My first reaction to Stone's article was that it was about what happens in
classrooms without any concern for evidence about what actually happens in
classrooms. My impression is that writing about something in such a
second-hand way is the kind of writing most likely use dichotomous
rhetoric. The writer needs to make assertions about the world without
recourse to messy data. There are,of course, observational studies of
classrooms that have used dichotomous category systems to try to tidy up
the data. But maybe the further you get from the original experiences, the
more the structures of language dominate the discourse, and dichotomies
that Gordon describes structure the argument instead of the struggles for
complex descriptions that characterize experience-focused writing.
A second thought. One of the articles that gets quoted in the
reviews (e.g.Rosenshine) that 'proved' the superiority of 'direct'
instruction (quoted by Stone as a truly research-based method of teaching)
is a research report I wrote with Cliff Wright. In that article, we made
the point that the results should not be used to tell teachers how to
teach. We said we thought the results were part of an evolving
understanding of teaching, nothing more. That part of our article never got
referred to. I guess it is part of the complexity that cannot be
transferred into the rhetoric, and gets left behind.
Somewhere behind all this is the conflict between the desire to understand
experience with all its complexity, and the desire to change the world,
with all its dichotomous rhetoric.
Graham
Graham Nuthall
Education Department
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch, New Zealand
Phone 64 03 3642255
Fax 64 03 3642418