1,024 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2023
    1. overall performance

      No such thing as overall performance. There are only specific metrics to improve. "Overall" necessarily implies picking and choosing which components of performance matter. Employee satisfaction, in this case, seems likely to be one that didn't much.

    2. other forms of motivation

      I'd say other sources of motivation.

  2. Nov 2022
    1. Designing strategies to influence people’s motivation is a problem-solving process.

      I oppose this framing—though not as strongly as I might if "influence" was instead a more objectifying term.

    2. deep-seated

      What's this mean functionally? (Leaving behind the orientational metaphor.)

    3. Self-determination theory is unique in that it differentiates the construct of extrinsic motivation.

      Is it though? (Unique in this regard?) Again, the autonomous/controlled differentiation is more elemental.

    4. only to get good grades.

      Grades themselves are extrinsic.

    5. Extrinsic motivation can represent inner sources of an action and result in high-quality learning behaviors.

      Could have done more to lead with this. Your earlier characterization is at cross purposes with this.

    6. is

      Typo

    7. Locus of causality, for example, influences learners’ self-esteem and esteem-related emotions (Weiner, 1986).

      Hmmmm. I wonder if this is an error, or if there's a difference in terminology.

    8. Effort is internal to the learner, for example, whereas luck is external.

      Is this as simple as it's presented to be? Are there reasons people would consider their effort outside of their control? (I'm thinking of ME/CFS.)

    9. For example, people may attribute their success (or failure) to ability, effort, luck, task difficulty, mood, fatigue, and so on.

      Locus of control. Though I might re-word that to locus of determination? Haven't had that thought before.

    10. less likely

      Some definitional muddiness. "If the cost is too high, student will be... (less likely to, or simply will not) engage in a given task."

    11. Tasks are perceived important when they reflect the important aspects of one’s self.

      Self-complexity relevant here?

    12. Early motivation theories reflected the traditional behaviorism approach, an approach that considered the basis of motivation to be rewards and punishments. Other theories looked at drives and needs.

      Are these all that separate?

    13. of being moved to do something

      Compelled vs. impelled.

    1. Remembering is also insufficient to be able to execute a set of steps in a procedure or to grasp the events of a process. 

      My experience earlier this term with acquiring procedures at the ADRC front desk.

    1. Experiential Learning

      Seems a bit of a misnomer to me—too general a concept to apply to too specific a set of principles.

  3. Jul 2022
    1. has to be

      Imperative language. Not value referenced. Has to be... in order to...? (Presumably in order to effectively navigate cultural competency challenges and improve study design. Maybe that's clear from context, but wouldn't hurt to include explicitly in the text.)

    2. ensure

      Trust can't be ensured, only nurtured. To frame trust as within the power of researchers to create is to assume a frame of reference that foregrounds control of research subjects, ironically casting them as objects (of our control).

    3. These scenarios demonstrate the importance of understanding historical contexts for study populations before initiating research.

      Do they? Not very effectively as you have written here. You've evoked them without drawing connections to specific practices. Someone who didn't already know details seems unlikely to benefit from this paragraph.

    4. misconduct in cultural competence

      To say those researchers made a mistake in practicing cultural competence is, I think, misguided. It seems like a wholesale rejection of those principles (though they weren't as well formulated at the time as now) is a necessary precondition for that experimental design. Dehumanization, in a word.

    5. knowledge

      Or consent.

    6. Scientists know her as HeLa.

      Ish. HeLa mostly refers to the cell cultures, in my (limited) experience. I'd hope scientists are referring to her by her full name...

    7. Second

      This paragraph is such an oversimplification of the principles as actually set out in the Belmont report. The big one that seems missing, especially if we're in a conversation about cultural competence, is that we should avoid designing research where the benefits (primarily) accrue to a dominant group while the costs are borne by minoritized groups.

    8. autonomy

      Autonomy-as-independence (instead of autonomy-as-volition).

    9. those who do not have the capacity to decide

      This is a bit binary in its framing for my taste. There are factors that can reduce capacity to make independent decisions--arguably there aren't any that are truly independent--but decisions remain.

  4. Aug 2021
    1. made to

      Language of control—linguistic objectification.

    2. They are mechanisms for keeping complexity at bay, but they are also mechanisms for controlling people.
      1. For placing complexity behind the wizard's curtain (hiding it, not dispelling it).

      2. The illusion of control is a facet of #1, not a separate dynamic. Control is a hell of an obscuring metaphor—what we think looks like control by necessity ignores much of reality.

    1. cited 249 times

      308 times as of 1/13/21

      343 times as of 8/3/21

      (According to Google Scholar)

    1. to let go of the fallacy that they are beyond reproach.

      I doubt any of these institutions would hold themselves up in that light.

    2. race intelligence

      and?

    3. measures

      Another slippery word. I don't think intelligence is measurable for reasons I'm sure are in annotations of mine elsewhere.

    4. Intelligence is the ability to learn and apply information and that is something we all do every day.

      Or maybe it's much more complex. This is a slippery word—and it makes me wonder about how this might intersect with discussions about superintelligence/intelligence augmentation à la my course with Howard Rheingold.

    5. 1) “difference is not neutral: to vary is to be defective” and 2) race “links physical characteristics to cognitive, cultural, and moral ones.”  

      The Tyranny of Better over Different

  5. Feb 2021
    1. As a country, we spend 100 times more on fighting wars than on preventing them.

      Disingenuous. Deterrence via disproportionate force is part of the logic of preventing wars.

  6. Nov 2020
    1. And play must not be reserved just for weekends or vacation, but integrated into the way we think about our work.

      Maybe a relevant time to note that Homo Ludens should be en route to me as of this date.

  7. Oct 2020
    1. One approach is that imperfect outcomes require improvement to the technology or better data to make better decisions.

      Technocratic approach.

  8. Sep 2020
    1. The boundaries between the personal and the professional have blurred. Some of our most private spaces are now on camera.

      Those lines were drawn on an overhead projector transparency sheet—not on the lives underneath it.

  9. Aug 2020
    1. We are not calling for a revolution that will eradicate the old and create the new from scratch. That kind of revolution has been tried before, with the same results each time, because that mentality is itself part of the old world. Sacred economics is part of a different kind of revolution entirely, a transformation and not a purge. In this revolution, the losers won’t even realize they have lost.

      I keep coming back to this.

    1. Students will interpret instructions and goals according to their own understandings, beliefs, goals and motivations. All of this is part of the reason that technologies (or even teaching methods) cannot realistically be evaluated for their effectiveness in isolation of the context in which they are embedded.

      Yes, And. This is a messy view, and I think what's called for is an even messier view, where evaluation for effectiveness is seen as having many necessary contexts, following the work of Urie Bronfenbrenner, and similar to the argument/METUX model presented in this paper.

    2. The design of teaching is very important, but you cannot design learning experiences, only tasks for students to (hopefully) do (Goodyear, 2015).

      I disagree with this. Certainly there are scales beyond which experiences can be common to a group (a designed "learning experience" probably [almost certainly] won't be able to result in identical daydreaming), but from the 35,000 foot view, I think an activity like BaFa' BaFa' are about an experience more than a task. What's asked of participants takes the form of tasks ("do X") but the result of group choices to perform those tasks is an emergent collective experience that derives much of its nature from its design.

    3. Determinism, on the other hand, is the idea that technology drives change, and that tools themselves are responsible for the outcomes of their use.

      Also an oversimplification. Its seems much more narrow that being a driver—more being a sole driver, if that. In determinism there's no room for agency, not even machines' agency.

    4. instrumentalism is the idea that tools are neutral,

      That's not how I read this term. Very much the opposite—to be instrumental is to be in service to a larger purpose, where particular purposes are on their face not neutral.

    5. already-constrained conception of teaching.

      What, then, are the sources of those constraints?

    6. I have noticed that the issue is not so much to do with people first choosing a technology and then thinking about what to do with it

      The hidden discussion here is the value system that drives those choices.

    7. All elements inevitably shape the ways in which the other elements are used and experienced.

      Ecological philosophy here.

    8. a false dichotomy

      Always a good indicator for me.

  10. Jul 2020
    1. In the rubric itself, the words “clear” or “clarity” appear over a dozen times.

      Irony.

    2. need to

      Imperative language

    3. flatten

      This word fits, and the word that comes to my mind is collapse—particularly as in the collapse of a multidimensional system into a single dimension.

  11. Jun 2020
    1. but is unable to.

      This belies a lack of experienced volition/endorsement that I'd associate with addiction.

    2. or play more powerful

      What would this mean...?

    3. We all know what it means to become addicted to nicotine, alcohol, heroin, or other drugs. It means that we have serious, physical withdrawal symptoms when we stop using the drug, so we are driven to continue using it even when we know it is hurting us and we very much want to stop.

      This seems to run counter to the interpretation of addiction that separates out chemical dependency.

    1. As the wildcat strikes at UCSC teach us, we need to develop lines of solidarity not only within our preformed categories (students, grad students, TT faculty, adjuncts, etc.), but also across those categories, in ways that reveal the insufficiency of those categories.

      Star star star.

    2. It makes metrics transparent.

      Purports to (but doesn't).

    3. increasingly

      Well—it's been complex all along. I think we're merely (Ha!) growing in our awareness of that complexity.

    4. Like any product, cop shit claims to solve a problem.

      This framing of products is part of the problem.

    1. We’re

      Who must "we" here be?

    2. they have to be put in a situation where they are taking steps to repair some of the harms in ways that actually build up the community.

      Linguistic objectification.

    3. Instead, we need to talk about accountability at both the interpersonal level and institutional level.

      I disagree with accountability as a discourse—it's useful as far as it goes, but for me revolves around processes that create awareness essential to informed decision making. Un-disambiguated, "accountability" can mean internal and external psychological coercion. Keeping an account—accountability in the sense of an accountant—is important as an ingredient for facilitating alignment between beliefs, behaviors, and values, so it's not that it's irrelevant, but I worry it too often is a touchstone for reducing agency rather than promoting it.

    4. institutions whose normal functioning is inherently unjust.

      "Inherently" carries so much water here. It seems that part of the overall argument is that the institution of police is something of a Frankenstein's Monster—a range of roles stitched together into authority entrusted in the a singular body. I have little disagreement that the emerging result of that composite role may be inherently unjust, but police as police—police acting in their core role as law enforcement—seems more complex than a inherent/not inherent binary.

      This is particularly true when there's a larger question of democratic process concerned—where we ask officers to act separate from their individual judgment in pursuit of a rule of law that is nonetheless fallible. I'd argue, in that vein, that a large portion of unjust policing stems from unjust laws, which doesn't seem to be about police as much as about living in a collective.

    5. Policing is created as a form of government authority to manage resistance to exploitation.

      This is definitionally murky. I doubt a majority of the population would endorse this one—and I worry it sets up something of a strawman argument needlessly.

    6. If you talk to people in policing and corrections and ask them if they had the option of working in a jail or, for the same pay and benefits, could work in a community center and coach football or mentor teenagers…the vast majority of them would much rather have that community job. But there are no such jobs like that. The police department and the corrections department are always hiring and community centers aren’t. And when they do hire, it’s at half the salary and half the benefits.

      Speaks to the motivational context of police officers' choices to pursue the profession. I'll bet those who are more autonomous in those decisions (e.g. see their choice as aligned with intentions to serve *in this specific capacity rather than a general helping profession) are less likely to be involved in misconduct.

    7. designed to get people to

      Linguistic objectification.

    8. And the research behind this is that if the police take the time to talk to people about why they’re doing what they’re doing, listen to everyone’s side of the story, and act in a procedurally proper manner, then people feel better about the outcome, even if they get a ticket, even if they get arrested.

      Facilitating (cognitive?) autonomy support through the provisioning of rationales?

  12. May 2020
    1. we can be reminded that culture is distinctly human, and so part of our common project.

      The book title my brother sent me disagrees with culture as distinctly human.

    2. where connectedness is mediated by a screen.

      In addition to all the other things that mediate connectedness—and interact with the screen as a mediator. This is a moment that's relevant to my epigenetics of edtech metaphor.

    3. And if any best practices have emerged from the muddle, they have been revealed by trauma-informed pedagogy.

      Strange to deny the frame and then use it?

    4. I replied to the posts that my wisdom as a teacher—no matter how fallible—guided me to do.

      Value system/belief system as a guide—#MetaphorsWeLiveBy

    5. teachers

      Linguistic Objectification

    1. ways to listen

      I'm a bit confused on what this means. Well—confusion isn't quite the word. I think maybe what I'm reacting to is a sense that this isn't quite what's needed. Something about the implicit metaphor. It could mean more channels by which students can speak to us (e.g. email, Slack, open office hours), or more practices (like reflective listening) to verify that listening has taken place. But what listening itself is strikes me as more singular, more indivisible—an (almost?) ineffable internal process.

    2. becomes invisible.

      Is invisible by default.

    3. and compliance.

      With space for reflective defiance.

    4. or extrinsic motivators.

      *Controlling motivators.

    5. Most online learning platforms make customization slow or difficult enough to deter responsiveness or impulsivity.

      Responsiveness is a wide-ranging concept in a comparably small package, as far as I'm concerned. I think often of Chris Anson's epigraph in Maja Wilson's book Rethinking Rubrics:

      "The process of response... is so fundamental to human interaction that when it is short-circuited, whether by accident or design, the result can hardly be interpreted as anything but a loss of humanity."

    6. whether they’re bolted down,

      Which has quite a powerful implicit metaphor.

    7. The crucial part of this work is not keeping administrators and faculty connected to students, but about building space for students to stay connected with each other.

      I think there's a bit more to say here. I wonder to what extent this is more about connecting students to anybody who's not viewing them in instrumental terms—as objects relevant to fulfilling job responsibilities. Maybe students are simply more likely to view each other in this light?

      (Typing's a bit of a drag when you've recently hit a finger with a mallet...)

    1. As noted in the Psychology Today article I linked, this human tendency is because it gives us a sense of control over own world. We do not like the idea that the universe is random and that bad things can happen to anyone, so we resist that idea by looking for a cause for a crime, for poverty, for a disease.

      Not a claim to take on faith.

      Note the can's and may's in the article linked.

    1. an orientation toward responsive, rather than reactive, teaching can make all the difference for children.

      This reaction => response shift mirrors much of the rhetoric I've heard in therapeutic milieus. It's also reminiscent of a shift from oppositional defiance => reflective defiance.

    2. Legal segregation ended with Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in 1954.

      De-jure segregation. I think the point is that de-facto segregation remained legal.

    3. "For every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong."

      I love this.

    1. I can make sure that I don’t misunderstand what other people are saying.

      Not exactly, but one is better able to take steps to verify understanding.

    2. a belief that text is less personal, that immediacy is inherently more valuable, and that approximating face-to-face is beneficial.

      One of the things I think is useful about synchronous audiovisual elements has nothing to do with this list—that it is ephemeral. That it doesn't produce artifacts that can be accessed after the fact.

    3. discernment

      Yet another callsign for valuing. (Along with concern.)

      Apparently both concern and discern arise from a latin root for sifting/separating, which as an active behavior performed by humans strikes me as an act concomitant with intention/purpose guided by values.

    1. boggart

      Why hello Harry Potter reference. Seems apt.

    2. combat

      Strive against?

    3. but never students letters

      A matter of identity.

    4. crossing boundaries,

      Transcending boundaries—making of borders a receding horizon.

      "A horizon is a phenomenon of vision. One cannot look at the horizon; it is simply the point beyond which we cannot see. There is nothing in the horizon itself, however, that limits vision, for the horizon opens onto all that lies beyond itself. What limits vision is rather the incompleteness of that vision.

      One never reaches a horizon. It is not a line; it has no place; it encloses no field; its location is always relative to the view. To move toward a horizon is simply to have a new horizon. One can therefore never be close to one's horizon, though one may certainly have a short range of vision, a narrow horizon."

    5. and shared concern

      Shared concern is the same as shared value—well, not quite; there's a degree of removal there, and concern is a marker of value.

    6. guarantees

      False guarantees.

    7. a formational experience

      A pervasive context for development.

    8. And yet most of online learning occurs alone,

      Disagree. This goes back to my top annotation on valuing as preceding learning—if this is the case, and if valuing is a a socialization process (at least in large part), then it can't be alone. Which isn't necessarily what this sentence is getting at (more at a logistical level for tasks), but still seems related to me.

    9. invisible

      Differently visible? Less? Also, a smile is a surface expression of an affective state, and I think that state is still embodied in internet-mediated spaces. I'm thinking of David Crystal's Txtng, since I read it recently.

    10. Out of that intimacy comes spontaneity

      One variety of...

    11. all but the default for that space

      Disagree. I'd say it's the default at DPL, and I've had many sterile classroom experiences.

    1. had to

      Disagree. You have chosen to move the work online because that decision is aligned with values you hold dear, notably protecting those who are vulnerable. That choice, that it is a choice, is important.

    2. And in that way, the faculty of the Lab, the courses offered there, are a means and not an end.

      And Yes, and. I'd say that part of my endorsement of this idea is rooted in the recognition that I want to serve as a means for the development (flourishing) of our participants while simultaneously being recognized as an end myself.

    3. beings are built to learn

      Yes, and. My first thought in response to this is that humans are first built to value, and that learning in large part proceeds from there. What is unvalued us unmotivated and likely not learned—which doesn't discount instrumental values (e.g. avoiding punishments) as a kind of value.

      This strikes me as an important thought because it suggests a different question at the beginning of the design process, namely, "What fosters adaptive valuing?"

  13. Apr 2020
    1. before they have their turn.

      This is the anti-scarcity message that's important. Not a matter of whether they'll have one, but when.

    2. And if you are so fragile as to equate someone else acquiring power with the specter of your losing that power forever, then that’s a “you problem,” not an invalidation of pedagogical tools.

      My brain is radically split here. There seems to be a #MotSS dynamic going on here re: "a 'you problem'" where it is a pedagogical concern what emotional responses students have to the loss of relative privilege—particularly when there's the risk of radicalizing people toward the online harassment linked above. And yet it's an irretrievably complicated and fraught turn to design educational experiences to account for those emotional responses.

    3. temporarily excluded from a community space

      Defining this as exclusion is part of the challenge in the first place—the framing that to include some we must exclude others (even if only "temporarily") implies a scarcity that is half the struggle lost.

    4. make us feel

      PLOC

    5. The problem, though, is that because the Progressive Stack calls attention to existing structures of inequality by replacing them with another structure entirely, it forces those of us who identify as white (and, particularly, male) to confront the ways in which we have been complicit in maintaining inequality.

      Replaces tacit structure—arising (I imagine largely) unintentionally as a default (by which I only mean I don't imagine many educators consciously set out to create the imbalance)—with a designed structure.

    1. actually in service of the settler colonial state’s “economization of emotion”?

      Reminds me of Charles Eisenstein's arguments about a growth economy that seeks to privatize ever more of the public domain—while there may not be all that much left of it, affective experience seems a likely candidate to me for future pushes.

    2. when care is being used to maintain, rather than dismantle, fundamentally dehumanizing systems.

      Yeah—we're agreeing here.

    3. And these transformations are not unique to the university. As the Canadian government implements wage subsidies that underline the need for a guaranteed basic income, telecommunication companies are suddenly waiving overage fees—all in the name of care.

      I read these not as departures from the status quo but as stopgap measures to preserve it—likely to stave off a more radical shift in structure.

    4. Suddenly, everywhere, it seems like care trumps structure.

      Casting structure as opposed to care strikes me as strange. Structure (as reiterated again and again in SDT) is vital for facilitating the satisfaction of basic (psychological) needs. That said, the specific structures that come after this sentence aren't ones I would identify as supporting care—in fact, I'd say that grades run counter to care.

      Deadlines, though, I think can be rescued in their functional significance if they're accompanied by messages like, "given the labor entailed in the feedback process, holding to this deadline is important to my ability to manage my own work load in a way that supports my ability to meet my own needs."

    5. in the context of institutions that are invested in us becoming a little less human so we can be a little more efficient.

      As with "in order to" so with "efficient"—efficient at what?

      Though, to be fair to the author here, I think much of the challenge with rhetoric of efficiency is that it's not well-enumerated from the top.

    6. need to

      I think the implied "in order to" would be useful to elaborate on here. The next sentence's reference to rigor points the way, I think—the "in order to" is something like in order to be taken seriously.

    7. The capacity for empathy is the name in which white women extended the guiding hand of colonialism and imperialism that encoded white supremacy in churches and libraries and schools and hospitals. 

      I'm tempted to say that where these things went wrong (horribly, terribly, unspeakably wrong) is in an ignorance of what constitutes human needs—especially when those needs are seen as the needs of the Other, distinct from the needs recognized for those who aren't the Other. The need for autonomy and self-determination comes to mind as absent from a colonialist mode of thought (which seems dependent on a kind of elitism which masks, even to the point of self-delusion, the self-serving dimensions of the linked actions).

    8. that build and sustain networks

      The relational piece.

    9. an ethics of care is a feminist intervention that grapples generally speaking with the problem of the other and how we ought to treat them.

      How does this interact with Nel Noddings' decision to remove "feminine" from the most recent edition of her book on Care?—I think there's an important link to recognize between gender roles and caring, and thinking about the expansion of care as a feminist intervention in pursuit of gender equity, and I think a wider view of "an ethics of care" transcends particular interventions that stem from it—transcends feminism.

    1. i18n

      Having just finished David Crystal's Txtng: The gr8 db8, this kind of abbreviation is notable—Crystal offers more examples of different kinds than I remember, even with only about 24 hours since I finished the book, and this is surely not one of them.

    1. The virus we face here is fear, whether it is fear of Covid-19, or fear of the totalitarian response to it, and this virus too has its terrain.

      Disagree. I think this risks villainizing fear, which seems to me to run against your goals. The danger we face is acting from that place of separation—first and foremost the separation of our action from our sense of self.

    2. Should we blame the virus then (which killed few otherwise healthy people), or shall we blame underlying poor health?

      Yes, though attribution need not entail blame.

    3. To understand the point about ground conditions, consider some mortality statistics from Italy (from its National Health Institute), based on an analysis of hundreds of Covid-19 fatalities. Of those analyzed, less than 1% were free of serious chronic health conditions.

      Holy Mackerel. That's quite a connection if true.

    4. or be self-imposed in the form of habits.

      From values poorly integrated into the self: introjects with their source in fear.

    5. a locus of consciousness in a matrix of relationship

      This will stick with me.

    6. What kind of problem succumbs to domination and control? The kind caused by something from the outside, something Other.

      As opposed to something caused within the self—or at the boundary of the self as in the compartmentalization of the values that come alongside many predominant behaviors nonetheless misaligned with our more central experience of our selves.

    7. It is a crisis for which control works: quarantines, lockdowns, isolation, hand-washing; control of movement, control of information, control of our bodies.

      Control is within the complex of things that can work—work to bring about a relatively narrow version of success.

    8. To interrupt a habit is to make it visible; it is to turn it from a compulsion to a choice.

      I disagree. Self-awareness is often present alongside compulsion.

    9. coherency

      More and more a frame for my thinking.

    10. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement.

      I think I disagree with this—it will depend on how we name our problems. There is a way of seeing problems that coheres with non-technological-difficulty.

    1. need

      In order to...?

    2. that’s picked for them

      This contrasts more sharply with a feed—particular RSS feeds—where you have a flow of information, but it's hand-picked by users rather than generated algorithmically.

    1. It’s time we used information abundance to our advantage.

      I was wondering if this would be a Mike Caufield resource.

    2. they aren’t generated by users.

      Or they're generated by users but co-opted by platforms (used as means to the end of capturing our attention).

    3. as-mindful-citizen

      Metaphor

    4. But look at the last two links. One is to FoxNews, and the other to FiveThirtyEight.

      I hadn't followed the Fox link yet, but it did raise my eyebrow when I hovered over it.

    5. More digital-specific, I’ve made the text searchable and accessible

      Searchability (ctrl-f-ability) isn't much more than a half-step behind hyperlinks in importance. At least in my mind.

    1. We must look at them and not through them.

      Pourquoi pas les deux?

    2. It is an attempt to attend to what documents actually “say” and “do.”

      I think I want this grounded in more examples.

    3. For my colleagues’ sake (and sometimes my own sanity) I must comply.

      I want to hear more about this. How is compliance in the interest of your colleagues?

    4. These may seem “natural” and universally accepted.

      Psh. No.

    5. I must not do as the documents ask me to.

      I'm agreeable to the idea of documents asking us to do things, but I don't know if that extends to documents we ourselves compose. For those documents, when isn't this "asking" just a form of ourselves asking ourselves to do things? One answer might be that we compose those documents from a set of compartmentalized, introjected beliefs and values, or perceived external regulation, in which case a poorly internalized voice might be asking our more integrated, coherent self to act contrary to our sense of what's right and well.

      I'm not wedded to my thinking here—this comment, even less than usual, isn't a representation of my present brain so much as a line of thought I might find I endorse after working through it.

    6. progressively more complex levels

      I wonder if other words than complex might do different work in this sentence. For example:

      ... must introduce the learner to concepts and ideas at progressively more intricate levels.

      Hmm. Levels isn't (unsurprisingly) sitting well with me either.

      ... [would do well to] introduce the learner to concepts and ideas progressively more intricate.

      ... [would do well to] introduce the learner to concepts and ideas progressively more interwoven.

    7. must

      Or else?

    8. prescriptive standardised

      Another redundant phrase.

    9. checklists for self and external regulation

      Woah woah woah. Checklists can be great—again, the issue is with the ecosystem and its approach to autonomy and other basic human needs.

    10. it also conceals and ignores the emergent nature of learning and its outcomes.

      They risk this—particularly in light of dominant practice. In line with an above annotation, I think there is hope yet for syllabi to embody emergent principles—if educators make a concerted effort to do so.

    11. offer more transparency

      Than... no syllabus?

    12. documents do things, too.

      Being words themselves, this seems an unsurprising extension.

    13. Documents become sources of standards and are, to some extent, circulated as standards.

      Ish. I think standards aren't complete without their mechanisms of enforcement. The "or else" is inseparable from the "do this." Documents can describe this "or else," but except in some probably relatively rare circumstances (in the context of academic courses), documents will not be the "or else," (one exception could be a negative evaluation for, say, a letter of recommendation).

    14. have to

      Always?

    15. too much time

      This construction doesn't help me grasp the values behind this judgment.

    16. Learning outcomes remain ambiguous whatever verbs and descriptors are used.

      Yes, and not how I would put it. I think the issue is one of an ongoing d/evolving interplay between labels and their referents—a relationship which is a sort of linguistic agreement, a network effect, more than a property of a thing. Pre-determination, certainty, measurement seem to stand within this misconception, though. An inch is an inch outside of us (I mean—not at bottom if you're getting to SI unit discussions, but you [I] get my point).

    17. I have to make sure

      Control begets control—when educators' needs for autonomy aren't met, they're likely to adopt a controlling stance toward their students.

    18. am expected to be

      Passive voice again.

    19. where I want my students to have unintended learning outcomes.
    20. perpetuates and promotes the view that learning is a product.

      Again, compare with a vision of education that centers the cultivation of dispositions, outlooks, traits like kindness—with discrete knowledge in service of the same rather than traits ("grit") in service of knowledge acquisition. Which isn't to say that they can't be reciprocal or mutually-strengthening—but neither, I'd say, is it (should it be) an equal relationship.

    21. higher-order

      At least an ordinal scale.

    22. document-at-work

      Why I do believe we have stumbled upon a metaphorical framing for syllabi.

    23. in behavioural terms.

      Right. I think this is part of why my mind gravitates so much toward a shift in thinking that favors dispositions over behaviors—hopefully recognizing that the second emerges in large part from the first.

    24. First, it eliminates the social aspects of learning;

      Seems a strong construction. Perhaps ignores?

    25. In short, I have objections when it comes to intended learning outcomes.

      You and me both.

    26. They promote particular educational values and establish norms and conventions that we then must follow (over time) blindly and diligently.

      I disagree strongly here—documents don't in and of themselves promote any particular values or norms so much as they embody or instantiate a set of norms that live in the minds of instructors and the collective consciousnesses of institutions.

      I think documents can be made to embody radically different sets of norms and values. "The Other Syllabus" is a great example of it.

    27. an invitation

      I am, unsurprisingly, with you.

    28. It

      As in this document, presumably?

    29. I have found myself required to abide with this logic of conformity or convention that is not at all transparent, self-evident or fully sensible.

      Or else? The passive voice here is important. Who is doing the requiring, and how do (will) they hold to that boundary?

    30. for the sake of compliance and control and in the name of quality assurance.

      This is redundant—assurance, making certain, ensuring, are all synonyms for control because our only guaranteed outcome is the one we have sole ability to bring about. Anything less than that ability, and no guarantee can be offered.

    1. Cheating predates the internet and will not be solved by a tool

      Cheating is the phenotype, the surface feature, of a deep structure that emerges from values and beliefs—those that have been integrated (or introjected), and those that haven't been. I'm a bit more hesitant about this paragraph. I think there are probably kinds of technologies that could at very least severely restrict the behaviors associated with cheating. What I fear is that these technologies do not address—or exacerbate—the underlying beliefs and values that orient, that make coherent those behaviors in the first place.

    2. Cheating is not a technological problem, but a social and pedagogical problem.

      I'm hesitant even to give it the blanket label of a problem. I'd say most of the time it is, and perhaps even when I'd say a cheating behavior is a net positive, it likely has harmful side-effects (tacit communication that authorities are not to be trusted—cynically so, since I endorse the general case of that thought).

    3. require students to let companies record their bodies and collect biometric data, which these companies then use to refine their product and sell it back to universities.

      Seems like an informed consent issue. Which are extensions of autonomy issues.

    4. ignore the complexity of writing and citation

      Ignore, but also deny. I think denial might be the more important of the two. Though I doubt it would be an explicit message, it's a hell of a consistent implicit one.

    5. when students cheat

      SOUP

    6. The pedagogy of punishment ignores that what constitutes cheating, plagiarism, and citation are culturally constructed, seemingly arbitrary on first approach, and a source of anxiety for incoming students, especially those not acculturated to higher education.

      Ish. I think it's more than culturally constructed. Or differently? There's an important worldview that I think transcends culture, or many of the ways we conceive of and/or discuss culture—and this worldview makes coherent a set of behaviors that fit wide consensus of "cheating" as a label for those behaviors. There's a memeplex around that label that includes, for example, the separation of students into discrete individuals whose interests are accordingly separate. That wasn't as well-said as I'd like it to be, not as precise, but I think it captures enough of my thinking to evoke the larger threads if I come back here.

  14. Mar 2020
    1. how choice motivates students to read and write.

      Linguistic objectification and simplification. Choice is need-supportive, among a range of other need-relevant dimensions of curriculum design.

    2. In contrast, Novak’s explanations are thin on the kinds of details that show how UDL amounts to more than providing students with options.
    3. which psychologizes and individualizes what are systemic problems.

      This reminds me a bit of the distinction Zeynep Tufecki made between psychological and sociological storytelling in Game of Thrones

    4. Taylorism

      Fun to find this here.

    5. reduce the complexity and messiness of learning by controlling experimental conditions in the lab.

      Ish. Often.

    6. embraced

      At what scales? The existence of elective credits can be construed as evidence for recognition of variability, and electives have been around for long enough to call them traditional.

    7. strengths and weaknesses

      I don't like this framing. I know it's pervasive, and I don't think I've hesitated reading it much before now, but it seems of a piece with the sort of contextualized perspective offered in The End of Average (and in "The Context Principle" article cited in it).

    8. making structure and agency indistinguishable

      I don't think I understand this.

    9. is appealing

      To whom? For me, this is the opposite of an appeal.

    10. “The kind of vocational education in which I am interested is not one which will ‘adapt’ workers to the existing industrial regime; I am not sufficiently in love with the regime for that.”

      This is great.

    1. deliberately limited in scope.

      Holy isht. That's where my brain has been for aggregated highlights at some points.

    1. We are all going to need help.

      In order to best serve students.

    2. and forgiveness

      While I agree with this, I don't think I would emphasize it. Most of what's relevant here I wouldn't see as requiring forgiveness. Maybe another word is grace, or humility in facing a complex change in our collective circumstances? Grace has christian connotations I don't prefer. Then again, I do have a more general belief that understanding makes forgiveness redundant at best and maybe completely irrelevant.

  15. Jan 2020
    1. kind of adults

      Kinds is a red herring. (I'm wanting to use "red herring" today, apparently.)

      Perhaps instead: What are the attributes we want our children to have?

    2. This model, more or less, is still the most common one in schools today, where students learn by a defined time table that determines when they study, what subject, even when they eat lunch or can take a break.

      Ah yes, the smell of TED Dintersmith and Ken Robinson.

    3. Schools can always add more structure and control, but it comes at the cost of power and choice for the child and the adult he or she becomes.

      There are definitely not necessarily in opposition.

    4. The way a child learns how to make decisions is by making decisions, not by following directions.

      Bit of a Yes, And here. Role-modeling seems a powerful way to expand healthy decision-making capacity. Notably absent from my language here: teaching. I think I'm trending to more narrow usage of the term, and more narrow usage that perhaps excludes the idea that "decision making" can be taught.

    5. many parents are not ready to give up complete control over what/how their child learns.

      (Pssssst. They never had complete control.)

    6. autonomous learning strategies

      These "strategies", unless they're more narrowly defined than their parentheticals admit, are arguably present in plenty of classrooms in the ostensibly non-autonomous status quo.

    7. are competent partners in the process of learning

      Axiomatically? This is a murky statement, subject to an ocean of nuance in most all of the terms the sentence uses.

    8. Autonomy is often conflated with freedom by parents educated in more traditional, structured environments, but it actually means self-governance or self-direction, as opposed to being directed or driven by external factors like teachers or curricula.

      Not quite. This seems to sidestep discussions of structure and its importance and the role of adults in provisioning children with said structure.

    1. and using which new app?

      Really? Not where my brain went.

    2. “When you had a problem like this in the past, what did you do that worked?”

      This seems dangerous because it assumes an ability for the person to recall an analog that they experienced as successful. Maybe there is none--and if so, you might end up making salient some experiences of incompetence.

      Compare with: "Can you think of a time where you succeeded in solving a similar problem? (If answered in the affirmative:) What worked in that situation?"

    3. a climate of continual judgment

      This would indeed be unpleasant and undesirable if what you're describing were the only way to view this sort of feedback.

      But there's the possibility that feedback is experienced as informational rather than judgmental--and that can make all the difference.

  16. Nov 2019
    1. In one study, we simply asked students, “How are you? A woman, 18 years old and attending a university, responded, “I’m not OK.” When we asked why, she said, “I haven’t eaten in two days.”

      Holy mackerel is that a hell of a McGuffin. (I don't think I'm using that word correctly, but I'm gonna leave it.

    1. and challenge the disciplinary competition and fragmentation that has long characterized the academy.

      Buckminster Fuller and Great Pirates.

    2. multi-semester

      Included in some projects could be considerations for how a project might be handed off to students in subsequent iterations of a course.

    3. This “slowness” does not signify “inefficiency,” “smallness,” or “ineffectiveness.”

      I'd suspect that this "slowness" is orthogonal to these—one can have both efficient and inefficient slowness, for example.