How education works: Teaching, Technology and Technique - book overview

 This book by Professor Jon Dron - How education works - teaching, technology and technique - is available for download for the time being and then opened for purchase as an e or print book.

The book is not too long (not quite 300 pages), consisting of  preamble (2 chapters), 3 parts (the rest of the 8 chapters) and an epilogue. Each chapter, lays out the argument, moves through the narrative and provides connections from one chapter to the next..

The book is written for the wider educational practitioner and researcher audience, with examples drawn from the school and higher education sectors.

Firstly, in the first chapters, he lays out the premises of learners' self-direction and how, when one is motivated to learn (mostly intrinsically), it does not matter how the learning transpires and what mode of delivery is used. In the long run, learners will learn, if they want to!

The 'role' of technology is discussed in chapter 3 and extended in chapter 4 with the call to view the deployment of technology, in a holistic manner. Technology is not a solution but a means, which works for many but perhaps not for all.

Chapter 5 then puts forward the premise that it is our interaction with technology, not the technology itself, which is the key to understanding how technology can be usefully used to support, enhance learning - not only for content, but for constructivist learning to occur. Technology is both a conduit and assistant, not just for access of content. He posits that the application of technology could be 'soft' (flexible, distributed, complex etc.) or 'hard' (reliable, regular, structured etc.)

From chapters 6 to 8, the connections between how learning occurs, and the affordances from technology are discussed. Firstly, that learning is distributed and this allows technologies to provision access to this web or network of learning (Chapter 6). Chapter 7 undertakes an overview of the educational theories - objective, subjective and complex - and provides some connections to the general thrust of the book, that learning is co-participative. The in chapter 8, the aspirations and direction of co-participation are discussed and pondered.

The last two chapters, performs the synthesis between the first section on technologies, and the section on learning theories. Using a series of 'case studies' from his own experiences and introduced through the previous chapters, he details the challenges inherent in through reflection and why the cases have been important in his development of a better understanding of how education happens. Chapter 9 provides the narratives and chapter 10 the discursive sections. Chapter 10 revisits the 'statements' or 'myths' he wanted to explore, dispel, support etc. bringing the argument anchoring the book, to a sort of a conclusion.

The epilogue, closes the book with encouragement for readers, to think through more clearly, what education means and how education had occurred for them. 

A thought provoking book. Clearly written with good use of examples most teachers will be able to relate to, regardless of the context they teach in. As per the quote at the beginning of the book, it is not what we do, but how we do it, that gets results. Teaching is and always will be more than making sure learners tick off a series of learning outcomes, pass assessments, or attain high grades. It is about understanding what motivates learners and provisioning the tools that will help each learner, reach their potential as human beings.