To help illustrate the importance for business practice of mastering a relationship between observation and anaylsis, it might be helpful to see how it plays out for executives.
Business Ethnography as a Case in Point
The following article was the result of a discussion with an advertising executive who had strong objections to the way in which professionals conduct research and present results in her field. We worked together to articulate the commons issues among her specific field and effective thinking across contexts.
Sight Before Insight
For good and ill, business ethnography has come to represent the broadest category of research on film. Technological improvements in cameras have made data collection easy and inexpensive, and clients can find out first-hand almost an unlimited number of details of consumer behavior.
How much more reliable is observation than the results of a questionnaire? Rather than speculating about what a subject would do from the distance of a focus group, a person can show you, up close and personal, in the more applicable setting of her own home. You’ve seen this sort of research at presentations – agencies can collect an unlimited and disparate variety of data and create a link with the client’s product.
The question is: even though data has been captured on film, how do you know what it means?
The ease of contemporary filming may have made us excellent reporters but has not inherently improved our ability to analyse. The question here is the same as with all technology – how can we use what we know to improve our understanding?
Case Study: Casual Eating
The challenges to the advertising industry are apparent in a film recently shown at a conference for an international foods client.
The film consisted of a series of clips, each presenting a subject discussing with an interviewer reactions to food being eaten as the conversation took place. The format was question and answer and focused both on expectations and the actual eating experience at hand. Subjects were presented in mid-shot with suggestions of their environment behind them – the edge of a kitchen cabinet, a bedroom window curtain, the corner of a rug. However, the frame was otherwise entirely filled with the subject’s face.
Because the reporting was done on film, the result was more far more entertaining and engaging than it would have been on paper. Subjects’ opinions were clearly presented, and the tape offered a variety of responses to the food that seemed to represent a wide range both of opinion and impression – in other words, some liked the flavor, some were more interested in texture, some were more interested in the way it made them feel, and so on.
The presenter concluded with a summary of the results already seen, a mention of the target audience, and an announcement of her key insight.
There were two problems here. The first is that the summary and the key insight were the same. The second is that nobody seemed to notice.
This is not unusual. The immediacy of an film audience’s experience and the presumed transparency between the medium and the detail it captures can make us forgetful of the necessity to reflect. However, we need to remember that the act of seeing (observation) is not the same as the tool of insight (meaning).
And because we all agree that even the most meticulous observation can not replace analysis, here are some questions to consider when determining whether your video presents enough information on which to inform strategy:
How many people from different contexts can be made a part of the editing process?
• Can you include someone with entirely fresh eyes? A planner? A client? Can you put them in the same room? An industry expert?
• Can you generate analysis in stages – during the pre-production, filming, and post-production?
What is the difference between action and motivation?
• How will you determine why a subject does what they do other than by what she says?
• How much time is spent observing and how much interacting in the film? What does a subject tell you, what does the environment tell you, and do they agree?
• What evidence can you find of motivation in a subject’s home environment?
• What clues either corroborate or contradict what the subject says? Will the subject acknowledge inconsistencies? Why or why not? How do you know?
This is not to say that ethnography is the only effective use of video research. After all, observation and interrogation are necessary for any research --you can’t get the insight you’re after without accurate data. Ethnography comes in when we need to draw conclusions form that data.
The most important thing is not to mistake one for the other.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query research. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query research. Sort by date Show all posts
Monday, February 20, 2006
Thursday, August 14, 2014
UK Research Council's Conference on the Digital Economy
A scary smart friend and client, David Stokes,
has raved about a December conference that might be of interest. I
write about it here because it won't get the kind of publicity that the
more commercial events get.
It's called the DE2014 Symposium, and it's the prinicipal annual event of the Research Council's UK Digital Economy programme.
From what I'm told, the symposium is unique in bringing together the UK’s most innovative research thinkers with key members of the industrial, entrepreneurial, creative and finance communities.
It is not just for scientists, but is also aimed at entrepreneurs and basically anyone involved in the digital economy.
Check it out - more information than this, even, will be fully up next week at the same url.
It's called the DE2014 Symposium, and it's the prinicipal annual event of the Research Council's UK Digital Economy programme.
From what I'm told, the symposium is unique in bringing together the UK’s most innovative research thinkers with key members of the industrial, entrepreneurial, creative and finance communities.
It is not just for scientists, but is also aimed at entrepreneurs and basically anyone involved in the digital economy.
Check it out - more information than this, even, will be fully up next week at the same url.
Tuesday, July 09, 2013
Carol Dweck and Transforming Mindsets from Fixed to Growth
Continuing from the last post changing attitudes toward marketing objects, here is one on marketing the way we think.
At the RSA yesterday, I heard Dr. Carol Dweck talking her research that shows academic results for children are determined not by intelligence, not by effort, but by mindsets. This might sound obvious, but not when you dig down.
It also applies to adults in business, but let's start with the kids and work our way up.
Two Mindsets: Fixed vs. Growth
Dweck contends that there are two ways of thinking about oneself and one's academic achievements: Fixed and Growth. The Fixed Mindset is characterised by the conviction that intelligence is a fixed trait. You are either smart, or you're not.
This mindset is characterised by a reluctance to try new things, difficult challenges, anything that you don't begin with the knowledge that you will succeed. These children, above all, don't want to look foolish. There is also the belief that a task should be avoided if it requires effort. Again, you're either smart at something, or you're not.
The Growth Mindset, by contrast, posits that intelligence can be developed. In this way of thinking, anything that requires effort is useful because new connections are being created in the brain. Kids in this group will embrace difficult tasks, and effort is to be expected. Kids have more resilience when set-backs appear.
Setting the Stage: Studying a Struggling Population
In her research on children "fulfilling potential" intellectually (more on "potential" later), Dweck focused on the transition into 7th grade in a large group of schools. 7th grade is populated largely 13-year-olds, and as Dweck says, the move from the year below can be challenging. Academically, it signals more work, dividing class members into subject areas, bigger class size, less individual attention.
The emotional effects of these changes, usually without support, are compounded by a dissolution of class cohesion: you might only see familiar faces, including your friends, in one class rather than throughout the day as courses each have their own population.
Some Research to Back it Up
Amidst these changes, the difference in performance, Dweck found, was determined by the way in which children thought about learning. Dweck studied students who all began with the same scores in math. Those who had integrated a growth mindset saw a steady increase in grades. Those with a fixed mindset saw the same decrease in scores that created the reason for the study in the first place.
More on growth mindsets and feedback, and what this has to do with business, in the next post.
At the RSA yesterday, I heard Dr. Carol Dweck talking her research that shows academic results for children are determined not by intelligence, not by effort, but by mindsets. This might sound obvious, but not when you dig down.
It also applies to adults in business, but let's start with the kids and work our way up.
Two Mindsets: Fixed vs. Growth
Dweck contends that there are two ways of thinking about oneself and one's academic achievements: Fixed and Growth. The Fixed Mindset is characterised by the conviction that intelligence is a fixed trait. You are either smart, or you're not.
This mindset is characterised by a reluctance to try new things, difficult challenges, anything that you don't begin with the knowledge that you will succeed. These children, above all, don't want to look foolish. There is also the belief that a task should be avoided if it requires effort. Again, you're either smart at something, or you're not.
The Growth Mindset, by contrast, posits that intelligence can be developed. In this way of thinking, anything that requires effort is useful because new connections are being created in the brain. Kids in this group will embrace difficult tasks, and effort is to be expected. Kids have more resilience when set-backs appear.
Setting the Stage: Studying a Struggling Population
In her research on children "fulfilling potential" intellectually (more on "potential" later), Dweck focused on the transition into 7th grade in a large group of schools. 7th grade is populated largely 13-year-olds, and as Dweck says, the move from the year below can be challenging. Academically, it signals more work, dividing class members into subject areas, bigger class size, less individual attention.
The emotional effects of these changes, usually without support, are compounded by a dissolution of class cohesion: you might only see familiar faces, including your friends, in one class rather than throughout the day as courses each have their own population.
Some Research to Back it Up
Amidst these changes, the difference in performance, Dweck found, was determined by the way in which children thought about learning. Dweck studied students who all began with the same scores in math. Those who had integrated a growth mindset saw a steady increase in grades. Those with a fixed mindset saw the same decrease in scores that created the reason for the study in the first place.
More on growth mindsets and feedback, and what this has to do with business, in the next post.
Friday, June 30, 2006
If You Got Game, Are You a Leader? Research by John Beck
Continuing from the last post, John Beck followed John Ware with a discussion of research on the gaming generation.
Beck says that almost anyone born after 1970 is a gamer and almost anyone born before that time doesn't understand games at all. This, said Beck, is not just a US phenomenon. His research on leadership skills finds that the common thread that distinguishes those with and those without is their proclivity for electronic games, regardless of age.
Why Gaming?
Beck argues that once recognized, it makes sense:
--Growing up "on games" creates a new way of thinking about the world.
--Games are a valid way to experience and learn about the world.
--Games change how kids respond to incentives and risk and how players absorb new concepts.
--Games provide an important outlet for creativity and foster new problem-solving methods.
--Games command kids' attention better than most other sorts of interfaces and extend their attention span. It fosters rapt attention.
Beck told the story of his 18-year-old son with Downs Syndrome who beats him every time. As an antidote to challenges raised by Linda Stone, Beck responded, "It's impossible to have continuous partial attention when playing."
Developing the Brain
Beck argued that neuropath ways in the brain stop developing late in the teens. After that, we learn differently.
Up to the age of 12 or 13, data shows that there is no gender difference in gaming. Both boys and girls play the same games for the same amount of time. After this point, socialization takes over and gender roles begin to set in. Beck didn't talk too much about this, but he mentioned that boys tend to be more involved in war games than girls.
The Data
Beck then presented conclusions drawn from answers to questions asked of a large sample of gamers. Here are some examples:
--Are gamers more competitive? Twice as many gamers say "winning is everything."
--Are gamers global in their thinking? Yes, says Beck. One big of evidence is that the most influential media in most gamers' lives was created in Japan.
--Do gamers come off as self-confident? They answered that they have a high sense of their own importance and would prefer a bonus for merit over a salary.
--Do gamers believe more in luck? Gamers feel that winning is not entirely their doing. There's a random generator in each game that makes a round easier or harder to beat. Therefore, says Beck, gamers learn algorithms and resilience and optimism -- to hit the button again and start over with hopes to do better.
One Conclusion Worth More Detail
Although gamers have a reputation of living alone in a basement, Beck concluded that this group is actually quite sociable. Most said they find people more stimulating than anything else. Furthermore, families play together. All siblings can remain in a room often while two play. The better players help the younger ones, less experienced ones because it's boring to win against someone who's no good.
Furthermore, in multi-player games, Beck claims that gamers create their own teams, recruits, management styles, and strategies for winning.
Conclusions
Beck concludes that the overwhelming body of evidence reveals that gamers would make better leaders than non-gamers.
Although I accept the value of learning anything new, particularly strategic and physical coordination skills, I am skeptical that the Beck's data can translate directly and transparently to the off-line business world.
If a gamer sits in the basement, regardless of his social skills online, can he relate well with people in person? Will she engage with better with those who don't game than current business leaders who overlook peers or employees with whom they see little in common? Does the ability to manage an army in an electronic space translate to optimizing challenges of learning styles or social issues in an office space? Finally, would negotiating terms with a warrior opponent really help negotiate deals in the world of commerce?
Time will tell -- gamers are still young, and they have yet to make their mark on business culture.
On the other hand, as Beck pointed out as a virtue, this population is excellent at adapting to new environments, to fitting in, to becoming part of the culture. If this happens in the workforce, their impact will certainly not be seen at all.
Beck says that almost anyone born after 1970 is a gamer and almost anyone born before that time doesn't understand games at all. This, said Beck, is not just a US phenomenon. His research on leadership skills finds that the common thread that distinguishes those with and those without is their proclivity for electronic games, regardless of age.
Why Gaming?
Beck argues that once recognized, it makes sense:
--Growing up "on games" creates a new way of thinking about the world.
--Games are a valid way to experience and learn about the world.
--Games change how kids respond to incentives and risk and how players absorb new concepts.
--Games provide an important outlet for creativity and foster new problem-solving methods.
--Games command kids' attention better than most other sorts of interfaces and extend their attention span. It fosters rapt attention.
Beck told the story of his 18-year-old son with Downs Syndrome who beats him every time. As an antidote to challenges raised by Linda Stone, Beck responded, "It's impossible to have continuous partial attention when playing."
Developing the Brain
Beck argued that neuropath ways in the brain stop developing late in the teens. After that, we learn differently.
Up to the age of 12 or 13, data shows that there is no gender difference in gaming. Both boys and girls play the same games for the same amount of time. After this point, socialization takes over and gender roles begin to set in. Beck didn't talk too much about this, but he mentioned that boys tend to be more involved in war games than girls.
The Data
Beck then presented conclusions drawn from answers to questions asked of a large sample of gamers. Here are some examples:
--Are gamers more competitive? Twice as many gamers say "winning is everything."
--Are gamers global in their thinking? Yes, says Beck. One big of evidence is that the most influential media in most gamers' lives was created in Japan.
--Do gamers come off as self-confident? They answered that they have a high sense of their own importance and would prefer a bonus for merit over a salary.
--Do gamers believe more in luck? Gamers feel that winning is not entirely their doing. There's a random generator in each game that makes a round easier or harder to beat. Therefore, says Beck, gamers learn algorithms and resilience and optimism -- to hit the button again and start over with hopes to do better.
One Conclusion Worth More Detail
Although gamers have a reputation of living alone in a basement, Beck concluded that this group is actually quite sociable. Most said they find people more stimulating than anything else. Furthermore, families play together. All siblings can remain in a room often while two play. The better players help the younger ones, less experienced ones because it's boring to win against someone who's no good.
Furthermore, in multi-player games, Beck claims that gamers create their own teams, recruits, management styles, and strategies for winning.
Conclusions
Beck concludes that the overwhelming body of evidence reveals that gamers would make better leaders than non-gamers.
Although I accept the value of learning anything new, particularly strategic and physical coordination skills, I am skeptical that the Beck's data can translate directly and transparently to the off-line business world.
If a gamer sits in the basement, regardless of his social skills online, can he relate well with people in person? Will she engage with better with those who don't game than current business leaders who overlook peers or employees with whom they see little in common? Does the ability to manage an army in an electronic space translate to optimizing challenges of learning styles or social issues in an office space? Finally, would negotiating terms with a warrior opponent really help negotiate deals in the world of commerce?
Time will tell -- gamers are still young, and they have yet to make their mark on business culture.
On the other hand, as Beck pointed out as a virtue, this population is excellent at adapting to new environments, to fitting in, to becoming part of the culture. If this happens in the workforce, their impact will certainly not be seen at all.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Financial Services, Part 2: Sustainable Growth through Creativity
In the context of sustainable solutions for creativity in business, it seems appropriate to offer a second part of a previously posted conversation with a Partner in a Financial Services Firm.
Curiosity and Tenacity: Key Factors in Hiring
This high-level executive looks for curiosity, tenacity, and the kind of education that offers underlying discipline and confidence for effective problem-solving.
Here's a bit more on how his firm channels creativity to improve the bottom line:
AK: What concrete business case do you have for requiring curiosity in employees?
P: It's an equation that works like this: Problem-solving is a by-product of curiosity. You’ve got to be curious enough to deliver an effective outcome. That's how you make money, simple as that.
It's harder to sustain than you might think. You have to make sure the people who work for you are supported in their curiosity.
AK: So you're saying success in business involves taking care of employees? There's a lot of rhetoric around this in the business world, but how does it work? And is it really profitable?
P: Absolutely. Sustainability in a business model that people pay for. So I’ll pay a bigger multiple of earnings if I think your growth and innovative capacity is going to last forever. If I think the employees are well taken care of and earn stock, if they are supported, it's a big part of my decision to invest.
There are other issues as well that might help me make a decision. If the company has great corporate governance, if the management is super ethical, if they don't dump chemicals or kill trees, all these things are meaningful to investors.
These things were all overlooked for a while -- the economy was chugging along, but the world becomes increasingly complicated and interconnected.
AK: I'd like to hear more about how you support your employee's curiosity to sustain innovation and grow your business.
Would you elaborate on the ways your firm encourages or demands that employees find new ways of looking at the world to this end?
P: Sure. We put a lot of effort into providing opportunities to learn, and not just directly related to finance per se.
We support our people in going back to school and get advanced degrees, or take classes just because they're interested in a subject. The courses feed their curiosity and also provide ways to do better due diligence in the subject area.
In the end, we see the benefits for our company and our investors.
AK: Your employees get higher degrees in subjects other than straight business or economics? Can you give me an example?
P: Sure. There may be someone here who is fascinated by technology. He’ll go to a professor in NYU and learn how all the latest, hottest applications work. In the process, this person is also learning about the current state of industry, which products work, and how companies do customer service -- the whole gamut.
Once they get degrees, this employee is not just a finance guy -- he's also technologists. He can go out and question the industry and make investment decisions with having a real knowledge about what to ask. He has a sense of what's credible -- in your words -- and useful in a way that someone who just studies business would never get.
AK: Are there other benefits?
P: Sure. Knowing how to do this in one field is transferable to others. Like you said, learning is associative -- once you learn a process in one context, you can apply to a field that's unfamiliar. That's very useful to us.
AK: You said earlier that looking at patterns in one field can trigger curiousity in another about what doesn't fit and requires more investigation. Can you elaborate?
P: Here's an example. If you have a public company that declares its earnings, you have to understand that there are different possibilities of what’s true. Presentation of information that looks credible may have something behind it other than what it seems.
The specifics change from situation to situation. It's important to be able to be flexible and curious enough to investigate patterns when the data changes -- it's a creative process.
AK: This seems to go back to what we were saying about the value of making new connections among seemingly familiar pieces of information.
P: Right. This is an evolving industry on Wall Street. I mean, look at values-based research, for example. It's socially responsible investing -- looking at companies and their compensation and corporate governance and employee healthcare which typically people didn’t look at before.
More and more, there are research firms doing off pieced research products. This can tell you so much more than the basic income statement, value sheet, earnings, growth, and all that that we’re used to seeing.
AK: So what these firms are tying to do is get people to look at the market in a new way, to see it new.
P: Short-term thinking doesn't work long-term. Sophisticated investors understand that, and we help our clients recognize the value.
At the end of the day, a company's earning growth is not sustainable if it hasn't got good corporate governance and doesn't support its employees.
Curiosity and Tenacity: Key Factors in Hiring
This high-level executive looks for curiosity, tenacity, and the kind of education that offers underlying discipline and confidence for effective problem-solving.
Here's a bit more on how his firm channels creativity to improve the bottom line:
AK: What concrete business case do you have for requiring curiosity in employees?
P: It's an equation that works like this: Problem-solving is a by-product of curiosity. You’ve got to be curious enough to deliver an effective outcome. That's how you make money, simple as that.
It's harder to sustain than you might think. You have to make sure the people who work for you are supported in their curiosity.
AK: So you're saying success in business involves taking care of employees? There's a lot of rhetoric around this in the business world, but how does it work? And is it really profitable?
P: Absolutely. Sustainability in a business model that people pay for. So I’ll pay a bigger multiple of earnings if I think your growth and innovative capacity is going to last forever. If I think the employees are well taken care of and earn stock, if they are supported, it's a big part of my decision to invest.
There are other issues as well that might help me make a decision. If the company has great corporate governance, if the management is super ethical, if they don't dump chemicals or kill trees, all these things are meaningful to investors.
These things were all overlooked for a while -- the economy was chugging along, but the world becomes increasingly complicated and interconnected.
AK: I'd like to hear more about how you support your employee's curiosity to sustain innovation and grow your business.
Would you elaborate on the ways your firm encourages or demands that employees find new ways of looking at the world to this end?
P: Sure. We put a lot of effort into providing opportunities to learn, and not just directly related to finance per se.
We support our people in going back to school and get advanced degrees, or take classes just because they're interested in a subject. The courses feed their curiosity and also provide ways to do better due diligence in the subject area.
In the end, we see the benefits for our company and our investors.
AK: Your employees get higher degrees in subjects other than straight business or economics? Can you give me an example?
P: Sure. There may be someone here who is fascinated by technology. He’ll go to a professor in NYU and learn how all the latest, hottest applications work. In the process, this person is also learning about the current state of industry, which products work, and how companies do customer service -- the whole gamut.
Once they get degrees, this employee is not just a finance guy -- he's also technologists. He can go out and question the industry and make investment decisions with having a real knowledge about what to ask. He has a sense of what's credible -- in your words -- and useful in a way that someone who just studies business would never get.
AK: Are there other benefits?
P: Sure. Knowing how to do this in one field is transferable to others. Like you said, learning is associative -- once you learn a process in one context, you can apply to a field that's unfamiliar. That's very useful to us.
AK: You said earlier that looking at patterns in one field can trigger curiousity in another about what doesn't fit and requires more investigation. Can you elaborate?
P: Here's an example. If you have a public company that declares its earnings, you have to understand that there are different possibilities of what’s true. Presentation of information that looks credible may have something behind it other than what it seems.
The specifics change from situation to situation. It's important to be able to be flexible and curious enough to investigate patterns when the data changes -- it's a creative process.
AK: This seems to go back to what we were saying about the value of making new connections among seemingly familiar pieces of information.
P: Right. This is an evolving industry on Wall Street. I mean, look at values-based research, for example. It's socially responsible investing -- looking at companies and their compensation and corporate governance and employee healthcare which typically people didn’t look at before.
More and more, there are research firms doing off pieced research products. This can tell you so much more than the basic income statement, value sheet, earnings, growth, and all that that we’re used to seeing.
AK: So what these firms are tying to do is get people to look at the market in a new way, to see it new.
P: Short-term thinking doesn't work long-term. Sophisticated investors understand that, and we help our clients recognize the value.
At the end of the day, a company's earning growth is not sustainable if it hasn't got good corporate governance and doesn't support its employees.
Thursday, October 02, 2014
Commercialising research as a road to entrepreneurship and innovation
Academics are often dismissed too quickly
by industry when not looking for R&D because communication is not
necessarily a researcher's strongest suit. However, innovation is not
subject-specific. It's a process that can be applied to anything.
Mix innovative academic smarts at every university with just a little help articulating commercial benefits, and the UK could take over the world.
I had the great privilege of working with academics across Imperial College and Business School helping them commercialise their research. This was the idea of David Stokes, Programme Coordinator (Cross Faculty) – Digital City Exchange, and Elizabeth Varley, TechHub CEO and board member at Imperial.
Please note: these researchers are already very successful finding commercial partners - businesses come to them. This was a top up as there's always room for improvement. David found me because I work with TechHub helping entrepreneurs pitch for investment and partners, and Elizabeth kindly recommended me to him.
And thank you Elizabeth, for restoring my faith in innovative thinking. When business meets academics in the right spot, anything is possible - just give the researchers a little help talking to industry.
Companies dealing with smart cities would be tremendously lucky to have any of the folks I worked with at Imperial - with their depth of industry experience, agile thinking, and energy to make things happen. Genuine innovative thinking is so hard to find.
Want to learn about innovation? Go directly to Imperial. I am not usually a betting woman, but I suspect you'll find someone to help.
Mix innovative academic smarts at every university with just a little help articulating commercial benefits, and the UK could take over the world.
I had the great privilege of working with academics across Imperial College and Business School helping them commercialise their research. This was the idea of David Stokes, Programme Coordinator (Cross Faculty) – Digital City Exchange, and Elizabeth Varley, TechHub CEO and board member at Imperial.
Please note: these researchers are already very successful finding commercial partners - businesses come to them. This was a top up as there's always room for improvement. David found me because I work with TechHub helping entrepreneurs pitch for investment and partners, and Elizabeth kindly recommended me to him.
And thank you Elizabeth, for restoring my faith in innovative thinking. When business meets academics in the right spot, anything is possible - just give the researchers a little help talking to industry.
Companies dealing with smart cities would be tremendously lucky to have any of the folks I worked with at Imperial - with their depth of industry experience, agile thinking, and energy to make things happen. Genuine innovative thinking is so hard to find.
Want to learn about innovation? Go directly to Imperial. I am not usually a betting woman, but I suspect you'll find someone to help.
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Mapping Knowledge: Poetry in Aid of Science and Business
Before moving on to the main body of this missive, my good friend, Dean Landsman, kindly pointed out that the GEL posts have not been up to what he calls my usual standard of writing. He said so out of concern, and so please allow me to apologize here for any awkward sentence construction -- these are all first drafts with quick spell checks. I regret any lack of grace. I'm posting as quickly as I can get the words down.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program.
The History of Maps: Both a Means and Result of Discovery
Katy Börner, another inspirational speaker at GEL, explained her passion for finding patterns within and among large data sets and mapping the results.
Sound dry? In fact, the highly interpretive nature of the work -- how to create connections among siloed ideas to create an intuitive and yet accurate picture of existing knowledge -- demonstrates the importance of art in scientific innovation.
Börner began by discussing the history of science maps in relation to their geographical equivalents. Each map represents a vision of information and priorities based -- sometimes quite shamelessly -- on a particular mapmaker's perspective.
Mapping Science
Within the field of science, Börner includes the fields of math, physics, biology, chemistry, social sciences, and so on. Each domain of discovery (in this case, science) is distinct from the others often in language/jargon, resources, personnel, education, economic market, academic discipline, and often geography.
The questions Börner asks: how can we make use of what we know collectively so that we don't have to repeatedly reinvent the wheel? What would a map of knowledge look like that illustrated density (both overlap of ideas and outliers), detail (which can be got from search engines), and a big picture? What sort of metaphors would be appropriate?
Once You Build It?
Börner's work has application for every knowledge domain. Since the late eighteenth-century, Western thought has been increasingly relegated to distinct disciplines whose value, to a large extent, is predicated on its difference from other fields. Education follows a with increasingly specialized disciplines of interpretation to prepare practioners for their increasingly narrowing fields.
As Börner mentioned, as technology develops, it's increasingly difficult to keep up with the discovery and dissemination of knowledge. Furthermore, the ability of one field to publish more quickly than others creates a political imbalance among those in the business of research and discovery.
Learning: By Way of Example
With so much noise, and so few interpreters among fields, knowledge and learning processes are repeatedly redefined by practioners of psychology, biology, higher education, by secondary education, primary education, corporate training, new age systems, self-help industries, and so on.
In fact, the overlaps are often more salient than the differences, although the salaries for each field don't reflect it. Often, for example, corporate trainers spend a great deal of energy reminding adults that communication skills differ among individuals according to background, expectations, gender, culture, etc. How much more do they earn than Kindergarten teachers who spend much of their time on the same theme?
As I mentioned early on, this blog was born from my own frustration over the way in which education is handled. Three years of research demonstrates that across fields, most professionals agree on the components of effective thinking. However, practioners and researchers of learning, creativity, and education rarely acknowledge each other's accomplishments in a way that encourages further exploration of similarities. The economics and politics of celebrity discourage anything else.
What if overlaps among fields became a priority, and we mapped everything that is currently known about the way the mind processes information? What if everyone across age groups and fields worked from that map?
What if all fields were mapped across topics and discoveries?
More on GEL in the next post.
More on Börner's Work
Learn more about Börner's work at her website and get in touch if you have ideas about appropriate metaphors with which to map scientific knowledge. She also asked me to add that she and her colleagues sell maps and a video. All money goes towards the design and manufacture of (puzzle) maps of science to be donated to schools around the globe.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program.
The History of Maps: Both a Means and Result of Discovery
Katy Börner, another inspirational speaker at GEL, explained her passion for finding patterns within and among large data sets and mapping the results.
Sound dry? In fact, the highly interpretive nature of the work -- how to create connections among siloed ideas to create an intuitive and yet accurate picture of existing knowledge -- demonstrates the importance of art in scientific innovation.
Börner began by discussing the history of science maps in relation to their geographical equivalents. Each map represents a vision of information and priorities based -- sometimes quite shamelessly -- on a particular mapmaker's perspective.
Mapping Science
Within the field of science, Börner includes the fields of math, physics, biology, chemistry, social sciences, and so on. Each domain of discovery (in this case, science) is distinct from the others often in language/jargon, resources, personnel, education, economic market, academic discipline, and often geography.
The questions Börner asks: how can we make use of what we know collectively so that we don't have to repeatedly reinvent the wheel? What would a map of knowledge look like that illustrated density (both overlap of ideas and outliers), detail (which can be got from search engines), and a big picture? What sort of metaphors would be appropriate?
Once You Build It?
Börner's work has application for every knowledge domain. Since the late eighteenth-century, Western thought has been increasingly relegated to distinct disciplines whose value, to a large extent, is predicated on its difference from other fields. Education follows a with increasingly specialized disciplines of interpretation to prepare practioners for their increasingly narrowing fields.
As Börner mentioned, as technology develops, it's increasingly difficult to keep up with the discovery and dissemination of knowledge. Furthermore, the ability of one field to publish more quickly than others creates a political imbalance among those in the business of research and discovery.
Learning: By Way of Example
With so much noise, and so few interpreters among fields, knowledge and learning processes are repeatedly redefined by practioners of psychology, biology, higher education, by secondary education, primary education, corporate training, new age systems, self-help industries, and so on.
In fact, the overlaps are often more salient than the differences, although the salaries for each field don't reflect it. Often, for example, corporate trainers spend a great deal of energy reminding adults that communication skills differ among individuals according to background, expectations, gender, culture, etc. How much more do they earn than Kindergarten teachers who spend much of their time on the same theme?
As I mentioned early on, this blog was born from my own frustration over the way in which education is handled. Three years of research demonstrates that across fields, most professionals agree on the components of effective thinking. However, practioners and researchers of learning, creativity, and education rarely acknowledge each other's accomplishments in a way that encourages further exploration of similarities. The economics and politics of celebrity discourage anything else.
What if overlaps among fields became a priority, and we mapped everything that is currently known about the way the mind processes information? What if everyone across age groups and fields worked from that map?
What if all fields were mapped across topics and discoveries?
More on GEL in the next post.
More on Börner's Work
Learn more about Börner's work at her website and get in touch if you have ideas about appropriate metaphors with which to map scientific knowledge. She also asked me to add that she and her colleagues sell maps and a video. All money goes towards the design and manufacture of (puzzle) maps of science to be donated to schools around the globe.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
One More Thought On Sustainable Solutions
After a stimulating conversation with an admired colleague who is both an ethnographer and business executive, it seems a shame to abandon the notion of sustainable solutions for innovation where it was left yesterday. Based on our discussion, I'd like to add something that occurred to both of us.
Even if there is no time immediately to go into schools where learning starts -- and this is something I recommend highly -- sustainable solutions for innovation can be achieved by crossing silos within the business community alone.
Creativity is the ability to learn continuously across contexts. Begin with culture, research in situ and find out what works in the language of each discipline or field. Present the results on film, through blogs, on radio -- in whatever medium has the most immediacy for those involved. Then take the various languages of different cultures and translate what works across contexts.
Cross disciplines and see things new. Then leverage the resources that have been available all along but hidden in foreign languages and cultures.
A Note on Best Practices
Professional researchers should oversee and analyze the various processes who have no direct allegiance to any of the cultures being studied. Although there is no such thing as objectivity, it's important to have analysts who do not directly benefit financially from any particular process among which the different cultures are negotiating.
The Sustainable Part
As with learning of any kind, the discovery and introduction of new ideas is only the first step. Persist, develop, experiment, collaborate over time with diplomats from each culture continuing conversations both in person and through further research.
As new ideas become old hat, introduce new voices, unfamiliar disciplines, surprising alliances to force yourself to see things new. Patterns and processes will emerge as a kind of cross-disciplinary literacy that can sustain innovation across contexts.
Even if there is no time immediately to go into schools where learning starts -- and this is something I recommend highly -- sustainable solutions for innovation can be achieved by crossing silos within the business community alone.
Creativity is the ability to learn continuously across contexts. Begin with culture, research in situ and find out what works in the language of each discipline or field. Present the results on film, through blogs, on radio -- in whatever medium has the most immediacy for those involved. Then take the various languages of different cultures and translate what works across contexts.
Cross disciplines and see things new. Then leverage the resources that have been available all along but hidden in foreign languages and cultures.
A Note on Best Practices
Professional researchers should oversee and analyze the various processes who have no direct allegiance to any of the cultures being studied. Although there is no such thing as objectivity, it's important to have analysts who do not directly benefit financially from any particular process among which the different cultures are negotiating.
The Sustainable Part
As with learning of any kind, the discovery and introduction of new ideas is only the first step. Persist, develop, experiment, collaborate over time with diplomats from each culture continuing conversations both in person and through further research.
As new ideas become old hat, introduce new voices, unfamiliar disciplines, surprising alliances to force yourself to see things new. Patterns and processes will emerge as a kind of cross-disciplinary literacy that can sustain innovation across contexts.
Friday, September 30, 2005
Conversations As Best Practices
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. --C.G. Jung
If you're chasing after Thought Leadership, you're probably missing a key strategic insight.
Rather than talking AT your customers, entertain for a moment Doc Searls' and David Weinberger's Cluetrain argument that Markets Are Conversations.
Conversation as a communications strategy has clear implications for your bottom line. Engaging customers is the key to winning them, and what better way than interacting?
Conversation as Ongoing R&D Methodology
What better way to shap your insights, services, products and approach than a meaningful relationship with markets?
Consider enlarging the conversation beyond focus groups which are somewhat over determined by your own expectations and the moderator's skill. The results also constrained by the artificial context -- you're asking people to remember their experiences rather than describe them as they happen.
Emerging media work well as alternatives to keep the dialogue accessible, and so does research that's conducted in home environments. The question is how engaging can you be, and how well can you listen?
Conversation as a Model for Learning Across Contexts
Conversation works as a flexible tool because learning is associative. We understand what we know in relation to what is unfamiliar and learn by using what we know as a standard against which to consider other options. It works, however, only for those who are effective listeners.
It's something any good teacher could have told the business community if only someone had asked.
Conversation works as an effective model for research both academic and of the business variety. It's increasingly recognized as a useful tool to sustain and develop internal business culture and explains the rising trend in business coaching and the effectiveness.
The trick is that you have to be willing to play. Effective conversation requires giving up control, entertaining unfamiliar possibilities, and allowing yourself to be wrong. As in any kind of learning, in order to find new insights, you might have to get lost for a while.
If you're chasing after Thought Leadership, you're probably missing a key strategic insight.
Rather than talking AT your customers, entertain for a moment Doc Searls' and David Weinberger's Cluetrain argument that Markets Are Conversations.
Conversation as a communications strategy has clear implications for your bottom line. Engaging customers is the key to winning them, and what better way than interacting?
Conversation as Ongoing R&D Methodology
What better way to shap your insights, services, products and approach than a meaningful relationship with markets?
Consider enlarging the conversation beyond focus groups which are somewhat over determined by your own expectations and the moderator's skill. The results also constrained by the artificial context -- you're asking people to remember their experiences rather than describe them as they happen.
Emerging media work well as alternatives to keep the dialogue accessible, and so does research that's conducted in home environments. The question is how engaging can you be, and how well can you listen?
Conversation as a Model for Learning Across Contexts
Conversation works as a flexible tool because learning is associative. We understand what we know in relation to what is unfamiliar and learn by using what we know as a standard against which to consider other options. It works, however, only for those who are effective listeners.
It's something any good teacher could have told the business community if only someone had asked.
Conversation works as an effective model for research both academic and of the business variety. It's increasingly recognized as a useful tool to sustain and develop internal business culture and explains the rising trend in business coaching and the effectiveness.
The trick is that you have to be willing to play. Effective conversation requires giving up control, entertaining unfamiliar possibilities, and allowing yourself to be wrong. As in any kind of learning, in order to find new insights, you might have to get lost for a while.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the UK Debate: Social Media Effects Old Media in a New Way
In watching the BBC UK political coverage on the night of the debate, it occurred to me that a more interesting precedent was being set than the televised candidates together talking.
It also reminded me why I created my business -- people can understand how to listen and respond in theory without much skill at actually doing it. I help clients transform presentations into conversations people want to continue. In the case of the debate, they needed a hand. Change is challenging for everyone.
Before the Debate, and Because of It . . .
Channel 4 News offered two ordinary voters the opportunity to confront representatives of the major parties live on television without notes, scripts, or rules. Not only that, Jon Snow facilitated challenging questions from the ordinary voters and pushed the politicians to answer.
Really A Big Deal?
It's not new to have ordinary voters interviewed on camera outside the studio -- and it's not new to have experts argue with an anchor or each other. But it IS new to find a real discussion going on, live and unedited, between non-experts and the people who they might elect.
This would not be possible without Twitter. National news in Britain has been "taking email" and quoting Tweets for ages. Supposedly from the horses mouth, perhaps the News management felt that live people in the studio would offer the same sort of information.
Acceptance of Social Media allows people to talk face to face. New media makes old media possible again.
Of course, Tweets, email, and canned interviews are selected for very specific effect and to underline a pre-determined point. You don't actually know what people will do if you put them with other people in a room together. Even with facilitation, you don't have complete control.
The effect was rather fun. The two voters were aware of the candidates' positions but couldn't believe a word. The expert (yes, there has to be an expert somewhere) who joined them had an explanation -- people in Britain are engaged in politics but not in the main political parties or with the candidates.
How much better market research could you possibly get as a candidate? Polls and Twitter (and other social media) are all hearsay. Live human beings reacting candidly on camera (and without TV prep) is really all you have to know.
The results in the candidates' response (again) demonstrates why my business is booming: people have a very hard time breaking bad habits and in listening. Here you had a chance for political representatives to offer proof of concept -- and all they had to do was demonstrate that they heard their constituents.
Change hit the candidates, and they couldn't adjust. They were televised -- everyone could see them not acknowledging the views of people on whom they depend for their jobs. Voters didn't have to guess anymore whether they were heard -- they could see that they weren't.
Not Restricted to Political Life: Business Life is Rife with Non-Listeners
This is not an issue restricted to politicians. My much less well known business clients struggle with it every day.
Too often, it's hard for people with an agenda to listen. It can feel threatening to show you hear others' perspectives. Worse, sometimes it simply not occur to them. But you need to be able to at least fake it effectively.
Demonstrating that you hear when someone speaks is only the beginning. But it IS essential to any further communication. This all might sound obvious, but my business clients struggle with the same issues.
It also reminded me why I created my business -- people can understand how to listen and respond in theory without much skill at actually doing it. I help clients transform presentations into conversations people want to continue. In the case of the debate, they needed a hand. Change is challenging for everyone.
Before the Debate, and Because of It . . .
Channel 4 News offered two ordinary voters the opportunity to confront representatives of the major parties live on television without notes, scripts, or rules. Not only that, Jon Snow facilitated challenging questions from the ordinary voters and pushed the politicians to answer.
Really A Big Deal?
It's not new to have ordinary voters interviewed on camera outside the studio -- and it's not new to have experts argue with an anchor or each other. But it IS new to find a real discussion going on, live and unedited, between non-experts and the people who they might elect.
This would not be possible without Twitter. National news in Britain has been "taking email" and quoting Tweets for ages. Supposedly from the horses mouth, perhaps the News management felt that live people in the studio would offer the same sort of information.
Acceptance of Social Media allows people to talk face to face. New media makes old media possible again.
Of course, Tweets, email, and canned interviews are selected for very specific effect and to underline a pre-determined point. You don't actually know what people will do if you put them with other people in a room together. Even with facilitation, you don't have complete control.
The effect was rather fun. The two voters were aware of the candidates' positions but couldn't believe a word. The expert (yes, there has to be an expert somewhere) who joined them had an explanation -- people in Britain are engaged in politics but not in the main political parties or with the candidates.
How much better market research could you possibly get as a candidate? Polls and Twitter (and other social media) are all hearsay. Live human beings reacting candidly on camera (and without TV prep) is really all you have to know.
The results in the candidates' response (again) demonstrates why my business is booming: people have a very hard time breaking bad habits and in listening. Here you had a chance for political representatives to offer proof of concept -- and all they had to do was demonstrate that they heard their constituents.
Change hit the candidates, and they couldn't adjust. They were televised -- everyone could see them not acknowledging the views of people on whom they depend for their jobs. Voters didn't have to guess anymore whether they were heard -- they could see that they weren't.
Not Restricted to Political Life: Business Life is Rife with Non-Listeners
This is not an issue restricted to politicians. My much less well known business clients struggle with it every day.
Too often, it's hard for people with an agenda to listen. It can feel threatening to show you hear others' perspectives. Worse, sometimes it simply not occur to them. But you need to be able to at least fake it effectively.
Demonstrating that you hear when someone speaks is only the beginning. But it IS essential to any further communication. This all might sound obvious, but my business clients struggle with the same issues.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
A Thought on How We Think About Teachers
Why is it that teacher-directed websites usually look like they've been designed for children?
This isn't a big point -- just something I've been chewing on as I do organisational research this morning.
Take a look at any site for educators. Unless these educators are administrators, you'll probably find pictures of apples (for the teacher, presumably), ruled paper, and cartoon characters with blackboard pointers in their hands (hooves? claws?).
Here's My Experience
When I was hired to produce an interactive site for Troll Communications (at the time, Scholastic's chief competitor), the consistent image across pages was an owl with a flat, square graduation hat (what are they called? You know, the ones with the tassles?).
That owl was first on my hit list, especially because he also wore spec's. But the whole situation seemed revising from the bottom up.
Don't trolls EAT children? (Tip: don't ask this question at your first meeting with a CEO. It doesn't encourage the kind of change you're after.)
Kids Think Teachers Don't Exist Outside of School
This isn't a big point either. Anyone who's taught, and then runs into a student in a coffee shop or the supermarket, has seen the shock register.
I chalk it up to some sort of delayed object permanence problem. Kids tend to have a pretty fixed idea of how their worlds function. Even when I taught university, my students would express shock usually reserved only for a broken law of physics if I were sited anywhere outside the English Department.
How Much Thought is Given to Teachers Anyway?
We'd expect more from grown-up's.
But from the websites I've seen, non-educators seem so completely to merge teachers with their kids that they forget they're adults.
It's a strange phenomenon. I might give it to NASA to chew on.
On the other hand, how surprising is it really that teachers aren't paid very much if we forget they exist outside the classroom -- you know, paying rent, driving cars, or doing an activity with other adults?
Anyone, please find me a website designed for teachers that looks sophisticated, that treats its target audience as though they have some design sense or have ever been to the opera.
And those text-only sites don't count. They're just lazy.
Anyone?
This isn't a big point -- just something I've been chewing on as I do organisational research this morning.
Take a look at any site for educators. Unless these educators are administrators, you'll probably find pictures of apples (for the teacher, presumably), ruled paper, and cartoon characters with blackboard pointers in their hands (hooves? claws?).
Here's My Experience
When I was hired to produce an interactive site for Troll Communications (at the time, Scholastic's chief competitor), the consistent image across pages was an owl with a flat, square graduation hat (what are they called? You know, the ones with the tassles?).
That owl was first on my hit list, especially because he also wore spec's. But the whole situation seemed revising from the bottom up.
Don't trolls EAT children? (Tip: don't ask this question at your first meeting with a CEO. It doesn't encourage the kind of change you're after.)
Kids Think Teachers Don't Exist Outside of School
This isn't a big point either. Anyone who's taught, and then runs into a student in a coffee shop or the supermarket, has seen the shock register.
I chalk it up to some sort of delayed object permanence problem. Kids tend to have a pretty fixed idea of how their worlds function. Even when I taught university, my students would express shock usually reserved only for a broken law of physics if I were sited anywhere outside the English Department.
How Much Thought is Given to Teachers Anyway?
We'd expect more from grown-up's.
But from the websites I've seen, non-educators seem so completely to merge teachers with their kids that they forget they're adults.
It's a strange phenomenon. I might give it to NASA to chew on.
On the other hand, how surprising is it really that teachers aren't paid very much if we forget they exist outside the classroom -- you know, paying rent, driving cars, or doing an activity with other adults?
Anyone, please find me a website designed for teachers that looks sophisticated, that treats its target audience as though they have some design sense or have ever been to the opera.
And those text-only sites don't count. They're just lazy.
Anyone?
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Worth Repeating: Feelings and Business
I've begun revising and posting some older pieces from this blog on Affect Labs' website.
As those who have followed me know, I've done a lot of research on the ways in which people learn, in business and elsewhere.
The bottom line:
The more resources of your own to which you have access, the more innovative and creative you can be.
Sounds Obvious?
In business, it's pretty clear that affect is frowned upon. Feelings are suspect; ideas are supposedly products entirely of the intellect. OK, Emotional Intelligence sold well back in the day, but how often is it actually applied in a board room?
Why is this Worth Repeating? And Why There?
Affect Labs is proof of concept. Their software crawls social networks for what is said about brand based on the feeling expressed in phrases. Jennie Lee, who invented it, says there are no algorithms quite like the ones she created to do this.
Jennie's pretty smart, so I believe her.
It seems like that site is the place to reposition the relationships among language, social media, learning, and business because Affect Labs can help companies benefit from them.
But first they have to believe it.
Feeling Presentable
This might be a good place to connect up how this is related to the way people present themselves and performance coaching.
But that's for another time.
As those who have followed me know, I've done a lot of research on the ways in which people learn, in business and elsewhere.
The bottom line:
The more resources of your own to which you have access, the more innovative and creative you can be.
Sounds Obvious?
In business, it's pretty clear that affect is frowned upon. Feelings are suspect; ideas are supposedly products entirely of the intellect. OK, Emotional Intelligence sold well back in the day, but how often is it actually applied in a board room?
Why is this Worth Repeating? And Why There?
Affect Labs is proof of concept. Their software crawls social networks for what is said about brand based on the feeling expressed in phrases. Jennie Lee, who invented it, says there are no algorithms quite like the ones she created to do this.
Jennie's pretty smart, so I believe her.
It seems like that site is the place to reposition the relationships among language, social media, learning, and business because Affect Labs can help companies benefit from them.
But first they have to believe it.
Feeling Presentable
This might be a good place to connect up how this is related to the way people present themselves and performance coaching.
But that's for another time.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Thoughts on Presentation Among Media
I was brought into a project recently that made me keenly aware of the similarities between what marketers (like me) do to improve both written and in-person presentation.
This is a (continuing) research project -- a literature review for an international marketing symposium. The subject was erudite and technical, but it became immediately apparent how to work on the outline and structure, despite my unfamiliarity with the topic. The more my intermediary and content expert described the context in which the material would be read, the more insight I was able to give on how to present the information in a way that would be credible and clear to a reader.
It reminded me of my work with CEOs of companies coaching client and investor pitches. I don't have to understand the in's and out's of specialty data as long as I understand the audience. The more insight I have into the effect the presenter must have -- in writing or in person -- the more I can help the speaker or writer be effective at getting the point across.
Marketers sometimes get a bad rap for window dressing rather than creating substantial (read: measurable) value for companies. But the deep structure we create for companies with content of all kinds has an emotional impact on whomever comes across the information.
And these so-called soft-skills are as much a part of winning content as the data itself.
This is a (continuing) research project -- a literature review for an international marketing symposium. The subject was erudite and technical, but it became immediately apparent how to work on the outline and structure, despite my unfamiliarity with the topic. The more my intermediary and content expert described the context in which the material would be read, the more insight I was able to give on how to present the information in a way that would be credible and clear to a reader.
It reminded me of my work with CEOs of companies coaching client and investor pitches. I don't have to understand the in's and out's of specialty data as long as I understand the audience. The more insight I have into the effect the presenter must have -- in writing or in person -- the more I can help the speaker or writer be effective at getting the point across.
Marketers sometimes get a bad rap for window dressing rather than creating substantial (read: measurable) value for companies. But the deep structure we create for companies with content of all kinds has an emotional impact on whomever comes across the information.
And these so-called soft-skills are as much a part of winning content as the data itself.
Friday, August 31, 2007
An English G&T (The Other Kind)
Notes from A Broad
I've been looking at the politics of schools in England over the last week, and in some ways they are very close to those in the US.
For one thing, teachers have the habit (from training) of standing up in front of kids and talking. The children listen, or don't.
There is a category for those who are seen to shine. This group is called "Gifted and Talented."
All Children Are Gifted and Talented. Period.
Richard Gilder, CAGSE's CEO, had a wonderful analogy: potential doesn't mean what we say it does. All atoms have the potential to split, but they need the right force for it to come to pass.
For the right explosion, you need the right ingredients. Gun powder on its own is just dust.
The G&T kids (as they are dubbed for short) very well might be both gifted AND talented (although the moniker seems redundant), but the real distinction between these kids and their colleagues is their level of accomplishment.
(Americans, don't get smug -- we have the same sort of system. It just doesn't sound like a cocktail.)
Why Some Kids Go Farther
Here's a shocker: It's all down to test scores. Therefore, the teachers teach to the tests, certain kids do well, and the rest are deemed less intelligent (or G. or T. or both).
The kids don't like it, and the teachers don't seem happy with it either. My research is anecdotal here rather than scientific.
However, friends in America, does this not sound familiar?
What We've Found at CAGSE
For those who just tuned in, I am now the Director of an organization called CAGSE. It stands for either Curriculum Articulation for the Global Support of Education or for the Subversion of Education.
To a certain extent, these alternatives have become the same thing.
CAGSE doesn't Support existing structures of education, unless they work. So often Subversion is the only option to support learning.
Lorna Robinson, our new Director of Latin Programs, began the Iris Project on her own. She left her independent school job teaching Classics in order to work with kids who wouldn't ordinarily get the same opportunities as wealthier children.
Lorna picked Hackney, or Hackney picked her, and off she went teaching Latin in schools considered to be some of the worst in the country.
Short Digression for Americans
In England, it must be understood; Latin is only taught to the best and the brightest. It's considered a privilege. It's considered the province of classes well above the kids Lorna teaches.
Lorna found that the Hackney kids, considered neither G nor T by anyone else, love the challenge of being stretched in a new subject. They enjoy Latin, and the skills are giving them confidence and a better understanding of English as well. English is a second language for many of these children, and their first languages are Asian, not Romance-based as in the States.
And So?
Lorna came to work for CAGSE because there were many other schools in the area that wanted Latin as well. We're raising the funds to support now 20 schools -- 20 schools from an original 1, then 5, then 12.
The politics around Latin here are fierce. Don't ask. So much that is based in academia suffers from this problem. Lots of talk, lots of meetings, and sometimes tiny territorial issues leave the work undone and factions fighting.
CAGSE is going under the radar practically (although the powers that be certainly know about us). The opportunity is here, now. Enough talk. Enough meetings. Enough lobbying for particular texts (the sales component is fierce here, too).
CAGSE's program uses no single text for teachers, and absolutely no textbook in the classroom. We're talking to the kids -- not the texts -- and certainly not the tests.
I've been looking at the politics of schools in England over the last week, and in some ways they are very close to those in the US.
For one thing, teachers have the habit (from training) of standing up in front of kids and talking. The children listen, or don't.
There is a category for those who are seen to shine. This group is called "Gifted and Talented."
All Children Are Gifted and Talented. Period.
Richard Gilder, CAGSE's CEO, had a wonderful analogy: potential doesn't mean what we say it does. All atoms have the potential to split, but they need the right force for it to come to pass.
For the right explosion, you need the right ingredients. Gun powder on its own is just dust.
The G&T kids (as they are dubbed for short) very well might be both gifted AND talented (although the moniker seems redundant), but the real distinction between these kids and their colleagues is their level of accomplishment.
(Americans, don't get smug -- we have the same sort of system. It just doesn't sound like a cocktail.)
Why Some Kids Go Farther
Here's a shocker: It's all down to test scores. Therefore, the teachers teach to the tests, certain kids do well, and the rest are deemed less intelligent (or G. or T. or both).
The kids don't like it, and the teachers don't seem happy with it either. My research is anecdotal here rather than scientific.
However, friends in America, does this not sound familiar?
What We've Found at CAGSE
For those who just tuned in, I am now the Director of an organization called CAGSE. It stands for either Curriculum Articulation for the Global Support of Education or for the Subversion of Education.
To a certain extent, these alternatives have become the same thing.
CAGSE doesn't Support existing structures of education, unless they work. So often Subversion is the only option to support learning.
Lorna Robinson, our new Director of Latin Programs, began the Iris Project on her own. She left her independent school job teaching Classics in order to work with kids who wouldn't ordinarily get the same opportunities as wealthier children.
Lorna picked Hackney, or Hackney picked her, and off she went teaching Latin in schools considered to be some of the worst in the country.
Short Digression for Americans
In England, it must be understood; Latin is only taught to the best and the brightest. It's considered a privilege. It's considered the province of classes well above the kids Lorna teaches.
Lorna found that the Hackney kids, considered neither G nor T by anyone else, love the challenge of being stretched in a new subject. They enjoy Latin, and the skills are giving them confidence and a better understanding of English as well. English is a second language for many of these children, and their first languages are Asian, not Romance-based as in the States.
And So?
Lorna came to work for CAGSE because there were many other schools in the area that wanted Latin as well. We're raising the funds to support now 20 schools -- 20 schools from an original 1, then 5, then 12.
The politics around Latin here are fierce. Don't ask. So much that is based in academia suffers from this problem. Lots of talk, lots of meetings, and sometimes tiny territorial issues leave the work undone and factions fighting.
CAGSE is going under the radar practically (although the powers that be certainly know about us). The opportunity is here, now. Enough talk. Enough meetings. Enough lobbying for particular texts (the sales component is fierce here, too).
CAGSE's program uses no single text for teachers, and absolutely no textbook in the classroom. We're talking to the kids -- not the texts -- and certainly not the tests.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Unemployed? A Perfect Excuse to Rebrand
Every economic and political crisis has its opportunities. It just takes some imagination to find the ones you can make the most of.
Who said that luck happens when opportunity meets a ready mind?
When Last We Saw Our Hero . . .
I was recently asked to help a company to create marketing collateral for their current services. This organisation specialises in outsourcing particular financial functions for small to medium sized businesses.
In order to make the most of the marketing opportunities, I suggested that that they activities and collateral that will expand their brand.
With expertise in all aspects of finance, why not take the opportunity to find the cream of the financial market's unemployed, retrain them, and place them in new jobs?
In a world where there are hundreds of talented financial people who are newly unemployed, you have a market keen for any way to find a job.
Likewise, companies need talented people -- always. And they would prefer to outsource functions that require high overhead in salary, benefits, and so on.
So why not make a business of rebranding people from the City? You make money training. You make money placing people. Win-win.
You Who Have Lost Your Jobs: This Is Where You Come In
You who are smart and agile, this is your chance. The current situation allows high-level thinkers to take advantage of the opportunity for new career directions by re-branding yourselves.
What are you most passionate or curious about? What sorts of businesses or business functions have you demonstrated an impact other than whatever was contained in your job description? Where can you get that extra expertise quickly and efficiently to fill in gaps for a job you'd like to have?
Speaking from Experience
My own career path has been entirely about re-branding in order to explore and learn exactly what interests me. I worked in the theatre, I earned a PhD in drama, I became a journalist, I worked in Silicon Alley and consulted, worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers as strategist and negotiator for the global website, and then I ran a charity for children in London.
Contrary to those who advocate single career paths, employers have not found me flaky. In fact, I've found the threads that connect my passions allow me to see things new in ways that make me seem more, rather than less, committed and qualified. Cross-disciplinary thinking and making connections among unlikely resources is high in demand. In fact, my research shows that in every field employers are looking for people who can show this sort of creativity.
And those who do this can find great success.
Re-branding is a big topic, and I'll get back to it in later posts. For now, there's a great (if old) Fast Company issue that offers some very good ideas. Check it out.
Who said that luck happens when opportunity meets a ready mind?
When Last We Saw Our Hero . . .
I was recently asked to help a company to create marketing collateral for their current services. This organisation specialises in outsourcing particular financial functions for small to medium sized businesses.
In order to make the most of the marketing opportunities, I suggested that that they activities and collateral that will expand their brand.
With expertise in all aspects of finance, why not take the opportunity to find the cream of the financial market's unemployed, retrain them, and place them in new jobs?
In a world where there are hundreds of talented financial people who are newly unemployed, you have a market keen for any way to find a job.
Likewise, companies need talented people -- always. And they would prefer to outsource functions that require high overhead in salary, benefits, and so on.
So why not make a business of rebranding people from the City? You make money training. You make money placing people. Win-win.
You Who Have Lost Your Jobs: This Is Where You Come In
You who are smart and agile, this is your chance. The current situation allows high-level thinkers to take advantage of the opportunity for new career directions by re-branding yourselves.
What are you most passionate or curious about? What sorts of businesses or business functions have you demonstrated an impact other than whatever was contained in your job description? Where can you get that extra expertise quickly and efficiently to fill in gaps for a job you'd like to have?
Speaking from Experience
My own career path has been entirely about re-branding in order to explore and learn exactly what interests me. I worked in the theatre, I earned a PhD in drama, I became a journalist, I worked in Silicon Alley and consulted, worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers as strategist and negotiator for the global website, and then I ran a charity for children in London.
Contrary to those who advocate single career paths, employers have not found me flaky. In fact, I've found the threads that connect my passions allow me to see things new in ways that make me seem more, rather than less, committed and qualified. Cross-disciplinary thinking and making connections among unlikely resources is high in demand. In fact, my research shows that in every field employers are looking for people who can show this sort of creativity.
And those who do this can find great success.
Re-branding is a big topic, and I'll get back to it in later posts. For now, there's a great (if old) Fast Company issue that offers some very good ideas. Check it out.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Spelling: The Sequel
Dictionary Evangelist
Erin McKean is a lexicographer and entertaining conference speaker.
When first I encountered her two years ago at GEL, she began her talk by addressing a common misconceptions about her work.
"People often think that lexicographers prescribe meaning and keep the language as pure as possible. In fact, we research the way language is used -- in all sorts of media -- and we chart how language changes."
With this in mind, Erin's views on spelling are generous. See the last post for details on how to let yourself off the hook, regardless of how often others wince at the way you put letters together in writing
When Last We Saw Our Hero . . .
Erin is working as an independent assessor for CAGSE's Latin programs in primary school. The success of the pilot, running in 15 schools across London, will be measured both by her and by another independent assessor and former head of the Primary Trust, Peter Frost.
The first rule in business: If you haven't measured it, it never happened.
And So
Erin and I had supper at Carluccio's (for those of you who visit London occasionally -- there are quite a few, and the food is consistently good without being expensive).
I was interested to hear about her day in the schools.
We got on the subject of spelling and spell checks.
"Spell checks are terrible," said Erin, "and even if someone were to design a good one, people wouldn't use it anyway."
I asked why. She explained it thus:
It's very similar to the way a smoke alarm goes off every time you make toast. How many times has such a device been dismantled, never to be seen again?
The spell check is very much like a smoke alarm that demands attention every time one writes anything. It's annoying. So you ignore it.
Happens to be true for me, and I'm a lousy speller.
So Why Are Those of Us Not Blessed With the Spelling Gene So Bad At Catching Mistakes, Even When We Try?
Erin has given this a lot of thought. "Fixing your spelling requires that you know that you don't know how to spell a word (which means checking a lot of false positives from your spell checker) ... how often do you know that you don't know something, when it's something you're not good at in the first place?"
And the alternative?
"I think we need two things: better spell checkers (no false positives) and more leniency for typos/thinkos/spellos."
Leniency for Spellos. I'd vote for the person who ran for president on that ticket (Why do you hate freedom?).
So many jokes I could make about the thinkos of the White House's current inhabitant, but it's just too easy. I'm just not that kind of girl.
More in the next post on spelling, dictionaries, and the enlightenment.
Erin McKean is a lexicographer and entertaining conference speaker.
When first I encountered her two years ago at GEL, she began her talk by addressing a common misconceptions about her work.
"People often think that lexicographers prescribe meaning and keep the language as pure as possible. In fact, we research the way language is used -- in all sorts of media -- and we chart how language changes."
With this in mind, Erin's views on spelling are generous. See the last post for details on how to let yourself off the hook, regardless of how often others wince at the way you put letters together in writing
When Last We Saw Our Hero . . .
Erin is working as an independent assessor for CAGSE's Latin programs in primary school. The success of the pilot, running in 15 schools across London, will be measured both by her and by another independent assessor and former head of the Primary Trust, Peter Frost.
The first rule in business: If you haven't measured it, it never happened.
And So
Erin and I had supper at Carluccio's (for those of you who visit London occasionally -- there are quite a few, and the food is consistently good without being expensive).
I was interested to hear about her day in the schools.
We got on the subject of spelling and spell checks.
"Spell checks are terrible," said Erin, "and even if someone were to design a good one, people wouldn't use it anyway."
I asked why. She explained it thus:
It's very similar to the way a smoke alarm goes off every time you make toast. How many times has such a device been dismantled, never to be seen again?
The spell check is very much like a smoke alarm that demands attention every time one writes anything. It's annoying. So you ignore it.
Happens to be true for me, and I'm a lousy speller.
So Why Are Those of Us Not Blessed With the Spelling Gene So Bad At Catching Mistakes, Even When We Try?
Erin has given this a lot of thought. "Fixing your spelling requires that you know that you don't know how to spell a word (which means checking a lot of false positives from your spell checker) ... how often do you know that you don't know something, when it's something you're not good at in the first place?"
And the alternative?
"I think we need two things: better spell checkers (no false positives) and more leniency for typos/thinkos/spellos."
Leniency for Spellos. I'd vote for the person who ran for president on that ticket (Why do you hate freedom?).
So many jokes I could make about the thinkos of the White House's current inhabitant, but it's just too easy. I'm just not that kind of girl.
More in the next post on spelling, dictionaries, and the enlightenment.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
The Wisdom of Crowds: What Can Be Learned?
Continuing from the last post . . .
Newsassignment.net’s Goals
Newsassignment.net is a joint project with Wired.com. They share the costs of hiring a professional editor and skeleton staff to manage the site.
Newsassignment was designed as a research project to ask the questions:
--What can be the consequences of investigative reporting – the core of journalism – when with falling costs for people to find each other, share information, and create value? What are the effects on what’s published?
--Can a publication take one trend story, break it up into parts, develop the parts online, distribute them to citizen journalists within the community, and publish the best of what results? What is the quality of the resulting news?
--Can a story be written with the contributions of hundreds of writers rather than two or three?
Jay Rosen suspects that an open source business structure would push forward a platform of a new kind of reporting. This open source reporting would have more value than the traditional competitive model that relies on individual insights.
Rosen decided to establish this project because the cost of learning is so low that it made no sense NOT to try it.
Journalism 1.0
Rosen calls blogging journalism 1.0. “Dan Gilmore did a great job to get individuals to do their own thing,” Rosen says, “Who DOESN’T have a blog, and how long did that take?”
However, Rosen says, what blogging doesn’t promote is the process of working together on one story. In fact, blogging is almost antithetical to such a practice. “You get a reputation for your individuality, your unique perspective, your attitude – and you can link to others who agree with you. But it’s rare to collaborate.”
Journalism 2.0
Rosen calls what’s happening now Citizen Journalism 2.0 because he feels that crowd-sourced information creates not only a better product than that of mainstream media but it also goes after articles that papers like the Washington Post would never attempt.
2.0 require fact checking, and so it’s not necessarily a cheaper journalism, says Rosen. “But it’s a better journalism that comes up with bigger stories and bigger truths.” The example Rosen gives is the Sunlight Foundation’s request to find out which members of congress employed his or her own family members. The question was posted on a Friday morning, and the results were published in edited form on Monday morning.
Rosen warns that it was not entirely citizen journalism because the foundation did thorough fact checking during the process and after. However, there were very few errors. Rosen feels that this vindicates the speed, breadth, and reliability of crowd-sourced work.
The Implications?
Regardless of the web’s impact on the last election and of Rosen’s convictions, the real implications of newsassignment’s process will not be clear until the public assesses the quality of the results. Perhaps crowd-sourcing is useful in some cases but not in others, perhaps mainstream media could take advantage of specialized firms to expand their reach, or the perhaps whole project might be too unwieldy to handle.
More on the results of this experiment after the presidential elections.
Newsassignment.net’s Goals
Newsassignment.net is a joint project with Wired.com. They share the costs of hiring a professional editor and skeleton staff to manage the site.
Newsassignment was designed as a research project to ask the questions:
--What can be the consequences of investigative reporting – the core of journalism – when with falling costs for people to find each other, share information, and create value? What are the effects on what’s published?
--Can a publication take one trend story, break it up into parts, develop the parts online, distribute them to citizen journalists within the community, and publish the best of what results? What is the quality of the resulting news?
--Can a story be written with the contributions of hundreds of writers rather than two or three?
Jay Rosen suspects that an open source business structure would push forward a platform of a new kind of reporting. This open source reporting would have more value than the traditional competitive model that relies on individual insights.
Rosen decided to establish this project because the cost of learning is so low that it made no sense NOT to try it.
Journalism 1.0
Rosen calls blogging journalism 1.0. “Dan Gilmore did a great job to get individuals to do their own thing,” Rosen says, “Who DOESN’T have a blog, and how long did that take?”
However, Rosen says, what blogging doesn’t promote is the process of working together on one story. In fact, blogging is almost antithetical to such a practice. “You get a reputation for your individuality, your unique perspective, your attitude – and you can link to others who agree with you. But it’s rare to collaborate.”
Journalism 2.0
Rosen calls what’s happening now Citizen Journalism 2.0 because he feels that crowd-sourced information creates not only a better product than that of mainstream media but it also goes after articles that papers like the Washington Post would never attempt.
2.0 require fact checking, and so it’s not necessarily a cheaper journalism, says Rosen. “But it’s a better journalism that comes up with bigger stories and bigger truths.” The example Rosen gives is the Sunlight Foundation’s request to find out which members of congress employed his or her own family members. The question was posted on a Friday morning, and the results were published in edited form on Monday morning.
Rosen warns that it was not entirely citizen journalism because the foundation did thorough fact checking during the process and after. However, there were very few errors. Rosen feels that this vindicates the speed, breadth, and reliability of crowd-sourced work.
The Implications?
Regardless of the web’s impact on the last election and of Rosen’s convictions, the real implications of newsassignment’s process will not be clear until the public assesses the quality of the results. Perhaps crowd-sourcing is useful in some cases but not in others, perhaps mainstream media could take advantage of specialized firms to expand their reach, or the perhaps whole project might be too unwieldy to handle.
More on the results of this experiment after the presidential elections.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Musings on Schools -- of Fish, and Others
Richard Gilder, the CEO of CAGSE (the consultancy for which I now work), wrote a most insightful note on adolescents.
He says,
What Does It Mean to Learn to Be Your Own Person?
Going back to past posts, it is impossible to consider the learning process as an entirely intellectual exercise. Cognition involves a web of both emotional reactions and more abstract analyses.
What is inspiration but a meeting of intellectual and emotional insight? And can anyone develop an idea without first being engaged in other ways as well?
Yet by the time students in school are old enough to write persuasive essays or research papers, they no longer use "I" or any reference to feeling at all. The fashion dictates that both erode credibility.
Eventually students become dissociated from their feelings, their likes and dislikes, their own impulses -- themselves. Academic fields define the methodology as creating an objective voice in writing.
Circular (Il)Logic
If being objective means being able to argue all sides of a question, then clearly engagement is a necessary component. There has to be an "I" who knows, writes, talks, and so on. To disallow the pronoun is just windowdressing -- and can be downright dangerous.
True, the students who stop learning by cutting themselves off from their own inner resources often succeed academically because, with no inner compass, navigate by saying what others want them to say in the way they are asked to say it. They also might succeed in social groups (that I leave to Dr. Gilder), but then it might be the kind of group you don't want to join because it would have someone like you as a member.
Later on, the danger increases when these successes choose careers because it's what they feel others think they should do for a living (hence the invention of the mid-life crisis).
And So . . .
Emma Gilding once said to me that every school constitutes its own ecosystem. Social, academic, political, and emotional tides rise and fall and crash against each other while the both the adult and adolescent inhabitants develop habits to help them survive.
How hard must it be to stand the pressure?
I'm not against trying all sorts of writing -- why not? But it seems to me that some of the time, the least a teacher can do is allow kids to have their say. And to claim the ideas as their own with any pronoun they like.
He says,
Adolescents (and many young[er] adults as well) are in a constant battle with what they perceive as two diametrically opposed desires:
to be their own person;
to be part of a group. . . .
Self-confidence comes when adolescents realize that they fit into a group not in spite of, but because of, their independence.
In everything but relationship between pronouns and verbs, there must be agreement all round.What Does It Mean to Learn to Be Your Own Person?
Going back to past posts, it is impossible to consider the learning process as an entirely intellectual exercise. Cognition involves a web of both emotional reactions and more abstract analyses.
What is inspiration but a meeting of intellectual and emotional insight? And can anyone develop an idea without first being engaged in other ways as well?
Yet by the time students in school are old enough to write persuasive essays or research papers, they no longer use "I" or any reference to feeling at all. The fashion dictates that both erode credibility.
Eventually students become dissociated from their feelings, their likes and dislikes, their own impulses -- themselves. Academic fields define the methodology as creating an objective voice in writing.
Circular (Il)Logic
If being objective means being able to argue all sides of a question, then clearly engagement is a necessary component. There has to be an "I" who knows, writes, talks, and so on. To disallow the pronoun is just windowdressing -- and can be downright dangerous.
True, the students who stop learning by cutting themselves off from their own inner resources often succeed academically because, with no inner compass, navigate by saying what others want them to say in the way they are asked to say it. They also might succeed in social groups (that I leave to Dr. Gilder), but then it might be the kind of group you don't want to join because it would have someone like you as a member.
Later on, the danger increases when these successes choose careers because it's what they feel others think they should do for a living (hence the invention of the mid-life crisis).
And So . . .
Emma Gilding once said to me that every school constitutes its own ecosystem. Social, academic, political, and emotional tides rise and fall and crash against each other while the both the adult and adolescent inhabitants develop habits to help them survive.
How hard must it be to stand the pressure?
I'm not against trying all sorts of writing -- why not? But it seems to me that some of the time, the least a teacher can do is allow kids to have their say. And to claim the ideas as their own with any pronoun they like.
Sunday, June 02, 2013
Annual Lecture: St. George's House, Windsor Castle
The Annual Lecture by Jane Goodall at St. George's House, Windsor Castle was thrilling. Jane recounted her transformation from girl to scientist (at 5) that led to a move to Africa and field work (without a university education), and her subsequent work as an activist, first on behalf of research and then on behalf of the planet.
More for anyone pitching for clients of investment -- no matter how concise and expert you are within each piece of your message, discipline is necessary to win the day:
Although Dr. Goodall didn't ramble once --her mind is sharp and articulation of ideas crisp as ever -- her talk went on much too long. It was a shame because what she said was so nuanced and powerful, yet the overall, final impression was completely diffused and vague.
The event itself was star-studded: members of the Royal Family, House of Lords, Bank of England -- you name it. St. George's House is a tremendously rare valuable institution for conversations about Big Ideas, and anyone interested should certainly investigate. I'm quite honored to have been made an Associate as an honor (generally you buy a seat), and I look forward to more adventures.
More for anyone pitching for clients of investment -- no matter how concise and expert you are within each piece of your message, discipline is necessary to win the day:
Although Dr. Goodall didn't ramble once --her mind is sharp and articulation of ideas crisp as ever -- her talk went on much too long. It was a shame because what she said was so nuanced and powerful, yet the overall, final impression was completely diffused and vague.
The event itself was star-studded: members of the Royal Family, House of Lords, Bank of England -- you name it. St. George's House is a tremendously rare valuable institution for conversations about Big Ideas, and anyone interested should certainly investigate. I'm quite honored to have been made an Associate as an honor (generally you buy a seat), and I look forward to more adventures.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
One Common Language I'm Afraid We'll Never Get
The Black Hole: Generalizing About Problems in Education
I have a bone to pick with Dr. Richard Gilder, friend and colleague, but right only in part in his generalizations about English teachers. He laments:
. . . students today, at least in the United States, have no idea how their own language works. English and its grammar are a mystery to them. How did this happen? And what can and should we do about it? The notion that grammar is boring, and is therefore an impediment to the learning of English, made its insidious way into the minds of those who teach English and subjects of a similar ilk.
Having been both an English teacher and a teacher of "subjects of a similar ilk" (writing and many other topics apart from language within the humanities), I protest quite with great ardor.
There certainly is a feeling among certain groups of teachers that correcting or teaching language structure impedes or prevents the kind of engagement that comes with expressing ideas without reference to grammar. Sometimes, grammar needs to be blended in and enforced after confidence is built from the first forays into writing.
Why Don't Americans Teach Their Children How to Speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian -- the Greeks are taught their Greek.
Here are a couple of reasons derived from primary research:
Many teachers of all age-groups believe English grammar and logic should have been taught by someone else. This is anecdotal evidence rather than scientific -- my pool of data is restricted to 50 subjects.
These teachers of classes from first grade through the last year of graduate school all agree that it's not his or her job. The system is not designed for instructors of different age levels to collaborate. I didn't interview kindergarten teachers -- but I'm guessing they would say that learning good English comes from the home.
And now a Latin teacher is passing the buck as well.
The Black Hole: Where Does Good English Come From?
Grammar and and writing are hard to teach even for the Shakespeares among us. Both subjects are labor intensive on the part of the teacher and the student. They both require repeated and consistent feedback over a long period of time.
This is a lot of work for teachers worried about state requirements (for public schools) or getting articulate students into good colleges by cultivating their ideas. What's more, it's hard to engage students in either as a discipline. Even when courses give time to the subjects, students often don't absorb them.
Here's a bigger problem: grammar and writing are particularly hard to teach if no one ever taught them to you. How can you emphasize the importance of a discipline you don't feel comfortable with yourself?
Grab the Opportunity Where it Lies -- And Forget the Blame Game
I taught at and Ivy League university for years, and my students often had very weak skills in grammar and writing. At first, like Richard, I cursed the darkness (after all, I wanted to teach new material -- material that interested me enough to grind through graduate school to get a PhD).
Then I got practical. Over the course of five years, I came up with a system to integrate the material I loved with strong writing practices. Richard's done the same with his book on Latin for English speakers.
What Next?
It would be helpful if he took the energy he uses cursing the darkness (and teachers of other subjects) and uses instead to transform the black hole (where English has been lost) into a new galaxy. Why not organize a forum where teachers of all subjects can talk to each other about common challenges and strategies to master them.
Invite some businesses along as well. Employees are just older students. Perhaps there's a way to get funding from a business that wants to improve its collective communications skills.
After all, markets are conversations. What could be more profitable than starting one?
I have a bone to pick with Dr. Richard Gilder, friend and colleague, but right only in part in his generalizations about English teachers. He laments:
. . . students today, at least in the United States, have no idea how their own language works. English and its grammar are a mystery to them. How did this happen? And what can and should we do about it? The notion that grammar is boring, and is therefore an impediment to the learning of English, made its insidious way into the minds of those who teach English and subjects of a similar ilk.
Having been both an English teacher and a teacher of "subjects of a similar ilk" (writing and many other topics apart from language within the humanities), I protest quite with great ardor.
There certainly is a feeling among certain groups of teachers that correcting or teaching language structure impedes or prevents the kind of engagement that comes with expressing ideas without reference to grammar. Sometimes, grammar needs to be blended in and enforced after confidence is built from the first forays into writing.
Why Don't Americans Teach Their Children How to Speak?
Norwegians learn Norwegian -- the Greeks are taught their Greek.
Here are a couple of reasons derived from primary research:
Many teachers of all age-groups believe English grammar and logic should have been taught by someone else. This is anecdotal evidence rather than scientific -- my pool of data is restricted to 50 subjects.
These teachers of classes from first grade through the last year of graduate school all agree that it's not his or her job. The system is not designed for instructors of different age levels to collaborate. I didn't interview kindergarten teachers -- but I'm guessing they would say that learning good English comes from the home.
And now a Latin teacher is passing the buck as well.
The Black Hole: Where Does Good English Come From?
Grammar and and writing are hard to teach even for the Shakespeares among us. Both subjects are labor intensive on the part of the teacher and the student. They both require repeated and consistent feedback over a long period of time.
This is a lot of work for teachers worried about state requirements (for public schools) or getting articulate students into good colleges by cultivating their ideas. What's more, it's hard to engage students in either as a discipline. Even when courses give time to the subjects, students often don't absorb them.
Here's a bigger problem: grammar and writing are particularly hard to teach if no one ever taught them to you. How can you emphasize the importance of a discipline you don't feel comfortable with yourself?
Grab the Opportunity Where it Lies -- And Forget the Blame Game
I taught at and Ivy League university for years, and my students often had very weak skills in grammar and writing. At first, like Richard, I cursed the darkness (after all, I wanted to teach new material -- material that interested me enough to grind through graduate school to get a PhD).
Then I got practical. Over the course of five years, I came up with a system to integrate the material I loved with strong writing practices. Richard's done the same with his book on Latin for English speakers.
What Next?
It would be helpful if he took the energy he uses cursing the darkness (and teachers of other subjects) and uses instead to transform the black hole (where English has been lost) into a new galaxy. Why not organize a forum where teachers of all subjects can talk to each other about common challenges and strategies to master them.
Invite some businesses along as well. Employees are just older students. Perhaps there's a way to get funding from a business that wants to improve its collective communications skills.
After all, markets are conversations. What could be more profitable than starting one?
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