Breaking down fences

Seth Godin's blog is always good value, but his post today is quite profound. He writes about his avid reading of the entire collection of one library's science fiction stock during his high school days and concludes that "Expertise is a posture as much as it is a volume of knowledge". Expertise does not come easily. It takes hard work and a lot of tenacity to become expert at anything, whether it is sport, music, art or and other realm of knowledge or skill. Godin urges us to 'go deep' and to read everything we can on our chosen subject, and on the surface, this seems a no brainer. We read for a degree. Reading is what it takes to master a topic.

I tell all potential PhD candidates I meet the same thing. If they wish to complete a research degree, they must become an expert in a very narrow domain, and through their research they should contribute something unique to that field. In order to do that, they need to explore their field thoroughly. It means reading a lot. It means reflecting on your own practice, and thinking critically about your field. It means finding where the edge of that field is, and sometimes - if you're bold enough - even breaking a few fences down to venture beyond into uncharted territory.

It doesn't just apply to PhD candidates. Anyone who is a professional should try to be the best they can be. What about your own professional practice? How do you find the edge of your field of knowledge and expertise? What do you read and where do you find the edgy stuff?

Although journal articles and books are a great source of knowledge, many articles go quickly out of date, and were probably in most cases already out of date by the time they were published, due to ponderous editorial and review processes, and a general back-log of articles that wait in a queue to be published. It's the same for just about every closed pay-per-view journal. Open access journals are better - they are generally more up to date, and are of course free to read. Many can be found online and usually, as soon as an article is accepted, it is quickly published. Better still, if you wish to approach the very very edge of your field, search for blogs written by the leaders in the field. You can gain access to the latest thoughts and ideas posted onto the web direct from the mind of the author. You can't get much more immediate than that. You may receive more understanding and wisdom from a just-written-blog by a reputable researcher or leading thinker than you will ploughing through several dozen paper based journal articles. You need to find your own pathway. Any way you do it, go deep, search for the edge of your field and then break down a few fences.

Image by Lionel Grove


Breaking down fences by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Literacy, wot literacy?

I'm sat watching the evening news and I'm listening to a report about a decline in literacy, due apparently to a dwindling interest in book reading. 1 in 4 children will never read a book outside school, intones the BBC news man. Other statistics are thrown at me as I watch the news reporter build his case. 1 in 3 do not own a book and 1 in 6 children will struggle with their literacy, he says. Figures quoted are obtained from the National Literacy Trust he says. The BBC TV reporter goes on to suggest that kids today are "increasingly bombarded with new technology and new distractions" (images of children playing shoot em up computer games flash across the screen at this point), and that "the place of books, literacy and quiet reading ranks highly amongst the concerns of many parents." The BBC reporter balances his report by conceding that "kids do read, but increasingly it's not books." Well, that's helpful. I want to ask - so what do they read? But already, the channel has moved on to the sport.

Here's what I know: Increasingly, sales of books on Amazon are in electronic form, and this year, for the first time, the online store has reported that the sale of e-books has outstripped conventional book sales. But e-books are usually the preserve of adults. Few school children that I know actually read books on Kindle. Most don't own a Kindle or other e-book reader. Do children read other things then - on the Web for example, or on their games consoles? More to the point, what are kids interested in reading? Should they, as is the view of our esteemed Education Secretary Michael Gove, be tasked to read 50 books a year? What a splendid way of turning kids off reading altogether! I know that if I was forced to read a book a week when I was in school, I would very quickly have found a way of losing those books in a ditch somewhere.

I'm sceptical about the BBC news item, and the idea it is propagating that literacy is on the decline. Hasn't it always been thus? I can recall government statistics from when I was at school (oh so many years ago) saying that our country was in trouble, because of the poor standards of 'reading, writing and arithmetic.' I was messaged on Facebook yesterday by another Steve Wheeler (no relation, and certainly no friend) who going by his picture, is probably of the same generation as me, but behaving more in compliance with his shoe size than his age. Out of the blue, on my wall this stranger had written 'Your not Steve Wheeler I am.' By response I kindly pointed out to him that the correct grammatical construction should be 'You're not Steve Wheeler. I am.' He fired back a snide comment. I blocked him. No matter. The key point of this story is that every generation has its literacy problems. Is there really such a decline in literacy? Has it changed all that much from previous decades? If there is a decline, should we really be placing all the blame on 'new technology and new distractions?' There are so many questions. It's a complex issue.

The statement that new technology is distracting, and the implication that it is doing damage to literacy needs to be challenged. I would point those who are sceptical about the role of technology in education, and those who claim that it has had little impact on learning to the time just before Gutenberg introduced his movable type printing press. Literacy - reading and writing - was then the preserve of the elite, and it was zealously protected. Post Gutenberg, it became a world in which all could participate, and knowledge grew exponentially as a result.

Perhaps we should not be asking why children are reading less print books. Instead, maybe we should be asking 'what are the new literacies they will need in the society in which they will grow up and work?' Perhaps we should look more at how the emphasis on literacy is changing to digital literacies (notice the plural) ... the transliteracies and other new skills of communicating across social media and mobile platforms that are already assuming greater import as they transform our society.

No, I don't think the demise of the printed book is nigh. I believe there will be a place for print for a long time to come. And there are still many, many children who continue to read and enjoy books. But print is now having to move aside to make some space as newer methods of mass communication take a more prominent role in our world. The way we represent knowledge, the world around us, society, community, reality, is changing. So there you have it. Those are my thoughts on the topic. Do you read me?

Image source by Guldfisken


Literacy, wot literacy? by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.