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


29 April 1996

Sherman Dorn

dornsj@CTRVAX.VANDERBILT.EDU

In general, I found Stone's paper, arguing that a philosophy of developmentalism blocks many teachers from using effective teaching methods, provocative and interesting. Like Rick Garlikov, I found it appealing in the sense that I have witnessed some of the dynamics which Stone claims dominates teaching.
Yet ultimately I find the article unconvincing for several reasons.

1. In an article which espouses empiricism, Stone presents remarkably little concrete evidence that developmentalist philosophy is a primary barrier to more effective teaching. The following are two generalizations which would need evidence to convince me of Stone's thesis:
(a) Developmentalism has been important to teachers since the late 1960s (when, if I recall correctly, the first studies of Direct Instruction and other quasi-experimental intervention programs were published).

(b) Developmentalism has been a barrier to the use of research-based interventions:
(1) A developmentalist philosophy has blocked the implementation of research-based intervention programs in specific locations; or
(2) A substantial number of teachers across the country have considered research-based intervention programs and have discarded them explicitly because of developmentalist principles.
Evidence of these is nonexistent in the article. Instead, Stone presents what some teacher education texts say about teaching, and what some constructivist researchers have said about specific teaching methods (or about reinforcement in general) -- which reflect on *those texts* but which says little either about teacher education in general or about how teachers make decisions in classrooms.

2. Others are more persuasive in explaining why teachers don't change their methods much. Larry Cuban and Seymour Sarason have each argued that teaching is innately conservative and that schools create a conservative work culture. The most common teaching methods, especially in secondary schools, have changed relatively little over the past century compared to more experimental models which have existed side-by-side with more "traditional" classes. In *every single case*, traditional classes are more influential on the next generation of teachers and on teachers asked to change. It hasn't really mattered whether those experimental models were the Lab School run by Dewey or DISTAR, the Eight-Year project of the NEA or something else. Schools and teachers just have not picked up on new methods easily or faithfully. It does not require the inculcation of constructivism to have continued that pattern in the last few decades.

3. Stone's chronology implies that Dewey and other "developmentalists" were far more influential on educators than they actually were. As Ellen Lagemann wrote in Teachers College Record several years ago, Thorndike won the battle of educational philosophies in the early twentieth century. Dewey essentially lost, and it wasn't until decades later that someone else (and you can argue whether it was Piaget, Robert Coles, or others) became an effective rhetorical advocate of treating children as having mental lives of their own. Stone cites Lawrence Cremin's history of progressivism but omits a key message: while becoming a dominant professional force, the Progressive Education Association lost virtually every connection it had with Dewey's educational philosophy -- including, critically, the parts of Dewey which Stone identifies as developmentalist.
Similarly, I have my doubts about the reaches of constructivism. Visible in many schools of education, sure. Identifiable among individual teachers and principals, absolutely. But right next to constructivists you'll find other teachers who may fail their students *just as much* as constructivists and refuse to change even more.
I am not denying here either the dangers of not intervening in failing educational dynamics or the real contradictions in Dewey's or Piaget's philosophy. But one must put it in perspective.