Educating the Net Generation for Transformation and Transcendence

JOURNAL OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. Vol 54, No.2, September 2011

EDUCATING THE NET GENERATION FOR TRANSFORMATION AND TRANSCENDENCE]

NEIL HOLM Direwctor of Coursework, Sydney College of Divinity

In this paper, I outline the characteristics or sensibilities of the Net Generation and examine some other views of the Net

Generation. I then consider the design of optimal conditions for learning fry the Net Generation. I argue that learners bring

a range of natura/, inherent, or native capacities to the learning environment but teachers are able to do little to enhance or

develop these native capacities. Learners also bring a range of previouslY learned capacities. They bring a range of attitudes,

proclivities, and sensibilities that teachers can encourage or discourage, enhance or diminish, or enliven or deaden. Part of the

art of teaching is to design learning activities that build on those sensibilities that lead to greater engagement fry the learners

with an ultimate goal of releasing a learningprocess that leads to transformation and to transcendence. In developing this line

of thought, I draw on the work of Kalantzis and Cope, Robinson, and Zqjonc who discussed learning conditions that

involved engaging students and creating opportunities for transformation and transcendence.

Key words: Net Generation, digital natives, transcendence, Husserl, learning design, Kalantzis and Cope, Australian Youth Spirituality Research project, Edith Stein, Marilynne Robinson, collaboration, deracination, epoche, plenitude.

NET GENERATION The terms 'Net Generation', 'digital natives', and 'Millenials' have had currency since the late 1990s (Tapscott 1998, Prensky 2001). The Net Generation is the group of students who were born in the period beginning in the mid 1980s. These students have grown up with technology. Many began using computers from as young as five years and most were accomplished users by the teenage years. They look to the Internet rather than print media for information, pleasure, and recreation (Oblinger & Oblinger, 2005). These students have been described as active experiential learners; optimistic, team-

© 2011 The Australian Christian Education Forum

oriented achievers; and talented at multi-tasking and use of technology. Proponents of this description argue that these characteristics lead to a preference for a particular learning style (Bennett et ai 2008, p. 777).

In this paper, I am interested in the sensibilities, broad characteristics, or orientations of the Net Generation. However, the literature on the Net Generation, Digital Natives, or Millenials does not explore these features in any depth and so we need to look at other literature. The Australian Youth Spirituality Research (AYSR) project proved to be illuminating in this respect (Hughes 2007).

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Conducted between 2002 and 2006, the AYSR was a study of Australian youth between 13 and 24 years of age, the oldest of whom were born in 1978, about the time the Net Generation came into being. Therefore, the youth in this study were members of the Net Generation. The AYSR was concerned with the various ways in which these youth 'put their lives together' (Hughes 2007, p.9) and although not heavily focused on technology, the fIndings tend to support a description of the Net Generation as connected, communicative, collaborative, experiential, social, relational, and participative. They valued engagement, experience, and visual and kinaesthetic experiences (Hughes 2007, p.23, p.43, p.81; Mason et aI2007). Australian youth, but especially the older youth, solved major problems and made important decisions in a collaborative and reflective manner with friends rather than with family. They regarded friendship as entailing responsibility to be helpful and to care for others rather than friendship for pure social enjoyment. They put the needs of others before their own rights and interests. They sought a society characterised by cooperation, helpfulness, and social justice. They valued friendship, helpfulness, connectedness, relationship, cooperation, and interdependence.

OTHER VIEWS OF THE NET GENERATION The AYSR project complements some other research on the Net Generation. Bennett, Maton, and Kervin (2008, p.778-779) noted:

• The idea that a new generation oj students is entering the education D'stem has excited recent attention among educators and education commentatorJ. Termed 'digital natives' or the 'Net generation " these young people are said to have been immersed in technology all their lives, imbuing them with sophisticated technical

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skills and learningpreferences for which traditional education is unprepared. Grand claims are being made about the nature oj this generational change and about the urgent neceJSiry for educational reform in response. A sense oj impending crisis pervades this debate. However, the actual situation is far from clear. In this paper, the authors draw on the fields oj education and sociology to analYse the digital natives debate. The paper presents and questions tHe main claims made about digital natives and analYses the nature "oj the debate itse!f. We argue that rather than being empiricallY and theoreticallY informed, the debate can be likened to an academic form oj a 'moral panic'. We propose that a more measured and disinterested approach is now required to investigate 'digital natives' and their implications for education.

• Bennett et ai noted that the argument suggests that the digital native generation possesses sophisticated knowledge of and skills with information technologies. In addition, their upbringing and experiences with technology have led to particular learning preferences or styles that differ from earlier generations of students. Their review of research revealed that while many in this generation match the description above, there 'appears to be a signifIcant proportion of young people who do not have the levels of access or technology skills predicted by proponents of the digital native idea.' They pointed to the danger that this second group will be neglected and that signifIcant socio-economic and cultural factors will be ignored (2008, p.778-779). This point reinforced concerns about generalisations. It also signalled an issue to be discussed later when Kalantzis and Cope's emphasis on the importance of particularity is discussed. The research did not address the relational, collaborative features of learning that are of

interest to this paper.

Bennett et als re, styles noted that benefIcial, result cognitive 'ovel computer gam! interactivity appl However, the res Spirituality Resc suggested that relationality go 1

and gaming.

Hargittai (2010) members of th! students. She di, in online abilitie that rather than skills and levels c level of parental, and ethnicity American). This particularity but whether young 1 irrespective of tb have been shape to some extent, interactivity, com different to the I

Jones, Ramanal reported a so university stude: that, rather than Generation c minorities. T b research and t

university stud! They found th has particular cl: a range of oth study, this stud:use and did n01

EDUCATING THE NET GENERATION FOR TRANSFORMATION AND TRANSCENDENCE

Bennett et a/~ review of learning preferences or styles noted that multitasking, rather than being beneficial, results in a loss of concentration and cognitive 'overload' and that recreational computer games do not involve a form of interactivity applicable to learning (2008, p.779). However, the research from the Australian Youth Spirituality Research project noted previously suggested that interactivity, connection, and relationality go much deeper than multitasking and gaming.

Hargittai (2010) researched the skill levels of members of the net generation in US college students. She discovered a range of differences in online abilities and activities. She also found that rather than random distribution, Internet skills and levels of web usage are associated with level of parental education, gender (being a male), and ethnicity (being Caucasian or Asian American). This finding reinforces the need for particularity but it does not address the issue of whether young people of the Net Generation, irrespective of their skills and use of the Internet, have been shaped in ways that lead them, at least to some extent, to be characterised by levels of interactivity, connection, and relationality that are different to the previous generations.

Jones, Ramanau, Cross, and Healing (2010) reported a somewhat similar study with university students in the UK. They concluded that, rather than showing homogeneity, the Net Generation consisted of collections of minorities. They reviewed a wide range of research and they noted that any cadre of university students spans several generations. They found that even if the Net Generation has particular characteristics, any given class has a range of other students. Like the previous study, this study focused on levels of technology use and did not address any issues that related

to values or issues like interactivity, connection, and relationality.

Kennedy, Judd, Dalgarno, and Waycott (2010) conducted an Australian study. They identified four distinct types of technology users: power users (14% of sample), ordinary users (27%), irregular users (14%), and basic users (45%). As with the previous studies, they concluded that (2010, p.339)

• changes in curriculum or teaching approach based on assumptions about the technology experience oj this generation oj students as suggested, for example, 0 Prens~ (2001 a) and 0 Oblinger (2008) cannot be justified. This should not, however, be interpreted as an attempt to discourage the use oj technology in teaching and learning.

• Oblinger and others argued that wide experience with a technology that was not part of the experience of their parents formed the Net Generation into a separate generation. As we will see later, many influences playa part in forming the identity of members of the Net Generation but technology and the peer group are particularly important. These two factors played a significant role in shaping Net Generation ways of participating so that they respond reflexively, without conscious thought or reflection. The technological and peer group experience shaped the Net Generation in an orientation towards a perhaps unique learning style that requires teacher adaptations at all levels of education. The studies reported above showed that the levels of engagement with technology are not as high as suggested by Oblinger and others. However, neither Oblinger nor the other studies addressed the issues raised in the Australian Youth Spirituality Research project.

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Kolikant (2010) addressed students' beliefs but, rather than address beliefs related to values, this research looked at beliefs about the Internet itself The research concluded that Net Generation school students believed that their generation was not as good at learning as the pre-ICT (Information and Communications Technology) generation and that the Internet over-simplified schoolwork that in turn diminished learning abilities. As part of the literature review, Kolikant noted theories that suggested that Internet experiences lead students to move from the linear, deductive, abstract learning process to learning based on bricolage: learning by trial and error, learning by exploration and experimentation until some conclusion can be drawn. Kolikant also noted other theories: the Internet leads to a new hybrid form of simultaneous production and usage that leads students to become engaged in 'collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement (e.g., Wikipedia)'; likewise, the Internet encourages and legitimises sharing so that this generation learns through 'eXploring, eXpressing, and eXchanging ideas uS1ng technological means'.

Kolikant's paper is important because although his findings supported the previous studies, it was much more nuanced. Kolikant argued that the earlier studies focussed too much on technical skills and usage levels. He was conscious of much subtler issues. He tried to take into account the fact that for this generation, in terms of working with information at least, 'the rules of the games have changed.' He asked that we consider the Net Generation in terms of 'their related history and values concerning technology, books, information, and their interrelations' (2010, p.1390). In terms of his other findings, he could have extended this consideration to include the Net Generation's understanding of the nature

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of school education. In his small sample of students, he found that for some students the nature of school learning was quite different to the nature of other learning in which they engaged. He drew on concepts of 'person-solo' learning to suggest that school learning , deemed by teachers to be a highly individualised process that values the acquisition and retention of knowledge in memory, is of a diff~~ent and inferior nature to highly useful other learning. Differ~nces in curriculum models are explored later in this paper. Despite his careful unpacking of his research, Kolikant retained a limited concept of what sharing means within the Net Generation. His concept was far from the engagement and connectivity that we saw in the Australian Youth Spirituality Research project. His idea of sharing was quite individual in orientation. It amounted to a student working alone to produce something then 'sharing' it on the Web. He acknowledged Wikipedia as another example of sharing or collaboration. These examples seem to fall far short even of the learning outcomes in the Australian Qualifications Framework (2011) that call for teamwork and collaboration among learners from Senior Secondary through various levels beyond. They fail to appreciate the much deeper engagement that is possible when material is shared - the possibility of workshopping what has been shared, of offering critiques or fresh perspectives, of taking the ideas beyond those of the original author or of discussing their application to solve problems. Although Kolikant moved beyond the previous authors, neither he nor they seemed to have grasped the potential for technology to assist in creating the collaboration and other activities required in Australian education. Such activities can take many forms including quality learning experiences like peer teaching, peer-assisted study sessions, peer assessment, and group work (Biggs


& Tang 2007, p.l07, p.118-9, p.134, p.140-3, p.187-8).

White and Le Cornu addressed the sharing aspect by distinguishing between users of technology. They employed concepts of visitors and residents. Visitors are those who use the Web by dropping in, engaging for a while, and then departing without leaving any form of persisting presence on the Web. Residents are those who inhabit the Web more enduringly, who have a visibility and a digital identity, and who "belong' to a community which is located in the virtual' (2011, pA). Residents treat the Web as a 'place' where they cluster with friends and colleagues with whom they share information about their life and work, and with whom they extend and deepen relationships. Although the Visitor/ Resident distinction does not give a specific insight into the nature of the Net Generation, the notion of place is consistent with my characterisation of the Net Generation as a sector of society that exhibits levels of interactivity, connection, and relationality different to the preceding generations.

To conclude this section, other research has examined a range of characteristics of the group of young people often called the Net Generation. This research complements but does not address the communicative, collaborative, experiential, social, relational, and participative features addressed by the AYSR project.

DESIGNING OPTIMUM CONDITIONS FOR LEARNING In the first issue of the online journal E -Learning, Kalantzis and Cope (2004) published an article called Designs for Learning. They explored pedagogical processes that engaged the sensibilities of learners who were increasingly immersed in digital lifestyles (the Net Generation

for example). Designed to lead to transformation and transcendence, these processes included the way students worked and learned. As noted above, the Net Generation is characteris ed by an orientation towards engagement. Kalantzis and Cope argued that effective learning occurs when teachers create learning conditions that optimise engagement. The Net Generation may be oriented towards engagement but teachers must build on it. They proposed two learning conditions:

• Learning Condition 1: Belonging - a learner will not learn unless thry 'belong' in that learning. Learning Condition 2: Tran.ifOrmation - learning takes the learner into new places, and throughout the journry, acts as an agent of personal and cultural tran.ifOrmation.

• Condition 1 suggests that a learner has to feel that they belong or are at home in three ways: they are at home with the content, with the learning community, and with the mode, manner, or process of learning. From this perspective, learning occurs best when it engages the learner's subjectivity. The learner feels that the pedagogical process takes their individual nature, feelings, and opinions into account. That is, the pedagogical process respects the learner's particularity; the learner is not a generalised other, part of an undifferentiated, homogenised bunch of students. The pedagogical process also responds to the learner's life-world or identity, a multi-faceted construction that incorporates past experiences, current interests, emerging orientations to the world, values, dispositions, sensibilities, communication styles, interpersonal styles, thinking styles and the like (2004, pAl). Together, the influence of family, local community, friends, peers, and their engagement

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with popular or domestic culture form the learner's identity. These factors make them who they are and shape their ways of participation so that they respond reflexively, without conscious thought or reflection. This emphasis on life-world echoes the focus of the Australian Youth Spirituality Research on the various ways in which youth 'put their lives together'.

As argued above, the current interests, emerging orientations to the world, values, dispositions, sensibilities, communication styles, interpersonal styles, thinking styles and the like of the Net Generation find expression in a life-world that is connected, communicative, collaborative, experiential, social, relational, and participative. When planning for learning builds on these characteris tics, learners in the Net Generation feel that they belong and the foundation for solid learning has been established.

Learning Condition 2 is the necessary condition to go beyond mere engagement with learners, to go beyond identity affirmation, and nurturance of a sense of belonging. Learning Condition 2 is the necessary condition to extend learners' range so they feel at home, that they feel they belong in a wider, more encompassing world. Under Condition 1, there is a danger thatlearners remain within their comfort zone, within the limits of their previous experience. Learning involves development, change, and transformation. Kalantzis and Cope suggested that this transformation would result in the learner understanding at greater depth or in greater breadth. The deeper or broader understanding ultimately leads to personal growth, selftransformation, and change in identity. Kalantzis and Cope stressed that transformation occurred only when the learner was 'safely and securely in the centre of the story' (2004, p.44). They described this transformed state, this world of new

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knowledge and understanding as 'transcendental:' transcendent in the sense that learners move beyond their previous knowledge and limits and realise that their former assumptions based on 'common sense' no longer apply. However, they know where they started: they know and affirm their former life-world. They know, too, that although the journey may have taken them through often unsettling unfamiliar terrain, they have never felt threatened, irrevocably lost, or alienated and they are comfortable in their new transformed or transcendent state. Their transformational journey has gradually expanded their former 'home' and they felt supported along the way. In pedagogical terms, they benefited from the scaffolds that supported them through the risk situations. In summary, the journey has taken account of the particularity of each learner and those who guided the learning provided appropriate challenges and supports along the way.

In the case of Net Generation students, transformation builds on their subjectivity. It builds on a connected, communicative, collaborative, experiential, social, relational, and participative life-world. Learning for these students will be more natural when it engages with this subjectivity. Irrespective of the curriculum model, transformation is possible when Learning Conditions 1 and 2 receive attention.

Kalantzis and Cope reviewed three models of curriculum: traditional, progressivist, and trans formative (2004, p.S1). The traditional model focused on facts, memory, high cultural knowledge, centralised syllabus, system-wide testing, didactic and teacher-centred pedagogy. The progressivist model focused on experiential modes of knowing, constructivist pedagogy in which learners build their own knowledge, local content that is relevant to student experience,


school-based curriculum development, local assessment, and learner-centred pedagogy. The trans formative model did not dismiss the other models but sought to build on their strengths and ameliorate their weaknesses. This model sought to balance process and content, give opportunity for student-led and teacher-led learning with attention given to collaborative learning: collaboration between learners and between learner and teacher where good learners are good teachers and vice versa and this recognition leads to the co-construction of knowledge. This learning process involves changing the audience so that student meanings are shared not just with the teacher but also with each other and across the learning community.

Kalantzis and Cope identified several advantages of this process (2004, p.52-3). First, through peerto-peer learning, learners work collaboratively and publish their work and this, in turn, becomes part of the curriculum content. However, sound learning design will also create opportunities for autonomous learning and scaffolded, teacherdirected learning. In this way, the potential for full transformation is enhanced. Second, by following non-linear learning and a range of navigation paths students can work through units of work according to their own interest and at their own pace. In doing so, they focus on those learning processes within those units .of work that best suit their needs and interests. This proces$. increases accessibility allowing learning at any time and in any place. As we have noted already, Net Generation students will adapt readily to a trans formative curriculum.

TRANSCENDENCE Kalantzis and Cope suggested that the outcome of trans formative learning is a 'new world of knowledge [that] might be called the 'transcendental' - a place above and beyond the

commonsense assumptions of the lifeworld' (2004, p.44). The source of this concept was Husserl's The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl was a deeply religious, although unconventional, Christian (Moran 2008 (the following discussion of Husserl and Stein draws largely on Moran's paper)) . Kalantzis and Cope built on his multifaceted concept of transcendence. Edith Stein, who studied under Husserl and who sought to apply his insights in a more specifically Christian context, extended Husserl's formulation. She argued that Husserl's ideal of knowledge is 'divine knowledge where knowledge is simply disclosure of the given without mediation or obstruction or slant .... The finite and determined has to open up to the infinite, undetermined, and indeterminate' (2008, p.269). For Husserl, transcendence is a process whereby 'corporeal things are transcended because their essence contains a kind of infinity that is never intuitable in a completely adequate and fulfilled way (2008, p.269). When Kalantzis and Cope referred to the student travelling through unsettling, unfamiliar terrain, the students engage in a process that Husserl described as involving multiple adumbrations. Adumbrated experiences involve multiple encounters with shadows or resemblances or outlines of the real thing (cE. Hebrews 8:5, 10:1). The learner approaches an understanding of the object but its essence is never fully knowable because it is ultimately infinite. The journey towards understanding requires the learner to adopt a questioning attitude, to step back from takenfor-granted knowledge. The learner must practice epochi, Husserl's term for the process of bracketing or setting aside presuppositions about the object of learning. The learner must experience a phenomenon on its own terms without blinkers of naturalistic knowledge. The

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learner needs to shut out any unintended influences that prevent the object of learning from appearing on its own terms and in this way open up the possibility of transcendental knowledge. Moran (2008, p.278) notes:

• For Husserl the adoption if the transcendental attitude is like a person born blind who recovers his sight as a result if an operation. The newlY disclosed world looks completelY new so that one cannot relY on a1!Y if one} previous habits and convictions with regard to this entirelY new landscape. We have lift behind the childhood if naive natural existence and have entered, to invoke Husserl} own frequent religious imagery, 'the kingdom if pure spirit. '

• This notion of entering the kingdom of pure spirit invites us to consider Stein's extension of Husserl's concept. The ultimate outcome of the transcendent attitude is to apprehend the phenomenon as an element of divine knowledge. She argued, 'All real being (which comes to be and passes away) is anchored in the essential being of these divine ideas' (2008, p.284). Stein argued that 'People seek truth, they need meaning in their lives, they seek a 'philosophy of life" and that the goal of human knowledge is to approximate 'fullness' (2008, p.285). We seek to become complete; we seek to acquire plenitude; we seek fullness. This sense corresponds closely to the use of various forms of the verb teleioo (bring to its goal, perfect) in Hebrews (eg 2:10, 5:9, 14, 6:1) where the reference is (a) not to moral achievement but to 'completion.' 'finishing'; (b) to becoming adult, full grown as opposed to immature and infantile; and (c) to describe the moral, ethical, intellectual, and spiritual goal of a believer's life (packer 1962, p.996; Craddock 1998, p.63, p.68). We learn, we exist, in order to become complete or to experience plenitude. Note that, according to Stein, we only approximate

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completeness. We cannot have complete knowledge; we cannot know 'things-inthemselves'. We can only have fragmentary knowledge. Nevertheless, this fragmentary knowledge approximates the plenitude of meaning that is contained in the divine being . This perspective reflects the Apostle Paul's discussion of knowledge in 1 Corinth,ians 13:

• 9 For-we know onlY in part, and we prophe!J onlY in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. . . . 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimIY,[aJ but then we will see face to face. Now I know onlY in part; then I will know fullY, even as I have been fullY known. (NRSV)

• Note that the footnote to 'dimly' refers to a riddle. This suggests that in this world we are faced with a riddle, a statement constructed in a way that requires the reader or listener to search for meaning and to exercise ingenuity in the process. This riddle-solving process requires intentionality, a concept that I consider further later in this paper.

Movement towards a transcendental attitude, according to Husserl, is an achievement of 'transcendental subjectivity'. Meaning is created through intersubjectivity. Our understanding of the world of spirit as a unity (as a goal-oriented rational, communicative world that is at the same time a community of ultimately simple particularistic entities) is dependent on a process of intersubjectivity. Intersubjectivity can mean mutual understanding or shared understanding. For Husserl, however, this term carried a meaning close to empathy: learners put themselves in the place of the other; they exchange places, not just with people but also with other aspects of reality, other aspects of the world (Duranti 2010) . Through this process, we have the possibility of


understanding the world in all its fullness, never perfecdy, never fully accomplished, but always the potentiaL Likewise, we have the possibility for partially understanding the divine being.

Let me now look at some of the educational implications of this and in so doing reflect on some relevant ideas raised in a set of essays on human nature by Marilynne Robinson (2012). In her discussion of education she did not refer to transcendence, instead she used an allied concept of 'deracination': to remove or separate from a native environment or culture. Her gloss on this word included 'the meditative, free appreciation of whatever comes under one's eye, without any need to make tedious judgements as 'mine' and 'not mine'.' She was concerned that Western culture has allowed the effect of society to become too strong. Although she valued society, she was concerned that individuals have become too constrained by society and they need to escape the 'impress of society' (or escape from our taken-for-granted, naturalistic understandings) (2012, p.92). Drawing on her own experiences, she attributed much value to the fact that 'when I was a child I read books.' These books were 'fabrications of stodgily fantastical authoritative worlds, which answered only to my own notions of meaning and importance' (2012, p .SS). Drawn from throughout literary history, these books provided an alternative view of life and society. They allowe,d her to bracket out her previous understanding of life and society and begin to see the world in different ways. One of her great concerns with contemporary society was that human nature is characterised by utilitarianism and that the human ideal is the perfecdy rational, utility maximising autonomous individual (2012, p.149). We have lost any semblance of a view that humans are created in the image of God and we have lost capacity to view others as

valuable, wonderfully created people of dignity who are worthy of our concern and generosity. She sought ways of transcending these mutually impoverishing, closed, and dull perspectives. She wanted to help students see the world as a form of riddle that requires ingenuity, imagination, and creativity. Robinson taught creative writing in a university. This diminished view of human nature was evident in her students as they tried to create literary characters (2012, p.190). Although these students were excellent, large-spirited, exemplary individuals, they accepted the diminished view of human nature - their characters exemplified self-interest, sought self-gratification, revealed a morality that was unclear and undefined, and were motivated towards fmding a truer self. These characters had 'radically limited self-awareness, a minimum of meaningful inwardness, very litde ability to choose or appraise their actions' (2012, p.190). ~'hen challenged over their characters, only one student replied and that reply was a question, 'If you reject Freud, what else is there?' These students lacked a transcendent attitude. They seemed unable to bracket their current experiences and consider other ways. Robinson's solution lay in the vigorous and critical study of the humanities. She valued education that opened up an understanding of our deepest cultural history (2012, p.202):

• The meteoric passage if humankind through cosmic history has left a brilliant traiL Call it history, call it culture. We come from somewhere and we are tending somewhere, and the spectacle is glorious and portentous. The stucfy if our trqjectory would yield insight into human nature, and the nature if being itself.

• This process allows engagement with the Other - engagement with ideas about the Divine Other but also engagement with other people and other understandings of nature and creation.

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An analysis of the story of Abraham confirms some of the features of transcendence discussed above and introduces some additional features, notably intentionality and goalorientation (Volf 1996, p.38ff). Abraham became the 'ancestor of all who believe' (Rom 4:11). He gave attention to God. He set aside his known place and "headed into the unknown. He went relationally and with subjectivity, intentionality, goal-orientedness. Abraham was conscious of his subjectivity: he knew who he was. He considered his own body (already as good as dead) and Sarah's body (barren) (Rom 4:19). No doubt he considered his current circumstances (God's call required him to leave a comfortable, known place, complete with friends who had helped him to be who he was; to leave his known culture, climate, and environment). His intentionality lay in that he knew also that he was not determined by his friends or by God. He could accept the ties to his friends and remain or he could accept God's call to deracinate - to uproot himself and Sarah from their native environment and culture. He had the capacity to choose and to act intentionally. This led to his goal-orientedness, his decision to seek the blessings God promised, to seek to connect more intentionally with God, to seek the potential of getting to know God, and in a sense, seeking the opportunity to 'trade places' with God. He opened himself up to the potential of intersubjectivity with Goc). He chose the potential of relating to many others in order to be generous to them, to be a blessing to 'all the 'families of the earth' (Gen 12:3). He went seeking to become what he was not yet. He sought a new identity, a new subjectivity as the father of a great nation and as steward of a great land (Gen 12:7). Without goalorientedness, the journey would become pointless and meaningless. He committed himself to a transcendent journey.

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Transcendent learners reflect on their subjectivity, their intentionality, and their goalorientedness. They come to see the integrity and inner coherence of their knowledge, obscured previously by their earlier common sense perceptions (compare the two disciples on the Emmaus Road: they encounter the risen Jesus who explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself, their eyes were opened and they asked each other, 'Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us?' (Luke 24)). Transcendent learners begin to see that 'things are more than they are' and that they 'give more than they have' and so emerges the potential to extrapolate sacred dimensions. As Robinson reminded us above, transcendent learners know their subjectivity; they know they come from somewhere. They are intentional and goal-oriented; they are tending somewhere. This journey leads to a spectacle that is glorious and portentous. Transcendent learners move closer to being able to see that all they have learned is part of God's creation and that 'God's action of creation is utterly gratuitous, describable as a kind of play'. Learners begin to see themselves as meaningmakers who use ingenuity, imagination, and creativity in seeking to solve the riddle of reality. They are readers and interpreters of a marvellously created, interrelated, and interconnected world, and as analysts often in relationship with others who come to uncover the deepest mysteries. Transcendent learners do justice to their experienced world. They see that it is good and that it is loveable because it reflects God's love for it, and, in the eyes of God, it is worth even death of God's own son. From a Christian perspective, transcendent learners ultimately see the world as shot through with grace (Williams 2005, p.37-8, p.86, 88, p.89).


TRANSCENDENCE AND THE NET GENERATION The AYSR project showed that the Net Generation is connected, communicative, collaborative, experiential, social, relational, and participative. These characteristics orient them towards transcendence. They are oriented towards intersubjectivity. They already engage in activities that help them to exchange places with the other. They seem to have moved beyond Robinson's students. They seem to have moved away from the model of the perfectly rational, utility-maximising, autonomous individual. At least, they seem to have moved away from autonomy, although the extent to which they have moved away from utility maximising is unclear. The Net Generation may still be overly constrained by society, too much under the impress of society.

How then do teachers proceed if they seek to design learning for members of the Net Generation? If I understand Husserl, he would affirm the movement towardintersubjectivity but he would decry the lack of opportunity for the epocM. Education for the Net Generation should create opportunities to learn how to step back from the phenomenon, set aside all preconceptions, and to engage fully with the phenomenon as it presents itself - to seek to trade places with the phenomenon to see it as it sees itself This process of deeply engaging with the phenomenon has been used in art education. Zajonc (2010, p.10Sf£) described contemplative engagement opportunities for art students where one or two works were the focus for a whole semester. Students learned to 'behold' on many levels. They learned to let the artwork reveal itself to them. In support of this process, Zajonc cited Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock's advice to young students: 'live your way into each plant organ until you attain 'a feeling for the organism'.'

Net Generation students are oriented toward -engagement and connection. The development of a transcendent attitude can build on this orientation.

Education for the Net Generation should also help learners consider their goal-orientation and to consider their intentionality. Stein referred to truth, meaning, and philosophy of life as the goal of human knowledge - to approximate fullness, not fullness of self-satisfaction but plenitude.

Since Robinson's deracination is similar to aspects of Husserl's transcendence, teachers of the Net Generation could consider her suggestion of creating ways of engaging with the radically different other through greater attention to the Humanities or through engagement with peoples whose lives are radically culturally different, especially the poor and marginalised. This last suggestion will need careful implementation to ensure that students do not respond according to their prejudices, bearing in mind that the AYSR project showed that although the members of the Net Generation value friendship and helpfulness they show a lack of interest in or sense of responsibility for the wider society. However, Zajonc discussed the potential of experiential learning experiences that allow students to engage with intellectually disabled people. These experiences provided students with an opportunity to re-imagine what it means to be human and to develop a transcendent attitude. Although Zajonc did not assert that his students were part of the Net Generation, itis highly likely. that they are, and his students seemed to engage successfully in this transcendent process.

If teachers follow Kalantzis and Cope, they will build on the sensibilities of the learners; they will harness the orientation of the learners towards friendship, helpfulness, connectedness,

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relationship, cooperation, and interdependence in ways that lead the learners towards transformation. They will design learning experiences that allow the expression of these sensibilities. In some ways, this move will be educationally counter-cultural because high levels of individualism and autonomy still characterise contemporary education. However, students who have learned in this way are valued in the modern workplace. Increasingly, workplaces are becoming increasingly collaborative. For example, in 2006, a survey of CEOs reported by the US Public Buildings Service (2006) predicted a future where at least 60 per cent of a worker's output would depend on collaboration with others. Furthermore, recent collaborative projects in mathematics research, such as Gowers' polymath project, have led Australian Fields Medallist, Terrence Tao, to conclude that, promoted by generational changes as younger Net Generation mathematicians develop, a more collaborative approach in mathematics is emerging (Funnell 2012).

As they seek to build on the sensibilities of the Net Generation, teachers should beware an overemphasis in this area. Not all learning should be done collaboratively. There is still a place for scaffolded learning experiences designed to promote autonomy and independence. Overemphasis on collabo.rative learning has the potential to lead to universality at the expense of particularity. Christian understari'dings on the Body of Christ and of the Trinity remind us of the importance of both universality and particularity (Gunton 1993). Each learner must honour their particular gifts and ensure that they are maximised and used in the service of Christ.

Likewise, in responding to the orientation of the Net Generation toward technology, teachers

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must beware of some of the technological traps. Biggs and Tang (2007, p.22) contrasted surface learning and deep learning. They noted that it is easier to create a surface approach than a deep approach. Collaborative activity in on-line learning requires careful thought and planning. Teachers often neglect it because of its inherent difficulties. It is much easier for teachers who are inexperienced in on-line pedagogy to take a surface approach to design on-line learning experiences that are lock step, heavily didactic, and somewhat regimented. Teachers need to be wary of the drift towards programmed learning. However, when created by skilful teachers, online learning experiences allow teachers to respond to students as both 'the one and the many'. Electronic communication allows teachers to engage students easily as a group and as individuals in ways that were more difficult in the pre-electronic era. Furthermore, the encompassing nature of trans formative learning suggests that student learning should involve a range of media rather than reliance on electronic media.

Finally, achievement of transcendence in the way I have described it above depends on, for teachers of the Net Generation, whether on-line or other, deepening their understanding of reflection. Torralba Rose1l6 (2007) discussed eight expressions of transcendence: transcending the I, the present, material values, the limit of death, passions, superficiality, our images of God, and transcendence as abandoning oneself in God. Torralba Rosell6 canvassed nine different ways of awakening the meaning of transcendence in the student: dialogue, silence, symbol, ritual, contemplation, limit situations, beauty, goodness, and unity. Some of these (dialogue, contemplation, limit situations, beauty, and goodness (helpfulness)) have been touched upon above but no attention has been given to other


reflective activities. Palmer and Zajonc (2010, p.73, p.92, p.159, p.160, p.162) give some attention to the place of silence and music. These techniques may assist students to grow in honouring beauty, symmetry, harmony, synergy, intuition, and imagination that are essential aspects of transcendence. However, despite their orientation to relationality, the Net Generation's orientation towards technology may lead them away from these qualities.

CONCLUSION The paper began with a discussion of the Net Generation. Using data from the Australian Youth Spirituality Research project, I suggested that these learners are connected, communicative, collaborative, experiential, social, relational, and participative. Other research on the Net Generation was reviewed. The review found no data to challenge the features of the Net Generation described above. The researchers, however, highlighted some significant issues including different curriculum models and particularity that were explored later.

Pedagogical processes described by Kalantzis and Cope were used to show that the education of the Net Generation (and perhaps all who are engaged in e-learning) is built on two learning conditions that emphasise engagement and particularity. They also emphasise a concept of learning as a journey from an initial life-world through a process of transformation to a state of transcendence. This discussion described transformative education in terms of a curriculum built on the best features of the traditional curriculum and the progressivist curriculum while countering the weaknesses of these other curriculum models. This drew attention to the fact that, although the Net Generation might favour a particular learning style, transformation and transcendence is best

achieved when a more comprehensive approach to learning is adopted.

Kalantzis and Cope's understanding of transcendence was considered and broadened by building on the contributions of Husser! and Stein to our understanding of transcendence and its relation to the epoche. This discussion reinforced Kalantzis and Cope's emphasis on subjectivity and extended this understanding by considering intersubjectivity and its relationship to a partial understanding of the divine being.

The paper concluded with a discussion of the potential contribution of the Humanities and deracination to transcendence. This discussion built on the understanding of intersubjectivity and the epoche. It also considered the importance of intentionality and goal-orientedness in the transcendental process. It also discussed some issues for teachers to consider as they engage in learning processes that will lead members of the Net Generation to transcendence. Reflecting Robinson's concerns about the dangers of the impress of society and its potential to overwhelm particularity, I warned of overemphasis on collaboration because that would favour universality over particularity. I warned of dangers inherent in the use of technology that would inhibit progress towards transcendence. Finally, I suggested ways of enhancing the reflective process that is central to transcendence.

ENDNOTE 1 The Journal of Christian Education advises that

delays in its production schedule have led to papers being submitted, reviewed, and accepted on dates that are considerably later than the 2011 publication date of this issue. This article contains bibliographic references that post-date 2011.

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Documents

Educating the Net Generation for Transformation and Transcendence