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The Nature vs Nurture debate

Commentary by Downes (Stephen Downes) on link by Graeme Ferris, The Nature vs Nurture debate, February 10, 2011.

I think that the way the 'nature versus nurture' debate is expanded sheds some light on the distinction between connectivism and other theories.

First of all, though, I want to reshape this distinction. The phrase 'nature' versus 'nurture' suggests two possibilities: you either know it innately, genertically; or, you're taught.

Really, I think, the difference is between things you 'know' innately and things you learn by experiences. What skills do we know instinctively, and what skills do we need to practice?

Viewed this way, I think that a great deal of connectivism falls into the 'nurture' or 'experience' camp. That is to say, connectivism suggests that we start with a generally unshaped network of connections, and experience shapes that network.

Where I think it differs with more recent theories is in *how* this reshaping through experience occurs.

The basic learning mechanisms - the formation of or breaking of connections - are innate. They are physical processes. They are most affected by nutrition and drugs, and other physical factors, such as stress.

This means that learning itself is a much less intentional process than most people suggest. There is the widespread perspective that people decide what to learn, when to learn, how to learn. But such decisions (for there is no doubt that people make them) have only a limited impact on learning.

That's why I prefer to say that we 'grow' new knowledge rather than 'construct' new knowledge. The word 'construct' implies an agency that I think is not there. True, we can 'plant' a garden, and 'tend' a garden, and do a bunch of things that ill influence how the garden grows. But the actual growing is up to the garden itself. (Hits Today: 731 Total: 731)

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Re: The Nature vs Nurture debate

carol yeager, February 10, 2011
... "we start with a generally unshaped network of connections, and experience shapes that network."

I believe this is one of the roots, or tendrils, that underlies all learning. Experience may be the active portion of the unconsciously unshaped network that ultimately shapes the learning network.

Your analogy of the garden is one I have embraced wholeheartedly. We grow "up", grow "into" and grow "out of" our networked connections of learning. As A Toffler aptly said ... the literate of the 21st c will be those who can learn, unlearn and relearn ... these are seasons of growth and networked connections in our brains as well as in our associations.

I tend to push back a bit on "theories" and like to think in more organic ways. Ergo, from my perspective, we nurture nature for expanded growth in learning and understanding.

Re: The Nature vs Nurture debate

klwilcoxon, February 10, 2011
I believe that nature endows us with certain aptitudes, proclivities, preferences. Nurture then acts to shape and/or extinguish them.

Re: The Nature vs Nurture debate

Ken Anderson, February 10, 2011
>This means that learning itself is a much less intentional process than most people suggest.

Yes. Freud had a lot to say about the unconscious.

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