ECTEL2015 Mon a.m. (1): Lisa Marie Blaschke Keynote
Doug Clow, New Technolopgy in Higher Education, 2015/09/23

I talk a lot about personal learning (and have for a very long time). But I have to be clear that there is also a tradition in self-determined learning, under the name of heutagogy, which has been around since the early 2000s. Here's Lisa Marie Blaschke: "The heutagogical approach can be viewed as a progression from pedagogy to andragogy to heutagogy, with learners likewise progressing in maturity and autonomy. More mature learners require less instructor control and course structure and can be more self-directed in their learning." Doug Clow summarizes Blaschke's keynote at ECTEL 2015. "More institutions are moving towards learning-centred learning and competency-based education. It’s a powerful combination with Web 2.0 Affordances." Here's a really good bibliography of heutagogy.

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Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
Larry Cuban, National Education Policy Center, 2015/09/23

Larry Cuban offers four points based on his work with schools:

• No single way of teaching works best with all students.
• Small and slow changes in classroom practice occur often. Fundamental and rapid changes in practice seldom happen.
• School structures influence instruction.
• No instructional reform imposed upon teachers has been adopted by most teachers and used in lessons as intended.

These are probably all true - they certainly seem true to me, and nothing I've seen really counters any of them. But this is the reason why I think that educational reform, however it's defined, will take place outside schools. For some, this means charter schools (not a measure I support). For others (such as myself) this means the provisioning of informal learning opportunities.

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