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
... consisting of postings regarding my various pursuits: in software engineering, as an audiobook narrator, and in the field of education and educational technology. Besides these topics, as the title of the blog suggests, I reserve the right to veer off course in various constructive (or completely unconstructive) ways.
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, August 19, 2009
The Teacher as Flaneur
This is a video that was hurriedly assembled (in 3 or 4 hours) as the final "metaphor" project of one of my summer classes in the George Mason University "FAST TRAIN" program (http://fasttrain.gmu.edu/).
It features excerpts from Jean-Baptiste Lully's "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" as performed by Ars Antigua under the direction of Jerry Fuller. That work and many other wonderful performances are available on the Ars Antigua website (arsantiguapresents.com) under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.
It features excerpts from Jean-Baptiste Lully's "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" as performed by Ars Antigua under the direction of Jerry Fuller. That work and many other wonderful performances are available on the Ars Antigua website (arsantiguapresents.com) under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)