse to close shop myself and instead relocated to Starbucks.

There, at a crusty table co-occupied by antisocial, screen-glued men, inspiration began to flow… I don’t know that this will actually BECOME my dissertation. Most likely, the final product will barely resemble this outline. Nonetheless, I think I’m onto something here. And boy, do I feel proud…

NOTE: The formatting below is improper — not indented as it should be. If you’d like to see it in its hierarchical glory, click on the hyperlink above.
————————————————–
Dissertation: Strategic curricular approaches to social change interventions

I. Introduction
A. Hook: Allegorical anecdote
B. Thesis: Social change interventions, whether explicitly educational or otherwise, should employ strategies that are versatile/adaptable and address the whole person; such strategies include: creating a culture of participatory learning, and adopting means and ends oriented towards primary skills development.
C. Overview of paper

II. Review of lit/theoretical background
A. Participation and play
1. Participation
2. Play
B. Primary skill set
1. Asset appreciation (AA)
2. Social and emotional learning (SEL)
3. New media literacies (NML)
4. Narrative
C. Domestic education interventions
1. Current challenges
i. lack of funding
ii. test scores: low and invalid
iii. health/safety challenges
iv. cultural shifts
2. Prevailing perspectives
i. it’s lazy teachers’ fault
ii. it’s non-standardized curriculum’s fault
iii. it’s marginalized students’ fault
iv. it’s lack of technology’s fault
3. Programs/solutions
i. Status quo or even regressive: NCLB
ii. Status quo or ancillary or inadequate: Charter & pilot schools
iii. Innovative: Foundation initiatives (e.g., MacArthur’s YouMedia); Independent entities (e.g., Globaloria); University partnerships (e.g., USC’s Hybrid High or Pathfinder)
D. International social change interventions
1. Current challenges
i. lack of funding
ii. volatility: things keep changing
iii. complexity: things are intertwined
iv. idiosyncrasies: things are particular to context
2. Prevailing perspectives
i. top-down
ii. bottom-up
3. Programs/solutions
i. Status quo or even regressive: Externally produced, highly structured, “add water and stir” programs
ii. Status quo or ancillary or inadequate: Programs that allow for token or modest modification by recipients
iii. Innovative: Positive deviance; Participatory/community-oriented development

III. Argument
A. Definitions
1. Participatory learning
i. culture/norms of context: describes basic community functioning, the ways that we treat one another, the rights and responsibilities that community members have in that space — to receive feedback, access roles, pursue passions, etc;
ii. activities of learner: describes the ways that the learner engages with the curriculum — avidly, with perseverance, enriching participation/performance with dialogue
iii. theoretical origins: participatory culture; digital media & learning; educational theory
2. Primary skills
i. mode/means: use a skill-oriented activity as vehicle for exploring content; for example, learn photography through social awareness and appropriation
ii. objective/ends: proficiency in these skills is a goal of the program (whether this is the sole or priority goal can vary; arguably, richer and more efficient if it is not the sole goal)
iii. theoretical origins: arts integration; positive deviance; asset-based community development; appreciative inquiry; human development/resilience
B. The Case for Participatory Learning
1. we live in a dynamic world of constant change
2. learning how to learn, and making that experience community-supported and interest/passion-driven, is infinitely valuable
C. The Case for Primary Skills
1. owning modifiable knowledge-skills-practices efficiently prepares us for diverse contexts (regardless of whether these contexts are volatile)
2. treating the whole person is most effective
3. AA, SEL, NML, Narrative = fundamental (Community, culture, work, meaning)

III. Methods
A. Summer Sandbox
1. Participants
2. Materials
3. Design
4. Procedure
B. Sunukaddu
1. Participants
2. Materials
3. Design
4. Procedure
C. Explore Locally, Excel Digitally
1. Participants
2. Materials
3. Design
4. Procedure
D. Playing Outside the Box
1. Participants
2. Materials
3. Design
4. Procedure

IV. Results
A. Participatory Learning Case Study: Summer Sandbox
1. Program description
2. Participants’ gains
B. Skills-based Case Study: Sunukaddu
1. Program description
2. Participants’ gains
C. Hybrid: Explore Locally, Excel Digitally
1. Program description
2. Participants’ gains
D. Hybrid: Playing Outside the Box (encompassing Play On Workshops)
1. Program description
2. Participants’ gains

V. Discussion
A. Gains in context
1. Program challenges
2. Comparisons to other programs
3. Small sample size
4. Critique of assessment tools
C. Context: Informal vs. formal learning environments, Educational interventions vs. other social change endeavors
D. Audience: Practicing teachers vs. preservice teachers vs. administrators vs. parents vs. students
E. Culture: Outsider consultants, preaching to the choir?

VI. Conclusion
A. Review
B. Other potential areas of research