The New School

Classrooms are over. Dewey, Vigotsky, Schön would be moved by this picture. Education is going in the direction they suggested, at least in some places. The school in the picture is Orestad College, in Denmark.

The building was done trying that the "physical structure supports the visions of knowledge sharing, interdisciplinarity cooperation and competencies". The bad news is that it is only happening in North European Countries. The good news is that class is over.

Reflexive Organizations

Organizations of any kind, social, educational, political, business, etc., tend to remain the same. They are all characterized by what Donald Schön called "dynamic conservatism". That is not a hundred per cent bad: it makes institutions and companies reliable. Nevertheless, at times of uncertainty and big changes, like today, the exageration of this tendency can be lethal.

Reflexive organizations, that means institutions able to understand and react in front of changing realities, is the solution. The "Knowledge Based Society" should be renamed as "Learning Based Society".

Maybe one of the best texts on reflexiveness and society is Schön's Beyond the Stable State, published in 1973.

A learning system… must be one in which dynamic conservatism operates at such a level and in such a way as to permit change of state without intolerable threat to the essential functions the system fulfils for the self. Our systems need to maintain their identity, and their ability to support the self-identity of those who belong to them, but they must at the same time be capable of transforming themselves. (Schon 1973: 57)

The link has a good and comprenhensive information on Schön's learning approach.

Learning in the Digital Age

Picture taken from "Mutuas Palabras"

The question is not what is going to change in the digital age, the question is what has already changed and we have not noticed.

One of the most important changes are in education. We all have changed our approach to knowledge but universities and educational institutions. Maybe the best opportunity in the new world that is taking shape is to overcome a bit the mechanical way of thinking the industrial era imposed, being a bit more creative. The "Battery Model" (Shön) of learning is over. Welcome the Reflexive Mode of learning. This CHE's article is in the right direction.