Reflection 1: Discover Module

Though an educator by profession and academically focused on design work, my earliest interest lies in the world of philosophy. The intangible study of how we know things, the estimations we make of them, and the process via which they are accessed are focuses of unwavering interest for me. Accordingly, when in education we begin to speak of formal epistemologies, or learning practices as they are popularly referred to in the field, I find myself immediately interested. Modules through my experience at the Harvard Graduate School of Education thus far have spent a great deal of time centering these theories of learning which has been a welcome focus given my previous interests. An issue I have had, both in my pursuits in philosophy and brushing up against these theories of learning, is their distance from the contemporary milieu. This week this feeling particular came to the fore for me when reading Ertmer and Newby updated remarks on their Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism piece from 20 years prior. Within they describe massive insurrectionary changes that have been ushered in on the back the internet, from the nature of knowledge creation and interaction (66) all the way to the genesis of an epistemologically unique generation of digital natives. The conclusions taken by the authors from these changes though were not similarly radical: existing bodies of knowledge will still have their explanatory place and old intervention styles will be adaptable to these new contexts. Though these may be true, I can't help but feel that there is a need for our theorizing to be equally as bold as the change that we face. This is work I hope to do in this program, and the results of which I hope to share with my students.