These two notions of knowledge were identified by John Dewey (1916) as “records” of previous cultural accomplishments and engagement in active processes as represented by the phrase “to do.” For example, doing mathematics involves solving problems, abstracting, inventing, proving (see, e.g., Romberg, 1983). Today, students need to understand the current state of their knowledge and to build on it, improve it, and make decisions in the face of uncertainty (Talbert and McLaughlin, 1993). In short, the factory model affected the design of curriculum, instruction, and assessment in schools. The emulation of factory efficiency fostered the development of standardized tests for measurement of the “product,” of clerical work by teachers to keep records of costs and progress (often at the expense of teaching), and of “management” of teaching by central district authorities who had little knowledge of educational practice or philosophy (Callahan, 1962). Teachers were viewed as workers whose job was to carry out directives from their superiors-the efficiency experts of schooling (administrators and researchers). This approach attempted to sort the raw materials (the children) so that they could be treated somewhat as an assembly line. Children were regarded as raw materials to be efficiently processed by technical workers (the teachers) to reach the end product (Bennett and LeCompte, 1990 Callahan, 1962 Kliebard, 1975). School administrators were eager to make use of the “scientific” organization of factories to structure efficient classrooms. In the early 1900s, the challenge of providing mass education was seen by many as analogous to mass production in factories. Overall, the definition of functional literacy changed from being able to sign one’s name to word decoding to reading for new information (Resnick and Resnick, 1977) see Box 6.1. As in writing, it was not until relatively recently that analysis and interpretation of what is read became an expectation of skilled reading by all school children. It was not until the 1930s that the idea emerged of primary school students expressing themselves in writing (Alcorta, 1994 Schneuwly, 1994). Even then, writing instruction was largely aimed at giving children the capacity to closely imitate very simple text forms. It was not until the mid to late 1800s that writing began to be taught on a mass level in most European countries, and school children began to be asked to compose their own written texts. Instruction in writing focused on the mechanics of making notation as dictated by the teacher, transforming oral messages into written ones. Many cases, schools seem to be functioning as well as ever, but the challenges and expectations have changed quite dramatically (e.g., Bruer, 1993 Resnick, 1987).Ĭonsider the goals of schooling in the early 1800s. Later, we define these perspectives and explain how they relate to the preceding discussions in Chapters 1– 4. After discussing changes in goals, we explore the design of learning environments from four perspectives that appear to be particularly important given current data about human learning, namely, the degree to which learning environments are learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered. A fundamental tenet of modern learning theory is that different kinds of learning goals require different approaches to instruction ( Chapter 3) new goals for education require changes in opportunities to learn. Everyone expects much more from today’s schools than was expected 100 years ago. We begin our discussion of learning environments by revisiting a point made in Chapter 1-that the learning goals for schools have undergone major changes during the past century. The focus in this chapter is on general characteristics of learning environments that need to be examined in light of new developments in the science of learning Chapter 7 provides specific examples of instruction in the areas of mathematics, science, and history-examples that make the arguments in the present chapter more concrete. Nevertheless, new developments in the science of learning raise important questions about the design of learning environments-questions that suggest the value of rethinking what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed. Learning theory does not provide a simple recipe for designing effective learning environments similarly, physics constrains but does not dictate how to build a bridge (e.g., Simon, 1969). In this chapter we discuss implications of new knowledge about learning for the design of learning environments, especially schools.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |