It’s amazing the way links can be made between ideas read and conversations and events that occur in life.  What I mean is it seems that in my life I have conversations with someone on a topic, and then suddenly something related to that topic appears within days in something we read in this program.

My partner went to a session on Wednesday which was held at a Waldorf school, the focus being on technology and elementary education.  From my understanding, the speaker focused on how technology should not be a dominant in the lives of young people, as it deters from the learning of social values and communication skills, as well as creating black/white and/or right/wrong situations while many aspects of life aren’t that way.  Conversations around gaps in ability to deal with conflict and solve problems were also mentioned. 

Sound familiar?  This tends to fall into the urban legends in education which were mentioned in Kirschner’s article.  Although some may have been backed up by empirical research, much of this may conveniently support Waldorf’s educational approach.  Not to say I don’t support this pedagogy, but I do echo the sentiments of both Etchells and Kirschner, who express the need to find measurable data to back up these claims. 

This is a very complex issue, and making links between physical health and use of technology for example could just as easily be related to more people moving to urban centres, having two working parents and having less access to teams to join, as to the proliferation of devices to divert their attention.  Why isn’t there data to back it up? 

Another useful tidbit from my day today was a conversation with my sister in law, who has a PhD. I mentioned that I read articles all the time from 15 years ago about approaches to education (constructivism, PBL etc.) which although make plenty of logical sense, are still not really common in many educational circles.  She said that it takes 19 years on average for research to be verified and implemented on a wide scale in education.  I may be spreading hearsay here (and playing into ‘myth’), but that really supports the perspective that assumptions and hype around how teachers should teach to the self-reported learning styles of their learners may indeed be as a result of studies done in a different era.  In our current climate where technology is everywhere, one would think that it wouldn’t take 19 years before verified research supported approaches could be utilized on more of a broader scale in public education. 

References

Kirschner, P. (2017). Stop propagating the learning styles myth. Computers & Education, 106, 166-171.

Etchells, P., et al. (January 6, 2017). Screen Time Guidelines should be built on evidence, not hype. The Guardian.

The image was taken from — https://www.westpac.co.nz/assets/Red-News/_resampled/CroppedImage600300-Mythbusting.jpg