July+2014

Monday, July 28th
I've spent this month living with my brother in a little apartment on the 19th floor of a completely nondescript building in downtown Calgary. What a month! I'm far away from Winnipeg to complete some coursework for the Doctoral program I'm in with the [|Werklund School of Education] at the [|University of Calgary]. This time around I even found a bit of time to go to the [|Calgary Stampede]. And yes, I even bought a cowboy hat.

Now, before anyone starts to worry about a "slippery slope" or about "going down the rabbit hole" I need to take a thirty second commercial break to remind us all that context is King. Or Queen. Anyways, context is high ranking royalty, and it often calls the shot. Out here in Calgary it is completely expected that cowboy hats, plaid shirts and rugged boots will be worn (seemingly by everyone, everywhere) during the Stampede. After Stampede that costume disappears, only to be resurrected at the beginning of next July, when Calgary ramps up for Stampede once again.

The Stampede and its concomitant costume are a regular and expected part of Calgary life, but I'm not blind to the [|criticism] that the Stampede receives every year. In many parts of Canada and in the national press the Stampede is often portrayed as a sick abuse of animals for the pleasure of drunken barbarians dressed like characters from spaghetti westerns. That's the majority judgement of the Stampede, in many contexts. While there are even many Calgarians who would agree with the above characterization of the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, the broad, multicultural, diverse majority of Calgary enjoys the Stampede as their premier summer festival and a significant international tourist attraction. Even William and Kate went to the Stampede. Calgary loves the Stampede, and there is no way that the broader context of Canadian culture or sentiment will change the local context enough to have an impact on this event.

Ok. Thirty seconds is up. All of this thinking about context, taboos, values structures and societal priorities is mostly a way for me to introduce the idea of curriculum and learning, in a Canadian context. If context is Queen (or King) then I wonder about the extent of its domain. In Canada, curriculum is negotiated into existence in every Province, interpreted by every School Division or District, distributed into schools by Principals and Consultants, and handed to a Teacher to administer with students. Yes, I left out the words "teach" and "learn" on purpose. Here's the thing: teaching and learning are incredibly context dependent, and what might make sense Provincially might make no sense at all when thirty people draw together to share their knowings in a room that somebody decided to call a "class". I've heard it said that all politics is local. I think all learning is local too.

But I'm not blind to the criticism that local learning receives every year. The OECD Pisa test seem to make us think that we have to heed a global context over a local one, and while it is good to think further than the city limit, local contexts are so essential to learning that they will always beat out the alarms of "[|ignorant armies who clash by night]". I just had to throw some Matthew Arnold in there, but I digress. Oh, by the way, he was a school supervisor by day, and poet by night. Provincial tests also impose a broader-than-local context. Then again, so do cookie-cutter final exams in any high school. Stretching further, so does assigning the same work to everyone in a group of 30. Local context matters to learning to the point that we know that no two students ever end up learning the exact same facts the same way in the same order and value those facts at the same levels even if the delivery of the material is completely uniform. You can make "teaching" pretty uniform, but learning? All learning is local, as local as the individual.

In the last month I've written about 25 pages of new academic material (with 6 more pages of properly formatted APA References) to add to my portfolio as I prepare for my Doctoral research proposal. It's been tough work, demanding, and rewarding. I don't think I could have learned the same things in another context. My brother's Spartan apartment, my rock-solid Doctoral cohort and expert instructors have (un)wittingly conspired to evoke new learning in me. It's all wonderful, and it has been a golden month of learning, but it makes me wonder; how do people from other contexts view the changes they see in me? Also, how will I, in turn, be able to contribute in new and different ways to my educational contexts closer to home? I'll have to wait to find out, but when I do, I think I'll leave the cowboy hat at home.