Can you do 'good work'? Howard Gardner, the Harvard educationalist responsible for the idea of multiple intelligences, has been involved in something called the Good Work Project, alongside the noted researcher into creativity, Mihayi Cziksentmihalyi. Their aim is to "research how leading professionals carry out work that is of high quality and socially responsible". I'm interested in Gardner's shift from an interest in human diversity - allowing for different measures of smartness for kids - toward human integrity. What makes a teacher, journalist, actor, geneticist ethical? 'Professions are generated by a moral center in the first place, and if that gets too infirm the profession ceases to exist', says Gardner.
I suppose the Play Ethic is interested in the new professions that might emerge from the information age. Himanen's The Hacker Ethic is an early first stab. And might 'networker' become an ethical profession, after the rise of open source, blogging and the Deansphere (Jim Moore being an early example of the species)? Excitingly, many of the software socialists (sorry) are beginning to see their activities in explictly playful and ludic terms. (Thx to Jeremy Hiebert for this one).
The other area for professional innovation might be in the zone of care - as readers to this blog will know, I regard a commitment to care as part of the social contract of a players' society. Talking to Scottish social workers, they have a strong sense of moral centre - but an ambivalence about what they're called, acutely aware of the stigma of the 'worker' identity. We're exploring notions of what a social player might be with them - and it's been extremely productive. Watch this space for more developments.
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