dumb name, clear copyright infringement, but profoundly useful

worth signing up for:
http://a.aaaarg.org/

k

Mapping educational theories

hey all--
looking for a map of educational theories from any era (19th C. to present), particularly if they address connections between theories of learning (psychological, sociological, philosophical) with policy implementation.

i know the big names i want to address in my comps (e.g. Dewey, Freire, Vygotsky, Piaget, etc.), but i'd like to see how someone else has conceived of their interrelatedness in order either to build on this conception or critique it.

Thanks; oh, and any ideas on the name change?? Or should it remain publicators?

-k.

CO2 scrubbing silos?

i love that their solution is to literally bury the problem: extract C02 from the atmosphere and pack it in the earth, under the oceans, or wherever.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/23/scrubbing-the-atmosp.html

whatever works, i suppose, but man what a mess.

comments on a star editorial on copyright

« l o c a l - w e a t h e r »: notes on copyright reform in canada: bring out the thumbscrews!

comments on a star editorial on copyright
if interested, it's a little bit of a rant, but still (i hope) interesting and slightly informative.

A link to the editorial is at the top of that page, but is here again:
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/442594

happy friday!

Notes from Congress '08

hey there from Vancouver;

the transcript to the keynote to Congress 2008 has been posted on the UBC site. the title is intriguing, tho' it strikes me as odd for someone for whom it does actually matter to ask and answer whether "universities really matter."

anyway, i look forward to reading the keynote (i've been horribly bad at attending, and selfish at taking a vacation); here it is (as a PDF file):

Stephen Toope: "Crossing Borders, Contesting Values: Do Universities Matter?"

CCA presentation at Congress '08 - see you there!

Here's the abstract for my upcoming presentation at Canadian Communications Association conference @ Congress '08 in Vancouver. I'll be presenting on Friday morning, bright and early at 9am! Hitch a ride if you need to, but be sure to swing by!

Kris Erickson, Independent Scholar, Coordinator, Arts TA Development Program, Ryerson University
Between Two Worlds: Envisioning "Born into Brothels"

Born into Brothels (2004), a documentary film by photographer Zana Briski and filmmaker Ross Kauffman, occupies a unique place as a cultural object. Ostensibly the chronicle of a collaborative, intercultural, participatory photography or “photovoice” project with the children of sex-trade workers in Calcutta, Born into Brothels documents Briski’s encounters with her young students in and beyond the camera workshops she organizes for them. Yet more than simply a collaborative project, the film is also a journalistic account, a narrative authored at least as much by Briski and Kauffman as by the children whose images constitute the filmic space, and whose photographs punctuate the storyline. Since its release, the film’s supposedly neutral portrayal of these children and the products of their photographic education have been both celebrated and criticized, earning at once an Academy Award (as best documentary feature in 2005) and sharp criticism from social advocacy groups in Calcutta and in North America. This paper will analyze several images from the film in order to better understand how the products of contemporary visual communication like this documentary might successfully blur the boundaries between aesthetic representation and political agency. Because this film presents a rare glimpse into what teaching and learning looks like, it is an important text which highlights what I see as a pedagogical impulse underlying key discourses of contemporary media makers and media systems. In this paper I explore what the film attempts to teach us—about photography as well as about cultural practice—and consider what we might actually be learning from it in the end. As questions about the nature of truth and subjectivity, knowledge and information continue to be raised with respect to emerging communicational technologies and new media practices, a critical understanding of the increasing complexities of our visual worlds becomes crucially important.

the craft of academia: final round, the phd

thanks for stimulating conversation last night, dudes. i hope i didn't come off too didactic or preachy—the catholicism in my family history sometimes makes me fervent about certain things. i think last night i was going off on the craft of academia, and how i believe what we do as phds is training and rehearsal for that craft. (craft's a big term, but in brief: not suggesting that it's only learning the ropes of academia that's involved in acquiring the phd-craft; but there's also a matter of pushing the boundaries to shift what it means to be academics, struggling to change what needs changing in the structure/institution/industry, etc.—in short, craft knowledge as both a matter of professionalization and a matter of radicalization and change)

so what follows is all my belief—clearly to be taken with a grain of salt, but worded with conviction as it is firm belief for me... take from it what you will.

1) writing needs to be a daily act—time of day, duration of writing activities, nature of immediate environment: i think these all need to be both reflected upon very carefully and varied to determine best fit for our needs. i wonder if we need to get out of strict and rigid habits, or whether we need to form them...

2) everything goes into the phd—which is to not to mean we spend every waking hour and every sleeping one dreaming about our dissertation; but i think we need to reflect on how our interests and passions about everything from Barney to Foucault (no comparison intended!) need to be deeply considered. i guess it's about finding a balance, perhaps between carving out discrete chunks of time to spend with family and friends away from work/research, and about allowing oneself to think about research/work during these times without rushing to a keyboard.

3) befriend technology, yet remain a luddite—i was talking about RSS feeds from journal providers, joining email listservs for areas in our field (even peripherally), organizing our interests in refworks, and probably setting up a wiki or blog to order thoughts and gain some writing and web development experience... yet part of me wants to build tables, paint watercolours, and forget all about the hi-tech stuff. i guess the point is to recognize where tech can kill creativity and innovation, and to be skeptical of it for that reason, and for the other ways we let it dehumanize us (is this thought overly dark?)

anyway here's a hit list of some programs i find useful (i'll only mention the free stuff).
+ Firefox is the web browser of choice for doing research: it allows you to "add on" different features, like Zotero, which is a bibliographic research tool.
+ Thunderbird is a great email program that lets you organize and archive your email better than doing stuff only online. it's a bit of a pain to set up, but once you do, you should be sailing. it also allows you to bring in RSS feeds so you can bring all your research into here, a kind of one-stop place for daily mail and news...
+ GMail is the only online mail service that i use, mostly because it's a great interface, but also because, once you create a Google account, you have access to all the other free stuff Google has created (like Blogger, Calendar, Scholar, Documents, and so on)—this is all great stuff for if you're not working from home, but are mobile (esp. during classes in first year). Useful too, because Google Documents are totally compatible with the Microsoft Word format
+ Foxit reader is an alternative to Adobe PDF Reader, and really nice because it lets you annotate PDF files: specifically, make highlights and add comments—Adobe doesn't let you do that!

...here's some of the writing/editing resources i mentioned, too
+ Howard Becker's kind of the guru for social science writing, in my opinion. very clear and direct writing, and a narrative style that directs his readers away from snap judgements toward more analytical, multi-faceted, and responsible thinking on a topic. (I would recommend hitting a library or a used-book store to peruse them first: you might find one to be better than another [or you might find one for cheaper than what Amazon or Chapters sells it for...])

Writing for Social Scientists | Telling About Society | Tricks of the Trade

(i'd also recommend his book on Art Worlds which, even though it's about the social construction of systems of artistic practice, i think there's a great deal of what's said that informs how systems of scientific practice operate...)

anyway, that's the list for now—any more to add? thanks for listening & i'm sure the conversation will continue...

bruno latour at U of T: notes on method

first, latour's work is ground-breaking. for that reason alone it is difficult to understand since we are ill-equiped both to understand the precise ways in which certain words are meaningful, and in the more general patterns of how such words form discursive patterns. i've read a bit of him through howard becker (in the latter's telling about society [2007] for example), and have appreciated his thoughts more directly through what little i've read of science in action (1987).

i thought the audience, at least judging by the majority of responses and some conversations i had afterward, was a little cold (inhospitable even) to what he was proposing. then i thought, what a wonderful illustration of his premise: namely, that matters of fact have become matters of concern in the sciences. audience responses revealed thinkers more interested in (concerned with) semantics, it seemed, than the content of latour's talk. some, i'd argue, were more concerned with positioning themselves as various personae (mostly academically) in the room than they were with engaging latour's specific arguments, suggesting more a thing or two about institutional politics and ego-formation in hierarchical systems than about anything to do with problems about objectivity. (an exception: peter ryan's review, while brief, is at least even-handed and more giving to the territory latour was stridently marching through.)

perhaps i'm not the best person to ask (because i had far fewer qualms than did others about how he was framing things, and was more interested in what he was getting on about), but here are a few things i got from his talk.

1. first, that some objectivity can still be asserted in natural and social scientific research. however, the ways in which it's to be asserted have changed (i.e. objectivity cannot be divorced from the networked and interacting systems, local and global, of which everything is a part). i think this is what he was suggesting as a tension between the object and thing: he used the example of the challenger space shuttle (as object, symbol of scientific progress, and as thing, exploded scraps of forensic meaning) to suggest that there's a continuity of meaning between the two that often gets obscured (too often, and too quickly) as one assumes certain dominant interpretations of an object, rendering other equally viable interpretations invisible, even those which it is clear are no less important (like faulty o-rings known in advance to be faulty).

by way of comparison, and as an example entirely out of personal interest, i think of the photograph—any photograph. the last thing that's ever seen of a photograph is that it is a photograph: it's always, primarily, a photograph of something. yet to discount from any interpretation the enormous and elaborate systems of technological, economical, political, cultural and other forms of organization that have contributed to an author creating that image is to misread it entirely. (something we almost invariably do, of course, but that's another matter.) it's a representation, after all: an object holding some validity (contextual meaning), but not necessarily complete facticity (definitive or universal meaning).

thus what i gather latour means by taking an "object-oriented" approach is for researchers to pay attention less to the object as the source of meaning (which is ultimately partial and contingent), but to the object as a nexus of qualities, characteristics, and valuations. not as a fact, but as a vehicle (a rhetorical vehicle?) through which facts among other values (concerns) can be found, such as political orientations, struggles for real and symbolic power, and so on.

2. from this ultimately pragmatic position, how we choose our methodological and representational tools and why we do so is crucial to our practice. we'll do best, he suggests, to make this methodology explicit, rather than implicit. doing so will allow us to broaden our repertoire of representational techniques, sharing research findings in more ways than simply monographs or peer-reviewed journal publications, and work iteratively to refining representational forms. as our lack of knowledge in some of these areas becomes evident, greater collaboration becomes necessary as our practice expands outward to connect with others who possess better craft-skills in certain areas than do we ourselves. as our work needs to be shared amongst a broader-ranging audience of participants and collaborators, it has a greater likelihood of becoming more widely communicable and meaningful to a broader network of stakeholders. Both of these possibilities are politically progressive: first in making improvements to the ways institutional research gets conducted and shared; and secondly in engaging others in more meaningful, pragmatically grounded questions.

anyway, some rough thoughts. would love a ping back or two, especially if you feel i'm being unfair at all, or non-objective in my estimations ;-)

funding denied

Well, no SSHRC for me, and am on the wait-list for OGS .

In the interest of full disclosure, here's the project i pitched--good enough to get me into Communications and Culture at Ryerson/York, but nothing else so far...

Insights, ideas, scathing criticisms, biting commentaries—all are welcome!

- k

Seeing Learning
Towards a Critical Visual Pedagogy of Classroom Learning

Background and Statement of Problem

Although we exist in a profoundly visual culture, there are relatively few contemporary examples of photography-based education in either public school or community-based settings. Each is rare, but each is also distinct: public school photography instruction typically emphasizes technological and vocational aims at only the most senior levels (or “vo-tech” [Goldfarb 2004; Newbury 1997]), while community-based photographic education has a rich history of innovative and critical practice across a range of sites and focused towards a diverse audience. Such practice includes community arts initiatives (Braden 1983, Barndt 2006), research projects utilizing “photovoice” (Wang and Burris 1997, McIntyre 2000) or “talking pictures” (Bunster 1978) techniques, and popular education practices (Barndt 1991). Where critical, school-based learning does exist it is often disconnected from similar practices happening both locally and around the globe (Isherwood and Stanley 1994, Brake 1996, Kist 2005). It is not clear whether community-based practice fares any better (Augaitis, et al. 1995). This project will document examples of photographic practice in public education and community-based settings from the Toronto area in order to articulate a critical visual pedagogy of photographic communication.

This doctoral research project has two primary aims. First, to depict what current practices of photography-based education look like in order to describe the various agents involved, the various pedagogical and technical activities in which they are engaged, and the stated aims and goals of such practices. Attention will be paid to the various traits that align or distinguish public education from community-based practice, and vice versa. Secondly, this research will assess the significance of photographic learning, both in local settings and more broadly across the Ontario education system. I will analyze what factors constitute critical photographic learning for teachers, students, community members, and at a local level, while also considering what such a visual pedagogy both offers and demands of a publicly funded system. Ethnographic interviews with key stakeholders from schools and communities from the Toronto area and photographic documentation of these learning spaces will contribute to this descriptive and analytical survey of the practices, agents, and technologies involved in photographic education. In addition, several action research projects will be initiated at these sites in order to develop of a theoretical framework which situates a critical visual pedagogy within discourses of institutional change and broader practices of social activism.

The goal of this research is to describe and articulate an alternative educational practice which emphasizes visual dimensions to learning in addition to traditional language- and text-based practices. The study will fill in a gap between media literacy education research focused on formal school settings and action research found in community-based practices. The notion of a “critical visual pedagogy” I will develop is clearly indebted to educators and scholars in the Freirian tradition, for whom becoming literate is an emancipatory process and “naming the world” (Freire 1970) is inextricably linked to the speech acts implied in the “photovoice” (Wang and Burris 1997) or “talking pictures” (Bunster 1978) methods I intend to employ. Yet this concept is also related to the tradition of critical theory, particularly as it has been applied to studies of power relations in institutional organizations (Smith 1993, Darville 1995), state-based systems (Lloyd and Thomas 1998, Sears 2004), and media networks (Enzensberger 1970).

Bibliography

Augaitis, D., Falk, L., Gilbert, S., & Moser, M. A. (Eds.). (1995). Questions of Community: Artists, Audiences, Coalitions. Banff: Banff Centre Press.

Barndt, D. (2006). Wild Fire: Art As Activism. Toronto: Sumach Press.

Barndt, D. (1991). To Change This House: Popular Education Under the Sandinistas. Toronto: Between the Lines.

Braden, S. (1983). Committing Photography. Pluto Press.

Brake, J. (1996). Changing Images: Photography, Education and Young People. Salford: Viewpoint Photography.

Bunster, X. (1978). Talking pictures: field method and visual mode. Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication, 5(1), 37-55.

Darville, R. (1995). Literacy, Experience, Power. In M. L. Campbell & A. Manicom (Eds.), Knowledge, Experience, and Ruling Relations: Studies in the Social Organization of Knowledge. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (pp. 249-261).

Enzensberger, H. M. (1970). Constituents of a Theory of the Media. New Left Review, 64.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Goldfarb, B. (2002). Visual Pedagogy: Media Cultures in and Beyond the Classroom. Durham: Duke University Press.

Isherwood, S., & Stanley, N. (Eds.). (1994). Creating Vision: Photography and the National Curriculum. Manchester: Arts Council of Great Britain.

Kist, W. (2005). New Literacies in Action: Teaching and Learning in Multiple Media. New York: Teachers College Press.

Lloyd, D., & Thomas, P. (1998). Culture and the State. New York: Routledge.

McIntyre, A. (2000). Constructing Meaning About Violence, School, and Community: Participatory Action Research with Urban Youth. The Urban Review, 32(2), 123-154.

Newbury, D. (1997). Talking about Practice: Photography Students, Photographic Culture and Professional Identities. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(3), 421-434.

Sears, A. (2003). Retooling the Mind Factory: Education in a Lean State. Aurora: Garamond Press.

Smith, D. E. (1993). Texts, Facts and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling. New York: Routledge.

Wang, C., & Burris, M. A. (1997). Photovoice: Concept, Methodology and Use for Participatory Needs Assessment. Health Education & Behavior, 24(3), 369-387.

Self-promotion (shameless)

I am happy to report that I have been publicated! Mind you, not a peer-reviewed venue but as part of a series of grad student papers from FES. So now when I refer to "(Berbes, 2007)", you know what I'm talking about ;)

Here is the abstract:

Environmental crises have prompted a re-evaluation of traditional approaches to environmental management that has often highlighted their inability to deal with the complexity of social-ecological systems. The ecosystem approach (EA) offers an alternative that combines ideas from systems theory, participatory decision-making and adaptive management. However, EAs are still relatively young both as a discipline and as a practice, and as such, their meaning is continuously being redefined. This paper assesses the current state of development and the direction of EAs in the Golden Horseshoe Region (Ontario) by analyzing quantitative and qualitative data from interviews with EA practitioners. Practitioners were involved in projects that applied EA in a variety of fronts from ecological restoration to eco-health to urban development. The survey used helped to identify the theoretical foundations and core themes of EA; the methods, techniques and tools used; and, the factors and barriers to its implementation and potential application to other contexts. Two findings emerged from this research: first, despite the diversity of practitioners and applications, the theoretical understandings of EA are coalescing into a unified view that emphasizes the principles of integration, connectivity and participation. Second, successful implementation of EAs will require a parallel shift in the current institutional setting towards more adaptive forms of governance. Despite this obstacle EA continues to spread to applications in the fields of eco-health and urban development.

To full paper is available on FES Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Series. Kris, the literature review has some stuff on systems theory that may be of interest.

thoughts on timing, scheduling, and self-discipline

it was a nice breakfast/brunch we had the other day, tho' i think i was a little insistent in my talk of timelines and scheduling and work habits. that said, i thought (or 'thot') i'd put my money where my mouth is & post about my attempt at planning a weekly schedule. having just been accepted to present at Congress at the Canadian Communications Association (CCA) conference in June in Vancouver, i figure this is better done now than later.

so first, i thought about what a reasonable work week would be. 10 hours per weekday plus another 10 over the weekend is a 60 hour work week, but with reading and writing constituting a big chunk of that, it isn't an overwhelming schedule, I believe.

Then I thought about what that would be (w/ a running total at the end of each point):
+ 10 hours a TA-ship (that's the easy one, and it gives me bonus time in the summer, or if I choose not to do a TA-ship one semester: 50 hours remaining)
+ 2 hrs/day writing = 14 hrs. (i thought whether this would be lumped into weekends or free days, or rigidly scheduled into the activities of each day. i don't yet have an answer for that, but the 14 hour weekly max. gives some flexibility: 36 hours remaining)
+ 2 hrs./day reading = 14 hrs. (this includes researching, annotating, and note-taking, which might also be considered writing, tho' i'd like to develop a habit of doing research directly into the computer, so i don't have to filter through post-it notes at a later date. i've had success doing this with précis-writing, tho' it's not yet instinctive enough a practice. "writing" proper i'd like to devote to synthesis and analysis and more creative activities: 22 hours remaining)
+ 3 hrs./weekly supervisory meetings (maybe ambitious, but i would like to be working closely with my supervisor[s], either supporting their work through my collaboration, or discussing my own progress with them. i'd like to institute this early and make it an ongoing activity... i guess the challenge is getting my supervisor to buy in: 19 hours remaining)
+ 6-9 hrs./weekly in-class, coursework (this may include course audits, unaccredited coursework. ideally i'll be taking two in a semester, tho' three courses may be a necessity at times. in any case, i'll say 9 hours to give myself some space to do readings without cutting too deeply into my own research: 10 hours remaining)
+ 7 hrs./weekly peer meetings (the formal side of socializing, this would include TA development activities, participation in grad student association meetings, peer presentations of work-in-progress, local symposiums/panels/etc., gallery openings, and so on. i've averaged an hour per day on this, tho' it'll likely cluster: 3 hours remaining)

So the grand total is 57 hours, meaning I have 3 to spare! Of course I'm not factoring in transportation in this equation, and 3 hours hardly counts for that. But as a set of upper limits, hopefully that makes sense.

the question now is whether i "enforce" my restrictions, and how do i do it? (apologies in advance for sounding so anal in this section, but i'm just trying to work a problem through.) for example: say there's a number of interesting peer activities going on in a week that would take me above my alloted 7 hours: do i say no to them? do i cut into my reading or writing or some other time to attend? do i "bank" hours from week to week, or does each week start as a blank slate? how do i determine when things need to change—do i redo this weekly plan every few months or so?

many questions. i only hope by addressing them like i have here that i'm working toward a viable solution rather than a compulsive disorder (the use of the term "self-discipline" in the title makes me feel really squirmy...)

Research at Cornell

You know, in this day and age where you can find everything and anything through Google, or e-Bay, I still find it surprisingly difficult to know which schools are hot hubs for what. And it is not for lack of shameless self-promotion on the part of universities. Luckily, traditional ways are still useful in this respect and someone pointed out to me that Cornell University is doing some really fun stuff education-wise.

Edukators, take a look.

Visualizing Information for Advocacy by the Tactical Technology Collective

i'm totally psyched about browsing/reading this:
http://www.tacticaltech.org/infodesign

Modern life is saturated with ever increasing amounts of information, advertising and media with little time to digest what is being said. Against this background, NGOs and advocates too often find the information they want to communicate, either buried in long reports full of professional jargon and statistics, or overlooked in an endless stream of media releases. Whether communicating to the public, staff, donors or government officials, information design can help NGOs communicate with more impact, increase accessibility, and present issues powerfully.

Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design is a manual aimed at helping NGOs and advocates strengthen their campaigns and projects through communicating vital information with greater impact. This project aims to raise awareness, introduce concepts, and promote good practice in information design – a powerful tool for advocacy, outreach, research, organization and education.

from what i can gather, Tactical Technology Collective is an international group, with members based (and funding received from organizations based) all over the world.