>I've been fascinated by the snippets of conversation I've
>managed to catch about the school to work movement, and
>regret not having been able to attend to the debate more fully.
>
>Moving away from the political aspects of the debate, I'm
>interested in the presumed educational value of "realism" as
>a solution to the problems of students' educational disengagement
>in traditional school environments. In an article in this month's
>(November) Educational Researcher, Tony Whitson and I take issue
>with some standard formulations of "situated cognition" which
>tend to reify the conventional idea of "situation" as a temporal/
>spatial location wherein a unitary community-of-practice practices.
>(Our alternative is more akin to Jay Lemke's ecosocial systems
>approach.) I think that some advocats of realistic educational
>settings rely on such understandings of situated learning theory.
>
>In my work with preservice mathematics teachers, I've been grappling
>with contrasting notions of "student centered" teaching that seem
>to percolate through the literature. On the one hand there are
>constructivist notions of student centered which focus on the teacher's
>detailed models of the students' conceptual structures. In such an
>approach, the teacher attempts to engage the students in structured
>activities with specific predictions as to what the students will
>experience in these activities, and how their conceptual structures
>will be challenged/modified as a result. On the other hand there are
>a whole raft of approaches that claim to be sensitive to the students'
>cognitive styles or interests or vocational needs..., and which structure
>educational environments and experiences around those aspects. While
>recognizing the value of teachers' awareness of such aspects, in my
>more intolerant moments I relegate them to the broad category of
>"educational management" rather than to teaching itself. That is
>because I see the constructivist mandate as so demanding of the
>teacher as be incompatible with these other aspects _as organizing
>principles of instruction_. (They can still be useful as secondary
>considerations in teaching.) I see the realism in education imperative
>as just such a managerial approach, almost inevitably detracting
>from teachers' involvement with students' conceptual development.
>
>I wonder if others of you have more sympathy for the realism in education
>imperative as an educational justification for school to work.
>
>David Kirshner
>Louisiana State University
>(504) 388-2332
>dkirsh who-is-at lsu.edu
>
>
>