Towards a New Way of Thinking about Learning and Teaching

06-06-2016

News | Adult education

Dr. habil Gábor Szécsi PhD: Current Trends in Adult Learning

The age of electronic communication is the age of opening categorical and classification boundaries. In this new space of communication the traditional distinctions between private and public, between children and adult experiences, and between male and  female spheres collapse and traditional distinctions between private and public, between children and adult experiences, and between make and female spheres collapse and disappear. In the age of electronic media, as Meyrowitz (2005, p. 29) suggests, we are experiencing “both macro-level homogenization of indentities  and micro-level fragmentation of them”.

One of the most important consequences of the openness of the new communication situations created by the use of electronic technologies is that the boundaries between childhood and adulthood once more becomes blurred. In Nail Postman’s (1994) terms, the “disappearance of childhood” is one of the convergencies of social and cultural categories experienced in the new media space.  By using electronic technologies children are routinely exposed to so called “adult information”. As Meyrowitz (2005, p. 29)  writes, “just as there is a blurring of traditional distinctions between children’s and adults’ experiences /…/, so is there a breaking down of the traditional similarities among what people of the same age or same gender experience”.

The use of the electronic technologies, therefore, has abolished the traditional pedagogical thinking, and brings in new conventions. As a result of evolving new practices which rely on electronic communication devices, communication has become an essential activity among the children, helping them acquire and share everyday information and knowledge with an intensively and efficiency that can even change the traditional pedagogical thinking. The use the new communication technologies and the involving forms of learning supports gain particular importance especially in a system of lifelong learning, which provides identical frameworks for children and adults. So there is no sense in making distinctions between the children’s and adults’ world, since new forms and technologies of learning can be developed for and applied to any age group.

The “disappearance of childhood”, accordingly, is one of the consequences of conceptual convergencies that are rooted in the increasing functional permeability of the boundaries between communication situations in the age of electronic media. Electronic communication unties us from the restrictions and limitations implied in traditional social classing and interactions. As Meyrowitz (2005, p. 30) points out: “Yet, with a wide array of electronic media, including the mobile phone, we are also liberated from the same bounded and confining experiences. We are free to choose our own networks for membership and our own level of engagement in each network. We are free, as well, to shape our degrees of connection to local space.” The expansion of electronic communication has abolished classroom enclosure and erodes the existing pedagogical norm system by this functional permeability of situational boundaries. By appearing a new virtual society, the traditional role of the teacher becomes anachronistic in this way.

The novelty of the structure and function of knowledge acquired by electronic communication, accordingly, is a consequence that affects the bases of traditional pedagogical thinking. It is a  problem which provides new scope for pedagogical researches. The effects of this problem appear more and more significant social and cultural dimensions that forces pedagogical thinking to assume a wider framework. Change has an expanding effect on the framework of the new, electronic forms of learning, adding new dimensions.  The use of electronic communication technologies sets pedagogy a big methodological challenge.

Pedagogy becomes a part of the process characterizing the scientific life of information society leads to disappearance of the traditional disciplinary boundaries. And this disciplinary openness can be regarded as a basis of a new pedagogical paradigm, which help us to form general theory of the cognitive background and consequences of the new  teaching/learning forms appearing in the new media space, and by which we can work out a methodological conception that offers appropriate solutions to the new cultural challenges.

References
Meyrowitz, J. (2005). The Rise of Glocality: New Senses of Place and Identity in the Global
Village. In K. Nyíri (Ed.), Sense of Place: The Global and the Local in Mobile Communication (pp. 21-30) Vienna: Passagen Verlag.
Postman N. (1994). The Disappearance of Childhood, New York: Vintage Books.

Dr. habil Gábor Szécsi PhD
Head of Department, University of Pécs

Original article

Last modified: 06-06-2016