Blogging on the Brain

Well, I think I may have found a new role model in Maxine Greene. Seriously, what a lady. Born in 1917, Greene managed to get  a BA in American history and philosophy in 1938 (not super common for women back then), and went on to get a masters, then PhD in the male-dominated field of educational psychology from NYU in 1955. Among other things, she was the first female president of the Philosophy of Education Society, and the first woman to preside over the American Educational Research Association. She has taught social philosophy, philosophy and history of education, literature, writing, and aesthetics. She now heads the Maxine Greene Foundation to support the arts and education.

Of the many, many ideas and philosophies Dr. Greene has developed in her career, I’d like to focus on just two. These are the two that struck me most as I read about her, so please don’t consider this in any way a thorough account of her work.

The first idea that I loved was that of one of her books, Teacher as Stranger (1973). The main idea, according to Greene is to “suggest that the stranger’s vision brought a kind of acuity unlikely to be found in a person whose vision was dulled by familiarity. In effect, I was asking the teacher to take the view of the critical onlooker, someone attentive to inequities, false pieties, groundless promises.” Basically, she challenged teachers to continually question the material they taught, and to keep themselves from becoming dulled to the information they imparted. I love this idea, that we as teachers should remain almost uncomfortable with the material in order to always look at it critically and with fresh eyes.

This leads me to the second idea that I loved – the role of the teacher in cultivating what Greene calls “wide-awakeness” in students. Part of our job is to teach our students that the possibility of learning is everywhere and that we have only to engage fully in the world and in our interactions with others to start seeing it. I only hope that I can someday cultivate that in my students!

So in an effort to get back into the habit of blogging more (which I have clearly been failing at), I’ve decided to reinstate the 50 Modern Thinkers series, or at least throw a few in now and then. These help me in that the book offers lovely, discrete (-ish) little nuggets of information, then I tell you what I think about them. Sometimes that seems a lot easier to me than organizing my thoughts about some abstract concept (like “education,” or “science”). I know I also need to do more of that really challenging thinking, but in the meantime, I figure reading about other people’s thoughts might do me some good…and keep me blogging!

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Over the span of his career, Donald Campbell contributed to many fields, including social psychology and experimental methods, for which he is best known. Among other things, he often spoke out about the over-confidence and elitism of those in academia, and particularly those in the sciences.  He held strongly to the belief that scientists shouldn’t be proclaiming universal truths, but conservatively suggesting possible explanations for a particular data set. There’s a great quote in his profile about what happens when you get over-confident scientists and over-zealous politicians on the same side of an issue:

Government asks what to do, and scholars answer with assurance, quite out of keeping with the scientific status of their fields. In the process, the scholar-advisors too (along with the politicians), fall into the over-advocacy trap. Certainly the idea that one already knows precludes finding out how valid one’s theories are.

He was often critical of his own field of social science, feeling that more often than not, social scientists set out to validate their own theories, rather than let the data guide them to new theories that might be socially useful. In one of his attempts to follow his own advice, he set out to conduct a study on prejudice and social attitudes (in the 1960’s). With his usual precision, he set out with a great team of statisticians and research associates, and this is what he said about the experience:

We were a high morale team, working on the best integration of theory and data collection I have ever achieved, with an extreme enough sample size to be definitive.

The results were crushingly negative and threw me, at least, into a temporary depression. Our research write-up began ‘This thorough, tedious, expensive, and disappointing study…

Despite feeling pretty bad for the guy, I was actually comforted to know that “grown up” scientists feel this way too. There’s just nothing worse than putting everything into a project only to get nothing out of it. Apparently Campbell had quite a few periods of depression throughout his career, particularly at times when he couldn’t keep up with all his commitments (of which there were many), but he was able to maintain an overall optimistic outlook.

He also felt strongly about the role of government in education, saying tests “that have been valid for describing the state of society become invalid when they start being used for political decision making…Thus, achievement tests once valid for describing educational status have become less valid when used as the basis of rewards to students or teachers.” This is certainly a hot topic in education today, and from what I’ve gathered from almost everyone I’ve spoken with about it is that standardized/state required testing is (one of the things) killing the public school system in the US. I would certainly say that’s the case, but don’t listen to me – you’re much better off taking Campbell’s word for it.

Torsten Husen, a Swedish psychologist and educator, was at the forefront of some of the most comprehensive educational research of the 20th century. He was apparently interested (and educated) in interdisciplinarity, and seems to have always had several proverbial balls in the air.

He was interested in the nature/nurture debate, curriculum design, orthography, philosophy, and many other areas. Not only was he interested in all these things, but he seemed able to draw from them simultaneously in response to any given problem or inquiry. He was able to empirically test many of his theories of education (conducted a large twin study to investigate IQ, etc. in the nature/nurture debate; conducted one of the longest longitudinal studies ever to test educational ability over time) thanks to his background in psychology.

One of his most lasting legacies was heading up the Association for the Evaluation of Educational Acheivement – on organization dedicated to measuring and increasing international scholastic productivity. In his time there, he instilled his knack for empirical testing, leading to some of the largest studies they have ever conducted.

Despite all of his achievements, the thing that  struck me most about Husenwas his work ethic, which was more than commendable. He lived by the phrase “nulla dies sine linea,” or “no day without a line,” which is why – when he passed away just this last July – he left us over 55 books and 1500 articles of his thoughts. Quite the legacy.

I’m a little nervous about writing about Jerome Bruner – he’s kind of a big deal I know a lot of people who are very familiar with his works and have very high opinions of him, and honestly, this is my first real exposure other than a comment or two in passing – so please bear with me!

Obviously there’s a lot I could write about here, but I think I just want to focus on one of his ideas, that of a “spiral curriculum.” The idea as I understand it is that any subject can be taught, at least in some degree, to children of any age. The subject will then be revisited later (spiral back around) when the child can grasp more of it. What an interesting idea. We use this sort of concept in the “traditional” disciplines (math, reading, etc.), but why not start teaching neuroscience in grade school? Certainly the electrophysiological stuff would be a little intense, but why not introduce just the idea of the brain? Or what about teaching psychology? Or philosophy? Those aren’t traditionally offered until college – but why not?

I like the idea that the spiral curriculum would expose children to different ideas and disciplines early enough that (1) they could figure out what they like/don’t like and maybe avoid changing majors 17 times in college, and (2) just like learning a musical instrument or dance, think of how much farther along these kids could be by the time they hit high school or college! Not to mention we could maybe do away with all those Intro to X classes everybody hates (to take and teach) so much.

Like I said, there’s obviously a lot more to talk about with Bruner, but I’m still a bit intimidated. I’d love to hear what others like about him too!

Talk about a guy who knew about running a University – Clark Kerr served as the president of the University of California system for nine years, during which he established three additional campuses (the highest rate of expansion it’s seen). In addition to running UC, Kerr had a lot of ideas that trickled into his leadership regarding what the purpose of higher education was, and how best to deliver it to students. He helped develop the “California Master Plan” which was signed into law in 1960. The Plan outlined how the University, the State College, and the Junior Colleges would work together to provide appropriate education for all who wanted it. There were four principles:

1. Create specific hierarchical roles for each of the three tiers

2. To have different admission standards for the different tiers

3. To provide education at all levels of ability/intelligence

4. To make sure no student was ever turned away for lack of funds.

Obviously this made a big impact on the UC system as well as many others who looked to UC as a role model. As far as the purpose of the university, the profile on Kerr opens with a great quote, which I think I will use to end:

The basic reality, for the university, is the widespread recognition that new knowledge is the most important factor in economic and social growth. We are just now perceiving that the university’s invisible product, knowledge, may be the most powerful single element in our culture, affecting the rise and fall of professions and even of social classes, of regions and even of nations.

According to Simone Weil, the real goal of education was the development of the capacity for attention. Her definition of attention:

Attention consists of suspending out thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired…

I though this was an interesting spin on the goal of education. When you think about it, the capacity to really pay attention and focus may be a lot of what education requires. Once you have the capacity to do that, you have, really, the most important tool necessary for learning. I know as a graduate student, one of the most important things I’ve learned is how to teach myself. I’m fully aware that I don’t know everything (in fact I feel like I know very little) about neuroscience, but I’m slowly gaining confidence that even if I don’t know the details on something, I have the ability to find that information, read it, and understand it.

So maybe this is one of the goals of education – to equip students with the tools they need to be lifetime learners.

Joseph Schwab was apparently one of the most diligent curriculum theorists the US has known in the recent past. He seems to have been quite a bit more perfunctory about content than a lot of the other people I’ve been reading about – and I can’t decide if I like that or not.

I got the impression that Schwab thinks that the way to design curriculum is to ask what knowledge/skills students will need to function in any given culture or environment, which seems like a perfectly logical idea…at firs. The problem, however, seems to be that he assumes he (or perhaps a group of experts) either know or could figure out what students would need to know. Do the need to know about art history? Well, probably not if you’re just going for basic function, but what about becoming an interesting, well-rounded person? What about what art might mean for the society, etc.? I think Schwab is right in saying it’s a good question to ask, it’s probably just not the only one we should consider.

One of the other things I found interesting about Schwab (and again, I can’t really tell if I like it or not) was that when he talked about finding the right curriculum or figuring out what “works,” he always talked about it in the context of what was right for the particular class – or even student – he had at that time. He didn’t assume that there was one right way of doing things, but that the curriculum should be tailored to the specific needs of a particular group of people. I would think we should be able to pick out some things that are universally beneficial to teach (oh, say, multiplication), but I don’t know how this individualization of content would look or if it would be feasible today.

Today we have another trained philosopher – Harry Broudy. One of his main contributions to education was the idea that all students should be educated in the arts (not just the ones that are good at it/interested in it). He said that the education of the imagination through the arts would give students an interpretive lens through which they could look at things different ways and broaden their comprehension.

He also asserted that the arts, like the humanities, should function to teach students about beauty and creativity and to take some of the ugliness out of the world. This should, Broudy believed, help them along the road to the realization of selfhood, which is what he thought the aim of education should be. Generally, I like this idea. I’m glad that I had to take an art history class in college, and I took photography as an elective. I think it always helps to broaden our knowledge, whether in the arts or humanities or (if you are in the arts or humanities) the hard sciences. I’m becoming a big believer in the benefits of well-rounded education in the production of well-rounded people.

“As I began to trust students…I changed from being a teacher and evaluator, to being a facilitator of learning.”

-Carl Rogers

Most well known for his contributions to clinical psychology (client-centered and non-directive therapy), Rogers also made several important contributions to education. The idea of his that I think I liked the most was that for true learning to occur, there needs to be an integration of cognition and emotion (an idea that’s actually really taking hold these days).

He thought the role of the teacher was, of course, to facilitate learning, but also to encourage healthy development. This would require the teacher to have a general positive regard toward the student, as well as empathy and genuineness. Unlike Freudian theorists and behaviorists, Rogers actually had a positive view of human nature and believed that with the right developmental environment, people could become, well, good: independent yet connected and confident of themselves yet flexible in their beliefs. He believed teachers were an integral part of this healthy development, which I think we certainly can be.

Benjamin Bloom was an American educator and psychologist who, among other things, came up with the fascinating idea of Mastery Learning. He had long been interested in the individual differences between students, and what the cause of those differences was. He determined that there weren’t really poor students and good students, but that nearly all of the differences in achievement could be abolished by giving individual students the time and specific instruction they required.

Bloom asserted that there were three main principles to be considered which together accounted for 90% or more of the variance seen in achievement:

1. “Cognitive entry behavior,” which essentially refers to the competence of the student upon beginning a new task/subject/etc. By taking this into account and adjusting the curriculum, Bloom said this step alone could account for 50% of variation
2. “Affective entry behavior,” refers to the confidence and attitude of the student. Again, by altering the teaching a little – avoiding initial failure, starting with easier material, etc. – and by doing this, increase motivation, this could account for up to another 25% of variation.
3. Lastly, Bloom said the instruction should be tailored to the individual student as far as teaching style, encouragement, etc. This should cover up to another 25% of variance.

So, I thought this was a pretty interesting idea. I’m just not sure if it’s true. Even if it is, is there a way that we can apply it? If we can, should we? If you’re talking about intelligence versus achievement, this could perhaps level the achievements, but it wouldn’t change the baseline intelligence of the individuals, right? Part of being more intelligent means you learn things faster. Exams are timed because those who know the material better can finish, those who don’t know it as well won’t. So while I’m interested in the basic idea, I can’t see it actually being employed on a large scale, it would be a logistical impossibility to personalize curriculum for every student. Interesting to think about nonetheless.

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