>I am afraid that direct instruction has, therefore, given a bad
>name, if you will, to cultural transmission. Perhaps you meant
>that you have a problem with a direct instruction approach to
>cultural transmission?
Thanks, Clarke. You expressed what I wanted to say much better than I did.
I was, indeed, associating cultural transmission with direct instruction. I
would not for a moment deny that a gret deal of cultural transmisision takes
place in the classroom. My objection is when knowledge that must be
constructed is taught through direct instruction--and then children are blamed
if they didn't "learn" it!
>I am also afraid that direct instruction has given a bad name to
>discipline in the classroom. Not many of us want to say the D.
>word, primarily because we are afraid that it means being
>authoritarian and disrespectful to children, which in my mind, it
>doesn't. Indeed, my greatest concern as a teacher of early
>childhood educators is that my students either seem too directive
>or too romantic in the classroom; but on the whole, they tend to be
>too romantic. They're either afraid, or uncertain about how, to be
>authoritative.
Your observation that often teachers are afraid of discipline is right on
target. I think part of the confusion involves how to exercise subtle
leadership of a class (god knows a bunch of 4-year-olds need leadership)
without completely taking over and denying children the opportunity to be
self-regulating.
>I do see a role for (what I'll call) other-regulation
>in assisting a child to achieve self-regulation.
There is certainly a role for other-regulation in the development of
self-regulation. The trick is in meting it (other-regulation) out carefully.
The teachers I have observed who are good at this are truly artists. At some
point, too much other-regulation becomes coercion.
Betty Zan