Robin Davidson Smith

Conceptual

WHAT I WANT TO KNOW
As my goal statement indicates, my central educational interests when I entered George Mason University’s CEHD Ph.D. program were designing experiences that would enable students to learn how to learn and identifying systemic changes that would create a more effective public education in Virginia. These two topics may seem unrelated; but epistemology, the branch of philosophy that examines the origins, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge (American College Dictionary, 1970), is at the root of each issue. In addition, technology has proven pivotal to solving problems posed by each of my interests.

Epistemology has benefited from progress in brain research that directly resulted from technology: attempts to develop artificial intelligence brought about studies that have improved our understanding of cognition and the brain, and computerized equipment has enabled us to view and study the brain at work. For example, imaging technology has demonstrated that the left side of the brain is used primarily for language and that the Broca’s area is the section most connected to grammar. Patients with lesions on the Broca’s area are able to understand language but are not able to produce it (Gazzaniga, 1992, p. 3). Imaging technology and progress in decoding DNA have led scientists to identify a genetic disorder shared by a father and son that prevents their making plurals of nouns (Gazzaniga, 1992, p. 81). Discoveries like this will change our notions of how we learn and of the very nature of language itself.

Systemic change in education may be an oxymoron, but it is definitely impossible unless we can unequivocally identify how we learn and what students need to learn and can define the best relationship between the learner and the learning community. Online learning offers a promising environment for both exploring these relationships and initiating change over a wide geographic area. During my two years working with The Online Academy, I have become less concerned with systemic change and more focused on optimizing computer-assisted learning experiences because our best chance for systemic change in education comes from the technology that is changing the way we live.

For millennia, humans have been asking these questions: What can we know? How do we know? How should we use what we know? In the past two decades, we have increased exponentially our knowledge about what and how we can know. Fortunately, questions of how we should use what we know are no longer answered by an auto da fé, but a contemporary Galileo still may face restrictions on scientific inquiries such as conducting stem cell research. The most significant questions about knowing for the 21st century are these: How can we best overcome the limitations to knowing imposed by time, space, biology, and culture? How can we process, organize, and transform the overwhelming amount of information with which we are faced daily? Online learning that is constructivist in nature and situated in authentic problems offers our best hope of overcoming limitations to knowing; online learning also offers a platform from which to launch effective instruction and practice in dealing with the information overload.

WHAT I KNEW
When I took my first class at George Mason University in the fall of 2003, I knew that Homo sapiens is a language-using animal who, through anatomical selection, had developed a larynx that enabled him to control the flow of air in his esophagus—and thus produce speech—and had a complex, two-sided brain that enabled him to learn and remember. I had a vague notion about pathways being forged between synapses of the brain. I have become more and more aware that the physical has incalculable effect on the mental. I believed from experience and reading that students were not tabula rasa or big cauldrons to be filled with knowledge. Making connections with people, texts, experiences and prior knowledge is a critical part of learning. I had done a fair amount of reading about brain research as it directly related to my discipline. I was not aware of it, but on some level the social construction of knowledge had entered my radar. I was also interested in visual representation—both because I am a visual learner and because of my design experience with students.

WHAT I NEED TO KNOW
There were—and still are—some big holes in my understanding. I knew nothing about the concept of expertise although I am probably an expert myself. While I had read Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, I had never given consideration to the notion of mediating texts, much less remediating texts! Although I knew better, I believed that knowing could only find expression through language. I believed that Wittgenstein was right: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”

Years ago I looked up the word know to demonstrate to my students how to find the etymology and history of words in my brand new Compact Oxford English Dictionary (OED). As always, my OED provided thought-provoking material. Our modern word to know comes from a combination of three Old English words: cnáw (to know by the senses), kennen from which we get ken (to make known or to know by doing, i. e. can), and wissen from which we get wit (to know with the mind). Cnáw and kennen—meaning to apprehend, to perceive, to conceive, to recognize, to identify, to do—imply physical experience, a priori experience, scientific investigation. Wissen—meaning to comprehend, think, understand—implies the mental activity we now refer to as cognition.

It is intriguing but typical that English has both blended three meanings into one word and retained the other two words with more specialized meanings. In Scandinavian languages with similar origins, ken has replaced know, which now means “to make known, to impart the knowledge” (Chartrand, 2005). This is not surprising. Languages are as culture-specific as are the ways we know. Different cultures have their own words and their own meanings for know and knowledge. Chartrand and others have suggested that the specific definitions associated with words for knowledge in a particular culture may determine the types of knowing that can take place in that culture. Chartrand (2005) noted that the Japanese are known as good technicians but not good scientists and suggested that this may be because their language does not have words for abstract terms, making it impossible for Japanese to even discuss scientific theory or such matters as Plato’s ideal forms in their native tongue.

Language and knowing are inextricably bound. I still believe that Wittgenstein is right: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world”; however, our understanding of the word language has expanded. Language is a set of agreed-upon symbols—visual or aural—that are used within a specific context to communicate meaning. We must recognize the fact that, because of technology, language now includes much more than the text and oral speech available to Wittgenstein. I need to know how best to use language in all of its myriad forms to design and deliver instruction.

TECHNOLOGY AND LITERACY
When teachers think of technology and its implications for education, we tend to concentrate on ways to use technology to enhance lessons. We need to be aware of the fact that technology has changed the very way we and our students perceive the world. Classics scholar Jay David Bolter used a vivid passage from Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris, 1482 to open Writing Space: Computer, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print (2001), his book about the impact of technology on literacy. In the excerpt, a priest named Frollo looks with despair between the church of Notre Dame and a printed book he holds in his hand, declaring that the book will destroy the church. As Bolter (2001) explained, the cathedral was “a symbol of Christian authority and a repository of medieval knowledge, moral knowledge about the world and the human condition. The cathedral was a library to be read by the religious” (pp. 1-2) who walked its aisles and read its art and images. According to Bolter (2001), we are in a similar conflict now with technologies competing for space and prestige. Printed text (like the cathedral) represents authority and stability while hypertext (like the printed book introduced with the technological innovation of movable type) has speed of distribution, flexibility, and interactivity (p. 5). Digital technology has also changed the very relationship between the reader and writer, reducing the distance and making the reader into an author; this change has reversed our tendency to magnify the author and has empowered the reader (Bolter, 2001, p. 4). Writing and reading are not the same processes they were years ago when I began teaching.

In some ways we have come full circle. Written language was originally an attempt to capture the visual and aural elements of oral language. Web pages with text, images, and streaming audio and video simply combine the best of oral and written language. Hypertext comes close to re-establishing the lack of rhetorical distance oral language has, once more making participation, immediate feedback, and response possibilities. Bolter (2001) asserted rightly that those who do not read and compose hypermedia are already illiterate by the historical standards of literacy. As importantly, teachers who do not take advantage of the potential of hypermedia are losing an incredible opportunity for student engagement.

Literacy among males is an increasing problem. As a high school English teacher, I have witnessed the increasing difficulty of engaging adolescent males with the standard texts and curriculum. The 1998 National Assessments of Educational Progress reported that the lowest-scoring boys performed much worse in 1998 than they did in 1992, and the gap between performance for girls and boys in grade 12 continued to widen (Smith and Wilhelm, 2003, p. 1). The literacy performance gap between American boys and girls is as wide as that between whites and groups who have suffered systematic discrimination (Smith and Wilhelm, 2003, p. 2). Technology and instruction designed around authentic activity offer the perfect avenues through which to narrow this gap. Males’ performance improves when they read for information “or when they read to do or accomplish something beyond the reading” (Smith and Wilhelm, 2003, p. 2). Numerous studies have shown that boys are more enthusiastic about reading electronic texts than girls; are inclined to read magazine and newspaper articles; “prefer active responses to reading in which they physically act out responses, do, or make something”; and are influenced by the appearance of the reading material (Smith and Wilhelm, 2003, p. 11). Males want the same things they expect in a video game in their learning experiences: clear goals and feedback, a sense of competency and control, self-efficacy, and an appropriate sense of challenge (Smith and Wilhelm, 2003, pp. 31-37). How often does high school instruction reflect these needs? (Image used with permission from the Library of Congress Center for the Book: <http://www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook>.)

Smith and Wilhelm (2003) suggested that we need to redefine literacy in semiotic terms to include “the ability to communicate and make meaning with various sign systems, such as music, video, visual arts, and electronic technologies” (p. 186) and should “build on the interconnections among various forms of literacy” (p. 186). This redefinition would allow classrooms to utilize a wider variety of texts that possess a greater ability to express and engage and “recognize and celebrate both who the boys are and the literacies they currently practice, which would allow them to see themselves and what they do as important in the classroom” (p. 186). Smith and Wilhelm (2003) specifically referenced male students, but feelings of worth and connectedness with our culture’s favored modes of discourse would benefit all students—particularly the dispossessed. A curriculum that focuses on issues of interest to students and media literacies from popular culture can serve as a path to more traditional forms of literacy.

We must conceive of a wider literacy to “help us prepare students for a modern world that uses a profusion of multimedia signs” (Smith and Wilhelm, 2003, p. 186). Linda Flower reported in The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A Social Cognitive Theory of Writing (1994) that the National Assessment of Educational Progress defines workplace literacy as more than simply reading with comprehension and recording information in writing. In this century, workplace literacy demands that workers not simply reproduce information; they must be able to transform information (p. 10). Our students must be able to produce meaningful messages utilizing a variety of media. Schools cannot continue to base literacy expectations on 19th century definitions, continuing to ignore what literacy means in our world.

DESIGN
Many adults are as illiterate as 12th century European peasants; we are not capable of decoding or producing texts in the modes of discourse favored by our culture. Can teachers be effective in the classroom without the literacies the world demands of our students? Intelligent use of visual language has become critical in designing instructional materials whether online or in a standard classroom. Teachers need to utilize what we know about human perception as it relates to learning, student habits and experiences, and the current aesthetic.

Because of my work with student publications, I have known for years that clear serif fonts are more readable on the printed page. I did not know the difference between being readable and being legible or that human eyes respond differently to text in print and on screens. The word readable refers to the ease with which we read long, extended pieces of text. The word legible refers to the ease with which we “read short bursts of text” (Williams and Tollett, 2000, p. 220). Readability and legibility are both important considerations when preparing student materials. Sans serif fonts are more legible on print and screen; sans serif fonts are also more readable on screen because the letters must fit into pixels (Williams and Tollett, 2000). (Cartoon used with permision: http://www.wdcweb.info/library/images/cartoon_monk_05_250(2).jpg)

At the Commonwealth Governor’s School (CGS) we frequently use PowerPoint presentations in our introductory English broadcasts. Since we take turns being lead teacher on units, we often upload the presentations before a broadcast so that we can all get up to speed on the topic and anticipate any questions or problems, but the primary purpose of the PowerPoint presentations is to lessen confusion or provide stimulation. (Students who missed class can also view these online.) During the actual broadcast, legibility and readability are crucial. With over 100 students involved in a broadcast, there isn’t time for squinting or questions about how to spell deus ex machina. Knowing that sans serif fonts are more legible and readable on the screen has made my visuals, such as this presentation on literary perspectives about Kate Chopin, more informative.

Teachers and students also need to be aware of graphic elements in texts. Poor readers generally ignore graphic cues such as special fonts and colors in reading materials, so I often use the first class meeting to discuss the use of textual features. I am now making a more concerted effort to make intelligent use of design principles in preparing student materials. I try to avoid lengthy, dense text blocks--despite what this dense document might suggest! This linked revision of our English 9 summer reading assignment may not seem significant; however, last year we used a form designed by another teacher that was two pages of text with no breaks other than paragraphing. All of my 30 very intelligent students had serious problems decoding the instructions. I got emails and calls all summer asking for clarification. Because of my revisions, this summer I have not had a single call about the summer assignments.

The English teachers with whom I team teach are making more effort to include visuals in our instruction—and not just as decoration. We recognize the important functions that visuals can serve: stimulating thought-provoking dialogue and helping students forge connections with prior learning. These two paintings about the age of artillery by Max Beckmann and Paul Nash that are linked here were used to initiate a discussion of trench warfare as part of our reading of Remarque’s World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front.

Students’ experiences should also inform instruction. The majority of our students are used to the web in which each site has multiple ways to navigate a document. Unwanted and unread pop-ups frequently interfere. Many commercial web pages are overloaded with information. Students have learned, must learn, to be selective viewers, or they would be overwhelmed with information. We must learn to provide flexible movement and clear markers in our lessons and our materials if we have any hopes of taking advantage of students’ strengths and interests. We must provide resources such as this link to my research resources and make them available to students when they need them.

Students are familiar with visual language, a combination of words, shapes, and images molded into a single communication unit (Horn, 1998, p. 8). According to Horn (1998), a number of influences have pushed us into this visual culture: use of personal computers and other digital technology, globalization, Internet, improvements in graphic computer tools, overpowering streams of data, the popularity of work teams, advertising, the spread of television and movies, increasing complexity of tasks, and the increasing need for cross-functional communication (pp. 15-16). Education must become part of this visual culture.

Visual language should change the way teachers design learning experiences; it has certainly changed the way students read. Students are used to engaging in a multilevel, multimodal reading process in which text, images, and shapes operate on both a metaphorical and literal level. “Because multiple levels of visuals, texts, and concepts are combined, they require readers to spend more time in analysis and synthesis in order to come away with the full meaning of the communication” (Horn, 1998, p. 223). Simultaneously, readers of hypertext seeing “familiar visual images” experience “a point of immediate entry and understanding that often bypasses conscious evaluation” (Horn, 1998, p. 223). Visual language offers the prospect of making text both engaging and accessible while demanding upper level thinking. According to Bolter (2001), prose is fast losing its cultural warrant because of its association with printed text; he believes that the only chance for prose to maintain its cultural warrant and prestige is to disassociate itself from printed text and associate itself with “the cultural prosperity of the image” (p. 6). Effective communication should include visual elements.

MENTORING AND ONLINE LEARNING
Working with The Online Academy has shown me that one critical component of education for the 21st century must be the mentor. I began to see myself as a coach rather than as a teacher years ago, but I now see myself as a designer and a mentor. Laurent A. Daloz’s book Mentor (1999) focused solely on the characteristics of adult learners, but his conclusion in the final chapter that education is about care and nurturing holds true for adolescents as well. His description of a good education also holds for teens: “A good education tends to our deepest longings, enriches them, nourishes the questions from which grow the tentative answers that, in turn, sow fresh questions about what really matters” (p. 4).

A critical part of this good education is the mentor, whom Daloz described as “protecting his charge from threat, urging him on, explaining the mysteries, pointing the way, leaving him alone, translating arcane codes, calming marauding beasts, clearing away obstacles, and encouraging—always encouraging” (p. 29). From my first week of teaching I understood that developing a caring relationship with students is critical to their success, so I was very concerned about how I would develop a supportive, caring relationship with a high school student I would mentor through the English 11 course I helped to design. How could I develop a relationship with a student I would never even see face to face or talk to? Luckily, I had practice teaching our online module on the Harlem Renaissance before I began mentoring an online student full time. (Use login = powerguest and password = vhs35 to access the module.)

During the 2003-2004 school year, I was only part time in CGS and taught two regular sections of English 11-1. For one section I taught literature of the Harlem Renaissance as I would in a standard classroom. The other section took our Harlem Renaissance online module for the same number of weeks. We went to a computer lab every day. I communicated with online students only via email even though we were in the same physical classroom for 45 minutes a day. There were a number of problems (largely technical), but two significant results reassured me about online learning: the online students scored as well as or better than students in the control section on a final assessment, and I developed strong online relationships with students who had been remote or unapproachable before.

Smith and Wilhelm’s (2003) investigation into the literate lives of adolescent males indicated that boys have the following expectations: teachers should try to get to know me personally, care about me individually, attend to my interests, help me learn, and make sure that I have learned (p. 99). Girls want the same treatment. Computers, oddly enough, can provide an environment that makes meeting these expectations easier for teachers and students. Computers provide teachers with more opportunity and time to respond to students’ learning needs and provide students with a sense of safety. Smith and Wilhelm (2003) reported that one boy they called Bam noted that computer discussion provided the anonymity that allowed him “to explore ideas and emotions he would never explore in face-to-face conversations” (p. 149). I found that to be true in my Harlem Renaissance experiment. One boy who would never speak up in class became quite creative and chatty online. One of my “Goth” girls dropped her pose of ennui, morbidity, and depression to show a playful side that was endearing. I was still nervous when I got my first full time online student sight unseen. I had had a prior relationship with my experimental online students and had some sense of their personalities, interests, and capabilities.

My fears were unfounded. Discovering emoticons together on DigiChat, the GMU equivalent of Instant Messenger, opened up a dialogue and relationship before we got down to negotiating ground rules for when and how to turn in work, what to do in case of technical failure, what texts were necessary, schedules, and our expectations. Having Jessica email me work with her invariable “I hope you like it!” made not developing a caring relationship impossible. Psychologically, the whole nature of schoolwork changed for me. Because she was working on her own without group practice or help, when she emailed me work, I perceived it as part of a process—as I would if a colleague gave me an important communication to read and edit. I responded like an expert, explaining my thought processes and making suggestions about what she might do next. As an English teacher, I am used to reading multiple drafts of work and helping students see ways to revise and improve, but this mentality permeated our interaction with every assignment. There was much more dialogue about what and how to complete tasks. A mentee/mentor relationship is more likely to elicit the modeling of expert behavior than is a student/teaching relationship. The absence of other students also made an incalculable difference in our working relationship; this experience made me very aware of how frequently teaching requires changes in instruction for everyone because of the demands of a few. When I changed Jessica’s instruction, it was because optimal learning for her required that change.

Gene I. Maeroff’s A Classroom of One (2003) is of particular interest to those who fear that online education may be devoid of personal relationship and connection. A report from the U.S. Department of Education found that instructors of online courses had more office hours and more contact with students than colleagues who did not teach distance learning courses. Online mentors interacted with and were available to students more than their colleagues who only taught face-to-face classes (pp. 191-192). In my own experience, the problem might be that online teachers spend more time than they can afford with their online students. Next time I do online mentoring, I will establish more parameters. I never felt pressured by Jessica to respond immediately unless there were technical problems, but I felt a subtle pressure of my own to be available 24/7. I checked my email entirely too frequently—just as I continually scan a classroom looking for eyes that reflect uncertainty, confusion, or unanswered questions. In a regular classroom, the students go away eventually, and I can stop scanning. My online student was always lurking in my consciousness.

Maeroff (2003) was quick to point out that students must be responsible for their own learning in online environments. From what we now know about what people learn and how we develop expertise, being responsible for their own learning is another advantage to online learning rather than the drawback some perceive it to be. Maeroff (2003) stated that the online environment forces mentors to trust students, “placing the destiny of students in their hands, an approach that may motivate some learners” (p. 100). Motivational research shows that students who have not taken responsibility for their education in regular classrooms are more likely to be motivated to complete work when they are given choices and freedom (Maeroff, 2003, p. 101).

While problems may be camouflaged in a standard classroom, it quickly becomes obvious in an online environment when students do not know how to learn. They are more likely to get individual help in an online environment because the mentor will know exactly what the students can and cannot do and students are more likely to ask for help. I found this to be true in my Harlem Renaissance experiment. One student simply did not have the computer and research skills needed for the work. In a regular classroom I might have assumed that she was simply lazy or didn’t want to do homework. (Prior research assignments had been done in teams, so she had successfully disguised her ineptness.) In an online environment, I identified the problem within days and worked with her individually.

Having my own mentor helped me tremendously. When taking several online courses about mentoring, I had an online mentor of my own. Being on the receiving end made me appreciate the need for a sense of security. I also witnessed the benefits of having a mentor model expertise.

EXPERTISE
At the Commonwealth Governor’s School (CGS) where I now teach Honors English 9, AP English Language and Composition 11, and AP English Literature and Composition 12, we do have a culture of thinking and try to model the behavior of experts; however, I want to initiate lessons on what Tishman, Perkins, and Jay (1995) referred to as the six dimensions of thinking: a language of thinking, thinking dispositions, mental management, the strategic spirit, higher order knowledge, and transfer. We have something called the culminating activity, a totally individualized, independent research project that takes a year to complete, and we have been working on transforming it into an exercise that helps students progress from novice to expert status by their senior years. (They do, in fact, have experts in their area of inquiry as mentors in grade 12.) Throughout the process, students have a faculty mentor who coaches and guides. We also teach specific interdisciplinary lessons related to culminating activity; these workshops would be the perfect place to implant specific lessons on the six dimensions. We continue to refine this activity each year; it is a major focus of our efforts to develop our students into self-regulated, self-motivated learners. I have gotten many ideas from Tishman, Perkins, and Jay’s book, The Thinking Classroom (1995). We will be revising culminating again this fall and attempting to get college research credit based on the European model.

Developing Self-Regulated Learners (1996) by Zimmermann, Bonner, and Kovach addressed an issue that is critical to education in any environment. Online learning has simply made the necessity more apparent. This text posited the notion that successful, self-regulated learning requires five skills that can be taught: (1) time planning and management, (2) text comprehension and summarization, (3) note-taking, (4) test anticipation and preparation, and (5) writing. The authors offer a cyclical model that is workable for self-regulated learning in any discipline and any environment; this cycle is to be used after instruction and practice in each of the five skill areas.

Zimmermann, Bonner, and Kovach (1996) also listed stages that the learner and mentor repeat again and again in a process that helps the learner to become increasingly independent and self-regulated: goal setting and strategic planning, strategy implementation and monitoring, strategic outcome monitoring, and self-evaluation and monitoring. All teachers bemoan students’ not being self-regulated learners, and we may even make slap-dash efforts to train students in becoming self-regulated learners. Like The Thinking Classroom, this text gives students and teachers a common language to use to define, model, and practice skills and processes that can actually implement a system to help students rather than just criticizing them for not being self-regulated. We are all agreed that students must be responsible for their own learning; this text gives teachers the tools to help students do that. Again, I hope to use the lessons in Developing Self-Regulated Learners to refine our year-long culminating project into an authentic activity that provides students with instruction, modeling, and a cyclical process that can help them move from novice to expert.

While only two chapters of Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry into the Nature and Implications of Expertise (1993) related specifically to education, and one of those two chapters focused on the ways in which schools blight efforts at developing expertise, Bereiter and Scardamalia’s book has serious implications for American education. We would all agree that we want schools to be places that foster the development of novices into experts rather than the development of novices into experienced novices. The first five chapters explored what it is to be an expert and how experts come to exist. Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) came to the conclusion that while experts may know more than others, the primary issue is not how much experts know but exactly what experts know (experts tend to isolate and store significant information while non experts simply store vast quantities of unsorted information), how well their knowledge is integrated (and therefore accessible), and how well they can use what they know to solve problems and accomplish tasks (p. 74). A complete discussion of Bereiter and Scardamalia’s findings is impossible here and inappropriate, but one significant thread recurs: it is by working with real authentic activities and problems that we develop expertise. Just as we cannot become proficient long-distance runners by reading a history of track as a sport, we cannot become experts by reading and memorizing. There may well be facts that must be memorized before we can handle the problems that come our way, but simply memorizing the facts will not help us to perform as self-regulating experts, which is what we want our students to be.

We need to live at the edge of our competence. According to Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993), “in order to be experts, people must choose to address the problems of their field at the upper limit of the complexity they can handle. And they must make this choice early in their careers, or perhaps even earlier, as school children” (p. 20). This philosophy contradicts much curriculum design seen in American schools. The across-the-board testing that results from political mandates like No Child Left Behind and the Virginia Standards of Learning make curricula designed to develop expertise unlikely. In the Commonwealth Governor’s School, we do not have to worry about our students passing the SOL tests (except that our students are expected to get an advanced pass), but we do have to concern ourselves about our students’ scores on the Advanced Placement (AP) tests. Not only will the scores mean lost hours and money for our students, our scores are part of our school’s report card. We will have to fight to eke out the hours needed to make the culminating project a more robust learning experience. Getting thirty teachers on board may also prove difficult. We also have a problem in that we erroneously expect our students to be experts—or capable of picking expertise up by themselves—simply because they are smart.

Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) admit that separating intelligence from expert behavior is difficult. Several studies have been conducted examining the behavior of students to determine if there is such a thing as all-around expert learners (p. 105). They did find that some students consistently applied “deep planning” to learning in any field—whether it was juggling or math—and had better performance than their peers. They bring up a persistent problem in school: students are continually faced with learning about topics for which they have little prior knowledge (p. 108). We know how important prior knowledge is to new learning.

Some of our CGS students are expert learners; some are very bright in a particular discipline but are not expert learners and struggle in classes in which their background or skill level is weak. (Unlike most students, ours are forced to take AP classes in the four core subjects, not just the ones they are “good in.”) The studies of Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) showed that expert learners use a progressive problem-solving approach to learning new material rather than the “best-fit” approach that other learners use (p. 108). Experts tend to realize when the best-fit approach does not work; they try problem-solving techniques to find another way to make the information fit with what they already know. Inexpert learners tend to suffer all of the consequences of “inadequate prior knowledge—faulty concepts, over-simplification, disconnectedness, dysfunctionality” (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993, p. 170). Expert learners sense when they have not assimilated new knowledge properly and continue to look for other connections (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993, p. 175). Even though we at CGS consciously want to help our students become experts, like most schools, we are not structured to develop expertise, and only some of our students—with little to no help from us—exhibit the characteristics of expert learners.

One of the most successful techniques I used this year to develop expertise was to set up weblogs for assignments that I thought might initially intimidate students. For example, my freshmen students had to write a poem that had an event or person from the French Revolution or a work of art from the Romantic Period as its subject. My seniors had to write a review of a performance of Twelfth Night that we saw. Students got to see what others had done and to discuss how they had accomplished the task. Having a public forum also made them more determined to excel at these tasks. We did a little online poetry collection at the end of the year because they wanted a permanent place to display their work.

Schools tend to favor rapid absorption and retrieval of knowledge (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993, p. 175). It is an unfortunate fact that “[s]cope for the exercise of expertise—for progressive problem solving, in other words—is generally available only to the teachers, and schooling provides no mechanism (such as those that exist in trade apprenticeships) for the teacher’s expertise to be passed on to the students” (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993, pp. 187-188). We need schools that favor “long-term accumulation of information, reflective thinking, and laborious constructive activity” (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993, p. 175). Most schools encourage students to simply complete tasks and activities rather than to learn, reinforcing inexpert learners' tendency to minimize “new learning by immediately making a best-fit match between new information and whatever is already known” (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993, p. 181). Expert learners approach work very differently: “making opportunistic use of school tasks and resources to advance” (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993, p. 181) a personal agenda. We need to structure curricula that will provide opportunities for inexpert learners to approach tasks the way expert learners do. Making this possible involves changing the culture of schools as well as the instruction.

SO WHAT NOW?
We have a new definition of literacy that includes skills many teachers do not possess. We know more about learning and knowing than we ever have. We have technology that has changed—and is still changing—everything from geography to social structure to the economy. What do we need to know? What do we need to do? Norton and Wiburg (2003) summarized significant facts about what we now call the information economy:

More information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the previous 5,000 years. A thousand new book titles are published each day through the world, and the total of all printed knowledge is doubling every eight years. Information in the sciences doubles approximately every 5.5 years. Electronically stored information available online has grown an astonishing 700 percent between 1980 and 1990. The information age forces us to face massive amounts of information transmitted at accelerating speeds. (p. 189)

These facts leave us no choice but to change education practices—and quickly.

Lankshear and Knobel (2002) in “Do We Have Your Attention?” noted that the information economy should rightly be called the attention economy. As they put it, “we are drowning in a particular order or kind of information—information as raw data” (p. 23). They made use of the term “attention” in much the way it was defined by Richard Lanham, whose work they summarized. Lanham believed that we use different terms for and respond differently to information, depending on how much attention has been paid to it. If the information has received no attention, it is useless, raw data. If some attention has been paid to it, we call it “massaged data”; if lots of attention has been paid, the result is useful information. Lanham simplified this by referring to data, information, and wisdom (p. 23). In the information economy, attention is the scarcest commodity. Lanham illustrated the change by noting the ways librarians’ functions must change. Traditionally, librarians served as gateways to hard copies of print or audio-visual materials. In the information economy, librarians become gateways to transforming data into usable information. Lanham saw this task as evolving into the “highest order and most powerful, sought-after and rewarded literacy” (Lankshear and Knobel, 2002, p. 26). Librarians are not the only people who will need to become gateways to transforming data into usable information. Teachers—especially English teachers—will need these skills and will need to design learning opportunities that will help students to develop the skills to make sense of this information overload. Norton and Wiburg (2003) recommend these specific information processing skills that they refer to by the mnemonic SSCC: “searching for information, sorting and judging information, and creating and communicating ideas and concepts as the result of information use” (p. 190).

These tasks certainly fall within the parameters of English/language arts classrooms; however, they should fall within the scope of all classes. Lankshear and Knobel (2002) warned us that the “kinds of competencies associated with successfully engaging the economics of interest are those that come with the capacity to research aspects of the world as opposed to merely looking at them or receiving them as content” (p. 38). We are obliged to do more than teach information skills; engaging students in using information skills to solve authentic problems should be a central methodology to all instruction, not just add-ons in English and social studies classes.

Schools are already battling to direct and keep students’ attentions, but Lanham maintained that in the future, schools must give more thought to developing the new literacies that create opportunities for gaining, facilitating, structuring, and maintaining attention (Lankshear and Knobel, 2002, p. 27). The English class is the perfect venue for developing those new literacies that use the experiences and interests of students to direct attention.

In the U.S., English/language arts and social studies have historically been the “workhorse” disciplines that give instruction in anything deemed necessary that is not covered elsewhere. In my years of teaching English, I have taught a number of topics that bear little apparent connection to language arts: etiquette, philosophy, mental health, sex education, current events, and art history, to name a few. I have also had primary responsibility for topics that are the purview of all disciplines, such as reading and writing in all of the disciplines, keyboarding, using computer software, art and design, public speaking and debate, and research. One of the things that has kept me engaged as a teacher for so many years is the necessity for learning new things in order to do my job effectively. Sometimes I have been ordered to teach material outside of my field. (As a demonstration of the bizarre nature of bureaucracies and of some of the odd things asked of English teachers, one year I was told to teach sex education because I was a married female with children who taught ninth grade English during first period. The thinking was that first period students would forget potentially controversial information by the time they got home to their parents, and if they did, parents would feel ridiculous complaining about something taught by a well-respected married woman. My question about the point of the exercise if they were only to forget what they had learned went unanswered.) Sometimes my own experience has led me to include non-English instruction. (My work with student yearbooks and newspapers showed me the value design instruction could have for reading and writing instruction; similarly I felt a need to train students in group process.) Literature instruction is important because it helps students explore their world and themselves; however, literature instruction must not be the primary focus of the English classroom. Our primary goal must be to help students develop the skills and literacies they need to function comfortably in their world--regardless of what we end up teaching in the English classroom.

Technology offers us the perfect opportunity to officially and unilaterally change the focus of English instruction. “If English is to remain relevant as the subject which provides access to participation in public forms of communication, as well as remaining capable of providing understandings of and the abilities to produce culturally valued texts, then an emphasis on language alone simply will no longer do” (Kress, 1999, p. 67). Our terminology demonstrates the very vagueness of our understanding of what literacy means. The word literacy has enumerable meanings, depending on the context. In the 19th century, being literate meant being able to sign one’s name, to make the letters. In all romance languages and German, the term comparable to literacy still relates specifically to competence with the alphabet; anything beyond that must be referred to using other specific words. English is one of the few languages to lump all of these meanings together (Kress, 1999, p. 67). Being literate today involves a multiplicity of skills and behaviors that we should separate and specify. The word literacy already carries too many meanings; the addition of meanings from digital technology would make references to literacy meaningless (Kress, 1999, p. 68). The first step in redefining English must be to determine specifically what we mean by literacy in our culture. Norton and Wiburg (2003) predicated a basic definition of literacy:

To be literate, one must understand how various discourse forms are organized, understanding where information can be found, how information is connected, and the unique potentials inherent in a diversity of discourse forms. Whether. . .learning from printed, video, television, or computer forms of discourse, literacy depends on one’s ability to work within the frame of that discourse form. (p. 136)

Beyond this, we need to identify the modes of discourse that will be warranted by our culture. Because literacy has always had political and social ramifications, that decision may be as fraught with discord as the discussion over who enters the literary canon. Since the marketplace has a huge investment in what becomes warranted, valued, and taught in schools, the choices may not be as elitist as we fear.

Regardless of the modes of discourse labeled as favored, prestige modes, there will be social, class repercussions—if only what we refer to as the “digital divide.” I am preparing to take over mentoring an online student for a week while a colleague goes on vacation. I have discovered that the student, a rising senior, has not submitted any schoolwork for two weeks. She works over 40 hours a week at a fast food restaurant, and her phone and online access have been cut off at home. While it seems obvious that she could go to the public library or her home school for Internet access, her job schedule limits her from working on her English class until after 9 p.m. What school or library is open then? How realistic is it that she quit her job if the family is in such financial straits that the phone has been disconnected? Economically burdened students such as this girl will inevitably fall behind however effective we are at identifying the necessary modes of discourse for successfully entering the workforce or functioning in today’s world.

As a language teacher, I am shocked to find myself saying this, but we must begin by identifying the literacies that have nothing to do with language. “At the moment our theories of meaning (hence our dominant theories of cognition) are entirely shaped by and derived from theories of language. Meaning is in fact identified with ‘meanings in language’” (Kress, 1999, p. 86). This cultural bias forms an impediment to our understanding the full potential of Homo sapiens. Kress (1999) pointed out the ramifications of our preoccupation with language:

The focus on language alone has meant a neglect, an overlooking, even suppression of the potentials of representational and communicational modes in particular cultures; an often repressive and always systematic neglect of human potentials in many of these areas; and a neglect equally, as a consequence, of the development of theoretical understandings of such modes. . . . Or, to put it provocatively: the single, exclusive and intensive focus on written language has dampened the full development of all kinds of human potentials, through all the sensorial possibilities of human bodies, in all kinds of respects, cognitively and affectively, in two and three dimensional representation. (p. 85)

Fortunately, advances in cognitive research, in understanding the biology of the brain, should help to better educate us about ourselves and our capabilities. Unfortunately, change in education is slower than the advance of an iceberg. It is possible, however, that our understanding of literacy can advance on the coattails of technology, which is forcing change in education at an unprecedented pace.

According to Tapscott in Growing up Digital (1998), we must pay attention to the culture that flows from the cyberspace experiences of the N-Geners (InterNet-Generation) because it “foreshadows the culture they will create as the leaders of tomorrow in the workplace and society” (p. 55). If we look at the ten themes of N-Gen culture that Tapscott (1998) detailed, we should be reassured about the nature of that culture: fierce independence, emotional and intellectual openness, inclusion, free expression and strong views, innovation, preoccupation with maturity, investigation, immediacy, awareness of corporate interest in public spaces, and authentication and trust (p. 55). These themes, behaviors, expectations—whatever we want to call them—of N-Geners should make even the most reactionary people feel comfortable with the ways technology is shaping our world. Tapscott (1998) discussed Neil Postman’s horror in the 1980s that we had turned away from the text communication of Guttenberg to the visual imagery of television (p. 62) and referenced Marshall McLuhan’s aphorism “the medium is the message,” meaning that we can best examine a culture by looking at its tools for communication (p. 63). In 1985, Postman did not foresee the influence digital technology would have on the ways we engage in conversation. Perhaps he would not have been so disheartened had he seem the development of visual language that combines Gutenberg’s text with the imagery of television. Those who rail about the transformations happening around us are as blind to the changes in the skills, needs, and expectations of today’s students as Postman was to the new uses to which text would be put. We also need to take McLuhan a step further: the medium is not just the message, it is the messenger and the recipient. We are molded by the modes of discourse we use.

Norton and Wiburg (2003), stated that N-Geners expect customized, learner-centered, hypermedia learning, with construction and discovery and a focus on how to navigate and how to learn. They see themselves as lifelong learners who have facilitators rather than teachers. For them, learning is fun, not torture (p. 15). Isn’t this a description of the way all educators would like school to be in an ideal world? Well-planned authentic activities, which Norton and Wiburg (2003) define as “the ordinary practices of a culture” (p. 128), provide a structured formula in which novices can learn and practice the kinds of things experts do in that discipline. If technology is integrated into schools in the ways it is in every other aspect of life, knowledgeable adults can model expert behavior and support emerging learners in the culture of their disciplines. Anchored instruction will allow instructional designers to provide authentic activities as a focus for learning based in real-world events and modes of discourse but including specific content in a context relevant to the discipline. These teacher/designers can formulate experiences that promote content as well as process (Norton and Wiburg, 2003, pp. 15-16).

It is crucial that we identify what expert knowledge is; how else will we know what understandings students need and how else can we provide guided practice in using that knowledge in productive ways? Currently, we tend to focus instruction on discrete bits of knowledge that either help students pass a specific test or meet criteria we have developed about what esoteric knowledge (useful or not) is mastered by experts in our fields. In reality, as Norton and Wiburg (2003) pointed out, “Experts’ knowledge is connected and organized around important concepts. It is especially tied to the contexts in which it is applicable. It supports understanding and application to other contexts rather than only the ability to remember” (p. 130). Rarely do we consider what those contexts and connections are or how to enable our students to function in those contexts or develop those connections.

Instructional design should imitate the process that experts follow and should include the four recursive stages identified by Norton and Wiburg (2003): “analysis, development, implementation, and improvement” (p. 38). Instructional design should include life experiences and be based on the idea that students construct their own knowledge within specific contexts (Norton and Wiburg, 2003, p. 39). Norton and Wiburg (2003) detailed four tenets of constructivism that make the connection between effective instructional design and the notion of expertise very clear:

First, knowledge depends on past constructions. Second, construction comes about through systems of assimilation and accommodation. Third, learning is an organic process of invention, rather than a mechanical process of accumulation. Fourth, meaningful learning occurs through reflection and resolution of cognitive conflict, negating earlier, incomplete levels of understanding. Teachers can only mediate in this process. (p. 40)

Teachers who participate in this kind of learning are designers and mentors. That's what I want to be when I grow up.

I have had difficulty in organizing this paper because expertise, technology, evolving notions of how we do and should learn, and cultural and social changes in our students and our world are all both cause and effect, interconnected in this huge tangle that cannot be separated. With the overwhelming amount of new information being produced daily, we can no longer prepare students the way we did. We can only hope to teach the structures and processes of our disciplines (Norton and Wiburg, 2003, p. 95-96). I have found that Norton and Wiburg’s (2003) FACTS (Foundations, Activities, Contents, Tools, Systems) Design Model provides a structure that helps me to design instruction that focuses on the structures and processes that provide quality learning experiences in today’s world. Using the FACTS model, curriculum designers ask themselves these questions:

What Foundations of learning do today’s students most need to learn? What Activities should designers choose to ensure that students become actively engaged in learning through construction? What Contents, ideas, and/or concepts afford a context for student learning? What Tools might a designer choose to best support and enhance student learning? What Systems of assessment might a designer construct to appropriately assess student learning? How might learning environments be constructed to complement the overall learning design? (p. 66-68)

As a learner who comes from a print generation, I am handicapped by my need for linear patterns—in texts I produce and in texts I “read.” Norton and Wiburg’s FACTS Design Model fools me into thinking that I am performing a linear function when, in fact, I am using their questions as an anchor to keep me from getting lost in the endless, recursive loop that defines learning and educational design.

I hope to gain further experience in mentoring this fall when I work with teachers who are taking courses about mentoring in The Online Academy for Teachers. I will also be mentoring high school students. I plan to work with a design team on an unfinished section of the mentoring course. All of this work will be useful to me since mentoring is one of my research interests. In my experience, teaching someone else is the best way to master knowledge or a skill, so I expect to gain expertise as well. My work with The Online Academy has allowed me to engage in authentic activity as I learned both theory and practice. I am fortunate to maintain a connection to that learning environment.

I am an effective, independent learner, but I am still struggling with doing academic work in a discipline other than English. Of course, I detest APA style with its past tense verbs and inconsistent and obsessive interest in dates, but my essential difficulty is learning another way of thinking and other modes of discourse. But I am learning.

With training and experience, my students, who are much more comfortable with non linear hypermedia, should develop expert problem-solving behaviors much more easily than I have. As Norton and Wiburg (2003) pointed out, students already use technology “to help create a culture of learning, where the learner enjoys enhanced responsibility, interactivity, and connections with others. . . . N-Geners partner with peers and adults to learn socially” (p. 15). Students are ready. Teachers must educate themselves and prepare to assume their proper roles in the socially constructed knowledge that should be the basis of education. Whenever teachers experience fright or reluctance, we need to remember Kress (1999): “Curriculum is a design for the future. . . . The contents and processes put forward in curriculum and in its associated pedagogy constitute the design for future human dispositions” (p. 88). Curriculum isn’t about us. It’s about the future.

REFERENCES

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Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2002). Do we have your attention? New literacies, digital technologies, and the education of adolescents. In Alverman, D. E. (Ed.) Adolescents and literacies in a digital world (pp. 19-39). Washington, DC: Peter Lang.

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rsmithm@gmu.edu


Doctoral Advisory Committee:
Dr. Priscilla Norton, Chair
Dr. Kevin A. Clark
Dr. Penelope M. Earley