Monday, September 28th, 2009
Don’t you find that with the sea of teaching and training jargon – and the preoccupation with classifying learning as formal, non-formal or informal, that we sometimes loose site of learning, what it really is about? Here are two articles, by Roger C. Shank, that brings us back to the essence, with an approach that doesn’t worry itself with trying to draw the line between life-based, work-based, school-based learning, just accepts that they intermingle and enrich each other.
Articles:
What can be taught: part I
What can be taught: part II
Competency based approaches do have an intention to work towards this view, even if the transformation can get a little lost in the implementation. That’s normal, since we are mostly all products of education systems that organised learning into specialised topics and subjects rather than universal skill sets.
I wish that when I was doing my anthropology and education degrees we could have opened up to such a broad view of learning. It would have helped me to get a better grasp that my experience during those university years has actually served me well in my professional and personal life thereafter, even if on the surface it might appear disconnected. Indeed, classifiying types of learning/teaching into 16 types of processes that can then be grouped into 1) conscious processes, 2) subconscious processes, 3) analytic processes, and 4) mixed processes, is eye-opening and useful.
Now, when I read the other entry by Shank, on “Things that can’t be taught”, I instantly say to myself, but has he heard about e-portfolios. This is reflective tool that supports the learning/development of self-awareness and self-knowledge. Yes, it is much more difficult to “teach” more personality related competence such as integrity but e-portfolios are the path into this zone.
Posted in Apprentissage tout au long de la vie, Compétences, General, Portfolio numérique | No Comments »
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
Le Congrès annuel des CRHA/CRIA (Conseillers en ressources humaines agrées et Conseillers en relations industrielles agrées) m’a étonné. J’ai senti dans l’air un vent de renouveau dans le milieu des ressources humaines. Et ce renouveau semble naître de plusieurs constats : celui du défi de recruter et de retenir des employés dans un contexte de pénurie de la main d’oeuvre, celui de l’épuisement professionnel et des maladies mentales qui assiègent le mileu de travail. Pas étonnant que c’est la dimension humaine qui a dominé pendant ce congrès.
C’est dans cet esprit que j’ai écouté avec empathie le film Histoire d’une vie et la discussion avec la réalisatrice Maryse Chartrand. Pour ceux qui n’en ont pas entendu parlé, Mme Chartrand et son mari Simon avait le projet de faire un film sur leur expérience incroyable de leur année de « décrochage », pendant laquelle, avec leurs trois enfants, ils ont fait le tour du monde. Un an de retour aux sources. Malheureusement, au retour à Montréal, Simon, papa, s’enlève la vie. Le projet doit se transformer en un film sur la santé mentale.
Les hommes, plus que les femmes, s’identifient par leur travail et ils vivent dans une société où la communication de leurs émotions est vue comme une faiblesse. Or la « souffrance » professionnelle n’est pas reliée au nombre de jours et d’heures que l’on travaille. Par exemple, dans le film, lorsque la famille visite l’atelier d’un artisan dans un pays du Sud, où ce dernier travaille des longues journées 7 jours sur 7, Simon est frappé que malgré les longue heures de travail, cette personne ne semble pas atteint de stress professionnel. C’est qu’il y a encore de la dignité dans son métier.
Et le congrès a enchaîné dans cette direction. Un atelier a porté sur la démarche appréciative qui base des interventions de solutions sur l’attention sur les forces, les moments d’excellence, des facteurs de succès. Une démarche qui réussit et dynamise au même temps. La conférence de Serge Marquis intitulée Est-ce que la peur de la mort rendrait nos entreprises malades? qui parle de « transparence et de valeurs », « d’une vision sereine du travail et de la vie », « de mobiliser les personnes par le désir de vivre pleinement et profondément ». Et pour finir, Laurent Saussereau est venu parler de deux manières de gérer et d’agir, « soit par la peur, soit par l’amour ».
Dans le contexte de ce congrès, mon intervention a été mieux reçue que j’aurais jamais pu l’imaginer. Je parlais de notre approche « inside out » pour avoir du recul dans une entreprise, pour valoriser collectivement le chemin parcouru et pour mieux s’avancer dans la direction donnée par ses valeurs et ses croyances. En fait, c’est une démarche simple qui permet le développement en continu d’une mémoire organisationnelle et d’une identitié numérique sur le web qui est le reflet véritable des compétences de l’entreprise. C’est aussi un moyen pour développer sa capacité d’être une organisation apprenante. Pour en savoir plus, voici la présentation :
Posted in Compétences, General, Identité numérique, Portfolio numérique, Technologie | 2 Comments »
Friday, August 29th, 2008
About a year and a half ago I embarked on a process to develop my eportfolio – though it was a personal, introspective process, I decided to allow public access to my site as it evolves. I was rather uncomfortable with so many people potentially seeing so much information about me, however, since the line of work of percolab is eportfolios and collaborative processes and I was frustrated that we could never see the result of each others “private” process, I had no choice. So there I was, in a place of discomfort – but deep down I knew that such visibility might have its rewards. And indeed it does.
Darren Cambridge, international researcher and author on eportfolios, chose to analyse my ePortfolio for a book he is writing and he sent me a draft of the chapter that refers to my work. Darren links my process to concepts of “integrity” and “employabilty” in ways that only someone from outside looking in could. He points out ideas that I share:
Knowing what one’s capabilities, values, dispositions and relationships are or could be is not enough. Rather, individuals must develop organizing principles to help them prioritize their attention and to establish the boundaries between their roles, developing a holistic understanding of their identity as a coherent system.
Darren gets what I was trying to do, a self-representation that is “more than an aggregation of discrete reflections on specific experiences, pieces of evidence of isolated competencies, or a repository of goals”. Darren sums up my vision for me:
..learning is a lifewide and lifelong process, requiring individual motivation to take personal responsibility for one’s holistic development. By embracing their curiosity, values, and passions, individuals can grow into more effective family members, workers, and community leaders. This learning is best supported in resource-rich environments that are welcoming to diverse people and personalized to each person, inviting connection and collaboration. Rather than being divorced form daily life, these environments should be integrated within them. Learning technology in its broadest sense – composed both of electronic tools such as wikis and conceptual tools such as competency frameworks – is most powerful when it adds flexibility and broadens access, serving as a heuristic that stimulates and guides, but doesn’t constrain individuals in their efforts to better themselves.
But Darren goes even further, he sees how I am was trying to go get somewhere different, and indeed this is part of the foundation of percolab.
Slade’s use of competencies differs from the typical approach in many employability-orientated eportfolio programs, doing more than just identifying competencies, matching them to the needs of the market, and engaging in learning that makes for a stronger alignment of personal skills and organizational needs. She goes further to document and examine both the personal and professional elements of her life using an overarching theory of how she wishes to develop as a person and to contribute to the development of others. While her approach places personal choice and personal responsibility front and center, it suggests that there are other factors that need to be taken into account in making good choices beyond what potential employers or clients say they want. In this way, it differ from the dominant discourse of employability and lifelong learning in most Western societies, which frames the individual role as shaping the self in ways that strengthen the economy.
And Darren understands also how, without ever saying it, I used my eportfolio to develop my professionalism and capacity to innovate in my area of speciality, learning design. The structure and process I developed is in line with the theory “supporting self-sponsored learning through cultivating distributed, flexible, content-rich spaces and tools that connect learners”.
Darren thinks that my portfolio is “a powerful example of how integrity, the linking of private and public life through systems thinking, is important to defining excellence within a profession” and that in general:
The health of a profession should be judged by how well it enables its members to do “good work”. The meaning of “good” in good work is two-fold: good in the sense of expertise, doing work well, and good in the sense of ethics, doing work that serves the good.” Defining the good that a profession should do and enabling it s members to do it requires more than occupation-specific competencies. It also requires taking into consideration the values, beliefs, and commitments held by its members, considering commonalities and conflict in relationship to the public’s expectations of the profession.
Darren and I both see the potential of eportfolios to help many under-appreciated professions (from waitresses to welders) that in fact involve “considerable, multiple intelligences and cognitive sophistication” to “argue for their right to the means for professional self-definition.” Indeed , percolab has been looking at how eportfolios can help develop the professional identity and credibility in the field of youth workers and volunteers.
And so my little eportfolio undertaking is put in a larger perspective, a gift Darren offers me, serving to clarify, solidify and enrich ideas that were were searching to be formalised. His words inspire me forward. Thank you Darren. I will no longer doubt that making my eportfolio publicly accessible was the right decision.
Note: The text of the book, once published, may differ from that in the passages quoted above.
Posted in Apprentissage tout au long de la vie, Compétences, Développement professionnel, Portfolio numérique | No Comments »
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
I recently participated at the 6th Forum on eCulture in Lausanne, Switzerland, an event organised by the foundation Ynternet.org.
The term “eCulture” is still up for discussion – somehow, at least in North America, it is a term that creates more confusion than anything else. No, it is not about visual art and dance in the web, but rather individual and collective behaviors and practices in the online world. eCulture relates to netiquette, online communication, as well as the free and open software movement, cooperation etc. There is perhaps also a link to the idea that cyberspace was founded on ethical, individually enlightened and public good principles (see A Declaration for the Independence of Cyberspace).
At the event, there was a launch of a great little video, Digital natives, that communicates very clearly how much the online world is part of the daily reality of the next generation, and that our institutions and organisations have an interest and a responsibility to be there in that space and accompany this generation in a responsible way.
Posted in Culture numérique, Portfolio numérique | No Comments »
