Given the
delay between the spring semester and the start of the summer semester, I have
been thinking about a number of things, such as how my students have
progressed, the situation with regard to the pandemic, and things I thought I
understood but had reason to doubt my thinking. A common thread runs through
those things and it is encapsulated in what is known in the instructional
design community as the ADDIE (analysis, design, development,
implementation, and evaluation) model. ADDIE is a generic process thought to be
useful in addressing challenging problems and it is used in a number of
disciplines. Sometimes, ADDIE is applied in a rigorous manner that discourages
innovation and can result in less than optimal solutions. I vaguely recall
writing that one might better think of ADDIE as a guide, like a caddie in golf
who can assist the golfer and help the golfer improve. The extra ‘c’ at the
beginning of CADDIE might be thought to stand for ‘continuous’ or
‘comprehensive’. An effective problem-solving process is an ongoing enterprise
that often revisits earlier stages and revises the plan as things evolve and
the plan unfolds – whence ‘continuous’ for the initial ‘c’. Or, an effective
problem-solving process is comprehensive in that the entire context surrounding
the problem is taken into consideration. To be truthful, I cannot recall why I
added the initial ‘c’ and dubbed instructional design processes as CADDIE. I grow old and my memory grows weak.
I think
about advice I often give my graduate students, which is a version of advice I
was given. Identify a central problem, examine what has been done to address
that problem, select an under-addressed small part of that problem, and try to
contribute something useful to make progress in that specific area – i.e.,
examine, understand, plan, and act – oh, a new acronym – EUPA … sounds almost
like yippee … as in finally something I can do. Or perhaps it is a
strange variant of eureka, which is Greek for “I found it” which is
allegedly what Archimedes said when he fell into a well and discovered a
solution for calculating the volume of an irregularly shaped body. Who knows if
any of that is true? Who still cares about truth these days? We should all care
about truth these days. Definitions only lead to other definitions – I think I
read this in one of Wittgenstein’s posthumous publications. Facts, on the other
hand can lead to other facts and eventually to a deeper understanding of
something puzzling. Truth … well, truth shows itself in what one does, as
Bouwsma wrote in an unpublished journal, “Surely your life will show what you
think of yourself,” and as Ruth’s words to Naomi reflect, truth shows itself in
Ruth following Naomi into an uncertain future. Truth is not something personal
…. It is something others can see and understand and judge, which is what I
have gathered from Wittgenstein, Bouwsma and Ruth. It seems to me that many are
off course with regard to truth, facts and definitions, but then I am off
course in these remarks about CADDIE.
The thought
I had involved my excursion into system dynamics when I was in Bergen, Norway,
which is home to the Wittgenstein archives, by the way. Anyway, I learned from
folks such as Pål Davidsen and Erling Moxnes that
when a system dynamicist goes about creating a system dynamics model of a
complex situation an initial step is to create a causal loop model or influence
diagram of the situation. This proceeds by asking key people involved with the
situation four questions: (a) what factors influence this situation, (b) how
would you describe each factor, (c) what relationships exist among these
factors, and (d) how would you describe those relationships? Should we create
an acronym for these questions, such as FDRD (try pronouncing that with a mouth
full of pebbles). Those four questions seem applicable to a wide variety of
problems and can help guide a problem solver to an effective solution approach,
which is how I thought about CADDIE. The name of this game is helping problem solvers
develop good solutions. What is a good solution? One that works … one that can
be replicated … one that can be sustained and applied to similar problems – a
good solution is scalable and sustainable – IMLTHO (in my less than humble
opinion, which is pronounceable … try it on for size).
Back to the
thought that drove me to make notes. I was thinking about how different people
think about the purpose of education, and then how those different conceptions
might be put into a system dynamics model. I am certainly not the first to have
such an idea; see for example, Jennifer Sterling Groff’s model). My thought has a twist, however,
which is how I like my gin and tonic, with twist of lemon or lime … and it is
okay to hold the gin as I am no longer drinking alcoholic beverages, unlike in my
misbegotten youth growing up in East Tennessee.
There is of
course an issue involving groups of people as opposed to working with
individuals, but there do seem to be patterns. Do you remember the four
questions – not the ones recited at the Passover Seder but the ones mentioned
earlier?
So, how
might a parent with children describe the purpose of education:
a) Key factors are include finding a
rewarding job, being qualified to pursue higher education, getting accepted
into a reputable university, looking to future job requirements, satisfying
inclinations and desires, having a liveable income, and so on. Keeping the list
to about ten or so key factors is important.
b) Factor descriptions – these vary from
parent to parent and also from child to child and teacher to teacher so I leave
this an exercise for those bored with this discussion (there goes my audience).
c) Key relationships – again this will
vary somewhat but looking for those relationships that seem to be most
influential is worthwhile and probably revealing.
d) Relationship descriptions – well,
what counts as a liveable income will vary a lot … for a despicable few, enough
is never enough … but again building this causal influence diagram is a
worthwhile activity for parents, educators, students, teachers, administrators,
and policy makers.
If one has multiple
such causal influence diagrams for different constituencies, the twist I wish
to add is to see what commonalities might exist across different
constituencies. I do not consider my own case to be at all representative. I wanted
to pursue a career as a philosopher professor so I would have summers off to go
hiking and camping in the mountains, but there were no jobs and those that did
exist certainly did not lead to job security or the accumulation of wealth. So
I gave software engineering and programming a try having been through IBM’s
programming school in Kansas City. That did lead to jobs but they were not exactly
satisfying. So I tried teaching computer science for a number of year with
limited success and discovered expert systems and artificial intelligence which
led to a position at the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory and long-term and
well-funded projects involving efforts to automate parts of instructional
design and development, again with some success until labs were consolidated;
then I escaped to the University of Bergen, initially on a Fulbright research
fellowship. The point of this short sketch of my own case is that education is
an ongoing process and an individual’s educational and life goals can and do
change.
SO … so, the
real question is how best to educate youth for a changing future. That is not
how folks generally think about education. Let’s develop an educational system
that helps improve a child’s chance for a good job, or helps improve the
nation’s likely productivity in years to come, or helps improve our children’s
ability to lead happy and satisfying lives. So what is it going to be? Build
wealth or live happily? Of course it is not that simple. It is what Bouwsma
wrote: “Surely your life will show what you think of yourself” and “the world
may gladden your heart, but it will surely make you cry.” Or as Wittensteint
wrote: “the world of the happy is not the
same as the world of the unhappy.”
Here is another
quotation from T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock:”
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
The truth,
however, is there is not time … one must choose, one must live, and one ought
to live a life in pursuit of truth, according to verifiable and widely accepted
facts, and aligned with a definition of a person as an individual with a mind
capable of rational thought and a body capable of caring for others.
Mike Spector
May 5, 2021
