Pedagogy
WRITTEN BY
Professor
of Education, University of Birmingham, England, 1950–78. Editor, Educational
Review. Author of The Psychological Basis of Education.
Pedagogy, study of teaching methods, including the
aims of education and the ways in which such goals may be achieved. The field
relies heavily on educational psychology, which encompasses scientific theories of learning, and to some extent on
the philosophy of education, which considers the aims and value of
education from a philosophical perspective.
The teacher and the learner
In the act of teaching there are two parties (the teacher and the taught) who work together in some program (the subject matter) designed to modify the learners’ experience and understanding in some way. It is necessary to begin, therefore, with observations about the learner, the teacher, and the subject matter and then to consider the significance of group life and the school. It will then be possible to consider the factors and theories involved in modifying a person’s experience and understanding. They include theories of learning in education, of school and class organization, and of instructional media.
A child enters school with little if any
attainment in written expression and leaves it capable of learning much from
human culture. It was thought originally that such progress was just a matter of
learning, memorizing, associating, and practicing. The work of psychologists
has revealed, however, that the growth of the pupil’s intellectual powers must include a large element of
development through different phases, beginning with simple sensorimotor coordination;
going on to the beginnings of symbolizing, helped by the growth of language and play; and then on to logical
thought, provided the material is concrete; and, finally, in midadolescence, on
to the power to examine problems comprehensively, to grasp their formal
structure, and to evoke explanation. Regarding emotional experience, the child
progresses from direct, immediate, uninhibited reactions to more complex, less
direct, and more circumspect responses. The physical growth of the
child is so obvious as to need no comment. Any attempt to educate the child
intellectually and emotionally and for action must take account of those
characteristics. Education must pace development, not follow it and not ignore
it. The components in the child’s overall educational growth are physical and
mental maturation, experience, formal teaching through language, and an urge in
the learner to resolve discrepancies, anomalies, and dissonances in experience.
What is required of teachers is that they
enjoy and be capable of sharing with children work programs designed to modify
their experience and understanding. That means making relevant experience
available to the student at the right time. The teacher must be mature, have
humour with a sense of status, be firm yet unruffled, and be sympathetic but
not overpersonal. With large classes, the teacher becomes a leader of a group,
providing stimulating learning situations.
The subject matter taught also has
a marked influence on the total teaching situation. It may be conveniently
divided into broad headings of languages, humanities, sciences, mathematics, and arts. Although each group of
subjects has something in common with others in terms of the demands it makes
on the thinker, each area has also something quite specific in its mode of
development. Languages call for verbal learning and production based on oral
work, particularly during the early phases. The humanities call for an
understanding of cause-effect relations of immediate and remote connections
between persons and institutions and between human beings and their environment. The sciences call for induction from experience, though deductive processes are required when the laws of science are formalized into
mathematical terms. The humanities and sciences both depend on the ability of
the learner to hypothesize. Mathematics calls for the ability to abstract,
symbolize, and deduce. An interest in the formal and structural properties of
the acts of counting and measuring is fundamental. Arts and literature call for
a fairly free opportunity to explore and create.
A large part of the teacher’s role is as
a group leader, and the group life of the school and the classroom
must influence the teaching situation. Group life shows itself in the dynamic structure of the class—including its manner of reaching group
decisions, the hierarchy of its members, the existence of cliques and of isolated
individuals—and in its morale and overall response to the school and the rest
of the staff. Individual pupils also conduct themselves under the influence of
the groups to which they belong. Their achievements and attitudes are subject
to evaluation by the group, leading to support or ostracism, and they set their
standards according to those influences.
In many schools, the range of ages in any
class is about one year, and the narrow range makes for some uniformity of
subject-matter coverage. But in rural one- and two-teacher schools, groups of
children may be heterogeneous by age and ability, and the mode of teaching
has to cope with a number of smaller subunits moving along at different rates.
The teacher’s problem is to coordinate the work of those small, dissimilar
groups in such a way that all get attention. Creative free activity has to be
practiced by one group while another has more formal instruction from the
teacher.
The effect of “streaming,” or “tracking”—that is, selecting homogeneous groups by both age and intellectual ability—has promoted much inquiry. The
practice evokes extreme opinions, ardent support, and vociferous condemnation. The case for uniformity is
that putting pupils with their intellectual peers makes teaching more effective
and learning more acceptable. The case against it draws attention to its bad
effects on the morale of those children in the lower streams. That view
supports the heterogeneous class on the grounds that the strongest are not
overforced and the weakest gain from sharing with their abler fellows.
Experimental evidence on the problem is diverse.
The school community is housed in a physical complex, and the conditions of
classrooms, assembly places, and play areas and the existence (or nonexistence)
of libraries, laboratories, arts-and-crafts rooms, and workshops all
play their part in the effectiveness of the teaching-learning situation. Severe
restrictions may be caused by the absence of library and laboratory services.
The social forces immediately outside the
school community also influence the teaching situation. They emanate from home,
neighbourhood, and wider social groupings. Teaching is a compact among several
groups, including teachers, students, and parents, in the first place, with
youth organizations and civic and sometimes religious groups playing a
secondary role. The overall neighbourhood youth subculture also sets standards
and attitudes that teachers must take into account in their work.
General objectives of teaching
The classification of the general objectives
of teaching in terms of school subject matter is not sufficient to
explain the ultimate ends of education. They include, essentially,
the promotion of a well-integrated person capable of taking a responsible,
active role in society. With such a purpose in mind, one may achieve more
insight by choosing a psychological analysis of the objectives into the
attainment of intellectual abilities and social insights (cognition), the learning of practical active skills (psychomotor learning), and the development of emotions, attitudes, and values
(affective learning).
Cognitive growth begins at the level of the infant school, with the acquisition of early language and
numerical capabilities, and continues increasingly to dominate education to the
secondary and higher levels. But the learner is more than an enlarging
reservoir of information. With that acquisition goes a growing power to
generalize, abstract, infer, interpret, explain, apply, and create. Cognitive
training produces a thinker-observer aware of the modes of thought and judgment
making up human intellectual activity. In the final stages, the teacher aims at
a thinker, critic, organizer, and creator.
In the development of psychomotor learning, the teacher is concerned with the promotion
of coordinated skills and their creative use. Instruction begins with the acts
of handwriting and plastic art play, characteristic of earlier years of
schooling. It includes painting, games, workshop skills, and practical science. It has a high prestige value among the pupils themselves and the wider community.
The permeation of emotional learning throughout
the whole educative process is not always obvious, in part because very often
it is brought about incidentally. Teachers may be self-conscious and
self-critical about the deliberate inculcation of emotional responses, which
will provide the energy and a mainspring of social life. The acquisition and
application of values and attitudes are most marked by the time of adolescence and dominate the
general life of the young individual. Theoretical, aesthetic, social, economic, political, ethical, and sometimes religious values pervade the school
curriculum. Literature, art, the humanities, and sometimes religious
teaching are all directly involved, and the teaching of science and mathematics
can bring about a positive attitude toward cognitive and theoretical values.
An individual’s emotional structure is the
pattern of personal values and attitudes. Under the influence of instruction
and experience, that structure shows three kinds of change. First, pupils learn
to select those situations and problems to which they will make appropriate
emotional responses. Second, in general, an increasing range of situations
includes happenings more remote from the learner. At first, emotions are
aroused by situations directly affecting the child. As children become more
mature, they are increasingly involved in affairs and causes far removed from
their own personal lives. Third, their repertoire of emotional responses gradually becomes
less immediate, expressive, and linked with physical activity.
The general design of instruction
The scientific analysis of educative processes
has led to a more detailed examination of the total act of teaching, which is
intended to make the teacher more aware of all that is involved in a piece of
instruction.
Foreknowledge about students and
objectives
The complete act of teaching involves more
than the presentation and development of lesson material. Before they embark on
a fresh stage of instruction, teachers must be reasonably clear about two
things: (1) the capabilities, achievements, strengths and weaknesses,
background, and interests of their learners; and (2) the short- and long-term
objectives they hope to achieve in a lesson and series of lessons. Those
curricular strategies will have to be put into effect in the light of what is
known about the students and will result in the actual tactics of the
teaching-learning situation.
Educational psychologists give much attention to
diagnosing preinstructional achievements, particularly in the basic subjects of
language and number, and to measuring intellectual ability in the form of reasoning power. There has been
special emphasis on the idea of the student’s readiness at various ages to
grasp concepts of concrete and formal thought. Numerous agencies produce test
material for those purposes, and in many countries the idea has been widely
applied to selection for entry to secondary and higher schools; one of the
purposes of so-called leaving examinations is to grade students as to their
suitability for further stages of education. Teachers themselves, however, can
provide the most sensitive diagnoses and analyses of preinstructional capacity, and the existence
of so much published material in no way diminishes the effectiveness of their
responsibility.
The teaching-learning situation
In the actual instruction, a single lesson is
usually a part of a longer sequence covering months or more. Each lesson,
however, stands to some extent as a self-contained unit within a sequence. In
addition, each lesson itself is a complex of smaller teaching-learning-thinking
elements. The progress of a lesson may consist of a cycle of smaller units of
shorter duration, each consisting of instruction by the teacher and
construction by the learner—that is, alternating phases in which first the
activity of the teacher and then that of the learner predominates.
The lesson or syllabus proper is thus not to be narrowly conceived of as “chalk and
talk” instruction. It is better seen as a succession of periods of varying
length of instruction by the teacher and of discovery, construction, and problem solving by the pupil. Although the student’s own
curiosity, experience, and observation are important, so is the cyclic activity
of teacher and learner. The teacher selects, arranges, and partially predigests
the material to be learned, and that is what is meant by guiding the learner’s
discovery and construction activity. It is a role the teacher cannot abrogate, and, even in curricula revised to give learners greater
opportunity to discover for themselves, there is concealed a large degree of selecting and decision
making by
the teacher. That is what teaching is about.
Teachers must face the problem of how to
maintain curiosity and interest as the chief motivative forces behind the learning.
Sustained interest leads students to set themselves realistic standards of
achievement. Vital intrinsic motivation may sometimes be supplemented by extrinsic rewards
and standards originating from sources other than the students themselves, such
as examinations and outside incentives, but those latter are better regarded as
props to support the attention of learners and to augment their interest in the
subject matter.
Assessment of results
At the end of the lesson proper or of any
other unit or program of instruction, the teacher must assess its results
before moving to the next cycle of teaching events. Assuming the occurrence of
teaching-learning cycles of instruction-construction activity, it follows that
there is a built-in process of frequent assessment during the progress of any period of
teaching. The results of the small phases of the learner’s problem solving
provide at the same time both the assessment of past progress and the readiness
for further development.
Progress over longer intervals of learning can
be measured by more formal tests or examinations within the school or at local
administrative levels. Postinstructional assessment may have several purposes:
to discover when classes or year groups have reached some minimum level of
competence, to produce a measure of individual differences, or to diagnose
individual learning-thinking difficulties. A wide variety of assessment can be
used for this purpose, including the analysis of work produced in the course of
learning, continuous assessments by the teachers, essay-type
examinations, creative tasks, and objective tests. The content of the
assessment material may also vary widely, ranging from that which asks for
reproduction of learned material to that which evokes application,
generalization, and transfer to new problem situations.
The organization of instruction
Educational organization rests to some extent
on psychological views about learning, but explicitly it is
concerned with the grouping of pupils for educational experience and instruction.
Pupils in general are organized by age into
what are usually termed grades, classes, or forms. Each
school is also usually either comprehensive (containing students pursuing various
academic, commercial, and vocational curricula) or based on the so-called dual plan (containing only students pursuing a particular curriculum).
In some countries, the dual system is actually tripartite: there may be schools
for classical academic study, schools for technical or vocational study, and
schools for more generalized, “modern,” diversified study. Whether comprehensive or dual-plan, schools frequently have
some kind of streaming or multitracking whereby students are grouped according
to ability so that there are separate classes for the less able and the more
able.
Grading and streaming have recently come in
for much criticism. There is a rigidity in the two systems that causes some educators
uneasiness, particularly since total education is seen as more than achievement
in school subjects. Some countries, notably the United States, have made a
start in trying to solve this difficulty by introducing the nongraded
school, in which grades are abolished and students are placed individually in
“phases” for each subject, through which they progress at their own pace. A
similar solution has been to ungrade students for certain basic subjects, such
as mathematics and native language, but to have them rejoin their age peers for
other school activities. In such systems there is, nevertheless, a kind of
grading by intellectual ability, and egalitarians are apt still
to be suspicious of them. There is scarcely any clear evidence of the
effectiveness of the wholly nongraded system. It would seem probable that the
optimum organization may be to combine grading with nongrading. Although that
will involve constructing complex timetables, it will also offer the advantages
of other, more rigid systems without introducing too many of their
disadvantages. For one thing, retaining some grouping by age seems important as
a link to extramural activities, in which age peers tend spontaneously to come
together.
The modern interest in resources for learning
has led to the concepts of general-purpose classrooms, open-plan teaching,
and team teaching. The idea of general-purpose classrooms starts from the
assumption that the school curriculum can be divided into a few large areas of
allied intellectual interests, such as the humanities, languages, and sciences.
The total resources available for teaching in each of those areas, including
teachers, are then made available in one common teaching space, and ordinary
classroom and lesson-period divisions disappear, to be replaced by a real
mobility between teachers and learners as they make use of the different
resources available, including library and laboratory facilities and various
educational aids (see below Instructional media). In the infant and primary schools, similar
ideas are introduced in the open-plan system. At both the primary and the
secondary levels, however, there is insufficient evidence on the effectiveness
of the systems. The attitude and action of teachers remains the strongest
factor, and they may still require some privacy for their teaching.
Team
teaching represents
an attempt to make better use of every teacher’s potential in any subject area,
to create a flexible learning situation, and to make nonstreaming more
effective. For example, the normal class of 30 pupils with an individual
subject teacher is replaced by a larger group of pupils and a team of teachers,
who pool their efforts. Although the team plan may take several forms, it
generally assumes some variety of the following elements: (1) large-group
instruction, in which the total complement of some 50 to 150 students in the
program is periodically taught by one teacher (either the same teacher or
several teachers in rotation) in a lecture hall; (2) small-group instruction,
which alternates with large-group instruction so as to allow small numbers of
students and a member of the teaching team to discuss, report, and exchange
ideas; (3) independent study, whereby students are given individual projects or
library work; and (4) team planning sessions, in which, daily or weekly, the
teachers plan, coordinate, report on, and evaluate their programs. The presumed
benefits of team teaching are that it makes better use of each teacher’s
individual interests and strengths; that it avoids unnecessary replication,
particularly in such basic subjects as native literature, in which ordinarily
several classes led by different teachers cover the same ground; and that
teaching in front of one’s colleagues is a beneficial practice providing some evaluative
feedback. Also, it is said that the less able children do not feel so
segregated as in ordinary streamed classes; although they may gain little from
the large-group sessions and individual projects, they seem to make real
progress in the small seminar groups, without becoming overaware of their more
limited capabilities. The reasons for that are obscure. In any event, the most
obvious advantage of team teaching is its flexibility, in affording a great
variety of possible combinations of student groupings and of educational
resources. The major problem is that team teaching cannot be used in all
subject areas. Although it may be useful in such areas as the humanities and
the social sciences, its provision for lecture-size audiences does not aid the
teaching of such subjects as mathematics, in which there are too many
individual differences in ability. The same is true of arts and other subjects.
Furthermore, without expert leadership, seminars are apt to degenerate into
scenes of rather woolly discussions.
The grouping of children by ability, though
still practiced, remains a problem. Formal tests are used to separate students
according to their ability, and many people feel that separations by such means
are neither reliable nor socially desirable. Even with regard to separating
the intellectually disabled, there is growing opinion that, wherever
possible, such children should be given basic instruction in special centres
and remedial classes in schools for normal children. Disabled and normal
children would thereby share much of their education. Separation of the sexes
has also declined in most countries, as the mixing of girls and boys has come
to be recognized as healthy and socializing.
Instructional media
In general, instructional media are seen by
educators as aids rather than substitutions for the teacher. Teachers spend a disproportionate
amount of their time in routine chores—in collecting and assigning books and
materials and in marking, or grading—that could be partly obviated if aids could be so constructed as to free them to
concentrate on the central job of promoting understanding, intellectual curiosity, and creative activity in the
learner.
With in-person lectures and with audiovisual
recordings, teachers are able to set out their material as they think best, but
usually the audience reception is weakly passive since there is not much
opportunity for a two-way communication of ideas. Furthermore,
in lectures, much of the students’ energies may be taken up with note writing,
which inhibits thinking about the material. Recordings enable one to store
lecture material and to use it on occasions when a teacher is not available,
but they are rather detached for young learners and seem to evoke better
results with older students.
Language laboratories are study rooms equipped
with electronic sound-reproduction devices, enabling students to hear model
pronunciations of foreign languages and to record and hear their own voices as
they engage in pattern drills. Such laboratories are effective modes of operant
learning, and, after a minimum vocabulary and syntax have been established,
the learning can be converted into a stimulating form of problem solving.
Visual and observational media
Useful visual materials include objects and
models, diagrams, charts, graphs, cartoons, and posters; maps, globes, and sand
tables for illustrating topographical items; pictures, slides, videos, motion
pictures, and television. Facilities include blackboards, bulletin boards,
display cases, and museums. Such activities as field trips and the use of
visiting authorities (usually called resource people) are considered part of
visual and observational programs, and even demonstrations, dramatizations,
experiments, and creative activities are usually included.
In general, pictures and diagrams, fieldwork,
and contrived experiments and observations are all used as concrete leads to
the generalizing, abstracting, and explaining that constitutes human learning. To fulfil that function,
however, their use must be accompanied by interpretation by an adult mind.
The teacher must offer careful elaboration and
discussion, for children’s and adolescents’ powers to interpret and infer often
go astray and thus must be carefully guided. Visual material by itself may even
be a hindrance; a scattering of pretty pictures through a history text, for
example, does not necessarily produce a better understanding of history.
Similar difficulties are inherent in fieldwork—geographical, biological,
archaeological, and geological. What is observed rarely gives the whole story
and, in the case of archaeological and geological fieldwork, provides an
incomplete picture of the past. Teachers must fill in the gaps or somehow lead
their students to do so.
Reading-writing media
Reading and writing have formed the staple
of traditional education. Both assume sophisticated language attainments and the capacity
to think formally and respond to another mind, for a textbook is essentially a
mode of communication between a remote teacher and a reader. The material in a
textbook is a sample of a subject area, simplified to a level suitable for the
reader. Because the sampling in both the text and the exercise might be
haphazard, and there can be no feedback to the writer, the teacher has to take
on the writer’s responsibilities.
Programmed learning is a form of reading and writing. The
most basic form of programmed instruction—called linear programming—analyzes a subject into its component parts
and arranges the parts in sequential learning order. At each step in their
reading, students are required to make a response and are told immediately
whether or not the response is correct. The program is usually structured so
that right answers are apt to be extremely frequent (perhaps 95 percent of the
time)—in order to encourage students, so the theory goes, and give them a
feeling of success. In another kind of programmed instruction—called branching programming—students are given a piece of information,
provided with alternative answers to questions, and, on the basis
of their decision, detoured, if necessary, to remedial study or sent on to the next section of the program. The two
types of program differ fundamentally in their attitudes toward errors and the
use of them. The brancher uses them to further the learning; the linearist
avoids them. The chief value of programmed instruction in general is that it
allows students to learn at their own pace, without much teacher supervision.
Its chief defect is that it can quickly become dull and mechanical for the
student.
Computer-based instruction
Computers have great usefulness in the
classroom. They can give instruction to students, call for responses, feed back
the results, and modify students’ further learning accordingly. Computers can
also be used to measure each student’s attainments, compare them with past
performances, and then advise teachers on what parts of the curriculum they
should follow next.
In a fully computer-assisted instruction program, the computer
takes over from the teacher in providing the learner with drill, practice, and
revision, as well as testing and diagnosis. The form of the teaching may be simply linear
or branching, or it can be extended to thinking and problem solving by
simulation.
Teaching Theories:
Traditional theories
The earliest mental-discipline theories
of teaching were based on a premise that the main justification for teaching anything is not for
itself but for what it trains—intelligence, attitudes, and values. By choosing the right
material and by emphasizing rote methods of learning, according to that theory,
one disciplines the mind and produces a better
intellect.
In Greco-Roman antiquity, the ideal product
of education was held to be a citizen trained in the disciplined study of a restricted number of subjects—grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. The mode of learning was
based on imitation and memorizing, and there was heavy emphasis on the intellectual authority of the teacher. In later
centuries, it was further taken for granted that the study of Greco-Roman
literature and philosophy would have a liberalizing effect on the student.
In the hands of the Renaissance Dutch
philosopher Erasmus and the Jesuits, that method of instruction
took more sensitive account of the psychological characteristics of young
learners. Understanding had to precede learning, and, according
to the Jesuits, the teacher’s first task was careful preparation of the
material to be taught (the prelection). But even with that greater awareness of
the learner’s needs, the concept of mental discipline still underlay the whole process of
instruction. Present-day critics of the classical-humanistic approach would
challenge the alleged power of mental discipline and the rather exclusive value of Greco-Roman thought.
The theory of learning involving mental
discipline is more commonly associated with the “faculty psychology” of Aristotle, by which the mind is understood to be
composed of a number of faculties, each of which is considered to be relatively
independent of the others. The principle had its origin in a theory that
classified mental and spiritual life in terms of functions of the soul: knowing, feeling, hungering, reasoning, and doing. From the Middle Ages to the early 19th
century, the number of recognized faculties grew and included those of
judgment, duty, perception, and conception. Since those were associated with certain
parts of the cranium by the phrenologists, it was a natural step to
assume that learning would consist of the exercise of these “parts,” or mental
capabilities (though the education of the senses also had a role, in initiating
the rational cognitive processes). Certain school subjects were thought to have
particular value as agents for exercising certain faculties. Geometry trained
the faculty of reason, and history trained the memory. School subjects came to be valuable as much for what faculties
they trained as for their own intrinsic worth. Such was the learning theory of formal discipline.
Psychological faculties, used as categories, no
doubt influenced the study of so-called mental factors. When different
cognitive tests are given and the results compared, similarities are found
among all the tests and among smaller groups of them. The bases for the
similarities are identified as mental factors, including the ideas of
intelligence, reasoning, memory, verbal ability, number capacity, and spatial
intelligence. The existence of common mental factors underlying different
school subjects would support the idea of formal discipline and would lead to
the notion of transfer of training, by which exercise in one school subject
leads to improvements in learning of another. The transferred elements could be
common facts, learning habits, methods of thinking, attitudes, and values.
Although much empirical research has been done on transfer of learning, it has
yielded mixed results. Some workers hold that transfer has been possible only
insofar as there have been identical elements, and even those who claim a
transfer of methods generally insist that transfer has little chance of success
unless it is actively explained and applied. Learners have to apply methods
consciously to the new field in order to succeed. The opposing view would be
that each subject is unique and requires its own mode of thought. A more
realistic view may be intermediate—namely, that there is both a common and a
specific element in each intellectual field, that mental discipline or transfer
of training is to some degree possible but only insofar as the similarities and analogies are utilized, that the process is deliberate, and that a
residue of specific subject matter remains in each field, which requires
specific learning.
Naturalistic theories
A few educational theorists view the education
of the child as an unfolding process. The child develops inevitably as a
product of nature, and the main function of the teacher is to provide the
optimum conditions for that development. That view leads to the theory that the
child’s experience is the essential thing. A Swiss educator, J.H. Pestalozzi, was a leading theorist in that field, and
his practical schemes were designed to provide the most appropriate experience
for the child’s development. In a sense, the modern revival of the
potency of experience is an acknowledgement of the developmental element in
learning.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau also started from the assumption that
humans conform to nature. Since, more than Pestalozzi, he assumed the certainty
of a spontaneous development of powers and faculties, he urged that any form of
constraint was to be avoided. Thus, it has been held that he saw humans as
noble savages growing in isolation in a state of nature. But nature also means a social life. The
consequences of Rousseau’s basic view have been (1) a reduced emphasis on
knowing and greater emphasis on acting and doing, (2) a promotion of positive
interests in learning, and (3) an encouragement of children to depend on their
own resources. In their purest form, naturalistic theories are clearly
inadequate in the modern world of technology, but their emphasis on spontaneous
child activity, as opposed to excessive formal instruction, is a valuable
component of the educational process.
Apperception theories
Another theory assumed that human learning
consisted essentially of building up associations between different ideas and experiences;
the mind, in accordance with the ideas of the 17th-century English
philosopher John Locke, was assumed to be at first
devoid of ideas. The 19th-century German philosopher Johann Herbart made an important contribution by
providing a mental mechanism that determined which ideas would become conscious and which would be
left in the subconscious, to be called upon if circumstances warranted
it. Such was the mechanism of apperception, by which new ideas became
associated with existing ideas to form a matrix of associated ideas called the
apperception mass. New ideas were thus assimilated to the old. A Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, argued that such
assimilation was not enough, that accommodation of the established ideas to the
new experiences was also required.
In any event, ideas such as Herbart’s were
translated into a sequence of steps presumed to be required to carry out a
lesson:
1. Preparation, whereby the teacher starts the
lesson with something already known to the class
2. Presentation, introducing new material
3. Association, whereby the new is compared
with the old and connected (the stage of apperception)
4. Generalization, whereby the teacher
presents other instances of the new idea
5. Application, whereby the ideas are applied
to further material, carried out by the child individually (a problem-solving
phase)
Although these five steps give the teacher a
clear role, they constitute a form of intellectual dominance and
could lead to stereotyped lessons restricting the spontaneous
creative learning by the pupil. Contemporary curricular revisions, on the
contrary, aim at promoting pupil activity.
Conditioning and behaviourist theories
In the act of classical
conditioning,
the learner comes to respond to stimuli other than the one originally calling for the response (as
when dogs are taught to salivate at the sound of a bell). One says in such a
situation that a new stimulus is learned. In the human situation, learning to recognize the name
of an object or a foreign word constitutes a simple instance of stimulus learning.
Such an event is called sign learning, because, in knowing the sign for
something, people to some extent make a response to the sign similar to that
which they would make to the object itself. Learning new vocabularies, new
terms and conventions, or algebraic and chemical symbols all involve some degree of classical conditioning. It is thought probable that one
trains the emotions in the same way, for people may learn to feel pleasure not
only when they meet the original situation causing the pleasure but also when
they see some wider context associated with it. That idea is important in school teaching and helps in a general
way to explain children’s positive and negative feelings toward school, feelings
that may have arisen originally from difficulties in learning specific school
subjects.
Operant, or instrumental, conditioning is so called because, in making
their responses, learners provide the instrument by which a problem is solved.
Such learning is more important to schoolwork, for teachers are concerned
ultimately with drawing forth new responses from their students. Learning is
active, and, after the early acquisition of vocabulary, terminology, and rules
(by stimulus learning), the learner must use this material in problem-solving
responses. By reinforcement (e.g., a reward), both
sorts of learning can be combined.
Conditioning theories are not wholly adequate
to explain school learning, since the learner is not simply a responder.
Intervening between the stimulus and the response is the learners’ total
conscious structure, made up of the results of experience, previous teaching,
attitudes, and their own capacity to comment upon and edit their own responses.
Simple reinforcement is also inadequate in that the stimulus and the response
are not linked in an exclusive one-to-one basis. Several stimuli may evoke a single
response, and several responses may be made to a particular stimulus. Those
form the behavioral bases for the formation of concepts and transfer effects
from one topic to another. The two basic modes of stimulus-response learning
provide a ground analysis of school learning, but the complexity of academic
achievement calls for much elaboration on the simple model.
Cognitive theories
Cognitive theories are appropriate to the school situation, for they
are concerned with knowing and thinking. They assume that perceiving and doing,
shown in manipulation and play, precede the capacity to symbolize, which in
turn prepares for comprehensive understanding. Although the sequence of
motor-perceptual experience followed by symbolic representation has been
advocated for a long time, Piaget offered the first penetrating account of that
kind of intellectual growth. His views have exercised great
influence on educators.
Cognitive theories of learning also assume
that the complete act of thought follows a fairly common sequence, as follows:
arousal of intellectual interest; preliminary exploration of the problem;
formulation of ideas, explanations, or hypotheses; selection of appropriate
ideas; and verification of their suitability.
Teaching based on cognitive theories of
learning recognizes, first, the growth in quality of intellectual activity and
capitalizes on that knowledge by organizing instruction to anticipate the next
stage in development but not await it; otherwise there would be no instruction.
That is, instruction should pace development but not outstrip it. Second, it
seeks to tune the learning situation to the sequences of the complete act of
thought and to arrange, simplify, and organize the subject matter accordingly.
Some educators emphasize strongly the arousal phase; in many modern science curricula there is,
thus, the idea of inquiry training, which tries to arouse in the child a
spontaneous rather than a directed interest. Other educators are concerned more
with the middle intellectual phases of the thinking sequence—especially the
playing with hypotheses or hunches and the working with
organizing ideas and concepts.
Once started, the motivation of cognitive
learning depends less on notions of reinforcement and more on standards of
intellectual achievement generated by learners themselves. Accordingly,
learners may begin to have aspirations and to set themselves future standards
that are influenced by their past performances and those of their fellows.
Maturation and readiness theories
Readiness theories of learning lean heavily on
the concept of maturation in stages of biological and mental development. It is
assumed that a child passes through all stages of development in reaching
maturity. The teacher finds out what a child is ready for and then devises
appropriate materials and methods. Much of the work on reading skills, for instance, makes use of the readiness concept. The
Italian educator Maria Montessori claimed that “periods
of sensitivity,” corresponding to certain ages, exist when a child’s
interest and mental capacity are best suited to acquiring knowledge of such
things as textures and colours, tidiness, and language.
Insofar as Piaget offered a learning theory, it was based on the idea of readiness. But
his approach to development does not overemphasize maturation and readiness,
for he pointed out that, after the first few months of life, maturation is
marginal in its effects, whereas experience is essential. Development through
different intellectual phases, he believed, is necessarily coincident with
relevant active experience; readiness is actively promoted, not passively
entered, and the teacher must endeavour to be a step ahead of any particular
level of readiness.
Structural theories
The second half of the 20th century saw a
revival of the concept of the structured wholeness of experience, which Gestalt psychologists had first introduced early in the
century. The whole of experience, in that view, is more than the sum of its
parts. In educational terms, a new experience—such as a new historical text, an
exposition in science, or a problem rider in geometry—begins by seeming
relatively formless and unstructured. Learners, who do not yet know their way
about the material, begin by seizing upon what appears to them to be important
features or figures. They then reformulate the experience in those new terms.
The insight gradually becomes more and more structured until finally they reach
an understanding or a solution to the problem. It may be that, in all those
processes, learners may try anything they can think of, usually in a haphazard
way.
Piaget improved upon Gestalt notions by suggesting a thought structure of a more adaptable
nature—one that becomes more differentiated and intuitive with experience. He listed
three psychological properties of a structure: wholeness, relationship between
parts, and the principle of homeostasis, whereby a mental structure adjusts itself to
new experience by assimilation and accommodation. That kind of structuralism
found quite independent advocates in other fields. In language, for example, an
American, Noam Chomsky, believes that there are innate language
structures in the young individual, just as Piaget insists that there are
thought structures.
A belief in the structural nature of
experience would conceive of the teacher as an encourager, example provider,
coanalyzer, and cobuilder of mental structures that originate in the learner in
a relatively undifferentiated state. Learners are assumed to be active in
forming structures and to be making the best they can of the situation they are
experiencing. The teacher’s task is to help and moderate this process of the
learners’ active construction. That notion works easily and well with able
children but entails careful selection with less able students.
Others have also stressed the structural
nature of advanced cognitive learning. Each area of human knowledge, in that
view, is said to have its own unique structure composed of its concepts and
their relationships and its own basic modes of progress. It is suggested that
teaching a school subject should not lead to too much tampering with the inherent structural order of the subject but should follow the
structure and lines of development of the subject itself. Teaching should not
be contrived and artificial. Thus, economics should be taught as an
economist views it or physics as a physicist views it or language as a linguist views it.
Although such ideas are generally attractive, they have not been widely
translated with any success into actual school practice.
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