Best
Laid Plans
Chapter 10 of Sherden’s, The Best Laid Plans, outlines some
forces which impact the socio-technical plan of student-centric learning both
in positive and negative ways. Student-centric learning requires “Thinking through
the Maze” which is the title of that chapter.
There could be negative unintended consequences primarily
caused by the social mechanisms that complicate the process of thinking through
decisions in advance. This is always the issue in the education sector. Sherden
(2011) refers to complex social systems which contain many unpredictable
elements (p.165) including people, organizations, and intuitions that interact
in ways that make prediction nearly impossible. Teachers and students may not adapt
to changes in their new learning environment which defeats the best intentions
of student-centric learning. Complexity of social systems associated with
learning has created challenges in developing the right theories to predict the
correct outcomes of new initiatives. Education sector has always struggled with
this.
Social intervention (p. 169) has a positive effect on student-centric
learning because when our classrooms become undesirable for students we are
forced to interfere with it. Sherden (2011) outlines how social intervention
has accomplished good results in public health, civil rights, fair voting, highway
systems, and many other public services to make our world a better place to
live. Why it can’t do the same for education? In other words, student-centric
learning is influenced and has to be driven by social intervention to fulfill our
need for interfering with the current methods of teaching in public schools
that are holistic and more for the convenience of teachers, not students.
Sherden, W. A. (2011). Best Laid Plans: The Tyranny of
Unintended Consequences and How to Avoid Them. Praeger, CA. ISBN-13:
978-0313385315
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