INTRODUCTION THE LEARNING EDGE IN DEVELOPMENT ADB INSTITUTE: FUTURES SEARCH WORKSHOP

WORKSHOP GOALS

The ADB Institute has established, as one of the key areas of its communication and research program in the coming years, the broad relationship between learning and development. The thematic focus for this initial futures search workshop , The Learning Edge in Development has been determined with two meanings in mind. The first is to highlight the central importance of learning to the process of economic and human development. That is, societies, which focus upon and strengthen their learning systems, tend to have an edge in the process of development. The second meaning intended by the thematic focus of the workshop is the need to explore innovative and cutting edge thinking and practices regarding learning, and development. The purposes of the futures search workshop are to explore how learning systems influence the process of development, to explore how fresh conceptual frameworks, research approaches, policy initiatives and innovative practices, can strengthen, deepen, and expand the linkage between learning and development, and to provide advice to the ADB Institute on the critical issues and themes which should form the core of its program in learning and development

The workshop will bring together a diverse array of people who, through their research, advocacy, and practice, are providing new perspectives on learning and its linkage to development. Participants are drawn from the entire Asia Pacific Region and represent all levels and dimensions of the learning enterprise. The design and processes to be employed in the workshop are outlined in a separate attachment. The use of the term learning, in contrast, for example, to words such as schooling or education, as an organizing theme for the workshop, is deliberate. It is meant to convey the message that all types, contexts and processes of learning are to be examined. Successful learning describes an individuals ability to apply the appropriate tools, information, and knowledge to the solution of problems and pursuit of opportunities encountered during a lifetime. Consequently, learning can be linked to the pursuit of at least three types of goals: personal goals such as self improvement, personal mastery and spiritual fulfillment; economic goals such as gaining marketable skills and knowledge that enable individuals to support themselves and their families; and social goals that lead to greater civic participation and engagement. Learning is a purposeful process that unfolds in a diversity of contexts over a lifetime.

In this regard, it is perhaps fruitful to approach this matter from what can be called the learning architecture, or learning design, of given societies and nations. A learning architecture unfolds from a particular societys way of addressing, either consciously, or through cultural practices, the question: Who is learning what, where, when, how, and for what purpose? All societies evidence a learning architecture; that is, through their conscious intentions or historical practice, they establish the boundaries and rules for who learns what, with whom, where, when, how and for what purpose. The existence of a learning architecture is, thus, common among societies and nations. Within this commonality, however, there is an immense range of variability, based upon different ways in which nations and societies provide enabling, or limiting structures, for whom is involved in learning what, where, when, how, with whom, and for what purpose. In the dynamic world of today, significant change forces and socio-economic needs are coalescing, with new intellectual points of view, to exert strong pressures on the shape, sturdiness and sustainability of the architectures of learning of many societies. These pressures are of such a force and significance, today, as to cause many nations to seriously examine their current learning architecture and to engage in an equally serious process of redesign. Many key elements and dimensions in the learning architectures of nations are in the process of transformation, as are the processes, needs, requisites, and challenges of development. While in previous eras, it was possible to debate whether the learning systems of a nation reacted to, or led, the process of development, the dominant situation today is that learning and development exist within a pattern of dynamic interaction, change and mutual feedback. In this situation, complexity and uncertainty have increased, but so too have opportunity and the boundaries of potential. One of our greatest needs, now, is for what can perhaps be described as strategic imagination: the willingness and ability to envision new possibilities for the development of human potential and, in parallel, to conceive, explore, test, and demonstrate innovative strategies that can contribute toward making these possibilities a reality for all.

THE LEARNING ARCHITECTURE: AN EMERGING TEMPLATE As a heuristic to stimulate the strategic imagination, consider the following elements of the learning architecture, key dimensions of each element, the ways in which the pressures of change and new knowledge are impacting each, and the implications of this for the process of development.

ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENT: WHO IS LEARNING? Dimension: Participation The question of who is learning can be approached from at least two perspectives: patterns of participation and human learning capabilities. The first is a question of access and the second a matter of efficacy. Both are essential for learning to maximize its contribution to development and both are undergoing a transformation driven by new knowledge and new necessities. As an illustration, consider the following shifts in this dimension of one of the key elements of the learning architecture: SHIFT 1: From Elite to Mass Customized Participation Patterns of participation in learning in various societies, are driven by a complex combination of personal, social, cultural, and economic factors. The mere availability of the opportunity to access learning does not necessarily guarantee that people will, in fact, take advantage of these opportunities and engage in active participation. Individual choices concerning relative priorities in their lives and the allocation of their attention resources often affect decisions to participate in learning. Moreover, as studies in the field of adult and continuing education have shown, even price does not necessarily affect participation in a one to one relationship.1 Freely available learning opportunities do not necessarily mean a high level of participation or continuance in these activities. Increasing participation and continuance in learning, within any given society, then, is a much more complex matter than is often assumed. One thing however is certain amidst this complexity: without the opportunity for individuals to choose to participate in learning opportunities that are actually available to them, then the participation rate will remain stagnant. In this sense, policies and funding geared to the opportunity to learn are a necessary prerequisite to enlarging the participation rate in any society. From the perspective of social roles, different societies enable, or constrain, the participation in learning of various types of people. In this regard, there appears to be a global consensus emerging that societies, in order to energize and sustain development, must shift from elite to mass models of participation in learning. Investment in education, as Robert Barro has demonstrated through comparative factorial analysis across nations, provides one of the few enduring, cross-national indicators and sources of economic growth and development. 2 Labor force segmentation theory, in this regard, has added the important caveat that levels of learning participation and literacy, while pre-conditions for labor market participation, do not, given the segmentation of the labor market, guarantee equal access to types of labor markets or equal rewards. This approach explains, in part, the paradoxical pattern of increasing participation rates in learning by women and yet the continuance of disparities between males and females in types of jobs obtained and levels of income.3

1 2

D. Tobin, The Knowledge-Enabled Organization (NY: Jossey bass, 1998) R. Barro, The Determinants of Economic Growth (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997) 3 International Adult Literacy Study, Human Resources Canada, 1997

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing more about the interrelationships between participation in learning and relative patterns, and gains from, participation in the labor market by various groups. Labor market policy, in other words, may be a key ingredient in affecting the nature, duration, and effect of learning participation by various social gro ups in a given society. Many developing countries, however, continue to struggle to implant the resource and institutional base for mass participation in schooling, and literacy for that matter. As the charts in Appendix 1 show, in Asia there has been a marked general increase in learning participation at the primary and secondary levels, with a growing participation in tertiary education. Within this pattern of general increase, however, wide disparities exist among nations, and within nations, in terms of participation and continuance rates.4 Strategies to increase overall rates of participation in education, as a result, rightly remain a matter of high priority in development policy. In Western industrialized societies, policies such as compulsory schooling have led to the expectation that certain age groups will be required to learn, for certain periods of time, and in certain contexts. Many developing countries are struggling to design and implement such policies from both an economic as well as political perspective. Participation in learning, in terms of gender roles, also evidences change and variability. Many industrialized countries have made it a point of public and institutional policy to encourage, and in some cases mandate, that there be an increase in the percentage share of participation in schooling by females, both in terms of the level and type of education received within the overall system. Developing countries, although encouraged and assisted from many quarters to increase the participation of females in learning, often confront economic, cultural, and perceptual barriers to such participation. Participation in learning cannot be neatly abstracted from the cultural context in which it exists and, for this reason alone, financial assistance is a necessary, but not sufficient basis for its improvement. Work roles also establish expectations and constraints in terms of patterns of participation in learning. In some societies, the more formal education one has managed to obtain, the more further education one is likely to have available, with the result that the learning gap between people in different work roles widens. In other societies, a firm dividing line separates a persons role as worker and learner. And in still other societies, there is increasing talk about a new social convergence between working and learning on a continuous and mutually reinforcing basis. Participation in learning can be examined from the perspective of many other social roles: parent, senior citizen, spouse, voter etc. In such an analysis, it becomes increasingly clear that, as societies industrialize, and enter the knowledge age, participation in learning shifts from a preparatory and youthfocused pattern, to one that is lifelong, recurrent, and trans-generational in scope. How best to plan for, fund and manage such a fundamental shift in learning participation is a monumental challenge for any nation. For developing countries, in particular, this leads to the challenge of designing the participatory dimension of their learning architecture in a nonlinear manner. In other words, to somehow insure that increased participation in learning can be accommodated in ways other than a lock-step learning ladder.

See: A, Mingat, The Strategies Used By High Performing Asian Economies In Education, World Development, vol.26, no. 4, pp. 695-716.

ADB Institute Interest .The Institute is interested in knowing more about how such a nonlinear participation model can be developed and implemented in developing countries . One potential way of addressing the need for both enlarged and differentiated participation in learning is to move ones thinking beyond standardization and mass production models of education toward what has been described as mass customization. Coined by Stan Davis in reference to a marketing and production strategy in which products and services are produced for mass distribution, but can be simultaneously tailored for particular customer needs and preferences, mass customized education meets general needs for learning and provides for customized adaptations to fit the needs of particular groups. 5 Mass customization, in the design of the participatory strategies of learning systems, would allow for general access goals for the entire population, combined with targeted, flexible and affirmative access strategies for particular groups. Mature student admissions policies within higher education provide an example of a mechanism of mass customization. So too, does the use of equivalency tests e.g., GED, online learning, and credit for experiential learning. Mass customization of education requires, as it does in industry, a customercentered systems design underpinned by organizational, technological, and process innovation. Whether a mass customized approach to the simultaneous achievement of broadened and differentiated participation goals in education in developing countries can work is an open question. What seems not to be an open question is the need for developing countries to find new ways to meet a challenge that did not face industrializing nations in the early part of this century: how to design a learning system which enlarges, on a continuous and simultaneous basis, both the scale and scope of participation?

ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENT: WHO IS LEARNING? Dimension: Human Capability, Capacity and Potential The past twenty-five years have witnessed a virtual revolution in conceptions of the human mind and its potential for learning, as well as a rethinking of the grounds and nature of human intelligence. These new insights, derived from interdisciplinary research in cognitive science, linguistics, neurology, artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, pose serious questions about, and present new approaches to, the entire process of learning and education.6

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in both the validity of these views of learning, the human mind and education and the degree to which they should and can inform the relationship between education and development.
5 6

Stan Davis, Future Perfect (NY: Basic Books, 1985) See: S. Pinker, How The Mind Works (NY: Norton, 1997)

While it is impossible to fully describe, or do justice to, the vast array of theory and research in this field, several patterns appear to be emerging which are altering the learning architecture in many societies. These are briefly highlighted below.

SHIFT 2: From Reception to Construction of Knowledge For most of this century views of learning and education have been dominated by what has been described as an associationist view of mental functioning. 7 The mind, in this view, is a device for detecting patterns in the external world and operating on them. A persons knowledge of the world flows from the combination of patterns, which are observed, and operations, which are performed, in that process. Learning is the process that generates knowledge, while development is described as cumulative learning. Intelligence, within the associationist perspective, is a trait of individuals and sets limits on the rate of cumulative learning. Education is depicted as a process of controlling the contingencies in the persons environment to achieve socially desirable learning goals. The central educational technique, in the associationist model of the learner, is direct and systematic instruction followed by supervised practice. Countless classrooms at all levels of education around the world mirror, in their modes of interaction, this pattern of teacher-directed and teacher-led instruction, with students functioning as relatively passive receptacles for the absorption of knowledge and information. Wrapped around this pattern of passive receptivity has been an authority structure in the school, and other educational institutions, in which students, by and large, are inducted into compliant and rulefollowing behavior. The associationist model of learning has long dominated educational thinking, particularly in industrialized and postcolonial societies. In recent years, however, new theory and research into the nature of the human mind, intelligence, and learning have challenged the associationist model of learning. One such emerging tradition has led to what is described as a constructivist model of learning. Based upon the work of Piaget and Dewey, and extended by such scholars as Gardner, Sternberg, Langer, a different learning map emerges. 8 The mind, in the constructivist model, is conceived as an organ whose primary function is the acquisition and creation of knowledge. Learning is the process that takes place when the mind applies an existing structure, or set of categories, to a new experience, in order to understand it. Development is the long term process through which cognitive structures change allowing the mind to construct ever broader meaning. Intelligence, rather than a limiting and unevenly distributed trait, is seen as a many- faceted, adaptive capacity to change cognitive structures, which is possessed by all human beings, and which changes over time. Education is pictured as a learner centered process that involves the provision of an environment that will stimulate the construction of
7

R. Case, Changing Views of Knowledge and Their Impact on Educational Theory and Practice, in.D. Olsen and N. Torrance ed. The Handbook of Education and Human Development (London: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 75-100. 8 A current and excellent sampling of such research can be found in D. Olsen and N. Torrance above.

knowledge and promote reflection on that process. These educational goals are seen as being best pursued through a form of guided discovery, rather than direct instruction. In constructivist classrooms, or other learning settings, learners actively engage in inquiry and interaction, on an individual and group basis, with the teacher acting as a guide, mentor, and stimulator of the process. Constructivist models of learning have emerged to prominence in industrialized societies recently and are forming the basis for a deliberate redesign of learning systems in some newly industrialized nations.9 Constructivist models of learning are often associated with the quest for the development of what are called higher order thinking capacities that are demanded in an increasingly knowledge and information based economy. Constructivist models of learning also tend to underpin the calls, within the development community, for developing countries to adopt more active learning and teaching models. Models of human learning and the human mind, to a degree, reflect a given cultures conception of humanness and the values and predispositions associated with that conception. In this regard, constructivist models of learning tend to focus on the individual as the heart of the educational process. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in whether or not constructivist conceptions of the learning process are reflections of a given cultures image of what it is to be human and whether such conceptions can or should be transported across cultures? Moreover, the Institute is particularly interested in whether the tendency toward individualism, within constructivist conceptions of learning and education, stand in the way of their ready adoption in certain developing countries. Shift 3: From Cognition to Confluence The conventional learning architecture is also being re-examined in relationship to new findings about the functioning of the human brain that flow from the cognitive and neurosciences. In very general terms, the human brain, in light of this research, is pictured as modular, with the various separate regions acting in concert to allow a person to hear, smell, feel and think. These capacities, moreover, mature, at varying speeds and to varying degrees. The capacities of the human brain are not fixed at birth, but actually grow and mature partly in relation to the degree to which the person exists within a stimulating physical and social environment. Childhood, from conception to adolescence, is the optimal time for neural development, due to the exuberant connectivity and neural pruning that occurs during these years.10 Renate and Geoffrey Caine have summarized this research into a set of what they describe as mind/brain learning principles:11 The brain is a complex adaptive system: It has the capacity to function on many levels and in many ways simultaneously. The brain is a parallel processor engaging thought, emotions, imagination, predispositions, and physiological processes, all at once.

See: The Smart School: Concept and Implementation Plan (Malaysia Ministry of Education, 1997) 10 M. Diamond and J. Hopson, Magic Trees of the Mind (NY: Dutton, 1998), pp. 275289. 11 R. and G. Caine, Brain-Based Learning (ASCD, I994)

The brain is a social brain: Our brain/mind continuously changes in response to engagement with others and individuals, as a result, must always be seen as integral parts of larger social systems. The search for meaning is innate: We are purposeful human beings constantly engaged in a process of searching for meaning or making sense from our experiences. The search for meaning occurs through patterning: Our brain/mind registers the familiar and creates patterns in the unfamiliar. Emotions are crucial to patterning: What and how we learn is strongly influenced and structured by emotions and such mind set mechanisms as expectancy, personal biases, self esteem, and the need for social interaction. Every brain simultaneously perceives and creates parts and wholes: The brain/mind engages in serial thinking, breaking things into their component parts and holistic thinking creating new and higher order syntheses. Learning involves both focussed attention and peripheral perception: The brain/mind absorbs information, which is the focus of immediate attention, and information on the peripheries of that attention. Learning always involves conscious and unconscious processes: Much of our learning is unconscious, in that experience and sensory input are processed below the level of our awareness and at times other than its first encounter. Meaningful and meaningless information are organized and stored differently: Taxonomies are used to store unrelated information and autobiographical frames are employed to store information from known experiences. Learning is developmental: While the brain is plastic, there are windows of opportunity for laying down the structures for later and higher levels of learning. Complex learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat: The brain/mind makes maximum connections when appropriately challenged in an environment in which risk taking is encouraged. Every brain is uniquely organized: Within a general framework there is a range of different learning and thinking styles that vary by person, genetic inheritance and culture.

From these principles, there emerges a set of educational practices which, it is argued, match the complexity, parallelism, and potential of the human brain: Education must rethink its standardized model of learning and come to grips with the complex, multi-faceted nature of the human learner. Learning is profoundly affected by the nature of the social relationships within which people find themselves and the degree to which these relationships enable the brain/mind to exercise its true potential. Learning is enhanced when learners are involved in experiences that are meaningful to them.

Effective education involves giving learners the opportunity to formulate their own patterns of understanding in terms of a range of experiences. A supportive emotional climate is indispensable to effective education. Effective education provides a context in which the learner can engage in analytical, synthetic, association, intuitive, and meta-cognitive thinking. Developing the structures and heuristics of memory, through teaching and curriculum, are as important as what is stored in the memory. Understanding may not always occur at the point of teaching and may be delayed. Learners have multiple ways of knowing and multiple styles of learning and thus require multiple avenues within education through which to learn and demonstrate that they have learned.

Research into brain functioning, the long assumed seat of cognition, has ironically led to a broadened picture of mental functioning in which emotions, physiological processes, social settings and interactions and cognitive processes function in parallel and mutually amplify each other.12 A new confluence has emerged to challenge traditional dualisms that have pervaded particularly Western conceptions of the mind and body. 13 ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the relationship between new findings related to human brain functioning and long standing holistic conceptions of the mind and consciousness in many Asian cultures and traditions. Are we at a point in which there a new common ground is emerging between Eastern and Western conceptions of the mind and does this common ground offer a way to move ahead together in educational thinking and practice?

SHIFT 4: From Learning About to Learning by Doing A third approach to learning, which has undergone somewhat of a renaissance in recent years, can be described as a cultural model. Flowing from the work of Vygotsky, Luria and more recently Wertsch, Cole, Schweder, Lave and Rogoff, the cultural model begins with the assertion that what is distinctive about the human mind is its capacity to develop and use language, tools, other people, and other artifacts as a mediators of experience. 14 Knowledge, thus, is the creation of a social group as it engages in its daily interaction. Learning is the process of being initiated into the group so that one can assume a role in its daily praxis. Development is the emergence of capacities over time, which make this induction possible. Intelligence, from this perspective, is inherently social and is distributed across the group and tied to the tools, artifacts, and symbol systems employed by the group. Education is the process by which a community inducts the young into its culture and ways of seeing the world. The instructional
12 13

See: D. Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (NY: Free Press, 1995) See: M. Diamond and J. Hopson, Magic Trees of the Mind (NY: Dutton, 1997) 14 See: B. Rogoff, Apprenticeship In Thinking (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995), J. Lave Situated Cognition (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996), J. Wertsch, Voices of the Mind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), and L. Vygotsky, Mind in Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985)

techniques, which flow from the cultural model of learning, include collaborative learning and communities of learners. The cultural model of learning was long influential in the former Soviet Union and China. It has regained prominence in the West, particularly in the discussion of concepts of distributed learning systems, in which new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are central mediating means of learning. The view that learning is fundamentally social and cultural has found favor, as well, within certain developing countries. From an instructional viewpoint, the cultural model of learning has brought renewed interest in apprenticeship as a form of learning. Calling this form of learning cognitive apprenticeship, John Seeley Brown and Allan Collins have suggested that apprenticeship-like learning settings allow the learner to learn in the context of doing and, in a such a way, that the processes are made visible and demonstrable.15 Cognitive apprenticeship also makes processes such as problem solving and critical thinking visible to the student through observation of a model practicing them. In this way, cognitive apprenticeship models of learning hope to make knowledge come alive, unlike the inert knowledge obtained by students in most schools. To translate the model of traditional apprenticeship to cognitive apprenticeship, teachers need to identify the processes of a task and make them visible to the student, situate abstract tasks in authentic contexts so students can make the link with the real world, and vary the diversity of situations so students can articulate general principles and transfer their learning. Cognitive apprenticeship models of learning have been applied, with success, through reciprocal teaching of reading, expert models in the teaching of writing and modeling and coaching approaches to the learning of mathematics. 16 Cognitive apprenticeship models of learning have also been used as key components in the education of doctors, lawyers and other professionals, particularly in clinical and other practice settings. Cognitive apprenticeship, and the cultural models of learning upon which it rests, represents a reaction to the separation of the school, or other types of educational institutions, from its surrounding society and community. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the degree to which the extension of compulsory education, considered by many to be a critical step in the use of education for development purposes, may inadvertently, and unintentionally, lead to a separation of knowledge and skills from the context of their practice? How can educational opportunity be extended, as part of the process of development, without leading to a situation in which increasing numbers of students are distanced from the community, learning about the world, rather than learning in the context of the world? Does a distinction need to be made, in education for development, between compulsory schooling strategies, in which the learner and learning itself is decontextualized, and a strategy of extending and deepening learning through new linkages between the school and community?

15

A. Collins and J.Seeley Brown, Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Things Visible, American Educator, Winter, 1991. 16 See: C. Bereiter and M. Scardamilia, Surpassing Ourselves (Toronto: Grove, 1996)

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SHIFT 5: From Expert to Folk Knowledge

Parallel to, and perhaps underpinning each of the generic models of learning briefly sketched above, a strand of research has developed that focuses on our intuitive theories of how our own minds and those of others work. These theories are rarely made explicit and yet exert profound impact on educational practice. Such lay theories are often referred to as folk psychologies: the everyday lens through which people understand and interpret how their minds and the minds of others work. Another way of saying this is that people carry with them mental models of how their minds and the minds of others work. Thus, parents have mental models of how the minds of their children work, teachers have mental models of how the minds of their students work, supervisors have mental models of how the minds of their employees work etc. The reverse of this process is also operative. Research has shown that children have mental models of how their minds work and of how the minds of their parents and teachers work. 17 Based upon these folk psychologies, teachers, and others engaged in facilitating learning in a culture, adopt what can be called folk pedagogies; a cluster of strategies and techniques, formed in the ambient of their conceptions of the mind, that are assumed to facilitate the learning of others. In theorizing about, or attempting to improve or change the practice of education in a classroom or any other learning setting, it becomes important to take into account the pre-existing folk psychologies and folk pedagogies already possessed by those engaged in the process. The reason for this, according to Jerome Bruner, is that any innovation will have to compete with, replace, adjust or otherwise deal with these pre- existing mental models. The following chart, based on the work of Jerome Bruner and David Olsen, provides one example of the relationship between folk psychologies and the folk pedagogies, which flow from them.18 One does not have to accept the specific formulations of Bruner and Olsen to appreciate the power of the chart itself. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in what we really know about the folk psychologies and folk pedagogies, which are operative in developing countries? Are they similar to those in industrialized countries? Are they different? If they are different, do the differences reflect particular stages in the development process, particular colonial relationships, and the nature of the culture or other factors? Moreover, what difference would such differences make in term of how we conceive of, and engage in, the process of education for development? Far too often interventions in the learning or schooling process that are designed to improve the effectiveness of education, whether in the context of development or not, fail to understand, or perhaps even ignore, the constraining power of pre-existing folk psychologies and pedagogies of teachers. Interestingly
17

See: J.W. Astington, The Childs discovery of the Mind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993) 18 See: D. Olsen and J. Bruner, Folk Psychology and Folk Pedagogy in. D. Olsen and N. Torrance ed. Handbook of education and Human Development (London: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 10-36.

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enough, these same mental models permeate students and impact the degree to which instructional innovations are accepted or rejected. In a recent project in Mauritius, dedicated to improving the thinking skills of students, by training teachers and introducing into the schools, new and more active processes of learning, one of the critical obstacles to change that was consistently identified, through teacher reports and student interviews, was the resistance of students to such learning processes.19 For many students, in fact, group based active learning actually was defined as the teacher not doing his or her job or asking seemingly strange questions with no clear answers. Similar attitudes were found to exist among parents and administrators. As noted above, a first step in surmounting this problem is to come to a better understanding, through research, of these pre-existing folk psychologies and pedagogies. Parallel with the development of a more complete understanding of these folk psychologies and pedagogies is the need to use an awareness of their existence as an integral part of development project planning, particularly with projects that assume or call for change in educational practice. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing more about how knowledge of intuitive theories of the mind and teaching can help to facilitate the process of change in education for development? In this regard, educators may be able to learn more about this phenomenon by examining the recent work and findings in the area of technology transfer related to what is called indigenous epistemologies in science. Even with a complete understanding of the pre-existing folk psychologies and pedagogies in various developing countries, what significance should be attached to them? There are a number of possibilities. One option is to align these ways of thinking against current scientific knowledge and show where they are weak, ill informed or ill founded. This has been the pattern of past practice and has rarely led to productive educational change. A second possibility is to recognize them as enabling devices in the process of educational development; that is, providing a basis for starting from where people are and with what and how they come to know. A third avenue that might be pursued is to recognize and use them as a basis upon which to develop a wider and more meaningful dialogue about the nature of learning, thinking and human development; that is, to set, as one of the goals of educational development, the building of communities of learning about learning. Nestled within any conception of development is a perception of the basis for improving the human condition. To that degree, development is an intentional process and an expression of values and preferences. Whose values or what preferences should predominate in the process is of course a much-contested issue.

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing more about whether there are any demands and challenges, in the process of development in todays world, that require, in order that they can be effectively addressed, a particular view of the nature of learning and the mind, or will any folk psychology and folk pedagogy suffice?
19

See: T.R. Morrison, The Children of Modernisation: Adolescence and Modernisation in Mauritius (Pathways Project, 1997)

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THE EMERGING PARADIGM If one surveys these shifts and others that could be added to the learning architecture as it relates to learner capability and participation, a rather general picture of an emerging, and in some peoples views a preferable, paradigm surfaces. 20 Both participation and learning are seen to be enhanced to the degree to which schools and other learning environments emphasize Learner independence and choice. Intrinsic motivation and natural curiosity. The construction of knowledge through active learning with real world tasks. Collaborative learning with peers and others. The importance of emotional well being and satisfying social interactions. High challenge, low threat learning environments. Complex and holistic thinking abilities. Multi-sensory engagement in learning. Situating learning in the context of practice.

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing to what degree these elements of the emerging paradigm of learning and participation, as outlined above, are appropriate to, necessary for, and implementable in, the development process? Are the elements of this emerging paradigm universally applicable to learning by all human beings, regardless of their cultural backgrounds and contexts? Are the elements of this emerging paradigm necessary to insure that education and learning can make their maximal contribution to development? And finally, even if the answers to the above questions are positive, how is it possible to make such practices and perceptions integral attributes of education and learning for development?

20

See: Learner-Centered Psychological Principles: A framework for School Redesign and Reform, American Psychological Association, 1997.

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ARCHICTECTURAL ELEMENT: WHAT IS BEING LEARNED? Dimension: Content and Competencies A second structural feature of the learning architecture encompasses the substance of what is being learned in a given society or setting. In particular, it addresses the matter of the primary content focus of learning and the competencies that are to be developed as a result of engaging in the process. Again, there are a number of noticeable shifts in emphasis in this element of the learning architecture. SHIFT 6: From the Acquisition to the Management of Information Formal systems of education were borne largely in a context of information scarcity. It is not surprising, then, that one of the key functions of such systems historically has been the storage, codification and transmission of information. Indeed, one of the functions of credentials in educational systems is to indicate the degree to which an individual has closed the information gap between his or her bank of knowledge and the knowledge resident within the institution of learning. With increasing intensity today, information scarcity is being replaced by information abundance, a process that inevitably leads to a redefinition of the role of learning institutions in society. In industrialized societies, people have available to them an ever-increasing array of channels through which to access an ever increasing amount and variety of information and from an equally increasing number of sources. Their primary problem is less a matter of acquiring information, than of choosing among various providers of various types of information and finding ways to manage and utilize the information, which they obtain. In this context, the focus of formal learning institutions, at the rhetorical level at least, shifts, from being a primary provider of information, to serving as a context in which one can learn how to organize, manage, analyze, verify, apply, interpret and give meaning to information. This is a profound shift in the core function of formal learning institutions; the implications of which extend to all dimensions of the educational enterprise: curriculum, teaching, assessment, credentializing, organizational structures, as well as their relationship to time and space. The new interest in the management of information is exemplified in efforts to develop what the National Science Foundation in the U.S.A. calls Knowledge Networking. Knowledge Networking focuses on the integration of knowledge from different sources and domains across time and space.21 Modern computing and telecommunications technology provide the vehicle through which to send bits anywhere in mass quantities. However, connectivity alone cannot insure
21

Useful communication across disciplines, languages and cultures. Appropriate processing and integration of knowledge from different sources, domains, and non-text based media.
Knowledge Networking, National Science Foundation, 1997.

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Effective models for working together in teams, organizations or learning communities across time and space. Deepening the understanding of the legal, ethical and social implications of the new connectivity.

In other words, we have connectivity, but not interactivity and integration. The Knowledge Networking initiative of the National Science Foundation (NSF) intends to move beyond connectivity to the achievement of new levels of interactivity by increasing the semantic bandwidth, knowledge bandwidth, activity bandwidth, and cultural bandwidth among people, organizations and communities. The concept of a knowledge network moves beyond the creation and distribution of information and toward the processes involved in the construction of knowledge. Building knowledge requires that a community of learners, for example the scientific community, come to grips with new forms of gathering data, new tools to manipulate and store information, new ways of transforming that information, and new ways of working together over time and distance. The NSF initiative in knowledge networking in science represents an evolution, from todays stress on information and distributed data, to emerging systems of knowledge and distributed intelligence. For the scientific community, this means that interdisciplinary communities can be joined in sharing data, accumulating information and building knowledge together that will allow the treatment of problems, heretofore confined within disciplinary boundaries. The Knowledge Network requires, for its effective functioning, that scientific communities attempt to establish a common framework for communication, consensual processes for validating a sharing information, new proficiencies in design, reasoning and argumentation and vehicles to enlarge participation in the learning community. The end result will be to create what the NSF calls a new cognitive ecology for science that will lead to the development of new types of content and knowledge bases of radically increased scope and scale. The Knowledge Network, in other words, is designed to allow an increase in the ability of scientists and society to better understand and manage larger and more complex natural, social, and material phenomena. The NSF envisions that knowledge networks will increase the ability of societies to understand and manage such phenomena as coping with natural disasters, impacts of human beings on the ecosystem, urban planning, business cycles, and disease prevention. The Knowledge Network can best be understood as a dynamic and interactive system for the construction, representation and sharing of knowledge across time and space. Unlike networks, such as the Internet, the knowledge network is designed as a community of learning and inquiry, in which shared ground rules lead to a cumulative process of knowledge development and sharing. The energy of knowledge construction resides in the system and not in any one of its components or levels. The NSF envisages that, over time, Knowledge Networks can be developed around a host of domains including, but not confined to the scientific community. ADB Institute Interest: To the degree to which such innovations in knowledge management, such as the Knowledge Network, come to fruition, the ADB Institute is interested in knowing whether and how developing countries can have the opportunity to participate in the early dialogue surrounding the design of such systems.

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Many institutions of learning in the developing world, however, continue to find themselves in a position of being the primary providers of information in an information scarce environment. In many school classrooms in the developing world, basic textbooks continue to be absent and, in institutions of higher learning, libraries are woefully under funded and under-stocked. Moreover, teachers often are under-trained and the stocks of knowledge that they can draw upon are weak. This explains, in part, why one of the core development strategies in education in developing countries has been to build up the stock of information available for learning. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in how to improve access to information in developing countries and what role schools and other institutions of formal learning should play in that process? Are formal institutions of learning and education the ideal focal points around which to develop information access strategies? Moreover, if information increasingly is contained in, and flows through, electronic and interpersonal networks, is an information access strategy, in reality, a networking strategy? To what degree can, and should, such a networking strategy form a central element in educational planning for development? One of the critical issues in educational development is how best to build a stock of information, in a context of scarcity, while also preparing the learners to function in a world which will be increasingly characterized by the abundance of information. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the degree to which development programs can increase their effectiveness by providing a new package of assistance: information repositories, plus the tools to access and create more.

SHIFT 7: From Recipes to Complexities It is now a truism to say that the world is increasingly complex and filled with ambiguity and uncertainty bordering at times, it seems, on chaos. Indeed, the new quantum sciences of complexity and chaos are telling us that this is the natural state of the world and that we must learn new ways of living in the context of what are called self organizing systems; systems that are static and in motion simultaneously22. These new habits of mind require toleration for, and understanding of, ambiguity, complexity, interrelatedness, change, uncertainty, and flow. Traditional institutions and models of education, however, have for years prepared people for the world by passing on recipes for thinking, seeing and living. This focus on recipes rests on an assumption that learners seek reassurance and answers from their learning experiences and would somehow be troubled and anxious in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity.

22

See: J. Holland, The Hidden Order (NY: Addison-Wesley, 1995)

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These recipes, or algorithmic ways of approaching problems and understanding the world, however, are increasingly maladaptive to a world characterized by rapid, never-ending, pulsating, and interconnected change. In fact, when recipes and recipe learning no longer provide a basis for making sense of the world, let alone assigning meaning, anxiety and fear are the result. It is for this reason that there is emerging a view, at all levels of the educational system, of the need to develop new habits of the mind for a new world. Part of this appreciation entails a moving away from recipes and algorithmic thinking toward complexities and complex thinking. An example of this movement toward non-algorithmic thinking and an embracing of complexity is clearly evident in what has come to be called problem-based learning (PBL.) PBL, an approach that is being applied to all levels of education and professional training has, at its organizing center, the illstructured problem which is messy and complex in nature; requires inquiry, information gathering and reflection; changing and tentative; and has no simple, fixed, formulaic or right solution. Consider, as an example of an ill structured problem, one that was developed by a grade two student in a PBL program: You are a science advisor at NASA. A planet much like earth has experienced massive destruction of elements of its biosphere. What is causing the destruction of plant life? Can new plants from earth be successfully introduced to help save the planets environment?.23 PBL begins with the introduction of an ill-structured problem that becomes the focal point for all subsequent learning. Teachers, in PBL, assume the role of cognitive and meta-cognitive coach, rather than knowledge holder and disseminator. Students assume the role of active problem-solvers, decisionmakers and meaning makers, rather than passive listeners. In the teaching and learning process, information is shared, but knowledge is a personal construction of the learner. Thinking is fully articulated and held to strict benchmarks. The PBL unit is not necessarily interdisciplinary, but is always integrative. In what is called running the problem, teachers constantly insure that the situation is problematic, ill structured and that students have appropriate roles and stakes in the problem. In PBL, students approach different problems, with different problem solving and strategic thinking strategies; there is no one single problem solving methodology that is utilized. Problem based learning promotes Motivation: by engaging students in learning, resolving dissonance, and feeling that they are empowered to have an impact on the outcome of the investigation. Relevance and Context: PBL provides students with an answer to the questions Why do we need to learn this information and what does what I am learning in school or university have to do with the real world? Higher order thinking: The ill-structured problem scenario calls forth critical and creative thinking by suspending the guessing game of Whats the right answer the teacher wants me to find? Learning how to learn: PBL promotes meta-cognition and self-regulated learning by asking students to generate their own strategies for problem

23

What Is Problem Based Learning? Centre for Problem Based Learning, 1998

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definition, information gathering, data analysis, and hypothesis building, and sharing them with other students, teachers, and mentors. Authenticity: PBL involves students in the types of problems faced in real life settings.

A shift from a recipe to a complexity orientation in the learning architecture does not necessarily mean the adoption of a new set of recipes for the right way to solve problems or confront complexities. However, this can be an unintended consequence of its misapplication in traditional school settings. The shift does strongly suggest that complexity, rather than certainty, is moving to center stage and that introducing students to alternative search and inference strategies in relation to complex problems, rather than employing pre set algorithms in relation to clearly defined problems, is a new challenge facing education. The increasing connectedness of the world has also brought to the fore a growing awareness of the interdependencies of existence. The recent financial crisis in Asia and Russia, and the domino effects which each has unleashed in the world, are testimony to this fact. The modern world is increasingly shaped, in its essence, as a dynamic system. In a connected world, many more things interact and shape each other and many more domains of activity take on the properties of a complex system. Many of the concepts that are used in the curricula of schools to understand such dynamically changing societies and conditions, however, are pre-systemic and flow from an image of the world as a self-contained static machine. Fewer and fewer things today have clear-cut boundaries and the multiplicity of connections makes for greater uncertainty and speed of change. This condition demands adaptability, rather than a dogged pursuit of efficiency. As Geoff Mulgan has noted, the simplest reason for the obsolescence of the machine metaphor, as a guide to modern thinking, rests with intelligence. In the ideal machine, the intelligence goes into the design: once designed the machine runs itself and there is no need for redesign. 24 In intelligent systems, characteristic of human societies, everything can be redesigned and everything is temporary. Each element in the system is capable of thinking, as well as doing. Society functions, as a result, more as a form of parallel, rather than serial, processing. One of the worldwide challenges facing education today is how to provide learners with new thinking tools appropriate to and congruent with such a connected world. In most countries, for example, school children continue to be inducted into linear modes of thinking, in which cause precedes effect in a neatly arranged series of steps. Most disciplines also tend to ignore knowledge and modes of inquiry outside their boundaries. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing the degree to which the new connectedness of the modern world requires the development, in learners of all ages, of new form of systems thinking which can capture and provide greater understanding of the interdependencies of our global condition and what strategies can be employed to this end? Does connectedness make systems thinking one of the basic literacies of the modern world?

24

G. Mulgan, Connexity (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1998) pp. 145164.

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Introducing students, or other learners for that matter, to complexity and uncertainty, rather than inducting them into established and time worn recipes for understanding a static world, to some extent, challenges the socializing and enculturating function of educational institutions. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing more, from the perspective of development, about how issues related to complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity should, and can be, addressed in educational contexts and whether or not such issues inevitably challenge the role of schools and other educational institutions in inducting people into the ways of a given society? Are trade-offs and zero sum games, in other words, an inherent aspect of such a question?

SHIFT 8: From Thought Systems to Thinking Tools One of the traditional functions of education has been to induct learners into the ways of thinking of a culture, whether that culture has its roots in religion, ethnicity, class, gender or modes of inquiry. As a result, the curriculum in most educational institutions has reflected, in its structure, themes and organizing principles, the dominant modes of thought prevalent at the time. In the West, this has tended to produce a curriculum in which academic disciplines, whose particular prominence varied over time, predominated as the organizing principles. Students, as a result, studied history, the physical and social sciences, and language systems, with increasing specialization as one moved through the levels of the system being the norm. The assumption, in this form of curriculum, is that the disciplines contain within them the major means of inquiry and the major bodies of significant knowledge, which flow from these investigations. In nonWestern and colonial cultures, this curricular pattern also prevailed, with variations being a function primarily of prevailing ideological frameworks in use, the history of the particular civilization and the dominant language of the community. A major consequence of this disciplinary focus in the curriculum of schools and institutions of higher learning has been to give the university a powerful role in shaping the curriculum of earlier years of schooling, since the disciplines form the organizing basis of higher education. Whether the curricular structure of universities, which are after all engaged in the education of young and increasingly older adults, is the most appropriate basis for learning for young children and adolescents is an open question. In recent years, however, there has been a growing critique of disciplines as the basis for organizing the school curriculum. One of the assumptions in using disciplines as the organizing principle of the curriculum, was that they provided a framework through, and context in which, thinking skills would be developed. Today, this assumption is being challenged, and in some cases replaced, by the view that the best way to develop thinking skills in students is to directly teach thinking. This has led to curriculum revision in which analytic, analogical, problem solving, decision making and creative skills, and other tools of thinking are learned by students, with disciplinary knowledge providing the context, rather

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than the means. This represents a shift in emphasis in the curriculum, from thought systems to thinking tools. Part of this pattern is driven, no doubt, by the emergence of the knowledge or information economy in which thinking skills, many argue, become paramount competencies25. Singapore, for example, has launched a major effort to place thinking skills at the center of its curriculum. Many business and engineering schools in universities, moreover, now include courses in critical and creative thinking, as well as problem solving, as a compulsory part of their curriculum. What does this emerging shift toward the teaching of thinking, and its associated stress on thinking tools, imply for the process of development? Most curricula in developing countries continue to be organized around academic disciplines and quality continues to be defined in terms of these standards. Shifting to a more concerted focus on thinking skills would necessitate, as it has in industrialized countries, a major retooling and development of teaching staff at all levels of the system. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing whether and how, this new focus on thinking skills should form an integral aspect of education for development and how the impact of such a shift in emphasis might be assessed?

SHIFT 9: From Breadth to Depth One of the historic functions of educational institutions, as was noted earlier, was to serve as a conduit for passing on information and knowledge. The information explosion, albeit that it has yet to fully reach developing countries, has called into question this basic view. As more and more information has become publicly available on more and more things, however, educational institutions have tended to respond by enlarging the breadth of material covered in the curriculum, or lengthening the amount of study time required to complete school years and degrees. This has led to a situation in which observers note that students are learning less about more things and that their conceptual abilities and true understanding of how knowledge is developed is suffering. Ference Martin and Roger Saljo, two Swedish investigators who examined students approaches to study using ethnographic methods uncovered an interesting pattern. The researchers noted that Swedish students did not really understand the points that they were studying, since they were not looking for it. What they were doing was cramming facts into their heads. They were doing this because they knew that was what they were being tested for. What was missing was the meaning of the texts they were studying and how those texts might relate to their own evolving thinking about the world. Their approach to the study of the texts was termed, by the researchers, to be a form of surface learning. 26 Very few of the students who were studied evidenced what Martin and Saljo called a deep approach to learning, in which students seek meaning in study, reflect on what they read and hear and undertake to create their personal sense of understanding. Deep learning, as Marchese has suggested, is a prerequisite to a students movement from knowledge to understanding and to restructuring the

25 26

T. Stewart, Intellectual Capital (NY: Norton, 1998) F. Marton and R. Saljo, On Qualitative Difference in Learning: Outcome and Process, British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 46. 1997, pp. 4-11

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mental models, which guide that transition.27 Further findings have emerged in this line of research, that suggest that surface learning increases in intensity as one progresses through the educational system and, depending upon a host of factors, students will switch between deep learning in some courses and surface learning in others, and in other cases engage in these approaches simultaneously. Entwistle recently has suggested that fear of failure, anxiety, and low self-esteem are associated with surface approaches to learning. Ellen Langer has added further insight to this stream of thinking by describing the process of mindless learning as a student being on automatic pilot during most of the schooling years.28 The third volume of the TIMSS report of the IEA international performance studies in mathematics, called A Splintered Vision, has been recently released and has proposed a set of recommendations for mathematics education that reflect the growing concern about the balance between breadth and depth in the curriculum and their associated surface and deep approaches to learning. The report stresses the need for mathematics curriculum to Focus on powerful, central ideas and capacities. Pursue greater depth, so content has a chance to be meaningful, organized, and linked to other ideas that the students acquire or possess. Provide rigorous powerful, meaningful content-producing learning that lasts.

One of the intriguing and understandable aspects of education and development is that there tends to be a concern, bordering on fear, in developing countries, that they are in danger of being left behind the so-called developed world or that they must undertake efforts to catch up. In education, these concerns often get translated into a cumulative process of packing the curriculum with ever-increasing amounts of information on an ever-widening range of topics. This process has gone so far in some countries that students must attend extra tuition classes, in the evenings and on weekends, to cover the curriculum in place. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing more about the tendency in developing countries to excessively broaden and extend the range of topics, areas of study and information in the curriculum and the degree to which this process may, not only be working against the possibility of depth learning, but also negatively intruding on the process of childhood and youth development? The last recommendation of the TIMSS report noted above is especially poignant for educations role in development. One of the guiding ideas in development, in recent years, is the concept of sustainability. This idea does not strictly mean that development should be undertaken in a way which can be sustained by the natural environment, but that it be sustainable or capable of being pursued, deepened and enriched over time.

27

T. Marchese, The New Conversations About Learning, American Association for Higher Education, 1997 28 E. Langer, Mindful Learning (NY: Norton, 1998)

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ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing whether a shift in emphasis in the curriculum from breadth to depth, and its associated assessment and teaching systems, would contribute to a greater degree of learning sustainability for development purposes.

SHIFT 10: From the Contrived to the Real World Ostensibly, one of the purposes for attending institutions of formal education is to learn about the real the world in which one lives. Not to denigrate this most noble goal, many students do learn about the world in which they live. At least they acquire one perspective on that world. They absorb, or at least are presented with, many facts and theories about the world out there and how it operates. Much of this introduction to the world, however, tends to be abstract, overly selective in terms of the dimensions examined and based upon highly rational assumptions about how things actually work. This tendency to provide students with a contrived context, and to a degree a contrived view, of various dimensions of the world and their operating principles has recently come under scrutiny. Consider the dimensions of the world that students are introduced to. Yes, in most countries they do learn facts about their governmental systems, the natural world, and the physics of life. This is important knowledge. But what tends to be missing is an understanding of some of the key facets of living: the world of work, the nature of the market in economies, parenting, aging, poverty, and the list goes on. Learning about these dimensions of living is reserved, it seems, for a later stage in life. Research into student knowledge of the practicalities of life and work, and the moral and social dimensions of living, bear out this reserved for a later time principle. 29 Young people are remarkably ill informed about the world of work, the functioning of the economy, parenting, aging, and such social issues as poverty. Against this tendency there has arisen a view, driven by forces more outside than inside education, that students are experienced deprived; that is, lacking in understanding of some of the key dimensions of life which they will be expected to participate in and contribute to. The world of work provides a good example. Students tend to be remarkably uninformed, unrealistic, and in some cases ill informed, as to the working world and what will be expected of them in that world, let alone what types of careers, with what types of skills, are and will be available to them. There has emerged a movement that focuses on what is known as the school to work transition. Essentially, this involves providing students with firsthand experience of the working world throughout their school years. In these programs, business and employers cooperate with schools in providing internships, mentors, and contexts in which learning projects can be undertaken. Students learn about the world of work in the context of the workplace and use the school as a forum for reflection upon what they have learned. In universities, one can notice the same pattern emerging in cooperative education, in which students rotate between study and work throughout their careers. This educational model is gaining momentum, particularly in engineering and the helping professions. In the field of workplace training, one can also witness these shifts with the introduction, in countries such as the USA, of individual training

29

D. Newman, P. Griffin and M. Cole, The Construction Zone (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1989)

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accounts, or skill grants, tied to performance placement and advancement.30

expectations linked to job

Rearranging the relationship between education and work alters fundamentally the lock step and preparatory role often attached to education. Education becomes a recurrent process in which a person alternates between reflection in school and experience in various contexts of the world. Teaching becomes less focused upon telling and more linked to reflecting, clarifying and interpreting. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing whether, and to what degree, this movement toward designing the educational process as a recurrent relationship between thought and experience in the real world has applicability to education for development? Is there a better way to gain a knowledge and understanding of the process, challenges, and problems of development than to participate in it as part of ones educational experience? Some may say that, in countries in which there does not exist the opportunity for education, young people derive a first hand view of the world of work, and at a very early age. But this would not be completely correct, for out-ofschool youth lack the conceptual tools to understand and improve their experience. Schools and other institutions of formal learning are required in development, but their role perhaps needs to be reconceptualised in terms of a particle in a wave like recurrent process, rather than a set of locksteps in a sequential process. Schools have tended to shelter students from some of the human dimensions of living and some of the ethical and social issues that arise in life. This too is in the process of change, although the change has, and continues to have, a bumpy ride. Increasingly, in the curriculum, students are being introduced to such value laden issues as abortion, environmental problems like the pollution of production, and social issues such as racism, human rights, corruption, poverty, and inequality. And increasingly they are being introduced to such skills as mediation, conflict resolution, value analysis, and action learning. Many students are learning about real world issues by confronting them directly and the school is giving voice to their perspectives and concerns. In a way, this shift toward reality in the curriculum, and to techniques for living and solving problems together, mirrors the efforts to build and sustain a civil society in which active participation, shared concern and collaborative problem solving are cardinal attributes.

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing whether this shift toward the real world, and a focus on real problems in the learning process, has implications for the role of education in development? If the development of a civil society forms an essential part in the process of development, then the matter deserves serious attention.

30

See: The new Workforce Investment Act recently passed in the US Congress.

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SHIFT 11: From Recitation to Performance It is not only in the world of business that what gets measured gets done. This adage has perhaps even more relevance, and exerts even more power, in the field of education. For this reason alone, the basis of assessment has been front and center in recent efforts to reform educational systems. The first development of note in assessment reform has been a move away from the input assumption, that the curriculum indicates what a student knows and can do, toward a more output focus which directly assesses knowledge and skill outcomes, regardless of their generative source. This shift in emphasis has led to the development, within many national educational systems, at all levels, of specific performance objectives, for each phase and stage of learning within content areas, and by levels of attainment. In some national contexts, such output and performance driven measures have been closely tied to inspection, budgeting, teacher training and reform of schools. This shift toward output measurement is not without controversy, since some argue that trust in the professional judgement of teachers has suffered within what is described as a mechanical production model of educational institutions and that certain understandings are not amenable to display by performance. The retort, of course, is that the new system of assessment is fair to the student, since he or she now knows the basis of evaluation and can set goals accordingly, and that such systems hold teachers, administrators, and indeed government, accountable for the results claimed for educational investments. To what degree do such performance driven output systems apply to, and have relevance for, the process of education in development? Development assistance, in the field of education has, to a large degree, ignored the question of performance objectives and performance outcomes for investment. This can be partially attributed to the fact that educational investment and extending the years of schooling, have been seen as a form of investment in human capital that will inevitably make positive impacts on the economic growth of a nation. The tendency to gloss over performance outcomes has also been colored by the fact that development assistance has not, until that is the arrival of the concept of conditionalities, intruded upon the internal polices of recipient nations. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing more about the appropriate place of performance objectives and outcomes assessment in education for development? Are these strategies useful and implementable, or does the stage of development of a nations educational system preclude their development and value? If they are appropriate, how should such systems be developed and how should the information, which is produced, be utilized? Of perhaps even more importance in the shift in assessment systems from recitation to performance, has been the change in focus in the ways in which students are evaluated. In essence, there has been a movement in assessment away from a stress on the knowledge that students can display through a process of recitation, toward a stress on students demonstrating their knowledge and skills through reflective performances. This requires that students be able to demonstrate their knowledge and skills on increasingly higher levels of understanding, as measured by such taxonomies as that developed by Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues.

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Moreover, students in the new approach to assessment demonstrate their understanding in assessment situations in which they are called upon to apply, show and create knowledge using the skills that are appropriate to the problem. This form of performance assessment occurs in what are called authentic contexts; that is, contexts that replicate the ways in which a persons knowledge and abilities, are tested in the real world. In such authentic assessments, students are asked to use knowledge to solve ill-structured problems, carry out exploration work in and through the disciplines, and to use a repertoire of knowledge and skill to negotiate a complex task. 31 Assessment reformers argue that such an approach to assessment evaluates whether indeed students have acquired designated knowledge and skills and pushes forward their desire to engage in higher order thinking. They also argue that many students who engage in surface learning strategies will have difficulty with such assessments and can modify their learning strategies accordingly. So too, many students who do not possess good memories will have an opportunity to display what they know through what they can do. As part of this reform of assessment entire curricula, in both education and training systems, in some countries, are being redesigned and rewritten using specific performance metrics, and applying such techniques as portfolios, project learning, and case based learning. The move toward more performance driven and authentic systems of assessment rests upon a view of the human mind and human learning. Memorization and surface learning reflects a faculty psychology of the mind. Authentic assessment and performance driven demonstration of knowledge and skills reflect a constructivist and, to a degree, a cultural view of learning. This raises to the question of the degree to which these approaches to assessment, and other dimensions of the recent efforts to reform educational systems, may be products of a particular culture and preferred way of learning and evaluation? We have, thus, come full circle. While the mind exists in culture, is it merely a product of culture? And if so, must all prescriptions for educational change be seen in that light-as the importation to one culture of concepts of mind and learning from another?

SHIFT 12: From Symbolic to Participatory Literacy The bedrock of sustainable development hinges, in part, on the level and distribution of literacy in a given society. As the tables in the appendices illustrate, several countries in Asia have made remarkable strides in moving toward the goal of universal literacy. At the same time, there remain large gaps in literacy levels, particularly in South Asia. While literacy has always been seen as a basic prerequisite to development, particularly in terms of moving toward equity goals and citizenship goals, the movement of the global economy toward knowledge intensive processes of production and exchange make this an even more pressing priority. These shifts in the global economy have also led to a situation in which the time frames for the achievement of literacy goals have taken on urgency not present in previous eras. The sense of urgency in relation to literacy is not only to be found in the developing world, but also is emerging in industrialized nations, many of which have significant pockets of illiteracy. Until recently, efforts to promote and enhance literacy were focussed on the role of schools as the primary vehicles for improvement. This linkage between
31

See: Grant Wiggins, Educative Assessment (NY: Jossey Bass, 1998)

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literacy and education, in fact, provided one of the basic justifications for the investment in the expansion of schooling in developing countries, particularly primary education. Access to schooling is, of course, vitally important in promoting literacy. But access to schooling alone, as the record shows, does not necessarily guarantee high levels of literacy within a population. 32 One reason is that schools address primarily the literacy needs of the young, leaving the adult population largely untouched. Another reason is that a school-focussed approach to literacy tends to generate a school-based conception of what is entailed in literacy itself. School-based literacy, in this regard, typically centers on linguistic, cognitive, numeracy, and reasoning skills demanded in the normative context of schooling.33 Put another way, it is literacy for schooling and success within that context. School-based literacy tends to be symbolic literacy: the facility to manipulate and communicate through linguistic and numeric symbols. Alongside this school based literacy focus, there has emerged, in recent years, a broader conception of literacy goals and the strategies needed to pursue them. This approach can, for want of a better term, be called participatory literacy. Participatory literacy addresses the needs and skills required for people to define themselves competent actors in the world. It is, as the International Institute for Literacy defines it, literacy for life.34 There are at least four dimensions to participatory literacy. The first dimension is literacy for access and orientation. This encompasses all of the ways in which people perceive literacy as helping them locate themselves in the world. For example, reading maps or signs so that they can find out how to reach a particular location, reading letters, conducting business and other exchanges, being able to understand their childs teacher, reading a newspaper, understanding a political advertisement, and filling out countless forms. The list can of course go on. The second dimension of participatory literacy is literacy as voice. Essentially this involves the capability of being able to communicate what one thinks and feels, particularly in interpersonal and social situations. Beyond the capacity to communicate, literacy, as voice, is also deeply connected to expressing the self, being heard, and establishing ones identity within a social group or cultural context. When surveyed in this regard, adults often point to their desire to participate in voting and the political process. People tend to see the power of words as making a difference in their capacity to influence events and people around them. The third dimension of participatory literacy is that it provides a vehicle for independent action. People see that literacy is a way of protecting themselves from being taken advantage of by others in various contexts, reducing their dependency on others in the conduct of their lives, and increasing their capacity for informed decision making. Being literate helps to remove a sense of vulnerability and establishes the building blocks of empowerment. The fourth dimension of participatory literacy is that it provides the capacity to engage the future. People are aware that the world is rapidly changing even though they may not be completely aware of the forces that drive such change. They sense that without basic literacy as a minimum, they will be
32

See: C. Snow et. al, Unfulfilled Expectations:Home and School Influences on Literacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). 33 See: J. Cook-Gumperz ed. The Social Construction of Literacy (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1986) 34 See: Equipped For The Future: A customer-Driven Vision For Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning (NIL, 1997)

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unable to cope with or keep up with change, and that in being left behind, they will be powerless and increasingly dependent. Initiatives that are directed toward expanding participatory literacy are directed at increasing access and orientation, voice, independent action, and the capacity to confront the future. These initiatives, while they utilize the resources of the school, tend to be community-based, community-focused and built upon high levels of community involvement in design and implementation. The organizing center of a participatory literacy program, in other words, is the entire community, rather than solely the young person within the walls of the school. Participatory literacy also tends to be self-determined literacy. Selfdetermined literacy begins with an agenda--a list of needs to be met or lacks to be remedied in a community. This list is drawn up from the experience of learners. Ujwala Samant describes the process as follows: In one community (India) women had wanted to write a petition to the police protesting the presence of illegal liquor dens within their community. One of the leaders of this group of women used this opportunity to effectively demonstrate the impotency of being illiterate when they could not write the petition, much less sign one written for them. These needs get translated into a set of goals such as signing names, learning about petitions, legal rights, riding buses, calculating interest on loans, and reading religious books. 35Samant calls this process non-curricular learning, meaning the information and skills that are acquired through the process of living as a member of a social group. Parajuli refers to the same phenomenon as survival knowledge and popular knowledge.36 Participatory literacy strategies have also rediscovered what Wagner calls indigenous education; that is, culturally formalized systems of instruction that are not descendants of modern European schooling.37 Examples include Islamic schooling, Buddhist education, and a range of nonformal education provided regularly through voluntary organizations and associations. Such indigenous forms of education provide an important resource and context for the development of participatory literacy. This is in part due to the fact that such institutions reach deeper and more effectively into the poorest and least accessible regions of a country. Such indigenous forms of education, while they are directed to specific learning goals, also tend to exert residual literacy benefits. Studies of learning processes in Quranic schools, for example show that children are introduced to structured learning, respect for the teacher; they use language to recite in unison, encode and decode alphabet, and are introduced to moral values and concepts of good citizenship. One of the critical features, moreover, is the strong motivation of children due to the sacred quality of the text and the strong support of parents and the community. Instead of considering indigenous literacy and indigenous schooling as impediments to, or in competition with government sponsored literacy campaigns, policy makers and planners should view these institutions as a potential resource for participatory literacy. Participatory literacy initiatives are also embedded in programs that have larger social and economic objectives. In particular, participatory literacy is linked increasingly with community health education programs and other social services for the adult population. In Papua New Guinea, for example, the
U. Samant, Literacy and Social Change: From a Womens Perspective (Proceedings of the 1996 World Conference on Literacy, UNESCO) 36 P. Parajuli, Politics of Knowledge, Models of Development and Literacy, Prospects, vol. 20, 1990, pp.289-298. 37 D. Wagner, Indigenous Education and Literacy Learning (International Literacy Institute, 1998.)
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Governments Coffee Development Board is working to teach coffee growers how to use new rust prevention technology and techniques. Farmer literacy is an important ingredient in this program. Well baby clinics, marketing cooperatives, centers for the dispensing of pharmaceuticals and even the rural post office provide natural centers for the teaching of participatory literacy. These natural centers are increasingly being seen as focal points for the development of telecenters: nodes in the design and development of computer based access to information through email, online education and the Internet.38 The concept of participatory literacy does not deny the importance of schooling in achieving literacy goals, but redefines, broadens, and links those goals to the challenges and necessities of life. Participatory literacy, moreover, establishes the community as the focal point of literacy initiatives and includes the school as a contributing component to that process. Perhaps one of the most powerful demonstrations of participatory literacy can be found in the State of Kerala in India. Kerala covers 24,000 square miles with a population of slightly over 30 million. It is poor even by the standards of India with a per capita GDP of $1000 per year. Yet Kerala displays some astonishing patterns: a life expectancy of 72 years, one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world, and a fertility rate of 1.7 births per woman. What is even more remarkable is that 90 per cent of Keralans are literate. In 1989, Keralas voluminous voluntary and activists organizations launched a statewide campaign to produce total literacy. As described by Akash Kapur: Over a three year period, more than 350,000 volunteers fanned out across the State, taking their blackboards and textbooks to fishing villages, city slums and remote tribal areas. In the streets and in the fields the volunteers staged plays that adapted scenes from traditional myths and everyday life to spark popular enthusiasm. Classes were conducted outdoors, under shady trees or in the single room houses of villagersThe literacy campaign provided a measure of psychological security. Adult students newly inducted into the ranks of the literate described themselves as overcoming a handicap. Some said they had joined classes so that they would be able to read their childrens letters, others so that they would be able to read bus signs and make their way from place to place without assistanceOne of the most memorable moments in the campaign occurred when a group of neo-literates, led by a handicapped Muslim girl named Rabia demanded-and got-a road and streetlights for their village.39 The success of initiatives in participatory literacy like that of Kerala are important not only because of the goals which were attained, but also because of the way in which these expectations were met. Achieving a literacy level of 90% in a population of 33 million, and one which is diverse in terms of religion, is a remarkable feat of social innovation and organization. There are deep lessons for the process of development within this type of experience.

38

See: M. Graham, Use of Information and Communication Technologies in IDRC Projects: Lessons Learned (Ottawa, IDRC, 1997) 39 A. Kapur, Poor But Prosperous, The Atlantic Monthly, September, 1998, pp. 40-44.

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ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the degree to which participatory models of literacy hold promise for increasing the scale and scope of literacy within developing countries and what strategies are required to increase and extend the effectiveness of that approach.

SHIFT 13: From Inwardness to Global Values In conceptual and practical terms, the idea of development reflects human values and the diversity of their expression. There are at least three ways in which values infuse the process and goals of development. The first is in substantive terms. Development is a purposeful activity guided by the pursuit of goals and these goals, regardless of their nature, reflect values. In most instances, development implies the pursuit of some concept of desirability or good. In this sense, development suggests a deliberate effort to move toward a particular value, or set of values, and have them realized in everyday life. The pursuit of economic growth, in this regard, is very much a matter of choice among values. So too is the pursuit of development that is ecologically sustainable. 40 Some of the most intense disputes in the field of development as a result, are reflections of disagreements regarding the values that should be pursued in the course of, and through, development. A second dimension of the role of values in development is process, or procedural, in orientation. Values infuse the process of development; how it is undertaken, who is or is not involved in the process, and the depth and meaning of that involvement. Here again there are debates and differing perspectives. Historically, development has tended to be undertaken by elites and some would argue in the interest of elites. Elites, of course, can be defined in terms of wealth, power or expertise. More recently, within the international community, the value focus in the procedural dimension of development has shifted from elite-based models toward ones that reflect people and community involvement in guiding and directing the process. Participation, in other words, has emerged as a new value in relation to development. 41 A third dimension of the role of values in development relates to the context in which it is pursued. Blind and exponential growth of economies, geared to the values of production and consumption, tended to dominate development for much of this century. Here again there is a change in perspective. The concept of sustainability suggests strongly that the pursuit of growth for the sake of consumption alone can actually work against the development project if it does irreparable harm to the life sustaining systems of the natural and cultural world.42 In substantive, procedural, and contextual terms, consequently, development poses and rests upon values. Values, in this regard, are at the heart of development. So too is culture, since it provides the ambient in which peoples values are shaped and nurtured. Attempts to relegate culture and values to the

40

See: R. Nelson, Sustainability, Efficiency and God, Institute for Philosophy and Public affairs, 1997. 41 See: Capacity Development For Governance and Sustainable Development (UNDP, 1997) 42 H. Daly et al. Valuing The Earth: Economics, Ecology and Ethics (Cambridge: MIT, 1993)

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backstage of the development discourse merely reflect the momentary triumph of a particular set of values. 43 The issue of values and culture in development is difficult terrain to enter and so should it be, since these questions drive to the heart of human existence and meaning. There have traditionally been two poles in the argument on the question of values in development. The first view can be described as a relativist position which, to vastly over simplify, asserts that values are reflective of particular cultural traditions of people and have integrity in and of themselves. And since there is no accepted general standard by which one can, or should, assess the ultimate validity of particular cultural values, then these values can rightly guide the process of development. Indeed, the relativist position would assert that a failure to incorporate the particular value orientations of a people into the process of development, as guiding principles in the endeavor, means that development itself is not possible. At the other pole is what can be described as a universalistic position. While recognizing the existence of cultural differences, combined with varying degrees of understanding, the universalistic position asserts that there is, nevertheless, a set of core values, which should guide the process of development, regardless of the purpose, or context in which it is undertaken. To a degree, the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights represents a universalistic view. Some would suggest, as well, that Western notions of development are also cloaks for a universalistic value proposition. 44 These twin poles, in the discourse on the role of values in development, have tended to fractionalize individuals, nations and peoples. So much so, that urgings to consider the role of values and culture in development have often been met with trepidation, on the one hand, and a sense of hopelessness, on the other hand. This situation has tended historically to produce an inward orientation among nations, either as a form of protection of values or as a base from which to export them.45 Today, there are promising signs that the question of values and culture in development is emerging with a renewed vigor and openness. This new-found willingness to engage in discussion of values and development has many sources, but the most telling appear to be the recognition of the growing interdependence of the worlds ecology and economy, the spread of knowledge about the world through new telecommunications technologies, the emergence of new voices in development flowing from the marginalized and civil society, and the growing recognition that the process of development, to succeed, must reflect and account for values and culture. This renewed, and welcomed interest in values and culture in development is reflected in many ways. Two such expressions are quite relevant for the issue of the relationship between learning and development. The first is the use of community based and participatory models of development. Participatory models of development engage people in the entire process from goal setting through action planning and assessment. Moreover, participatory models of development recognize that people involved in, or affected by the process of development, have solutions to problems, if ways can be found to
43

See: S. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (NY: Simon Schuster, 1996) 44 See: Globalization and Citizenship (UNRISD International Conference Proceedings, 1996) 45 See: L. Xiaorong, Asian Values and the Universality of Human Rights (Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, 1998.

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give them a voice. These models also draw upon local cultures as a capacity building resource, rather than a problem to be overcome. Participatory models increasingly recognize, as well, that local epistemologies are not merely quaint relics, but thriving and vital sources of meaning and knowledge that can and should be drawn upon. In education and learning, participatory models have been reflected in efforts to increase decentralization in decision making and foster community involvement in schools, to utilize volunteers and voluntary organizations as means to achieve educational goals, to develop local cultural studies as a key component of the curriculum, and to recognize and build upon local languages as a basis for literacy and second language learning. In the field of educational research, participatory models of development have led to a renewed interest in the role of culture and values in human cognition and learning styles. In higher education, participatory models have found their way into community outreach programs by universities, a renewed appreciation of the cultural role of the university and a research focus on cultural models of development. A second dimension of the role of values and culture in education can be seen in the emergence of a renewed interest in the concept of world citizenship. In its 1995 report, Our Global Neighborhood , the UN Commission on Global Governance captured this interest in the idea of world citizenship with the following statement: Never before have so many people had so much in common, but never before have the things that divide them been so obvious. 46 A thickening web of interdependence, in the words of the Commission, increasingly requires that countries and peoples find ways to work together. People, according to the Commission, are being forced to come to terms with the new circumstances of a global neighborhood; they find themselves living among people previously considered strangers. For the Commission, one of the challenges of development, if not the challenge, involves the development of, and commitment to, a global civic ethic to guide action within the global neighborhood. The UN Commission, while recognizing the sovereignty and selfdetermination of nations, proposed the following as the core values of what it termed a global civic ethic: People should treat others as they would wish to be treated. Respect for life and non-violence. A commitment to basic liberties: to define and express their own identity, to choose their form of worship, to earn a livelihood, freedom from persecution and oppression, free speech, free press, the right to vote, and freedom to receive information. Justice and equity. Mutual respect and tolerance. Caring. Integrity and trust in human relationships.

The Commission also recognizes that the global civic ethic that it proposes must be pursued while recognizing and respecting the reciprocal rights of others.
46

Our Global Neighborhood, (United Nations, 1996)

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This proviso, while consistent with the substance of a global civic ethic, of course, raises the problematic issue of how to accommodate difference within an overarching, global civic ethic. The UN Commission, as well as others, has suggested that the idea of global citizenship can serve as an important guiding principle in development. 47 However, the exact meaning, which one wishes to give to the concept of a global citizenship, is challenging to say the least. Martha Nussbaum, in this regard, suggests a helpful distinction. World citizenship can, according to Nussbaum, be understood in at least two ways.48 The first is the ideal of a citizen whose primary loyalty is to human beings through the world and whose national, local and varied group loyalties are considered as secondary in importance. One could say that this represents the idea of global citizenship, with emphasis being on global as the context in which civic values and duties are defined. The second concept of global citizenship recognizes a wide diversity in the ways in which we order our priorities, but says that, however we actually do order those priorities, it should be based on a recognition of the value of human life and the fact that we are bound in our present and futures to peoples all over the world. One can call this approach global citizenship, in which citizenship is paramount, but deriving meaning and direction from its global context. In each conception, however, a new sense of inclusion and breadth of vision is introduced into the definition and understanding of citizenship. What are the educational implications of the concept of global citizenship? The primary implication speaks to the purpose of education and the curricular expression of that purpose. If taken seriously, the concept of global citizenship sets a new learning challenge for education, what Martha Nussbaum calls the cultivation of humanity. Global citizenship asks that a person no matter where he or she lives in the world be willing and prepared to engage in a sympathetic and critical examination of oneself and ones traditions. This requires an understanding of the source of ones traditions, of their pattern of evolution over time, and of their meaning and significance in the modern world. It suggests, moreover, a willingness to examine these traditions in the light of reason, fact and argument, and to be open to a dialogue about their significance and the grounding of that significance. World citizenship implies that citizens who cultivate their humanity have the ability to perceive and understand themselves, not solely in terms of their membership in a local, ethnic or regional group, but also as human beings tied inextricably to other human beings. The world around us is interdependent and becoming increasingly so. The values, attitudes and actions of others, regardless of their distance from us, have real consequences. Understanding the other is a central challenge of the modern world. This suggests that all educational processes, regardless of where they are rooted, should include the development of an understanding of other cultures, traditions, and points of view. This need for inter-cultural and cross-cultural understanding applies regardless of the stage of development of a given country. Without a commitment to opening the cultural mind, the concept of world citizenship remains a hollow and abstract notion. A third challenge of the concept of world citizenship for education is to find ways to develop the capacity of people to imagine the world from the perspective of others. This requires the ability to place oneself in the shoes of others from cultural traditions distinct from ones own, to suspend judgment, and to see the world from that vantagepoint. Central to this process of role taking is
47

See: F. Ackerman et al. Human Well-Being and Economic Goals (NY: Island press, 1997). 48 M. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998)

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building a sense of the internal meaning and intent that informs various perspectives on the world. This requires cultural imagination; the capacity to understand the world through the mind and feelings of another. The concept of world citizenship often finds expression in policy statements of the United Nations, voluntary organizations, and other agencies. It also appears frequently in the writings of academics and journalists around the world. Much of this, while positive and encouraging, remains at the level of exhortation. Moreover, when the idea of world citizenship is pursued in education, it is often developed as the study of other cultures within the confines of particular institutions in a given national context. What has not occurred in any substantive and broad based way, is a truly international collaborative effort to design a curriculum and learning framework for world citizenship. That is, to bring together educators, and other voices from various cultures, to grapple with the central elements of a curriculum for world citizenship and to test its validity and applicability across cultures. One interesting foray in this direction has been provided by an UNESCO International Bureau of Education research project entitled Learning To live Together Through The Teaching of History and Geography. 49 The project involved a number of countries throughout the world and part of its focus was a detailed analysis of school textbooks. Based upon this analysis, supplemented by country studies, the project offered five suggestions for the teaching of history and geography that have applicability to the idea of global citizenship: Multi-scaling : Teachers and curriculum developers should take into consideration a complete range of scales from the smallest living space to the global level. This helps students come to a better understanding of all of the different spaces in which they live and how these spaces fit together: the neighborhood, the town, the city, the region, the nation, and the world. Relational Concepts: The project stressed the need to develop three concepts simultaneously in the curriculum. Identity: to know whom you are, where you come from, and why you are there. Otherness: to know who are the others, how does one make contact with them, and how does one understand them. Universality: a global attitude appreciative of cultural diversity and an awareness of the networks of relationships in the world. Continuity : The importance of understanding that continuity exists between the neighborhood and the world and learning about the ways in which locality fits into a global context.

If world citizenship, as a concept and emerging ideal, has true significance and importance in the modern world, then it needs to be tested in a global context. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing more about the degree to which the concept of world citizenship is valid and supported across cultures in both the industrialized and developing world and whether or not a global curriculum initiative provides one way of giving it living expression in world educational and learning systems.

49

Learning To Live Together Through the Teaching of History and Geography, Educational Innovation, June 1998.

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ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENT: HOW, WHEN, AND WHERE IS LEARNING OCCURRING? Dimensions: Process, Space, Context and Time Another element of the learning architecture of a given society relates to how people learn and where and when that learning takes place. As in other dimensions of the learning architecture there is substantial variation in the temporal, spatial, contextual and stylistic patterns of learning in given societies. Against this divergence, however, there appears to be emerging a set of change and enabling forces that possibly herald the arrival of a new convergence in terms of the potential of learning itself. A sampling of these shifts is examined below. SHIFT 14: From Rigidity to Multiplicity in Learning Styles In most traditional forms of education, student learning has been driven by the demands of content organization, teacher dominance, and administrative efficiency. The variables which have been nested in these three elements of the learning context have driven the process of learning, with the student being seen as putty that could be molded to these specifications. It is not surprising, in such circumstances, that schools, and other educational institutions, have generated a dominant, or modal form, of learning, characterized, in most cases, by logical processes for the reception, memorization, and recitation of content in verbal and print form. It is also not surprising that success as a learner in such contexts, depends heavily on ones predisposition toward such a learning style and ones induction, typically in the family environment, toward such a mode of learning. Recent research and theory into the nature of intelligence and learning styles, has begun to mount a serious challenge to the idea that there exists a dominant or modal learning style. In addition, this research has begun to challenge the very notion that intelligence itself is a unitary concept, represented by a G factor, and posits instead that intelligence is multi-dimensional and multimodal. The work of such researchers as Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences, Robert Sternberg on a componential view of intelligence, David Perkins on realm knowledge, M. Csikszentmihalyi on flow and optimal learning, and Susan Langer on metacognition, when placed alongside parallel studies of such stylistic differences as fluid and crystallized intelligence and the learning styles of adults, suggest strongly that learners have available a larger set of learning preferences and strategies than the traditional model allows them to exhibit. 50 This work has led to a process of reconceptualizing curricula, teaching strategies and organizational structures in schools from the vantage point of providing multiple contexts and means through which diverse learners, with multiple learning preferences, can engage the same content using different learning strategies and intelligences. Two examples of the application of such thinking to the process of learning and education can be used to illustrate their transformative significance.
50

See: D. Perkins, Outsmarting IQ (NY: Free Press, 1997), R. Sternberg, The Triarchic Mind (NY: Oxford, 1987), H. Gardner, The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (NY: Basic Books, 1985), S. Langer, Mindfulness (NY: Norton, 1989) and M. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow (NY: Norton, 1991)

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The first is the Smart Schools Project in Malaysia. The Smart Schools Project is a flagship application of the Malaysia Multi-Media Corridor, a major initiative of the governments Vision 2020 policy commitment. Vision 2020 calls for sustained productivity-driven growth that is achievable through the development of a technologically literate and critical thinking workforce who are prepared to participate in a 21 st century economy. The educational catalyst for such a strategy is the development of what are described as technologically-supported smart schools. The Smart School is designed to transform education away from memory-based learning designed for the average student to education that stimulates thinking, creativity and caring in all children.51 By the year 2010, the target is that all 10,000 Malaysian schools will be Smart Schools. The goals of the Smart School are To produce a thinking and technologically literate workforce. To provide all-round and balanced development. To provide opportunities to enhance individual strengths and abilities. To increase the participation of stakeholders. To democratize education.

In the words of the project team, with the Smart Schools initiative, a new curriculum has been developed based upon the following design principles 52 Meaningful : The curriculum stresses the active construction of meaning so that all students find purpose in their studies. Socially responsible: The curriculum develops in students a sense of social responsibility so that they become aware of their obligations and duties as citizens in a democracy and are especially sensitive to the needs of the poor and aged. Multi-cultural : The curriculum reflects and is responsive to the cultural diversity of this Nation and our community, so students develop a sense of pride in their own heritage and a respect for others Reflective: The curriculum fosters in students the skills and attitudes of reflection, so that they are able to think critically, creatively and affirmatively. Holistic: The curriculum gives appropriate emphasis to all significant aspects of growth and all of the types of human intelligence helping students see the connections between the separate subjects.

51

The Smart School : A Conceptual Blueprint ( Malaysia, Department of Education, 1998) 52 Ibid., pp. 5-25

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Global : The curriculum develops in students an awareness of global interdependence in all aspects of life, including the environment and the economy. Open-ended : The curriculum is open-ended in two ways: It is open to revision and continued refinement; and it provides open access to all students allowing them to go beyond explicitly stated learning outcomes in curriculum documents. Goal-Based: The curriculum focuses on significant goals so that all students, including those with special needs, develop the critical skills and acquire the knowledge they need for lifelong learning and full functioning as citizens in a changing society. Technological: The curriculum uses technology as one delivery system, examines the influence of technology on students lives, and gives students the skills they need to use the technology.

In the Smart School, teachers will employ a range of different strategies to achieve the goals of the curriculum: directive, observational, mediative, generative, collaborative, outside-context, and metacognitive. Teachers will function as learning guides, mentors, facilitators and coaches, rather than controllers of student learning. Assessment systems are to be criterion referenced, linked to curriculum goals, and authentic in terms of the evaluative tasks and situations presented to students. Quality and benchmark standards are developed for all processes, both learning and administrative, within the school. Central to the vision of the Smart School is the deployment of information and communication technology as an enabler of the learning process. The ideal vision in the Project is that each Smart school will have these technology enablers: Multi-media classroom: with multi-media courseware, presentation tools, and email or groupware for collaborative learning and projects. Library media center: a data base and digital information center with linkages to the INTERNET. Computer lab: for teaching about computers and for use in simulation learning. Multi-Media Development Center: with tools for the creation of multi-media teaching and learning materials. Studio-Theaterette: for video conferencing and previewing. Teacher Network room: equipped with email, online access to courseware and other professional networking toots. Assessment Monitoring System: a computer based and up-datable record of the performance and achievement of each student in each area of study organized by competency levels and type of assessment.

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As one can readily see, the Smart Schools Project is a bold and integrative educational undertaking combining new perspectives on learning within a redesigned curriculum and enabled by the use of modern technology. The smart school is smart, both in terms of its focus on thinking and a design that converts the school into a self-organizing and adaptive learning system. It is both inclusive and respecting of the diversity of learning styles, which exist among students. At the same time, it sets challenging intellectual and social goals for all students. Perhaps most importantly, the Smart Schools Project is dedicated to preparing students for the world as it is becoming in a way, which is respectful of the heritage of the past. This new recognition of the diversity of learning styles, and the need for a more customized model of the learning process, is also strongly evident in online learning; one of the most rapidly developing forms of learning across the globe. Online learning describes the process of learning within an electronic and virtual context that is asynchronous in time, learner-centered in preference and unbound by the limitations of space and distance. Elliot Masie of the Masie Center, and a pioneer in online learning, has suggested, in a rather humorous but telling way, that online learners want the multi factor front and center in what they choose to learn online. In Masies view, online learners want to participate in learning that is:53 Multi-sensory: learning which is presented in forms which tap the various senses and which allow for the various senses to be engaged in the learning process. Multi-pathed: learning which allows content to be explored in ways in addition to the typical lock-step beginning, middle, and end stages and which can be engaged in from middle to end and then beginning, or end to beginning and then middle etc. Multi-incident: learning that allows the learners to return to the learning incident a second, third or fourth time unlike classroom where once the incident occurs it is over. Multi-source: learning processes that engage the learner with a range of different types of people and sources of expertise rather than with just one teacher. Multi-resourced: Learning that is underpinned by easy access to sources through which one can broaden or deepen ones understanding of a topic and in real time. Multi-style: learning which taps and allows for people to engage in learning using a range of preferred learning styles and dimensions of intelligence.

The growing recognition of learning style diversity, in combination with a more differentiated conception of intelligence, has important implications for all of education and training. ADB Institute Interest: In the case of educational strategies for development, this line of research and the growing exemplars of its applications in practice, suggest strongly to the ADB Institute, that as much attention needs to be paid to the processes of learning in schools, and other educational settings in developing countries, as to that given to the expansion of the educational and opportunity infrastructure.
53

Online Learning Principles, Elliott Masie, Masie Centre, 1998.

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While extending the number of schools in developing countries is an important policy objective, equally important is the attention which must be given to the learning processes within such an extended schooling system. If a school system practices a dominant mode of teaching and learning, one, which denies or thwarts the capacity of learners to learn the same content in different ways, then one might suggest that this policy will contribute to accessibility, but not necessarily to equity objectives. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing whether equity objectives in education for development, to be achievable, require learning process reforms, as much as the creation of opportunity structures?

SHIFT 15: From Institutions to Learning Communities The institutional dominance of learning in societies, when set against the span of world history, is a relatively recent phenomenon. In Western industrialized societies, institutions, like schools and universities, captured learning, just as the factory captured production. Each institution, in its own way, represented a growing press for specialization and division of labor in society and the economy. Institutions like schools fit the industrial economy. But today the world is moving toward a new type of economy that demands not only new intellectual and social skills, but also the opportunity to acquire such skills on a lifelong basis. Institutions, such as schools and universities, have been relatively slow in adapting to the imperatives of lifelong learning and the co equal rise in consumer or client awareness about where and how to acquire knowledge and skills. Over the past decades, learners have increasingly sought various learning opportunities and with people of like mind. In this process, learning communities of like-minded, or perhaps a better word is like-interested people, have emerged as contexts in which people come together to acquire information, knowledge and skills and to do so in a collaborative way. So too, institutions such as corporations that have felt most immediately the knowledge and skill pressures of the new economy, have created their own internal learning communities, some going as far to create universities within their own boundaries. Adult educators have long pointed out that adults were developing their own learning projects outside the boundaries of formal education and these involvements were providing people with a sense of meaningfulness which they did not experience in more formal learning settings.54 Today, whether one wants to learn how to fix a car, discuss a major book, understand a social or political issue, learn how to invest or whatever, there is a community of learners available to you. Increasingly, in industrialised countries, learning communities are virtual, existing as conferences, chat rooms, and discussion forums on the Internet and participation in them is growing exponentially. To illustrate this ex ponential growth on 3 September 1998, CNN reported a new record on contacts, or hits, to its specialised Web page, CNNfn that deals with business and economic issues. During August that CNNfn web page had 100,000,000 hits from around the world.
54

See: A. Tough, The Adults Learning Project (Toronto: OISE, 1985)

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One of the common traits of learning communities is that participation in them is voluntary and sharing, rather than competitive, and this appears to be the norm of interaction. People are drawn to learning communities because they appear to offer meaning, relevance, choice and sharing. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing how these voluntary learning communities can serve the process of development? Are they repositories of knowledge and skill that can serve a nation? Do they offer insights into how adults cope with change, through learning and the styles of learning, which they prefer? Should development planning in education incorporate learning communities into their designs or is it preferable, in order to actually preserve their creative inspiration and innovativeness, that there be a hands off approach to the phenomenon? Finally, do learning communities represent a rejection of institutional education or a reaffirmation of the value of learning, or both? Multimedia and networking technologies, as they spread throughout the world, raise fresh questions about the relationship between learning, communities and cultures. While much of the focus on these new technologies and their relationship to learning is on their globalising impact, the reality is that they offer renewed opportunities, as well, to support the development of local content, local communities and local cultures. The Learning Without Frontiers Program of UNESCO has recognized this global/local dimension of the new learning technologies through an exploration of the idea of using them to create open learning communities. 55 Open learning communities are conceived of as spaces that house valuable knowledge systems and encompass a range of contexts from voluntary associations, extended families, religious institutions, income-generation groups, youth clubs to villages and cities. Educational institutions, depending upon their openness to the world around them may or may not be open learning communities. The UNESCO Program, in this regard, poses a number of challenging questions related to the development of such open learning communities: What would learning from the perspective pace, local culture, towards developing potential? environments look like if they were constructed of each learner-sensitive to the learning needs, values, interests and aspirations-and geared each human beings individual and collective

What would learning environments look like if they were constructed and managed by the learners and communities and linked to dynamic processes of continually identifying and realizing their development priorities? What would learning environments look like if they were comprised of dynamically inter-connected diverse learning communities that shared information, culture and experiences and supported the evolution and construction of local knowledge systems?

55

See: M. Jain, Towards Open Learning Communities: One Vision Under Construction, Proceeeding of Conference on Education, Democracy and Development at the Turn of the Century, March 22/97.

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What would learning environments look like if they allowed learners the flexibility to move in and out of them and encouraged wider social interaction? What would learning environments look like if they tried to engage in their own organizational learning? 56 SHIFT 16: From Hierarchies to Learning Organizations

In the information economy, knowledge is increasingly seen as both the raw material and major product of organizations. The competitive advantage, or excellence, of an organization is deeply affected by its capacity to learn. This shift, at least in perception, means that we can expect organizations of all kinds to emerge as one of the critical contexts in which people learn. Of course organizations have always been contexts for learning, at least in terms of the expectations that have been attached to performing various roles. The fact that organizations serve as contexts in which people learn things, for good or bad, is not new. What is new, is a growing recognition that the effectiveness of organizations requires that structures and processes be put in place to continuously replenish, extend, deepen, and challenge the knowledge and capabilities base of all members. Once a luxury reserved for top management in organizations, knowledge creation and learning are becoming ubiquitous processes to be engaged in by all. This democratization of knowledge creation and learning, as an essential element in the competitive advantage and effectiveness of organizations, is perhaps one of the most revolutionary dimensions of the learning revolution. The idea that the learning potential, or knowledge-generating capacity, of organizations is a key component in confronting and adapting to the new challenges of the information economy has spawned the concept of knowledge management as one of the new tasks of leadership. Knowledge management is a dynamic process of creating the conditions and enabling mechanisms for the generation, codification, sharing and application of the knowledge and competencies that reside within an organizations processes, systems, and people. 57 Knowledge management views the organization ecologically as a set of dynamically interrelated parts and processes. More particularly, from the perspective of knowledge management, there is a tendency to manage the flow of people, ideas and processes through a set of practices and perceptions that differ radically from control oriented hierarchies: To see the organization as a human community capable of providing diverse meanings to information outputs generated by technological and other systems. To de-emphasize the adherence to the way things have always been done so that prevailing practice can be continuously assessed from multiple perspectives and in terms of their fit to a changing environment. To encourage and stimulate greater proactive involvement of the human imagination and creativity.

56 57

Towards Open Learning Communities, UNESCO, 1997. See: T. Davenport and L. Prusak, Working Knowledge (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1998)

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To give more explicit recognition to tacit knowledge and to such issues as values, ideals or emotions. To design and implement new flexible technologies and systems that support and enable communities of practice, both formal and informal, to emerge and thrive within the organization. To make the organizational information database accessible to all as a way of encouraging shared problem solving and the development of a transparent organizational memory.

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the implications for the process of development, of organizations emerging as major contexts for generative and shareable learning and the knowledge management focus that has emerged as a consequence. There is much talk today in development circles, and among economists, of the need for effective governance structures as a way of increasing transparency in market relationships. The ADB Institute is interested in the degree to which such structural reforms must, in order to be effective in the long run, be underpinned by a conception of management in which knowledge creation, learning, and participation are guiding principles? Many organizations in the developing world, as indeed in the industrialized world, are heavily bureaucratic and control oriented. These organizations, regardless of the sectors in which they are to be found, must find better ways to manage what they know, what they would like to know, and how to create absorb and apply knowledge. One does not have to be in the midst of an information and knowledge driven economy to recognize that knowledge is an increasingly vital source of organizational advantage and effectiveness. It is important that developing countries do not find themselves in a situation in which they replicate yesterdays institutions and forms of organization that may not be relevant to, or help them participate in, the emerging global knowledge economy. New institutions and new styles of management are very important if developing countries hope to use the knowledge resources at their command and those that they can potentially access. It is instructive to note that very recently the World Bank has decided to call itself the Knowledge Bank. 58 This turn of phrase is more significant than it seems, for what the World Bank has committed itself to is the development of its own knowledge management system that will provide knowledge, best practices, and experience directly to clients through online communities. The World Bank is undertaking this initiative in recognition that the information economy poses the serious possibility that a knowledge gap will emerge between the so-called developed and developing world. While it is laudable that the World Bank is developing its own knowledge management system, it perhaps deserves mention that developing countries are
58

See: The Knowledge Bank, World Bank Planning and Policy Paper, 1997

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not devoid of knowledge creating or management systems. These systems may exist, but be quite different from the highly explicit forms of knowledge management envisaged in much of the thinking that underpins this area. This point has been made in a very detailed and powerful way, in the context of Japan by Nonaka and Takeuchi the authors of the thought provoking study, The Knowledge-Creating Company .59 In their study of knowledge creating processes within Japanese companies, Nonaka and Takeuchi argue that knowledge creation in these firms involves a spiraling process of exchange between tacit and explicit knowledge among individuals, groups, and organizations in which four modes of knowledge conversion are operative depending upon the nature of the knowledge which is being exchanged. Knowledge is created and converted, they argue, through socialization (tacit knowledge acquired through tacit means), externalization (making tacit knowledge explicit), combination (combining different bodies of explicit knowledge), and internalization (transforming explicit knowledge into tacit understandings). This study is an important milestone in gaining an understanding of how organizations, and people within organizations, create and manage knowledge and the role that culture plays in structuring these processes. One implication of this study for the development of knowledge management systems, particularly those intended to be accessible to developing countries, is the danger, and perhaps arrogance, of automatically assuming that such systems do not exist. In other words, as in the case of the Japan study, it is vitally important not to confuse explicit practices with best practices. The starting point in this area of activity then, is to be clear as to the knowledge management and knowledge creating processes that do exist in a given context, and the processes that are at work in such systems. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested to know the degree to which explicit knowledge management is demanded in the new information economy, and whether the faster such processes become explicit, the better organizations will be able to compete and thrive in this new economy? On the other hand, the ADB Institute also contemplates that there are alternative, non-explicit modes of knowledge creation and sharing which, if understood, can broaden the impact that knowledge can make on development. How these two worlds of knowledge creation, the explicit and the tacit, are best balanced in the face of a new knowledge driven economy is a matter of central concern to the ADB Institute. There is little question that a focal issue in development today increasingly relates to the degree to which various countries are prepared for, and able to participate in, the knowledge and information revolution. The US National Research Council and the World Bank have recently developed a promising methodology for the conduct of what is termed a National Knowledge Assessment: a framework designed to improve the use of knowledge for social and economic development. Specifically, the knowledge assessment is a tool for assisting developing countries, and indeed any nation, to analyze their capabilities for participating in the knowledge revolution.60 The knowledge assessment process is a learning experience for the country and for the agency that facilitates its implementation.

59 60

I. Nonaka and H. Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company (NY: Oxford, 1995) National Knowledge Assessment, National research Council, 1998

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The knowledge assessment model developed by the National Research Council draws upon a technique used in industry for analyzing new business investments and making location decisions: the venture capital investment model. The knowledge assessment has four linked components: 1. Construction of a National Knowledge System model 2. Virtual case studies of sentinel enterprises 3. Gap Analysis 4. Strategic Policy. In the methodology as it has evolved to date, a national symposium is used as the vehicle for constructing what is termed a National Knowledge System Model. The National Knowledge System of a country comprises those institutions that control and regulate the flow and use of knowledge in the economy and society, together with the linkages among them and with the outside world. A map of the knowledge system includes the stocks and flows of knowledge, its sources and uses, and identifies leverage-points-those institutions, processes or systems whose creation, redesign or strengthening is likely to promote the wider diffusion of knowledge and lower barriers to its assimilation and use. While the knowledge system is national in focus, it necessarily elucidates how the national system is embedded in, and interacts with, systems defined beyond the boundaries of the nation state. Specifically the National Knowledge System Model is built around six fundamental functions: Motivation for engaging in knowledge-based activities Creation of knowledge, both fundamental and applied.

Access to knowledge, the physical means available within the country for obtaining knowledge from sources inside and outside and the pattern of access by people to the resultant knowledge pool. The capacity for assimilation of knowledge, its election, and understanding. The diffusion of knowledge to those who can make use of it.

The capacity for the productive use of knowledge for both economic and social benefit. The development of the National Knowledge System Model represents the supply side of the knowledge equation. A complementary element of knowledge assessment focuses on the demand side and this is where the virtual case study of sentinel enterprises comes into play. A virtual case study entails a feasibility study for a hypothetical, sentinel enterprise conducted by a team composed of local entrepreneurs and managers, foreign experts drawn from or familiar with global industries, and persons knowledgeable about the governmental and legal structure of the country. The sentinel enterprise could be one that might be found in the new knowledge-based industry or a hypothetical existing firm developing a new product or process or expanding into a new market. The elements of the sentinel enterprise plan may include information about access to capital, siting, licenses, market information, training needs etc. For each item in the plan, or class of items, baseline data is provided by the local participants that include exemplary benchmarks furnished by international participants on the team and drawn from global databases. The difference between what seems currently achievable in the country and global best practice is considered to be a gap, and the sources and causes of this gap are identified and examined. The last stage in the process involves the crafting of strategies to close gaps, or a rethinking of launching into particular

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sentinel enterprises. It is important to underline the fact that the conduct of a National Knowledge Assessment can be through a simulation or real experience; that is, it can be a preparatory assessment, as part of anticipatory planning, or an actual assessment for an actual industry in an actual country setting.

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the opportunities and challenges posed for development by the emergence and intensification of knowledge and information based economy. Does such an economy inevitably mean that the gap between the developed and developing world will grow even wider? What are the basal requirements needed for a given nation to be able to productively participate in, and gain from, the knowledge based economy? What tools exist, or should be developed, to assess a nations preparedness for such an economy? What type of learning system will enable the people of a nation to productively participate in the knowledge economy?

SHIFT 17: From Inert to Action Learning One of the perennial challenges that face training and learning design is how to insure a transfer of new knowledge, perspectives, and skills to the strategic plans and actual practices of an organisation or other setting. Traditional training systems have tended to assume transfer by virtue of the fact that a person possessed new knowledge and skills. For this reason, and others, most training was conducted in classrooms separate from the workplace and dealt with theories, or cases, that it was assumed would broaden the codified knowledge base of the employee or manager. Billions of dollars have been spent, on a worldwide basis, on this training and learning model. This model of transmitting inert knowledge, and assuming the individual would give it life when in the organisational context, is now under very serious scrutiny, if not dramatic challenge. The knowledge creation cycle depicted in the following diagram provides a framework for matching individual and organisational development needs. 61 Although developed to guide the design of programs for leadership development, the cycle can in fact be applied generically. It pictures leadership development as a constantly escalating process that builds on the experience of the learner to create an ongoing cycle of individual learning and knowledge creation. An understanding of the knowledge creation cycle can enable an organisation to enhance both its ability to learn and its awareness of the appropriate tools to use in leadership development. The central feature of the cycle is the idea of linking: techniques which link, new experiences to individual learning, and individual learning to organisational knowledge. In the field of leadership development a number of linking strategies are being employed: performance appraisal, teaching, training, task forces, and action learning. Of the various linking techniques employed, action learning appears to be gaining in momentum and popularity. Action learning is a process which brings people together to find solutions to problems and, in so doing, develops both the individuals and the organisation. In action learning these two perspectives are always present: the growth and development of people and of the organisation,
61

The diagram is adpated from: A. Vicere and R. Fulmer,Leadership By Design (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1997), p. 95.

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and the finding of solutions to real problems. Action learning has several characteristics that, when cumulatively combined, give the approach its unique character: Action learning is project based : The learning is centred on the need to find solutions to problems. Action learning is for real: There is an explicit contract between the organisation and the recommendations to be implemented. Action learning is learner-driven: All of the tutorials and teaching are in response from requests from participants who need to know. Action learning is a social process: Participants in action learning work in groups, learning from each other as well as from tutors and facilitators. Action learning has high visibility : Action learning projects are not undertaken in secret but a conducted publicly within organisations and draw on many segments of the organisation for advice and ideas. Action learning takes time : Action learning is in-depth learning about real problems.62

Action learning is guided by a conception of learning, which was formulated by its inventor Reg Revans, a scientist by training. It can be expressed as an equation: L=P + Q + I. In this equation, P is called programmed knowledge that is stored in books, files, and other devices in the organisation and its environment. It is the expert basis of what is known about a problem. Q refers to the process of asking the right questions when things are uncertain and no one knows what to do next. These questions include: What am I or my organisation trying to do first and last? What is topping me or my organization from doing it? What can I or my organisation contrive to do about it? Who knows about what we are trying to do -- who has the real facts and can put things into a proper perspective? Who cares about getting it implemented -- who has a vested interest in getting the problem solved as opposed to merely talking about it? Who has the power to get it implemented -- who controls the resources that can make change happen?

With these questions as a guide, the action learning process proceeds as a form of team based problem solving and organisational change. Participants work in what are called sets, groups of usually five to eight, who form an action learning project team. Where larger numbers are involved sub sets are formed. The set works on a real problem in an organisation and with a manager or other individual who is defined as owning the problem; that is, committed to implementing workable solutions in real time. Each set has a set adviser, a person who services the set by steering it through the action learning process and arranging for organisational logistics. Each set also has a tutor; an expert who packages and delivers workshops on action learning processes and programmed knowledge during the course of the investigation by the set. The action learning process concludes with a detailed action plan addressed specifically to the issue identified at the outset.

62

See: Scott Inglis, Making the Most of Action Learning (London, Gower, 1996)

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What sets action learning apart is how learning is interwoven with action within a compressed time frame. The action learning process incorporates and integrates a number of elements essential to individual and organisational learning: Data collection on problems and strategies Team effectiveness workshops and team building processes Action research Developing and sharing of new ideas and perspectives Evaluation and assessment Presentation development and reporting Implementation and management of change Participants learning journal that records on going learning during the action learning cycle.

What action learning creates is a temporary system.63 It is a temporary environment that resembles the real world of work in a number of ways, but it is also one in which team members and sponsors are able to experiment and take risks that they may otherwise not contemplate. What keeps this from being just a learning experience is the front-end commitment to action in relation to a real problem. Action learning, as the above outlines, provides a way for an organisation to convert individual learning into organisational knowledge through the hands-on resolution of real problems. Since the projects are conducted in teams, learning is shared across members, networking is reinforced, and new perspectives are encouraged. Action learning, when functioning in a highly effective manner, provides the conditions for the creation of a community of learners in which the distinction between work and learning all but disappears. Action learning is increasing in use in corporate training contexts, professional development initiatives, community development, and leadership development programs. Training initiatives often form an integral part of the process of development and, in this regard, such programs face challenges associated with the transfer and relevancy of new knowledge and skills to development problems. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing the degree to which action learning processes and techniques can and are being employed as key components of technical assistance and as part of a learning framework for problem solving in development.

SHIFT 18: From Central Places to Distributed Networks One of the profound impacts of modern communications and computer technologies has been to alter the meaning of place and distance in society. In terms of the generation and communication of ideas and information, place is increasingly disappearing as a barrier. Most other spatial barriers to information
63

See: D. Dotlich and J. Noel, Action Learning: How the Worlds Top Companies Are Re-Creating Their Leaders and Themselves (San Franscisco: Jossey bass, 1998)

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exchange are also dissipating in the age of instant connectivity. In no area of social activity has the impact of the disappearance of distance begun to be felt more than in the worlds of training and learning. Schools and other institutions of formal learning, like universities, have been constructed on the assumption that economies of scale flowed from people coming together in one central place in order to learn. A given institutional location could be resourced to provide a range of learning experiences and access to expertise that no single individual, acting on his or her own, could obtain. New information technologies, and the learning highways which they create, reverse this historic process: knowledge and learning experiences are taken to the person, regardless of their place or space. Learning, the opportunity to learn, and expertise are being distributed across space and time. In such environments, people can increasingly learn anytime, anyplace, and with virtually anyone. Learning anecdote: A colleague at the ADB Institute recently developed a strong interest in new online learning forms and the design principles that underpin them. This was an urgent and felt need on her part. As she recounts, her interest was not only sparked, but she had a compelling desire to know more right now. With her interest charged and her need to know in high gear, she immediately sought opportunities on the Web. Rather than facing a dearth of opportunities, she soon found herself in a state of opportunity overload. She had to choose from the various opportunities presenting themselves to her for online learning about online learning. As it turns out, she selected several, and is currently pursuing her online learning about online learning to depths that I can only imagine or hear about when she comes up for real as opposed to cyberair.

Distributed learning systems, as the example above hopefully illustrates, provides just in time learning. It is, as David Perkins has noted, a Person Plus system of learning: the person plus the mediating tools and technologies available in the distributed system 64. Moreover, such distributed learning environments develop what Roy Pea has called distributed cognition: enlarging the capacity of human mental functioning through the use of a complex adaptive system that includes the mind plus tools that extend its capacity to access, categorise, simulation, represent, create, and share knowledge and information.65 New information and communication technologies (ICTs), and the digital economy that they are nurturing, are significantly altering the environment in which educational systems and institutions function. Currently, institutions such as universities, in the words of Carol Twigg and Michael Miloff, are bundling a number of functions including standards setting, accreditation, content creation, and delivery and administration of instructional materials66. With the emerging digital learning infrastructure, these functions can be disintermediated, disaggregated, globalized, and carried out in customized fashion by different entities. The result is the emergence of what is being described as a studentcentric learning system in which various providers of content, tools and leaning

64 65

D. Perkins, Smart Schools (NY: Basic Books, 1996) R. Pea and G. Salomon ed. Distributed Cognition (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 66 C. Twigg and M. Miloff, The Global Learning Infrastructure: The Future of Higher Education, in. D. Tapscott ed. Blueprint the Digital Economy (NY: McGraw Hill, 1998), pp.179-202.

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processes compete in a new educational marketplace for the interest and participation of the learner. These student-centric learning systems offer new ways to meet the pressing challenges facing education. Consider higher education, which around the globe faces the simultaneous challenges of increasing access, quality, relevance, and productivity. Through the Internet, it is now possible, and increasingly becoming a reality, to offer instructional material and learning experiences to anyone, anywhere and anytime. Many universities, at first skeptical about the promise of new ICTs, are now offering countless programs by distance learning and an ever increasing number of courses can be taken in person or online. Quality is also being directly affected by ICTs. Countless courses and learning experiences developed by teams of content and instructional design experts are now available on the Web, buttressed by access to vast digital libraries, and in a form that allows for degrees of interactivity and personal attention that can rarely be replicated in a lecture theatre of 500 students. The World Lecture Hall provides an example of such new capacities. 67 The World Lecture Hall is a virtual repository of online course materials structured like a university course catalogue. The difference is that the repository houses full sets of actual course teaching and learning materials. The Hall also provides tools that allow new courses to be easily searched and added to by others. It is an example of cooperative curriculum development. The Hall represents what economists refer to as positive network externalities: the more users adopt the product, the more valuable (but not scarcer) the product becomes for other users. The capacity of courses and programs to be customized to a persons learning style and needs means that relevance also increases. Rather than the principle of one size fits all, as is the case in most conventional institutions of higher education, virtual and online learning systems actually allow the person to tailor make his or her learning to his her needs. Motorola University, a university within the walls of the Motorola Corporation, actually offers an online learning customization program for customers and others. Cost is also addressed by the new ICTs. It is possible to spread the development costs of any new course, or area of learning, across millions of users on the net. When this is combined with a reduction in duplication costs, exemplified by psychology 101 being taught and developed simultaneously in each and every university, the cost savings, or productivity, gains are truly substantial. Indeed, it is possible to conceive, as Twigg and Miloff do, of a new principle of modularity as the basis for the design of distributed learning systems. A modular approach unbundles content and educational processes into their most basic components and uses the principle of interoperability standards to insure that modules can be easily modified, combined or replaced. Modularity strengthens the capacity of the educational market to stimulate and match distinctive supplier capabilities with learner or customer interests, capabilities and needs. Suppliers of learning, whether they be universities, corporations, governments, voluntary groups or individuals, can focus on their core competencies, while customers need only purchase those service in which they are interested. The same module, regardless of the source of its development, can be used in different ways in different types of learning programs. This represents a new economic principle of increasing returns which, as will be discussed later in this paper, some argue underpins the new information
67

See: www.utexas.edu/world/lecture

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economy. Modularity and inter-operable standards in education also profoundly challenge the knowledge possession mystique that has pervaded education and applies the principle of transparency to the learning process itself. For this vision to become a reality, of course, what is needed is agreement on the interoperability standards- a challenge that has significant implications for the future of education and development. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in what model and framework could be developed to initiate a process for the creation of open learning standards that support interoperability in the provision of modules of learning, and how a global network of learning institutions could be created that is committed to offering learning modules to and with the developing world? The new digital economy in education is redefining the relationship between supply and demand for learning. To what degree, for example, will nations continue to have educational institutions offering a full range of programs and services to all students? Will, or should, educational institutions begin to position themselves in the new marketplace in such a way that they can focus on their core competencies, whether that be in content areas or process techniques, while using electronic networks to access services which they themselves do not provide directly. Partnership is another hallmark of the digital economy. What types of partnerships, for example between universities, publishers and instructional design centers can, and are being, developed as a way of leveraging the expertise of the Web? To what extent will consortia of all kinds provide the new organizational frame for the digital educational marketplace and what planning, management, negotiation and other skills will be demanded as education shifts from an institutional to learning systems focus? These are questions that are also of concern to the ADB Institute. The new digital economy in education also poses several issues related to the human resource mix within higher and other forms of education. Will the same number of faculty be needed to undertake the same number and type of tasks? Or, will there emerge a new basis for providing the human resource expertise needed to deliver services to people? Will old notions of student/class ratios disappear as the critical ingredient in the cost management and resourcing of higher education?

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing more about the economics of distributed learning systems and the interplay between cost drivers and productivity levers.

Development assistance in education, in recent years, has stressed institutional capacity building as one of its key initiatives and areas of support and intervention. This has been a worthwhile endeavor and one that has produced some positive results. The new digital economy in education, which is a global rather than local phenomenon, but one which will inevitably impact developing countries, poses some important issues for capacity building. It suggests that

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institutions will continue to have needs for strengthening, but their greater need, over time, will be to have the capacity to take advantage of distributed learning systems and engage in the new partnerships which permeate such systems of learning.

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing to what extent efforts to strengthen institutions should be directed toward their capacity to realign competencies for participation in distributed learning systems? Indeed, perhaps the new thrust should better be described as building capacities for institutional extending, rather than institutional strengthening. The emergence of digitally based and distributed learning systems poses serious challenges to the vision and mode of operation of traditional educational institutions. Unless the digital revolution will somehow reverse itself, these challenges also face educational institutions in developing countries. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the frame within which educational planning in developing countries should be set: the same place same time world, or the emerging world of learning anytime, any place and with anyone? Emergence planning, which lays pathways for migration to the future, in other words, may be as important in education for development, as planning which is geared to meeting the immediate needs of today. There seems to be little question that one of the dominant themes of modern life is the degree to which people are being connected through the application of computing and communication technol ogies. While significant areas of the world remain on the margins of this connectedness, the dominant trend appears to be that they too will soon be linked to the growing interdependencies in the world today. The attributes of this connected world can be summed up, according to Geoff Mulgan, in three laws. 68 The first law was originally stated by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel. He predicted that the number of transistors which could be built on the same piece of silicon would double every eighteen months. This led to the proposition that the cost of computing power halves every eighteen months. The second law is associated with Robert Metcalfe and suggests that the value of a network rises exponentially relative to the square of the numbers using it. The reason for this is that each person using the network increases its value to those who are already using it. The third law flows from the speculation of John Kao a business professor and entrepreneur from Harvard University. Kao claims that the power of creativity rises exponentially with the diversity and divergence of those connected into a network. Put in another way, the capacity to innovate or create flows from dissonant and complimentary ways of thinking and not from agreement and consensus. These laws, and variants on them, explain, in part, the drive to connect diverse people, and indeed cultures, to one another through networks whose costs are falling over time. As discussed earlier, the field of learning is one in which connectedness holds much promise to create, widen, and deepen opportunities for learning for countless numbers of people. At the same time, merely connecting people to
68

G. Mulgan, Connexity (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1998)

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each other, and to a network, does not necessarily guarantee that learning processes conducted on that network will be meaningful and positive in relation to people and societies. Some suggest that the connected world will replace relationships based on high orders of intentionality with relationships based on low ones. Text based systems of communication, moreover, gloss over, or miss, nine-tenths of any message whose primary content is emotional. Email, for example, has been found in some settings to provide a vehicle for interpersonal attack through the use of a supposedly neutral and impersonal medium. Learning is not merely a process of the exchange of information between and among people. It is a deeply social and cultural process in which values, emotions, and nuances of meaning and significance play central roles. 69 From the perspective of learning, one can view the new connectedness from at least two perspectives: exchange or relationship. From an exchange perspective the new connectedness suggests the development of what one can call a spot market for the exchange of information in which the rules of efficiency, cost, and leverage prevail. Alternatively, one can view the new connectedness as a possibility for developing new and more meaningful learning relationships among people in which the cumulative understanding of motives, meanings, and mentalities are central. These two views, of course, do not necessarily have to conflict. but can compliment one another. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in how and whether it is possible to utilize the new technologies of connectedness for purposes, not only of exchange, but for the development of meaningful learning relationships among people and cultures.

Shift 19: From Mono to Multi-Media Education is a social process and is always limited, to a degree, by the affordances in the environment in which it occurs. As a result, until recently, education was a function of how many people were available to play the roles of teacher and learner, the capacity norms set in terms of interaction, and what tools they had available to facilitate their interaction. Typically, this led to the development and widespread use of an understandable and simple model of learning: a teacher, interacting with a set number of students, occasionally supplemented by outside persons, using talk, writing, reading mediated by such visual aids as chalk and a blackboard, with the occasional use of over head and slide projectors. While some allowance was made in this model for individual learning styles and learning problems by grouping in the classroom, by and large, every learner progressed through the interaction, and encountered the content, in the same sequence. Those that had difficulty with this learning model usually left for work or other pastimes. This model of education, to borrow a phrase from agriculture, represents a monolearning culture. This mono-learning culture, structured as it is by the affordances available in the learning context, is in the process of dramatic change. The change is being brought about by the emergence of new multi-media affordances in society, born
69

See: M. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity (Cambridge: Harvard University press, 1998)

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of the convergence of communication and computing technologies accessible, technologically speaking, to anyone on an anywhere, anytime basis. These new multi-media technologies make possible processes in the educational context that were unavailable in a mono-learning culture: The range of people, both teachers and learners, with whom a given learner can interact, grows immensely. The content of learning can be displayed in various forms and with varying degrees of interactivity. The degree to which a learner can become involved in self directed learning with or without the class group and teacher expands. The information limitations of the immediate learning context can be overcome and widened tremendously. Inquiry, as part of the learning process, can proceed on a local and global scale both individually, in small groups or in networks. The limitation of local reality as the ambient of learning can be overcome through the use of such techniques as computer based and interactive simulations and games. Feedback and corrective action in terms of the learning process can be immediate and just in time. Teachers can shift their primary function from the repetitive and mind numbing process of dispensing information to the truly professional role of facilitating analysis, creativity synthesis and the development of processes for learning how to learn. Finally in the connected multi-media environment people can learn, not only what others want them to learn, but acting on an independent basis, they can also design their own curriculum, customize the learning processes underpinning that curriculum, discuss their learning with others with whom they wish to share and collaborate and, if they are so inclined, offer their curriculum to others who also can customize it to their needs and preferences. This new multi-media learning environment, not only makes new affordances available to the traditional sectors in education, but opens up a host of new possibilities in the field of training, whether for work or self development purposes. Indeed, in many ways, the frontiers of the new multi-media learning environment are being explored most extensively in the field of training. One of the reasons for this is the growing recognition that the competencies of organizations are central to their health and competitiveness and the new multimedia technologies appear to offer a cost effective, timely, flexible and high quality mode of delivery. To reap the benefits of employing multi-media technologies for learning, however, it is becoming absolutely essential that the learning systems in which they are used be designed, or redesigned as the case may be, to accommodate what these technologies afford in terms of expanding the interactional, space, and time dimensions of learning. An example of designing a new learning system to accommodate and deploy multi-media technologies is that developed by Arthur Anderson Consulting to mange its own training needs and provide training to its clients. As the following diagram illustrates, Andersen uses goal-based, multi-media simulations depending on where in the matrix a particular learning

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objectives falls. 70 While this design was developed for training applications within a consulting company environment, it demonstrates how, in the light of the access to multi-media technologies, a matrix, or customized, mode of thinking replaces the traditional lock-step, same size fits all, frameworks that dominate educational planning and practice in traditional learning systems. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing whether the use of such a customized matrix framework, or other variations on it, in educational planning for development can provide a more strategically driven tool for meeting learner needs and allocating resources? To what degree do the new multi-media technologies herald a potential revolution in learning? Earlier revolutionary claims were made, in all seriousness and with equal fervor, for both radio and television. In the case of television (TV), it has found its way into the classroom, but as a supplement to the dominant mode of learning. Television did not change the basic design features of learning. One of the reasons for this is that TV is a medium of one way communication. New multi-media technologies, however, are interactive and asynchronous. They allow, not only for broader access to information, but also provide a vehicle for an individual learner to simultaneously interact asynchronously with the content, with others about that experience and to create and share content in different ways using different forms of representation. These features of the new multimedia technologies represent a set of principles, which, if combined in an enabling environment, do in fact represent the elements of a new learning design. An outstanding example of the deployment of the new information and communication technologies within a fresh learning design is project GLOBE. The GLOBE program is a hands-on environmental science and education program that uses multi-media and INTERNET technologies to unite students, educators, and scientists from around the world in studying the global environment. The program currently involves over 5000 schools in 70 countries worldwide. Three goals guide the GLOBE program: To enhance the environmental awareness of individuals worldwide. To increase scientific understanding of the earth. To improve student achievement in the sciences and mathematics.

GLOBE is a worldwide electronic network of K-12 students working under the guidance of teachers trained to conduct the program. Each GLOBE school site involves students in the following activities Undertaking a core set of environmental observations at a site at or near their school using pre-established protocols developed by GLOBE scientists. Reporting their data through the Internet to a GLOBE data processing facility. Receiving and using global images created from worldwide GLOBE school data. Receiving analyses of their data for comparison from GLOBE scientists as well as being involved in the larger globe science program. Interacting through the Internet with other GLOBE schools around the world sharing data and developing joint projects.

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This diagram is adapted from : R. Schank, Virtual learning (NY: McGraw Hill, 1998), p.56

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GLOBE has also developed curricular materials to support the program, as well as graphics, search and other Internet tools available to students in the project. GLOBE is both an international environmental science research program and an environmental science education program that by design involves a tight coupling between the two. GLOBE functions on the basis of the principle of coinvestigators drawn from the ranks of science and the schools. From the perspective of science, the GLOBE scientist obtains current and real time data from an exceedingly diverse range of locations around the world and can engage in discussion with students about the incoming data and conditions of its collection. For students, they study science by doing real science, with real scientists, on major issues of importance. This year, 1998, for example, GLOBE is conducting a major study, through its network, on the El Nino effect. The GLOBE program fosters the creation of a worldwide research team comprised of students, teachers, and environmental scientists. In the words of the project director, GLOBE is a hands-on and minds-on effort in which students will become the environmental experts for their study sites. GLOBE is an example of the use of multi-media technology as an enabler of a new design for learning. As the chart illustrates, the distributed and multimedia learning environment of GLOBE, along with its clear focus on scientific thinking and the doing of real science, develops a range of science and thinking skills in students. It is safe to say that the capacity of a teacher functioning in a classroom, without access to such learning technology, networks and scientific expertise, to provide such a learning experience for students would be nonexistent. Internet based multi-media technologies are also providing the ambient for the emergence of electronic learning communities. These communities often develop spontaneously, rather than as part of a deliberate plan aimed at specific educational goals. They symbolize, in a way, a revival of the spirit of voluntarism characteristic of civil society. One example of a thriving electronic-learning community is Bio-MedNet that began its life as a single electronic academic journal in 1991. Today, BioMedNet includes an online library of publications, a shopping mall that links to companies that sell products of interest to this community, a collection of collaboration tools, virtual discussion groups, and online conferences, and an electronic bulletin board of job opportunities. 71 BioMedNet offers faculty in the biological and medical sciences almost a one stop shopping center for their professional needs: In a couple of hours, professors might be able to catch up on the latest journal publications, read critical reviews, discuss new research ideas with colleagues from other countries, examine new books in their field, check out job listings, and place orders for a variety of products. BioMedNet has also added a new service that allows members to create their own virtual rooms within the community. Internet based technologies are also being used to address and give voice to the concerns of children and youth. Voices of Youth, for example, was developed by UNICEF to create an environment for children and adolescents to take part in global discussions on current issues and concerns. Young people from all around the world are asked to contribute their ideas about what the world would look like if the rights of children were guaranteed. 72 The site is divided into
Rand Corporation, Untangling The Web, 1998. See: Voices of Youth (Error! Reference source not found.) and see also: KIDLINK (Error! Reference source not found. TERC (http://www.terc.edu/abouterc.html).
72 71

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three main for a. The meeting place involves children giving their views on how global issues actually affect the lives of children and what actions communities might take to deal with these effects. The learning place provides an opportunity for children around the world to undertake a series of interactive global learning projects. The teachers place is another context in which teachers and other can discover and share useful educational materials and teaching methods. The number of interactive opportunities for children and young people to come together to discuss ideas, participate in common projects and suggest strategies for change is growing at an increasingly fast rate. Perhaps for the first time in human history, the global voices and perspectives of children and young people on matters of global concern can be heard and understood without the selective and sometimes controlling force of adults. Whether adult societies around the globe are prepared for such a development is, of course, an interesting question. Do multi-media learning technologies have a role to play in the process of development? This question is posed with increasing frequency today. It is somewhat like asking whether or not one of the purposes of development is to increase the ability of developing countries to actively participate and thrive in the modern world. Surely the answer is a definitive yes. Moreover, the challenge of making these technologies accessible to the developing world are not technological; that is, the technologies are available to do just that. There is, it is true, a financial challenge, but this ultimately becomes a matter of the strategic assessment of different investment options and the benefits and return of each.

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the degree to which continued investment in a traditional learning model which, as suggested here, is in the process of being significantly altered for cost effectiveness and benefit reasons, is akin to hardwiring obsolescence into the learning systems of developing countries and further widening the knowledge gap between the rich and poor? Yet, the question remains as to what strategies can be developed, and are needed, to both meet the immediate educational capacity needs of developing countries and, at the same time, do so in a way which allows that capacity to be applied, extended and deepened within a new model of learning?

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ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENT: WHY LEARN? Dimension: Purpose and Policy This dimension of the learning architecture centers on why people learn examined from both a personal perspective, as well as from the perspective of public policy support for learning. SHIFT 20: From Personal Growth to Competitive Competencies In the era of elite-based education, the purpose of participation in learning was a matter of socialization to the privileges and obligations of social class and the acquisition of key values and norms which underpinned such a class system. In the early transit from elite to mass education, the focus of education shifted again toward broad education for civic responsibilities, basic literacy and numeracy, underpinned by the induction into the norms and values of the society. This model applied in both colonial and non-colonial contexts. In Western countries, as the mass education system developed and economies experienced levels of affluence heretofore unheard of, the purpose of education shifted again, with a concentration on the development and growth of the person represented most strongly in child-centered models of elementary and secondary education and the growth of electives and choice at tertiary levels. The onset, in Western industrialized countries, of problems associated with economic competitiveness and fiscal indebtedness, and the rise of Asian economies as significant sources of challenge to Western hegemony, has led, in recent years, to a fundamental rethinking of the purposes of learning. Increasingly, learning is being seen as a process, not for the growth of the individual, but for the acquisition of competitive competencies. Competitive competencies are those knowledge, dispositions and skills deemed to be demanded in the labor market and required by nations and firms to remain internationally competitive. Numerous studies and commissions in Western industrialized nations, often involving the business community, have developed lists of core competitive competencies including such things as problem solving capability, decision making skills, communication and computational skills, technological and especially computer literacy combined with a broad understanding of the values of the workplace and a resilient attitude toward change. Many nations, as discussed earlier in this paper, have formalized these competencies into a set of performance outcomes to be monitored and assessed somewhat like a firm monitors and assesses its market and profit performance. In all of this, there seems to be a strong belief that the core competencies of individuals convert into the core competencies and competitive advantage of nations. This, of course, is an assumption that has yet to be definitively verified. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is very interested, if the supposition is indeed true, in the mechanisms through which such a transfer of skills from individuals to nations actually occurs and might be made more effective.

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Developing countries have not been immune to this shift in the core purpose assigned to education. In many developing countries, the education system is structured as a ladder in which students compete with each other to obtain scores, often on externally moderated tests developed in industrialized societies, which will admit them to what in one such society are referred to as star schools. Part of this competition for the best places in the best schools often entails participation in a fee-paying system of extra tuition provided through private schools or teachers themselves. In these contexts, the income level and social capital of parents and families often play a role in determining a students competitive success in the school system.73 Within such systems, in fact, the real competition is often between families. In some of these nations, the amount of time spent in extra tuition equals, and in some cases exceeds, the time spent in school. A latent effect of such highly competitive educational environments is what some observers refer to as a loss of childhood among the young and the associated development, over time, of deep antipathies to the entire process of learning. Although not intended as such, the new focus on the formation of competitive competencies, as the core purpose of education, can be seen in the international and comparative assessments of achievement in mathematics and the sciences conducted by the TIMMS and IEA consortia.74 One of the interesting findings of the most recent assessment was the strong correlation, across all grade levels and participant countries, between social capital (the level of education of parents plus the existence in the home of such things as computers, books and a private study desk) and overall achievement levels. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the implications of this and similar findings regarding the mediating role of social capital in impacting educational achievement and what strategies can be devised to equalize the access to social capital of learners in a given society? The rankings for performance on the TIMMS math and science achievement tests show an interesting pattern, with Korea topping the list in primary science and Singapore in primary mathematics. In fact, in terms of the top three rankings in each category Asian countries were present in both mathematics and science. The United States was third in achievement in primary science and in the middle range in mathematics. However, when the results were displayed for the later stages of secondary school the USA dropped to below international averages. This has led some in the United States to be very concerned about the competitive state of math and science education, or the company of international peers with whom that nation wishes to be identified with. In a recent analysis, the performance of the USA has been attributed to a splintered vision in mathematics and science education, in which curricular breadth is sacrificed for depth, textbooks are unfocussed, teachers pursue diffuse learning objectives for students, and there is an overall lack of coherence among the actors and institutions in the system.75

73 74

See: T.R. Morrison, The Children of Modernisation (Pathways Project, Mauritius, 1998) See: Third International Mathematics and Science Study, TIMSS International Study Center, Boston College, 1998. 75 William Smith et. al. A Splintered Vision: An Investigation of U.S. Science and Mathematics Education (Michigan State University, 1998)

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There is an irony in the results of the international assessment. If strong performance in competitive competencies like mathematics and science are, as assumed by many, linked to economic competitiveness, then how can one explain the health and robustness of the American economy in relation to the current economic downturn in Asian economies? It may be that such a downturn is a temporary phenomenon and the strong math and science performance of countries like Korea, Singapore, and Japan will provide the intellectual basis for solid growth in the future. This is a possibility and a testable hypothesis. On the other hand, it may be that economic competitiveness is not driven by any single factor, intellectual capital included, and that educational policies which are tied to the competitive performance of nations, or crafted apart from other factors which influence economic competitiveness, are themselves splintered and fragmented.

SHIFT 21: From Factor Endowments to Intellectual Capital For many economies the process of industrialization has often meant exploiting comparative advantages in such factors as natural resources, labor costs, and geographic location, combined with new organizational structures, production and transportation technologies, management systems, and access to investment capital. Many developing countries, today, continue to rely on combinations of comparative advantages in natural resources, geographic location and relatively low labor costs. However, as a recent study by the Monitor Consulting group demonstrates, these factor advantages are not often sustainable as a basis for economic growth: resources deplete and are subject to price fluctuations in the market; new communication technologies are removing distance as a barrier and with it geographic location advantages; and labor costs are always relative to those which can be offered by competitors.76 Moreover, new organizational and management systems, plus the capacity to productively deploy technology, depend to a large extent on the skill and knowledge capacities of the given country. As the recent experience of Asia shows, investment capital can flow out of a country as quickly as it flows in. 77 It is increasingly posited today that the engine of growth of the economy in the information age is knowledge and the competitive advantage of both firms and nations resides increasingly in intellectual capital. While there are different ways in which one might define and unravel the concept of intellectual capital, one way of thinking about the concept is that it represents human capital plus the vision and organizational and relationship processes to deploy it for productive and innovative purposes. Like all forms of capital, intellectual capital, unless deployed for some purpose, remains an inert resource. Intellectual capital is of increasing importance as economies begin to transform themselves from a focus on the processing of resources to the processing of information, from application of raw energy to the application of ideas. Brian Arthur, an economist associated with the Santa Fe Institute, has suggested that, when this shift occurs, the mechanisms that determine economic behavior begin to shift from ones of diminishing returns to ones of
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M. Fairbanks and S. Lindsay, Plowing The Sea: Nurturing The Hidden Sources of Growth in the Developing World (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1997). 77 See: J. Sachs, Global Capitalism: Making It Work, The Economist, Sept. 12, 1998, pp. 19-25.

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increasing returns. 78 Increasing returns are the tendency for that which is ahead to get further ahead and for that which loses advantage to lose further advantage. Increasing returns generate not equilibrium, but instability and demand constant adaptation and the management of change on the part of organizations and indeed nations. Diminishing returns continue to hold sway in the traditional part of the processing industries, although even here the knowledge content of process products is growing. Increasing returns reign in the newer part of the knowledgebased industries. Arthur argues that modern economies have become divided into two interrelated and intertwined parts--two worlds of commerce corresponding to the two types of return. In the economy devoted to bulk processing of grains, livestock, heavy chemicals, metals, forests, and foodstuffs, operations are largely repetitive. When companies in this sector try to expand, they usually run into some limitation related to market demand, access to raw materials or competition from substitute suppliers. That is, diminishing returns set in at some point. In sectors like high technology, however, increasing returns and unpredictability are the key traits. The sectors in which increasing returns predominate in Arthurs words are heavy on knowhow and light on resources. Unit costs fall dramatically as scale increases. Thus, Arthur argues that there are two economies: a bulk production economy yielding products that are essentially congealed resources with a little knowledge operating according to the principles of diminishing returns and a knowledge-based part of the economy yielding products that essentially are congealed knowledge with a little resources and operating according to the principle of increasing returns. 79 The new knowledge sector of the economy, because of the different basis of competition, moreover, demands flat hierarchies, a mission orientation and above all a sense of direction. It is as Arthur claims a commitment to re-everything and constant adaptation and innovation: You cannot optimize in the casino of increasingreturns games. You can be smart. You can be cunning. You can position. You can observe. But when the games themselves are not even fully defined, you cannot optimize. What you can do is adept. Adaptation, in the proactive sense, means watching for the nest wave that is coming, figuring out what shape it will take and positioning the company to take advantage of it. Adaptation is what drives increasing-returns business, not optimization. As the economies of the world shift steadily away from the force of things into the powers of the mind, from resource-based bulk processing into knowledge-based design and reproduction, so it is shifting from a base of diminishing returns to one of increasing returns. While we currently see the existence of two economies, there are strong signals that knowledge is penetrating and altering the basis of bulk processing itself. Products are becoming smarter and the knowledge content of natural resource processing is increasing. 80

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B. Arthur, Increasing Returns and Path Dependence In The Economy (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 1994) 79 B. Arthur, Increasing return and the Two Worlds of Business, Harvard Business Review, July-Aug. 1996 80 S. Zuboff, In The Age of The Smart Machine (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1992)

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This shift toward a knowledge based economy and a world of increasing returns has significant implications for the process of development and the design of learning systems. The first is that the bulk processing economies of the developing world will not be immune to the growth and expansion of the knowledge-based economy. As knowledge intrudes upon bulk processing, developing countries will need to enlarge and deepen their intellectual capital as a way of remaining competitive. If developing countries hope to avoid the ghettoization of being locked into bulk processing, then they will have to do even more to develop their intellectual capital, for this is the entrance ticket to participation in the knowledge economy. Moreover, in developing its intellectual capital, a nation, somewhat like a company, needs a new set of strategic monitoring tools and metrics. Typical measures used in national budgets and planning documents typically relate to gross development measures such as GNP, per capital GNP, deficits and surpluses in various accounts etc. What is missing in these national report cards is a framework and set of measures to chart the development of a nations intellectual capital linked to the strategic policy initiatives of a government. Nations in the developing world, if they intend to take intellectual capital seriously, need the equivalent of what Robert Kaplan and David Norton refer to as a Balanced Scorecard: a framework for examining a nations activity performance from four perspectives: financial, customer, innovation and learning. In each of these perspectives, a nation can establish goals, targets, benchmarks and performance measures. 81 Development planning and policy making, in the context of a renewed interest in the centrality of intellectual capital, must develop new tools and frameworks for understanding these linkages and creatively and strategically guiding investment and assessing results. In terms of education, this calls not only for a dramatic extension in participation, but a transformation in the nature of the educational process in which adaptive problem solving and creative skills have a new premium. In its recently released 1998 World Development Report entitled Knowledge for Development, the World Bank has begun the process of articulating what one could describe as a new paradigm for development. Indeed, in the report the Bank suggests that knowledge is development. In this context, the Bank pinpoints two dimensions of knowledge that are critical for the process of development: Knowledge about technology, or know-how and knowledge about attributes, such as the quality of a product or the credit worthiness of a firm. In each instance, the World Bank argues that there are gaps between developed and developing countries which, if left unaddressed, will handicap, and potentially reverse the gain of development over the past twenty years.82 The first gap noted by the Bank is what it describes as a knowledge or know how gap. To close this gap, the Bank suggests that developing countries need to develop strategies in three areas: Acquiring Knowledge: Tapping into and adapting knowledge available elsewhere in the world through, for example, the adoption of open trading regimes, foreign investment, creating knowledge locally through research and development and building upon indigenous knowledge.

81

R. Kaplan and D. Norton, The Balanced Scorecard (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996) and R. Kaplan and D. Norton, Cost and Effects (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1998) 82 Knowledge For Development, World Bank, 1998.

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Absorbing Knowledge: Insuring a solid and universal foundation in basic education, with special emphasis on girls education and other disadvantaged groups, designing lifelong learning systems and supporting tertiary education, particularly in mathematics and science. Communicating Knowledge: Taking advantage of and leveraging new communications and computing technologies to expand access to knowledge.

The second gap identified in the Banks Report is a gap in information or awareness. Information, the Bank argues, is essential to the efficient functioning of markets and through proper and focused institution building these gaps can be addressed. The Bank suggests that such information gaps be closed first in the processing of financial information, knowledge of the environment and particular knowledge gaps that affect the poor. The 1998 World Development Report of the World Bank provides a new and refreshing perspective on the process and challenges of development. Indeed, when viewed from the perspective of knowledge, the process of development begins to emerge as a more generic process and one that is not as easily categorized into stages and types. Moreover, knowledge places a renewed emphasis upon the creative intelligence of human beings as the centerpiece of the entire project. This too is a welcomed insight. Without disputing the value of approaching development from the perspective of knowledge gaps and information problems, it might be suggested that, in addition to the gap in know-how and the problems of information awareness, there is another dimension to a knowledge perspective on development that deserves examination. This concerns the question of knowing why and speaks to the central issue of the purposes of closing knowledge gaps and overcoming information problems. Answering knowing why, moreover, will strongly affect not only the types of knowledge gap one wishes to close and information problem to be overcome, but also will impact how one wishes to use the new found knowledge that has been acquired. Knowing why, in other words, provides the framework within which knowing that and knowing how derive their meaning and significance. Intellectual capital and the knowledge based economy out of which it grows, is strongly influenced today by the new information and communication technologies ( ICTs) and networks. The new ICTs, central as they are to the spread of global knowledge based industries and economies, are not of marginal concern to developing countries. It is interesting to note that the concerns of developing countries today increasingly focus less on whether ICTs should be accorded a high priority and more on how to effectively apply information technologies to development in order to reduce, rather than widen, what is seen as a potential gap between the information haves and have nots. The new ICTs provide teachers and learners alike with an immense and growing array of tools to enhance learning. These technologies, if located in a learner sensitive design, have been shown to enhance learning in a number of significant ways: Enhance discovery through simulation and exploration of new concepts. Connect learners to new people and ideas and expand content beyond what was previously available.

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Promote equity by providing a diverse array of resources and experiences to those who might not otherwise be able to afford them. Adapt to and accommodate different learning styles through modularized, self-paced, just-in-time learning and non-threatening learning environments. Increase the self-motivation of learners. Promote collaborative learning. Promote a readiness to participate in the technology-rich workplace of the future. Improve learning productivity by delivering more opportunities for learning to more people at a potentially reduced cost. Overcome time and spatial barriers in access to learning. Promote the value of individual creation and distribution by permitting people to share their own learning processes and results with others. Enhance professional development. Facilitate communication between teachers, parents, and students. Create learning channels through which people can participate more easily in local and national policy debates and action. Integrate knowledge across fields of practice and sectors of activity permitting the development of more integrated and holistic perspectives on problems and opportunities.

One of the interesting aspects about the new ICTs is that they are agents of change powerful enough to make significant impacts on the social and economic contexts in which they operate. They actually present societies with potential opportunities to question fundamental assumptions and institutions and to rethink existing approaches in whole fields of endeavor. The new ICTs present the chance to engage in opportunity-driven rather than crisis-driven planning. In this style of planning, there are at least two linked questions of importance: access to technology and access to people and information. The first, of course, is a requisite to the second, and strategies and investments are needed to facilitate it. The second is of equal importance and relates very much to learning and the formation of intellectual capital. In the field of educational development, ICTs present developing countries with a host of strategic issues, questions and opportunities: Should the nation be a primary recipient of information from others or a developer of information to share with others or both simultaneously? Should a nation focus its strategic access policies and funding of ICTs on primary schools, secondary schools, the tertiary sector or adult education? Should ICTs be used to reduce the cost of education?

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To what degree should the application of ICTs in education function on a commercial model? What place do the emergence of global digital libraries have in the process of development? To what degree should developing countries apply ICTs at the community level through such innovations as multiple service telecentres? What measures if any should be taken as part of development policy to regulate the cultural content delivered through h ICTs? What institutional and other rule systems need to be developed to protect the developers of indigenous knowledge? What role and relative priority should be assigned in development policy to participation in virtual scientific libraries and research projects as well as access to databases?

These, and other questions that can be raised, make it clear that the emergence of ICTs stands as a critical element in any serious thinking about development and the role of education in the formation of a strong foundation in intellectual capital. ICTs, while they have potential to significantly enhance learning, are not immune from downsides that can flow from technology being ill applied and not equally distributed. One of the emerging trends in the use of ICTs, even in industrialized countries, has been an increase in inequities in particular strata of society. These inequities arise, in part, from differential abilities to pay for ICT access and, more importantly, from less intellectual preparedness to use and exploit the technologies. There is an important distinction, in this regard, between equal access that concentrates on quantitative equivalents in the access to pieces of technology (computers per child or learner) and equitable access which encompasses those factors (teachers knowledge, learning environment, information literacy) that affect the ability of learners to learn effectively with the technology. Furthermore, one must be cognizant of the fact that a wired society may not be a civil society. It may atrophy our social skills, erode our affinities and sense of community and contribute to what Raul Yzaguirre has called a modem on the mountain top mentality.83 ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the degree to which those who do not have access to electronic information resources are excluded from participating in the new global culture that is empowered by those very resources? Access to basic schooling has long been seen to be a fundamental policy principle in a national development. It may well be that equal opportunity to access electronic information will be the next centurys version of the common school. Knowledge dissemination, in any society, is affected by the combined impact of economic incentives and cultural attitudes. From an economic perspective, the system of rewards and punishments for trying or not trying new things, and the system for organizing production and exchange, affect how fast new knowledge is adopted and diffused in practice. From a cultural perspective, value orientations, scientific frames of mind, and openness to change also affect
Creating A Learning Society: Initiatives For Education and Technology, (Aspen Institute, 1996) p.10.
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the degree to which a given society exhibits a readiness to adopt new knowledge. In this regard, there is an important relationship between education and the willingness to adopt new technologies. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in knowing more about those social and economic structures that facilitate openness toward new knowledge and the capacity to diffuse that knowledge throughout society. What, in other words, do we know about the social, economic, and institutional enablers of knowledge reception and diffusion? Moreover what should be the knowledge strategy of developing countries: local knowledge production versus acquiring it from abroad; incentives tied to the production versus dissemination of knowledge; processing and validating knowledge versus unfettered dissemination; investments targeted to the private versus public sources of knowledge production. 84 In all of the recent talk and focus upon the knowledge economy and the role of intellectual capital within that economy, it is possible to be lulled into thinking, and assuming, that developing countries are devoid of intellectual capital, or that the intellectual capital which they have is of little competitive economic or social value. No society is devoid of intellectual capital or the problem solving and other skills that energize it. This is increasingly recognized in the research and policy work related to what has become known as indigenous knowledge. Indigenous knowledge is local knowledge, derived from the interactions between people and their environment and it is a characteristic of all cultures.85 It encompasses the entire range of human experience, including history, linguistics, politics, art, economics, administration and psychology. Its technical dimensions include agriculture, medicine, natural resources management, engineering and fishing. In many communities in the developing world indigenous knowledge is tacit and encoded in proverbs, stories, riddles, music and praxis. The research literature on indigenous knowledge, and its relationship to agricultural development and environmental management, provides growing evidence that this knowledge and its associated activities use complex, but implicit scientific principles.86 It is becoming increasingly clear, moreover, that the exclusion of such knowledge from development activities, through processes in which outsider knowledge is imposed without regard to local knowledge, can have disastrous consequences.87 In the field of education, indigenous knowledge systems have been found to provide a resource for expanding scientific thinking. This may seem odd given the oft assumed view that indigenous knowledge may, indeed, be knowledge, but not scientific knowledge. Richards, for example, found that the principle of classification that is central to Western science, is also part of indigenous knowledge. In his research, he found that farmers classify crop varieties according to such criteria as soil and water requirements, cropping season, crop

84 85

World Development Report 1998 Draft, World Bank, 1998. S. Kroma, Popularizing Science education in Developing Countries Through Indigenous Knowledge, Indigenous Knowledge Monitor, 1995. 86 See: D.M. Warren, Using indigenous Knowledge in Agricultural Development, World Bank Discussion paper no. 127, 1991 and C. Quiroz, Local Knowledge Systems Contribute To Sustainable Development, Indigenous Knowledge Monitor, 1996. 87 See: D. Warren et al. The Cultural Dimensions of Development: Indigenous Knowledge Systems, (London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1995).

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duration, and time of sowing. 88 Warren also found that farmers practice soil classification and distinguish crops according to their suitability for each soil type. Working with farmers in Niger, McCorkle found that farmers design, implement and evaluate farm trials using steps, which correspond to the scientific method.89 These insights have led to the development of innovative approaches to science education in developing countries in which local knowledge is utilized alongside formal science to introduce students to the working of the world around them. As noted above, much of indigenous knowledge remains at the tacit level and beyond the local community it is rarely shared. What, if anything, should be done in light of the findings regarding indigenous knowledge and its potential role in the process of development? It is possible to argue, as some do, that codifying and communicating indigenous knowledge beyond the context of its development will destroy the creative process, which produced it in the first place.90 This leads to the strategy of finding ways to insure an in situ preservation of indigenous knowledge. A hands-off approach, if you like. Others argue that indigenous knowledge has demonstrable value in working toward the goal of community-based and sustainable development through the solutions in practice, which are contained within such understanding. In this view, development, not only of the local community, but of similar commentates around the world can be assisted if ways can be found to record, document, validate, field test and share the understanding and wisdom that is inherent in indigenous knowledge systems. Proposals in this area call for the establishment of electronically accessible indigenous knowledge networks and locally based indigenous knowledge centers.91 ADB Institute Interest: The institute is interested in how indigenous knowledge contributes to intellectual capital and whether approaches can be developed to codify and share that knowledge without destroying its creative foundations.

SHIFT 22: From State Dominance to Plural Partnerships Society can be divided into four interacting components: the state sphere, the private sphere, the market sphere, and the public sphere. 92 The state sphere involves legislative (law making), executive (law implementing) and judicial (law and constitution evaluating) organizations. The private sphere consists of family life, networks of friends and acquaintances, and the disposition of personal property. The market sphere consists of private and a few public organizations that are engaged in the instrumental creation of income and wealth through the production and distribution of goods and services. The public sphere, finally, consists of voluntary organizations, political parties, interest groups, social
88 89

See: P. Richards, Coping With Hunger (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986). C. McCorkle,Farmer Innovation in Niger (Iowa State university, 1994) 90 See: A. Agrawal, Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge: Some critical Comments (Indigenous Knowledge Monitor, 1995) 91 See: R. Eglash et. al. Indigenous Science for Education and Development: A BootStrapping Approach (Indigenous Knowledge Monitor, 1997) 92 See: T. Janoski ,Citizenship and Civil Society (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

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movements, and religious bodies. These spheres interact and in some areas overlap. A Corporation, in its wealth-making role, is clearly in the market sphere, but when it establishes a research foundation it may be operating in the public sphere. The state sphere has also, according to some, intruded upon the private sphere when it attempts to regulate childbearing or other familial matters. When one applies the concept of spheres of society to education and patterns of learning some interesting trends and patterns begin to emerge. Prior to the onset of publicly funded schooling, education was largely a matter of the private sphere, with tutors teaching those who could afford their services or the public sphere attached particularly to religious orders. Public schooling and public finance of schooling altered this pattern dramatically: the state sphere gradually emerged as the dominant context for the provision of education, with the market sphere holding its own or slowly growing. The post-war period in the history of the West, for example, saw the growth of the middle class, with their demands for broadened and universal access to schooling and pressures for the expansion of higher education. In most countries, this access demand was funded and regulated by the state, with the result that the role of the state as funder, regulator, and provider of education expanded significantly. In some countries, the concept of universal education, provided by and through the state, was almost synonymous with an entitlement of citizenship. In the former Soviet Union, the states role in education was even more dominant. In the so-called third and newly developing worlds, the states role in the provision of primary education expanded and solidified, while a parallel system of private providers (many of whom were funded indirectly by the state) emerged at the secondary and post-secondary levels. One of the interesting patterns in the emerging learning architecture is a shift from state exclusivity in the delivery of education toward what one can describe as a pattern of pluralistic partnership. This emerging pattern flows from many sources: a growing dissatisfaction with the quality of state education and the large bureaucracy charged with its regulation, direction, and management; the search for ways and means of reducing expenditures on education, in order to reduce deficits or meet structural adjustment targets; the search for styles and types of education that match particular interests or ideologies of parents; and the growing belief in the utility of employing market mechanisms in public sector service delivery. As a result of these pressures, a new pluralism has emerged in the locus and delivery of education. The emergence of the market, as a context for the delivery of learning, can be witnessed in a number of developments: the establishment of private charter schools; the exponential expansion of religious and other interest group led forms of education; the creation by corporations of in-house educational institutions, including universities; and the forging by schools, colleges, and universities of both financial and program linkages with the private sector; the privatization of public educational institutions; and the creation of incentive and market based model for the financing of research. The state sphere continues to play the most dominant role in most educational systems, but increasingly is involved in a serious process of reform of the educational system, as well as introducing new market and incentive driven funding and accountability formulas and systems. Within the public sphere, there has been an upsurge in the growth of what can be described as focal interest education dedicated to learning about the particular perspectives of a given group and bringing these perspectives to bear on the process of education.

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Voluntary associations, moreover, continue to thrive as contexts for learning of practical and civic skills, as well as literacy and language. The public sphere has gained new momentum in various efforts to develop community involvement in and through schools and the use of community building models of change and development. The private sphere has also edged back into the educational game with the growth of home schooling. And ironically, the state sphere, particularly in industrialized countries, is active in efforts to sell knowledge, skills, and programs in a growing international educational marketplace. In other societies, policy makers in search of a more responsive educational system in which the customer is empowered, have proposed and implemented educational voucher schemes. And increasingly one hears serious discussion regarding the privatization of education. Pluralism, rather than state dominance, increasingly characterizes the delivery of educational services. The state, once the dominant funder, regulator, and provider of educational services, has begun to share each of these functions with an increasingly diverse array of organizations and agencies. In this process, and subject to the ability to pay--an important caveat--the individual has available many ways in which to access and participate in education. Choice, rather than obligation, has become the central dynamic in the provision of educational services. What does this emerging pattern of pluralism in educational service delivery mean for the process of development? Some would argue that such a pattern should not be encouraged in and by developing countries, since these nations are involved in the stage of building basic capacities, and for these capacities to have national impact they must be controlled, financed, planned for and directed by the state. Others argue that state bureaucratic control of education is removed from, and unresponsive to, the needs of the community and has been one of the reasons for the lack of change and innovation in education. According to this line of thinking, the grip of bureaucrats must be broken through the provision of services in other ways, particularly by using market mechanisms. Still others urge the introduction of market incentives and systems in education including such things as privatization combined with voucher or other systems of direct transfer of state subsidies to customers. While there is no clear consensus on which of these positions, or variants therein, should be predominant in the policy and practice of educational development, the new pluralism in the locus of educational delivery has expanded considerably the discourse and boundaries of practice for citizen rights in and through education. While in many societies citizen rights were confined to legal and political rights, the new pluralism in educational delivery has led to the development of such social rights, as opportunity rights, and a host of new and what are called participation rights. Parallel with this expansion in rights, there has arisen a new call to clarify the nature and scope of citizen obligations. Does the right to education, for example, presume in order for it to be exercised the coequal right to pursue that education to the best of ones ability? Recent tendencies in thinking and planning in educational development pay much attention to participatory models of development which are, in fact, expressions of the pluralism noted above. Broadening the sources and vehicles available for participation in decision making and priority setting in education, some argue, is an essential ingredient in insuring the relevance of education to individual and community needs. Such participatory models also, it is claimed, provide a source for the generation of creative and workable ideas.93 At the same time, other observers and decision-makers wonder whether the public interest is,
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See: M. Shuman, Going Local (NY: Free Press, 1998)

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in reality, the sum total of interest group perspectives delivered through participatory processes. Is there a need for an adjudicating and ethical dimension that transcends particular patterns of participation at particular times? 94 ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in what should be the appropriate balance between rights and obligations in educational policy formation and what structures and mechanisms are needed in the modern world to insure such a balance? The Institute is also interested in what frameworks and processes are needed for the planning and management of learning systems that are based upon the principle of plural partnerships?

SHIFT 23: From Snapshots to Dynamism in Planning Development planning in education has occurred largely within an image of the world as the linear unfolding of stages and the associated capacities needed to manage within, and migrate toward, the next stage of development. Change, within this way of thinking, is seen as a set of forces that operates as a lock-in to a specific stage, an opportunity to leap to the next stage, or leap an entire stage, or a force that may lead to a regress to a previous stage. The tools used in this process of planning are the well known: master, strategic and action plans applied to countries and sectors within countries. These plans, and their associated techniques and processes, have been very useful as tools for taking a snapshot of the educational system, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, outlining its opportunities and threats, crafting strategies to achieve development goals, and aligning people and resources to these strategies. If you want a picture of what the educational system looked like--the use of the past tense is deliberate here--at the time the plan was developed, and of the image of it in the minds of those who crafted the plan, then the strategic plan is the place to look. If you want to know how the educational system is coping with complex and fast-paced change, and what images of the future guide that process of adaptation, then the strategic plan is not the place to look. It is not that strategic planning is not important. It is important, but it is also limited because it tends to be developed around one set of shared goals and one conception of the future. Planning in and for education, as part of the development process today, confronts the very same context as that faced by other institutions and agencies in society: dynamic change processes that interact constantly producing a stream of new problems, issues and opportunities. Static models of planning are not able to cope with such dynamic complexity and, for that reason, offer policy makers only limited assistance in decision making, crafting strategies and priority setting. Most politicians will tell you that, while they see the need for planning, and the value of such things as master and strategic plans, the world changes so rapidly that the static plan soon loses its value as a guide to action and in many cases becomes a problem itself. Alternative conceptions and models of planning, which treat education and learning processes as a complex adaptive system, are desperately needed in the development process. One promising approach to this quandary is the use of scenario planning and learning techniques. Scenario planning and learning involves two elements:
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See: E. Etzioni, The Moral Community (NY: Free Press, 1995)

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constructing or developing scenarios and integrating the content of the scenarios into the decision making process. Liam Fahey argues that organizations, or fields of endeavor, should consider the adoption of scenario learning if it has reason to believe that95 Its future context of business or functioning (products, customers, distribution channels, suppliers, competitors, technology and regulatory environment) will be significantly different than that prevailing today. A set of alternative futures that are different, and in some cases dramatically so, from each other and from the current operating environment, should be considered as part of the strategic decision making process.

Although the future will be affected by todays trends, many surprises may significantly alter the organizations operating environment. It can be suggested without much hesitation, that these three principles apply to education in the context of development.

Scenario learning helps managers and policy makers explore the range of available choices involved in preparing for the future, test how these choices would succeed in various possible futures, and prepare a rough timetable for future events. Scenarios, by definition, challenge the mindset of policy makers and leaders in education by developing plausible alternatives. They take decision makers into new substantive terrain; they require them to be willing to suspend their beliefs, assumptions and preconceptions, and compel them to grapple with questions that were previously not raised or may have been hastily considered and moved aside. Scenarios are born from analysis, but rest strongly on dialogue and discussion. The process, if well designed, opens the boundaries of the organization to learning from outside its walls. Scenario learning trains policy makers and managers to organize what they know, and what they can imagine, into logical, useful stories about the future and to discern and consider the implications of the future histories for their current and future strategic choices. Scenarios help policy makers, and other decision-makers, see what possible futures might look like (end sets), how these futures might come about (plots and stories) and why they might occur (logics). The scenario learning and planning process, in other, words helps policy makers deal with two of the processes and conditions that most affect their decision making: uncertainty and complexity. Scenario planning has been applied in the corporate world in such companies as Shell. In the field of development, interest in, and application of, the techniques is recent. A recent example of its application can be found in the collaborative work of the International Development Research Center of Canada and the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology in the area of the applications of ICTs for development. This work involved bringing together representatives from different countries and specialties to attempt to build a shared mental map of the futures, which awaited the relationship between ICTs and development. The scenario-planning workshop focussed on three themes. In the words of Robert Vallatin of the IDRC: We need to understand the exact nature of the challenges posed by ICTs to existing societies and
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L. Fahey and Robert Randall, What is Scenario Learning?, in L. Fahey and R. Randall ed. Learning From the Future (NY: Wiley, 1998), pp. 3-21.

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economies. We need to know what we mean by information society and the creative economy. Above all, we need to imagine how ICTs may develop not just in rich urban societies, but in societies, in all countries, and in all sectors of these societies and countries.96 The scenario planning process began with a discussion on the nature of economic and social development leading to a group consensus on five priorities: Literacy, education and skills Health and well being Income and economic welfare Choice democracy and participation Technological Development and innovative capacity

Key trends in ICTs, as they impact the five areas of development, were then examined and distilled into two basic uncertainties related to the global community and national policies. In terms of the global community, will its value systems become more inclusive and open, or more exclusive and closed? Will cooperation or exploitation in other words be the trajectory of the global community? In terms of individual countries, will they have complete or partial (proactive or reactive) response to ICT acquisition and use?

Given these two uncertainties, the workshop devised four scenarios. Each scenario starts with the same certainty that technological innovation will continue for the foreseeable future and then diverge according to the two uncertainties defined at the outset of the process. Thus, while the levels of technology expand under all scenarios (a key certainty) the levels of access to technology and its benefits (a key uncertainty) vary. The interaction between the certainties and uncertainties will determine the future. The time scale of the scenarios, which were developed, is up to 15-20 years roughly to the year 2010. The workshop developed four future scenarios about the relationship of ICTs and development and gave shorthand names to each: The march of Follies, Cargo Cult, Netblocs and Networld. The scenario descriptions are provided below: Scenario 1: The March of Follies Assumptions The global community is exclusive and fragmented. Most developing countries respond only partially and reactively to the acquisition and use of ICTs.

The scenario starts with the certainty common to all scenarios: the level of technology, and the means of selling it, increases by leaps and bounds. The immense cash profits and monopoly rents available to electronic gatekeepers push these companies inexorably toward merger and concentration. Software companies use their intellectual property rights (IPRs) and installed customer databases to extract a quasi-levy from all users of computers and the Internet. Content companies do the same in entertainment and, increasingly, in education. Their ambitions are encouraged by the global business community and by governments. Money follows technology, and the technology follows money; there is no other guide.
96

R. Vallatin, Report on the Kelburn Workshop, (Ottawa: IDRC, 1997)

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Technology certainly doesnt follow basic needs. There are no real attempts to direct the technologies for public benefit, either in OECD countries or anywhere else. Corporations are free to exploit cheap labor anywhere in the world, and cities face job losses when employers find cheaper labor in another country. Many people oscillate between overwork when work is available and no work when it isnt. Countries that try to maintain public welfare systems face bankruptcy as work and the resulting tax revenues move elsewhere. Private companies set the criteria for infrastructure investment and management, as did the railway companies in the 19th century. Places that do not meet their criteria do not get networks. Governments cannot maintain a sensible cost structure in the face of private competition. As a result, places either have a private network or they have nothing. The corporate world operates in its own short-term interests to exploit untapped markets. Companies move to export their brands and services as fast as possible. Most developing countries also act in their own short-term interests. They erect protectionist barriers such as import tariffs. They take a passive view of global markets. They are active only to the extent they erect barriers to trade; they do not introduce policies to generate domestic industries. All players put short-term interests above long-term interests. The global corporations exploit urban markets, but do not seek to develop mass markets and do not try to respond to local needs. Dumping increases. There is a lack of government-togovernment coordination and a corresponding increase in quasi-official and often quasilegal parallel structures. Self-interested elites become more prominent. Vulnerability and fraud increase. International law enforcement is starved of resources. Governments determined to be self-sufficient, do not cooperate with the WTO and are locked into outdated trade practices. They continue to depend excessively on outdated technologies and on hierarchical management, and fall further behind. The trade boom of 2000-2005 is seen to be a high burn. Exports slow down. It becomes clear that companies had failed to develop new markets. They had encouraged the growth of urban hot spots the main cities and a few coastal strips while villages and rural areas remain unconnected. Most people in developing countries are therefore excluded. The exchange of information from village to city to the global level, and back, is hesitant and hardly listened to. After some years of this divisive scenario, the WTOs OECD members propose a new agreement on trade-related intellectual property issues. The developing countries, with a few exceptions, do not have a clear alternate strategy. The global village arrives but, as in many villages, the neighbors have different interests and occupy different realities, in terms of both real space and cyberspace. The new world map has poles of growth where people share money, fashion, myth, and power. Regions outside this network become increasingly marginalized. The global commons withers away. There is a sharp bifurcation between the elite and the rest. The elite move freely (in real space and in cyberspace) and many have a base in New York, Geneva, or Singapore. But the rest are marginalized. Their own traditional national identity is diminished and replaced by a larger but fuzzier global identity. They see world movies and buy world goods, they are employed by people trained in global qualifications, but they do not earn enough to take a full part in all of this. The gap between the nomadic wealthy and the local poor is very wide, and appears unbridgeable and meaningful. By 2010 the development debate is virtually dead. Few notice that the UN is moribund. The continuing fighting in Rwanda is reported by the one news channel still covering international affairs, but with little impact. Everyday the stories are the same: some people somewhere with not enough to eat, some cases of mass migration, poor people trying to invade rich areas, scenes of violence. But these problems are no longer in the public sphere and subject to public regulation, and they are no longer part of public anxiety.

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The ICTs of the 1990s fail to live up to their promises as development aids, as was the case with the telephone, radio, satellites, and ICTs of earlier decades.

Scenario 2: Cargo Cult Assumptions The global community is inclusive and supportive. Most developing countries respond only partially and reactively to the acquisition and use of ICTs.

Faced with an onslaught of new services, all owned and marketed by the United States, the EU, or Japan, developing countries adopt the same helpless attitude, as did Melanesian people in the late 19 th century. The arrival of foreign cargo symbolized the arrival of a new messianic age, inaugurating paradise. The natives gave up their indigenous working practices and stopped cultivating their fields. Some cargo cults were deliberately encouraged by Christian missionaries as part of a millennium drive and as a means of controlling native people. The cults were revived in the 1930s and some continue in the 1990s. Why might this happen with ICTs? The scenario begins in the same way as The March of Follies. The late 1990s see an explosion of infrastructure, dominated by a few US and EU companies that can arrange cheap finance and that own patents in the dominant software and technologies. Issues of equity and access are hardly considered. Technical specifications and standards are almost entirely determined by OECD governments and corporations, and by the intergovernmental organizations that they finance and dominate. Developing countries have little input. The emergence of a strong international community prevents a slide into The March of Follies scenario. The UN and its agencies make new links with the private sector. An agency called Greenbyte is spun off from Greenpeace to fight for equity in the electronic commons. Another organization called Netqity brings together a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private corporations, and government agencies, with support from the World Bank and the UTU Development Fund. Global corporations see the advantages of providing wider access and cooperate with developing countries to develop infrastructure (the experience in debt restructuring may be of some relevance here). By 2005, all countries have access to an effective global network. However, although the local access provider might have a local name, its language, user interface, menu, guide, smart agent, and search agent are usually devised, owned, and managed by foreign companies. Some corporations look for local companies to originate local user interfaces, but they often do not exist. The talented young people who want to work in software development are forced, because of the lack of local training schemes and local opportunities, to go to the USA, Europe, or Singapore. There is a very significant outflow of skilled workers from developing countries to OECD countries and the newly industrialized countries (NICs). In their absence, Northern companies sell systems based on Northern assumptions and do not attempt, or know how, to adapt them to the aspirations and needs of developing countries, There is a lack of local translators and adapters. The small-scale dumping seen under the March of Follies grows in scale and becomes big business. Some innovative solutions are developed. For example, one country uses the principle of planning gain to sell its mineral rights to an international consortium on the condition that the consortium wires up the entire population. But the countrys failure to train people to produce software content means that most of the content comes from outside, and, in the end, the consortium simply gains an infrastructure asset even more profitable than its original mining rights.

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The UN is restructured and takes a lead role in promoting the universalization of access to the global communications commons, and in coordinating government policies and international agreements. The World Bank and regional development banks establish special funds for infrastructure projects that are used by some developing countries to leverage corporate finance in the financial markets of the USA, Europe, and Japan. As a condition of their loans, these agencies require governments to introduce bit takes along the lines of spectrum taxes. But many governments set up enterprise zone that are free of bit taxes to attract international corporations. As a result, the developing world fails to capture the potential benefits of bit taxes, as it had earlier failed to benefit from spectrum rent. By 2010 the Cargo Cult mentality prevails. Most national governments not only lack financial resources and know-how but also political will. Having a national computing center, like having a national airline and a national satellite system, is a matter of national pride, if in reality a loss to the treasury. Computers symbolize the new religion; even if they do not work well or have any useful software. Every country has a national campaign to put computers in schools, but many fail to train the teachers to operate the computers and some put computers in schools that do not have any electricity or connectivity. Very few education officials have the skills that are needed. Countries that do adopt national policies mostly aim to replicate the import substitution strategies that had been popular in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Information and communications policies are given a high profile for a few years; but, when they fail to deliver goods and services that could compete with foreign products, they are abandoned. The result is widespread frustration. The dreams of the 20 th century, which had solidified into almost a religion, fade away. by adopting an uncritical approach, most countries gain access at the expense of substance. They can buy other countries information; but they cannot generate their own. They fail to make the connection between information and development. They receive information and they expect to receive development, without working to make development in their own image.

Scenario 3: Netblocs Assumptions The global system is exclusive and fragmented. Developing countries take an active approach to the acquisition and use of ICTs and develop a complete set of policies.

As a result of the spread of ICTs, many people become wired into the new global information society. Groups emerge, based on shared cultures and languages, initially the towns and then spreading further afield. Each has its own decided and inventive approach to information and communication. The groups, or blocs, emerge for a variety of reasons. The sheer size and growth of the ICT industry push it to the top of the worlds agenda. The notion of the information economy and the creative economy takes hold. The existence of relatively cheap broadband networks allows people to communicate and transact with their peers allover the world (although most users are initially young people.) The OECD countries constitute one bloc. The maintain leadership in many dominant areas, such as banking, network management, software development, branded goods, and entertainment. Some of the NICs of Asia form a bloc. The countries on the Indian Ocean Rim South Africa, the Gulf States, India, Malaysia, and Singapore form another bloc on the

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basis of their shared religions and ancient trading routes. The African Information Society Initiative and a series f conferences and events that followed the Information Society and Development Conference held in South Africa provide useful platforms. The Francophone countries form a bloc. Latin America forms a bloc, fed by its own political tradition, cultures, and languages. Other blocs are based on Islam and on the Chinese script. Some countries waver between two blocs. Russia asserts its power over the former Asian republics of the USSR. Eastern Europe continues to have association agreements with the EU, but relishes its independent leverage as a major trader between the EU and Russia. As the scenario unfolds, each bloc establishes a strong position by virtue of its sheer size, common culture, the business skills of its young entrepreneurs, and highly focused specialization. India specializes in software design and development. Singapore specializes in electronic funds transfer and commerce. The blocs are competitive and divisive, both against the OECD and against each other. By 2005, many blocs set up regional Intranets, closed and often censored. The global environment breaks down into countervailing zones of exclusion. The poor in each bloc, who are very heterogeneous, threaten the composition of each of the blocs and of the relationships among them. Not all countries join a bloc. Some developing countries lack resources. Some lack natural partners. Old ties based on physical proximity tend to weaken as more business is done electronically (the end of geopolitics). After a few more years, one of the major Southern blocs makes a proposal to tax information, by means of taxes on spectrum and bits, and to use the revenues for public benefit. It persuades the UN General Assembly to study various options. When the resolution is passed, the USA and other countries withdraw from the UN. Another attempt to introduce global policy also rebounds when the EU and the USA agree to a new copyright regime for the information age under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization and set up a joint collecting society and a system of digital watermarking. The effects on some developing societies are devastating. China withdraws. As a result, the UN system is enfeebled, and the global consensus, already fragile, breaks down. At the end of the scenario period, the blocs have achieved much. They have created information societies and economies that reflect their own histories, traditions, cultures, and ways of doing business. But their insistence on their own regional laws, regulations, and trading principles creates centripetal forces that lead to a highly unstable situation.

Scenario 4: Networld Assumptions The global community is inclusive and supportive. Developing countries have a complete and proactive set of policies toward the acquisition and use of ICTs.

It begins, as do the other scenarios, with the rapid spread of technologies and services, driven by OECD values, shareholders, IPR principles, brands, and deals. The OECD attitude toward the developing countries is ambivalent. They find some of the restrictive national policies (such as on the ownership of media) as intensely irritating.

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By 2000, many corporations realize that the successful sale of a few international brands (such as for televisions, foods, and clothes) to young urban elites has not produced a broad consumer base or generated much domestic wealth. Markets for other goods and services are also very small. These companies begin to realize the extent of their failure. Facing saturated markets at home, they want to reach new consumers. They do not wish to be shut out of new markets. There is strong evidence of enlightened self-interest as they seek ways of working with companies and institutions in the developing world. They regard Netblocs as harmful, creating tariff and nontariff barriers to trade and allowing regional competitors to emerge. They take the initiative to lobby their governments to dismantle these trade barriers. Their awareness is matched by a realization in developing countries that they should work with global corporations to create their own national information society and economy. They cannot go it alone. A diplomatic conference on copyright produces a new convention that requires global assent. The OECD countries want to sign. The developing countries agree to sign if WTO amends its trade rules. An agreement is drafted that provides a win-win solution. The negotiations are assisted by the development of translation software. By allowing free testing and practically free individual usage, the software becomes widespread and allows speakers of many languages to take part in the debate. Faced with these developments, many developing governments take a more positive stance toward ICTs and their use for social and economic development. Some countries take an even bolder step. Instead of wondering how ICTs can support their existing development policies, they decide to treat ICTs or, rather, information and communications as the starting point for development. This novel approach opens the floodgates to a whole new set of policies. It also enables the developing counties to talk on equal terms with the OECD countries. The principles of equity, open access, and fair accounting that dominate telecommunications policy become the new management fashion. They set the tone in other sectors including education and health care. Around 2005, the major intergovernmental organizations seek new agendas, new missions, and new sources of revenue. They invite NGOs to be members, thus acquiring new authority, new ideas, and new sources of revenue. The NGOs thus have a larger role to play than they do, for example, in the Cargo Cult scenario, to everyones benefit. International organizations seize the moment to launch some imaginative projects. One is the establishment of a network of six tele-towns chosen against three criteria: social and economic relevance, cultural distinctiveness, and media potential. The sites are financed by private corporations with matching funds from international organizations. There is considerable competition around the world to host one of these towns. Intellectual property becomes a big issue. Politicians, executives, as well as lawyers, begin to understand IPRs. As a result, they become more flexible and creative in their use of copyright. This enables countries that had problems with copyright to stay within the international copyright conventions. At the end of the scenario period, poverty and deprivation still remain. But the international system is not only supportive but also knowledgeable. National governments and the private sector, acting both locally and through intergovernmental organizations, work in tandem more often than not.

Scenario learning also has formed part of the planning and decision making for the development of a democratic society in South Africa. The Mont

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Fleur scenario exercise was an innovative public conversation about the future of South Africa that took place from September 1991 through December 1992. Its aim was to stimulate debate on how to shape the nations next ten years. The project brought together a diverse group of prominent South Africans from across the political spectrum to develop and share stories of what might happen to the country from 1992-2002. The scenario team met for three 3-day workshops at the Mont Fleur conference center outside Cape Town. The process produced four scenarios of what was plausible in terms of the future: Ostrich: A negotiated settlement to the crisis in South Africa is not achieved and the countrys government continues to be nonrepresentative. Lame Duck: A settlement is achieved but the transition to a new dispensation and approach is slow and indecisive. Icarus: The transition is rapid but the new government pursues an unsustainable, populist economic policy. Flight of the Flamingoes: The governments policies are sustainable and the country takes a path of inclusive growth and democracy.

Each story was developed into a brief logical narrative and included in a 14-page report that was distributed publicly through the media. The team then presented and discussed the scenarios with 100 or so groups, including political parties and companies. While the Mont Fleur scenarios did not in themselves resolve the crisis in South Africa, they contributed to a much needed common language and understanding, served as a basis for organizing options and provided a context for creative solution seeking. Mont Fleur did not squarely deal with differences among the group but utilized the common ground technique of focussing on areas where there was agreement. In summarizing the role that the Mont Fleur scenario process exercised in the resolution of the crisis in South Africa, Adam Kahane argues that the process has five key characteristics that help to explain its results: Logical and fact-based: There is no room in scenario conversation for positions or values. Instead the conversation is about whether you can convince your fellow team members that the story you are telling is plausible. Open and Informal: The scenario process can take creative risks because it is only about telling stories; it does not require the participants to make commitments. This allows people to fly with ideas and discuss things they might not normally want to. Inclusive: A story about a countrys future has to be able to encompass several political, social, economic, and ecological issues. It encourages examining the issue from a variety of perspectives in which complexity pervades. In this process everyone sees more of the world. Choice-Eliciting: One of the premises in scenario thinking is that the future is not predetermined and cannot be predicted. However, the choices we make can influence what happens. In a situation of uncertainty and complexity the idea that the choices we make can influence outcomes is an empowering worldview. Constructive: The scenario process turns the attention of a group, to a degree, away from the past and present--where debate, plans and

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positions often get stuck--toward the future. It shifts the dialogue from looking for a single solution, best practice or best strategy, toward exploring alternative possibilities. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in what types of frameworks and approaches to planning exist or are in development that can capture the dynamic complexity which characterizes the context of education and development in todays world.

SHIFT 24: From Vocational Education to Workforce Development

In its recently released World Employment Report, the International Labour Organization estimates that by the end of 1998 some one billion workersor one third of the worlds workforce-are either unemployed or underemployed. 97 The number of people who are unemployed, defined as seeking work but unable to find it, will reach 150 million by the end of 1998. Another 25-30% of the worlds workforce-or between 750-950 million- are underemployed; either working substantially less than full time, but wanting to work longer or earning less than a living wage. The Asian financial crisis is expected to add 10million to the ranks of the unemployed. These patterns of unemployment have also exacerbated social exclusion within the labor market. The ILO estimates that 60 million young people between the ages of 15-24 are in search of work, or entry to the labor market, and cannot obtain these goals. The ILO notes that several forces are driving this pattern of unemployment. Globalization and fast paced technological change are two such forces and each has a two-edged sword quality. On the one hand, these new forces open up opportunities for economic growth and employment expansion. Paramount, in this regard, is the opening up of a global market for goods and services. This very global market, while it enlarges the scope and scale of opportunity, also dramatically increases and changes the nature of competition between firm and nations. The diffusion of new technology worldwide has both created and destroyed jobs and has brought a change in the organization of the workplace. Among these are greater responsibility for workers, especially at the lower end of the skills spectrum. The result, in the view of the ILO, is that skills have become increasingly important in determining the employability of the individual, and at the macro level, the competitiveness of the country. Training policies, therefore, assume great importance both in addressing the greater demand for skilled labor and the needs of those who lose out because of these labor market developments. The sustainability of high growth rates in any economy depends ultimately, in the view o the ILO, upon a countrys human resource capacity. This means that constant upgrading of skills and adaptability of workers and enterprises to new market opportunities are essential features of long-term prospects. As an illustration of the strategic importance of skills in the economy the ILO examined the cases of the leather and computer software industries in India. Leather goods are Indias fourth largest export earner and employ around 1.65 million people, of which about 90% work in the informal sector. Despite its size, the leather industry in India is experiencing a sharp decline in its share of the international market. In sharp contrast the computer software industry in India is
97

World Employment Report, International Labour Organization, 1998.

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growing rapidly and an entirely new information technology sector is emerging. In fact, employment is booming in the IT sector and the leather sector is experiencing an acute shortage of workers. Part of the reason for this pattern is the demand-driven nature of the IT industry. The pattern is also affected, however, by the differences in the education and training approaches in the two areas. Software production for export requires a high level of sophisticated skill a factor, which India possessed due to its focus on mathematics and science in its educational pollicies. But this natural endowment of home grown skill would have been insufficient as a basis for sustained competitive advantage has India not undertaken efforts to focus and strengthen that resource on an on-going basis. Indias entry into the computer software business was followed by a large expansion in IT training. Currently two of the largest IT companies in the Nation provide training to over 300,000 people a year. In the leather industry the situation is vastly different. Most of the workers are illiterate and practice traditional aspects of the trade. These factors pose serious obstacles to upgrading skills, particularly those needed in design and management. In 1995, only 635 candidates underwent formal training courses in leatherwork out of a total capacity in all courses of 420,000. One of the central challenges of development involves the creation of workable strategies through which youth, and indeed all segments of the population, can be provided with opportunities to participate in their countrys economic development. Sustainable employment, in other words, is a critical element in sustainable development. For most of this century training for the labor market has been a function of specialized vocational or technical schools in combination, in some countries, with on-the-job apprenticeship. The assumption in this model of labor market training was that the reason for either successful or unsuccessful entry into the labor market rested on skills. Successful entry and participation in the labor market was seen to require specific skills for specific jobs. So too, the difficulty of obtaining entrance to the labor market, or sustaining employment while there, was seen as a matter of skill deficit. There is no question that specific technical and job related skills are important in entering and remaining in the labor market. But in todays world, the possession of skills alone does not guarantee either entrance or sustainability in the labor market. One reason for this is what has been referred to as the pattern of jobless growth, in which the power of technology energies grows and decreases types of jobs at the same time. 98Another factor is the changing nature of work in which multi-skilling, and the capacity to learn across fields of activity, appears to be the norm in many industries. Also emerging in importance are attitudes toward work itself and the need for a flexible capacity to work in various ways, at various times, with various types of people. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the increasing need to link skills training, not only to the real and emerging needs of industry, but to the capacity to create work and add value for oneself. In recognition of the problems associated with a strictly vocational education model of training for the labor market, there is emerging a new strategy that is referred to as workforce development. 99 Workforce development strategies are based on a systems view of the relationship between the individual, the
98 99

See: J Rifkin, The End of Work (NY: Free Press, 1990 See: Investing in Tomorrows Workforce, Center for Workforce Development, 1998

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organization, and the labor market. In the words of the Center for Workforce Development, an organization that has conducted a number of pioneering studies in workforce development in both the developed and developing world, workforce development is a system of linked policies and activities which enable all people to have access to opportunities that enhance the development of their skills, knowledge and aptitudes such that they are able to participate in productive work, either by means of self-employment or by working for someone else.100 This concept of workforce development is not, as the definition above indicates, confined to skills training, but also envelops in a systematic fashion of access to credit, information about markets, quality and relevance of learning, supply and demand for labor, cultural influences, and beliefs that shape a societys view towards work and a host of other interrelated factors which shape the world of productive work and livelihoods. Workforce development, thus, is not a single program intervention, whether that be training, vocational education, or micro credit. Rather, it is an ecological system in which multiple parties have something to gain or lose if their actions do not produce skilled people and productive citizens. Workforce development, as the diagram indicates, applies systems, rather than institutional thinking, to the broad issue of the relationship between the individual and the labor market. This systems thinking is revealed clearly in the results of a major international study of workforce development conducted by the Center for Workforce Development across several nations and continents. Using detailed case studies and workshops, the study identified several characteristics of successful workforce development programs: Values, Strategies and Accountability: One of the strong values associated with effective workforce development programs is the belief that learning by doing is more effective than reading about something or discussing it without putting it into practice. Project-based learning in the context of the workplace plays a prominent role, as do all forms of experiential learning. Another value orientation is a commitment to customer-oriented learning: helping people learn what they want to learn. These two values are underpinned by a strong commitment to transparency and public accountability in the partnerships, which form the basis of workforce development programs. Demand-Driven Design: One of the problems associated with traditional vocational education approaches to workforce development is that they have often not been tied to demand in the local, regional or international economy. These programs have tended to be supply, rather than demand driven, with the result that there has tended to be a continuous discontinuity between the relative supply and need for skills in the labor market. Workforce development programs tend to be closely linked to the skill needs of local industry and these needs are reflected in both the content and training methodology of the program. Workforce development programs also design their learning around employment opportunities in the international and regional economies of their nations and toward emerging types of jobs and areas of employment. Open Access: Effective workforce development programs maintain transparent entry and exit criteria and vehicles for targeting information to heretofore under-served groups. Systems that make very clear the criteria for entry to programs and what successful completion means are highly

100

Ibid. p. 6

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effective. Special support services for targeted groups also increases success. Competency-based learning approaches that allow multiple entry and repeated mastery-based learning of modules have also been found to be an important element in successful workforce development programs. Portable Skills: Successful workforce development programs make skills portable in two domains: across geographic boundaries and across occupations. The use of consortia agreements facilitates the former while the development of core and cluster competencies enhances the latter. Continuous Improvement: Effective workforce development programs build in process and outcomes evaluation as a basis for providing evidence of performance as well as targeting areas for improvement. The use of focus and advisory groups also facilitates this process. Public-Private Partnerships: The most effective forms of workforce development tend to bring together resources from the private and public sectors. Various frameworks can be used to involve all key stakeholders in the workforce development process and various models exist for leveraging costs through such partnerships. Focused Role for Government: Effective workforce development programs entail a clear a focused role for government. A critically important role for government is to provide the connector between existing programs in larger workforce development, establishing standards and performance expectations and measures, and leveraging financing.

Workforce development programs assume many forms in different countries. Their commonality, however, resides in the attempt to take a systems view of the relationship between the individual and the labor market and to embed training, learning, and skills development as an integral component of work and enterprise development. One can recognize these commonalties, for example, in four such initiatives in Asia: the Singapore Skills Development Fund, the Regional Institute for Research and Development in Workforce Formation, Education and Development, Ahmedabad Self-Employed Womens Association in India and the National Vocational Qualifications System in Australia. The Singapore Skills Development fund is managed by the Singapore National Productivity and Skills Board. Its purpose is to increase the productivity of the Nations workforce by making it less expensive for employers to train workers than to employ low or unskilled workers. The Fund supports up to 80 percent of the cost of employer-based training by taxing the payroll of employers who employ workers earning less than 1000 S$ per month. The Fund targets supporting training for workers below management levels and processes about 45,000 completed company training initiatives per year. In 1980, the year of its inception, the Fund supported 11,000 training places. By 1995, this had risen to over 493,000 places. The Fund reaches 63% of all companies with less than 10 workers, 85% of companies with less than 50 workers, and 100% of companies with workforces between 99-500 workers, for a total of 38,040 companies. The Skills Development Fund is based on the premise that training is one of the most direct routes toward economic growth. The Fund is also based on a partnership model. The National Productivity and Skills Board plays a pivotal role in bringing employers, trade unions, and government together to chart the priorities for the Fund and to monitor its impact. All of the services of the Fund, moreover, are available online through skillsnet. The Fund uses a demand driven design: training is closely linked to domestic and international market

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requirements; priority is assigned to training approaches that develop portable workplace skills and reduce skill shortages; future skill requirements are identified through a clusters development strategy; training proposals must be of high quality and clear on the competencies to be developed. The Singapore Productivity and Standards Board has recently expanded its strategic commitment to training through the development of an innovative program called People Developer. The People Developer is a quality standard that gives recognition to organizations that invest in their people and have a comprehensive system for developing their staff. The program, as the diagram indicates, provides a systematic process for reviewing the human resources practices of organizations; adopting a structured approach to staff development; improving the effectiveness of training; and achieving better business results. Organizations that obtain the people developer mark of distinction are automatically qualified for support from the Skills Development Fund. To achieve the People Developer standard, organizations undertake an audit and gap identification process under the supervision of the productivity board. The People Developer program also provides funding through the Skills Development Fund for consultancy services to enable companies and other organizations to deal with gaps identified in the audit process. One of the latent benefits of the People Developer review process is the contribution it makes to organizational learning. Another example of innovation in workforce development is the Regional Institute for Research in Workforce Development Formation, Education and Development in Shanghai, China. The mission of the Institute (RIBB) is to develop a dual system of education and training in Shanghai patterned after Germanys combination of learning at work and learning at school. RIBB is involved in conducting research studies, developing pilots and bringing the results to scale. The RIBB was created following a World Bank study in 1988 that called for an overhaul and redesign of Chinas vocational education and training system. The traditional system in China trained people for highly specific occupational and job functions within the many state owned enterprises. RIBB is helping Chinese policy makers identify what skills are important for the future, particularly in light of the international labor market. As part of this process, the RIBB is publishing Chinas first Occupational Outlook Directory that highlights the shifts in the demand for labor and skill sets. RIBB also trains trainers in vocational and skill formation programs both in China and Germany. RIBB is also involved in an extensive process of curriculum design that focuses on preparation for an occupation, knowledge of industrial sectors, and cross-occupational portable skills. The RIBB also is piloting the uses of a GTZ multi-year planning matrix which describes the relationship between the elements of the development hypothesis of the RIBB program and the objective, content, goals, insights, time frames, results, and deliverables of the training programs. The Self-Employed Womens Association (SEWA) of Ahmedabad, India provides an example of the workforce development strategy applied to underprivileged and marginalized groups in society. SEWAs objectives are to Support womens self-employment through training, access to credit, cooperatives and activism. Secure legal protection for women workers. Press for higher incomes and better working conditions for women. Increase the vocational, organizing, and articulation skills of members. Act as a liaison between self-employed women and government agencies.

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SEWA sees skill improvement at the core of providing high quality products that bring in cash sales, and creating self-sufficient traders. SEWA members elect their leadership and every three years a representative council is elected. SEWA provides support through a womens bank, a skills training program, a literacy program, a social security scheme, and production and marketing cooperatives. SEWA also lobbies government on behalf of its members in terms of receiving needed services and protection of rights. Workforce development initiatives are increasingly performance based in their design and expectations, including the use of such instruments as performance benchmarks, and national and industry-wide skill standards. Workforce development programs, furthermore, have provided both a conceptual framework and pressure for the development of National Training Systems. In one way, national training systems represent the skills version of the information superhighway. The new national vocational training system in Australia illustrates well the application of flexibility, demand-driven design, quality control, user choice and transferability within an overall workforce development strategy. The Australian model is driven by a National Training Framework that is strategically targeted to create an integrated national approach to vocational education and training, improved quality for all vocational education and national portability of the resultant skills and certified levels of competency. The National Training framework is based upon four elements: A National Recognition Framework, training packages, flexible delivery, client choice, industry-based curriculum, and key performance indicators. The national recognition framework provides a system through which those providers of training, whether public or private, that have been registered and accredited by the National Vocational Authority, will have their training and the credentials which they offer recognized and credited throughout Australia. This system speaks to one of the banes of tertiary education and training; the transferability of credit. In order to achieve the status of a Registered Training Organization, institutions must undergo an intensive assessment process that focuses upon meeting standards for quality in curriculum, delivery, management, marketing and client service. If organizations wish to obtain government funding from such schemes as apprenticeships, then they require the designation of RTO. The programs offered under the Australian model are based upon direct input from industry training advisory bodies. The advisory bodies include representatives from employers and employer associations, unions and people from small and medium sized businesses. These advisory bodies also advise government on strategic issues in the field of training. The advisory bodies determine the competencies within industry training packages. The heart of the new Australian system is the training package. Each training package for a particular skill area, or occupation, contains industry competency standards that are nationally agreed, and industry developed statements of the competencies required for effective performance in a given industry. Each competency standard, called a unit of competence, is made up of elements of competence which are the main subdivisions of the unit, performance criteria which can be evaluated, a range of variables which expands and gives context to performance criteria and elements and an evidence guide to provide more information for assessors and learners. Each competency standard must also address the ways in which it requires, or helps to build, what are called key competencies: the capacity to collect, organize and analyze information; plan and organize activities; work with others and in teams; use mathematical

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ideas and techniques; solve problems and use technology. Training packages are also available to senior secondary schools whose students can also participate in vocational training through a newly re-designed schools apprenticeship program. The new vocational training framework in Australia is closely tied to national goals and strategies through the use of key performance indicators. These measures are being used to hold the system accountable, demonstrate the value of vocational education and training to the economy and prompt continuous improvements in the system. The following seven key performance indicators guide the system:101 Skills outputs produced annually within the domain of the formally recognized vocational education and training measured by Australian Qualifications Framework qualifications and units of competency. Stocks of vocational education and training skills against desired levels, as measured by the total skills of the Australian population by industry, and industry demand for vocational education and skills. Employers views on the relevance of skills acquired through vocational education and training, as measured by how much graduates use their skills, the relevance, cost effectiveness and accessibility of training and the quality of information available from providers. Student employment outcomes and prospects before and after participation in vocational education and training. Vocational education and training participation, outputs and outcomes achieved by disadvantaged client groups. Actual public expenditure per publicly funded output The ratio of public expenditure on vocational education and training to private investment.

ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the degree to which a systems-based, workforce development strategy has general applicability to enhancing the prospects for sustainable employment in developing countries and what knowledge, skills, and institutional arrangements are needed to underpin such an approach.

Based upon years of research into patterns of employment worldwide, the ILO suggests that the training systems, in many countries, and particularly developing nations, need to be redesigned. These systems, it is argued, need to teach marketable skills, be demand-driven in design and nurture the workers ability to acquire new and more skills more effectively. The ILO proposes that a pyramid model can be utilized as a basis for the redesign of skill training. The base of the pyramid involves foundation skills in literacy and numeracy acquired through the expansion of primary education and adult literacy. Built on this foundation, which should be accessible and mandatory for all, are general or occupational skills, of the sort learned in secondary education and vocational and
101

The Australian Recognition Framework, 1998.

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technical schools. Further up the pyramid are firm-specific skills to be acquired through work experience and on the job training schemes. At the pinnacle of the pyramid are professional skills acquired through academic study and lifelong learning. While there may be one pyramid, the ILO suggests that there are a range of ways in which different countries can construct it depending upon the nature of their economies, cultural traditions and future goals. But, in light of the modern world, all countries inevitably must have a skills pyramid. Another way of putting this proposition is that the skills of the workforce are increasingly central to productivity and the standard of living. Simply defined productivity is the value of outputs produced per unit of labor(labor productivity) or per unit of capital goods(capital productivity) averaged over the economy as a whole.102 A nations workforce, in the long run, cannot be paid more than the real value of what it is producing. There are two ways in which productive capacity can grow: one is to increase the inputs of labor and capital and the other is to increase the productivity of the existing inputs. Skills and education contribute to both aspects of the productivity equation. Training and educational systems insure a supply of labor inputs; that is, they provide trained people to meet the labor requirements of firms. It is pointless to increase the supply of labor whose skills do not match those needed by industry. Secondly, training systems, if properly designed, also increase the capacity of workers to make maximum use of the added investments in capital. Investment in training, thus, has a multiplier effect in terms of productivity: it increases the needed labor supply, the efficiency of the total supply of labor, the benefits of capital investment and the attractiveness for further investment. Training and skills development are not the only things which are important to long term sustainable economic growth, but without them, it is highly probable that such growth will be fragile and shallow at best.

SHIFT 25: From Exclusion To Inclusion

One of the paradoxical qualities of the educational system in most countries is that it is simultaneously a vehicle for reproducing the existing structures of society and a generative source of change in those very same structures. This paradox has particular potency in relation to the question of educations role in generating greater equality in a given society. Access to education, and to various levels within the system, strongly affect the individual earnings and social mobility prospects of individuals. 103 This effect applies in both industrialized and developing countries. In this way, education functions as a potential equalizer of opportunity in society. At the same time, education in many societies functions as a sifting and sorting machine which tracks individuals to various slots in the social hierarchy. In this way, education performs a counterequity function. This counter-equity function of education has, until recently, been the dominant effect. This effect has been intensified in many developing countries due to the scarcity of resources to fund and put in place a universal system of education. However, even universal systems of education contain within them competitive structures that impact the differential mobility of individuals and, in some cases, entire groups.
102 103

See: R. Lester, The Productive Edge (NY: Free Press, 1998) See: S. Hossain, Making and Equitable and Efficient Education: The Chinese Experience (Working paper, World Bank, 1996) and M. Carnoy and m. Castells, Sustainable Flexibility:A Prospective Study of Work Family and Society in the Information Age (Paris: OECD, 1997).

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The counter-equity function of education has often been justified as reflecting an inevitable choice between merit and equity, on the one hand, and access and quality on the other hand. These arguments suggest that it is one of the functions of the education system to assess and reward merit and academic excellence. Those who, for whatever reason, fail to continue in the system, according to this line of thought, merely represent the fact that they have reached their level of competence. In a similar vein, it is also suggested that dramatic increases in access to education inevitably reduce the quality of education and the results that the system can produce. Both of these arguments have had a substantial influence on policy making within education. In recent years, however, a different perspective has been brought to bear on the types of choices and options that are framed in the above arguments. This perspective suggests that a knowledge based economy, unlike an industrial economy, requires the maximum intellectual development of all of its citizens.104 Put in other words, inclusiveness has become a key element in competitiveness. In developing countries, this argument has generated a spill over effect leading to a renewed focus on human, social and intellectual capital as the basis for sustainability in development. Societies around the globe are moving from exclusion toward inclusion as the centerpiece of their educational policies. This movement in thinking, however, has generated a renewed debate that centers on optimal strategies for inclusion. In this regard, there are at least four competing strategies proposed through which to achieve the goal of greater inclusion in and through education. The first can be called an opportunity strategy. An opportunity strategy involves the state in providing the basic infrastructure, legal and regulatory framework and core funding for the educational system leaving the question of participation in that system, beyond a specified compulsory minimum, to individual choice. The policy tools in this framework include such things as establishing a requirement for compulsory basic education, providing a core curriculum with entrance and exit standards, teacher education, and the development of student loan and financial assistance programs at the tertiary level. The opportunity strategy sees education as a matter of consumption, in which individuals make decisions about preferences among competing claims. The opportunity strategy, when applied, has been most successful in expanding educational participation and success rates among the middle classes in society. It has led to the dramatic expansion in the educational system of many nations. The opportunity strategy, however, has not been as successful in broadening the social basis of participation in education. Individuals from lowincome situations, racial and ethnic minorities, those living in rural locations and, until recently in industrialized countries, women have not dramatically increased their participation in education as a result of the opportunity strategy. Based upon a recognition of the limitations of an opportunity strategy as the sole basis upon which to broaden the social basis of participation in education, an alternative results-oriented strategy has been proposed and pursued. A results-oriented strategy begins with the issue of the social composition of participation in education, establishes a preferred distribution in that participation and uses the regulatory and financial powers of the state to realize the specified target. The policy tools employed in a results-oriented strategy include special efforts to strengthen the skills and motivation of groups whose participation and success in education are relatively low or below expectations
104

See: L. Darling-Hamond, The Right To Learn (NY: Free Press, 1997)

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set in the targeting process. Examples of these tools are programs such as Head Start that entail early childhood intervention to boost academic performance, special teacher education programs geared to enhancing an understanding of learning problems and their linkage to self esteem and the development of retraining programs for unemployed workers. The most prominent policy tool in the results strategy is affirmative action. Essentially, an affirmative action approach uses the power of law and regulations, typically mandated by the state, to alter the social basis of participation in education. This strategy often includes such things as special admission quotas in higher education, and programs within, for designated groups in combination with customized financial, study skills and counseling programs. The rationale for such a strategy flows from the failure of the opportunity model to significantly expand the participation of designated groups matched by an argument based upon distributive justice and the educational value of diversity. 105 Affirmative action strategies have been applied to increase the representation in education of women and ethnic and racial minorities. The approach is controversial to say the least and is usually countered with the claim that it sacrifices the principle of merit which, in the long run, works against the designated groups and the society at large. A third strategy for inclusion in and through education centers on the market. Based in part on a reaction against the inefficiencies of the welfare state, and the contested intrusion of that state into far too many dimensions of life, a market strategy for inclusion involves a redefinition of the role of the state in equity and a new focus on incentives. The market strategy is true to its name in that it begins with the view that the competitive and choice rendering dimensions of the market can provide the most efficient way of distributing the benefits of access to education. Rather than have the state involved in funding, regulating and directing access to education, the market strategy involves the creation of competition among alternative providers of education and the empowerment of people to choose the type and level of education they desire. The mechanisms used in introducing such a market component in education include voucher and school choice systems, charter schools, bidding processes for training contracts, privatization of state run educational enterprises, substantial increases in tuition based higher education aligned, in some cases, with income contingent loan repayment schemes. Market strategies in education have been central elements in what has been referred to as government reinvention and market-based development policy. The market strategy for inclusion, in and through education, according to its critics, ignores the concept of the public good, fails to recognize inequalities in access to informed knowledge of educational options and confuses efficiency with equity. A fourth strategy for educational inclusion can be called an ecological approach. Unlike the previous three strategies, an ecological strategy uses the community, rather than the individual, as the focal point. Education, and opportunities to access and succeed within it, is pictured as being nested within a larger network of community and cultural processes and relationships. Attempts to achieve greater inclusion, in and through education, as a result, will be affected by culture and the structures of social and community life. These structures and processes both constrain the degree of inclusion within education and serve as potential reservoirs to expand it. Critical in this regard is what is referred to as the social capital of a nation or community within it: the structures

105

See: R. Fullinwider, Diversity and Affirmative Action, Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, 1998.

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and processes that facilitate cooperation for mutual benefit. 106 Social capital is seen to enhance the benefits of investment in physical and human capital. Ecological strategies for inclusion in education take a holistic approach to change arguing for greater community involvement in all aspects of education, the development of economic, health and social policies which enable learning and broadening the concept of education itself to include the forms of learning and opportunity created through the educational endeavors of organizations in civil society. Ecological strategies, moreover, are often cast within the broader idea of strengthening the degree of social integration in the process of development. In this regard, ecological strategies also reframe the question of exclusion and its associated strategies to include those who are excluded from development. The disadvantaged, no matter how difficult their situations are seen to be, are immersed in networks of social relations that link their destinies to those of others. Their predicament, from this point of view, does not arise because they are unintegrated into wider social systems. It arises because present patterns of integration promote unjust or destructive outcomes in some situations. Education, from this perspective, faces the challenge of contributing to new forms of integration which are just and fair and enable the voice of the marginalised and disadvantaged to be heard. Inclusion, as a guiding principle in education, also addresses the question of culture and its relationship to learning. How, for example, should educational institutions approach culture and the diverse ways in which it is manifested, transmitted and represented? In many societies schools have been employed as cultural homogenizers inducting students into the culture of a prevailing group and denying the legitimacy of alternative cultural traditions. In this regard, is it possible for education to have a cultural role that does not inevitably pit one cultural group or set of values against another? One attempt to carve out such a culturally responsive role for education is contained in the Alaska Standards for Culturally Responsive Schools. These standards, the cultural equivalent of performance and quality standards, were developed, after extensive consultation, by the Assembly of Alaska Native Educators to provide a way for schools and communities to examine the extent to which they were attending to the educational and cultural well being of the students in their care:107 The standards are predicated on the belief that a firm grounding in the heritage language and culture indigenous to a particular place is a fundamental prerequisite for the development of culturally-healthy students and communities associated with that place. While the state standards stipulate what students should know and be able to do, the cultural standards are oriented toward providing guidance on how to get them there in such a way that they become responsible, capable and whole human beings in the process. The standards for culturally responsive teachers, schools, curriculum, and the community: schools address students,

106

See: R. Putnam, The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public life, The American Prospect, Spring, 1993. 107 Alaska Standards for Culturally Responsive Schools, Alaska Native Knowledge Network, 1998.

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CULTURAL STANDARDS FOR STUDENTS Culturally knowledgeable students are well grounded in the cultural heritage and traditions of their community. Culturally knowledgeable students are able to build on the knowledge and skills of the local cultural community as a foundation from which to achieve personal and academic success throughout life. Culturally knowledgeable students are able to actively participate in various cultural environments. Culturally knowledgeable students are able to engage effectively in learning activities that are based on traditional ways of knowing and learning. Culturally knowledgeable students demonstrate an awareness and appreciation of the relationships and processes of interaction of all elements in the world around them. CULTURAL STANDARDS FOR EDUCATORS Culturally responsive educators incorporate local ways of knowing and teaching in their work. Culturally responsive educators use the local environment and community resources on a regular basis to link what they are teaching to the everyday lives of students. Culturally responsive educators participate in community activities in an appropriate and supportive way. events and

Culturally responsive educators work closely with parents to achieve a high level of complimentary educational expectations between home and school. Culturally responsive educators recognize the full educational potential of each student and provide the challenges necessary for them to achieve that potential. CULTURAL STANDARDS FOR CURRICULUM

A culturally responsive curriculum reinforces the integrity of the cultural knowledge that students bring with them. A culturally-responsive curriculum recognizes cultural knowledge as part of a living and constantly adapting system that is grounded in the past, but continues to grow through the present and into the future. A culturally responsive curriculum uses the local language and cultural knowledge as a foundation for the rest of the curriculum. A culturally responsive curriculum fosters a complimentary relationship across knowledge derived from diverse knowledge systems. A culturally responsive curriculum situates local knowledge and actions in a global context.

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CULTURAL STANDARDS FOR SCHOOLS A culturally responsive school fosters the on-going participation of elders in all aspects of the schooling process. A culturally-responsive school provides multiple avenues for students to access the learning that is offered, as well as multiple forms of assessment for students to demonstrate what they have learned. A culturally responsive school provides opportunities for students to learn in and/or about their heritage language. A culturally responsive school has a high level of involvement of professional staff who are of the same cultural background as the students with whom they are working. A culturally responsive school consists of facilities that are compatible with the community environment in which they are situated. A culturally responsive school fosters extensive on-going participation, communication and interaction between the school and community personnel. CULTURAL STANDARDS FOR COMMUNITIES A culturally responsive community incorporates the practice of local culture traditions in its everyday affairs. A culturally supportive community nurtures the use of the local heritage language. A culturally supportive community takes an active role in the education of all of its members. A culturally supportive community nurtures family responsibility, sense of belonging and cultural identity. A culturally supportive community assists teachers in learning and utilizing local traditions and practices. A culturally supportive community contributes to all aspects of curriculum design and implementation in the local school.

The cultural standards developed by the Alaskan Native Educators Assembly are each underpinned by a set of competencies which describe the specific knowledge and capabilities which flow from the given standard. The concept of cultural responsiveness as articulated within the standards, unlike notions of cultural hegemony, moreover, provides a dynamic view of culture and its importance to individual identity and well being, community concern and caring and the learning process. It is an idea that allows the self and other to cohabitate in a mutually enriching relationship. The ADB Institute is committed to the ideal of integrated development. That is, development which is people-centered, people involving and that meets the economic, learning, social, cultural and spiritual needs of all people. At the core of integrated development are the principles of equity, cultural responsiveness, sustainability, efficacy, social integration and the capacity to

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choose. Education and learning are central to integrated development, since they provide one of the few contexts in which all of the principles underpinning it dynamically interact. ADB Institute Interest: The Institute is interested in the degree to which it is possible to develop and implement education and learning strategies that simultaneously contribute to economic growth, equity, cultural responsiveness and social integration.

THE WAY AHEAD The learning architecture today, is dynamic and many of its design features are in the process of transformation. This transformation is driven by the combined and inter-connected impact of at least four change forces: New knowledge and research about the nature of the human mind and the learning potential of people. The globalising capacity of new information and communication technologies to connect people across time, place, space, and context. Shifts in the demographic structure of populations. The development challenges and goals inherent in the emergence of a global economy increasingly based upon the knowledge, skills, and intellectual capital of people, organizations, and nations. The pressures and challenges to develop education and learning systems which are accessible and inclusive, capable of recognizing and accommodating cultural diversity and able to provide an integrating force in society.

Regardless of its stage of development, each nation, in the face of these and other change forces, must ask itself the following question: Who should be learning what, where, when, how and for what purpose? Many nations are asking this question and their responses are leading to a redesign of their societys learning architecture. Other nations, many of them in the so-called developing world, are beginning to ask this question, but are also in need of the financial resources, technologies, knowledge base and skills to underwrite their answers. Walt Rostow, at mid century, introduced into the discourse on development the concept of take-off, by which he meant establishing a set of pre-conditions in a given nation deemed essential to move from one stage of development to another.108 One does not have to accept the concept of linear stages of development to appreciate the idea of take-off, or readiness for development. Macro-economic stability, good governance and transparency,
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W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth (NY: Oxford, 1964)

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strategic resource development, effective management, and other such factors contribute very much to developmental readiness. They are in fact preconditions and cannot be ignored in terms of meeting development objectives. The learning architecture of a nation is also a key element in development readiness. But even more importantly, particularly in the emerging global and knowledge-based economy, the learning architecture of a nation is the bridge to sustainability in development. It is within a nations learning architecture that the knowledge, skills, and dispositions essential to, and demanded by, the new economy, at any point in time, are forged. It is within a nations learning architecture that the on-going capacity to adapt, change, and innovate is nurtured or thwarted as the case may be. It is within a nations learning architecture that a shared vision of the nations future is nurtured and concepts of citizenship and commitment to the public good are shaped. It is within a nations learning architecture that human ingenuity, caring, and creativity, the elements most vital to, and essential for, the sustainability of development, are fostered. One of the critical tasks facing education for development involves the assessment of the developmental readiness of a nations learning architecture; that is, the degree to which it has in place a learning architecture that will enable the achievement of its development goals and aspirations. Essentially, this is a matter of understanding and critically assessing the societal learning processes in place and their linkage to future development goals. Consider the question of the degree to which a given society is in a state of learning readiness for the knowledge society. There are at least five modes of societal learning which, in various ways, contribute to such a learning readiness: Maintenance Learning : Maintenance learning involves processes that allow an organization, or a nation for that matter, to discover better ways of doing what it already knows how to do. 109 It encourages doing things the best way without asking whether they are the right things to do. To the extent that it is committed to preserving the status quo, maintenance learning offers little challenge to an organization or a nations existing strategy. The focus of maintenance learning is short term and it is not unusual for crises, born of dramatic shifts in environmental factors or internal competencies, to cause crises of various sorts. Examples of maintenance learning abound:

1. Applying more fertilizer to existing crops in order to increase production without necessarily assessing the development of new forms of crops for new markets; 2. Dramatically increasing the number of teachers within the existing instructional model without assessing the strategic role that an investment in new technologies might make to productivity and quality in learning; 3. Continually expanding the government bureaucracy as a way of delivering services without examining such market devices as outsourcing, privatization or public-private sector partnerships. The list can of course be extended. It should be stressed that maintenance learning is necessary in any society or organization to insure continuity. When maintenance learning is the dominant mode of learning in a given society, however, its readiness for the knowledge society and the adaptation required is dramatically reduced.

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See: J. Bodkin et al. No Limits To Learning ( Club of Rome, 1978)

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Anticipatory Learning: This mode of learning addresses both the long term consequences of present actions and the most effective ways of dealing with future environments. Anticipatory learning tends to be participatory based on the assumption that no single group in an organization, or society, has a privileged access to or understanding of the needs and demands which will flow from alternative futures. Nations, or organizations within them, that have in place mechanisms and processes for participation in the development of views of the future, both likely and preferred, tend to have a higher capacity for anticipatory learning. The National Knowledge Assessment process described earlier in this document represents a form of anticipatory learning, as do scenario-planning processes. New experiments in electronic governance also offer nations intriguing possibilities to enhance their anticipatory learning capabilities. The knowledge society, with its constant and boundariless circulation of information on an ever-widening array of themes and core functions in society, demands an anticipatory learning capacity as a basic adaptive function. Generative Learning: Generative learning reflects the basic distinction made by Schon and Argyris between single and double-loop learning.110 According to Schon and Argyris, when organizational learning involves detecting and correcting errors, or identifying performance gaps so an organization can continue to carry on its present policies, or achieve its present objectives, then that error-correction and detection process is single loop learning. Double loop learning occurs when error is detected and corrected in ways that involves the modification of an organizations norms, policies, objectives, and strategies. The constant learning that occurs in most organizations is of a single loop variety. Double-loop learning, on the other hand, requires decision-makers to challenge long-standing assumptions and modes of operating. Double loop learning, in other words, is generative learning and leads to the creation of new assumptions and new ways of operating in the light of new realities. The development of the Swiss Swatch is an example of double loop learning, as was the development of the personal computer. Nations, who years before the competition, developed export processing zones also reflect generative learning. The heart of a generative learning mode is creativity and the social innovation that allows it to thrive in a given setting. A knowledge society demands creative thinking and social innovation on an on-going basis. It demands as well an educational and learning system in which critical and creative thinking is at the core of the entire process. The Malaysian Smart School Project and the Singapore Intelligent Island initiative are two prime examples of the attempt to embed generative learning capacities within a nation.

Inclusive Learning: One of the most striking challenges posed by the emergence of a knowledge society is that it places demands on the cognitive resources of the entire nation. Highly selective, educational systems are ill equipped to confront a situation in the knowledge economy where competition is between entire peoples, rather than elites. The knowledge society demands, almost by definition, an inclusive learning system in which maximum opportunity is provided to all citizens to learn to their highest potential. Inclusive learning, moreover, involves a process of learning in the context of difference and appreciating the various perspectives which can, and are brought to bear, on any given situation or theme. Inclusive learning systems provide an education in the creative ingenuity of difference and the value of diversity in life.
D. Schon and C. Argyris, Organization Learning II (NY: Addison Wesley, 1997)

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Reflective Learning: The single greatest gift that any learning system can bestow upon a person is the capacity to learn how to learn. This same gift applies to organizations and nations. Their capacity to learn how to learn is the ultimate source of sustainability and value in the world today. The recently emerging focus on intellectual capital and knowledge management is one example of how organizations can intentionally engage in reflective learning. Another source of reflective learning rests with the press and media and the degree to which they provide a critical and synthetic information and knowledge culture. So too, are a nations research and science policies and the degree to which they foster reflective awareness among the public. And, as is the case in all the modes of learning discussed above, the degree to which the educational systems of a nation foster and provide the conditions for the development of meta-cognitive development in students, then to that degree these systems will contributed to reflective learning in the nation as a whole.

The onset of the knowledge society, and the new information and communications technologies that underpin it, poses one of the greatest challenges and opportunities for the development process. Nations, regardless of their point in development, need now to assess the degree to which their society is in a state of learning readiness for the knowledge society. As the chart illustrates, nations need to be able to map the degree to which their learning architecture enables the development and energizing of multi-modes of societal learning, as well as the degree to which any one mode overly dominates. A society with only a maintenance mode of learning at its disposal will, in all likelihood, find the emergence of a knowledge society to be a crisis. It will lack the capacity to conceive of and involve people in the creation of alternative futures, generate new and innovative strategies for those futures, and to learn from experience. Inherent in the concept of development is some notion of progress or human betterment. In the West, this notion of progress has had what can be described as a vertical quality to it: progress has been defined, and to a large degree continues to be seen, as an accumulation of material goods, technological capability, and freedom from various constraints. The connexity of the modern world poses challenges to this notion of progress. It suggests the need to begin to think of progress in lateral rather than vertical terms: as a process that parallels the one which most people pass through in their lives as they move from the dependence of childhood, through the independence of adolescence toward the interdependence of adulthood.111 Nations, it can be argued also pass through these transitional phases from the dependence of colonial relationships through political independence toward the modern interdependent condition. In todays interconnected world, progress continues to be an important aspiration, but its lateral conception requires a rebalancing of such values as freedom and responsibility, economic growth and equity, choice and constraint, globalization and local community, convergence and diversity, and speed and quality. Paradoxically, the new connexity provides an ambient in which, for the first time perhaps in human history, human beings can engage in a global dialogue about ways in which they want to ground the very notion of progress. Education and learning are both a source of, and context in which, such a global dialogue and conversation about the future can occur. For the potential of learning as a context for global conversation to be realized, however, there is need for a new dialogue concerning the relationship between learning and
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G. Mulgam, Connexity (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1998)

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development, one that transcends a vertical conception of the relationship toward one founded upon the principles of parallelism and co-evolution. Many developing countries in the field of education and learning face a dual task. The first is to increase the core capacity of the nation to provide basic educational opportunities and services for the population. Achieving sustainable gains and improvements in numeracy and literacy are an essential part of this process, as is widening the social basis of access to and participation in learning. At the same time, developing countries must design their learning systems to match the world as it is becoming, if they hope to thrive and survive in that world. This requires that serious consideration be given to the learning architecture in which their educational and developmental goals will be pursued. Failure to do this may result in a situation in which developing countries attain literacy, numeracy, and access goals, but do so within a learning architecture that functions inadvertently as a brake on further, let alone sustainable, development in the emerging global and knowledge-driven economy. Literacy, numeracy, and access to learning, in other words, are necessary, but not sufficient, as a basis upon which to design and otherwise craft strategies for education and development. They provide some of the raw materials for a modern learning architecture, but they are not, in and of themselves, the learning architecture for the modern world. Many industrialized nations, in their own affairs, recognize this distinction and are in the process of reforming, and otherwise designing, a new learning architecture. Developing countries need to ask themselves the following question: What learning architecture will best enable us to simultaneously expand the basic knowledge, skills and learning opportunities of our people and provide them with the new knowledge, capacities, and learning opportunities required for active participation in a global and knowledgedriven economy? Some may argue, with some justification, that developing countries need to attend to first things first; that is, ensure basic literacy, numeracy, and access and only when this is complete should they attend to other matters. The problematic aspect of this approach, however, is that it assumes that the world economy, and the attendant pressures of globalization and knowledge intensity, will stand still and wait for the first process to be completed before further change processes are set in motion. This, of course, is highly improbable and flows against the grain of the extremely rapid changes occurring within the global economy and modern world. ADB Institute Interest: For this reason, the Institute is interested in knowing how educational development frameworks, and their associated learning architectures, can be designed to incorporate, and simultaneously execute, integrative strategies that expand both basic opportunity and the capacity to adapt to and benefit from change. The learning architecture of a nation is not the sole source of its development. But its configuration, to a large degree, will set limits on both the potential and sustainability of that development. For this reason alone, the ADB Institute is committed to exploring new pathways through which to strengthen the relationship between learning and development. The ADB Institute is guided in its work by the concept of integrative development; that is, development which contributes to the overall and multi-faceted well being of people. For integrative development to be realized, nations require a learning architecture that enables

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all people to creatively manage, reflect on, anticipate, and adapt to change. In todays world, no nation is exempt from this challenge and no nation should be denied the opportunity, knowledge or tools to meet it. Integrative development should not be confused with the concept of human capital, although the latter is an important component in the former. Defining human capabilities and other qualities in terms of the degree to which they contribute to economic growth, according to Amartya Sen, does not answer two questions: Why economic growth is pursued and the role of enhanced human qualities in making it possible to lead lives which are fulfilling and based upon the freedom to choose. In Sens words: If an expansion of an educational facility or health care increases labor productivity and thus the income level, the perspective of human capital would give it immediate recognition. But if that expansion adds directly to the length of our lives, reduces our ailments, and makes us happier and more fulfilled, without changing labor productivity or increasing commodity production, then-in most accounting of human capital-that achievement would simply not get the recognition that it deserves. In this context, there is something of importance that is missed in the perspective of human capital. Being educated, being healthier, in Senss view, expand our lives directly, as well as through their effects on making human beings more knowledgeable, skilled and well resources for further production and consumption. Human beings are not only the ultimate means of development, they are also the ultimate ends. It is, therefore, useful and relevant to distinguish between two types of influence of education on human capabilities and the quality of life: The direct impact on capabilities making it possible for people to do many things they could not do without that education. The indirect impact on capabilities which operates through raising productivity and incomes and through that fosters peoples capabilities of doing things they could not do if they had less income and had been poorer.

The traditional focus of human capital concentrates its attention on the second of these dimensions which is very important, but needs to be supplemented and broadened by the first dimension, which is, as Sen suggests, the direct linkage. Increased education has not only been found to impact a persons long term income prospects, but has also been shown to exert significant effects on health, parenting, environmental awareness and care, fertility and crime. 112 These so-called quality of life dimensions are, not only worthwhile in themselves, and often touted as the true purposes of development, but actually provide the critical factors to sustain development. To pursue economic growth as means to improve the quality of life of people requires that both the means and goal be in harmony. In other words, that development is seen as an integrated and integrating process. This document is constructed as a tentative template that describes the critical interacting elements in what has been called the learning architecture. As described above, major elements in the learning architecture are in the process of transformation; that is, there is a set of identifiable shifts in relation to a number of key variables. The exact configurations, in each nation or region of the world, which will emerge from this transformation in the learning architecture, are
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See: J. Behrman and N. Stacey ed. The Social Benefits of Education (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998)

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as yet unclear. What is clear, however, is that the relationship between learning and development today, and increasingly in the future, will be dynamic, bringing forth new possibilities and new challenges. To pursue the challenges of development through learning and education requires recognition of the dynamic nature of the learning architecture. Development, while always focused on the problems and challenges of the present is, nevertheless, one of the most future-focussed of all activities in any society. To that degree, it is imperative that the learning systems, which are developed as part of development, be such that they provide a nation with the knowledge, skills, and learning processes that will enable people to adapt to and maximize their success in that future.

The ADB Institute Invitation: You are invited to contribute your thoughts and experience to this tentative template for the emerging architecture of learning by: Elaborating on the key concepts and ideas presented in one or all of the shifts outlined. Providing further examples of the shifts in the learning architecture. Drawing further implications for the process of development of the shifts noted. Disagreeing, and providing reasons, for why a particular shift noted is, in fact, not a shift of significance. Introducing a shift in the learning architecture that is not addressed in this document, and providing examples of it in practice and drawing implications for the process of development. Suggesting areas in the learning architecture in which continuity, rather than transformation, is the dominant characteristic.

We welcome and look forward to your contributions toward a better understanding of the emerging learning architecture and its implications for the process of development.

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