Re: [xmca] The Grip of "Direct Instruction"

[Carol Macdonald <carolmacdon@gmail.com>]

Carol says:
And to me please, Mike.

I had a student teach English Grade 10 with the ZPD of the whole class. The
girls worked in groups through carefully presented steps which Michelle had
constructed.  The concentration was total, and the performance shot through
the ceiling. At the end of the year Michelle was very tired and decided to
dictate some notes.  The girls said: "Please Mrs P, can't we teach ourselves
like we are used to doing?" What I found interesting was they didn't realise
that they could only "teach themselves" was because Michelle had carefully
broken down very difficult tasks into doable subtasks.

I am afraid that I don't have data on what these girls did in Gr 9, because
Michelle went to teach at another school.

Tomorrow I will write and tell you about the consequences of Outcomes Based
Education, which is our official school policy.

Sufficient unto the day.
Carol

On 16 August 2010 00:06, Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com> wrote:

> Send one to me also, please, Mike.
> - Steve
>
>
> On Aug 15, 2010, at 10:05 AM, mike cole wrote:
>
>  I'll send along the draft paper, Jerry.
>> My speculation concerning the "attention span" argument is the same as
>> yours
>> and Jay's: students who have gotten involved in active learning and been
>> successful doing it are badly turned off by transmission teaching in large
>> classrooms with little feedback. They display "short attention" spans
>> which
>> at least one of their professors interprets is a deep disposition brought
>> about by the hidden failures of activity-centered, motivating, and
>> agency-distributing activity-based instruction (with the caveat from David
>> K
>> not to lump all non-direct-instruction into a virtuous clump).
>>
>> It was primarily the willingness to make such deep disposition claims with
>> the idea that it was now up to the college to teach attention span, that
>> were the focus on my amazement in the discussion I reported.
>> mike
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 10:30 PM, Jerry Balzano <gjbalzano@ucsd.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  Hey Mike Coole,
>>>
>>> I for one would very much like to see a draft of your APA paper, if you
>>> please.
>>>
>>> I'm trying to figure out how your Canadian interlocutor comes to the
>>> inference that the collaborative learning per se, as it were, is acting
>>> as
>>> "intellectual Borax", stripping students of their attention spans.  How
>>> could such a thing work, in principle, I wonder?  Seems more likely to
>>> me,
>>> in any case, that having had first-hand experience with successful
>>> learning
>>> using collaboration and other more activity-based methods gives students
>>> a
>>> healthy skepticism about the value of "direct instruction for its own
>>> sake",
>>> especially when the latter is manifested in the form of a
>>> not-very-skillfully-executed lecture.  What, precisely, does my inability
>>> to
>>> pay attention to a badly designed lecture say about my attention span?
>>>  Did
>>> this woman, one wonders, really have her "scientific thinking cap" on
>>> when
>>> coming to these conclusions?
>>>
>>> As for good ol' calculus, it just so happens that I have a personal story
>>> -- a slightly sad one -- to tell.  I was as happy as a clam, learning
>>> calculus quite successfully as an "autodidact" during my senior year of
>>> high
>>> school, and I entered college very much excited to take a "Real Calculus
>>> Course" taught by a Real Calculus Professor so I could really go racing
>>> forward in this wonderful subject.  As it turned out, Direct Instruction
>>> in
>>> Calculus, in my freshman year in college, all but killed my love of
>>> mathematics; I barely survived the course, escaping with a C+, which
>>> stands
>>> to this day as my lowest grade ever in a math course or any other course
>>> (OK, I also got a C+ in an Anthro course, but that's it).  My love for
>>> mathematics survived, thankfully ... but it really didn't come all the
>>> way
>>> back until I taught myself group theory approximately eight years after
>>> my
>>> Freshman Calculus Direct Instruction Disaster.
>>>
>>> There does seem to be some very strongly entrenched pedagogical folklore
>>> to
>>> the effect that Some Subjects Require Direct Instruction, or at least,
>>> Some
>>> Subjects Necessitate More Direct Instruction Than Others, but it's never
>>> been clear to me what the provenance of this folklore is, or what the
>>> logic
>>> of it is based on.  I certainly don't buy any of it; and in the case of
>>> calculus, a strongly favored example used to illustrate the folklore by
>>> its
>>> advocates (I think of Al Manaster from UCSD lecturing me about this, no
>>> pun
>>> intended), I have direct personal evidence strongly to the contrary.
>>>
>>> Jerry
>>>
>>> On Aug 14, 2010, at 4:01 PM, mike cole wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks, David.
>>> If anyone is interested I can send draft of paper for APA. It is similar
>>> to
>>> my AERA address (but less interesting-- damned print!).
>>>
>>> Sure, crappy instruction can come from "we pretend to teach they pretend
>>> to
>>> learn" regimes. The examples I gave all have pretty good evidence in
>>> their
>>> favor and in many cases detailed differentiation of what gets cut out as
>>> a
>>> coherent program enters the sausage grinder.
>>>
>>> While I am certainly willing to believe that people get into Universities
>>> having acquired levels of learning that are very low ( I deal with
>>> transfer
>>> students from California colleges, and direct admitees into UCSD who
>>> cannot
>>> handle, for example, a book as complicated as *1984*, I do not believe
>>> that
>>> it is a plausible account of the average Canadian university's entering
>>> classes.
>>>
>>> Apropos, however, of your point. Recent news reports concerning
>>> unemployment
>>> indicate that there are a couple of hundred pretty well paid jobs going
>>> begging in the US right now because there is a dearth of people who can
>>> handle the work tasks. Not a new story -- one which puts many industries
>>> in
>>> the business of paying new employees to learn a lot before they start
>>> working.
>>>
>>> I'll read your paper with interest.
>>> mike
>>>
>>> On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 3:44 PM, David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Mike,
>>>
>>> Thanks for sharing that anecdote.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately there is a mirror image in reform teaching to the
>>>
>>> dysfunctional portrait you presented of direct instruction of procedures
>>>
>>> disconnected from meaning-making: engagement in activity with no vision
>>>
>>> on the teacher's part of what or how learning is to be supported. I
>>>
>>> think there is good evidence that the Math Wars in the US initiated not
>>>
>>> from ideological resistance (that came later), but from true horror
>>>
>>> stories of kids in dysfunctional reform classrooms, some of them getting
>>>
>>> to college unprepared as learners (getting into college is not always a
>>>
>>> sign of a successful K-12 learning experience). As a community, I don't
>>>
>>> think we've done a good job of articulating what it is that makes
>>>
>>> activity-based learning environments effective.
>>>
>>> This was the topic of my AERA paper in May, "The Incoherence of
>>>
>>> Contemporary Pedagogical Reform," which I attach in case anyone is
>>>
>>> interested. (The meat of the paper starts about half way through at the
>>>
>>> section titled "Theoretical Analysis.")
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>
>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
>>>
>>> On Behalf Of mike cole
>>>
>>> Sent: Saturday, August 14, 2010 2:39 PM
>>>
>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture,Activity
>>>
>>> Subject: [xmca] The Grip of "Direct Instruction"
>>>
>>>
>>> Yesterday I presented a longish paper at the American Psych Association
>>>
>>> meetings here in San Diego.
>>>
>>> A lot of it was about what here I would refer to as "activity-based"
>>>
>>> curriculum projects -- their virtues, problems, and apparent inability
>>>
>>> to
>>>
>>> gain traction against recitation scrips and direct instruction. A major
>>>
>>> general finding was that when implemented as designers intend, such
>>>
>>> program
>>>
>>> work, but they tend quickly to be undermined by teachers who strongly
>>>
>>> believe that direct instruction on elements not under control of a
>>>
>>> meaningful whole is THE only way to be effective.
>>>
>>>
>>> A person from Canada posed a question after prefacing her remarks by
>>>
>>> saying
>>>
>>> she agreed with all I said, and thank you, etc. She began by saying that
>>>
>>> in
>>>
>>> Canada such approaches had gained a lot of
>>>
>>> traction in k-12 education, but they were causing a problem at the
>>>
>>> university level. She phrased the problem roughly as follows: "We get a
>>>
>>> lot
>>>
>>> of students who are great at collaborative learning, but it appears to
>>>
>>> strip
>>>
>>> them of their attention spans. And, doesn't a subject like calculus
>>>
>>> REQUIRE
>>>
>>> direct instruction?"
>>>
>>>
>>> These comments/questions knocked me over. I have long disliked the
>>>
>>> discourse
>>>
>>> of short attention span in school kids, which appears to masquerade far
>>>
>>> too
>>>
>>> often as a proxy for "the kids will not sit still and control themselves
>>>
>>> doing stuff they do not understand and do not understand why they should
>>>
>>> try
>>>
>>> to understand."
>>>
>>> But I never expected that the the charge of "reduced attention spans"
>>>
>>> would
>>>
>>> be attributed to college students (who have succeeded in getting in to
>>>
>>> college, after all) with the causal factor inducing this "deficit" being
>>>
>>> that their former (successful) modes of learning engendered by
>>>
>>> activity-centered instruction). Moreover, I was surprised that anyone
>>>
>>> believes that calculus can be taught by "direct instruction" with no
>>>
>>> effort
>>>
>>> made to subordinate procedural knowledge to knowledge of the potential
>>>
>>> motives for learning.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think I was experiencing exactly the challenges confronting the many
>>>
>>> really interesting and successful innovators in education (we might
>>>
>>> start
>>>
>>> here with Dewey, but I have in mind modern scholars) who want to make
>>>
>>> education a meaningful process to students but who find that their
>>>
>>> efforts
>>>
>>> are rapidly deconstructed once they leave the home ground.
>>>
>>>
>>> Anyone else have observations of this kind?
>>>
>>> mike
>>>
>>>
>>> Two things struck me
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>>
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>>>
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>>>
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