[Quotes taken from a summary of "Teaching for Turbulence," (1996) by Barbara Mossberg, the National Teaching and Learning Forum, 5(3), pp. 5-7.]
"Learning requires the conceptual ability to take knowledge about one kind of thing and apply it to another, different, kind of thing." In other words, the brain must construct and acquire greater complexity about a subject by virtue of the awareness of differences. Such awareness allows learners to make comparisons and define an understanding by application of analogy and metaphor. All are part of an interdependent system of learning.
In the counseling assignment that I"m examining, I've asked my students to bring all that they've previously learned to the table. Then, I've asked them to find ways to use that. It is in this process, bringing what they know from other places to this work, that learning can occur. By allowing students to develop their own "thing" (in this case their own research/theory) they develop an intellectual complexity regarding the experience that up until the analysis was one dimensional. If I were to tell them what they had in their transcript or what they had to find, then nothing would have happened of lasting value. No learning would have occurred.
In essence, they must look at a transcript and make decisions about what it is and what it is not. By discovering what it is NOT, students develop complexity. Then, they use analogy and metaphor to define and express their understanding of the new thing. How they develop anaologies and metaphors would be a great question to ask. What anologies and metaphors they develop would be another good focus. The comment about an interdependent system of learning prompts me to ask, "What elements interact when learning occurs?" Learner's brain, existing knowledge, new knowledge? But again, with the necessity of developing analogies and metaphors we see that language skills (the ability to understand analogy and metaphor and the ability to create analogy and metaphor are essential to learning. Those that go on to higher levels of learning must possess a linguistic competence of a certain sophistication. In the assignment, I'm asking tsutdents to study language (transcript), analyze that language, and reconceive that language into something different than what it appears. Perhaps those who excel are thsoe who are linguistically advanced. What metaphors and analogies do they use to make sense of their work?
Chaos theory further discusses the definitions of "order" and "disorder" within such a system of learning. Both states coexist simultaneously in the dynamic learning system. Intellectual challenge is born with the awareness that contradictions challenge existing ideas constantly, within individual learners and the learning environment. This tension is a central condition of learning: In order for learning to occur, the accepted structure must be lifted to allow information to unfold in a unique circumstance and have impact.
Once I told a young science teacher who said her students never asked questions until she put them in the lab and they "got into trouble" with the experiments that she needed to get them in trouble sooner. That trouble means moving them from order, what they do recognize and understand, to disorder, what they do not recognize or understand. The notion is that both order and disorder co-exist and the description given to any state is dependent upon whose eyes are doing the viewing. The actual state of disroder presents us with a teaching opportunity that enables us to move from dialogue to multilogue. We begin to socially construct, across the voices of the community, our understanding and order. I'm enamored of the multilogue issue. My classes, if I'm talking at all, end up being dialogues. Small group work in my classes encourage multilogues where four or five of the students within a group actually have a conversation with one another.
Somehow I know that conflict is connected to these ideas. Conflict represents tension? Conflict definitely creates tension and according to this passage, this tension is the central condition for learning. Logically, without tension there can be no learning.
If teachers can allow each class to develop its own order through the power of the class to organize, understand, and create knowledge, then what is learned will encompass all contributions and interactions. The class may learn something different than the original or intended "order," but it is now an order of which the class is part.
Owned order. Owned chaos. If I can allow each student to develop their own order through the power they have to organize, understand, and create knowledge, then they will own that order and therefore remember that order and understand it. Now, the trick for me is how do you facilitate students in their learning to organize information into something new.
With regard to my assignment, it appears that tensions may have driven Wayne to new levels of understanding of the experience. The tension for him clearly came from disorder (or his perception of what was disorderly). For example, he talks about being "prepared for any and every contingency" as a way to create order and thus reduce tension. He also talks about the interview with the parent. In this section he describes himself as being "upset" because the parent kept asking questions that did not go "in the direction I wanted them to." Here he becomes upset because disorder is created when the parent doesn't go to the place that Wayne knows and understands. In the analysis of the transcript, he writes about being too caught up in labeling and diagramming "every little thing" and not being able to see a patter in it [transcript]. Here is where his disorder turns to order with an "epiphany" as the "elements came together."
