Emergent Program Planning "Model"

My response to Kevin, who questioned why program planning was presented as a "thing":

No, I don't think program planning is a real "thing", although there needs to be a way to concretize the ideas in the beginning in order to get some sense of all the things it could be, before developing it into new things. Like seeing hundreds of pictures of "tables" in order to understand what the word "table" may refer to. Then go ahead and build a five-legged one, for all it matters!

My ideal (I've been working on this idea for a while, see my blog from a year ago or so) would be to have "emergent program planning" ... a completely organic and yet somewhat, sorta-kinda structured process, not product, that allows for emergent learning. I'm influenced by the theories of chaos and order, by Jane Jacobs and her related ideas of city planning, by anthills and Pi. More than anything, I'm influenced by social networking and the principles of connectivism. Here, I think, are the kernels of what program planing could and should be. If only we had the software to support it. So far, programs are still planned in a linear fashion, instead of in an emergent fashion that allows people to forage and wander through ideas and applications.

In my mind, program planning should be a process that allows for various 'ingredients' in a planning situation to emerge and disappear over time. If I had to make a model of the idea, it would be a 3-D, ever-morphing, cloud-like mass that changes colour and shape, and grows and diminishes, as the planning processes carries on.

In the beginning, the cloud would be thin and wispy, because very little is known about the stakeholders, the context or the need. As discussions and research continue, more solid "ingredients" would get added to the cloud. Some ingredients would stay, whereas others would drop off as they're found to be irrelevant. In time, a central glob would form out of the primordial chaos. These would be the things shared and agreed upon, and believed to be "true" by the key stakeholders.

These would then be expanded by the gelling work of setting some kind of initial objectives, starting to talk about money and timeframe, looking at resources, etc. The mass starts to take a shape. At this point, progress tends to happen quickly. Either the resources come together and everyone is in some kind of agreement, or things gets stuck and begin to fray and fall apart.

The program runs in the cloudy shape for the first piloting, and then adjustments are made. A little cloud is plucked from here or there, a little more padding is added in places, and then the cloud is sent out once more to do its work. Through the piloting, some things begin to get more solid and perhaps even rigid ("This is the way we do things here"), and in time the whole cloud may in fact turn into a rather solid and dusty glob, if no one is watching to make sure that the surface remains permeable and flexible.

The thing is that this model of the process of planning a program reflects the model of a program itself, and in fact, it describes to me how learning works. depending on whether or not we seek out new information and attempt to stay fresh, our learning (our curriculum, our lessons, our materials) may become rigid and dusty.

Instead, we would be best to allow things to shift and change, and to allow new needs and responses to emerge.

Women. Literacy and Poverty

Tomorrow evening I'm doing my presentation to the Provincial Council of Women of Manitoba, a body that presents resolutions to government at the civic, provincial, national and international levels. I've written a provincial one about adult literacy that goes forward in February, but I'm doing a presentation on the content first. Stepping out on a limb, voicing opinions about what I've seen in program planning for the disadvantaged. In this case, what's driving me is what I've seen in the housing development literacy program. It's a prime example of how a particular social mindset and value system shapes programming in subtle but absolutely critical ways.

In short, I've traced the history of literacy programming in Canada through various shifts from the more socially-minded to now, where literacy has become - in my mind - co-opted by big business. OK, that's a gross oversimplification, but the idea is accurate. National literacy levels have now been understood to affect our society (through various international studies and reports), but it's the economic perspective that's becoming the driver. Ie. better literacy = better employees.

So where do the women in the housing development fit into that mandate? They don't, and hence funding for programs (and people?) that are perceived as "lost causes" (ie. they don't have a fabulous return-on-investment in the economy), are seen as charity work. Funding goes to literacy programs that can demonstrate their connecting to Essential Skills, a work-related brand of literacy. What used to be "Literacy as Freedom" (the slogan for the UN's Decade of Literacy 2003-2012) is now Literacy for Work.

Which is great, unless you're a low literacy, low income, single parent trying to go back to school to improve your literacy levels so you can get a better job and improve the life of your kids.

Here's the problem: the vast majority of "single parents" are actually single mothers, and women at low levels of literacy earn about half what men at low levels of literacy earn, because they're working in different kinds of jobs that require different kinds of skills. They actually need to progress twice as far with their literacy skills before they get into jobs that earn the same as men with lower literacy levels!

That means that, if we want to improve our national literacy rates and prevent continuing low literacy rates in the next generation, and maybe reduce poverty along the way, we might want to develop literacy programs for low income mothers, usually with several children, because they need different scheduling, childcare and transportation help, counseling, onsite programming, and content relevant to their lives. Why teach them to read a book about an astronaut, when they need to be able to read about getting restraining orders?! In order for it to be "fair" and accessible to single moms (parents) living in poverty, literacy programming actually needs to be far better funded and better designed. While the kids are young, we can support the moms far better in getting to upgrading programs. Otherwise we're asking for these already discouraged learners to jump over much higher hurdles than we ask anyone else.

Indeed, it's an interesting example of how the larger social context, which values work over parenting, economy over society, and "men's work" over "women's work", is affecting literacy programming for those who are raising the next generation.