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Children, on-line learning and authentic teaching skills in primary education |
Substance & Form |
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Main Topics
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At a recent Tasmanian Principals Conference a panel of twelve secondary students were asked to respond to the question 'What can schools do for me?' Interpreting their comments and linking them to the related comments made by a panel of professionals from various agencies and organisations the following distinctions are proposed for consideration:
Substance: to do with success and well-being, values, purposes, accessing opportunities, participation, engagement, belonging, (working) relationships, actionable learning ('applicable in everyday life'), achievements, teaching as mediation
Form: how the substance is expressed: attendance, time, place, (working) arrangements, membership, (working) roles, policies, processes, products, scaffolding, teaching as scaffolding
IF this framework is valid then
Substance, form and Technology To be managed by technology any substance must be in a form that is amenable to the specific technology . Consider water and levers: in its liquid form it is difficult to lever water, however in one solid form, ice, it can be levered. In another solid form, snow, it is less amenable to leverage.
Consider also the transport of oil: oil is readily amenable to pipeline, pumping and tanker technology but not so readily amenable to conveyer belt technology.
Substance, form and ICT There are two major issues to do with substance and form in relation to ICT.
The first is the issue raised in the previous paragraph. That is, the information and/or communication must in a form that is amenable to the technology being used. Typically information must be codified in some way that will allow the information to be processed.
The need for information to be codified prior to the application of ICT is a major issue in teaching and learning.
Information for teaching Only a small proportion of the information traditionally used by teachers and learners is in a codified (or even codifiable) form. That is much of the critical information used in teaching and learning is not readily amenable to management with ICT. This is perhaps one of the reasons that that ICT has had such little impact on the core work of teachers despite classrooms having computers for twenty years. When teacher information is codified (as in assessment and reporting) it is generally in a form that is more suitable use by adults as so teachers are more likely to use ICT for assessment and reporting than for direct instruction.
The nature of teacher's information contrast with nature of the key information in commercial transactions. Commercial activity usually involves transactions which can be readily and universally codified in terms of quantity, date, time, cost, product ID (barcodes?), order number, supplier ID, customer ID... At this point in time there is not an equivalent framework for educational 'transactions'.
Teaching for substantial learning The second issue related to the teacher's need to distinguish substance and form in the students achievements. Of course substance and form are closely linked. It can be common practice for an explicit form (eg, an electronic document) to be taken as an indication of substance. That is, the document is an indication of student achievement: competence with ICT and/or knowledge related to the document's contents.
On the other hand some teachers are reluctant to accept ICT based 'homework' because of the difficulty of establishing the substance of the authoring student's engagements with, and achievement in, the learning task that has resulted in the document.
Similarly, assisted and automated processing by ICT-based tools can produce student work in a form that masks a lack of substance in terms of the learner's achievement or capabilities. For example, early in the 2003 school year one Grade 3 Teacher reported his reluctance to allow his students to use the word processors on the class computers until he had established (the substance of) their current literacy competencies.
Change and Improvement The introduction of new technology is advocated on the basis on the improvements that will follow. But how are change and improvement related to substance and form?
Improvement is fundamentally about achieving better substance. The form may or may not change. On the other hand it is possible to change the form without improving the substance. Thus there are several dangers in managing change and improvement:
This leads to the 'baby and bathwater' challenge. The substance (baby and baby's well-being) must not be lost when the form (bathwater) is removed or changed.
The policy challenge In simple terms the policy challenge is how to achieve transformation of the substance. the trap is that form is often easier to specify than how to achieve improved substance.
Transformation Paradoxically a transformation may not involved substantial change of form, but a transformation definitely involves a significant change of substance (40+% is a reasonable benchmark). See Ben's Story. [Important Note: Ben's Story also illustrates that IT does not always involve computers or even digital devices. It also illustrates that matching the technology to the learning task can have a profound effect on learning. The technology involved in this case study is simply a method for measuring and recording learning performance so that the learner can reflect on it.]
Organisation for substance and form Organisationally there are also issues related to substance and form. ICT may contribute by making alternative arrangements feasible as in 'flexible delivery'. In this sense ICT may enable students to engage with the substance of a program while participating in a different form of the program.
Substance, form and assessment There are significant implications for both planning of form and assessment of substance. Indeed it is common for matters of form, such as attendance, to be used for assessment. In this situation it is likely that attendance (form) is being used as a measure of engagement (substance).
Achieving consistent substance Form is largely the specific arrangements made to support or demonstrate learning (substance). Given that different students will require different support and may need to be able to demonstrate their learning in different forms the following principles may apply:
That is 'one form does not fit all'.
Substance, form and quality Thus quality is best achieved through consistency of substance rather than uniformity of expression of the substance (one form). |
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