Meaningful Learning with Technology by Jonassen et al (2008) was an excellent read! They present a very compelling, simple, and comprehensive model of what constitutes curriculum that creates meaningful learning. This is in the service of technology-enabled learning. But really, it applies to all curricula.
Jonassen identifies as a Constructivist. Very apt. And very much related to thinkers in the field of Adult Learning that I subscribe to. John Heron, Jack Mezirow, Robert Kegan. The constructivist school of thought is a response to popular thinking decades ago espousing that learning is measured by behavior. It believed that creating the right environment will allow for desired behavior to emerge. Mental conditioning was one such theory that emerged from this school of thought.
The constructivists' response to this thinking was that true, authentic, and--in Jonassen's words--meaningful thinking goes beyond the mechanism of environment-person interaction. The constructivists will argue that reducing our understanding of learning to behavior alone effectively blackboxes the process. It is ignorant of the most basic mechanism of learning that exists in people. Constructivists argue that this basic mechanism of learning exists in a process of making meaning. That two different people who have different meaning making schemes (or mental models), if exposed to the same environment, will learn differently. The interim process between external stimuli and behavior is this process of mental processing or meaning making. Heron, Mezirow, and Kegan talk about how this emerges, but to the credit of Jonassen, they do not offer a comprehensive framework for how to facilitate such learning. For instance, Mezirow's transformative learning theory simply says that to trigger learning, a facilitator might create an experience or conversation that will lead to a disorientation, or a disorienting dilemma. To bring the thinking of Mezirow and Jonassen, I would use the framework of Jonassen to create conditions for learning, but tack on the thinking of Mezirow that whatever this experience is, it must generate some kind of disorientation or dissonance. It is only through this process of disorientation that a person will begin to reflect and question his or her mental models, taken for granted assumptions about the topic at hand.
It is truly a thrill to draw parallels between thinkers from different fields.
Looking forward to reading the rest of this book.
Kudos to our professor, Debra, for great reading selection!
