B.F. Skinner weighs in

This is interesting. I had no idea B.F. Skinner had been a foe of ed schools:

Skinner's (1983) classic paper "The Shame of American Education" was originally published in the American Psychologist and later appeared in a collection of Skinner's papers (1987). It was aimed directly at cognitive psychologists. Skinner blamed modern cognitive psychology, in part, for the United States being what the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE, 1983) termed "A Nation at Risk" The NCEE report described the United States as being threatened by "a rising tide of mediocrity." Skinner (1987) also blamed colleges of education as the place where "psychological theories come into the hands of teachers" (p. 120).

[snip]

The failure of colleges of education to teach science and subject- based pedagogy has a long history that cannot be attributed solely or even primarily to cognitive psychology.

[snip]

Evers and Clopton (2003) suggest that progressive ideas in the early 20th century grew from an activist religious piety they termed "pietist millennialism." [I'm not sure what "pietist millennialism" means, but I like the phrase...]

Skinner on discovery

Skinner (1968) made his views of the method of discovery quite clear:

If the student can be taught to learn from the world of things, nothing else will ever have to be taught. This is the method of discovery. It is designed to absolve the teacher from a sense of failure by making instruction unnecessary. The teacher arranges the environment in which discovery is to take place, he suggests lines of inquiry, he keeps the students within bounds. The important thing is that he should tell him nothing.

The human organism does, of course, learn without being taught. It is a good thing that this is so, and it would no doubt be a good thing if more could be learned in that way. Students are naturally interested in what they learn by themselves because they would not learn if they were not, and for the same reason they are more likely to remember what they learn in that way. There are reinforcing elements of surprise and accomplishment in personal discovery which are welcome alternatives to traditional aversive consequences. But discovery is no solution to the problems of education. A culture is no stronger than its capacity to transmit itself....It is quite impossible for the student to discover for himself any substantial part of the wisdom of his culture, and no philosophy of education really proposes that he should. Great thinkers build upon the past, they do not waste time in rediscovering it. It is dangerous to suggest to the student that it is beneath his dignity to learn what others already know, that there is something ignoble (and even destructive of rational powers) in memorizing facts, codes, formulae, or passages from literary works and that to be admired he must think in original ways. It is equally dangerous to forgo teaching important facts and principles in order to give the student a chance to discover them for himself. Only a teacher who is unaware of his effects on his students can believe that children actually discover mathematics, that (as one teacher has written) 'in group discussion they can and do figure out all the relationships, facts, and procedures, that comprise a full program in math' (p. 110).

instructivists!

Skinner pointed out that each of the reform proposals that were being made in the period immediately preceding his paper had a curious omission: namely how teaching could be improved. He described it as a "conspiracy of silence." Skinner suggested that pedagogy had become a "dirty word." Soon after Skinner's paper was published, this silence would be broken and pedagogy would come to the forefront. From the mid 1980's until the present, there has been an open battle between the progressives and the instructivists.

[snip]

During the 1990s the United States underwent an unprecedented curricular "reform" of the public schools. By 1990, the ideological legacy of Kilpatrick, Rugg and Dewey controlled virtually all colleges of education and their respective teacher organizations. The NCTM and the National Council of Teachers of English developed standards reflecting progressive values and pedagogy. These curriculum standards were then adopted by state after state as the frameworks for reading and math. The end result was the standardization of ineffective practices leading to inadequately trained teachers and low-achieving students in basic academic domains (Rumph, Ninness, & McCuller, 2001).

"foundational constituents and complex composites"

Teachers are asked not to teach but to facilitate learning. The teacher is not to tell or show the students but to allow them to discover their own individual knowledge. Paradoxically, it is permissible for an untrained peer to show and tell. The knowledge gained by students is said to be different for each student. Independent reality separate from the person's own knowledge is denied. Progressive pedagogy does not analyze subject matter into foundational constituents and more complex composites, nor does it sequence material in such a way that constituents are taught before composites. Intentionally, the progressives use top down teaching, in which the sequences are inverted such that the more complex skill is introduced first and the foundational skills for it are assumed to be acquired in the context of the more complex task. Slavin (2003) describes top-down teaching this way: "Top-down means that students begin with complex problems to solve and then work out or discover (with the teacher's guidance) the basic skills required" (p. 259). It is not that progressive ideas can never be put to good use; they can (Johnson & Street, 2004). However, using indirect pedagogy to establish foundational constituent skills is simply ineffective and inefficient. Inevitable difficulties will occur in obtaining the skill at all, and in the absence of practice, established skills remain fragile. Weakly established skills are subject to forgetting, hinder the acquisition of composite skills of which they are a component and are less likely to combine with other skills through contingency adduction (Johnson & Layng, 1992).^* Behavior analysts Layng, Twyman, and Stikeleather (2004) have developed methods to engineer discovery after directly training constituent skills and using precisely designed instructional sequences. Designed instructional sequences are not a component of contemporary or historical progressive education pedagogy but are a component of most effective pedagogies.

source:
the Shame of American Education redux (pdf file)
By Rumph, Robin; Ninness, Chris; McCuller, Glen; Holland, James; et al
Author note: Portions of this paper were presented at the 31st annual convention of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Chicago, May, 2005. We gratefully acknowledge Angela Ford for contributions in developing this manuscript. Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to Robin Rumph, School & Behavioral Psychology Program, PO Box 13019 SFA Station, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX, 75962
Chris Ninness home page & publications

Robin Rumph and Chris Ninness are professors at Stephen F. Austin State University School & Behavioral Psychology.



spaced repetition: top-down teaching

"Top-down means that students begin with complex problems to solve and then work out or discover (with the teacher's guidance) the basic skills required."

Slavin, R. (2003). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (7th ed.) Boston,MA: Allyn and Bacon.

in a nutshell: behaviorist take on constructivism

• teachers are facilitators
• peers, but not teachers, may "show and tell"
• each student's knowledge is different
• "independent reality separate from the person's own knowledge is denied"
• subjects are intentionally taught "top down"
• "top down" means subject matter is not analyzed into foundational constituents and more complex components
• material is not sequenced so that foundational constituents are taught before more complex components
• Robert Slavin: "Top-down means that students begin with complex problems to solve and then work out or discover (with the teacher's guidance) the basic skills required."
• top-down teaching is "ineffective and inefficient"
• problems acquiring the skill will inevitably ensue
• without practice "established skills remain fragile"
• worse yet: "Weakly established skills are subject to forgetting, hinder the acquisition of composite skills of which they are a component and are less likely to combine with other skills through contingency adduction." [ Johnson, K. R. & Lanyng, T. V. (1992) Breaking the structuralist barrier: Literacy and numeracy with fluency. American Psychologist, 47, 1475-1490.]
• it is possible to "engineer discovery after directly training constituent skills and using precisely designed instructional sequences" [Layng, J., Twyman, J., & Stikeleather, G. (2004). Engineering discovery learning: The contingency adduction of some precursors of textual responding in a beginning program. Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 20, 99-110.] - but constructivist pedagogy does not do this
• "Designed instructional sequences are not a component of contemporary or historical progressive education pedagogy but are a component of most effective pedagogies."
  

^* "Contingency adduction occurs when multiple repertoires or components combine with little, if any, instruction (Andronis, Goldiamond & Layng, 1983; Johnson & Layng, 1996; Binder, 1996). "The problem of skill generalisation" (introduction to an unpublished dissertation, I think)


wholes, not parts: Martin Brooks and The Constructivist Classroom
whole math