For this assignment, we were asked partner in pairs and to identify a topic that we were both currently unfamiliar with and would like to know more about. The topic we chose was Bitcoin. Being that there’s quite a bit of hype around the subject, the material available was of course extensive. We did find it surprising that scholarly journal articles do exist on this topic. We did not realize that this cryptocurrency had been around since 2008. In terms of Bitcoin, we were able to find many articles through Google Scholar regarding the topic. In other words, it was a situation of “abundance” as Weller (2011) has identified.
Weller’s assertion is that, until now, education was confined to an assumption of scarcity, as was the content industry in general. However, the digitisation of content and the advent of the internet has meant that new economic models needed to be developed for the new situation of abundance. Therefore, according Weller, the same shift to abundance will likewise have an impact on education. A problem with Weller’s argument is that he characterizes the educator as a source of information. Without access to the Internet, an expert was a rare commodity, contribution to a situation of scarcity. Likewise, the physicality of learning material, while an improvement, nevertheless contributed to this scarcity. Therefore, Weller (2011) concludes, “An instructivist pedagogy then can be seen as a direct consequence of the demands of scarcity” (p. 226).
This appears to be a classic example of the “fault lines of recontextualisation” associated with constructivism, as McPhail (2016) identified. Constructivism purports to be a response to what was a didactic approach to education, where the instructor is expected to impart a certain predefined set of knowledge. As such, Weller perceives the role of the instructor as merely a source of information. However, instructors are not the result of restricted access to material. If that wasn’t the case, universities would need only consist of libraries where students could educate themselves. If all the appropriate books were in already in the libraries, could engineers learn their trade by themselves?
No, we understand that the role of the instructor is to guide the learner in wading through the abundance of material, because of his or her familiarity with the subject and the standards of the industry. An expert is not merely a fount of information on which a student depends. Rather, an expert is one more experienced in a particular topic, who can assist the student in their own learning path. Ironically, that is what is recommended by the constructivist approach that Weller proposes. But an instructor should never be obeyed blindly, as the final authority on any particular subject, but should be put through the rigors to continually demonstrate why they are entitled to lead instruction in a particular matter.
The same applies to information. One point that Weller (2011) brings up is an important one. He stated that, “In a world of abundance the emphasis is less on the development of specific learning materials than on the selection, aggregation and interpretation of existing materials” (p. 229). He further notes that the risk of a constructivist approach, where students effectively teach themselves, is the proliferation of “fake news” in this new state of abundance. However, it’s always been important for all learners, whether in a formal educational setting or not, to learn to assess the credibility of sources. That’s an issue of critical thinking, not the relative amount of information available.
Contrary to what Weller suggests, it could be argued that learning and instruction have not changed. All that has changed is the extent of learning material available. Students can no more teach themselves in this environment they can could with more limited availability of information. But as in all cases of learning, there is value in resorting to the knowledge of an expert who can serve as a guide through the labyrinth of that information.
References
Bitcoin News (n.d.). CoinTelegraph. Retrieved from https://cointelegraph.com/tags/bitcoin
McPhail, G. (2016). The fault lines of recontextualisation: The limits of constructivism in education. British Educational Research Journal, 42(2), 294–313. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3199
Romano D, Schmid G. Beyond Bitcoin: A Critical Look at Blockchain-Based Systems. Cryptography. 2017; 1(2):15. Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/2410-387X/1/2/15
Weller, M. (2011). A pedagogy of abundance. Spanish Journal of Pedagogy, 249, 223–236.