“There is no model of a model.”

The most basic distinction is, in Clifford Geertz's terms, between “an ‘of’ sense and a ‘for’ sense” of modelling (1973: 93). A model of something is an exploratory device, a more or less “poor substitute” for the real thing (Groenewold 1960: 98). We build such models-of because the object of study is inaccessible or intractable, like poetry or subatomic whatever-they-are. In contrast a model for something is a design, exemplary ideal, archetype or other guiding preconception. Thus we construct a model of an airplane in order to see how it works; we design a model for an airplane to guide its construction. A crucial point is that both kinds are imagined, the former out of a pre-existing reality, the latter into a world that doesn't yet exist, as a plan for its realization. Knowing true things by what their mockeries be’: Modelling in the Humanities Willard McCarty

I have been having fun designing a learning resource for a friend whose students are looking at how ideas are communicated through museum exhibits ... thinking about models and strategies for communicating meaning are part of the day job for every teacher in New Zealand.  Which might explain why I have much enjoyed reading Willard McCarty's paper on "Knowing true things by what their mockeries be." 

On understanding OF and FOR ...

Teachers are always designing models   ... models to help students learn.

When we make a model OF “learning” we want to understand how learning works. We imagine a simpler substitute for a notion that is hard to pin down.

In the day job we use Biggs and Collis’ Structured Overview of Learning Outcomes (SOLO Taxonomy) as a model OF “learning .”

When we plan learning experiences we make a model FOR “learning” – we imagine learning outcomes that don’t exist yet, and plan experiences to help students realise them.     

And in the day job we use a a “SOLO coded planning template” as a model FOR learning within a conceptual framework. 

McCarty’s paper challenges me to be more purposeful in how I design FOR learning, it also made me laugh aloud when I read “there is “no model of a model””

When we plan with The New Zealand Curriculum, our design for learning is developed from a “concept” [key ideas/ processes that help build coherent understanding of the discipline] and the identification of insights [Overarching or deep understandings that help make sense of our world.]

I sometimes worry that our limited understanding of the concepts chosen by schools compromises all that follows.  That in truth many of us should steer well clear of a concept curriculum and stick to the safety and certainty of teaching The Russian Revolution, the annelids, or decimals, fractions and percentages.

For example
I have yet to plan with any teachers who think about the concept of “identity” like Kenan Malik does in Identity is That Which is Given

The anthropologist Margaret Mead once observed that in the 1930s, when she was busy remaking the idea of culture, the notion of cultural diversity was to be found only in the ‘vocabulary of a small and technical group of professional anthropologists’. Today, everyone and everything seems to have its own culture. From anorexia to zydeco, the American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has observed, there is little that we don’t talk about as the product of some group’s culture. In this age of globalisation many people fret about Western culture taking over the world. But the greatest Western export is not Disney or McDonalds or Tom Cruise. It is the very idea of culture.

I have yet to plan with any teachers who think about the concept “technology” like Postman or Winograd and Flores ...

All new technologies develop within a background of tacit understanding of human nature and human work. The use of technology in turn leads to fundamental changes in what we do, and ultimately what it is to be human. We encounter deep questions of design when we recognize that in designing tools we are designing ways of being (Understanding Computers and Cognition, Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores 1986). 

All of which makes me wonder what is happening when we design learning experiences to communicate meaning,

What are the tensions between what mockeries be and truth?

If school is all about learning what it is to be human, then what is really happening when we design for learning?

Comments

[Janet Hawtin]

yum. which takes me here for the master of mischief
http://www.snark.de/carroll/alice/alice9.html

`When we were little,' the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, `we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle--we used to call him Tortoise--'

`Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?' Alice asked.

`We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily: `really you are very dull!'

`You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,' added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At last the Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, `Drive on, old fellow! Don't be all day about it!' and he went on in these words:

`Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn't believe it--'

`I never said I didn't!' interrupted Alice.

`You did,' said the Mock Turtle.

`Hold your tongue!' added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again. The Mock Turtle went on.

`We had the best of educations--in fact, we went to school every day--'

`I'VE been to a day-school, too,' said Alice; `you needn't be so proud as all that.'

`With extras?' asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously.

`Yes,' said Alice, `we learned French and music.'

`And washing?' said the Mock Turtle.

`Certainly not!' said Alice indignantly.

`Ah! then yours wasn't a really good school,' said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. `Now at OURS they had at the end of the bill, "French, music, AND WASHING--extra."'

`You couldn't have wanted it much,' said Alice; `living at the bottom of the sea.'

`I couldn't afford to learn it.' said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. `I only took the regular course.'

`What was that?' inquired Alice.

`Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied; `and then the different branches of Arithmetic-- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.'

`I never heard of "Uglification," Alice ventured to say. `What is it?'

The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. `What! Never heard of uglifying!' it exclaimed. `You know what to beautify is, I suppose?'

`Yes,' said Alice doubtfully: `it means--to--make--anything-- prettier.'

`Well, then,' the Gryphon went on, `if you don't know what to uglify is, you ARE a simpleton.'

Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said `What else had you to learn?'

`Well, there was Mystery,' the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers, `--Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography: then Drawling--the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: HE taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.'

`What was THAT like?' said Alice.

`Well, I can't show it you myself,' the Mock Turtle said: `I'm too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.'

`Hadn't time,' said the Gryphon: `I went to the Classics master, though. He was an old crab, HE was.'

`I never went to him,' the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: `he taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.'

`So he did, so he did,' said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.

`And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.

`Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: `nine the next, and so on.'

`What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.

`That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.'

This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. `Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?'

`Of course it was,' said the Mock Turtle.

`And how did you manage on the twelfth?' Alice went on eagerly.

`That's enough about lessons,' the Gryphon interrupted in a very decided tone: `tell her something about the games now.'

[Artichoke]

I have always loved this Janet ... I used to have an extract pinned to my classroom door ... is the perfect analysis for "There is no model of a model".

And over time I have changed in what I identify as my most favourite curriculum area ..

I wonder if anyone has tried to design achievemnt objectives and then plan and deliver learning experiences for something like "Fainting in Coils" And then ... and then delivered them in a way that "lessen(ed) from day to day" - Now that would be something to design.

We could create the on line version ... but "laughing and grief" really needs to be done with others rather than through a screen.

[Janet Hawtin]

Perhaps 'fainting in coils' etc might be a nice framework for a boardgame, or a computer game. I am enjoying xnethack where i navigate around in a fetching samurai avatar which is a whole 14pixels high, like a netsuke self. I was recently killed by a kitten.

Working on a fledgeling boardgame atm currently where I am thinking that the (imagined) epic overnight boardgame marathon version might involve navigating while being retired, with sod all income and finding out what kinds of life assets are handy at that end of the game.

[cj]

"coherent understanding of the discipline" - Interesting aim. Was mulling about how many/most disciplines (can we still call them that?) transform as the D word begins to play, i.e. digital history. Building certainties on such shifting sand is like juggling on a bed of marbles.

[Artichoke]

Ahh cj I have missed the way you so effortlessly undermine ideas ...

“coherent understanding of the discipline” indeed ... it sounds so daft plucked out like this ... and I must admit that up to this moment I have been able to talk like this in the day job without any sense of self irony ...

Your comment made me think of that Pew Internet Report that had the interview with David Weinberger ... Forget Dewey and His Decimals, Internet Users are Revolutionizing the Way We Classify Information – and Make Sense of It
Interview: Author David Weinberger Describes How Tagging Changes People’s Relationship to Information and Each Other

Is it possible that Weinbergers suggestion that tagging could replace our Dewey’s Decimal System way of thinking about the disciplines ... Is not bold enough .... it is after all simply suggesting we replace one tyranny with another ...

Will replacing thinking about grouping information in terms of

• 000s Information (now including computer science) and general works
  100s Philosophy and psychology
  200s Religion
  300s Social sciences
  400s Language
  500s Science
  600s Technology
  700s Arts and recreation
  800s Literature
  900s History and geography

with all those user created tags for discovery, for retrieval, for memory and for social connection mean that in time there will be no collective “coherence” in the way we understand information at all ... now that is a dangerous idea

That our thinking about information might move from the “tyranny of Melvil Dewey” imposed through the Dewey Decimal System to “the tyranny of the majority” imposed through social bookmarking/ tagging to the “tyranny of the absence of a tyranny”

And thanks for the Flores update ... was wondrous to imagine the impact of "speech acts" in the "wobbly isles"

[Artichoke]

Manovich imagines this unstructured collection of information bit quite well in his "Database as a Symbolic Form" in The Language of New Media

where every item has the same significance as any other

• After the novel, and subsequently cinema privileged narrative as the key form of cultural expression of the modern age, the computer age introduces its correlate - database. Many new media objects do not tell stories; they don't have beginning or end; in fact, they don't have any development, thematically, formally or otherwise which would organize their elements into a sequence. Instead, they are collections of individual items, where every item has the same significance as any other.

• Indeed, if after the death of God (Nietzche), the end of grand Narratives of Enlightenment (Lyotard) and the arrival of the Web (Tim Berners-Lee) the world appears to us as an endless and unstructured collection of images, texts, and other data records, it is only appropriate that we will be moved to model it as a database. But it is also appropriate that we would want to develops poetics, aesthetics, and ethics of this database.

but it is still possible to imagine an organisation to make meaning in terms of poetics/ aesthetics and ethics ...

All of which makes me wonder what sort of human being would come out of an information database developed against poetics, against aesthetics and against ethics