On blogging - twenty years and still going!!

At the beginning of 2015, I posted my reflections on a decade of blogging. The precepts I discussed, still hold as I come up to the end of my 20th year of blogging!

One would think that in this age of AI and short communication forms (Snapchat, TikTok, X etc.), that blogging would have faded. However, SEO's article, written at the beginning of 2024, indicates that blogging is not dead! Readership of blogs is still high and seem to be a mainstay of marketers, influencers and commentators. 

However, for me, the purposes for continuing with this blog remains very similar to what was summarised 10 years ago. The blog becomes a 'one stop shop' for archiving notes and reflections from readings, found resources/websites, conference musings, and occasional rants. Having somewhere to park items one comes across in a busy work and scholarly life means that it becomes easier to organise thoughts and ideas as they consolidate. With the increase in open access articles and books, links to these resources can be archived, along with brief notes to trigger relevant searches when topics being worked on are required. 

So continuing on with blogging is more to meet my individual cognitive needs, rather than to provide a forum for others to read. If nothing else, this blog is a record of a mostly productive academic life and long may it continue :) 

Embodiment and professional learning - open access book - brief overview

 This 2021 book - Embodiment and Professional Education : Body Practice and Pedagogy is published by Springer and edited by S. Loftus and E.A. Kinsella.

Through learning, humans attain not only knowledge, but also appropriates practice. With the current discussions on AI and its impact on teaching and learning, one of the impacts is that AI replaces some of the 'doing'. It is in actual practice that we consolidate knowledge through application. Deliberate practice is required to bring mind and body into active enactment of what has been learnt. Therefore, in the current circumstances, discussions on embodiment and how this makes us human have great relevance.

The book is is open access (via UTS) and has 17 chapters.

The first chapter by the editors, summarises the main themes of the book. It calls for promoting the significance of the body in our lives as to date, it has been much neglected. 

Chapter two by B. Green introduces practice theory and concepts of corporeality and its role in professional education. The practice turn recommends bringing the body back into professional learning.

E. Swartz contributes the next chapter on 'To act as one body? collective and embodied judgement within professional action and education'. Through professional practice, which includes human relations within a social sphere, collaboration amongst professionals contribute to practical wisdom or phronesis. The chapter introduces and discusses the concepts.

S. Loftus then writes on how embodied knowledge and thinking should be the hallmark of professional education.

Two chapters on 'embodiment and professional practice' follow. T. Chemi with 'the genealogy of the actor's laboratory: making kin as embodied pedagogy' and S. DeLuca on 'theatre of carnival: a classroom for the vigilant embodied healer'.

The three chapters on 'embodiment and reflection'. E.A. Kinsella and K. S. Smith with 'I listen to my body more': embodied mindfulness in professional education; 'Body mapping to facilitate embodied reflection in professional education programmes' by H. F. Harrison and 'Ethics and embodiment in health professions education' by A. M. DeBaets.

Following on are three chapter on 'Embodiment and professional knowledge'. S. Loftus with 'Goethe and embodiment in professional education and practice'; B. Roberts with 'Neurophenomology and Professional education'; and 'Embodied learning and two-eyed seeing: indigenous and feminist perspectives in professional education' by E. Cupchik and M. Schnarr.

The last section has four chapters on the theme of 'embodiment and technology. First up, W. Kupers with ' (Re-)embodied digital education practices: Empirical vignettes about teaching and learning in 'tele-co-presence'; B. Delgarno with 'Technological affordances for embodied learning in authentic contexts'; K. Mahon on 'neoliberalised (human) bodies and implications for professional education' and R. A. Gardiner and J. Chisholm on 'Its not just one bad actor: Tracing the embodied effects of institutional sexism in the implementation of gender-based violence policies and practices.

The editors close with the last chapter to present 'implications for practice'. Overall, the book makes important contributions to better understand the processes of human learning. With the advent of AI, it is important to evaluate what makes us humans and to appreciate that processes of learning, involving holistic experiences, to prepare us to live and be in the world. Without doing and by abrogating our responsibilities to AI agents, we become less able to grapple with the complexities of life. Given the VUCA world we now live in, it is to our detriment if we place all of our reliance on using AI rather than take up the work required, to be proficient and skilled at cognitive, evaluative, tasks and critical thinking which are the hallmarks of being human.

 

NZ Government framework for AI - Public Service guidelines

The NZ Government has launched its public service AI framework. It is part of the overall NZ Government work on establishing guidelines for its National AI Strategy. The public service guidelines draw on the OECD AI principles of:

- inclusive, sustainable development

- human centred values

- transparency and explainability

- safety and security 

- accountability.

The NZ framework layers in the important concepts of the nation's biculturism. Commentary on this aspect along with the ways the principles above require much more work internationally provide material for critical reflection. Guidelines and frameworks may set the scene but it is how they are supported, adopted and persistently worked on to actually make a difference which is the important ongoing effect.

Developing curriculum for deep thinking - book overview

In this 'age of AI ascendence'  more than anytime perhaps in human history, the importance of how we learn knowledge and what is required to learn it, is more important than ever.

This Open Access Springer brief - Developing curriculum for deep learning:The knowledge revival has chapters written by authors from Europe (T, Surma, C. Vanhees, M, Wils, J, Nijlunsing, N. Crato, D, Muijs, D. Wiliam, P. A. Kirschner) Australia (J. Hattie) and New Zealand. (E. Rata).

Although the chapters have the school context at the forefront, the many concepts introduced and discussed has relevance across the all educational sectors. The books main premise is that it is important to ensure curriculum is 'knowledge-rich'. In doing, the attainment of knowledge helps to drive the learning (acquisition and practice) of crucial cognitive or thinking skills. 

There are five chapters.

After a short introductory chapter the following chapters discuss:

- How knowledge matters

- knowledge and the curriulum

Then two chapter - concluding remarks and an executive summary close the book.

Therefore the book is a short treatise (less than 100 pages) presenting the argument for the importance of ensuring that knowledge is made visible across the curriculum, and the need for content richness, coherence across the curriculum, and clarity of purpose for learning knowledge. 

Future of work report 2025 - World Economic Forum

 This year's future of work report from the World Economic Forum, provides some good information as the world of work moves into the AI age. Summaries are provided for many countries by Aotearoa New Zealand is not included.

The forces contributing to the shifts are summarised as:

- increased digital access and advances across technologies (AI, information processing, robotics and automation, energy generation, storage and distribution), all influence the ways work is carried out and how work is structured.

- cost of living and other economic impacts of inflation, economic slowdown etc. will affect job creation.

- climate change mitigation leads to the need for new skills and generates new types of work and occupations.

- demographic shifts including worldwide aging of the workforce and increasing numbers of older people, living longer puts strain on economies.

-geoeconomics and geopolitical tensions make for an unpredictable future.

Jobs predicted to grow in volume include farmworkers, delivery drivers, construction workers, sales people and food processing workers, Care economy jobs in nursing, social work, counselling etc. also to grow significantly. Technology related roles including one related to data management and green energy transition roles also set to grow.

In contrast, clerical and secretarial work is set to decline along with jobs in the postal service, banks and data entry roles.

There is a great need to ensure that analytical thinking as a core skill is attained. Other skills include workers being resilient, flexible and agile. Understanding AI and big data are also important to leverage off the potential of these technologies. 

All in, a good overview  and reference source on the current state of work and what may come in the near future.

Gen AI strategies for Australian higher education - emerging practice

 The Australian Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TESQA) published a practice toolkit for Gen AI in November 2023. 

The guide covers three dimensions of tertiary education - Process, People and Practice. Each dimension is introduced and the implications of Gen AI are detailed, discussed and evaluated. Examples from Australian tertiary institutions are provided to provide case studies. These provide good templates from which individual institutional processes, policies and procedures can be contextualised and synthesised. 

All in a good resource to mine for relevant concepts as Gen AI takes hold across the tertiary landscape. 

Plans for 2025

 It looks like another busy year coming up.

Details of what post Te Pūkenga looks like will help clarify what is likely to occur at an organisational level and some of these may affect the composition of my current work team, our lines of management, and our objectives. Whatever happens, there is still a great deal of work to do!

Firstly, we have many programmes in review. In Aotearoa, all programmes of study are reviewed every five years. The responsibility for these, devolved to Te Pūkenga 2 years ago, but only a small number of programmes were 'unified'. Hence, we now have a substantial backlog of programmes, several over 3 years beyond their review timelines, to work on and have presented to NZQA by July. Therefore, my  educational development team (down to 5 from 8) are fully occupied with working through all the programme reviews.

Secondly, AI is not going away. Capability and professional development for our teaching colleagues, has been patchy, as lines of responsibility for who does what, have been unclear since Te Pūkenga disestablishment was announced late in 2023. Te Pūkenga was at the beginning of bringing together a consolidated approach to capability and development but this all came to a halt and individual institutions have been working on financial stability, maintaining quality etc. before looking at capability.

Thirdly, I am now about half way through scoping another group of scholarship of teaching and learning projects for this year. The focus will be on integrating AI into programmes with strong practice-based learning as currently, AI has text/writing focus. Multimodality of AI is not as common as integrating AI through text. Also, it is important to have AI available in practice-based learning environments - i.e. workshops, training kitchens / salons / studios etc. plus the need to have customised / bespoke or 'wall-garden' AI tools as the generalised AI (e.g. ChatGPT, CoPilot) often do not use specialised occupational vocabulary, with information drawn on being very North American-centric.

Therefore, it looks like there is quite a bit to do, making it difficult to even think about retiring for the moment!!