Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 8: Stone Developmentalism: An Obscure but Pervasive Restriction on Educational Improvement

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29 April 1996

John Stone

STONEJ@EDUSERV.EAST-TENN-ST.EDU

Rick, thanks for your very thoughtful analysis of my recent EPAA article on "developmentalism." It would have been advantageous to see your thinking while I was reviewing and revising. I won't be able to address your concerns as thoroughly as they deserve in this post, but let me begin by making 2 points:

* As you say in your last paragraph, "I believe that it is not age development that generally creates readiness, but development through meaningful exposure or experience." In general, I agree and I wrote about developmentalism in an attempt to counter what I see as a widely assumed (not necessarily well understood) doctrinal limitation on how educators go about improving their practices.

* Please bear in mind that my principal objective was the relatively narrow one of trying to identify and describe a set of assumptions about learning and the nature of human development and to show that they have considerable educational importance. Obviously, my account has numerous implications for educational (and parenting) practice--chief among which is the matter of how experimental research is used and what that has to do with more effective schooling. A more complete treatment of how and where developmentalist assumptions intersect with social and educational issues would require much lengthier treatment.

In the following, I will try to respond briefly to a number of your points:

(1) does not sufficiently explain or take into account the rationales, and philosophical points, of other people for some of the approaches he refers to as "developmental"

I agree. Much more could be said but I was only trying to show that they intersect and likely implications.

(2) My chief concern in writing this is that the good aspects of some of the approaches Prof. Stone considers "developmental" not be thrown out with those elements he effectively argues are bad.

I too would not want to banish everything associated with those approaches identified as developmental. I say, let's look at evidence of effectiveness.

3. ...the purpose of school is to give students a broader range of knowledge and skills than whatever the workplace may likely demand... (snip) ...where schools do not teach well enough to adequately prepare students for the workplace, that signifies a problem on my view only because that should be a minimal outcome of the sort of education I seek for students.

I agree that meeting the demands of the workplace is a minimum and I too would want schools to go well beyond. However, it is well to bear in mind that it is failure to meet the minimum that has critical personal, social and economic implications, and that failure to meet this minimum is a matter of central concern to the people who are paying most of us to teach. I think if the many surveys of public opinion in the matter of educational objectives tell us anything, they say to public elementary and secondary schools: First and foremost, do a vastly better job of insuring that everyone has the literacy, numeracy, communication, etc. skills necessary to the workplace (and necessary to preparedness for postsecondary learning) in the information age.

(4) ...teachers (like anyone else) are disposed to favor specific practices with which they are familiar and comfortable -- frequently teaching as they have been taught, rather than teaching as they have been taught to teach in ed schools.

Having spent a career in teacher education, I will be the first to agree with the point that teachers make only limited use of that which they have been taught in the colleges of education. However, the truth of that assertion does not mean that teacher education (and its doctrines) is having no effect. Rather, in my judgement, teacher training has a substantial restrictive effect. What I have observed and learned from the relevant literature (surveys of teachers, etc.) is that teachers frequently find that that which they are taught in the colleges of education does not work in the classroom. For this reason, a perennial reform in teacher education is more apprenticeship type training and less time spent on theory and methods. A companion reform in TN has been to require education professors to spend so many days per year in the schools. I teach the required developmental psychology courses (for teachers and non teachers), and teacher surveys find that such courses are among the most inapplicable.

Confronted with the daily reality of having to find something that does work, teachers use the kind of teaching that enabled them personally to learn; they rely on that which other teachers have found to work; and they rely on that which seems to work with their students. For lack of any better information, they are forced to continually "reinvent the wheel" (i.e., innovate) and over the years the same innovations and the same faulty initiatives (uncharitably called "fads") come around again and again--all at student and taxpayer expense.

In my opinion, teacher training further contributes to this situation by a) failing to train prospective teachers in any experimentally vindicated approaches to teaching (that might be used or adapted) or by b) affording such little training in a given approach that implementation is almost bound to fail. From what I have seen over the years, well demonstrated teaching practices have been neglected or abandoned because (inadequately trained teachers) could not make them work (after having a few classes or a workshop). Over time, most teachers become so jaded about the latest "innovation" that they understandably ignore new ideas regardless of merit.

Finally, developmentalist teacher training effectively encourages teachers to believe that good teaching requires whatever approach they devise to be, first and foremost, well received by students and, second, effective in producing academic achievement. This order of priorities is more or less the reverse of the public's. Schools that fail to produce acceptable degrees of conventional academic achievement are nonsense to the public. It is my suspicion that this stricture combined with the uncertainty about whether an untested innovation will produce results markedly limits that which teachers and schools are willing to attempt with students. In other words, there is a boundary based on doctrine and effectively reorders educational priorities. I might add that this is a terribly expensive way to go about education. Teachers are sent on a perpetual quest for the perfect fit between teaching practice and the individual student's developmental attributes on the theory that an excellent fit will be both well received and successful. Again, in my opinion, the public would prefer schooling that succeeds in producing learning whether or not students find it entirely to their tastes.

(5) ...there being grounds besides "natural development" for advocating methods other than those research has shown effective

I do not disagree. My point is that the "natural" attribute is important to the appeal of these approaches, perhaps a critically important attribute. Neither am I arguing that all traditional or unnatural approaches are effective.

(6) The first problem is that there is much published which seems quite clearly to be flawed research, or interpretations of research, in that it does not isolate an independent variable and show its effect.

Yes, there is plenty of flawed research--experimental and otherwise; and yes, it is difficult to isolate the effects of independent variables in complex situations. However, I do not take these considerable difficulties as arguments for abandoning experiments. Instead, I ask whether there is better avenue to credible knowledge of teaching effectiveness.

It seems to me that teacher education and the teaching profession generally has some obligation to assure that the skills with which teachers are equipped actually work. I think the obligation is largely parallel to that had by medical schools and the medical profession. Experimentally validated and field tested findings have enabled enormous advancements in medicine and many other areas of human endeavor. That they would fail so completely in education would be odd indeed.

My point here is that if the teaching profession has an obligation to equip teachers with practices that work and that experiments are the best way of making such a determination, then experimental evidence should play a prominent role in our thinking about how to teach. If we reject experimentation on the grounds that it is less than perfect, it seems to an unfair comparison--the perfect hypothetical is made the enemy of the best real option.

(7)*IF* you can make the practice fun, is that not better than making drill tedious --if you achieve the same learning. Not better because it is more effective in the short run, but because it may be more effective in the long run for students' schooling in general, and is more humane. I am not against memorization, nor am I against drill. The argument is over the specifics and the outcomes with regard to a reasonable span of time. If you teach kids to read, but make them hate to read, what of value have you accomplished?

I wholly favor making learning fun and interesting, and if students generally learned the way Rousseau's Emile did, for example, the educational issues that concern us would be largely nonexistent. It is worth remembering, however, that Rousseau's real children were shipped off to an orphanage.

The point I am making is that in those cases where teachers find something that "clicks" with the student, the resulting learning can be ideal. Your personal examples are great; and to all who can find similarly thoughtful and creative ways of achieving results, I offer my complements. The great problem of education, however, is what to do about the very substantial numbers of students who do not respond.

My question is: Must teachers be limited to methods that are immediately gratifying and well received by students? I am suggesting that developmentalism, in effect, sets such a limit. As would be true of any reasonable and humane individual, I favor the most gratifying methods we can devise and I certainly would exclude intervention that goes beyond the bounds of decent and humane treatment. Where I probably would part company with many members of the teaching profession, however, is that I would balance the privations attendant a student's effort during his or her school years against the catastrophic prospect of failure to learn. Learning takes study (defined broadly) and study takes time and effort. Almost inevitably in our day and age, study time comes at the expense of some far more attractive activities. Either children discipline themselves to the task as a result of the enthusiasm inspired by their teacher or the teacher (and the parent) somehow insure that the necessary time and effort is allocated. To me, letting children become much less than they can be is truly abusive.

Another area in which I would part company with many teachers and teacher educators is in the matter of how patient we should be in expecting students to progress. I think that individuals whom I would term developmentalists see time and expected progress as largely open ended. My view is that time is money and there are finite limits to both. Schools are enormously expensive. When college level remedial programs have to re-teach basic skills to high school graduates (even ones with above average GPAs), I think we need to take a careful look at whether students are making good use of the educational opportunity they are provided. Schooling is plenty expensive even without waste. Permitting students to advance without learning wastes their time as well as the taxpayer's money. What we know as adults is that there is only a brief period in one's life when one's parents provide a place to live and pay the bills. Sooner or later most people are on their own; and as many of the students I see every day will tell you, they wished their parents and their teachers had pushed them while the opportunity was there.

In addition to believing that many in teaching fail to balance present deprivation and discomfort against the catastrophic effects of failure to learn, I think the supposed dangers of teaching practices to which students are not immediately receptive is greatly overrated--a point I tried to address in the present paper. My two sons dislike wind sprints in basketball practice, but such activities do seem to get them ready for play and neither one of them have talked about quitting basketball. As an educational psychologist, I would argue that people frequently learn valuable lessons under adverse circumstances. They may strongly dislike the experience that taught them, but knowledge or skill acquired became valuable and attractive because of its functionality under other circumstances. For example, many people hate English composition classes but later learn to love writing.

In truth, structured and result-oriented teaching methods are not inherently unpleasant. For example, Direct Instruction (Engelmann, Becker, Carnine, et al) entails drill, recitation, and choral responding--all practices that are anathema to many educators. Kids, however, seem to love it.

(8) When Stone says "Led by Dewey...the mainstream teaching profession has held that such 'intrinsic' or naturally occurring interest will express itself provided that the student is confronted with a sufficiently meaningful or relevant or lifelike problem" Stone seems to think that this precludes all sorts of what he refers to as "purposeful actions of teachers and parents".

I must not have made myself clear on this point. In my view, Dewey does not restrict all purposeful actions of teachers and parents, rather he limits their options to approaches that would pique a youngster's interest. My reading of Dewey is that his great break with educational tradition of his day was his insistence that true learning had to be motivated by the genuine interest of the student, not by the insistence of a teacher/taskmaster. For example, Dewey would have opposed a teacher insisting that an unengaged student complete an assignment before going to recess. In fact, Dewey would have objected to the idea of the teacher making an assignment purely on the basis of the teacher's assessment of the student's educational needs.

I realize my responses are not as complete and as nuanced as your contentions deserve, but for the time being this is the best I can do. Again, I appreciate your thoughtful response because I believe this issue may be at the heart of whether public schools as we know them survive.