OLDaily

Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics. We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

There are many ways to read OLDaily; pick whatever works best for you:

• Read in your web browser on this web page, updated weekdays
• Receive a daily or weekly email newsletter by subscribing here
• Subscribe to the RSS feed using your favourite feed reader
• Follow @OLDaily@mastodon.social on Mastodon or elsewhere in the fediverse
• Follow @OLDaily on Twitter
• Integrate the open API using the JSON feed

Introduction to the Duty of Care
2022/11/21

---

Here is a section from my bok-in-progress (which may never be completed, but I continue to toil away). Please read it keeping the following in mind:

- It should be thought of as a conversation. Sure, it's a conversation with you as a very patient and quiet partidipant, but this is me speaking, not writing. This is me reflecting on the concept. You don't have to agree with me (indeed, it's more interesting if you don't). The text contains observations I thought might be of value to you. If not - no hard feelings.

- Please keep in mind that this is an introduction and intended to highlight themes I want to explore. It's 9 pages out of a manuscript that currently sits at 998 pages. Yeah. So I know there are many people and points of view I should be covering here, and especially people like Carol Gilligan and bell hooks. They appear elsewhere. I haven't eft them out.

Enjoy.

 

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Flourishing as the aim of education - Kristján Kristjánsson
Jenny Mackness, Jenny Connected, 2022/11/21

---

"Flourishing would seem an obvious aim of education," writes Jenny Mackness. "To me it's an indictment of our times that Kristján Kristjánsson felt he needed to write a lengthy book to justify this." Maybe, but as the result of the article shows, it's not exactly clear what counts as 'flourishing'. It's more, for example, that mere happiness (or so we read here). Aristotle listed some factors, including good government, a full life, and even some physical beauty. Later in the article Mackness cites a suggestion that spirituality is necessary for flourishing. This all seems pretty culturally specific to me, and most of it has little to do with my own idea of flourishing.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession: Prestige, Interest, Preparation, and Satisfaction over the Last Half Century
Matthew A. Kraft, Melissa Arnold Lyon, EdWorkingPapers, 2022/11/21

---

This paper reports on the changing levels of prestige and satisfaction in the teaching profession in the U.S., finding that it has sunk to the lowest levels in fifty years. Why? They look at eight hypotheses: "education funding levels, teacher compensation, outside labor market opportunities, teacher unionism, barriers to entry, working conditions, accountability/autonomy on the job, and school shootings." 68 page PDF.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]