Here is the second of two article critiques done as part of my George Mason University FAST TRAIN course work this summer. The article that I examine here makes explicit reference to the first article I reviewed, and stands in direct opposition to it, seeming to show that a hands-on constructivist approach to learning is decidedly more effective than a "direct instruction" approach. But I found that the research behind this second article seems to be just as skewed as the first, albeit in the opposite direction, in order to come to an opposite conclusion.
* * * * * * *
Article Critique on
Direct Instruction vs. Discovery: The Long View
by David Dean, Jr. and Deanna Kuhn
As I reported in my last article review, I was disappointed to find that the research of Klahr and Nigam, published in Psychological Science in 2004, seemed to be intentionally set up from the beginning to assure that the end result would definitely be declared a victory of good old-fashioned direct instruction against new-fangled constructivism. The authors apparently went to considerable effort to produce the study, but did not think it important to familiarize themselves in even a cursory way with the basic tenets of the branch of constructivism they were claiming to test in comparison to direct instruction. Their self-professed ignorance of the branch of constructivism known as “discovery learning” assured that their resulting article would be of no use to any thinking classroom teacher (Klahr and Nigam, 2004). So I was heartened to find a follow-up study done by another team in 2006 which, in its abstract, seemed to promise to correct some of the failings of objectivity of the previous work.
Hoping to find a more intellectually honest and balanced study contrasting traditional direct instruction teaching with newer constructivist methodologies, I instead found documentation of yet another elaborate round of research which seems to have been intentionally skewed to make a preordained point, this time in favor of the constructivist method. As with the earlier study, this one focused on teaching students the “control of variables strategy” (CVS), i.e., to choose only one independent variable and keep all others constant when constructing and performing an experiment. Dean and Kuhn claimed that they were rigorously adhering to the basic setup of the earlier study, with the most significant difference being that they would be conducting the new study over a longer time frame.
The detailed description of the conditions of the study show, however, that the cards were decidedly stacked against the group of students that were purely undergoing direct instruction. The direct instruction students were given only a single 45 minute lesson which included 10 minutes of direct instruction on the topic of CVS, while another group of students (called the “practice” group) was given a slightly shorter introductory lesson followed by 12 sessions over 10 weeks of working with experiment-emulating computer software which repeatedly led them through exercises in which they were encouraged to choose a single variable to construct a virtual experiment. Unsurprisingly, when both groups were given the same assessment at the 11 week point, the group that had been practicing with the concepts for 10 weeks significantly outperformed the group that had been given the single “direct instruction” lesson, with no follow-up, 11 weeks earlier (Dean and Kuhn, 2006).
At this point in my new teaching career, my training and my natural inclinations lead me to lean in favor of applying constructivist methods in many situations. However, I am not an ideologue in this regard, and I am a firm believer that many different teaching techniques, include those involving direct instruction and other traditional teaching methods, could certainly be fruitfully put to use in a number of contexts. As a person who is open to a broad range of ideas, I long for comparative studies that are constructed so as to honestly put all methods compared in the best possible light, to give each a fighting chance to show what its strengths might be. A greatly improved future study comparing direct instruction with a constructivist-oriented approach might involve competent teachers in the construction of the study’s parameters, with proponents of both teaching philosophies represented. By involving a balanced mix of others, researchers might be able to bottle up their own predispositions and establish an air of reason and objectivity so desperately missing from both of these competing studies.
References
Dean, D., & Kuhn, D. (2006, December). Direct Instruction vs. Discovery: The Long View. Wiley Interscience Journal. Retrieved June 25, 2009 from http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/113512640/PDFSTART
Klahr, D., & Nigam, M. (2004, October). The equivalence of learning paths in early science instruction: Effects of direct instruction and discovery learning. Psychological Science, 15(10), 661-667. Retrieved June 25, 2009, doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00737.x
Showing posts with label constructivism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label constructivism. Show all posts
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Critique of rather questionable "research" (1 of 2)
The following is a brief article critique that I wrote up as part of my summer course work in the George Mason University FAST TRAIN program. The article that I review here (and a second that I review in a soon-to-be-added additional blog posting) seems to me unfortunately representative of a noticeable collection of social science and educational "research" that seems skewed in order to come to preordained conclusions.
* * * * *
Article Critique on:
The Equivalence of Learning Paths in Early Science Instruction: Effects of Direct Instruction and Discovery Learning
by David Klahr and Milena Nigam
One of our in-class readings, “Instruction versus exploration in science learning”, by Rachel Adelson (2004), raised considerably more questions than it answered. The article's main thrust was to summarize a slightly longer article published in the journal, Psychological Science, in the fall of 2004. The original article, the work of two psychology professors, David Klahr and Milena Nigam (2004), purportedly did a clinical comparison of “discovery learning” and “direct instruction” and found that the former was much less effective than the latter for teaching crucial science process skills to third and fourth graders. However, Adelson's summary article left the reader wondering whether the researchers had a fundamental understanding of what “discovery learning” actually is. On the other hand, perhaps Adelson had completely mischaracterized the content and intent of the original Klahr and Nigam article. I decided that the only way to strip away some of the ambiguity was to get my hands on the original Klahr and Nigam text.
My main question, “Did Klahr and Nigam have an understanding of what 'discovery learning' is?” was answered in a surprisingly clear way near the beginning of their article: “... at the outset, we faced a difficult definitional problem because nearly 100 years of research had yet to produce a consistent definition of discovery learning.” (Klahr and Nigam, 2004) The only work that they cite in their article as the basis of their knowledge of discovery learning is a work written by W.A. Winch in 1913, forty-seven years before the concept of “discovery learning” was first proposed by Jerome Bruner (1961). The researchers make no attempt to explain why they did not aggressively seek out a more current working definition for “discovery learning”, but instead stake out their acknowledged position of ignorance as justification for pushing their experiment to the furthest possible extremes:
The fact that the researchers are so open about their premeditated skewing of the conditions of their experiment immediately absolves them of any hint of malpractice. If we also presume away incompetence on their part and on the part of the journal that accepted and published their article, then we are left with little alternative but to question the motives of all those involved, none of whom (notably) appear to be professional educators. Why did the researchers openly create their own caricature version of a rather obscure flavor of constructivism to place in comparison to their version of “direct instruction”? It is not clear to me whether there actually are any present-day proponents of discovery learning as originally espoused by Bruner (1961), which makes it even more unclear why it was chosen for this study. Ultimately, it seems most likely that what has here been labeled “discovery learning” simply serves as a convenient straw man taken up by the researchers to stand in for constructivism in general. By openly “cooking the books”, the researchers ensured that the crude stand-in for a constructivist method would not merely fail, but fail miserably.
I for one would be very interested in a study which genuinely attempts an effective comparison of one or more aspects of constructivist teaching with alternative methods. For beginning teachers like me, the jury is still (and perhaps shall always remain) out, and we are open to a broad range of ideas, thoughtfully presented. But a study like this, in which the outcome is openly preordained, serves as nothing but a case study of how not to do empirical educational research.
References
Adelson, R. (2004, June). Instruction versus exploration in science learning. Monitor on Psychology, 35(6). Retrieved June 25, 2009 from: http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun04/instruct.html
Bruner, J. (1961). The Act of Discovery. Harvard Educational Review, 31(1), 21-32. Retrieved June 27, 2009, from Education Research Complete database.
Klahr, D., & Nigam, M. (2004, October). The equivalence of learning paths in early science instruction: Effects of direct instruction and discovery learning. Psychological Science, 15(10), 661-667. Retrieved June 25, 2009, doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00737.x
* * * * *
Article Critique on:
The Equivalence of Learning Paths in Early Science Instruction: Effects of Direct Instruction and Discovery Learning
by David Klahr and Milena Nigam
One of our in-class readings, “Instruction versus exploration in science learning”, by Rachel Adelson (2004), raised considerably more questions than it answered. The article's main thrust was to summarize a slightly longer article published in the journal, Psychological Science, in the fall of 2004. The original article, the work of two psychology professors, David Klahr and Milena Nigam (2004), purportedly did a clinical comparison of “discovery learning” and “direct instruction” and found that the former was much less effective than the latter for teaching crucial science process skills to third and fourth graders. However, Adelson's summary article left the reader wondering whether the researchers had a fundamental understanding of what “discovery learning” actually is. On the other hand, perhaps Adelson had completely mischaracterized the content and intent of the original Klahr and Nigam article. I decided that the only way to strip away some of the ambiguity was to get my hands on the original Klahr and Nigam text.
My main question, “Did Klahr and Nigam have an understanding of what 'discovery learning' is?” was answered in a surprisingly clear way near the beginning of their article: “... at the outset, we faced a difficult definitional problem because nearly 100 years of research had yet to produce a consistent definition of discovery learning.” (Klahr and Nigam, 2004) The only work that they cite in their article as the basis of their knowledge of discovery learning is a work written by W.A. Winch in 1913, forty-seven years before the concept of “discovery learning” was first proposed by Jerome Bruner (1961). The researchers make no attempt to explain why they did not aggressively seek out a more current working definition for “discovery learning”, but instead stake out their acknowledged position of ignorance as justification for pushing their experiment to the furthest possible extremes:
... we intentionally magnified the difference between the two instructional treatments in order to provide a strong test of the path independent transfer hypothesis. In our discovery-learning condition, there was no teacher intervention beyond the suggestion of a learning objective; there were no guiding questions and no feedback about the quality of the child’s selection of materials, explorations, or self-assessments. (Klahr and Nigam, 2004)
The fact that the researchers are so open about their premeditated skewing of the conditions of their experiment immediately absolves them of any hint of malpractice. If we also presume away incompetence on their part and on the part of the journal that accepted and published their article, then we are left with little alternative but to question the motives of all those involved, none of whom (notably) appear to be professional educators. Why did the researchers openly create their own caricature version of a rather obscure flavor of constructivism to place in comparison to their version of “direct instruction”? It is not clear to me whether there actually are any present-day proponents of discovery learning as originally espoused by Bruner (1961), which makes it even more unclear why it was chosen for this study. Ultimately, it seems most likely that what has here been labeled “discovery learning” simply serves as a convenient straw man taken up by the researchers to stand in for constructivism in general. By openly “cooking the books”, the researchers ensured that the crude stand-in for a constructivist method would not merely fail, but fail miserably.
I for one would be very interested in a study which genuinely attempts an effective comparison of one or more aspects of constructivist teaching with alternative methods. For beginning teachers like me, the jury is still (and perhaps shall always remain) out, and we are open to a broad range of ideas, thoughtfully presented. But a study like this, in which the outcome is openly preordained, serves as nothing but a case study of how not to do empirical educational research.
References
Adelson, R. (2004, June). Instruction versus exploration in science learning. Monitor on Psychology, 35(6). Retrieved June 25, 2009 from: http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun04/instruct.html
Bruner, J. (1961). The Act of Discovery. Harvard Educational Review, 31(1), 21-32. Retrieved June 27, 2009, from Education Research Complete database.
Klahr, D., & Nigam, M. (2004, October). The equivalence of learning paths in early science instruction: Effects of direct instruction and discovery learning. Psychological Science, 15(10), 661-667. Retrieved June 25, 2009, doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00737.x
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Is a new flavor of social constructivism coming? (Or is it already here?)
Here's a paper I wrote up last week in one of my GWU courses...
It is useful that this week’s discussions opened with a “nuts and bolts” focus on a taxonomy of educational computing. The taxonomy proposed by Taylor (1980), and expanded upon by Knezek, Rachlin, and Scanell (1988), offers a practical set of “buckets” into which to categorize educational computing solutions: tutor, tool, tutee, and telecommunication. When dealing with a broad array of technological solutions, it is vital to have a simple means of mentally organizing them, so that when it comes time to engage with an institution’s teachers to investigate technology integration options, the tools are readily retrievable.
It is useful that this week’s discussions opened with a “nuts and bolts” focus on a taxonomy of educational computing. The taxonomy proposed by Taylor (1980), and expanded upon by Knezek, Rachlin, and Scanell (1988), offers a practical set of “buckets” into which to categorize educational computing solutions: tutor, tool, tutee, and telecommunication. When dealing with a broad array of technological solutions, it is vital to have a simple means of mentally organizing them, so that when it comes time to engage with an institution’s teachers to investigate technology integration options, the tools are readily retrievable.
But beyond the utility of a taxonomy in helping me to organize my “tool box” of technologies, I question its role in shaping my overall philosophy of educational computing. For philosophical questions, I continue to look to “old standards”, such as behavioralism and constructivism, to inform and shape my personal ideologies. At this point in my (relatively new) teaching career, I am most drawn to social-constructivist concepts, and find myself superimposing them upon this semester’s technologically-oriented conversations. However, I begin to question whether some aspects of the 21st century landscape might require an expansion beyond “old school” thinking, leading me to my central question: Will the rapidly-evolving nature of networked computing technology force an evolution and expansion of the educational philosophy of social constructivism?
The two classic pillars of social constructivism are those erected by Piaget and Vygotsky. While both saw a socially-based co-construction of knowledge as being the center-point of the learning process, Piaget favored peer-to-peer learning, whereas Vygotsky thought that the most powerful co-constructions take place when a less-experienced person interacts with a person with greater expertise (Woolfolk, 2008).
From the standpoint of these two classical theorists, it is clear that Internet-based social-networking technologies that have risen to the fore over the last few years offer powerful new platforms for both Piagetian peer-to-peer co-constructive learning and Vygotskyesque neophyte-to-expert co-constructions. As Larry Lessig said in a recent interview (2008), Web 2.0 technologies are making the Internet into an increasingly “read/write” medium, in which learners not only receive information, but they synthesize it, transform it, and then inject new knowledge back into the Internet – social constructivism on steroids.
Against this shifting socio-technological landscape, I hold up my personally synthesized version of Stager’s (2008) triangular paradigm of educational computing, in which I bring Piaget and Vygotsky clearly into the picture, each of them associated with one corner of the triangle. 
References:
Knezek, G. & others (1988, January 1). A Taxonomy for Educational Computing. Educational Technology, 28(3), 15-19.
Lessig L. (2008, November). Interview with Charlie Rose. Retrieved, February 13, 2009 from http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
Stager, G. (2008). What’s a computer for? It all depends on your educational philosophy. Retrieved February 12, 2009 from http://www.articlearchives.com/computing-information-technology/computer-equipment/785896-1.html
Taylor, R. P. (1980). The computer in the school: Tutor, tool, tutee. New York: Teachers College Press.
Woolfolk, Anita (2008). Educational Psychology. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Piaget = Scientist?
Before proceeding, let me first say that I have high regard for the work of Jean Piaget, who, along with Lev Vygotsky, laid the groundwork of social constructivism. In fact, I probably cite their work to an obnoxious extent in my academic writings. However, I think it reasonable and healthy to question the extent to which their work should be regarded as scientific, in the strictest sense. If we draw a firm distinction between social science and the "harder" natural (or physical) sciences, then we can take social scientific research (such as Piaget's) for what it is truly worth. Social science does not tend to lend itself to strict application of the scientific method, as the following excerpt from a recent child study of mine anecdotally confirms.
My study focused on a second-grader, referred to in the study by the pseudonym "LD". I had the opportunity to replicate some of Piaget’s original experiments that he did in Switzerland almost a century ago. Note particularly my reflections on whether or not I was engaged in “scientific” research:
One of the most fundamental tenets of Piaget’s theory holds that a child of LD’s age should be somewhere near the end of their “preoperational stage” or the beginning of their “concrete operational” stage of development (Phillips, 1981; Woolfolk, 2008). To directly test this theory, I had the opportunity to perform some of Piaget’s original experiments with LD and some of his classmates, and I took the liberty of characterizing it all as a game called “Perspective Detective”.
[I then devote several paragraphs to describing the three Piagetian experiments that I engaged in with the students, ending the section with the following assessment.]
I honestly was not sure what insights, if any, would come out of performing these Piaget experiments, but I did gain at least a couple. The first is that these experiments, while potentially useful for anecdotal observations regarding individual children, are in no way, shape, or form scientific. Any hope of maintaining appropriate experimental control, dependent, or independent variables required by a valid scientific experiment goes flying right out the window the moment a second grader walks into the room, asking questions, poking, prodding, and usurping the proper orders and protocols prescribed by the would-be experiment. Perhaps all of Piaget’s subjects were proper little Swiss tykes who colored inside the lines, but LD and his classmates would absolutely not fall into line. Each instead made their own variation on the theme of the exercise in an interesting way…
References cited in the above child-study excerpt:
Phillips, J. (1981). Piaget’s Theory: A Primer. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company.
Woolfolk, Anita (2008). Educational Psychology. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
My study focused on a second-grader, referred to in the study by the pseudonym "LD". I had the opportunity to replicate some of Piaget’s original experiments that he did in Switzerland almost a century ago. Note particularly my reflections on whether or not I was engaged in “scientific” research:
One of the most fundamental tenets of Piaget’s theory holds that a child of LD’s age should be somewhere near the end of their “preoperational stage” or the beginning of their “concrete operational” stage of development (Phillips, 1981; Woolfolk, 2008). To directly test this theory, I had the opportunity to perform some of Piaget’s original experiments with LD and some of his classmates, and I took the liberty of characterizing it all as a game called “Perspective Detective”.
[I then devote several paragraphs to describing the three Piagetian experiments that I engaged in with the students, ending the section with the following assessment.]
I honestly was not sure what insights, if any, would come out of performing these Piaget experiments, but I did gain at least a couple. The first is that these experiments, while potentially useful for anecdotal observations regarding individual children, are in no way, shape, or form scientific. Any hope of maintaining appropriate experimental control, dependent, or independent variables required by a valid scientific experiment goes flying right out the window the moment a second grader walks into the room, asking questions, poking, prodding, and usurping the proper orders and protocols prescribed by the would-be experiment. Perhaps all of Piaget’s subjects were proper little Swiss tykes who colored inside the lines, but LD and his classmates would absolutely not fall into line. Each instead made their own variation on the theme of the exercise in an interesting way…
References cited in the above child-study excerpt:
Phillips, J. (1981). Piaget’s Theory: A Primer. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company.
Woolfolk, Anita (2008). Educational Psychology. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
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