I heard Shintaro Kakutani’s talk at Kaigi on Rails, an engineering conference. The talk introduced the background that led to translating Jeremy Evans’s programming book “Polished Ruby Programming.” Kakutani’s talks always introduce a lot of knowledge behind the topic, so when I have room, I try to dig deeper.

Polishing on “Polished Ruby Programming” by Kakutani Shintaro - Kaigi on Rails 2021 _Jeremy Evans’s Polished Ruby._kaigionrails.org

In that talk, I found that the book “Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation” was introduced. When I checked its contents, I realized that I lacked classical knowledge about education. I think I understood most of what the book said, but I did not know the knowledge introduced as background for how such theories emerged.

For educational knowledge, I had thought it would be enough to follow: 1. advanced case studies using technology, which I had long been interested in, 2. research using education and data analysis, represented by people such as Yusuke Narita and Makiko Nakamuro, and 3. trendy ideas such as grit. That assumption was overturned.

So I decided to go back and broadly cover the educational philosophy side. Specifically, John Dewey, Dick Bruna, and Jerome Bruner. In short, on the philosophical side, pragmatism, and on the educational side, educational psychology, were areas I had not had many chances to touch.

I had read Ivan Illich, Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Plato, Rousseau, and so on as personal interests.

My understanding is still shallow, but I wanted to summarize my thoughts after a quick reading, so I wrote this article.

What I misunderstood

I thought Salman Khan, Christensen, and others were pushing forward flipped learning and mastery learning. Specifically, I thought so after watching the video below.

https://www.ted.com/talks/sal_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education?language=ja

From there I read Salman Khan’s book and understood Salman Khan as the person thinking about and promoting mastery learning. Based on that background, I wrote the article below.

How the education industry will change after 2020, or how it should change _A review of EdTech trends before 2020_geeknees.medium.com

I am not saying Salman Khan claimed to have invented the concept of mastery learning, nor do I mean to reduce the achievement of trying to implement mastery learning.

In fact, the concept of mastery learning was proposed 50 years ago by Jerome Bruner, the idea of personalization was proposed 100 years ago by John Dewey, and the emphasis on experience over knowledge was proposed more than 250 years ago by Rousseau. The importance of active learning had long been actively discussed. I had misunderstood that.

Even if Rousseau is too far back, it means concepts created more than 100 years ago have still not been realized. That raises the question: why has active learning not replaced passive learning until now?

Why has active learning not replaced passive learning until now?

If the concept of active learning had been created by the emergence of technology, or the internet, then we could hope that active learning would become mainstream. However, the truth seems to be that active learning was spotlighted again by the emergence of technology.

If so, we may fall into a trap if we overlook why it could not be realized until now. Honestly, I do not have an answer at this point. So for now, I will only list hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1: passive learning is more effective than active learning, or we cannot measure which is better

Measuring learning effect is extremely difficult, because you first have to define what counts as an effect in learning.

In addition, variables in learning outcomes are not decided by one factor such as learning method, and the measurement period is long.

A direction for solutions may be to start by clarifying what elements exist, what data has been collected, and whether there is a mechanism for stakeholders to share openly.

Hypothesis 2: teachers cannot adapt to active learning, or securing teacher resources is difficult

If you think about learning in terms of productivity per teacher, this hypothesis appears. There may be individual teacher issues, and the number of teachers needed to teach all students may increase.

There is also a view that active learning reduces the number of teachers, so perhaps the cost of changing teachers’ skill sets is large.

A realistic direction is to avoid wasting existing teachers’ skills, while asking newly hired teachers for different skills and switching gradually. At the same time, increase opportunities for existing teachers to use their skills while acquiring different ones.

Hypothesis 3: what people ask from educational institutions is not education, or not only education

For example, people may ask educational institutions to make children follow discipline and get used to group life, or to provide a safe place to take care of children.

Who asks for it also matters. There may be patterns where the administration asks for it, and patterns where guardians ask for it.

If we take companies at their word, they appeal to the importance of active talent, so there is a chance to break through. On the other hand, Japanese companies’ own training systems also seem based on passive learning and may be an obstacle.

A direction for solutions is first data collection. Even in public education, actively surveying guardians and sharing data seems good. Mechanisms for co-creation through workshops may also be effective.

Hypothesis 4: existing facilities, such as classrooms, are obstacles to active learning

This is the case where equipment such as desks and blackboards becomes an obstacle. Sunk costs may prevent change. Textbooks, teaching materials, and teacher manuals may also be obstacles.

This is the innovator’s dilemma. The common answer is a startup-like approach, such as special schools or using private-sector strength. I do not know whether it is correct. It may also be possible to think like a big cleanup and boldly discard things with low usage.

Hypothesis 5: universal values in education, and the skills everyone should equally acquire, are undefined or too many

This is slightly complicated, but even when advancing active learning and individual optimization, there are still skills and values that everyone should equally acquire.

For example, respecting people around you. These universal values are not shared across all stakeholders, or their volume is too large.

This overlaps with Hypothesis 1, but the first step is discussion. On the other hand, it will become ideological and may become emotional. My personal opinion is to start from early childhood education, and to include women, foreigners, and others in diverse discussions.

Hypothesis 6: compulsory, general education and higher education are not distinguished

General education, where it is good for everyone to be able to do the same things, and higher education, where doing something different from others has value, have different natures. It may be easier to understand by separating reading and writing from research in a laboratory. I feel problems occur because these two are not separated.

The particular problem is that general education cannot shift to active learning. It may be better to proceed as two discussions: how far compulsory education should provide things, separated from higher education, and how higher education should be established as a community.

Hypothesis 7: conventional learning and active learning were placed in opposition

I have written various hypotheses, but what I ultimately think is that conventional learning and active learning were placed on an axis of opposition. I came to think the important perspective is how to preserve the good parts of conventional learning while updating it into active learning. Opposition creates rigidity. If we want to update education, we need to face this.

I want to continue digging deeper into the field of education.