User:Gunitag/self-reflection

My project began as inquiry into the common practice of assigning homework as an educational tradition or tool. In the minds of many educators, administrators, parents, and the public, homework is an ubiquitous occurrence in the life of a student. But is it necessary to the goals of education? Indeed, what are the goals of education and schooling and are these common across disciplines, times, and geographies? These questions formed the basis of my initial question; however, my research has yielded a limited discourse on the topic that tends to be self-referential and ambivalent at best. In order to represent my own personal exploration into these issues, I have chosen to create a wiki installation. In this installation I explore the various ways in which information, inquiry, and learning might coexist in a digital environment. Using multimedia, creative expression, and formal writing in concert, my project creates a varied and rich response to the questions surrounding pedagogical common practices that invites collaboration and ongoing dialogue.

It is interesting that the dialogue surrounding my topic, thus far, has not been about the topic at all but the means by which I have chosen to represent it: the wiki. And more specifically: my apparent disregard for the rules of the UBC wikispace due to the learning curve I encountered when I first undertook the medium. My non-compliance with these rules prompted a correspondence with the administrative team in which ideals, purposes, sentiments, and philosophies have been discussed—all with appropriate citation, of course!

What is even more interesting is that this debate can be applied to the topic of homework and inquiry into common educational practice as well. As teachers—pre-service or full-fledged—we will inevitably do seemingly commonplace things that prompt someone to ask us "Why?". Faced with this question, it behooves anyone of us to have an answer of some sort, and hopefully one which addresses ideals, purposes, sentiments, and philosophies in such a way as to prompt dialogue and evolution. For, even though the current incarnation of the wiki is problematic for some and emblematic to others, it has evolved and will continue to evolve simply because a dialogue has begun.

Which brings us back to homework. Sadly when I reviewed the literature I found that the dialogue was stagnating in a pool of self-interested research re-purposing. But, rather than have this rendering the topic moot for me, I found that perhaps the flaw occurred in the inquiry methods used by the researchers and not the question itself. The majority of the writers on the topic of homework either used case-studies or data sampling, or cited the case-studies and data sampling of others and reworked the findings (or omitted some altogether) to support a stance for or against. A few pedagogues did strive to redefine the look and/or purpose of homework. But, it is easy to see how this has done little to change things. Just ask any number of currently practising teachers and many of them will undoubtedly still toe the company line regarding homework. Yes, this is a generalisation, but that doesn't make it untrue. The fact of the matter is that homework has yet to evolve much in the same way that education—for all the best intentions otherwise—still looks the way it did hundreds of years ago. But this does not have to be bad thing. Indeed, the continuity of the image can be conceived of as enduring simply because, even while there may have been mutations, the organism still has not had sufficient need (desire?) to evolve. For evolution is, in part, a response to an organism's environment. In the case of homework, education, and educational common practice, quite simply, the environment has been so static that the organism is content the way it is. In this analogy, to be clear, the organism is the practice and the environment is the inquiry which, at its absolute best, should be prompting change on an exponential level. So why is it stuck? Could it be that we are simply asking the wrong question in the wrong way?