'
Contributed Commentary on
Volume 4 Number 8: Stone Developmentalism: An Obscure but
Pervasive Restriction on Educational Improvement
30 April 1996
Rick Garlikov
hmwkhelp@SCOTT.NET
It is very difficult to give evidence of a pervasive but unconscious
attitude in a field. I thought that what J.E. Stone said "fit" many of
the teachers I know who DO adhere to some of the pedagogical philosophies
that he calls "developmentalist". I would be hardpressed to prove
empirically it fits, but that is in part because when you spell it out as
he does, they tend to deny having that view. Yet many of the things they
say logically lead to it.
I thought the paper was important, but it is difficult to characterize
what "kind" of scholarship effort it represents if one is into such
categorizing. Still I think it was a good, worthwhile, and scholarly
article; and I think (as the letter in his post exemplified) that it in
some sense explains the resistance of many developmentalists to other
sorts of methods --and it explains it to people who have presented such
empirically based methods and been rejected in ways that did not make
sense to them at the time, but which make sense (or are consistent with)
Prof. Stone's analysis/characterization.