1. Who should control
education?
Prof. Oleg Liber
Institute for Educational Cybernetics
University of Bolton

2. Education is a Human Right
"Everyone has the right to education.
Education shall be free, at least in the
elementary and fundamental stages.
Elementary education shall be
compulsory. Technical and professional
education shall be made generally
available and higher education shall be
equally accessible to all on the basis of
merit”
Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
Article 26

3. Education is a Human Right
"The States Parties ... recognize the right of
everyone to education.... Education shall enable
all persons to participate effectively in a free
society, promote understanding, tolerance and
friendship among ... racial, ethnic or religious
groups.... Primary education shall be compulsory
and available free to all... Secondary education ...
including technical and vocational secondary
education, shall be made generally available and
accessible to all.... Higher education shall be
made equally accessible to all....“
--
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultur
, Article 13

4. Shared Understanding? Primary
Education:
In UK ends at age 11, but in Denmark at age 16!

5. Shared Understanding? Secondary
Education:
“Secondary schools have been
generally the great disappointment of
the 20th century. They have been too
big, too demoralised, distanced from
true learning by the national curriculum
and the hurriedness and uniformity that
it imparts, too restricting for young
adults.

6. Shared Understanding? Secondary
Education:
“The time will come when the
compulsory school age is lowered to
14 and… more teenagers averse to
school will be coupled with an older
person as their education companion
to introduce them to learning.” (Young,
2000)

7. Shared Understanding? Technical
and Vocational Education
…contrasted with Countryside Recreation &
theory and abstract Tourism
conceptual knowledge, Food and Drink
characteristic of tertiary Heritage Management
education.
Casino Operations
Management
i.e. not Law, Medicine, Golf and Sports Turf
Engineering, Dentistry, Management
Teaching, Nursing… ?
Outdoor Adventure
Management

8. What is Education for?
.... Education shall be directed to the full development of
the human personality and to the strengthening of
respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It
shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship
among ... racial or religious groups....
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26
…Education shall enable all persons to participate
effectively in a free society
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
, Article 13

9. What does Education do?
…for most men the right to learn is
curtailed by the obligation to attend
school
… attempt to expand the pedagogue's
responsibility until it engulfs his pupils'
lifetimes
…the search for… educational webs
which heighten the opportunity for each
one to transform each moment of his
living into one of learning, sharing, and
caring.
Illich (1972)

10. Everyone knows that…
Education spending is huge in the
developed world
The developing world cannot match this but
is forced to try
The Education system reinforces the cycle
of disadvantage
This is systemic

11. The promise of the computer:1980
“…the computer will enable us to so
modify the learning environment
outside the classroom that much of not
all the knowledge schools presently try
to teach with such pain and expense
and limited success will be learned, as
the child learns to talk, painlessly,
successfully, and without organized
instruction”
Seymour Papert (1980) Mindstorms, Harvester,
Brighton p.9

12. The promise of the computer:1985
Interactive content on CD ROM (or Videodisk, or CDi…)
Intelligent tutoring:
“the acme of all the educational media if they existed”
(Laurillard 1993)
The end of school?
The end of courses?
All we need is more computers!

13. Villemard postcard from 1910 depicting education in the year
2000; Bibliothèque National de France

14. The promise of eLearning 1990s
The WWW
Content distribution (and sharing)
Online discussions
Online assessment
The end of the campus?
VLEs (LMS)
All we need is bandwidth and standards

15. The promise of eLearning, 21st C
We have the technology
bandwidth
standards
software for collaboration
What’s the problem?
Why is education so unchanged?
Why has Lifelong learning come to mean
training?

16. It’s the system
“Study the theory of a system” (Deming 2000)
POSIWID – the purpose of a system is what it does (Beer
1985)
“…we have forgotten that education had any other purpose
than to promote growth” (Wolf 2002)

17. What is to be done?
• Understand (model) the system
what does it do and how?
• Recognise and acknowledge the
importance of non-formal modes of
learning
• Promote and support self-
organised learning
• give the people the tools
• Invert and find a new role for
institutions
• re-design the meta-system

18. Modelling the Education System
• Beer’s Viable System Fiv
e
Model (VSM)
Fou
• Establish the identity r
(purpose) Thre
e
• Agree recursions of the
system
• Model each recursion

19. Establishing the identity
Transformation: what is being transformed?
Actors: who effects the transformation?
Suppliers: who supplies the inputs?
Customers: who benefits?
Owners: who controls the system?
Interveners: who else matters?
Espejo, R. (1990)

20. Examples
T: Learner’s ability to control National economic growth
their future
A: Learners Teachers
S: Teachers Publishers
C: The population The national economy
O: The community The state
I: Other institutions – work, Competitors
arts, leisure

21. The State
State
Education Recursion in the
Education System
Education
Institution
HE
Dept
State
Programme
Institution
Dept.
HE

22. Recursion is important
“…fundamental processes are causing… loss of control…
processes… are needed to contain explosive disorder.
Management will need to work at the metasystemic
level. We can no longer afford to tinker with the internal
mechanisms of established institutions.”
Beer (1975) Platform for Change. Chichester, Wiley p.117

23. Viable System Model (VSM)
Environment
System
Mgt
Ve >> Vs >> Vm

24. The VSM and Education
New Education
KE Learners Education
Management
Old Education
Ve >> Vl >> Vt

25. Env. System Mgt

26. Mgt.
on-
Organization

27. 5: IDENTITY
4: INTELLIGENCE
3: OPERATIONAL
MANAGEMENT

28. 5: IDENTITY
4: INTELLIGENCE
3: OPERATIONAL
MANAGEMENT

29. 3: OPERATIONAL
MANAGEMENT
3*: monitoring 2: coordination
Rules &
Resource
bargain
MA
A
MB
B

30. 5. Policy
Five
The
Full Four
4. Strategy
Viable Three
3. Control
System
Model

31. 5. Policy
Five
Four
4. Strategy
Three
3. Control
Variety
Variety

32. How the Education System attenuates
variety: knowledge
Implied stability of knowledge
Knowledge divided into academic
subjects
Institutions into subject based
departments
Subjects into courses
Courses have linear curricula
Curricula into lessons

33. How the Education System attenuates
complexity: institutions & people
Sectors are similar
Institutions are similar
People are similar
grouped by ‘ability’
attend lessons
learn content
tested on content before
they can move to the next
course

34. Systemic implications
What?
– Syllabuses require
transmission
– Courses require timetables
– People are partitioned by
lessons
Why?
– It simplifies matters
– It works (so far)
– It is the way it has always
been

35. Pedagogic limitations
People have unique histories,
aptitudes and desires
People have different learning
approaches
People have different time
availability
Designed for transmission of
pre-defined content
Difficult to organise
– Individualised learning
– Small group learning
– Problem based learning

36. The costs of traditional education
Difficult to develop
process skills
Team skills, problem
solving skills, creative
skills, conversational
and social skills
Overspecialisation
No space for polymaths

37. Examples
Framework for evaluating e-Learning
VSM to model teaching
Identify key amplification/attenuation
Propose technological interventions

38. Students on a course
5. Steering Teacher
Env.
4. Development
3. Delivery
3* Monitoring Negotiation 2. Co-ordination
Self-organisation Learner

39. Proposed criteria
3. How does negotiation of learning take place?
2. How can a unit of learning be structured sequentially and / or
hierarchically over time? What facilities are there to organise
learners in a variety of ways in the module (whole group, small
groups, individuals)?
3*. What facilities are there to monitor the success of the unit of
learning as it runs?
What can learners do on their own, outside of the purview of the
teacher?
4. To what extent is it possible for the teacher to adapt the module
structure once teaching is underway?
Britain & Liber (2004) A Framework for pedagogical evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments. JISC
Report http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/VLE%20Full%20Report%2006.doc

40. Example
Personal Learning Environments
Start with the whole person as a viable
system
Identify where new technological
interventions can help amplify
Join up fragments

41. Multiple learning contexts
Course 1 Course 2 Course 3
Our Student

42. Joining up the fragments

43. Student on many courses
5. Self-steering
Env.
4. Self- Development
3. Self-delivery
Negotiation
Co-ordination
Monitoring
Self-organisation

44. Self management
Negotiating Learning: Steering
Env.
– Commitments to different activities
Coordinating courses: Development
– Managing time, scheduling, resources, materials, colleagues,
reading, activities, making overall sense
Delivery
Monitoring:
– Am I making progress on each course as I expected? - reflection
Self-organised collaboration
– Finding synergy between courses & activities
Development:
– New courses? New materials? New colleagues? Where next?
PDP

45. University University Provider
VLE VLE VLE
Personal technology
Social networks
Web
Knowledge

46. University University University
Serv Serv Serv
-ices -ices -ices
Personal
technology
Personal technology
Serv
Social networks -ices
Web
Knowledge

47. Real Possibilities?
University as service?
Customers or apprentices?
Separate teaching and certification?
different products
Encourage and nurture inquiry
Inquiry-based learning at the
workplace
Ensure high level interoperability
provide information, not tools
Use models and real data to manage our
work
no more blame Co-educate

48. Universities and students
Are learners part of the institution?
Is the learners part of the institution’s
environment?
Are institutions part of the learners’
environments?
Are all these “true”?
How do they affect the design of technical
systems?

49. Challenge for institutions
What is their purpose given
modern information
environment?
Re-think education – all
recursions
Make lifelong learning real
Promote and facilitate self-
organised learning
Institutional inversion (Illich)

50. Alternatives
Full deschooling?
100% self organised online
Resourced how?
The digerati
New elites… same elites?
Return to participative education - WEA
State operate as metasystem
Democratic control over our futures

51. “We are plagued by misconceptions about learning
that stem from thinking that schooling is
synonymous with education” (p162)
Gordon Pask (1982) Microman. London, Century
The daunting challenge of achieving a sustainable
society in the coming decades demands a wholesale
and urgent reorientation of educational vision and
practice.
Sterling, S. (2004). Whole systems thinking as a basis for paradigm change in
education: Explorations in the context of sustainability. Ph.D. thesis, University
of Bath. Retrieved February 28, 2005 from
http://www.bath.ac.uk/cree/sterling.htm.