[NLA] building policy vision

[Eileen Eckert]

Last week, I asked, "When you advocate for literacy policy, or make policy 
decisions yourself, is there a big picture? Are there some unifying themes 
or underlying principles that make specific policies complement each other? 
What are they, and how do they work?"

A few people wrote about how to develop a policy vision for the field, or 
about the content of their individual vision. I hope we can pursue this 
further, focusing on the principles or themes involved in each individual's 
picture of what policy as a whole should do, and how it should work.

To that end, I'm going to try to articulate my own "big picture" and the 
themes involved.

Theme 1: Learners, teachers, classes, and programs are "complex systems" 
whose integrity should be respected and whose learning should be nurtured. 
Policies that recognize the uniqueness and support the further growth and 
development of such self-organized complex systems will be more effective 
than policies that prescribe specific actions.

(A note about complex systems: Syvantek & Brown (2000) explain that complex 
systems are "those systems whose behaviors cannot be explained by breaking 
down the system into its component parts" (p. 69). Davis & Sumara (2001) 
differentiate between complicated and complex. "Complicated objects or 
events are mechanical...In the case of a complicated object, a detailed 
knowledge of its components is all that is needed to predict what it will 
do...A complex system does not comprise simple discrete parts. Rather, it is 
itself a collective of dynamic and similarly complex systems...Unlike 
complicated objects, which are the sum of their parts, complex systems 
transcend their components" (p. 88).)

Theme 2: People are self-determining learners and actors (from Deci & 
colleagues' Self-Determination Theory). Policy that respects autonomy and 
self-determination and builds on it as a strength will be more effective in 
promoting learning than policy that mandates specific actions or processes, 
even in the name of disseminating "best practices". Policy that dictates or 
mandates specific actions takes control from the people who are responsible 
for implementing the action, negating the strength of autonomy and setting 
up a power struggle between the actor (learner, teacher, etc) and the 
policy-dictator.

Theme 3: People learn by reflecting, alone and with others, on their 
experience (from Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory). Policy that directs 
resources and support to learners, teachers, and programs, and that allows 
and encourages them to learn from each other in ways that make sense to 
them, will be more effective than policy that attempts to distill and 
disseminate the results of learning done by others. I think this is related 
to Women's Ways of Knowing as well, in that "silent" or "received" knowers 
will have a hard time constructing meaning from their own experience, and 
policy that promulgates a culture of received knowing will be disempowering, 
emphasizing acceptance of knowledge from external sources.

It is useful to me to attempt to articulate my own "mental model" of policy 
and practice, surfacing assumptions and connecting them to theory and to 
policy. Most of my reflections haven't made it to this message. I'm 
interested in hearing what themes and principles others use to decide what 
policies (and what kinds of policies) to support.

Thanks,
Eileen





_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

_______________________________________________
NLA mailing list: NLA at lists.literacytent.org
http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/nla
LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
http://literacytent.org