What is the "Double-Bind" that Makes Schooling an Obstacle to Learning?

Image Credit: Gardner Campbell

In his keynote address at the Open Ed conference in Vancouver, in 2012, Gardner Campbell discussed the need to create "Ecologies of Yearning", a vague concept which we recognize only when we experience it.

Digital technology and social networking tools create the potential for wide-ranging student interaction across vast distances. They also give students access to information and other learning resources that would have been unimaginable 25 years ago, and yet, even as universities adapt digital learning platforms as part of their instruction, students seem to feel more boxed-in than ever rather than feeling as though they are part of an ever-expending, alive and vibrant massive network of learning. Why is that happening?

Digital technology and social networking tools also create the potential for students to participate in project-based learning and to create digital artifacts that should unleash the process of discovery and and stimulate their creative juices, yet students feel constricted by the process, as if they were in a strait-jacket. How are we to understand what blocks this process of creativity and discovery?

Gardner Campbell draws from Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind to explore the nature of the "double-bind". An application of the double-bind is when it occurs as the requirement to implement conventional modes of course organization and assessment of student learning meet the emerging creative and discovery potential of digital technology. It is akin to saying, "Be spontaneous, but within this rubric."

In order to identify this double-bind we must develop skills recognizing meta-messaging, the meta-context in which we are thinking, meta-contextual perspective, and transcontextual syndromes. To get a handle on these $50 words, watch the lecture. It is essential in order for us to even begin to work our way through this puzzle.

How do we break out of this double-bind so that the minds of students will be freed and authentic learning will take place? Campbell argues that learning begins with yearning; the challenge is how we create educational environments that place yearning at the center of the process of education.