eLearning & Deliberative Moments

IDT as ethical pursuit

2008-07-04T10:14:00.004+10:00

P Clint Rogers eulogises recently deceased academic and mentor Dr. Dillon K. Inouye. They share the view, so eloquently expressed in this 2005 article, that the discipline of instructional design technology (IDT) is primarily an ethical concern.

Too often, our universities and funding bodies push us into research about IDT to reveal universal "scientific" truths, as an engineering design practice, or as economic innovation.

This aligns well with this framework (pdf) by Orrill, Hannafin and Glazier (1999) that categorises educational technology research depending on whether or not it seeks fundamental understanding or it considers usage. Their quadrant includes basic foundational research, use-inspired (theory-building) research and applied research.

Inouye suggested that we take an Aristotelian view of IDT, and research about it, as an ethical pursuit. It is primarily a response to what we ought to do to help people learn and act. The other research approaches are valuable, of course. But if we prioritise our endeavour with the emancipatory at the top, then the research agenda that emerges takes a distinctive shape. Inouye suggested that our focus should be subjective and contextual rather than objective and universal. He advocated methods like naturalistic inquiry and participatory action research where the output of the research endeavour is assistive rather than merely academic.

The ethical underpinning of learning designs is usually taken for granted. This is obscured further when instruction reinforces a closed, absolutist worldview in authorising what "you must" do rather than helping you explore what "you ought" to do.

As Inouye cited of Aristotle, “No one deliberates about the unvarying”.

Deliberative evangelism and recruitment

2008-07-02T10:06:00.004+10:00

On the plane coming back from a project meeting in Sydney, I sat next to a woman who immediately engaged me in conversation. Tania noticed my textbook reading about research methods in political science and wondered what I did. She asked me a dozen knowledgeable questions allowing me to provide a broad explanation about what deliberative processes are all about. I spoke passionately about my endeavour.

Then Tania told me that she is a volunteer for (and I would venture to say, disciple of) the Art of Living movement. They are led by an Indian swami and believe that political and social change can occur through personal transformation. The Art of Living is an NGO that performs community development work. She made no secret that the organisation raises funds through courses about meditative practice. I was being tugged by a very loyal and skilled recruiter.

I learned from Tania that their meditative practice is intended to generate similar ideals to deliberative process: mutual respect, reciprocity, openness and commitment to the search for common ground. But they're approach is entirely prescriptive--it starts with a commitment to their personal way of thinking, literally. In providing aid to communities, they begin by delivering their course to them.

This led me to wonder about my own evangelistic zeal about deliberation. The ideals about civil conduct are little different, only the Art of Living prescribes personal transformation while deliberative practitioners seek social transformation through the uptake of productive conversation formats. Of course, they are related. But the approaches are differentiated by the locality and granularity of their intervention.

In pulling citizens into a conversation bubble that precludes competitive behaviour, are deliberationists just as prescriptive? How different is my repulse of the tug of psychological recruitment to the repulse of conservative pluralists to any group activity, which they may believe to be inherently coercive?

This returns me to my ongoing dilemma of finding a way to respect the autonomous individual perspective AND having them willingly include themselves in constructive, collaborative conversation.

My father finds me music

2008-06-28T10:57:00.006+10:00

My father is 83 and going strongly. He likes big band and swing music, and recently has taken to making slideshow presentations as birthday greetings. And these need background music. So I've been helping him bit, although he hardly needs it.

Yesterday he had a problem with an mp3 link, so I managed to track it down to the musician's website, who happens to be a Berliner like my father.

What a surprise! If you like piano-driven chill, check out Martin Herzberg: http://www.cloudbreak.de

Nice stuff, thanks Dad!

Brain science furphies

2008-06-27T13:50:00.005+10:00

my dome piece from cloois on Vimeo.

A couple of weeks ago I read an article entitled Does Our Brain Impair Our Political Perspective? It referred enthusiastically to a report about an experiment with an MRI machine that "found" that people did not register brain activity when presented with evidence that their preferred political candidates were lying or being contradictory. The conclusion by the brain scientists was that political polarisation inhibits learning. I left this comment:

I am sceptical of positivist science that presumes an objective Truth external to our personal and social context. Yet the study findings are an interpretation of interpretations by subjects. This hand-waving is hardly validated by the use of an MRI machine.

If I am an expert at something, I will go more directly to a response apparently without thought. Similarly, social, political and even technocratic beliefs unconsciously guide everything I do and filter my perception. I don’t need an MRI to “prove” this.

Today George Siemens points to a paper entitled The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations. Those researchers demonstrate that people claimed to be brain scientists tend to be believed regardless of what they say, without question.

But this video tells the important story that most often the levels of analysis are not rigorously aligned between the claims of brain science and learning or behaviour.

Petabyte Age negates scientific method? Rubbish

2008-06-24T12:19:00.003+10:00

This is the kind of cockamamy claim that infuriates me. The author of this article in Wired Magazine is its editor, Chris Anderson, who also coined the term "long tail" as a contemporary business model. Wired has often published provocative articles, but I think it has long tailed out.

Chris' claim is that with petabyte storage (yes, that's lots), "we can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot." The patterns found are the emergent model, so this is just rubbish.

Chris clearly has not actually done academic research. If he had, then he would know that it is the research question that defines the methodology, not the subject or the capacity of your computer. There are already many approaches, especially in social studies where meaning is sought, which lead to qualitative methods of data collection (ie. they need human recorders) from which patterns are discerned. Grounded theory is a well-established methodology that generates explanations through a structured inductive process from focussed qualitative or quantitative data. Other research questions are precisely designed to validate theory, and thus lead to hypothesis-driven, experimental research designs that may only rely on quantitative data.

Unfortunately, many outside academia (and a few inside those walls) think only the latter is "proper research".

via Harold Jarche, who is editing OLDaily while Stephen Downes takes a long break.

Personal Democracy Revolutionaries

2008-06-24T10:07:00.003+10:00

Matt Leighninger, Executive Director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, Senior Associate of Everyday Democracy and author of "The Next Form of Democracy: How Expert Rule Is Giving Way to Shared Governance - And Why Politics Will Never Be the Same", writes an impassioned blogpost ostensibly to attendees to the Personal Democracy Forum conference, but really to all of us who are interested in making politics more open and accessible to ordinary citizens. His words are certainly relevant to us developing the Australian Citizens’ Parliament project.

Are you democratic revolutionaries or just another interest group?

Making politics more “open” [through the medium of the Internet] is a terrific priority – but if that’s all you do, then you’ll just be making a space for yourselves at the political table and not welcoming in the people with less time, less education, less confidence, less faith in government and community, and/or a lower level of technological skills.

While most noise in America is focussed on the Presidential race, Matt suggests that citizens remain uninfluential, armchair commentators. Instead, he recommends that we work hard on instigating initiatives that really engage citizens in everyday political decision-making, especially at the local level where it can really count.

A circuit of our politics?

2008-06-20T15:46:00.003+10:00

This image from Lewis Fry Richardson (1930), Electrical Model illustrating a Mind having a Will but capable of only Two Ideas, scanned (because I can) from The Analogy Between Mental Images and Sparks, Psychological Review, vol 37, no. 3, p. 222.

The lamps having been rested overnight, insertion of the plug K caused lamp Q to light while P remained extinct. Contact at x, applying the extra W of 12 volts for about a second, caused both lamps to flash, P more brightly than Q; and when contact at x was withdrawn, P remained alight but Q extinct, although the main voltage V was applied steadily all the time. Thus the lighting of P had inhibited Q. Again a temporary contact for about a second at y left Q alight but P extinct. And so on to and fro many times in succession.

Oscillating preferences, a great deal of resistance on the right, and much pent-up capacitance on the left. Looks like a good analogy to our polarised political landscape!

(I first came across this bit of fun in a TED talk by George Dyson about the birth of computing.)

Where are the giants?

2008-06-10T15:30:00.003+10:00

Over the past several months I have read dozens and dozens of academic papers. These have been primarily in the disciplines of communications, educational and political psychology. Many proclaimed to report on empirical research, but their method was nothing more than a few interviews and great deal of theory-rationalisation. There is surely a double standard. While senior academics can proffer stylised facts, PhD students like me are justifiably compelled to complete coursework about rigorous research methods.

[For me that's a story in itself. The PhD coordinator is demanding that I fly weekly to Sydney to attend every single class, which I am simply unable to do. Without special dispensation from the Dean, my candidacy is currently under a cloud.]

I have read all of these papers to find out how other researchers have collected data about deliberative and collaborative processes. Leaving aside the works that border on empirical pretence, much of what is left is experimentally and quantitatively derived. These studies start with hypotheses and then use survey or questionnaire to prove or disprove them. They are theory-driven, which means they find what they are looking for.

In the area of psychology, much of this data collection takes the form of personal inventory. These would include judgment statements like "I tend to make decisions on evidence rather than intuitively", on Likert scales ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. I'm reminded of the USA entry forms after 9/11--"Are you a member of a terrorist organisation?" Silly really.

There are various levels of falseness. First there is the invitation for flagrant deceit--people will tell you precisely what they think you want to know. Second, and for academic researchers in particular, you'll get made-up answers because subjects will not have consciously thought about it. James Fishkin, who developed Deliberative Polling, calls these phantom opinions. Lastly, and insidiously, you'll get what critical theorists call "false consciousness", a personal belief induced by hegemonic social pressure (eg. "autonomy is good").

I am interested in the willingness and capacity of citizens to participate in deliberative processes. As part of this investigation, I want to know what predispositions, traits or epistemological theories they bring to the table, regardless of validity. I'll be using qualitative methods to uncover these (eg interview, observation, subject narrative), and will probably have to break new ground in this methodological space considering the apparent paucity of giants to stand on. But I'll keep reading and maybe something will pop up....

Australia 2020 Summit full report released

2008-06-01T20:41:00.003+10:00

The full report of the recent Australia 2020 Summit was released yesterday. Unlike the initial report which was ambitiously produced on the fly and literally taken away by Summiteers as they left, this report is the complete record as captured by volunteer scribes and the materials produced during the Summit deliberations. It has been called the "final" report, but expectations now build for government ministers to do something with it.

This report is intended to provide a record of the Australia 2020 Summit and recommendations on each of the discussion areas for consideration by the Australian Government. It is based on ideas put forward by participants during the Summit discussion sessions, outcomes from preliminary Summit events and ideas generated from public submissions received prior to the Summit.

My PhD supervisor Lyn Carson is shown in a photograph in the report section about the governance stream, reproduced here--the gender imbalance suggests this conversation was about constitutional law. But in the end citizen engagement became a priority theme of ideas:

an online portal, free and searchable government information, and a space for citizens to participate and share their views - ourgov.au
AuSpan network – an Australian C-Span
deliberative inclusive processes that feed directly into government decision-making processes
active citizenship training as a universal component of primary and secondary school curricula and available to the broader community.

Under the theme of parliamentary reform, some related ideas also gained traction:

Improve deliberative democracy and equipping citizens to participate in an engaged, modern democracy, using and including:
online participation
citizens’ juries
citizens’ parliaments
participatory budgeting
21st century and electronic town meetings
active citizenship education as part of the school curriculum.

We are hopeful that our planned Citizens' Parliament project can ride the rising wave of interest for public engagement that the 2020 Summit has reinforced.

Deliberative research

2008-05-12T10:43:00.003+10:00

Regarding the Australian Citizens' Parliament our research team is establishing, a friend of mine wrote:

It's brave of you to put your PhD in the hands of others to rely on their events providing your data.

In part, I responded thus:

I made a very conscious decision to pursue naturalistic (ie. phenomenological) rather than experimental research because that's what the big names in education and poli-sci/comms are calling for. We need to understand what is actually happening according to participants, not what can be explained by laboratory analogy or filtered through the lens of theory. It is certainly easier to devise a lab exercise, especially in getting funding and setting it up. And you are right, that would be less risky too if I was in complete control of it.

But I haven't put my PhD in the hands of others. Sure, much of what occurs through the deliberative process is not in my direct control. But my research data collection is being planned very carefully and is specific to my research questions. It is not the events that provide the data, but the responses of individuals and groups to my specific inquiry, whether it be through structured observation, semi-structured interview or questionnaire. It is that research "structure" that is crucial, as I will be looking at very particular things in the context of the entire proceedings.

As part of the planning group, I have no doubt that we can provide an environment at regional meetings, online and finally at Old Parliament House in Canberra that is conducive to deliberation. In fact, I'd say that there is less risk there than at a municipal Citizens Jury!

So I don't think I'm being especially brave (or silly?) to undertake this research with others. What does take courage is to promote my research agenda within a project that is dominated by logistical concerns and the established agendas of the others. The collaborative (aka deliberative) demands of this project on us will probably serve me as much or more in my future prospects as the findings of my research.

I am learning to be a deliberative researcher.

2020 Summit wasn't just about ideas

2008-04-27T17:26:00.006+10:00

A week after the Australia 2020 Summit, the maelstrom has fizzled away. Thankfully, the media had little to do with the Summit itself. Sky News' David Spears ran a competent but unnecessary panel interview on the second day opening plenary session, but that's it. (That said, I was especially impressed with how young Sam Hadid articulated cultural inclusion.) Sure, there were dozens of journos shuffling from room to room scoffing the biscuits. The newspapers have done some good reporting, including online. But visual media, especially commercial television, did the Summit a complete disservice focusing on celebrities--Catey and Jacko are nice people, but the show was not about them, surely. The Summit organisers let themselves down by focusing most on their Creativity stream in the final plenary. Yes, I think that creativity and arts should pervade most national pursuits, but that's not a new idea.

ABC Television tried to cover the Summit, mainly on ABC2. I had it turned on most of the time, to the disdain of my young children who didn't recognise their future. But most of the coverage was of studio guests discussing what was said in speeches and staged events. Precious little was shown of Summiteers actually engaged in dialogue. What I did glean was that each of the ten streams ran their groups their own way. Most were run like noisy public hearings. The TV had the poorest coverage of the Governance stream, which interested me most. After a rousing opening speech by John Faulkner, all we got was their final wrap on the second day. My PhD supervisor Lyn Carson participated in that stream, and wrote that many of the popular ideas didn't make it into the final published report. Others have written that the wording has been altered. A republic or a bill or rights is not thinking big, it's just rehashing established positions. Fodder for endless cynicism.

Tim Fisher ran the Rural stream like a policy wonk planning session. Climate Minister Penny Wong ran the Climate stream with an iron fist and made "executive decisions"--why was she allowed to do this?

On the other hand, the Family, Communities and Social Inclusion stream did it right--they used qualified facilitators who knew how to impartially guide a group forward. What emerged (and that is the key) was not just ideas, but the diversity of values and beliefs in the community. They used well-established techniques of open dialogue and idea endorsement, rather than controlled monologue. Of course, community engagement people know a lot about this, as they practice it every day.

My fear is that most of the other participants left the Australia 2020 Summit not having even the faintest comprehension about what well-facilitated deliberation actually looks and feels like. The Governance stream were proud of their recommendation of "collaborative governance", but did most of them understand it? Just read all the participant blogs and reports (not hard to Google) who claim that they felt unsatisfied by the process. No truly deliberative process should leave participants in this state.

Of course, the challenge was always tough. You can't invite 1002 people to a meeting armed with ideas that they hold dear to their hearts, and then wonder why everyone didn't get on famously. We still don't really know what each Department will do with the recommendations.

As with Family, Communities and Social Inclusion, the objective and the method for all streams should have been to dig into the messy diversity of values and beliefs, to uncover the range of aspirations for different Australians. Of course, some of these would be contradictory. But by making them explicit, there is an authentic platform to gauge the appropriateness of the innovative ideas to improve our lot. Ironically, media pundits have condemned some streams for generating "motherhood" aspirations as their "big idea". But that's where it should have always started.

Note: image used without consent.

Enough of watching the grass grow

2008-04-24T13:17:00.001+10:00

Mt Hotham Autumn 6
Originally uploaded by clickcraftsman.

Is that the date? Have I really abandoned my blog for five weeks? Oh dear. This is but one symptom of a life lived unreflectively. I've let the grass grow too long.

I could cite the Easter school holidays, when young daughters Gillian and Allison filled every waking (and sometimes sleeping) minute with valid claims for attention. Or the week-long business trip to Singapore by my wife which extended my primary care responsibilities further. Or of broken toilets, weatherboards that needed replacing on the house, or a ski lodge that needed painting. Or the ensuing backlog of commitments that were knocked off late and of lower quality than expected. Or that the University has bungled their communication of requirements of me as a PhD candidate, adding onerous obligations I'm not sure how I'm going to fit in. Or of dentistry extracting both money and teeth. Or the fact that my research funds have STILL not arrived for no apparent reason other than bureaucratic indifference, leaving me borrowing lunch money from my wife (she's okay about it, but it's still stressful). Or that my research design is off the rails because I've had difficulty concentrating properly on it....

My home office desk is a mess, I haven't shaved for a month, and I haven't been going for enough runs.

But these are all excuses for an undisciplined and somewhat depressed period from which I need to recover. So Things Have to Change.

I blew up yesterday at a colleague who was off on a tangent. While I shall endeavour to be more tactful, I'll continue to re-assert that I'm tired of humbly acting the passenger.

Good, now that that is off my chest, I'd better get to work.

Reflection as action

2008-03-19T20:50:00.003+11:00

Originally uploaded by gadl.

I was sparked by this post by Chris Sessums to think about reflection as action. Reflecting means not only the recall of past experiences, but to do it in an explorative and creative manner, asking for example what led to outcomes, why you or others may have reacted as they did, and how the constellation of events affected each other. Whether you take a reductionist or holistic approach, whether your considerations are introspective or intersubjective, the intention is nonetheless to think critically and raise your understanding and rationality.

The crucial action is reflect with others. Near the time of the conception of her World Cafe format, Juanita Brown wrote that

reflection enables new meanings to be seen and shared, allows learning to be noticed and integrated, and enables the "questions that matter" to surface.

Reflection means taking a higher-order perspective, to query what we are thinking and why. Moreover, it's about talking openly and having strong opinions, weakly held. It means re-discovering our taken-for-granted presumptions and what is essentially meaningful to us. This intentional, conscious and shared effort may strengthen many our beliefs or put some of them on notice--you need to take a step back to recognise contradictions, for example.

Today, the internet provides opportunities to both communicate and reflect like never before. As I write this post, I am literally thinking aloud and trying to articulate something meaningful. I'm trying to connect some dots that I didn't realise yesterday begged to be connected. Chris writes,

The Internet and Web have afforded us an opportunity to re-examine and re-define our morals, our communities, our nations, and the globe. But will these conversations be limited to only a few? What mechanisms are in place to encourage and support a wide range of thought and activity? Perhaps now that we have the ability to connect one-to-one-one-to-many, we should begin thinking about how to harness this collective social power and turn it into meaningful social action, promote open and meaningful dialogue, and serve as a platform for experimentation built on a wide range of perspectives.

So shared reflection is itself the action that needs to occur if we are all to get along better. While we should endeavour to invite more people into this conversation, how do we encourage people to be openly reflective if they stubbornly, timidly or selfishly refuse?

Beyond the 2020 Summit

2008-03-11T15:55:00.000+11:00

I'm pleased as Punch that the Centre for Policy Development has published this article that I helped Max Hardy and Lyn Carson write about what the upcoming Australia 2020 Summit could have done.

[Update} Crickey has republished the article. (Might require registration).

Visualising Information for Advocacy

2008-02-27T09:58:00.002+11:00

Booklet (PDF) by Tactical Technology Collective demonstrating how to display information effectively. Some of it is very dense, I'd prefer to see more Spartan, even primitive approaches. You don't always need a mega-dollar production to get your message across clearly and credibly.

Collective versus connected intelligence

2008-02-24T12:58:00.001+11:00

The 2008 Horizon Report (New Media Consortium/Educause Learning Initiative) lists collective intelligence amongst its list of emerging trends in ICT-mediated learning. The report has trouble defining it, first as the kind of knowledge and understanding that emerges from large groups of people and then the knowledge embedded within societies or large groups of individuals. My reading is that it's a system of collected data from a lot of individual activity such that from its combination an inate knowledge emerges.

But there is more too it, as I'm reluctant to call the federal election of a Prime Minister evidence of collective intelligence! As James Surowiecki describes in Wisdom of Crowds, it's more than just a statistical aggregation or competition. Rather, it is that whole new patterns and conceptions come through that were previously unimaginable by individuals. Also, the individual activity is ongoing and contributes to the macro outcomes in a complex way over time.

Some believe that intelligence should be attributed to the collective as a whole. For example, how can termites just know how to construct a mound? And how does traffic (especially in some cities) manage to just flow? The key here is that intersubjective communication creates new protocols, such as indexicality (eg. use of pronouns that presume mutual understanding). This takes us to Gerry Stahl's group cognition, which I accept as an analytical approach rather an epistemological commitment.

I have read so many blog comments, especially to op-eds, from people who equate any group activity with coercion. I wonder if they carry a deep-seated fear that a room of people can literally "think alike" dangerously and irrationally, that groupthink doesn't just describe a situation of compelled commitments, but even a paranormal phenomenon. Group activity threatens to over-write individual preferences. Perhaps they have been left scarred on the outer too many times.

I'd be careful not to put Stephen Downes in that category, but he certainly sees the political imbalances of society playing out in groups, especially those that are institutionally established (eg. schools, universities and corporations). In a learning context, a group is the medium which privileges conformity over disruptive creativity. This leads him to promote broader, networked alliances for lifewide learning and has given strong support to the connectivist approach of George Siemens.

I had started writing this blog entry before George wrote this entry into his wiki. I'm chuffed that he starts with the same realisation that we mix up vernacular with technical uses of the terms collective and connective. I think we have to be careful with scale--we don't think we should compare small groups with large networks. I believe that George is correct to begin speaking of large-scale democratic situations. I'd like to take it a step further.

If you believe that the primacy and rights of the individual should underlie our ethics and organisation of state, then discourse (and thus learning) through our dynamic network of connections is preferable. On the other hand, if you believe that we are our communities and culture, then you could not be compelled to reject the collective approach at any scale.

To my mind, the connective view of distributed knowledge through networks of individuals can work for everyone. It's not an either-or proposition.

The contact zone

2008-02-24T12:17:00.002+11:00

Originally uploaded by waffler.

Via Barbara Ganley, fell upon an informative speech by Mary Louise Pratt, also published in Ways of Reading, 5th edition, ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petroksky (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999). Professor Pratt is a linguist and cultural anthropologist who studies the interface of cultures, which she calls the contact zone. She has helped me understand the value of autoethnography as a qualitative research method. Whether considering the Australian indigenous story, the hegemony of institutionalised learning or the persistent divide between individualists and collectivists in most societies, her critical lens seems to have great application. I'll come back to this.

We are looking for the pedagogical arts of the contact zone. These will include, we are sure, exercises in storytelling and in identifying with the ideas, interests, histories, and attitudes of others; experiments in transculturation and collaborative work and in the arts of critique, parody, and comparison (including unseemly comparisons between elite and vernacular cultural forms); the redemption of the oral; ways for people to engage with suppressed aspects of history (including their own histories), ways to move into and out of rhetorics of authenticity; ground rules for communication across lines of difference and hierarchy that go beyond politeness but maintain mutual respect; a systematic approach to the all-important concept of cultural mediation.

Learning for Deliberation Quadrant

2008-02-16T13:43:00.016+11:00

Recently I was asked what my Masters degree research proved.

I had to explain that social research is primarily about finding meaning in the world. While numbers can play a part, explanations are often based on observing patterns and interpreting them in their particular context. The positivist concept of proof just doesn't fit.

In the citizens jury case I studied, I was interested in how the approach taken by the experts and stakeholders who presented to them affected the deliberation. I had coached the presenters to provide a workshop and talk with the jury rather than at them, but none seriously took my advice. However, I was able to make a clear qualitative distinction between those who were warm and open to conversation with the jury, and those who were decidedly not. I respectively categorised these presentation styles facilitative (generously) and authoritative.

In this particular case, the jury was substantially aligned in their preferences from the start. In addition, both presentation approaches were evident in the two overarching positions presented. This created an ad-hoc experimental opportunity, the findings of which can be summarised in the following table, which I called the Learning for Deliberation Quadrant:

	Authoritative Presenter	Facilitative Presenter
Juror agrees with position	Authority of Jury is not enhanced. Strengths and relevance of position not fully recognised.	Strengths and relevance of position recognised. Weaknesses of position not fully recognised.
Juror disagrees with position	Antipathy is enhanced. Strengths and relevance of position not fully recognised. Weaknesses of position recognised.	Relevance of and respect for position is enhanced.

In this case I demonstrated that an authoritative approach to address citizens preparing to deliberate does not serve the enterprise as well as a more facilitative approach, regardless of the expounded position.

This also supports my claim that the learning phase of participatory processes like citizens juries or citizens assemblies should align in its communicative ideals to the deliberation which follows. Most importantly, the respect for and knowledge of participants needs to be acknowledged.

Too young for deliberative ideals?

2008-02-11T13:35:00.001+11:00

During a conversation last week I was asked "at what age should children be introduced to the deliberative approach?". My immediate answer was "from birth". But research has found social capacity is limited for several years as brain development finishes after birth. Nonetheless, as a parent I can model and demonstrate the ideals of mutual respect, inclusiveness, rational discourse and cooperation as part of my everyday ethics.

Yesterday I read a superb book to my three and five year old children called Daft Bat, written by Jeanne Willis and humorously illustrated by Tony Ross. It begins with the arrival of Bat to a community of animals, who talks about an umbrella keeping her feet dry, the sky below and a rising river that threatens to wet her ears. The animals declare her quite barmy and run in fear. But Wise Owl suggests that all the animals try to view things from Bat's point of view. The illustrations show the big animals then hanging from trees too, and the text is shown upside down forcing the reader to flip the book over. So the mountain did have its pointy bit at the bottom! All the animals apologised.

For the first time, I could start to explain to my children what I am studying at university.

Empirical turn in deliberative democracy

2008-02-11T12:35:00.000+11:00

For the past two days I was in Canberra to attend my first seminar as a PhD student. It was organised by the Centre for Deliberative Democracy in the Research School of Social Sciences at Australia National University. The centre is headed by Professor John Dryzek, the doyen of deliberative democrats.

The intent of the seminar was to bring together a diverse group to present papers to each other about the theory and practice of deliberative democracy. We heard perspectives of political philosophy, parliamentary analysis, economics, social psychology, advocacy, argument mapping and facilitative practice. Attendees also specialised in linguistics, education (me) and application settings like resource management, wind farms and local government. The thirty attendees came from all corners of Australia.

My newDemocracy Project team colleagues gave a presentation which sparked both interest and scepticism. I had also assisted my supervisor in her co-authorship of a paper about the commercialisation and commodification of deliberative practice.

Appropriately, the concluding speakers panel so typical of research seminars was replaced with a facilitated session during which the prominent themes of the seminar where harvested, using a simple buzz group technique. What struck most of us was the depth and knowledge of our common interests and understanding, even though our backgrounds were so different.

Disturbingly, some in the academy still feel that theory should critique current practice even when it merely presumes what is actually practised. I dismissed the thought that we may have been the victims of devils' advocacy. For example, there were frequent statements which ignored the effect of facilitation on group dynamics, a prerequisite of deliberative processes. Also, it was often assumed incorrectly that all deliberative processes conclude with a decision-making phase--in processes like citizens juries participants make small commitments on the way to constructing and tuning a set of narrative recommendations.

There is also a persistent belief that quantitative, experimental research is the preferred form of inquiry in political science, even though qualitative methods can find trustworthy meaning in real-world settings where a control group just can't be isolated. In a complex political world, sometimes the determination of linear cause is an absurdity.

I was especially chuffed with the social psychologists who, like me, perceive a lack of scholarly attention on the role of social learning in deliberative processes. From them I picked up the phrase boundary object which describes a term perceived somewhat differently by different communities. Well, that surely would apply to deliberation.

At the start of some presentations, especially those which presumed a great deal of shared theoretical knowledge, I was apprehensive. But I was surprised to find myself keeping up well, actively noting questions and critique. It was satisfying that several questions asked by others related to my own. So in the end, I really did feel that I belonged in the room, and admitted as much when asked directly to comment by the facilitator.

In his well-received paper, Dryzek invited all of us to celebrate what he calls the empirical turn in deliberative democracy. He showed us that many theoretical critiques miss the point or worse. So whether we ground or attempt to validate theory, we should examine what actually occurs. And this means studying not just the act of deliberation itself, but the rising institutionalisation of deliberative practice that is true to its normative ideals.

We did it ourselves

2008-02-04T02:12:00.000+11:00

This poem attributed to Lao Tsu (c. 700 bce) has become a meme. Oxfam put it on a brochure annual report promoting a new style of global citizenship and social-justice work. It is listed in books of quotations. Many websites and blogs about communities of practice and community empowerment show it:

Go to the People.
Live among them,
Love them,
Learn from them.
Start from where they are,
Work with them,
Build on what they have.
But with the best leaders,
When the task is accomplished,
The work completed,
The people all remark:
We have done it ourselves.

But a quick search turns up that it's actually from Chapter 17 of Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing) by Lao Tsu (Lao-zi), with ongoing debate about if how and when it was written.

Here is a feminist translation by j. h. mcdonald:

The best leaders are those the people hardly know exist.
The next best is a leader who is loved and praised.
Next comes the one who is feared.
The worst one is the leader that is despised.

If you don't trust the people,
they will become untrustworthy.

The best leaders value their words, and use them sparingly.
When she has accomplished her task,
the people say, Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!

Here is another translation by Sanderson Beck:

The best leaders the people barely know. The next best they love and praise. The next they fear. And the next they hate.

Those who lack trust will not be trusted. Then they resort to promises. But when they accomplish their task and complete their work, the people say, We did it ourselves.

This translation by Steven Mitchell:

When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.

If you don't trust the people,
you make them untrustworthy.

The Master doesn't talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!

Whilst not identical, these translations are more like each other than the meme. They appear to be more about facilitation than empowerment.

Sounds like Chinese whispers by a lot of well-intentioned people not checking their source.

You can't buy importance

2008-02-01T19:47:00.000+11:00

Recently I spoke to a friend and winemaker who was quoted $12K for lifting the ranking in search engines for their website. Then I sat next to a man on a plane who's daughter-in-law works for a firm that guarantees to optimise sites for search engines. To both, I expressed alarm. This post is for them.

First of all, there is only one search engine you really need to care about now: Google. Like the older engines, Google still crawls the web cataloguing URLs and indexing text. But in addition, Google picks up on the pages to which you are linking, presuming that your link is a vote of recommendation. Conversely, your page's importance index, its PageRank is based on a formula that counts the links to it weighted by the importance of the referrers. The best way to raise a page's importance is to get it linked from many other pages, including those that also happen to be important.

But there is a whole industry around search engine optimisation. Avoid unscrupulous schemes that promise to manipulate your PageRank.

Google will find your pages without you doing anything at all. An actual search is done by text matching, so if your content is well-constructed and linkable, which will help your popularity, you are done. Content management systems (eg. weblogs, wikis, platforms like Joomla!) give you a leg up. If you use Google Analytics on your pages, as I do, it catches links in real-time for Google, so your PageRank is more accurate. [Update:] This NY Times article (June, 2007) provides a superb insight into the workings of Google Search.

So just concentrate on doing your best at communicating and let your PageRank sort itself out.

Six hours of invisibility

2008-01-25T21:04:00.001+11:00

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Originally uploaded by cld.

This morning I was in the middle of giving a demonstration of blogging using my laptop in a city café, when my blog literally disappeared. I could not publish to the server via FTP either. It might be powered by Google Blogger but it is served from webspace allotted by my cable carrier Optus.

Here in Australia we have a terrific online portal called Whirlpool with active discussion forums stretching the complete range of telecommunications topics. Within minutes posts appeared which confirmed that I was not the only dismembered member. Several had vanished.

Six hours later my site thankfully reappeared. Sorry if you went there in the meantime, only to receive the standard net response that the URL was incorrect.

Optus is the second largest provider of telephone, internet and television cable and wireless services in Australia. So it was no surprise that they haven't replied to my service request email. No indication has appeared on its member services page that any outage occurred.

Apparently, being invisible is considered normal.

eLearning predictions for 2008

2008-01-24T11:00:00.000+11:00

We're a month into it, but eLearn Magazine published the predictions of 23 leading e-learning pundits for 2008.

Michael Feldstein predicts that VLEs will start to open to personal web services, as I predicted two years ago.

Jonathan Levy sees us at a turning point in corporate learning with more requests for systems that dynamically capture tacit knowledge and expertise.

Looking through the list, I see many are talking up user-created content. I like Karl Kapps comment that "formalized 'instructional design' will begin to look more like 'instructional assembly" that turn "disaggregated [learner-created] pieces of related content into a coherent flow". But Ben Watson notes the supermarket effect that "competing demands for attention [by the plethora of web services] will drive people to single-source as much of their learning as possible."

The editor-in-chief Lisa Neal appears to see tensions growing between expert- and democratically-created 'knowledge'. With her comment about 'prioritization' for learning she seems reluctant to let go of expert rule as the final arbitrator of quality. In terms of my study about citizen learning, I find this the most interesting area.

Current state of weblog software/platforms

2008-01-17T16:44:00.000+11:00

I'm going to help a colleague set up a blog. So I thought I'd just gather a few links here to help make comparisons and understand the current landscape.

WeblogMatrix.org
Blog software comparison chart
Wikipedia
James Farmers' EduBlogs
Darren Rowse's Blogging Goals article
PC World review
eMomsAtHome review
Typical Australian ISP to self-host
Get your own domain?
A simple hosted alternative: Tumblr

If any readers have any other suggestions, please comment.