On Wed, Dec 24th Jay wrote:
"..although there seems to be no reason why students should not
immediately respond to many of these approaches, especially the youngest
students---teachers' adaptiveness seems to present quite a different
problem."
I currently conducted a study in which I looked at how teachers respond to
the private speech production within their second grade classrooms. I
found, not surprisingly, that a teacher more open to ambiguity,
uncertainty, unpredictability, and who participated in the co-construction
of knowledge with the students maintained an enviornment conducive to the
production of self-regulatory private speech. One teacher who exhibited
these characteristics was often seen as being an educational "failure"
for her classes were seen as being "chaotic" (Gordon mentions this). The
other 2nd grade teachers did not encourage or actively eradicated the
private speech production of their students. All of the teachers that I
observed and interviewed had at least 20 years of teaching experience.
When I asked that one teacher why she taught (e.g., modelled and
encouraged private speech) that way, she replied that she "was born that
way". While I agree with much that was said regarding best practices, I
cannot help but feel that instructional methods are born from the practices
and philosophies of the teacher-as-individual not from learning theory.
Gordon states that "But my belief is that they don't prejudge what topics
should be focused on in particular sitations of learning and teaching nor
how they should be approached, since these are properly the subject of
inquiries in the relevant communities." I do not think that I could
agree with you on this one. We can expand on the earlier example of a 2nd
grade classroom. The type of behavior (active participation by the whole
classroom community, dialogue, active inquiry of student determined and
teacher guided problems) that is seen as "chaotic" and not educational in
a second grade classroom is seen as par for the course for the elementary
artroom. I believe that there is a prejudgement concerning the
"educational worth" of topics and how they should be approached & taught
is deeply entrenched in that ideal.
Julia M. Matuga
Dept. of Counseling and Educational Psychology
School of Education, 4021B
Indiana University, Bloomington
"The theoretician's prayer: 'Dear Lord, forgive me the sin
of arrogance, and Lord, by arrogance I mean the following...."
--Leon Lederman