William Cope
Wei Liu
Pinakini Shah
Greg Jack
Leah Goldberg
Nell C Rundle
Bahar AnahmiasNew Learning MOOC’s Updates
Education as Social Construction
I found the paper by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, ‘Assessment and Pedagogy in the Era of Machine-Mediated Learning,’ very interesting among the proposed background material. It offers a deep and thought-provoking reflection on the role of technologies in education, highlighting how they can be used to support different social constructions of learning.
The authors identify two fundamental pedagogical paradigms: the didactic/mimetic and the reflective/ergetic. The former focuses on knowledge transmission and skill reproduction, while the latter emphasises active learning, knowledge construction and collaboration. These two paradigms are not only described as alternatives, but also as complementary, as each may be more appropriate in different contexts.
The discussion on the use of technology in education is particularly interesting. The authors emphasise how technologies can be used to intensify traditional pedagogies, but also to open up new, more transformative learning possibilities. For example, ‘big data’ and ‘cloud computing’ technologies can be used to create more personalised and collaborative learning environments.
A key point of the text is the importance of considering technologies as social tools that can be used to support different social constructions of learning. The authors argue that technologies do not determine pedagogical outcomes, but rather offer affordances that can be used in different ways depending on social goals.
The section on assessments is particularly relevant for students of pedagogy. The authors discuss how technologies can be used to create more formative and less judgmental assessments that provide constructive feedback to students and teachers. For example, ‘big data’ technologies can be used to track student progress and provide personalised feedback.
I believe Cope and Kalantzis' text offers an inspiring perspective on the role of technologies in education, emphasising the importance of considering technologies as social tools that can be used to support different social constructions of learning.
This perspective emphasizes that what we understand as education is influenced by societal norms, values, and power dynamics, rather than being an inherent truth or universal principle.
it is interesting how you explain the social construction in education, particularly highlighting the importance of technology
@Maura Your analysis of Cope and Kalantzis' work was perceptive, particularly highlighting the importance of technology in facilitating both conventional and innovative forms of learning. An idea that caught my attention is the emphasis on the complementary relationship between the didactic/mimetic and reflective/energetic paradigms. It got me reflecting on how in numerous educational environments, we tend to rely on either one method or the other, but in reality, a combination could result in better learning results.
I believe it is important for educators to further explore how technology can create personalized learning environments to meet the needs of diverse students. I am interested in how you envision big data influencing the future of formative assessments. Is it possible that this could result in more valuable feedback, or is there a chance it may oversimplify intricate learning advancements?