Whereas I agree that the system of education is built around _teaching_,
we cannot ignore that we, for the most part, are theorists of _learning_.
What we (and here I generously include the whole apparatus of educational
psychology) provide by way of teaching recommendations are usually
'good ideas', informed at least tangentially by our learning theories,
but importantly in accordance with a certain Zeitgeist of appropriate
teaching practice that seems to draw to it theorists of all stripes.
So constructivism, at base a theory of individual construction, evolves
towards "social constructivism;" sociocultural theory, originally
geared to explain hierarchical learning relationships, moves towards
collaborative peer relationships; behaviorism initially a theory of
unmediated stimulus/response conditioning moved (or at least attempted
to move, before Chomsky's sharp rebuke) to verbally mediated behavior;
cognitive science, most comfortable with decontextualized problem solving,
moves to grapple with problems of context; etc. Obviously these trends
in learning theories are motivated by more general needs and exigencies
than some putative "teaching Zeitgeist." But I maintain that the need
to be relevant to ongoing concerns of education is one of the shaping
forces of psychologies of many (all?) stripes.
This raises two concerns. The first, as adapted by Gordon (below)
from Peter Smogarinsky's earlier post, is how do we know that our
teaching recommendations "aren't the products of a particularly 'western'
cultural perspective?" The second, as related to Jay's comments (below),
is how can we apply to education evolving theoretical traditions
that often are enmeshed in complexities that only the most dedicated
theorists can unravel?
The solution that I am beginning to formulate in response to these
concerns involves recognizing both the limitations of theory for
providing comprehensive educational solutions, and the resonsibilty
for teachers to grapple with ambiguity and resolve their own conflicting
educational values. Each of the schools of psychology mentioned above
has some powerful, and often accessible, but quite limited insight about
learning to offer to teachers: Constructivism presents a quite coherent
picture of individual learning, before the attempts to integrate the
social complicate matters; behaviorism presents a clear picture of
conditioned learning,... etc. If we can overcome our need as theorists
to present comprehensive theoretical solutions and as educators to
predetermine the value systems of teachers, perhaps we (as a community)
can be happy with providing mere (discrete) glimpses of what learning
can be, leaving it to teachers to bring coherence to _their_ educational
projects, based on their own values, their own strengths, and their own
syntheses of the diverse possibilities for learning. This is not to say
that as theorists we should abandon the search for comprehensive theories.
No the movement from clear but limited, to opaque and complex formulations
is the normal trajectory of scientific inquiry (Kuhn, 1970). It is
important that theorists continue to struggle with the limits and
boundaries of their chosen approaches. But to have any chance of providing
insight, rather than preaching dogma, I think we have to distinguish
between what we seek to do as theorists and what we can do as educators.
David Kirshner
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge LA USA 70803-4728
On Fri, 26 Dec 1997 17:19:08 -0800 (PST) Gordon Wells said:
>Jay opened up a really interesting set of issues with his Christmas
>cookies message concerning 'new approaches' in education.
>
>On Wed, 24 Dec 1997, Jay Lemke wrote:
>>
>> First, 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. How easily can we expect teachers, especially those with more than
>> about 5 years experience, to adopt methods which may require radical
>> changes in both practices and philosophies of education? My experience
>> suggests that as eager as many teachers are for 'methods that work' with
>> their students, it is not at all easy for experienced teachers to adapt to
>> the spirit, as opposed to simply the procedures, of radically different
>> approaches. .....
>>
>> One of the problems with making learning theory the center of educational
>> thinking is that it can lead us to forget that we have built the entire
>> system not around the learner but around the teacher. Equally educational
>> practices have to be conceived of more adequately as teacher practices, and
>> seen not as importable commodities to be delivered to students without the
>> mediation of real teachers. I know this is not the view in most of the BP
>> programs I scanned, but neither did I feel confident that sufficient
>> attention was being directed toward teachers.
>
>There is no doubt that education is designed around teaching, not
>learning. One obvious evidence is the organization of the timetable:
>measured blocks of time, scheduled by 'subjects' taught by specialists,
>mid-term and final exams in preparation for which the specified curriculum
>must be covered, etc. Then there is teacher evaluation. As many of my
>teacher students report, they are warned not to try any of these new
>methods in which the teacher is not firmly in control, as they can't
>guarantee the outcomes; some, who are nevertheless brave enough to try
>more 'distributed' activities, tell of being visited by the principal who,
>after a few minutes, says s/he will come back when they are 'teaching'.
>Not surprisingly, teachers find it difficult to adopt new ways of
>thinking about teaching-and-learning when they receive so little support
>from those who administer the educational enterprise (as Tharp and
>Gallimore remarked in 'Rousing Minds to Life').
>
>But there is another problem that besets many of 'the new approaches',
>however excellent the principles upon which they are based. And that is
>that they are typically designed by educational researchers, tried out
>with the cooperation of a small number of hand-picked teachers, and then
>presented to the profession as 'approaches' or 'packages' to be
>implemented or delivered according to the researchers' design. To my
>mind, this is not very different from the 'transmission' approach which
>is typically what the new approaches are reacting against. The mistake,
>I think, is in the insufficiently questioned assumption that there are
>ideal methods, which if they could only be identified, would be
>universally effective. What is not sufficiently taken into account is:
>a) the unique 'chemistry' of every class and the unpredictability of every
>learning-and-teaching event; and b) the crucial contribution of the
>teacher-as-an-individual to what happens in that event, and the extent to
>which the quality of that contribution depends upon the teacher also
>being an active learner in the process.
>
>In a recent paper, I advanced the suggestion that there are three
>ingredients that are crucial for new approaches and that they are just as
>important as the teacher's understanding of the relevant concepts. These
>are: inquiry, dialogue and community; and they are essential at two levels:
>in the development and adoption of new approaches, and in their use in the
>classroom. What to spend time on in the classroom and how to do so most
>effectively must always be a matter of ongoing inquiry (I believe there
>are no final answers, as every class is both diverse and unique) and this
>inquiry must involve teachers in a dialogue with researchers and other
>'stakeholders' in a community in which teachers are equal, active
>partners. But the same needs to apply in the classroom; students and
>teacher need to be active inquirers in relation to the topics they
>address, treating the (re)construction of knowledge as an ongoing
>dialogue in a community in which everybody's voice is recognized and
>their contributions valued.
>
>In the light of Peter Smagorinsky's reaction to the paper, querying
>whether these values aren't the products of a particularly 'western'
>cultural perspective, I would be interested in hearing other people's
>reactions. Obviously, my championing of these values - inquiry, dialogue and
>community - is related to my own personal trajectory and my
>participation in particular cultural communities (including xmca). But
>my belief is that they don't prejudge what topics should be focused
>on in particular situations of learning and teaching nor how they
>should be approached, since these are properly the subject of inquiries
>in the relevant communities. But others may not share this confidence.
>
>So - what do you think?
>
>Gordon Wells, gwells who-is-at oise.utoronto.ca
>OISE/University of Toronto
>http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/~ctd/DICEP/
>
>Visit NETWORKS, the new on-line journal for teacher research, at:
>http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/~ctd/networks/
>