Towards Third Generation Learning and Teaching: Contours of the New Learning

By Murat A. Yülek and J. G. Wissema

Descartes has said he is because he thinks. Perhaps we should say: we are because we learn. Learning is an essential human characteristic, look at children who self-learn empirically. In our times we are privileged to have special learning institutions while learning has become a hallmark of civilization. Teachers are among the key contributors to our society, but will they work the same as in the last millennia? Right now, just about everything in learning and teaching is changing. Traditional methods are replaced by newer ones and there is a host of new learning “technologies.” It is of foremost importance that societies adapt to this and that is why this book has been created. Thoughts and experiences of the brightest minds of today offer an overview of what is going on and where we are heading. 

Written in an accessible, yet academically rigorous way, this volume explores the past dynamics and future avenues of learning and teaching. Its contributors are among the brightest minds of today with knowledge, experience and vision to shed a light of learning and teaching’s past and future. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781839984624

Book preview

Towards Third Generation Learning and Teaching

Towards Third Generation Learning and Teaching

Contours of The New Learning

Edited by

Edited by Murat A. Yülek and Johan G. Wissema

Contents

Preface

Part I.            INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1. Introduction—Three Generations of Learning

Johan G. Wissema

Chapter 2. Learning in Perspective—A Brief History of the Brain and Learning Sciences

Ismail Güven

Chapter 3. Insights from Brain Research on Teaching and Learning

David A. Sousa

Part II.            DRIVING FORCES ON THE DEMAND SIDE

Chapter 4. Which Skills do Employers Want? A Case Study in a Transition Economy

Aydin Fenerli

Chapter 5. Social and Emotional Learning—The Lessons from Neuroscience

Hagar Goldberg

Part III.        DRIVING FORCES ON THE SUPPLY SIDE

Chapter 6. Habits of Mind: New Insights into Teaching and Learning

Arthur Costa, Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda

Chapter 7. Beyond the Reach of Teaching—Differentiating the Role of Phenomenologically Oriented Vignettes in Learning and Teaching from Phenomenon-Based Learning

Evi Agostini and Vasileios Symeonidis

Chapter 8. Where Immersion, Experimentation, Gaming and Learning Meet—Learning in Virtual Realities

Carla Aerts

Chapter 9. Experiencing Digital Storytelling

Khaldoun Dia-Eddine

Chapter 10. Learning by Gaming in Management

Evgeniya Kaz and Evgeniya Nekhoda

Chapter 11. The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence

Iaroslava Kharkova and Wayne Holmes

Chapter 12. Agnogenesis Breeds KakistocracyAbstract

Bruno della Chiesa

Part IV           INDUSTRY–UNIVERSITY COLLABORATION

Chapter 13. Public Education and the University

Murat A. Yülek

Chapter 14. Learning in the Industrial University

Murat A. Yülek and Ahmet Uludag

Chapter 15. A New, Effective Model of Industry–University Cooperation

Vazgen Shavarsh Melikyan

Chapter 16. Case Study—Network Young Entrepreneurs NJO

L.M. van der Mandele

Part V             CONCLUSIONS

Chapter 17. The Future of Learning

Johan G. Wissema

Notes on Contributors

Notes

Index

Preface

According to Bill Gates, it is a special time in education (The Economist, 2016). The entire world of learning and education is shaking. New insights appear almost daily. Experimental new approaches and insights are emerging rapidly and maturing at breath-taking speed.

The idea emerged to try and capture the most important developments in one volume. It soon became clear that the field of learning and education is not moving because of one or a few powerful trends. Rather, new insights and approaches come from such different worlds as educational science, information technology (IT), neurology and many others; the entire field is being put upside down.

It was obvious that a book discussing the most important drivers and backgrounds could not be written by one person; it would require collaboration between authors of quite different disciplines. And so, we invited scholars of different disciplines, from different parts of the world, established academics as well as promising new talents and writers in the twilight zone of their careers, such as, alas, one editor, to contribute.

We composed the book for students, academics, teachers, course developers, staff of overseeing (governmental) bodies and anyone interested in the fascinating subject of learning. We hope readers may gain valuable insight and inspiration from this volume.

Although the chapters follow a model—outlined in Chapter 1—they can be studied individually or in arbitrary order.

We would like to thank our authors for their enthusiastic cooperation; working with them was a delight. We also wish to thank Anthem Publishers to make this volume possible and offering invaluable assistance on the way.

Johan G. Wissema and Murat A. Yülek

Reference

The Economist. Must Try Harder. December 10th, 2016.

Part I

Introduction

Chapter 1

Introduction—Three Generations of Learning

Johan G. Wissema

The Learning Challenge

We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another. In its scale, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society. This quote, from Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chair of World Economic Forum, continues to list some of the emerging technologies: artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage and quantum computing (Schwab, 2018). He could have added neuroscience, genetic engineering, blockchain technology and a host of other new technologies that have digitization as a common base. Further in his article he writes: The demand for highly skilled workers has increased while the market for workers with less education and lower skills has decreased. The result is a job market with a strong demand at the high and low ends, but a hollowing out in the middle.

Hyperbole? Well, nobody doubts the impact of the technologies now being developed. Just about every day we are confronted with estimates of the alarming number of jobs that are going to be destroyed, making you wonder whether anyone will have a job at all in the not-too-distant future. Yet, the passage quoted above could have been written equally well in say 1880, when electrical power, (international) railways and motorized shipping, telegraph, telephone, photography, cars, motorized farming and, eventually, aviation were entering into the lives of our great-grandparents. They certainly involved all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society (op cit). Closer in time, many of us will remember the massive layoffs of administrative staff when computers became a commodity. Despite these enormous shifts, unemployment levels have remained low and not only because we work (slightly) less. How come? The answer is education. Each wave of technological change calls for workers with new skills, lured to the new professions by the early monumental salaries; think of the salaries of IT staff at the end of the previous century. This is then followed by an expansion of educational capacity, resulting in more skilled workers and a return to normal salaries. Is this going to happen again? Of course, it is, but there is one big but. Higher education has expanded significantly: in 1945, there were 500 universities across the globe, while in 2018, this has expanded to 20,000 and we should continue increasing (Willetts, 2018). The but is that we not only need more educational efforts but also an increase in the effectiveness of learning and teaching. People have a natural inclination to learn, but does this inclination vibrate with the educational system? I am always eager to learn, although I do not always like to be taught—attributed to Winston Churchill.

Three Generations of Universities—the Medieval University

An intermezzo. In the earlier work, we have distinguished three generations of universities (Wissema, 2009), starting with the Medieval Universities or First Generation Universities (1GU). The University of Bologna, established in 1158, is generally regarded as the oldest uninterrupted university but the origins of universities lie in ancient times at different locations on the globe. The objective of the 1GUs was not the pursuit of new knowledge but the protection of the wisdom of the past and the teaching of obedience to the doctrines of the church. Universities were not armed for the conquest of science, born as they were in an epoch when the only question was to preserve the deposit of traditional beliefs. They commented and discussed, they invented nothing. They wore themselves out in subtleties, in fine distinctions, in quibbling. But they laid the ground for the great harvests of the sixteenth and following centuries (Rüegg, 2004).

Le Goff points out: It should be noted that nothing could become an object of conscious reflection in the Middle Ages except by way of religion. It would almost be possible to define the medieval mentality by its inability to express itself apart from religious references. This remains as late as the sixteenth century. Craft guilds would make the tools of their trade attributes of a saint, integrated in a hagiographic legend.… During the Middle Ages technical progress was perceived as a miracle, as a domination of nature which could have no origin than divine grace (Le Goff, 2016).

The Second Generation University

While the 1GU were spreading out over Europe and later Latin America, the Renaissance induced the development of the modern scientific method. The scientific method gained considerable momentum under the influence of the Enlightenment, a philosophical movement emerging in the mid-eighteenth century, that advocated, among other things, reason as the basis of analysis and decision making. Conclusions about the workings of nature became based on objective evidence, rather than the teachings of ancient scholars. Think of Leonardo da Vinci who dissected bodies to see how they were really composed, instead of relying on the anatomical atlases of Galen and other Roman physicians. The scientific method was developed outside the universities, most of which strongly opposed it. As an exception, in the fifteenth century, the University of Salamanca made great strides in navigation, which eventually enabled Columbus to prepare for his trip to discover America. It taught the forbidden Copernican system while Galileo was in prison.

The scientific method led to the creation of new universities, the Second Generation Universities (2GU), the first being the University of Berlin, now called Humboldt University after its founder Wilhelm von Humboldt, established in 1810 in the latter years of the Napoleonic era. The foremost objective of these universities is the exploits of science, with teaching in its slipstream. Teaching in Berlin was given in German, rather than Latin, the lingua franca of the 1GU. Universities gradually adopted the new model during the nineteenth century while their numbers and geographical spread expanded greatly.

The Third Generation University

In the mid-twentieth century, the 2GU were challenged by a number of developments that are the driving force of a gradual change to a new paradigm, the Third Generation University (3GU). One development was the vast increase of student numbers as of the 1960s which forced universities to adopt new teaching methods in order not to become learning factories. The emergence of multidisciplinary and later transdisciplinary research was another development. Faculties lost their significance in advanced research and were substituted by interdisciplinary research institutes that focus on subjects and not disciplines. Globalization meant that the three markets—for students, academics and contract research projects—became international, forcing universities to adopt English as the new lingua franca. The nineteenth-century universities were not involved in the application of their research findings; all great new technologies—the steam engine, telegraph, telephone and photography, you name it, were developed outside the universities. In contrast, 3GU are active in commercializing their know-how and stimulating students to start their own technology-based firms, resulting in technological valleys all over the world. Commercialization adds a third objective to universities in addition to teaching and research. One cannot say that the 3GU model substitutes the 2GU one; only advanced universities pursue that road while others stay in the 2GU mode or even the 1GU mode with teaching as their only objective.

Learning and Teaching—Classical Learning

Back to learning. Parallel to the development of universities, we can distinguish three stages in learning and teaching which we will call Classical Learning, Industrialized Learning and New Learning. This concept forms the thread of this book, and we will discuss the stages in brief.

Classical or First-Generation Learning is characterized by the direct interaction between teacher and student. The picture is familiar: the teacher in front of the classroom the sage on the stage—transfers his knowledge to students who sit on benches and make notes. It was practised in antiquity—Socrates challenging his students at the agora—and the Middle Ages, and it still comprises a considerable part of our learning system, especially in postgraduate courses. The method is perhaps much older; think of the Stone Age when fathers were teaching their sons how to position themselves in the wind lest the bear smell them. Some of today’s lectures are interactive, others are monologues. Direct interaction between students and teacher does not mean something like private lessons or small group teaching; thousands of students came to hear Abélard (1079–1142), and other famous scholars during the Middle Ages.

Learning was and is a container concept that incorporates such different things as:

Instruction, that is communicating indisputable facts, like telling a child the difference between a chair and a table or an electrician that the brown wire is plus and the blue one minus.

Talent development, as in art schools but likewise for practically every profession.

The art to solve problems or mysteries, as in scientific research and analytical activities.

Learning social skills and empathy.

Industrial Learning

After Napoleonic times, learning became increasingly industrialized. Industrial Learning, overlaying Classical Learning, constitutes the bulk of today’s learning. Born in Prussia around 1794—hence after the onset of the Industrial Revolution—Industrial Learning has all the elements of this revolution such as:

Specialization: the number of professions and scientific disciplines expanded, and their content narrowed. It has exploded since WW II, scientists tended to know ever more about ever less. The Renaissance man, who could muster several disciplines, all but disappeared. Secondary school learning is also specialized, according to the intellectual level of students, their age, the trade taught and so on. The higher up the teaching ladder, the more specialized the courses.

Standardization: courses, diplomas, students and teachers all became standardized by the government. Just as a label saying 1 kg of sugar tells the consumer that the bag contains sugar, not salt and a bit more than 1,000 gms of it, the school or university diploma tells employers what they buy. School and university courses became standardized and so did diplomas. In contrast to the Middle Ages, it did not matter much in the Industrial Era at which university you would study or to which school you went. Students became standardized as well: the labels first-, second- and third-year students and diplomas in subjects A, B or C tell us what is in the pack. Teachers likewise became standardized with their various standardized professional qualifications.

Synchronization: education is connected seamlessly to employment, with diploma being the linking pin. Diplomas are the communication tool between graduates and employers. Different types of schools and universities are interlinked, students can, to a certain extent, switch seamlessly from school to university and school to work, perhaps with the route of vocational education in between.

Concentration: schools and universities became ever larger until they have become true learning factories. In universities, personal contact is usually confined to the later years; exams—often multiple choice that housewives or computers can mark—have become likewise industrialized.

Maximization: output of schools and institutes of higher learning was maximized as the more education, the more prosperity; in addition, there should be equal chances for everyone. For this reason, education enjoys high esteem by politicians and employers. This esteem, however, makes the system very resistant to change. Maximization applies to quantity as well as the quality of education with institutes competing for the best results, best meaning for instance the percentage of pupils that pass the school exam. Educational institutes increasingly became the subject of all kinds of (quality) measurement, often a hobby of bureaucrats, except for the useful Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA test), a competition between 15-year olds in science, math and teaching skills, commissioned by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Universities boast of their production of scientific papers, just like a car manufacturer boasts about the number of cars produced.

Centralization: in just about every country, the Ministry of Education sits at the top of the National Education System. The Ministry designs the educational system, and implements, finances and controls it. In addition, it approves, or designs, courses, certifies teachers, sets examination targets and often conducts the exams itself. So, Big Education Brother is omnipresent. No part of society is further from free-market principles than education, except for the military, the police or the fire brigade.

The emerging Industrial Learning has been challenged since the Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century; think of the attempts at modernization by Rousseau and contemporaries. These experiments died out until the late nineteenth century. At the end of that century, a multitude of experimental new school types has emerged, some now well-established, like the Montessori schools. Schools and universities experiment with new types of teaching and learning. Distance learning has become a well-established dish on the menu. Home teaching has grown although it is statistically insignificant. Although the changes are only marginal in scale, we may say that the current educational and learning system is Industrial Plus. See Chapter 2 for a more educated history of learning.

Brain research has led to a rapidly increasing corpus of insights into how the brain works. As subsequent chapters will show, these insights are pervasive throughout this book. To help readers, Chapter 3 presents an overview of the workings of the brain and how the new insights influence teaching and learning. One cannot study learning and teaching unless one has a good understanding of the workings of the brain and the new insights that bubble in every day.

This chapter, Chapter 2 on the history of learning and teaching and Chapter 3 on the insights from brain research, together constitute Part I of this book—Introduction.

Challenges to Industrial Learning—Driving Forces on the Demand Side

Recent decades have seen strong forces of change that impact the way we look at teaching and learning. We distinguish driving forces on the demand side (coming from those who benefit from learning, that is students and employers) respectively the supply side (the technology of learning and teaching). Part II of this book (Chapters 4 and 5) is devoted to the changes on the demand side.

Let us start with students and pupils. New generations of pupils and students demand different approaches to education. While there is much hot air in the discussion about the millennials, it is undeniable that young cohorts of school leavers and graduates have different career objectives than previous generations. The youth of today take fewer drugs and alcohol than those before them, they enter sex at later ages and stay at home longer. They are less violent than they used to be (The Economist, 2018a). Millennials seek challenges more than money, they want to work for a coach, not a boss, they want to substitute the annual job evaluation for ongoing discussion in which attention is given to strengths, not weaknesses. Most of all, they focus on life, rather than the job; status does not interest them and many don’t own a car, let alone a bling-bling one (Currid-Halkett, 2017). Millennials are twice as likely to invest in so-called responsible companies and are twice as likely to exit investments because of objectionable corporate activity as the average investor (World Economic Forum 2014). They don’t fit well in the current labor market; no surprise then that 55 percent of them feel unengaged at work. Millennials don’t aspire to ideologies; they want to optimize their immediate living conditions. Employers complain that millennials are selfish and inhibit no loyalty: on their first day of employment, they start searching the net for the next and better job (The Washington Post, 2016). The new generations want to design their own courses and even have a say (or the highest say) in the management of educational institutions.

Already for many years, human resource (HR) practitioners advocate focus on human development, yet, in many enterprises, employees are considered cost factors that can be disposed of as easily as garbage in a household. The changes on the employers’ side are enhanced by what Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The idea is that the First Industrial Revolution used steam water and power to mechanize production, the Second used electric power, the Third uses electronics and information technology to automate production. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third. It is the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres (quoted from the World Economic Forum website). We would add that the requirements of the digital age not only make it mandatory for specialists to be engaged in teamwork, but that most of them should have mastered more than one specialization. We have called this transdisciplinary research and development—more specialists sit around the table than people. It followed mono-disciplinary, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and development (R&D). Harrison has argued that significant changes be made to single-discipline programs (Harrison, 2017). All this means that students must prepare bespoke courses with one eye on the market and one on what they find interesting and motivating. Chapter 4 reports on some remarkable changes in the attitudes of employers in a transition economy; however, the lessons from this chapter apply elsewhere.

From all sides of society, there is a strong demand for better social skills (soft skills). One reason is that the vast majority of projects are carried out by multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary teams. Team members then have to learn how to communicate across the languages of their own discipline. Another reason might be that our society is increasingly open, and actions must be communicated to stakeholders and often also to the public. Industrial learning institutes have focused on cognitive learning, leaving the learning of social skills to the private domain. There is opposition against the notion that learning is just a matter of cost/benefit analysis. Nancy Rothwell, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester, posits that university courses are not only a purely financial investment. Studying at universities should be a unique and transformational experience, challenge your principles, take you out of your comfort zone (Rothwell, 2016). Soft skills will become an integral part of just about any course, whether at kindergarten or university. Chapter 5 offers a compelling argument why teaching social skills—as an independent discipline as well as a coaching tool for students—need to be part of any curriculum.

If courses become individualized, what will be the role of diplomas? There are two kinds of exams: output exams, which give evidence that a certain course has been passed successfully, and input exams, for instance, for admitting students to higher education; job applications can also be considered for entrance exams. Successful output exams are rewarded by diplomas. Output diplomas have two functions. For the student, they are highly motivational, vide the elaborate ceremonies followed by frivolous parties when a course is finally crowned with a diploma. For society, diplomas serve as an intermediary between graduate and the employer—the 1 kg of sugar label. Is this still satisfactory? In the words of former Financial Times columnist and current teacher, Lucy Kellaway (2021): The point of education as currently configured is as a signaling device to universities and employers—students with the right exam scores are allowed on to the next phase of life. The children need the qualifications not to understand the world, but to make their way in it. It seems daft to make students sit exams in all subjects. There seems no good reason why they shouldn’t sit exams only in core subjects, leaving the rest of the time free to be inspired, educated and stretched in something more intrinsically interesting than parroting exam technique. This way, half of education would send signals to employers and universities and determine which students should get the place or the job. The other half would help the survive there once they’d landed it.

Driving Forces on the Supply Side

The multitude of new insights and practices in learning and teaching creates a turbulent field, especially as they come from entirely different disciplines, from psychology via pedagogical research to neurology and much else. In Part III (Chapters 6–12), we will explore some of the driving forces on the supply side without claiming to deal with all that is presented.

We begin with psychology. As we grow up, we create, consciously or subconsciously, habits in our thinking and acting that often turn out to be wholly or partly dysfunctional. The first step toward improvement is of course awareness; given that, a process of de-learning and learning better habits can set in. The educational institution can create an atmosphere in which this change of habits is stimulated. For a comprehensive approach, based on original research and much experimenting, turn to Chapter 6.

In phenomenon-based learning (The Economist, 2016), as in Stanford’s d.school, Maastricht’s Medical Faculty, Finland’s Design Factory and practices at Olin University, students work on a project, either alone or in a team, in which they have to solve a problem or make a design. The teacher becomes a coach rather than an instructor. Phenomenon-based learning builds on problem-based learning, which has been around for several decades (Schwartz et al., 2001). The case study approach in business schools can be regarded as problem-based learning. The common base is that being faced with a challenge turns out to be much more motivating than, say, learning Chapters 14–19. Chapter 7 explores the theory and practice of phenomenon-based learning.

The Internet already has a vast impact, partly because of specialized companies that put courses on the market—Udacity, Coursera, EdX and so on. One such company, Kahn Academy, has six million subscribers who solve three million math problems each day. In Russia, universities like Tomsk State University have specialized units that design online courses, for their own students or anyone who wants to use them. The popularity of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a rather primitive way of learning, has taken great flight.

An entirely new way of learning takes up the popularity of (video) games. But it is older than that; children have always learned from games, long before they became computerized or part of the Internet. Virtual reality adds a layer on top of gaming and makes it more intense. Augmented reality offers enormous possibilities for learning. Learning with virtual reality and augmented reality together is called immersive learning. Chapter 8 gives a contemporary state of the art.

One of the delights of old age is telling stories to one’s grandchildren. Together with the imitation of adults, it is perhaps the oldest way of learning. Storytelling is enhanced when children start to read books themselves—and that is usually where it ends, cognitive learning taking over. Or is it? Recently, a new form of learning has been introduced—digital storytelling—that can be applied at all levels of education and that turns out to be very powerful. Chapter 9 provides an introduction with experiences and examples.

Another way of learning from ancient times is by playing games. Cubs do it and for children, it is a great delight. Not surprisingly, modern pedagogues, notably Maria Montessori, have adapted it for use in education. Nowadays, gaming is a new and powerful tool that can be used in all levels of education. See Chapter 10 for backgrounds and stunning results of gaming and an example of gamification in management training courses.

This brings us to artificial intelligence (AI). Despite much publicity, AI-assisted learning is still in its infancy, but it holds vast promises. AI and machine learning will improve the process of scientific discovery, says Demis Hassabis, a co-founder of Deep Mind, the company known for its program to defeat the world’s best Go-players. Robots at the University of