Learning on hold: South-East Queensland preservice teachers and their understanding of lifelong learning
Sharn Donnison Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
Paper presented at the 35th Annual SCUTREA Conference July 5-July 7 2005, University of Sussex, England, UK
Introduction
This paper is about preservice primary school teachers and their understanding of lifelong learning. These young adults are members of the ‘Y’ Generation and reside in the South-East region of Queensland, Australia. This paper derives from a larger study where 70 aspiring primary school teachers engaged in scenario planning workshops, focus group interviews, and a telephone survey to determine their cultural models and Discoursesi about the future. While there were a number of different Discourses evident, this paper is particularly concerned with examining the group’s cultural models about themselves and lifelong learning and what these might mean for their future teaching careers. This paper briefly addresses the Discourse of lifelong learning, compares ‘Y’ Generation characteristics with the attributes of a lifelong learner, and then briefly outlines the study prior to examining and discussing the findings. This discussion centres on the respondents’ understanding about lifelong learning and what these might mean for them as future teaching professionals.
Discourse of Lifelong Learning
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2000) emphasises an economic rationalist position on lifelong learning by referring to it as organised, systematic education and training which is undertaken to obtain knowledge or skills for workplace employment, to increase earnings, and to improve career opportunities. While the Discourse of lifelong learning certainly encompasses imperatives about work and career training it also embodies lifewide and lifedeep concepts that are applicable beyond a work and career context (Australian Council of Deans of Education, 2001). These include such concepts as critical judgement and reasoning, empathy and tolerance, thinking and visioning, entreprenuerialism, habituation of learning, learning for self fulfilment, self awareness, and self management, and learning for social action (Longworth, 2003). Lifelong learning and a futures perspective are intimately linked in that those qualities of a lifelong learner, such as critical thinking and visioning, are essential cognitive tools of a futures’ oriented person.
The ‘Y’ Generation
The young adults in this study are members of what Strauss and Howe (1997) refer to as the next ‘great generation’ in western civilisation or the ‘Y’ Generation. As for all generations, there is some disparity on their age parameters. Alch (2000) suggests that the ‘Y’ Generation are those people born between 1975 and 1997, while Taylor (2003) claims they are born between 1980 and 2000. However, what is undisputed is that they are prolific with their numbers estimated to be as large as, or larger than, their ‘Baby Boomer’ parents.
Authors consistently speak in glowing terms about the personal, cultural, and social characteristics of the ‘Y’ Generation. They are said to be optimistic, enthusiastic, confident, have high self esteem, fun loving, sociable, conservative, traditional, idealistic, goal oriented, moral, tolerant, and mature in their approach to their future lives and careers. Authors also laud their media astuteness, their global orientation, community mindedness, social activism, and their technological expertise (Gaylor, 2002). Fewer authors stress the characteristics of flexibility, adaptability, and ability to manage change beyond the generations’ engagement with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
In contrast, skills and competencies in managing change and uncertainty in personal lives, careers, and the environment are seen as essential attributes of a lifelong learner. A ‘personal agency person’ (Zunker, 1998, cited in Pelsma and Arnett, 2002) is open minded, energetic, seeks new learning opportunities, takes risks and learns from experience, overcomes obstacles and set backs, adapts to new knowledge and behaviours, copes with uncertainty, makes decisions given the demands of the situation, asks relevant questions, and critically evaluates information. They assume responsibility for the future and assume no guarantees about the future.
The study
The study employed 70 subjects who reside in the South-East Queensland region and who were currently enrolled in, or were intending to enrol in, a teacher-training program of study. There were 14 males and 56 females involved in the study. The study used a multi-method approach that included scenario planning workshops, focus group interviews, and a telephone survey. The initial stage of the study involved six scenario planning workshops where 23 young adults (4 males and 19 females) were guided in creating four scenarios of the future based on current trends in society and social and cultural uncertainties.
The scenario-planning data was organised and analysed by a process of coding and grouping the data to form thematically linked categories. These categories constituted a Discourse (Gee, 1996). Six main Discourses were evident from the data of which one was concerned with themselves. This ‘Y’ Generation Discourse, with its associated concepts and predictions, was considered and discussed by 13 focus groups. Seven males and 40 females were involved in analysing and extrapolating the findings from the scenario planning workshops. Two years after the initial data were collected; a telephone survey was conducted of the original focus group participants. The questions in the survey were based on the analysis of the data. This survey data indicated that there had been little movement or change in the respondents’ ‘Y’ Generation Discourse.
Data presentation
As noted, personal agency people do not fear change and assume responsibility for the future. The respondents in this study portrayed themselves as personal agency people or change agents. When the focus groups were asked about their ability to affect the future and positively change society, 97% of the cohort believed in their efficacy to do so:
Researcher: . . . They say, ‘we are going to affect the future. We are really an important factor in determining what the future is like’. Do you agree with that?
Herman: Of course we are.
Charlene: We are the future.
Herman: We are the future. So because all of the other past generations have obviously affected their future, why shouldn’t we?
This attitude was still evident two years after the initial data collection with 75% of the telephone respondents affirming that they were change agents in society and 84% agreeing with the statement ‘I am an important contributor to society and I personally make a difference’.
In terms of social responsibility and action the data indicate that while they might espouse an attitude of social activism they actually assume limited social responsibility in the future. Someone or something, other than themselves, will be responsible for not only causing future social, cultural, or environmental problems but for finding solutions to them. Specifically, they blame the older generation, younger generation, technology, and/or immigration and multiculturalism for impending problems. For example, Athena blames the influence of the tenacious ‘Baby Boomers’ for impeding her generation’s ability to change the future. Kasha blames parents for her own generation’s lack of environmental concern:
Researcher: . . . Do you think your generation is a force that’s going to change the future?
Kylie: I think it’ll be the next generation (the generation proceeding the ‘Y’ Generation). . .
Researcher: Why . . . ?
Athena: I think the ‘Baby Boomers’ will still be sort of young enough to lead the country and then just they'll fade out . . .
Kasha: We aren’t (environmentally concerned) because we’ve gotten it through our parents and if our parents weren’t (…) and if our parents are environmentally concerned, then we are. We’re going to be the same. So you’ll pretty much have the same amount of people who are. . . . Depends on if your parents care or not.
Technologies are blamed for almost all future social ills. Zelda comments that, ‘I reckon it (technology) will make all the problems’, while Stuart blames technologies specifically for increasing health problems and ‘others’ for misrepresenting the effect of technologies on lifestyles:
Stuart: IT promotes it (health problems). They don’t call it laziness they call it um . . . they’re making life easy . . . but they’re making it lazier.
Their unwillingness to assume responsibility for the future is confirmed in their responses to the telephone survey statement where 44% of the respondents disagreed with the statement ‘I am responsible for the future and will take responsibility in the future’ and 20% refusing to take a position on the statement. Paradoxically, the respondents do assume responsibility in terms of their future teaching roles and see themselves as classroom and learning managers whose role is to, not only nurture and support student learning, but to remedy a future legacy of current educational inadequacies:
Doris: Obviously there’s are a whole load of things that we’re not teaching children . . . but no one’s doing anything about how we go about teaching them in the long run.
Researcher: So do you think that’s going to change in the future Doris?
Doris: I hope so, because it needs to. Sorry, like if we’ve got all these problems they’re going to stay the same if we don’t do something about them.
Researcher: Are we going to do something about them?
Doris: We’re going to try.
While they assume responsibility for the future learning of their charges, they do not assume responsibility for their own future professional development. It is purely within a technologies context that the respondents refer to themselves as lifelong learners. In replying to the statement ‘I will be a lifelong learner’, 99% of the respondents agreed. When queried on what they would be learning, their responses were limited to ‘technology’, ‘I don’t know’, or ‘everything’. No respondent mentioned concepts of professional development, or alluded to developing the qualities of a lifelong learner such as becoming more socially critical, more empathetic and tolerant, or developing an habituation of learning.
Discussion
Lifelong learning is integral to concepts of the future in that it is crucial to solving future environmental and social problems and to creating a socially just and equitable society (Renshaw, 2002). The respondents in this study have a very limited understanding of their responsibility for lifelong learning. It is incongruous however, that the respondents have been in a constant state of lifelong and lifewide learning. This is most obvious in their engagements with technologies and education. As ‘natives’ (Tunbridge, 1995) in the postmodern culture, they are adept at remaining current with constantly evolving technologies and novel forms of representation. They are particularly proficient in ICTs, predict that this current proficiency will continue into their personal futures, and acknowledge that within this context, they will continue to be lifelong learners. Further, they have been in a constant state of learning in terms of their current or previous twelve years of education and their present enrolment in teacher education. Within the parameters of these two contexts they have indeed taken responsibility for their learning and ultimately their personal futures. However, as noted, the respondents do not associate lifelong learning with their future careers. An examination of their visions for their future classrooms and their future roles as teacher provides some indication of why this might be.
At the time of initial data collection, the majority of respondents were at an early stage of their professional development where they were constructing themselves as a neophyte teacher by partially drawing upon their twelve or more years apprenticeship as a classroom student and classroom observer (Britzman, 2003). Their visions of future classrooms and themselves as teaching professionals reflect this apprenticeship in that there is no appreciable difference between existing and past educational structures, practices, and pedagogies and those predicted for the future:
Researcher: Pretend you’ve come back here (from the future) and you’re telling me what it (school) looks like. Would I recognise it? If I go there I’d say ‘oh yeah, same as always’?
Rex: I think so. . . Schools haven’t changed much over the last two hundred years. It’s still school. It might be shinier, more flashing lights, but I think it’ll be basically the same.
Researcher: Still run the same?
Rex: I’d say so.
Kiama: Yeah.
Researcher: . . . Is that going to be good?
Kiama: I think so. Worked when I was there.
Midori: Yeah I think it’ll be good. It worked when I was there as well so.
Researcher: If it’s not broke don’t fix it, or something like that?
Kiama: Yeah something like that.
The above sentiment is also reflected in their predicted future roles as teachers where they will interact in familiar and predictable ways with students whose engagement with learning will have altered little. Given that there is no appreciable change in future classroom structures and teaching processes, professional development, as a type of adult lifelong learning, becomes incongruous and superfluous.
The respondents’ dismal predictions for their future professional lives are not supported by educational organisations and bodies. Perpetual change is impacting and will continue to impact the teaching profession, specifically in how the profession is constructed. Future teachers will be ‘new kinds of people engaged in new social practices’ in new forms of workplaces (Gee, Hull, and Lankshear, 1996, p.xvii). These new social practices include being technologically, socially, environmentally, and culturally literate and able to manage the complexities of a constantly changing, increasingly diverse, and technology and knowledge-rich society (Australian Council of Deans of Education, 2001). This means embracing flexibility, being creative and innovative in content delivery, curriculum design, use of resources, and meeting students’ needs. It also means being self-transforming, committed, self-supervising, self-satisfied, and self-assessing of one’s skills and performances (Sachs, 2003).
Education Queensland (2000) has developed curriculum reforms (The New Basics) that presuppose teachers’ ability to engage in new social practices and to be new kinds of people and then to translate this into relevant teaching and learning experiences. The New Basics speaks of engaging in new Discourses for new times and include:
- having competency with print and electronic media;
- having critical thinking and self-analytical skills;
- having an ability to cope with complex community changes and uncertainty;
- being educable for retraining across the lifespan through a range of media.
These four Discourses are essentially different manifestations of the Discourse of lifelong learning. They are fundamental prerequisites for an activist teaching professional (Sachs, 2003) and position the future teacher with the practical and cognitive tools to manage their changing contexts. However, that teachers are resistant to change and to adopting new Discourses is well documented (Fullan, 1993). Lortie (1975) argues that the very nature of the teaching profession precludes it from attracting change agents. Teaching is a conservative occupation and tends to attract people who approve and support existing practices in education rather than are critical of it. The preservice teachers in this study with their predictable and conservative images of future classroom practices seem to support Lortie’s argument.
Educational change, such as that proposed by Education Queensland, is most successful when the individual and the institution share and work towards a similar vision and goal (Fullan, 1993). The futures vision currently being espoused by Education Queensland (2000) and other academic bodies (Australian Council for the Deans of Education, 2001) is one that predicts new industries, new work practices, new economies, new skills, and new knowledges. The preservice teachers in this study certainly have a futures vision but it is one that does not feature novelty and newness and as such does not require engagement in lifelong learning. Under these circumstances it would seem appropriate for Education Queensland to support these neophyte teachers in a process of ‘unlearning’ (Sarason, 1990) prior to working towards a shared vision.
Teacher education is partially responsible for preservice teachers’ lack of positive futures vision and their disinclination towards lifelong learning and are also best placed to prepare prospective teachers with the skills, knowledges, attitudes, and abilities to be lifelong learners, problem solvers, and activist professionals. Most teacher education courses, to varying degrees, encourage preservice teachers to see themselves as socially critical change agents. This is particularly evident in courses that examine the relationship between education and society such as socio-cultural courses and curriculum courses that focus on society and the environment. These courses will often include an explicit futures perspective as part of their course content. However, this content is limited at best. Courses specifically targeting futures perspectives such as Futures Studies would seem imperative if young adults of today and our future teachers of tomorrow are going to share in and shape the common vision. Futures Studies equip young adults with the cognitive and practical tools to work towards preferable futures. Having such a vision ultimately results in a greater sense of responsibility for the future and recognition of the need for continual updating of skills, knowledges, and practices.