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.
Hi Margerit, I like your analogy of cloud building. I like to think that the last few years I have built stratus and cumulus clouds and far less thunder clouds in the political climate we all have to learn to work with. Thanks. Take care! Gwenn
ReplyDeleteLove the image of thunder clouds, Gwenn! It seems that when we question the status quo, occasional "storms" are part of the package. I seem to often find myself in situations where I'm questioning why we do things a certain way because it seems to be bad for students, the very people we're here to "serve". The "way we've always done things" has become part of the larger organizational picture, and so questioning that becomes a matter of questioning the larger system, and that system isn't always so thrilled to be questioned.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as much as I believe in the organic, emergent nature of learning and program planning, I also believe that inputs = outputs. Garbage in, garbage out. If the program planing process isn't well thought out, then the success of a program is more likely to be due to happenstance. Slow building of "clouds" seems to allow for a gradual learning on everyone's part (including the planner, of course) and allows for reality checks and adjustments. That way the storms are at least shorter and less violent. :)