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.

I'd say other sources of motivation.

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

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

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

Grades themselves are extrinsic.

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

Typo

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

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.)

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

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

Self-complexity relevant here?

Are these all that separate?

Compelled vs. impelled.

Passive.

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

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

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.)

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).

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.

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.

Or consent.

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

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.

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

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.

Language of control—linguistic objectification.

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.

308 times as of 1/13/21

343 times as of 8/3/21

(According to Google Scholar)

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

and?

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

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.

The Tyranny of Better over Different

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

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

Technocratic approach.

MWLB

Wait. New html type effect for a hashtag symbol?

Unnecessary.

Value referenced.

Who's we?

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

I keep coming back to this.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What, then, are the sources of those constraints?

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

Ecological philosophy here.

Always a good indicator for me.

Irony.

Imperative language

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.

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

What would this mean...?

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

Star star star.

Purports to (but doesn't).

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

This framing of products is part of the problem.

Who must "we" here be?

Linguistic objectification.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

Linguistic objectification.

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

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

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.

Strange to deny the frame and then use it?

Value system/belief system as a guide—#MetaphorsWeLiveBy

Linguistic Objectification

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.

Is invisible by default.

With space for reflective defiance.

*Controlling motivators.

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."

Which has quite a powerful implicit metaphor.

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...)

Not a claim to take on faith.

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

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.

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

I love this.

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

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.

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.

Why hello Harry Potter reference. Seems apt.

Strive against?

A matter of identity.

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."

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.

False guarantees.

A pervasive context for development.

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.

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.

One variety of...

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

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.

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.

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?"

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

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.

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.

PLOC

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.

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.

Yeah—we're agreeing here.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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).

The relational piece.

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.

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.

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.

Yes, though attribution need not entail blame.

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

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

This will stick with me.

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.

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

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

More and more a frame for my thinking.

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.

In order to...?

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.

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

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

Metaphor

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

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

Pourquoi pas les deux?

I think I want this grounded in more examples.

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

Psh. No.

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.

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.

Or else?

Another redundant phrase.

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

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.

Than... no syllabus?

Being words themselves, this seems an unsurprising extension.

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).

Always?

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

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).

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

Passive voice again.

Plenty of crossover with my article: "When we see learning as an infinite game, we open greater possibilities for students to act adjacent, tangential to, beyond explicit directives in pursuit of goals nevertheless relevant to our learning community — perhaps vitally so."

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.

At least an ordinal scale.

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

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.

Seems a strong construction. Perhaps ignores?

You and me both.

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.

I am, unsurprisingly, with you.

As in this document, presumably?

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

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.

Heart.

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.

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).

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

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.

SOUP

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.

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

See Avi Assor on choice vs. relevance.

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

Fun to find this here.

Ish. Often.

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.

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).

I don't think I understand this.

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

This is great.

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

In order to best serve students.

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.

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?

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

There are definitely not necessarily in opposition.

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.

(Pssssst. They never had complete control.)

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.

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

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

Really? Not where my brain went.

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?"

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.

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.

Buckminster Fuller and Great Pirates.

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

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