Joy in the Journey

I had just read the statement “more important to focus as much on learning processes as on content” in this week’s article “Developing Online From Simplicity toward Complexity: Going with the Flow of Non-Linear Learning” when I thought of the old song “Joy in the Journey.” And sure enough, a few lines down, the article brought in that concept as it introduces (at least to me) the concept of “Active Research.” “Action research is participatory research, ‘directed towards and directed by those who are actually taking the journey’…” In other words, “getting there (really) is half the fun.” According to this research, anyway.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE ARTICLE:

I’ve had that feeling about this Connectivism course, finding new connections and while keeping to the trail set in the Daily toward the goals of the course, also enjoying the scenery along the way and how it applies to other studies I’ve been doing (which is why I chose the application to the History of Missions to examine Connectivism).

Finding “big consequences of little things” from Complexity theory, the “second and third order effects” also fascinates me and was foreshadowed in some of my posts last week. For example, the evangelism of Europe by the Celts resulting in Christianity coming back to Britain through the means of the very people the Britons had evangelized earlier after being extinguished by the Vikings. It could not have been predicted and the consequences were unforeseen. That is, in human terms.

Complexity depends upon the limitations of humanity (not being able to know the beginnings of things and only being able to guess consequences of things). But what if supernatural Wisdom is involved? If you had a record of the cause you would be able to better able to gauge the effect…and, supernaturally, all the moreso if the effect also is told to you. This is the paradox of faith. It seems, from the human perspective, that we don’t know where we started and don’t know what the consequences will be. But if we have faith in the GOD of the Bible we believe that He does know, though He may not (and often does not) share that information with us.

While these theories would seem antithetical to Christianity and “GOD being in control” (as control is construed as something negative), instead we find just the opposite to be true.

JESUS Himself uses the “you are My witnesses” (John 3:28) approach, which was also used in Isaiah and other places in the Bible. That is, you make your own learning…”Taste and see that the LORD is good.” (Psalm 34:8) Christianity and Missions do not involve “provable” knowledge. The knowledge is supernatural and experiential and the path each person goes upon, while guided in a sense, is in another sense dependent on the individual’s interaction and connections with various information and contexts and leads to different outcomes.

As was said here, ‘you don’t always know what you don’t know’!, but what if a (supernatural) Other does? The typical human reaction is to deny that. The Christian reaction is to accept that. But, even in that acceptance, to understand knowledge of the Other (GOD) cannot be gained through any natural means or alone. It is a personal process of constant interaction with various sources, such as GOD Himself (prayer and Scripture), with other Believers, and may vary according to context.

Even the Apostles disagreed with each other. (Acts 15:2, Galatians 2:11, etc.) The Christian’s mission is to simply say “This is what I have experienced of Christ and the veracity of what Scripture says. This is my understanding of what He has done, and this is the impact having a relationship with Him has had upon me.” While the essentials remain intact (the divinity of JESUS as the second Person of the Trinity, His being fully GOD yet fully man, His physical death and resurrection, and His full and complete payment for the sins of all those who believe in Him), there is much that remains for each individual to discover. No human being can give that experience or knowledge. It comes only from interaction and connection with GOD Himself and the (unpredictable in our human terms) causes and effects He allows into our lives.

Many computer games of the past, such as “The Neverhood”, “Myst” “The Dig”, and others, and now virtual worlds such as “Second Life” build on this very intentional part of Creation that every toddler knows: discovery. The connections, information, stimuli, etc. are out there but the gamer/toddler will learn only as he/she and to the amount he/she interacts with them. The methods and paths may vary and that will affect the learning. But there is a coder somewhere who knows the “big picture”, just as GOD allows us to use the discovery methods of Complexity but knows all permutations Himself.

Again, ironically, when the LORD tells us He has the answers yet allows us to struggle and grapple with complexity issues (disruption, uncertainty, unpredictability, tension, anxiety and problem creating “) in Life, we opine and complain. But He is (theoretically) using the best possible method for us to learn about Life and Himself.

GOD says, “You will find Me if you seek Me with your whole heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13) When we do that, there may be a lot of confusion on the way, and we may not end up where we expected or where others have, but there will also be joy in the journey. GOD chooses to use Complexity to have us discover Him.

NOTES FROM THE ARTICLE:

“…Complexity theory…uncertainty of prediction is inevitable (Eve, Horsfall & Lee, 1997) and that processes are critically dependent on their initial conditions, conditions that may be unrecoverable or unknowable. This is the essential notion behind the well known ‘butterfly effect’ (Waldrop, 1992)….”

“…the world is irreducibly complex, not determinist and predictable, and that the task before us is no longer to identify the simple elements
of reality underlying complex appearances, but to work out how to study complexity in its own right…”

“…emphasis on meaning rather than decontextalised content, an emphasis on creativity, a sense of connection to learners’ worlds and the development of a sense of ownership over what is learned…”

“ideas and concepts arise from specific contexts in inherently non-linear and unpredictable ways..”

Complexity’s perspective is that teachers need to accept students’ ability to organise, construct and structure learning, combining supportive and challenging behaviour; equilibrium with disequilibrium. ‘Curriculum becomes a process of development rather than a body of knowledge to be covered or learned, ends become beacons guiding this process, and the course itself transforms the indeterminate into the determinate’ (Doll, 1989a, p.250).

“…it is impossible to break down learning and teaching into determinist and predictable simple elements of knowledge..”

draw students away from expectations of directive-style teaching and instead to focus on them establishing self-directed and self-responsible approaches to their learning, including exploratory learning and ‘play’.

‘you don’t always know what you don’t know’!

when capability is the goal, skills and achievements emerge because students are open and embracing of learning opportunities and the process is more fluid than is implied by pre-specified outcomes.

‘We should probably find the absence, not the presence, of errors, mistakes and difficulties to be distressing – a sign that we are not exposing ourselves to the kinds of conditions that most facilitate our learning, and our self-assessment of that learning’ (Bjork, 1994, p.201).

Rather than simplifying the environment, the goal of educators should be to aid the learner to function in rich learning environments. In a similar way, Iannone (1995) argues that education should be process-oriented and students must be actively engaged. Curriculum, he states, should be flexible, open, disruptive, uncertain and unpredictable and should accept tension, anxiety and problem creating as the norm.

“…students were prompted to set themselves appropriate goals and were then challenged to engage with content most relevant to them…”

“…there is no real ‘start’ and ‘finish’. There is no single core body of information that everyone has to work through identically…”

to move from expectations of being told ‘what to learn and when to learn it’ to a more complex learning environment which encouraged them to ‘go with the flow’ of authentic and day-to-day learning approaches.