Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 8: Stone Developmentalism: An Obscure but Pervasive
Restriction on Educational Improvement
June 10 1996
Don Tinkler
dtinkler@schnet.edu.au
I have some sympathy with the position taken by Prof. Stone, and given
the opportunity and the time, would like to discuss further with him the
many claims he makes about moves in education over the past twenty or so
years, whether in the United States or Australia.
Having said that, I must protest that in applying 'developmentalism' as
an umbrella term, Stone has ignored the distinctions between the various
sub-sets of developmentalism. In the abstract accompanying the paper,
Stone concludes:
... its [developmentalism] most recent expressions include
"developmentally appropriate practice" and "constructivism". In the years
during which it gained ascendance, developmentalism served as a basis for
rejecting harsh and inhumane teaching methods. Today it impedes efforts
to hold schools accountable for student academic achievement.
The inference seems to be that constructivism, being a more recent
expression, is the impediment.
Prof. Stones' claim that 'constructivism discourages teachers and parents
from asserting themselves with children' indicates a failure to
understand the importance for education of the shift not only to a
practice that takes account of something more than behavioural outcomes,
but to one where the provision of quality experiences establishes the
mental connections that enable learners to construct more satisfactory
understandings of their individual realities.
I concede that the early varieties of developmentalism based on stages of
development or stages of cognitive growth served as a basis for rejecting
inappropriate (harsh and inhumane) teaching methods, and that many of the
practices of the so-called child- centred movement failed because of
complete lack of structure. However, I would need further convincing
before agreeing that developmentalist (constructivist) practices
constitute an impediment to strategies that might be applied to hold
schools accountable for student academic achievement. There is of course
the problem that professor Stone and I would probably be in considerable
disagreement on the definition of both the terms, "academic" and
"achievement."
Perhaps the opening of the abstract could have more accurately have read:
'Because of continuing and justified criticism of public education, much
of the so-called "experimentally demonstrated" teaching methodology ought
to have been rejected and abandoned long ago.'
"Constructivism" has developed from a rediscovery of the importance of
"mind" in the teaching-learning equation. The resultant shift of emphasis
has been from teaching to learning with teachers now having to ask
themselves what must I do so that my students can learn with
understanding, rather than asking what I must do to teach (instruct)?
Lauren Resnick (1983) asserted that:
... the accumulated body of cognitive task analysis and the emerging work
on cognitive theories of acquisition clearly signal the need for a
constructivist theory of instruction. It now seems absolutely certain
that our task is to develop a theory that places the learner's active
mental construction at the very heart of the instructional exchange.
Instruction cannot simply put knowledge into people's heads. Instead,
effective instruction must aim to place learners in situations where the
constructions that they naturally and inevitably make as they try to make
sense of their worlds are correct as well as sensible ones.
(Resnick's emphases)
My own contribution since the late seventies is accepted as essentially
constructivist. As one of the pioneers, I applied the emerging theory to
the development of curriculum in social education, providing an expanded
form of social studies incorporating aspects of anthropology, economics,
politics, the life sciences, earth science, some mathematics as well as
the more traditional history and geography at levels suitable for
children in years K through 6. The curriculum was developed on what has
become known as the 'logical sequential' model, taking into account the
need for higher order language skills and the factors of mental growth,
development of concepts, the need for quality experiences, values
education, scope and sequence and spiral development of experiences and
concepts.
The theorising supporting its development and the original curriculum
matrix chart, published in 1981, have generated numbers of articles,
papers and presentations which since 1984 have been delivered in all
States of Australia and on visits to London, various cities in the US and
Toronto.
A teacher handbook with a revised version of the chart, published in 1989
(2nd edition 1990) is widely dispersed and has received approval from
educators in many other countries.
A presention for the 10th World Congress on Gifted and Talented Education
(1993), Toronto, Canada, encapsulates something of the theory and
practice developed since 1981, and I include with this commentary the
first few pages of that paper:
A CURRICULUM THAT LIBERATES THE LEARNER
Presentation for the 10th World Congress on Gifted and Talented
Education, Toronto, Canada August 8 to 13, 1993
Don E Tinkler, Consultant in Education, Melbourne, Australia
-----------------------------------------
... the gulf between the mature or adult products and the experience and
abilities of the young is so wide that the very situation forbids much
active participation by the pupils in the development of what is taught.
Theirs is to do - and learn... that which is taught is thought of as
essentially static. It is taught as a finished product, with little
regard either to the ways in which it was originally built up or to
changes that will surely occur in the future. It is to a large extent
the cultural product of societies that assumed the future would be much
like the past, and yet it is used as educational food in a society where
change is the rule, not the exception.
The problem for progressive education is: What is the place and meaning
of subject-matter and of organization within experience?
It is not enough to insist upon the necessity of experience, or even the
activity in experience. Everything depends upon the quality of the
experience which is had.
John Dewey, 1938 (Dewey's emphases)
----------------------------------------------
While attacking traditional schooling which imposed knowledge on students
in a 'kind of institution sharply marked off from any other form of
social organization', Dewey was also strong in his criticism of the
'progressives' for the way they had distorted his theory of experience to
the extent that any school experience was accepted as being as good as
any other. Although approaching eighty years of age, to set the record
straight, Dewey wrote Experience in Education from which these quotes
are taken.
It is a matter of history (Samples 1976) that Dewey fell from favor when
the United States was beaten in the space race by the Russian Sputnik in
1957. Called to account for what was accepted as a national disgrace, a
conference of scientists and educators at Woods Hole in Massachusetts the
following year, chaired by Gerome Bruner, looked to the ideas of Jean
Piaget to redirect U.S. educational philosophy. So it was that Piaget's
'stages' theory was released on the educational world in 1964. Piaget
emerged as the dominant theorist, while Dewey faded into relative obscurity.
This paper will assert that it is time the learner was freed from the
constraints imposed by traditional schooling as claimed by Dewey, and yet
offered more than 'progressive' education as an alternative.
It will present an overview of more than fifteen years effort which has
resulted in the generation of a 'constructivist' theory of learning, a
new curriculum design, the publication of The Humanities Core Curriculum
(1981, 1989), a curriculum chart dealing with an expanded view of social
education, and a teacher handbook which explains how that curriculum can
be individualized for regular classroom use or for pull-out programs for
'gifted' students.
The innovative approach emphasizes learning with understanding and
provides new relevance to social education. At the same time it offers an
opportunity to teachers to make more effective use of their developed
skills in curriculum planning, facilitating, monitoring, and evaluation.
The handbook Social Education for Australian Primary Schools (2nd
Ed.
1990) takes a fresh look at a wide range of educational and curriculum
issues, unpacks some of the emerging theory about learning with
understanding, and converts it into sound practice in social education.
Subtitled A 'Futures' Perspective, it was written for teachers and
others
engaged in helping young people make sense of a very complex worldÑboth
in the present and into the longer term future.
Skills Building For the Future
Since no one can know the future, the plural form 'futures' is used. We
can talk of 'possible', 'probable' and 'preferred' futures. Possible
futures take in anything that could possibly happen; probable futures
refer to those that are likely to happen on the probability of certain
things occurring or not occurring; and preferred futures refer to those
that might be selected from the 'probable' futures as being more
desirable.
Professor David Suzuki of the University of British Columbia in a
broadcast in 1987 claimed that 'human beings have become the most
reliable failure component in technology today'. Educators must ask why
we should accept a future where human beings continue to be the most
'reliable failure components' in our advancing technology?
Attention of the world several years ago was focused upon literacy and
the problems of illiteracy. However, we should perhaps then have been
asking whether the level of literacy considered satisfactory in 1950, or
even as recently as 1980, will be suitable for the nineties and beyond.
The theme for the Australian Reading Association First International
Conference (1993) was Literacy For The New Millennium. Most speakers
seemed to think that literacy for the new millennium meant little more
than holding to the status quoÑall students being expected to develop the
skills of reading, writing and listening. While conceding that there was
much that we could do to develop more effective skills in these areas,
there seemed little awareness of the recent reports of the OECD where
reference was made to 'enterprise skills' as being like a
'third passport' enabling students to cross from school to the world
outside. Nor did it seem that speakers knew of the parallel work of
UNESCO and the call of its Symposium in Beijing late in 1989 for:
* a new view of knowledge;
* a greater integration of knowledge;
* a renewed commitment to lifelong learning;
* an education system with shifts of emphases from conformity to
creativity and innovativeness,
- from competitiveness to co-operativeness,
- from private benefits of learning to public
benefits,
- from instruction to learning how to learn,
- to nourishing the higher-order skills,
- to positive aspects of personal development,
- to promote tolerance in interrelating with others.
Taking account of the emerging ecological and global threats to survival,
the UNESCO Symposium cautioned that educational planners will need to
restructure education to fit people for the twenty-first century, which,
in their words, 'now will probably be rather different from what we would
have predicted as recently as five years ago'.
In the mid 1980s a 'Creative Cities' conference in Melbourne was told by
its Keynote speaker, Dr. Rashmi Mayur, Director of the Urban Development
Institute in Bombay and advisor to the United Nations and the U.S.
Congress, that what was really needed was 'creative people', that is,
people who could think creatively about future needs and about future
directions. It is certain that the most important resources in any future
will be the human resources. Tomorrow's people will need greater
capacity for creating choices, and thinking through the choices between
competing options. They will need also a wider range of personal
skills--some of which we can only guess at today.
All this points to the need perhaps to look at literacy in a different
way as we approach the new millennium.
Learner Monitored Learning
In England the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures
and Commerce (RSA), has adopted 'Education for Capability', a program
with major focus upon secondary schools and tertiary institutions.
According to the RSA, 'Education for Capability is a practical nationwide
campaign to develop the talents of all young people and give them the
confidence that comes with succes.'
The RSA joined with the World Education Fellowship and several other
institutions in convening the First International Conference on Learner
Managed Learning in April 1990.
At the conference, experiences were shared by those who had allowed
learners to apply their 'enterprise' skills in programs of self directed
learning and decision making. There were reports of learner contracts,
experiential learning, peer tutoring, inquiry and problem solving
approaches having been trialed.
With time to reflect upon the issues of the conference, I am convinced
that, at least in the formative years of primary and secondary school,
and maybe even in tertiary education, the learner does not 'manage' but
rather 'monitors' his/her learning processes. Just as in the one-teacher
school, the monitor works as a mediator under the guidance and
supervision of the teacher, we could look at self-directed learning as
the learner mediating the learning processes with the teacher as manager
or facilitator.
Some years ago, Paul Brandwein (1977) suggested that 'the child comes to
school with a comprehension consisting of a world of constructs, which we
know to be somewhat faulty. But he comes, nevertheless, with an
idiosyncratic way of learning'.
It seems that the teacher's task is to discover the idiosyncrasy, to help
correct the faults in the constructs, and lead the child forward towards
increased comprehension about the world. Teachers can help children
become aware of their own learning--referred to as 'metacognition' or
'awareness of awareness.'
Monitoring one's learning will require the development of a range of
competencies for problem solving, research and data processing. Those
competencies in turn will depend upon establishing the sub-skills of
reflection, analysis, comparing, inference, classification, and
synthesis--the so called 'thinking skills.'
Thinking skills can be taught. Parents can encourage the development of a
range of basic thinking strategies, but perhaps the most appropriate time
to start training in thinking skills is when the child reaches the
primary school.
The Search for an Alternative Theory of Knowledge Acquisition
The search for answers to questions arising from years of classroom
teaching led me to look at various theories of knowledge 'acquisition,'
and then to examine what teachers might do to speed up and strengthen the
processes of acquisition.
In the late 1960s I had been involved in the implementation of a new
science approach derived from the Nuffield Science curriculum developed
in the U.K., and had been impressed by the theories of Jean Piaget which
underpinned that program. A short time later, I took up a study of the
writings of Immanuel Kant and his impact upon education. In challenging
Kant's notion of a priori concepts, 'knowledge absolutely independent of
all experience', I developed the idea of 'mental abstraction', explained
then as the 'activity of the brain/mind in matching, comparing, analyzing
and synthesizing the mass of impressions coming in through the various
sense receptors and leading to the formation of concepts'.
Piaget's 1960s theory had four factors affecting cognitive growth. They
were:
(i) Nervous maturation
(ii) Experience
(iii) Social transmission
(iv) Equilibration
That theory I refer to as the 'autonomous' model--autonomous, because
growth was determined by 'equilibration', Piaget's invented term for a
self-regulatory mechanism which acted to correct any disequilibrium
brought about by new experiences. Equilibration also raised an individual
to higher 'stages' of cognitive growth.
In struggling to apply Piaget's 1960's theories to the design of a new
social studies curriculum in 1978, I came to a similar conclusion to that
later reported by Lauren Resnick of the Learning Research and Development
Center at the University of Pittsburgh when she commented in 1983 that
'Piagetian theory provides a very weak guide for instructional efforts'.
I returned to my notion of 'mental abstraction' as a likely theoretical
foundation to resolve the dilemma.
In developing an alternative 'supportive' model of cognitive growth, I
discounted Piaget's 'stages' in favor of the idea that the growth is
continuous, though irregular; the irregularity being influenced by four
factors:
(i) The total state of the brain and the central nervous system;
(ii) the level and the quality of experience;
(iii) the level and the quality of social interaction; and
(iv) 'sound pedagogy' (the art/craft of teaching--something that
can be applied
by a parent, a peer, or some other person, as well as the
professional teacher)
'Equilibration' is no longer needed, since the process of cognitive
growth can be more parsimoniously explained as due to the activity of
'mental abstraction.'
The following is a further explication of the 'supportive' model and the
four factors which influence cognitive growth:
Factor (i) the total state of the brain and the central nervous system:
Rather than being looked at simply as the 'nature' aspect in the long
running nature-nurture debate, the model takes into account the
information being generated by brain scientists in their attempt to
analyze and synthesize what happens as the billions of cells and neural
connections in the brain respond to information inputs. No one has yet
made the link between input and learning, except to suggest that there is
both chemical and electrical activity within the brain in response to input.
Chemical imbalance, physical or emotional trauma, fatigue, boredom,
illness, prescription or other drugs, hunger and dehydration, may affect
brain efficiency. Therefore 'total condition' seems to be a more adequate
descriptor for what is a major variable. Piaget's 'maturity' factor, as
presented by him in the 1960s, seems by comparison to be a less
satisfactory alternative.
Factor (ii) the level and quality of experience
Although concepts are generated by experience, not all experiences are of
equal value.
Recalling the statements of John Dewey on the importance of experience,
it is suggested that in the contrived environment of the classroom
teachers should select experiences largely on the criteria of
quality.
Factor (iii) the level and quality of social interaction
In recent years there has been an increasing concentration upon self
concept as being important to effective learning. Of major importance in
the development of positive self concepts are the kinds of relationships
that have already developed in student personal social interaction in
groups, whether that might have been within the family, among peers, or
with children and teachers in previous classes.
Factor (iv) 'sound pedagogy' (the art/craft of teaching)
The dictionary defines 'pedagogy' as the 'science or profession of
teaching; also as the theory of teaching how to teach'. As this was the
nearest to the idea of 'teaching craft', the term was adopted as the
factor which it seemed had been ignored by Piaget in his 1960s theories
on cognitive growth.
It should be noted that 'sound pedagogy' consistently involves deliberate
interventions that also involve factors (ii) and (iii). To put it another
way; sound teaching craft can, among other things, supplement personal
experience and social interaction as influences on mental (cognitive)
development.
'Sound pedagogy' is much more than 'instruction'. In applying sound
pedagogy the teacher's task extends beyond simply providing and managing
experiences. The role of the teacher expands to include all of the
following:
* selecting experiences using 'quality' as a measure of appropriateness;
* organising, timing, monitoring and managing the experiences;
* providing order in the experiences presented (giving
consideration to scope and sequence in what is presented as
curriculum);
* attempting to reduce some of the complexity of the
material or information being presented; (The world
for both children and adults is indeed complex,
but if some of the complexity is reduced in presenting ideas
initially, the learnings often make more sense when later placed back
into their original complexity);
* Drawing learners into purposeful two-way communication;
(generating a climate where learners are free to inquire, to
explore issues, to formulate questions, to express
ideas, to debate points of view, and to seek solutions to problems);
* extending the learners' interaction with the learning
environment (extending the range and variety of the learning context).
Classrooms are by nature busy places. There is such a variety of factors
operating; so many things going on simultaneously; so much that is
completely unpredictable; decisions to be made immediately; events that
are very public, some embarrassingly so - both for students and for
teachers; and each of the human elements enter with a personal background
and contribute to a class history that is completely unique. In spite of
the 'busy-ness', care should be taken to establish a climate built on
concern for and a warm acceptance of each member, a classroom climate in
which honesty, open-ness and mutual trust can develop.
Constructivist Theory
The theory that developed is essentially 'constructivist' in nature,
suggesting that we each construct our own 'reality' or 'world picture'
through the processing by the brain of sensory input. The reality is
dependent upon both the range and the quality of that sensory input--a
limited experiences results in a limited reality, a broad range of
experience generates an elaborated reality.
'Constructivist' theory provides a rationale for many of the recent
innovative approaches to learning. It explains why students seem to do
better through such strategies as experiential learning, inquiry
learning, problem solving, cooperative group learning, and
student-negotiated curriculum. Further, constructivism underpins the
importance now being attributed in education to self-esteem and to
'metacognition.' The theory is also consistent with many of the
conclusions of recent research into novice-expert representations of
knowledge.
(A more detailed explication of 'mental abstraction' and the resultant
'constructivist' theory has been given in various papers since first
presented in 1981.)
Although the theory developed from the re-think of the late 1970s it
parallels the work later reported by Lauren Resnick, and the Caine and
Caine publication for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development (ASCD). Several quotes will suffice:
The human mind has been rediscovered, or at least re-affirmed; reasoning
and thought are central objects of scientific study ... It seems evident
that a cognitive theory of instruction should be emerging alongside our
increasingly elaborated theories of cognitive performance and development.
Lauren
Resnick (1983)
Brain research establishes and confirms that multiple complex and
concrete experiences are essential for meaningful learning and teaching.
Optimizing the use of the human brain means using the brain's infinite
capacity to make connections Ñand understanding what conditions maximize
this process.
Caine and
Caine (1990)
Reinforcement for the direction taken was accepted to come from a further
Resnick statement:
It now seems absolutely certain that our task is to develop a theory of
intervention that places the learner's active mental construction at the
very heart of the instructional exchange.
In a recent yearbook of the ASCD, Cawelti
makes the comment that the
most critical ingredient of successful schools is the teacher and the
quality of the teaching in the classroom. Referring briefly to the
dominance of behaviorists over the past several decades, he draws
attention to the chapter by Peterson and Knapp. In Cawelti's words:
They record the important work of the 'constructivists' who are seeking
to demonstrate how students must be helped to create their own meaning
out of the learning experiences the school provides.
He adds a further comment:
The constructivist movement in learning will do much to help get students
more involved, particularly if students can be helped to see that in
adult life they will need to know what they are being asked to learn.
The 'Logical Sequential' Model of Curriculum Design and Development
From the outset, I had accepted social studies to include aspects of
anthropology, economics, politics, natural and applied sciences, as well
as history and geography, and set the following objectives:
The curriculum should:
- emphasize the need for children to develop an understanding of self,
the relationship
of self to others, and from that an understanding of society;
- provide a structure of scope and sequence from Kindergarten to Year-six;
- present a core of suggested experiences and learnings in social studies
Y-K through Y-6;
- provide children with quality experiences;
- position the experiences and concepts over the seven year period based
on an appropriate theory of cognitive growth;
- give weighting to both content and process;
- allow experiences and concepts to be interrelated within the structure;
- be constructed of selected categories of social studies rising as
expanding experience
spirals, providing later reinforcement for earlier experiences;
- give prominence to the ideas developed at a seminar in 1976 with
Professor Jack Fraenkel of San Francisco concerning an education in
values.
When published as a research document in 1981, the Humanities Core
Curriculum (HCC) fold-out chart was extremely well received by teachers,
administrators, parents and academics in all States of Australia.
Visitors from overseas and representatives of national publishers also
showed considerable interest.
The HCC Chart and the handbook are an outcome of applying the "Logical
Sequential Model" to the design of curriculum.
[then followed a statement explaining how the curriculum was applied
in developing class programs]
*************************
The need to shift theory and practice is becoming more apparent as
schools move to include convergent communications and information
technologies in their delivery of curriculum.
During the past four years, I have been working with colleagues on a
series of investigations for governments in Australia into the
application of state-of-the-art technologies in the delivery of education
at all levels, from schools to universities. The findings recorded in
three major reports endorse the importance of the shift to constructivism
made both by educators at the leading edge and the instructional
designers responsible for developing quality educational software in
opening up a future of new learning opportunities.