Towards 21st Century Learning: Culture, Process, and Skills

Behold ye olde dissertation…

OVERVIEW

This story began in Africa, and it continued in southern California. Let’s take it “home” by making sense of the journey. I utilized an ethnographic approach in order to study the learning culture, pedagogical process, and participant skill development of four out-of-school educational programs. To examine learning culture, I interpreted the extent to which participants indicated their sense of safety, connection, engagement, and empowerment. To conceptually assess pedagogical process, I characterized each program’s modeling of participatory governance, participatory learning, and playfulness. Three “master skills” — NML/SEL hybrids that I refer to as Dynamic Appreciation, Resource Engagement, and Respectful Negotiation — were my means for interpreting participants’ skill development.

Now let’s put these four case studies into conversation by answering RQ11, which asks, “Across these four case studies, which trends and/or relationships between/among culture, process, and skill development does this study suggest?”

MAJOR TAKEAWAYS

Safety. These data suggest that, when participants perceive a lower level of safety, their levels of connection, engagement, and empowerment also tend to be low.

Connection. When there is social-emotional safety, it seems as though it becomes significantly easier and more desirable to connect with a group, connect with a caring individual, and connect with self. Trust is the cornerstone upon which connection depends.

Engagement. Engagement appears related to both safety and connection. If you don’t feel particularly safe and/or connected, where’s the incentive to engage? Engaging under those tenuous circumstances is risky; your identity or your work might be disrespected in such a norms-challenged, shallowly connected culture. On the other hand, when levels of safety and connection are high, then engagement levels also tend to be high.

Whereas safety still seems like the cornerstone of all (e.g., everything flows from safety), the relationship between connection and engagement might be bidirectional.

Empowerment. Where engagement leads, empowerment tends to follow; or is it the opposite? … Let us conclude that engagement and empowerment are positively correlated and potentially boast a bidirectional relationship.

Participatory Governance. Empowerment and participatory governance are discrete constructs that overlap with regards to participants’ decision-making. When participants can make decisions for themselves, they sense empowerment; when they can make decisions about how the learning community operates, there is participatory governance. This corpus shows that when participants are empowered, power-sharing tends to be pluralistic — but not always. In the case of L4C, participants sensed personal empowerment even in the absence of equally shared control. When power-sharing is pluralistic, however, participants always sense empowerment.

Participatory Learning. Step One and Step Two of the participatory learning model (Felt, 2011) pertain to warmly welcoming participants and introducing participants to a learning community’s resources. These steps were universally modeled, and it’s little wonder – those processes are relatively simple, intuitive, and “safe” (in that they destabilize neither traditional classroom relationships nor traditional teaching practices).

In the case of ELED, the extent to which participants engaged with Step Three, which is about creation, was limited in Phase One and more considerable in Phase Two. I believe that this phenomenon will arise whenever educators value students’ acquisition of knowledge above their production of knowledge.

Steps Four and Five, which are respectively about iterating based on feedback and taking on new roles and responsibilities, were the least frequently modeled. I tend to think that this reflects the wider world as well. Compressed timelines and “perfection vs. failure” paradigms don’t lend themselves to iteration (Step Four), and traditional social hierarchies prohibit students’ varying and diverse access to the identities of expert, learner, leader, etc (Step Five).

Playfulness. Across this dissertation’s case studies, iteration was more commonly manifest than joy. This might be an artifact of program design; given Project NML’s definition of Play as iteration, and established educational traditions that either disallow fun or distrust its legitimacy as a learning goal, facilitators and curricula may have failed to consciously promote “joy.”

GLOSSARY

Culture. Norms, values, ambient emotional energy (i.e., affective climate).

Safety.

Physical safety: bullying-related violence, gang violence, school shootings, corporal punishment, sexual predation, inadequate provisions (e.g., non-existent or polluted drinking water, exorbitantly priced or nutritionally deficient food, broken or germ-ridden bathrooms), unsafe built environment (e.g., uneven pavement, faulty wiring), extreme temperatures (e.g., stifling heat, bitter cold); and natural disasters (e.g., tornadoes, earthquakes).
Social-emotional safety: bullying, unhealthy levels of competitiveness between and among community members, self-destructive involvement with social comparison, disloyalty and lack of integrity, inconsistent delivery of rewards and punishments, and the application of excessively punitive measures.
- Relational trust = Relational trust depends upon four supports: interpersonal respect; willingness to go “above and beyond”; confidence in the other’s capacity to perform his/her role competently; and faith in the other’s personal integrity.

Connection.

Connecting to a group = Sensing relatedness, school belonging.
Connecting to a supportive individual = Bonding with a compassionate school-based “caregiver.”
Connecting to self =
- Self-compassion = Being kind and understanding toward yourself, realizing that most people go through similar problems, and trying to maintain a more balanced awareness of your emotional experiences.
- Shame resilience = Acknowledging personal vulnerabilities, raising critical awareness of how social/cultural expectations shape and narrowly define experiences, reaching out to others to both find and offer empathy, and developing fluency in the language of shame.

Engagement.

Student emotional interest = Students approach the learning context with a sense of enjoyment, fascination
Student cognitive interest = Students can and do demonstrate comprehension, retention of material
- Relevance = The extent to which the learning context’s foci/material respects students’ cultural and geographical worlds, identities and interests, workplace requirements for the present and the future.

Empowerment.

Self-efficacy = Belief in one’s capacity to produce effects.
Collective efficacy = The degree to which individuals in a system believe that they can organize and execute courses of action required to achieve collective goals.

Process. Practices, approaches, ways of working.

Participatory Governance. See Wong, Zimmerman, and Parker (2010).

Vessel control = Lack of youth voice and participation; adults have total control.
Symbolic control = Youth have voice; adults have most control.
Pluralistic control = Youth have voice and an active participant role; youth and adults share control.
Independent control = Youth have voice and an active participant role; adults give youth most control.
Autonomous control = Youth have voice and an active participant role; youth have total control.

Participatory Learning.

Step One = The first step in the participatory learning model features the learning community avidly welcoming all entrants.
Step Two = The second step in the participatory learning model features learners exploring a learning context’s constraints, opportunities, boundaries, and affordances. Asking questions and facing challenges are means by which learners might collect this information; the context can assist by providing transparent rules and norms.
Step Three = Step three features the learning context providing access to materials for creative participation, and learners pursuing their own learning in a self-directed and/or novel fashion by constructing products and exchanging feedback.
Step Four = The fourth step in the participatory learning model features the community providing feedback, the learner steadily incorporating this feedback into his/her work, and developing passion(s) as a result of this meaningful experience.
Step Five = Finally, the fifth step in the model features the context providing access to diverse community members’ reflections and roles. The learner has the option, should s/he choose to exercise it and distinguish him/herself as worthy, to assume a position of more power/responsibility.

Playfulness.

Iteration = When iteration (e.g., experimentation, observation, revision) is an essential part of the learning process, then it both signals and compels other practices. These practices include, first, lowering the stakes around “failure.” If learning experiences are meant to merely set up the next attempt, then there is no such thing as failure. The second practice is restoring the balance between protection and freedom (Gill, 2007). If the implications of “failure” are less significant, than adults can “afford” to let youth negotiate novel pathways that might lead to disappointment, frustration, or innovation. Tim Gill, author of No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society (2007), describes this as a “resilient approach to risk” (p. 82). Third, iteration relates to supporting learners’ agency. If many attempts are to be expected, then learners can decide how they construct each attempt in order to approach their goal. It is worth noting that, since gaming and inventing both fundamentally rely upon iteration, they are effective strategies for propelling a playful learning process.
Joy = When joy is an essential part of the learning process (e.g., a key purpose and a frequently manifested emotion), then it both signals and compels other practices. These practices include identifying “fun” among one’s top objectives vis-à-vis a learning experience. If you’re not having fun, then the process isn’t playful.

This isn’t to say that the learning/work is easy, merely that it’s enjoyable. There’s a certain sort of joy that’s associated with flow, “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 4). The optimal experience or flow experience consists of “…situations in which attention can be freely invested to achieve a personʼs goals, because there is no disorder to straighten out, no threat for the self to defend against” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, p. 40). According to McGonigal (2011):

When we choose our hard work, we enjoy the stimulation and activation that makes us want to dive in, join together, and get things done. And this optimistic invigoration is way more mood-boosting than relaxing. As long as we feel capable of meeting the challenge, we report being highly motivated, extremely interested, and positively engaged by stressful situations. And these are the key emotional states that correspond with overall well-being and life satisfaction” (p. 32).

A second practice is sharing laughter. When processes are joyful, participants tend to smile, joke, and use laughter to both express their satisfaction and flatten social hierarchies.

A third practice is embracing spontaneity. If joy is a key purpose, then shifting directions and/or acting on impulse, be it a silly whim or divine inspiration, is both permitted and supported.

Skills. Capacities, abilities, competencies.

NMLs. New Media Literacies. “A set of cultural competencies and social skills young people need” in a culture that “shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement” (Jenkins et al, 2006, p. 4).

As of today, the NMLs are: Play; Performance; Simulation; Appropriation; Multitasking; Distributed Cognition; Collective Intelligence; Judgment; Transmedia Navigation; Networking; Negotiation; and Visualization.

SELs. Social and emotional learning skills. The pedagogy of emotional intelligence and social intelligence.

As of today, the SELs are: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision-making

Master Skills. NML/SEL hybrids.

Dynamic Appreciation = When its constituent NMLs and SELs are considered together, they articulate a hands-on, other-oriented way of knowing. To simultaneously (and exclusively) apply Play, Performance, social awareness, and self-management to a particular situation enables a learner to exercise creativity, rise above his/her own views or emotions, appreciate another person’s perspective, and “go with the flow.”
Resource Engagement = To simultaneously (and exclusively) apply Collective Intelligence, Appropriation, self-awareness, and social awareness to a particular situation enables a learner to efficiently engage with environmental resources (e.g., ideas, talents, infrastructure, agriculture, etc) and use them in meaningful, ethical ways.
Respectful Negotiation = To simultaneously (and exclusively) apply Negotiation, Networking, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills to a particular situation enables a learner to collaborate productively. Respect, caring, and conscientiousness undergird this practice. Whereas Dynamic Appreciation has a learner “step into another person’s shoes” in order to better appreciate his/her humanity, this skill begins from that place of appreciation and deals with how to cooperate. Whereas Resource Engagement could be enacted in solo contexts (with a learner collecting data or considering information independently), Respectful Negotiation must be practiced with another.

RESEARCH PARTNERS & CASE STUDIES

Project New Media Literacies

Dr. Henry Jenkins launched research group Project New Media Literacies (Project NML) in 2006 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2009, both Jenkins and Project NML moved to the University of Southern California (USC).

The formation of Project NML occurred in the wake of Jenkins and colleagues’ publication of the provocative and widely read white paper Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21^st Century (Jenkins et al., 2006). Inspired to investigate and support the types of learning that they had documented in their paper, members of Project NML stepped outside of the “ivory tower” and worked directly with both students and educators. Project NML’s goal was to “…identify and create educational practices that will prepare teachers and students to become full and active participants in the new digital culture” (Project New Media Literacies, n.d., para. 5). Project NML realized that the extent to which its philosophies and tools would shape classroom life would be determined by the degree to which educators appreciated new media literacies and themselves felt comfortable with participatory culture.

PLAY!. In 2010, from its new home at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, Project NML designed and launched a multi-faceted, multi-year investigation entitled Participatory Learning And You! (PLAY!). This investigation maintained Project NML’s focus on educator outreach, explaining its rationale thusly:

Teachers play a monumental role in facilitating opportunities for students to become critical thinkers, proactive citizens, and creative contributors to the world. In our rapidly shifting digital and social landscape, unequal access to experiences that help build the skills and knowledge necessary to contribute in these evolving environments can prevent youth from meaningful participation in them. This “participation gap”, we believe, cannot be wholly addressed when teachers themselves are not afforded these same opportunities to grow and learn (Project New Media Literacies, n.d., para. 3).

PLAY! sought to discover ways in which Project NML researchers and like-minded peers could integrate the tools, insights, and skills of a participatory culture into the public education system in the United States. Rather than a purely clinical, positivist data dive, Project NML conceptualized PLAY! “as a form of intervention”; this approach compelled “being on-the-ground and listening to participants’ needs in order to include them in the process” (Project New Media Literacies, n.d., para. 7).

This dissertation examines the three (intervention-like) components of Project NML’s PLAY! investigation:

Explore Locally, Excel Digitally (ELED), an after-school program at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools that Project NML staff facilitated over 15 weeks during the spring of 2011 with a core group of eight high school students, most of them freshman at the New Open World Academy;
The Summer Sandbox, a five-day professional development program at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools that Project NML facilitated twice during the summer of 2011, with nine Los Angeles Unified School District educators participating in Week 1 and 12 participating in Week 2;
PLAYing Outside the Box (POTB), an extension of the Summer Sandbox, in which 10 of its graduates chose to participate during the fall semester of 2011.

Laughter for a Change

Laughter for a Change, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, uses play to both follow and extend improvisational theater’s legacy of civic engagement. Its mission is to employ improvisational theater games and comedy training to foster new forms of learning, and to contribute to healing and a sense of well-being, particularly among underserved populations.

Founder Ed Greenberg established L4C in 2007, following his stint as a cultural envoy to Rwanda. Charged by the U.S. Department of State with the task of helping genocide survivors to “learn to laugh again,” Greenberg introduced improvisational theater to Rwandans (McFarren, 2011). He trusted that engaging with improv’s central tenets—“playing agreement, risk taking, spontaneity, changing perspectives, opening up to moments of discovery and surprise, [and] making active, not passive, choices”—would facilitate healing (as cited in McFarren, 2011, p. 166). And it did. Rwandan participants embraced the workshop enthusiastically and continued to create comedy content even after the program was over, prompting the head of the U.S. Department of State’s cultural envoy initiative to conclude, “This is the kind of program that keeps us doing what we do” (R. Keith, personal communication, November 1, 2007).

Greenberg and his staff of L4C Comedy Mentors use theater games to help participants build confidence and community. While L4C runs workshops with senior citizens, military veterans, and residents of homeless shelters, its primary focus is youths. Over the years, L4C Comedy Mentors have worked with such populations as juvenile offenders at Pacific Lodge Youth Services and fifth graders at five Los Angeles elementary schools.

During the spring of 2011, L4C applied and was accepted as a partner of Project NML’s PLAY On! program. Along with other PLAY On! partners, Greenberg presented L4C to Summer Sandbox participants. These partners invited Summer Sandbox participants to join their workshops for their own enjoyment and/or as members of PLAYing Outside the Box (POTB), the Summer Sandbox PD extension that required its participants to attend at least 8 hours of PLAY On! workshop programming.

Greenberg intended for his after-school L4C workshop to provide participating educators with the opportunity to co-learn with youth and to further develop their proficiency in various new media literacies (NMLs), particularly Play. Only one educator chose to attend L4C’s workshop (Week 2 participant Larry – see Chapter V); L4C nonetheless implemented its program, serving youth during the 2011-2012 school year.

This dissertation examines one of L4C’s projects with youth:

L4C at RFK, a weekly after-school improvisational theater workshop with a core group of 12 high school students at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, most of whom were freshman at the Los Angeles High School for the Arts (LAHSA), that took place during the 2011-2012 school year.

Inspiration and FYI

One of the things I was taught early on is that you are not the most important person in the scene. Everybody else is. And if they are the most important people in the scene, you will naturally pay attention to them and serve them. But the good news is you’re in the scene too. So hopefully to them you’re the most important person, and they will serve you. No one is leading, you’re all following the follower, serving the servant. You cannot win improv (Colbert, 2011).

In my experiences I have observed that most students only will pursue out-of-the-box innovation if they feel that the environment is a safe space for spectacular failures – that is, if they believe that, regardless of outcome, their community will respect their unique perspectives and essential humanity.

“Most significant was the finding that schools with chronically weak trust reports throughout the period of the study had virtually no chance of improving in either reading or mathematics” (Bryk & Schneider, 2003, p. 43).

Imagine what would happen if all stakeholders, like improvisers, entered into a mutual safety contract – that is, I’ll keep this space safe for you and you keep it safe for me. Just imagine the authenticity, creativity, and reform that the community could cultivate.