“Disrupting Class” and the Long Tail of Learning
Learning 2.0, Long Tail, Web 2.0 Teaching, book review, communities of practice, e-learning, education, educational technology, learning, social networking, traditional instruction Add commentsRecently finished Christensen, Horn, and Johnson’s Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. I read the book because of Christensen’s groundbreaking work on innovation (The Innovator’s Dilemma) and I wanted to see how he applied his theories to education. Christensen captured the problem with current education which is that it still operates in a factory mental model in which education is composed of bits of content which are delivered in a limited range of learning styles and with very little customization for individual learners.
Christensen’s solution is to provide computer-based learning which molds itself to the individual student’s preferred learning styles and ability to absorb information. “Well, that’s nothing new,” I thought and was tempted to stop reading at this point. But I pressed on and I am glad I did. What Christensen describes as the new wave of innovation in education is the creation of a “student-centric learning framework” which uses “facilitated user networks” to create and deliver educational content. In other words, the community of practice concept brought to the primary and secondary school level. Again, nothing new here but Christensen has put together a series of arguments that crystallizes the current movement toward learning communities and Long Tail Learning. Essentially, this is the clearest case for social-network based learning that I have read yet.
I also liked Chapter 7, “Improving Educational Research,” because I also believe that the biggest hindrance to educational reform is the current state of educational research (”methodologically weak”, “jargon-laden”, and “given to fads” pretty much sums it up). As Christensen points out, much of educational research is contradictory and hard to follow when trying to reform a school or program. No wonder that students and parents are developing their own networks of learning to compensate for the inadequacies of the current educational system. Christensen rightly points out that educational researchers need to shift from their prescriptive theories (how things should be) and focus on empirical research that leads to descriptive theories (how things are).
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