The future

Yesterday evening I managed time to catch up with a friend I had largely been avoiding (for various reason). Without a doubt this is a person who thinks more like me, in terms of subject matter, but differs the most to me, in terms of opinions and conclusions. Regardless, I generally have my best conversations and discussions with them.

The person and the philosophical/political/sociological/psychological/’semantics of life’ conversations we had are not the point of this post though. There was one conversation that would largely be relatable (both in terms of being able to retell it and of common interest) to the readers of this blog. The discussion of postgraduate degrees came up, and while my friend is a bit lost as to what to do (will likely be applying to get into a JD with the aims of becoming an international lawyer), I was actually more focused an specific as to what I wanted to do.

The University of Sydney (sticking with my to-be alma mater) offers the degree most relevant to my interests, that being the a Masters of Learning Science and Technology. No, not learning about science, but the science of learning – pedagogy and whatnot. But with a specific focus on technology incorporation to the learning process. Other universities offer a very similar course as well, as teaching starts to get more technology based and further research is required.

When I first looked into it, I knew that it would be most applicable to me. Recall I did my Honors dissertation on ICT and Modern History teaching. I am hoping to be able to modify that – or at least use chunks of that – to start off on a Masters research dissertation.

Beyond doing a Masters, I would intend on doing a PhD (if, for nothing else, the ‘Dr.’ and I feel that my family would actually be proud of something I did for once). And I think I have come upon the topic/research area that I want to look into by chance. It came up with a conversation I had with my friend, and we were discussing learning theories.

Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory has always had me interested and somewhat of a believer. I certainly believe in the essence of the theory as he wrote it, but I feel that the theory has been abused and diluted and manipulated in wrong ways over the past few years (having read research about it for the past 6 years). But, yes, I do subscribe (as many probably do) with the notion of different intelligences.

What I would like to investigate is whether with this massive explosion in technology in people’s (see; children’s) lives, is there a new branch of the ‘intelligences’ that Gardner came upon emerging that we could term ‘digital intelligence’? That is to say, are people now developing new and distinct ways to comprehend technology, the new ways technology is creating and presenting information, and the way the digital world works?

I imagine something like this would bridge both the education and the psychology fields (remember, I started university doing a Bachelor of Psychology and have continued to hold an interest in the field). It would also require a move away from studying Department documents (as I did in my Honors dissertation) and move back towards skills testing and identification (which means student-based research rather than teacher based as I did previously). But I really think this could be a good topic/area to look into.

I think by doing the Masters of Learning Science and Technology, I could very easily set myself up for the PhD on this topic. It would simply be a natural progression, I imagine. So what I might start doing, when university finishes up, is use some of the time it frees up to actually start some work on this area. See if anyone else has looked into it. See what the research is saying already.

I’d love some feedback on my idea. Do you think it’s a valid area? Do you think it would be a useful area to actually research into (probably not, because who actually reads ‘research’ these days?)? Is it something you’ve heard of before?

Thomas.