Learning about Elmore’s four modes of learning in Levälahti (2021) and Meilleur (2020), I get a feeling that one of these modes is considered dated and unfunctional. The top left quadrant (hierarchical/individual) is described as a ”competitive system” and the readers are supposed to analyze where we are and where we want to go (in my mind the idea is that we shall find ourselves in the top left, realize that this is not adequate, and that we will want to move down right to the more distributed/collective quadrant). After 20 years of teaching experience (and before that 18 years of student experience), I have experienced all kinds of teaching, and I would say that there are positive and negative aspects of all quadrants.

Robinson (n.d.) forcefully addresses the issues in today’s educational systems all over the world, with the exclusion of people that do not fit the ideal mold and what our dated, ill-fitting system does to our children. I completely agree with Robinson’s (n.d.) description of the major problems in current education, and am aware of the fact that something needs to be done for us to be able to sustain a stable society in the future. I am not, however, convinced that the solution for this is connected to a system of a more distributed/collective education. I am convinced that the solutions are not simple nor few, but there are many aspects that need to be addressed, and solely moving towards a more exploratory education may be detrimental to many students.

I have met many students at upper secondary level that have attended previous schools that allowed them to solely choose areas of interest and their work has been assessed more from a process point of view rather than testing knowledge. Many of these students have been upset when they realize that other teenagers are a lot more informed of basic knowledge and concepts, and they feel deprived of this. Ensuring that students achieve certain knowledge does not mean we have to teach in a boring, hierarchical way, but in some way there are vast areas of knowledge that form a base for further development and the students need this. To learn a lot may be painful, tedious and difficult, but it is well worth it once you get the hang of it.

I have a few years’ experience of with working with teenagers with ADHD and other neurodevelopmental and neurocognitive disorders, and the students I worked with were victims of the more distributed/collective teaching that is standard in Swedish education. They needed a lot more structure and transmission of knowledge to be able to understand the tasks that they were given and they felt that nobody cared about them when they were encouraged to take their own initiatives to explore subject areas. From an accessibility standpoint, I believe that the structured teaching in the top left quadrant may be very important. My own son with autism and ADD works the same way. He has his areas of interests and whenever he gets an opportunity to choose, he ends up in his areas of interest, which makes him miss out on basic knowledge that is necessary for further development. He needs structure and is very susceptible to transmission of knowledge, so we have to do the teaching at home in a very traditional way for him to pass his subjects. The distributed/collective teaching is not working at all for him unless it is within his very narrow field of interest.

This was supposed to be an evaluation of the ONL course, and between the lines, I hope this can be read as a form of evaluation. My group is beyond excellent. I have met extremely competent and driven teachers from all over the world, and I am happy with what we achieved in the different topics. However, the style of teaching in the ONL course would not work in a group of less competent or less driven people, and I do not consider this any more democratic or fair than the teaching that is represented by Elmore’s top left quadrant (Meilleur (2020). I am excited and happy that I got to work with such amazing people, and for our part, an even looser structure may have worked better. What if we, at the beginning of the twelve week, would have received the opportunity to shape something completely unique, something that we could have worked on this whole time and that we could benefit from in our regular professional lives? I trust this group would pull it off.

Levälahti, F. (2021). Notes from Modes of learning. https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOe0lU2I=/?moveToWidget=3458764514375061215&cot=10

Meilleur, C. (2020). Elmore’s 4 learning modes. Knowledge One. https://knowledgeone.ca/elmores-4-learning-modes/

Robinson, K.  Changing Education Paradigms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U