Showing papers in "Educational Researcher in 1992"

Teaching, Relating, and Learning@@@The Construction Zone: Working for Cognitive Change in Schools@@@Rousing Minds to Life: Teaching, Learning, and Schooling in Social Context

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction Part I. Teaching, Schooling, and Literacy: A Unified Theory of Education: 1. The redefinition of teaching and schooling 2. A theory of teaching as assisted performance 3. The means of assisting performance 4. The social organization of assisted performance 5. Language, literacy, and thought Part II. Practice: 6. A school organized for teaching: the Kamehameha Elementary Education Program 7. The activity setting of the instructional conversation: developing word and discourse meaning 8. The orchestration of activity settings: learning and social interaction in the whole group and independent centers 9. The interpsychological plane of teacher training 10. Assisting teacher performance through the ZPD: a case study 11. The intrapsychological plane of teacher training: the internalization of higher-order teaching skills 12. The schools in mind and society References Author index Subject index.

Understanding Cultural Diversity and Learning

Abstract: Core curriculum and multicultural education are two major approaches advocated in the current school reform movement. This article argues that neither of these approaches adequately addresses the problem of those minority groups who have not traditionally done well in the public school. Core curriculum advocates falsely assume that as a result of instituting a core curriculum, demanding higher standards, and patching up supposed individual deficiencies, all students will perform as expected. Multicultural education advocates inadequately design their program to focus on cultural differences in content and form. This article contends that the crucial issue in cultural diversity and learning is the relationship between the minority cultures and the American mainstream culture. Minorities whose cultural frames of reference are oppositional to the cultural frame of reference of American mainstream culture have greater difficulty crossing cultural boundaries at school to learn. Core curriculum and multicultura...

Notes on Pragmatism and Scientific Realism

Abstract: Research" (1991) is informative for the overview it provides of scientific realism. At the outset House tells the reader that he will forgo comparisons between scientific realism and interpretivism, pragmatism, and critical theory in order to focus on "its [scientific realism's] introduction and explication" (p. 2). At the end he poses the question: "How does scientific realism compare with perspectives such as interpretivism, pragmatism, and critical theory?" (p. 9). A note of response is not the place to pursue such comparisons in detail, but a few comments, perhaps, may provide the basis for beginning such comparisons, in this case between pragmatism and scientific realism. Pragmatism and scientific realism share a number of assumptions about science, language, and the world. Both are also opposed to positivism/empiricism. Given their areas of agreement as well as some common opponents, it is surprising that these two schools of thought end up so far apart. The following comments profile a few of their affinities as well as a few dramatic differences that divide them.

Bilingual Classroom Studies and Community Analysis: Some Recent Trends

Abstract: The questions and issues that underlie bilingual education are constrained by deficit views about the abilities and experiences of language-minority students. In general, most research has emphasized how well students acquire English, assimilate into mainstream culture, and perform on tests of basic skills. Employing a sociocultural perspective that acknowledges the many resources that are available to children outside of the school, the author describes how research about children's communities can be used to enhance instruction. For this to work, researchers and teachers must redefine their roles so that they enter into collaborative working relationships that focus on ways of bringing about educational change.

The Text and Cultural Politics

Abstract: The school curriculum is not neutral knowledge. Rather, what counts as legitimate knowledge is the result of complex power relations, struggles, and compromises among identifiable class, race, gender, and religious groups. A good deal of conceptual and empirical progress has been made in the last 2 decades in answering the question of whose knowledge becomes socially legitimate in schools. Yet, little attention has actually been paid to that one arti-fact that plays such a major role in defining whose culture is taught–the textbook. In this article, I discuss ways of approaching texts as embodiments of a larger process of cultural politics. Analyses of them must focus on the complex power relationships involved in their production, contexts, use, and reading. I caution us against employing overly reductive kinds of perspectives and point to the importance of newer forms of textual analysis that stress the politics of how students actually create meanings around texts. Finally, I point to some of the impli...

Can Tracking Research Inform Practice? Technical, Normative, and Political Considerations

Abstract: O ver the past decade, researchers interested intracking^nd_ability^grouping have moved beyond an almost exclusive Concern with effects on student outcomes Jx)_investigate the distributionof Jearning opportunities and students' day-to-day school experiences associated with these practices. The latter studies reveal striking track-related differences across the board, with some of the most dramatic evidence showing trackingVpartirnlqrjy. negativejmpact_pn the opportunities of low;income, AfricanAmerlcan^jind^Latino students. This work, together with new research investigating track-related student outcomes and reanalysis of earlier studies, supports the increasingly clear and consistent (if not yet universally accepted) conclusion that this common way of organizing students for instruction is, in most instances, neither eguitable norj^ffective^

Understanding Graphs and Tables

Abstract: Quantitative phenomena can be displayed effectively in a variety of ways, but to do so requires an understanding of both the structure of the phenomena and the limitations of candidate display formats. This article (a) re-counts three historic instances of the vital role data displays played in important discoveries, (b) provides three levels of information that form the basis of a theory of display to help us better measure both display quality and human graphicacy, and (c) describes three steps to improve the quality of tabular presentation.

Performance Assessments: Political Rhetoric and Measurement Reality

Abstract: y most yardsticks-international comparative studies of achievement, national assessment of educational progress, and some state testing programs-the United States has lost its academic competitiveness. The stakes are high. According to President Bush: "Today, education determines not just which students will succeed, but also which nations will thrive in a world united in pursuit of freedom in enterprise" (1991, p. 1). He went on to argue that:

Managing Dilemmas While. Building Professional Communities

Abstract: I am a teacher. I have taught for a quarietcenţury. Others might classify me as an "educator" since over a threeand-a-half decade career I have also been a superin­ tendent, a teacher educator, an associate dean in a univer­ sity's school of education, and a researcher. But it is teaching—not administration or research—that has defined my adult life. If teaching has permitted me to be a lifelong learner, performer, writer, and friend to former students and colleagues, it has also forced me to navigate moral conflicts. In teaching, I have had moments when odd tingles ran up and down my back as students' thoughts and mine unex­ pectedly joined and became one; moments when listening to students forced me to rethink a conventional notion after I had closed my mind's door; moments when it became clear that my students had touched me deeply. These rare in­ stances are, for me, like the delicious crack of a bat that sends a ball soaring into the left-field stands. Less treasured moments are those that have left me numb with the repetitiveness of teaching four classes in a row or the nagging sense that the voice I heard coming out of my mouth glazed students' eyes and drooped their heads onto desks. Other moments left me sad when I knew in my heart that I had failed to reach some students. Teachingjύstory for over a decadejn aMlack_schpols from the mid-l95Oslo the early 1970s gave me insights into my cultural blind spots and a deeper understanding of the strengths and ravages of growing up Black in urban America. Those years scrubbed away stereotypes, teaching me to move beyond the then-liberal rhetoric of being colorblind and to recognize openly the dilemmas I faced in teaching Black youth a history that had to make sense to them in their terms as much as mine. Because I was in the minority when I taught in these schools, I came to understand in an intensely personal way how my students and peers viewed Whites. Within these city schools I began my teaching career, learned my craft, and forged both personal and professional values. In the last 35_years, then, teaching has been central to my experiences as an educator. I discovered that in each teaching post I served—high school teacher, trainer of new teachers, and professor—there were common features to the craft of teaching. Moreover, deeply embedded in my teaching, ad­ ministering, policymaking, and researching have beemx>rnmon dilemmas with which I have had to cope. Yet even with these commonalities I found little sense of belongings to a community of scholars and practitioners. This afternoon I will develop these three themes: Professors and practitioners face common dilemmas; they share the practice of teaching; and ncΓprofessional community yet joins them together.

Compliant Cognition: The Misalliance of Management and Instructional Goals in Current School Reform

Abstract: We examine the social context of current school reform efforts, focusing specifically on the interrelated areas of management and instruction. We maintain that in order to reform schools significantly, we must consider the various constructions of students in the popular culture and educational community and their implication for school management policies. We believe that the intended modern school curriculum, which is designed to produce self-motivated, active learners, is seriously undermined by classroom management policies that encourage, if not demand, simple obedience. We advocate that a curriculum that seeks to promote problem solving and meaningful learning must be aligned with an authoritative management system that increasingly allows students to operate as self-regulated and risk-taking learners. We note, however, that the analysis of management systems is only a small part of a set of complex and interrelated factors (e.g., testing policies, in-service mandates, curriculum content) that shoul...

American Educational Research Association 1993 Annual Meeting Call for Proposals Atlanta, GA, April 12–16

Abstract: Humans have always attempted to understand the world in which they live and to employ ways through which their understanding could be given a public face. The theme of the 1993 AERA Annual Meeting reflects this effort. It acknowledges pluralism both in methods of inquiry and in forms of representation. It underscores the growing diversity in our Association and provides support to educational researchers and practitioners who draw upon both art and science in the conduct of their scholarly and professional lives.

The Meaning of Scholarly Activity and the Building of Community

Abstract: ver 30 years ago, I was a sixth-grade teacher in a fast-growing suburb of Los Angeles. The school was new; the district was building a new school every year. (It was a time when people could buy new houses for $100 down.) Some students in my class had been to as many as 12 schools. Many came from poor families; some were students of the military; others had moved to Califor­nia from the Midwest for the promise of a new life. Educa­tional change was in the air; it was the era of "individualiz­ing instruction" and "modern math." But there were 45 students in my class, and I was responsible for teaching more than 10 subject areas. I had a teaching credential from UCLA where I had par­ticipated in what was to be the last year of a teacher-preparation program based on the teachings of John Dewey. I had learned to teach by participating in the creation of all the materials and activities that I was to use as a teacher: for example, original songs and rhythms, books and artwork for a social-studies unit on Brazil. I felt well prepared and well qualified. I saw social studies as the core of the curriculum, and knowledge as more than the rote learning of discrete subjects, but rather as flowing from and integrated with the core. The role of the teacher was to create the conditions for students to engage actively in learning. I found out, when I began to teach, that creating these con­ditions was much more difficult than I had ever imagined. So I did what many other teachers before me had done: I tried to keep the students busy, tried to follow the cur­riculum, and most of all, tried to survive the isolation and loneliness and the fear of losing control. I stopped thinking about the ideas I had learned at UCLA. The questions that mattered most were: Were they learning anything? When would I stop having a stomachache? Should I become a social worker? One day the principal called us to a meeting at 3 o'clock. We dragged ourselves to the teachers' room to be met by a woman there who gave us a form to fill out concerning our principal and our school. I zipped through the questionnaire, finishing first, which allowed me time to talk to her. She told me that she was doing research, and that the questionnaire was attempting to get at the type of organization of this school, the style of the principal, and the influence that all this had on the teacher. I remember being fascinated by the idea that someone was studying ws. After all I was just a teacher. But could she possibly understand? Where in the questionnaire was the terror of losing control o 4f5 students? Or that what we had learned in preparing to teach had little to do with what we were actually doing? Or that we had no time to really reflect on our practice, and that we teachers rarely talked to each other about teaching? Did she know that the district curriculum people who were supposed to help were too distant from our problems to understand them and never asked us our opinion? Did she have any idea how wonderful and exhilarating it was to talk about intellectual ideas with another adult? It never occurred to me that before too long, I would be standing where she was. Indeed a few years later I went to graduate school and became involved in a research project that connected 18 schools in 18 different districts to UCLA—the League of Cooperating Schools. My job as research assistant (there were 12 of us: 11 men and 1 woman) was to go to assigned schools to encourage discussion and action to improve schools, while documenting the process (Goodlad, 1975). The idea of a partnership between university people and public schools to implement and study the change process Was a bold idea for its time. (Studying the change process in schools requires a long-term relationship, and there were few models.) We were exposing the schools to new ideas in curriculum, instruction, and school organization, observing the impact they had on the functioning of the principals and teachers. In my new role I found myself thinking: Why weren't these teachers more willing to be open with each other? How come they don't read more? Was my principal so paternalistic? Was I this docile when I was a teacher? It is not surprising, then, that trying to understand and resolve the contradictions in my own professional life, and in the professional lives of educators as a group, has become one of th main thrusts of my work. It has taken a long time even to figure out the right questions to ask, let alone pro­vide the answers. Can we connect schools and universities, building community that provides for growth and change, and sharing responsibility for and involvement in practice and research? Can we develop frames of understanding that consider and give voice to the inner and observed lives of teachers and schools as partners, rather than solely as ob­jects of study? Is it possible to study schools, programs, and practices to enhance knowledge as well as aid in the improve­ment of practice?

In Defense of Positivist Research Paradigms

Abstract: Although positivism means different things to different people, it is not difficult to identify research paradigms that would be clearly identified as positivist by friends and foes of positivism alike. I briefly describe one such paradigm and identify its principal features. I argue that even outspoken critics of positivist research–such as Elliot Eisner, Frederick Erickson, Henry Giroux, and Thomas Popkewitz–are logically committed to propositions that can be tested only by means of positivist research paradigms.

Educational Leadership and the Crisis of Democratic Government

Abstract: This article is organized around three major assumptions. First, it argues that the current crisis of American schooling is symptomatic of a broader crisis in the meaning and practice of American democracy. Second, it contends that the dominant approaches to educational reform, particularly America 2000, appear to be at odds with educating students to be informed, critical citizens capable of actively participating in shaping and governing a democratic society. Third, it calls for educators to refashion educational leadership through a language of critique and possibility that expands and deepens the possibility for cultural and political democracy. In short, the article suggests that educational reformers need to expand the purpose and promise of schooling beyond the narrow interests of the marketplace, view multicultural education as central to living in a democratic society, refuse to equate nationalism with monoculturalism, and substitute the language of community, solidarity, and public responsibilit...

Comparing American and Japanese Achievement: Is the United States Really a Low Achiever?:

Abstract: It is widely accepted that the Japanese educational system is more effective than the U.S. system and that this greater effectiveness produces across-the-board higher achievement. Using the data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA.) Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS), this paper examines both curriculum and achievement in Japan and the United States in grade 7/8 algebra and grade 12 elementary functions and analysis (calculus). The results suggest that overall, the lower achievement of the United States is the result of curricula that are not as well matched to the SIMS tests as are the curricula of Japan. Where the American curriculum is comparable to both the "curriculum" of the test and the curriculum of Japan, that is, in grade 8 algebra classes, U.S. achievement is similar to that of Japan. These findings suggest that the analytic methodology of cross-national achievement Studies like those of IEA or International Assessment of Educational ...

Perspectives on Second-Language Development: Implications for Bilingual Education

Abstract: This article provides a guide to basic research in second-language acquisition by characterizing distinct perspectives from foreign language teaching, first-language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and sociocultural factors. The research in these areas provides some answers to common questions about second-language acquisition, including those of optimum age, factors that facilitate learning, the consequences of bilingualism, individual differences, and assessment techniques. It is argued that the crucial insights of the sociocultural perspective must be introduced if we are to have adequate assessments of bilingual individuals or evaluation of bilingual programs.

A Narrative of Enhanced Professionalism Educational Researchers and Popular Storybooks About Schoolpeople

Abstract: Three narratives about the history, current status, and future of educational researchers as professionals are discussed. The prevailing collective self-portrait portrays educational researchers as social scientists with maximum autonomy for setting their research agenda and for quality control of their products. A counternarrative of deprofessionalization posits limited autonomy: Research often follows available funding, and government-sponsored grants generally reflect a popularly held view of schools and schoolpeople as the sources of social ailments and undeserving of additional financial support. This view is implicitly reinforced as research findings based on this premise are disseminated to members of the general public through intermediaries, especially members of the press. A third narrative accepts the countercritique but, in a more hopeful vein, foresees educational researchers challenging this view of schoolpeople by speaking directly to the polity. This is accomplished through the creation of...

Enriching Our Views of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education

Abstract: The articles for this special issue are introduced. Collectively, they underscore the need to enrich the research perspective on bilingual education by acknowledging its full range of complexities, including the politics, practices, values, and expectations regarding language-minority students. The authors argue for the importance of basic research on bilingualism, of case studies of practice, and of taking into account the reality of practitioners and the ideology that guides work with this population of students.

The Evaluation of Bilingual Education: From Necessity and Probability to Possibility

Abstract: The author discusses topics related to the evaluation of bilingual education programs. He surveys the results of seven major bilingual education evaluations and presents their diverse findings. He argues that such research cannot answer the question of whether bilingual education necessarily or even probably works. To demonstrate the potentials and possibilities for bilingual education, he describes a "bilingual immersion" program in which both language-majority and language-minority students learn each others’ language while continuing to develop their own.

Purposeful Behavior as the Control of Perception: Implications for Educational Research

Abstract: This article continues the discussion begun in my 1989 Educational Researcher essay on the problems posed by the unpredictability and indeterminism of human behavior for educational research and responds to criticisms of these arguments offered by Lehrer, Serlin, and Amundson (1990). In the course of this discussion, a theory of purposeful behavior known as perceptual control theory is presented which provides an explicit, working model of how individuals are able to produce repeatable outcomes via variable means. It is argued that the traditional "scientific" method of educational research, which attempts to find relationships between "independent" and "dependent" variables over groups of individuals, is in principle incapable of providing valid explanations of the how and why of purposeful human behavior.

The Societal Context of Bilingual Education

Abstract: Bilingual education is a term that draws strong reactions from those inside and outside the educational system. Here I examine social factors that contribute to the tensions surrounding this debate. The most dramatic conflict can be seen in the contemporary English-only movement and the countervailing English-Plus coalition. Despite the public arguments presented by English-only proponents and shrinking federal and state resources to support bilingual education programs, there has been a growing acceptance of the potential benefits of bilingual services among educational practitioners and researchers. Consequently, conflicting views will continue to characterize public discussion of bilingual education.

Perceptual Control Theory: One Threat to Educational Research Not (Yet?) Faced by Amundson, Serlin, and Lehrer

Abstract: mundson, Serlin, and Lehrer (1992) assert that I misunderstand or misrepresent the views of the authors I cite (Cziko, 1992) including those of Lehrer, Serlin, and Amundson (1990), who critically reviewed my 1989 essay. They also find nothing in my discussion of statistical methods and perceptual control theory that supports my criticism of the methods of mainstream quantitative educational and psychological research. I will consider each of these charges in turn. Concerning my "misunderstanding or misrepresentation" of authors such as Cronbach and Snow on educational research, Lakatos and Einstein on the philosophy and methods of science, and Gould on biological evolution, I can easily provide additional evidence to support my views. For example, while Amundson et al. (1992) chide me for using "the narrowest of readings and most selective of quotations ... to depict Lakatos as an advocate of prediction and control," it did not take me long to find an even stronger Lakatosian endorsement of the role of prediction in the same essay quoted repeatedly by Amundson et al.:

Coherence, the Rebel Angel

Abstract: When working against fragmentation in education, we must not confuse coherence with consistency. While consistency implies logical relations and the absence of contradictions, coherence allows for many kinds of connectedness, including associations of ideas and feelings, intimations of resemblance, conflicts and tensions, and imaginative leaps. Coherence–but not consistency–is hospitable to change and imagination, while true to the many facets of concepts and experiences. Educational coherence is found where students and teachers can discover and establish relations among various areas of sensibility, knowledge, and skill, yet where loose ends remain, inviting a reweaving of beliefs and ties to the unknown.

Why the Clinical Trial Doesn't Work as a Metaphor for Educational Research: A Response to Schrag:

Abstract: What I do embrace are approaches to research, both scientific and nOTsdentifje^that do not trivialize educational questions into oblivion by reducing data only to what is measurable, that recognize that value and fact are inseparable, that \"understand that the world is construed, not merely discovered, and that do not judge the quality of all research by a set of criteria that is suitable only to some forms of research. Appeals to drug trials as a model for the validation of educational research are a grossjoverzsimplification of what the practice and improvement of education entail. Educational research does not yield prescriptions teachers get from an educational pharmacy which they then implement in their classrooms. What they can get are ideas^suggestions, possibilities. These important^ contrifiotipris are cues, not prescriptions. Nor are they hypotheses to be validated like

Are All Causal Claims Positivistic?: A Reply to Francis Schrag

Abstract: Eels, E., & Sober, E. (1983). Probabilistic causality and the question of transitivity. Philosophy of Science, 50, 35-57. Eisner, E. (1991). The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. New York: Macmillan. Erickson, F. (1986). Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In M. C. Wittrock. (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 119-161). New York: Macmillan. Gage, N. L. (1978). The scientific basis of the art of teaching. New York: Teachers College. Giroux, H. (1981). Ideology, culture and the process of schooling. Philadelphia: Temple.

The Great Child-Care Experiment What Are the Lessons for School Improvement?

Abstract: Child-care settings provide a national laboratory for testing questions related to parental choice in K-12 schooling. Operating in open-market conditions with little oversight by the government, the child-care field embodies many of the organizational characteristics advocated under certain school choice models. In fact, parents’ general satisfaction with child care suggests that they are unlikely to act as major catalysts of K-12 reform. Their definitions of excellence in child care are somewhat at odds with professional bench-marks, and their procedures for investigating child-care organizations are often cursory. The national child-care experiment also illustrates the tensions between crafting educational remedies at the local level and tightening the technology of teaching through bureaucratic oversight.