Here is a paper from the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education by my friend Gerald Ardito and me that presents a slightly different way of thinking about teaching and learning. We adopt a broadly complexivist stance that sees environments not as a backdrop to learning but as a rich network of dynamic, interwingled relationships between the various parts (including parts played by people), mediated through technologies, enabling and enabled by autonomy. The model that we develop knits together a smorgasbord of theories and models, including Self-Determination Theory (SDT), Connectivism, an assortment of complexity theories, the extended version of Paulsen’s model of cooperative freedoms developed by me and Terry Anderson, Garrison & Baynton’s model of autonomy, and my own coparticipation theory, wrapping up with a bit of social network analysis of a couple of Gerald’s courses that puts it all into perspective. From Gerald’s initial draft the paper took years of very sporadic development and went through many iterations. It seemed to take forever, but we had fun writing it. Looking afresh at the finished article, I think the diagrams might have been clearer, we might have done more to join all the dots, and we might have expressed the ideas a bit less wordily, but I am mostly pleased with the way it turned out, and I am glad to see it finally published. The good bits are all Gerald’s, but I am personally most pleased with the consolidated model of autonomy visualized in figure 4, that connects my own & Terry Anderson’s cooperative freedoms, Garrison & Baynton’s model of autonomy, and SDT.
Reference:
(2024) The emergence of autonomy in intertwingled learning environments: a model of teaching and learning, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, DOI: 10.1080/1359866X.2024.2325746
