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Subject: Implementation and imagination

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Fran Everingham
Posts: 14
30/05/2007 17:09  
Hi Dave,
As a fellow Sydneysider, I’m sorry I missed your synchronise discussion.

I am drawn to your Item 11 what gets in the way of implementation: lack of imagination. There is, however, sector wide pressure to defend all design action with ‘evidence’ from the literature. While I applaud this, sadly in the hands of some, evidence has become a weapon wielded by the ignorant to challenge and cripple potential innovation; and in the hands of others, ‘evidence’ has been reduced to tired tokenism whereby a few overly quoted sources are danced out and deemed informed. In reality, what literature might appear relevant can be hard to connect to the local conditions, making it difficult to judge strength and transferability.

In the heart of the matter is sector-wide failure to dignify the place of pedagogical reasoning, and in turn respect that creativity must work in concert with evidence to theorize imaginative solutions to complex design problems and that this is a work of scholarly endeavour in its own right.
David Boud
Posts: 5
30/05/2007 22:23  
Fran, I agree with your comments. 'Evidence' is being used as a weapon to intimidate innovators. I think we should not be cowered by this. There is little or no 'evidence' for the practices that are being pushed by the proponents of the audit culture. We should be bold and question their evidence and not be quietened because we don't have evidence on the terms of others to deploy to defend ourselves. If we act as defensive our approaches will never have the opportunity to prove themselves. It is not as if there is a lot of really good research on assessment!
Damian Ruth
Posts: 6
31/05/2007 07:53  
Right on Fran and David. "Managing education" is oxymoronic. We can manage the systems that support conditions for education, but we cannot manage that open-ended exploratory and creative process that is at the heart of the educational process. I do not feel I need to justify innovation in education - managers need to justify their intrusion into the educational process. OK I do admit I am terribly reductive here. But I do think that the very idea of 'evidence' is worth interrogating. I teach management, and I am waiting for the paper on evidence-based spirituality in management, or some such. Assessment and evidence are blood relations...
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Forums > Keynotes > David Boud > Implementation and imagination


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