A reflection on two texts by John Seely Brown:
“Learning Working & Playing in the Digital Age” (1999) and “Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0” (2008)

Learning in the digital age lets us resume long-forgotten postures of joyful, explorative play.

Behaviors that John Seely Brown found emblematic of social learning mirror those practiced first by young children: reaching out into the world, exploring, multi-processing, testing the waters of what it means “to know” and “to be”.

With the heady confidence of youth and little knowledge or fear of failure, children engage head-first and hands-on with new concepts, materials, and mediums. Think of a child picking up a cellphone, unsure of what it is or how to use it, but certain that he wants to find out. Think of a group of children co-constructing and enacting wild stories in real time. Think of a toddler’s joy in using blocks to build a castle, delighted with her self-efficacy, only to find even greater joy in knocking it down to begin again.

Most of us start out in this world taking wobbly steps around what Vimeo creator Zach Klein calls the “virtuous cycle of curiosity: discovering, trying, failing, and growing” (How Minecraft and Duct Tape Wallets Prepare Our Kids for Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet). Our early school environments often allowed for and even encouraged play, experimentation, and social engagement.

Later, though, in classrooms built for the industrial society of the 20th century, we were socialized to learn obedience, respect hierarchy, and follow schedules (Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade). In this environment, we grew out of our early behaviors of playful social learning towards an adult worldview structured around what Brown calls the Cartesian epistemology:  “I think, therefore I am.” Cognitivism’s insistence on transmission and reception of the “substance” of knowledge introduced an element of fear into the early childhood joy of learning.

If knowledge is a substance to be gained, you either have it or you don’t. And if you don’t, you should be afraid: of losing face, of repercussions, of your own inadequacy. Carol Dweck’s work on mindsets showed that fear and a fixed-growth mindset are intimately linked and that neither are conducive to transformative learning (Mindset, 2006).

Yet, as we moved through our established Cartesian world, the very underpinnings of communication, working, and knowing were changing in the airspaces around us. As we walked down our one-way path toward the finish line of “Knowledge Gained”, the road took on other lanes, intersected and tangled with our neighbors’, and lost its linearity, until the path of knowledge was no longer a road but more an infinitely interwoven web.

Designing New Learning Environments

The once-dominant Cartesian perspective of knowledge is now a passé reminder of our limited understanding of learning in the pre-Internet world. Still, despite having fallen out of favor with progressive thinkers, educators, and learning scientists, cognitivism seems to maintain a remarkably tenacious hold on much of the American educational system.

As an instructor in higher education, I have a responsibility to my students and colleagues to refine my practice based on our ever-evolving understanding of learning. I remind myself to release my need for absolute control in the classroom, however uncomfortable this may be, to allow students’ playful exploration to emerge.

Using what we now know about learning in the Web 2.0 era, per John Seely Brown’s insightful texts, here are 3 ways to address learners’ emotions when designing constructivist learning ecosystems:

Fear

A transformative social learning ecosystem requires a collective redefinition of failure. Failure and its friend Fear together form a 5-story roadblock on learners’ paths of playful exploration.

By showing students that knowledge is not something they have to gain, but rather something that they help to create, the terror of failure begins to fade. Instructors as facilitators can create a culture of benign failure by assessing students’ processes instead of products. This shift would not require a dramatic overhaul of the standard grade-based system. Alternately, allowing programs to accept more pass/fail classes would encourage students to explore unfamiliar and challenging subjects.

Love

Brown’s writings indicate that students seek out opportunities to engage in legitimate participation in their chosen communities of inquiry. The promise that one’s work can make a meaningful, if minor, contribution to the greater world outside of school can be powerfully motivating.

Here in New Orleans, a friendly acquaintance of mine and former Teach for America educator recently developed a program to facilitate her students’ processes of enculturation through project-based community service. She has reached out to establish partnerships with leaders of a variety of non-profits throughout the local community. Community leaders identified ways in which students could make significant project-based contributions to their work at hand. Students were grouped according to their self-professed interests and matched with the organizations to begin a year-long process of mentorship and engagement.

Modern forms of apprenticeship are also taking place in our Penn State community. Over the course of the Summer 2015 semester, a group of Penn State Fayette students participated in the Pathway to Success: Summer Start program, beginning college a semester early to improve their English and math skills while working to earn money for school expenses. Of the students participating in the program, four worked on a project to make instructional materials accessible for their visually impaired and hearing impaired peers. Cheryl Tkacs, the instructional designer overseeing the project, found that “[the students] were all very eager, they learned quickly, and they had a wonderful work ethic as well.” (Students Make Course Content Accessible During Summer Program)

Joy

Meeting learners at their level helps educators to tap into their individual sources of joy. Assessing prior understanding and interest allows teachers to start instruction where it’s needed. Asking learners to engage in self-reflective practices like writing in a blog can help to draw out this information. By encouraging introspection and self-analysis, we guide students to develop the metacognitive processes they will need to be active life-long learners.