Conway learning cop-ies02

This article was downloaded by: [University College Cork]
On: 7 October 2008
Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 785045793]
Publisher Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Irish Educational Studies
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t716100713

Learning in communities of practice: Rethinking teaching and learning in
disadvantaged contexts
Paul F. Conway a
a
College Lecturer in the Education Department, University College, Cork

Online Publication Date: 01 December 2002

To cite this Article Conway, Paul F.(2002)'Learning in communities of practice: Rethinking teaching and learning in disadvantaged
contexts',Irish Educational Studies,21:3,61 — 91
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/0332331020210308
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0332331020210308

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or
systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or
distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents
will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses
should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,
actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly
or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Irish Educational Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3, Winter, 2002 61

LEARNING IN COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE:
RETHINKING TEACHING AND LEARNING IN
DISADVANTAGED CONTEXTS

Paul F. Conway

Introduction

A well-documented finding across many educational cultures is that
students in disadvantaged communities have less challenging
pedagogical and curricular experiences than their counterparts in more
Downloaded By: [University College Cork] At: 18:00 7 October 2008

advantaged contexts. This paper makes a case for the relevance of
new ideas about cognition and learning for rethinking teaching and
learning in disadvantaged contexts in the light of efforts to promote
more active learning by students in primary and secondary education.
Even though there has been an emphasis on the promotion of active
student engagement in the learning process at primary level since the
advent of the "New Curriculum" (Ireland, 1971) and more recently, in
the last decade, at second-level, research suggests that teaching
focuses predominantly on lower order thinking (Shiel, Forde and
Morgan, 1996).

This paper has four sections. First, I note the persistence of
educational disadvantage despite impressive advances in the education
system as a whole, and then discuss what some commentators see as
the relative dominance of technical and transmission oriented
discourse in relation to pedagogy in Irish education. Second, I outline
some of the findings internationally and in Ireland on the school
experiences of disadvantaged students and argue that their
pedagogical experiences in Ireland are characterised by an emphasis
on low-order thinking and a persistent assumption of the solo or
individual learner - like their more advantaged counterparts.
Furthermore, there is some evidence that students labeled
disadvantaged may experience diminished curricular and pedagogical
experiences - unlike their advantaged counterparts. In the third
section of the paper, I outline the assumptions underpinning
behavioural and cognitive perspectives on learning and cognition.
Drawing on the work of Brown (Brown, 1994; Brown, 1997a), Rogoff
et al. (1996), and Lave and Wenger (1991) and others, I compare the
behavioural and cognitive positions with the fundamental assumptions
of emergent socio-cultural perspectives on cognition and learning with
a focus on the socio-cultural position as a powerful model on which to
base initiatives to address educational disadvantage. Ideas such as

62 Irish Educational Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3, Winter 2002

"situated cognition", "distributed cognition", and "communities of
practice" may present an even more fundamental shift than that
between the behaviourist and cognitive views of learning. The final
section of the paper addresses the implications of these new views of
learning and cognition for students in educationally disadvantaged
settings.

The many notable and impressive achievements of the Irish
education system over the last forty years are an important preface to
the critique of Irish educational discourse and practice in this paper.
Among these notable achievements are: "the epoch making" impact of
the Investment in Education report (Lynch, 1998), the overall increase
in the capacity of the education system as well as the rise in overall

attainment rates (Fitzgerald, 1998), the improvement in curricular
opportunities for both girls and boys, the significant increases in
public expenditure on primary, secondary and third level education as
well as the overall increase in expenditure on education as a
percentage of Exchequer expenditure (Thomhill, 1998), the vast
increase in the range of areas of study at third level, developments in
both pre- and in-service teacher education, and the provision of well
qualified graduates to foster social and economic well-being
(Coolahan, 1994; Hyland, 1998). Despite these watershed
developments, educational disadvantage persists (Hyland, 1998;
McCormack, 1998) and Irish society is becoming more rather than
less inequitable (Breen and Whelan, 1996; Lynch and Lodge, 2002).
Thus, while the education system has in many respects been an
effective agent of social and economic change in Irish society it has
been considerably less effective in combating long standing societal
inequalities. In addressing these persistent problems, I make a case
for a greater interrogation of the assumptions about learning
underpinning various pedagogical practices, aware that neither
classroom practices nor the education system writ large are wholly
responsible for educational disadvantage. However, the education
system does play an important, albeit contested, role in reinforcing or
challenging long-standing patterns of social reproduction. The
potential influence of some system features and how they contribute to
educational disadvantage and social inequality has received some
attention while others have not. It is to this imbalance in attention I
now turn.

Debate on pedagogy in Irish education?

Various commentators have highlighted how Irish educational
discourse has been notable in its inattention to and resistance to


problematize curricular concerns regardless as to whether students are
viewed as advantaged or disadvantaged. What I mean by curriculum
here, in a similar fashion to the use of curriculum in the White Paper
on Education, is not only what subject matter is taught, but also how
and why, and its impact on students (Gleeson, 1998). Drawing on
Habermas' framework for understanding knowledge-constitutive
activities in society, Gleeson (1998) has critiqued the dominance of
technical discourse in Irish education to the relative exclusion of
practical or emancipatory dialogue. Similarly, Callan (1997),
commenting in the context of second-level curriculum initiatives, has
pointed out the technical nature of concerns with the dominance of
class size (1998) and access to resources as issues, to the relative

exclusion of more reflexive discourses examining the ideological
bases of preferred beliefs and classroom teaching practices. Similarly,
Gleeson (1998) laments the dominance of power and control issues in
the 1990s post National Education Convention (Coolahan,1994),
Green (Ireland, 1992), and White paper (Ireland, 1995) debates to the
relative exclusion of curricular issues. Despite the dominance of a
technical discourse, a considerable body of critiques and position
papers on Irish education emerged in the 1990s both in anticipation of
and response to changes in the education system (e.g. (Hogan, 1995;
Gleeson, 1998; McCormack, 1998) and CMRS/CORI publications
(CORI, 1992; CORI, 1998). While the range of issues addressed in
this body of literature is beyond the scope of this paper, the focus was
primarily on the system-level issues such as certification, selection,
assessment (examinations mainly) rather than classroom practices.
While these debates clearly recognize the education system as a site
for the partial perpetuation or redress of inequality, they nevertheless
veil pedagogical practices as a site in the brokerage of
inequality/equality. As such, the moment-to-moment transactions
between students, teachers and curriculum have received insufficient
attention in various efforts to address educational disadvantage. In
sum, conflict and debate about pedagogical and curricular concerns
(i.e. what is taught, how and why it is taught and its impact) remains
marginal in both educational research and debates on educational
disadvantage. While there has been some debate, as noted by Gleeson
(1998), about history and health and personal education, these are
exceptions. Conspicuously missing from the 1990s, in contrast to the
power and control discourse, was rigorous critical engagement and
reflection on the nature of whose knowledge is taught, how and why it
is taught and its impact on disadvantaged students. Consequently, the
classroom in Irish education remains largely a secret garden.


The OECD (OECD, 1991) review of Irish education raised
serious concern about the dominance and widespread prevalence of a
transmission model of teaching, low level cognitive demands in
classroom teaching, and low levels of pupil involvement in the
learning process in Irish schools. What is unclear from the OECD
report is the extent to which transmission oriented teaching was or is
more prevalent in educationally disadvantaged schools. Without
leaving much doubt as to impressions of the examiners the report
(OECD 1991, p. 55) concluded that:

The face...Irish schools present to the world is quite
recognisably that of previous generations. There is a

growing dissonance between it and the development of
the learning sciences and modern teaching technologies
that require a very different approach ... Co-operative
(team) teaching and non-instructional forms of learning
have not been conspicuous elements in determining
design and layout in the past.

Drawing upon this OECD report Callan (1997) noted that "the reality
of school-learning can be profiled with such descriptors as "primarily
didactic in nature, the teacher is the primary initiator, students work
alone; lessons are structured around content with a focus on factual
content; little or no small group problem solving approaches; little use
of computer/video technology". Subsequently, the goal of active
learning has become a more central feature of educational documents
in Ireland over the last decade as reflected in both the National
Education Convention Report (Coolahan, 1994) and in various
curriculum and assessment reform initiatives e.g. (Callan, 1997;
Gleeson and Granville, 1996; Gleeson, 1998; Hanafin, 1997; Hyland,
2000). While child-centered teaching was espoused in the New
Primary Curriculum in 1971 transmission models of teaching
nevertheless remained dominant particularly at second level (OECD,
1991; Coolahan, 1994). In the 1991 OECD report, the authors
recommended that attention be turned towards cognitive theories of
learning that might inform pedagogical practices in an effort to
displace transmission oriented teaching (which they implied was
based implicitly on common sense behavioural psychology). In
rethinking practice in disadvantaged contexts, I want to take the focus
on theories of learning one step further and turn to socio-cultural,
situative-pragmatic, cultural or socio-genetic theories of learning,
which have turned the spotlight away from the capacities of the solo
learner to the creation of classrooms as communities of learners


(Brown, 1994) or communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991;
Wenger, 1998).

Research in other educational cultures on classroom practices for
educationally disadvantaged students

Considerable evidence internationally points to the diminished
classroom pedagogical and organisational experiences of students in
low income, high poverty and/or minority communities (Anyon, 1981;
Oakes, 1986; Oakes and Lipton, 1999). Organisationally, teachers
typically tend to adopt stricter discipline procedures, more classroom
structure, and incorporate less social interaction. In terms of

curriculum and teaching, teachers tend to provide less challenging
content knowledge, engage in more repetitive curricular experiences,
break down tasks into smaller pieces, provide fewer opportunities to
engage in higher-order thinking or problem solving, and provide fewer
open ended divergent tasks (Means, Chelemer, and Knapp, 1991). In
sum, teachers tend to rely on drill and practice of basic skills in efforts
to compensate for the perceived deficits that students bring to school.
The result of such compensatory efforts, often based on deficit models
of students,, is the exacerbation of differences in instruction between
the "haves" and "have nots" (Means, Chelemer, and Knapp, 1991).

In the next section, I attempt to paint a composite picture of
classroom practice in Irish classrooms, attentive to the limitations of
this endeavor given the paucity of observational and/or ethnographic
research on classroom practices in Irish schools. Notable exceptions,
which shed a critical light on classroom practice, include Sugrue's
(1997) interpretive interview and case study of primary teachers'
views of child centered teaching and Drudy and Ui Chatham's (1998)
gender focused action research using an interaction analysis frame.
Furthermore, at present, there is an emerging and long overdue focus
on classroom practice in Irish educational research. Two recent
significant studies have provided insights on classroom teaching and
are beginning to redress the relative neglect of classroom practice in
Irish educational research. Lynch and Lodge's (Lynch and Lodge,
2002) multi-method (i.e. classroom observations, questionnaires and
essays, one-to-one and focus group interviews, classroom
observations) study of twelve single-sex and co-educational second-
level schools provides many insights on the dynamics of equality,
power and exclusion as they play out in a range of classroom and
school contexts. Lyons, Lynch, Close, Sheerin and Boland's (2003,
forthcoming) video study, of Mathematics (mainly) and English
teaching in ten different second-level schools, is the first such video


study in Irish classrooms and promises to shed light on the
relationships between teacher beliefs and practices, common trends
and diverse practices inside mathematics classrooms, and the impact
of social class and gender on the mediation of subject learning.

In the next section, with a view to understanding the largely
implicit assumptions about learning, I argue that an individualist
epistemology informs classroom practice in Irish education. Second,
based on an individualist epistemology, I argue that classroom
practice may be qualitatively different in disadvantaged settings, that
is, a differential pedagogy hypothesis.

Research in Ireland on classroom organisational and pedagogical
practices

My concern, in this paper, is with how and why teaching is enacted as
it is in disadvantaged settings. Educational research in Ireland has,
almost overwhelmingly stayed at arm's length from classroom
teaching practices. Maybe this is, in part due to, what the OECD
examiners termed, the "legendary autonomy" of Irish teachers as well
as the assumption that generic good teaching is readily identifiable
and universal in its efficacy. What teachers do in terms of best
practice in advantaged or disadvantaged settings in Irish schools
remains, in large part, a "black box".

An important point to note, is that considerable attention has
been paid in Ireland to reducing the pupil teacher ratio. The
presumption, whether in advantaged or disadvantaged communities,
seems to be that merely ensuring change at the level of inputs (a
greater number of teachers) will be sufficient to improve both
pedagogical and organisational processes leading to enhanced
academic outcomes (e.g. the reduction of pupil-teacher ratio to 15:1 in
Breaking the Cycle). The underlying assumption here appears to be
that there are little or no differences in the pedagogical and
organisational, practices between disadvantaged and advantaged
communities. In other words, what remains relatively unquestioned,
uncontested, and unexamined is the nature of the pedagogical
practices themselves.

Individualist epistemology

Both in academic and folk psychology individualist epistemologies
are dominant in Irish education. In teacher education a generic
constructivist theory dominates the discourse but is implicitly

Irish Educational Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3. Winter, 2002 67

individualist in assumptions (i.e. Piagetian assumptions of the 1971
New Primary Curriculum). Furthermore, for example, reviewing
recent volumes of Irish Educational Studies, the Irish Journal of
Education or Oideas: Journal of the Department Education and
Science there has been no debate about the meta-theoretical bases of
learning and cognition. When learning and cognition are addressed
the focus is on educational applications of individualist epistemologies
(e.g. Gardners' Multiple Intelligences Theory, Piagetian-inspired
active learning initiatives). In using the term, meta-theoretical I want
to draw attention to the underlying assumptions of dominant schools
of thought or paradigms in the learning sciences over the last one
hundred years. Attention to meta-theoretical issues provides an

opportunity to examine definitions, tease out assumptions, illuminate
guiding metaphors and categorise the pedagogical implications of
various learning theories. The conspicuous lack of a meta-theoretical
debate in Irish educational debates is problematic given the upsurge of
discussion and research internationally on cognition and learning, and
emergence in the last twenty years of socio-cultural approaches to
learning that have challenged the dominance of behavioural and
cognitive perspectives.

Attempting to characterize the epistemological beliefs held
more broadly among teachers and students is more difficult.
However, Rath's interview study of second-level teacher candidates is
illuminating (Rath, 2000). She noted deeply entrenched cultural
beliefs and practices about learning among student teachers. In
particular, she documented, a focus on (a) learning as something done
in isolation, and (b) a pervasive focus on the memorization of
information at a superficial level for the purposes of individual
performance in examinations. Furthermore, Lynch, (1999) building
on her earlier work, has pointed to the pervasive competitive
individualism of Irish secondary schooling. In addition, Fontes,
Kellaghan, Madaus, and Airasian's (1983) study, of a nationally
representative sample of Irish people's conceptions of intelligence,
presented evidence that they believed strongly in innate and
immutable conceptions of cognitive capacity (e.g. "...71% agreed that
education cannot make up for a lack of natural ability", p. 55). As
such, their views were consistent with psychometric notions of
singular intelligence and therefore deeply rooted in an individualist
epistemology.

What is the connection between individualist epistemologies
and differential pedagogy hypothesis? An important logical
connection between the individualist epistemologies and subsequent


differential pedagogical hypothesis can be understood in terms of the
psychology of individual differences or differential psychology.
Thorndike (Thorndike, 1903; Thorndike, 1931), among others,
advocated in the early part of the 20th century that educators should
devote their energy to understanding the individual student.
Subsequently, various measures of individual difference were
developed including intelligence tests used to sort students into ability
groups, streams, and special education categories. While the large-
scale intelligence testing movement to a great extent bypassed Ireland,
the focus on the sorting of students into ability groups and streaming
did not, and these have become central to school organisation in
Ireland at both primary (Devine, 1993) and secondary level (Smyth,
1999; Smyth, 2000). Indeed, Smyth's (1999) work provides strong

evidence of the negative impact of such streaming practices on both
social and academic outcomes.

Differential pedagogy hypothesis

What evidence is there about organisational, curriculum, and teaching
practices in Irish primary and secondary schools? Relatively little
attention has been paid to understanding the school and classroom
experiences of students in Ireland, although Lynch and Lodge (Lynch
and Lodge, 1999; Lynch and Lodge, 2002) have cogently unveiled
secondary school students' experiences of power and authority in
school. In particular, the pedagogical experiences of students at
primary or secondary level remain relatively hidden, be they portrayed
through the voice of researchers and/or students themselves. A study
(O'Sullivan, 1980a; O'Sullivan, 1980b), based on teacher self report,
compared teachers' beliefs in working- and middle class schools about
their own teaching styles in the light of the 1971 New Primary
Curriculum but did not provide observational or ethnographic
evidence of teaching practices. O'Sullivan (1980a) assessed the
degree to which Bowles and Gintis' (1976) differential socialization
hypothesis might be acting as a crucial mechanism in the reproduction
of social inequalities between middle and working class students. His
survey study, of one hundred and fifty three Cork primary teachers in
six middle- and fifteen working-class schools, concluded that "there is
little evidence in the findings on school and classroom organization
and teaching style in my study to support this view of differential
socialization" (O'Sullivan, 1980a, p. 84).

However, there is some evidence to support the differential
pedagogical hypothesis from research on the school organisational
practices such as ability grouping and streaming as well as research on


the extent that secondary schools contribute differentially to student
achievement. Lynch has documented the widespread use of streaming
and ability grouping in Irish primary and secondary schools and has
criticised the continued reliance on ability grouping in primary schools
and the continued existence of streaming, grouping or banding at
second level (Lynch, 1999; Lynch and Lodge, 2002). The impact on
students designated as low ability invariably confines that student to a
school career in the low group or stream exacerbating educational
disadvantage. However, the pedagogical experiences of students
designated as disadvantaged remains relatively unexamined despite
the fact that research in other countries has pointed out the differential
pedagogical and classroom organisational experiences of students

labeled as disadvantaged. Smyth's multi-level or hierarchical linear
modeling analysis of a nationally representative sample of second-
level schools provides clear support for differential pedagogy
hypothesis with schools' differential contribution to student
achievement evident even after controlling for students' background
characteristics (Smyth, 1999). In summary, considerable evidence
points to a system-wide emphasis on lower order skills. There is also
considerable evidence to support the differential pedagogy hypothesis
and both can be seen as underpinned by individualist epistemologies.
The strongest evidence to support the differential pedagogy hypothesis
is from Lynch and Lodge's research (2002) on the widespread
prevalence of ability grouping and Smyth's (Smyth, 1999)
documentation of differences between secondary schools in their
contribution to student achievement after controlling for background
factors. However, the extent to which differential pedagogy plays out
according to advantaged/disadvantaged groups is not clear.

In the next section I note the emphasis on an individualist
epistemology in both the behavioural and cognitive perspectives and
present the socio-cultural perspective as a generative alternative.

Three theories of cognition and learning

Broadly speaking, over the last one hundred years the learning
sciences have provided three distinct camps of learning theories: the
behaviourist-empiricist, the cognitive-rationalist, and situative-
pragmatic1 (Greeno, Collins, and Resnick, 1996). The notion of
communities of practice emanates from this last cluster of learning
theories. While a detailed exposition of the differences between these
three traditions is beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth
addressing how each defines learning, knowing, intelligence, and the
design of learning environments (Table 1). In the behaviourist


tradition learning is change in behaviour, in the cognitive tradition
learning is change in thinking, and in the socio-cultural tradition
learning is change in participation. These widely diverging definitions
of learning draw the attention of teachers and researchers to different
sets of questions in pondering and planning learning, teaching, and
assessment.


Table 1. Three perspectives on learning and their implications for
teaching and assessment2
Camp Behaviourism Cognitive •-.•••! Socio-cultural
Learning Change in Change in thinking Change in practices of
as... behaviour communities. & ability of
individuals to participate
Intelligence How smart are you? In what contexts are you
In what ways are smart?
you smart?
Knowing ...organised ...Structures of ...distributed in the
as... collection of knowledge and world among
collections processes that individuals, tools,
between elements construct patterns of . artifacts, texts people
or behavioural ';• symbols in order to: use and fostering

units. 1. Understand communities of learners
concepts & in which they participate
2. Engage in general
skills such as
< reasoning and
problem solving
Examples • Precision • General schemata • Fostering communities
teaching (Jean Piaget) of learners (Ann Brown)
j • Computer •General and : • Cognitive
* Assisted specific apprenticeship (Collins,
Instruction competencies e.g. etal)
(CAI)... i.e. Multiple
mastery learning Intelligences &TfU
(Howard Gardner), '
Designing TEACHING: TEACHING ..; TEACHING
;
[earning . Simplify and • Interactive • Communities of
environments sequence tasks environments for : learning for active
into discrete steps knowledge participation in the
• Routines of construction and - formulation and
How can we activity understanding : ] resolution of realistic
design • Clear goals, •Sequences of •' problems/inquiry
teaching for" feedback, and conceptual . • Development of
learning? reinforcement development ' disciplinary practices of
• Individualization • Explicit attention discourse, i.e. "ways of
with technologies to generality ' • J ; talking"
e.g. CAI •• • / • ^ . • • ^
1
:
1
v V ^ ••• - . ^ : . ' '.• ••'••?

• A sequence of ::ASSESSMENT.. J:.: ASSESSMENT
component to •Extended • Extended performance
composite skills • performance: • assessment and assess
ASSESSMENT: assessments and ; , change in participation
Assessments that crediting varieties of .)
tap into excellence ;i
components '

To the extent that there has been explicit attention to and
preference for assumptions about learning in Irish educational
discourse over the last thirty years, the focus has been on cognitive
theories particularly the work of Piaget, as evidenced by the 1971


New Primary School curriculum, and more recently the cognitive
symbol systems focus of Gardner's Multiple Intelligences theory
which has been used as the basis for widely publicized curriculum
initiatives (Hanafin, 1997; Hyland, 2000). Common in both Piaget's
and Gardner's vision, given their shared cognitive assumptions, is that
the learner is primarily viewed as an individual cognizer or solo
learner (Phillips and Soltis, 1998). In contrast, socio-cultural, cultural
or socio-genetic theories assume the learning itself is socially and
culturally rooted in communities of practice, encompassing the
artifacts and relationships of a particular time and place. An important
point here is that social is not just another variable, nor is it only the
interpersonal, rather it encompasses both artifacts and relationships as
they are situated historically (Vygotsky, 1978; Cole, 1996; Daniels,

2001). Thus, one can speak of what Valsiner and van der Veer call, in
their recent germinal work, the social mind (Valsiner and Van der
Veer, 2000). They trace the long tradition of scholarship underpinning
the idea of the social mind drawing a portrait of its lineage by tracing
the intellectual interdependency of the work of Lev Vygotsky, George
Herbert Mead, James Mark Baldwin, and Pierre Janet. More recently,
the work of cultural psychologist Arm Brown, who is credited with
creating the socio-cultural-based "community of learners" (COL)
model, has drawn attention to the rich pedagogical implications of the
socio-genetic tradition (Brown, 1994; Brown, 1997a; Brown, 1997b).
Drawing on Vygotsky's notion of the zone of proximal development
(ZPD) she highlights how reciprocal teaching, jigsaw co-operative
learning, and majoring (in-depth study of content focusing on
understanding)3 embody her conception of a community of learners
(Brown, 1993; Brown, 1994).

The distinctive pedagogical practices emanating from these
three camps of learning theories can be seen by examining the section
"Designing teaching: How can we design teaching for learning?" (see
Table 1). In the next section, I briefly describe the assumptions and
implications of the three camps.

The behavioural approach: clarity and targeted direct teaching
followed by controlled practice

Teaching approaches based on either common sense, what Olson and
Bruner (1996) call "folk psychology", or theoretically-inspired
behaviourism put a premium on three basic pedagogical strategies:
breaking down tasks into small and manageable pieces, teaching the
basics firsthand incrementally reinforcing or rewarding observable
progress. It is my contention, that these strategies have particular


appeal in educationally disadvantaged contexts. What are some of the
assumptions underpinning these hallmark strategies?

Based on empiricist philosophy, typified by Locke, Hume and
Thorndike, behaviourism's key assumptions are that learning occurs
though the detection of stimuli in the world by the sensory organs, the
detection of patterns in these stimuli, and the means through which
these "new associations" are transferred to different contexts. A
corollary of these assumptions is that knowledge is consistent with or
a reflection of experience (Greeno, Collins and Resnick, 1996). In
sum, these assumptions amount to viewing learning as the collection
and organisation of elements, associations, or behavioural units.

What are the implications of these assumptions for our views
of knowledge, intelligence, and pedagogy? From this perspective,
knowledge can be seen as a hierarchical assembly or collection of
associations or behavioural units. Intelligence is viewed as an
individual trait and a fixed commodity that puts a limit on the pace or
rate of learning. Perhaps the most widely recognised and intuitively
appealing implications of the behavioural perspective are its
recommendations for designing teaching. These are the simplification
and sequencing of tasks into discrete hierarchical steps and reinforcing
successful approximations of desired activity. In sum, the hallmarks
of behaviourism are presenting learning in small steps, in the simplest
possible form, sequencing tasks in a hierarchy from the simple to the
complex, and rewarding successful observed behaviours.

Two problems associated with this approach to teaching, are
the assumption of "vertical transfer" and the decomposition of
activities such as reading, writing, problem solving, resulting in a lack
of task wholeness and authenticity. Vertical transfer assumes that
learners will assemble the various associations or connections lower
down on the learning hierarchy, and integrate these in order to
eventually engage in higher order tasks. This vertical transfer
problem is interwoven with, what critics view as, the lack of task
authenticity when teaching is designed from a behavioural
perspective. Thus, rather than involving learners in the full
authenticity of say reading, a behavioural perspective focuses on
teaching the fundamental elements (e.g. in the case of reading,
perception of print, that is, single letters or words) prior to the more
complex elements (reading sentences and extended text). Using the
analogy of soccer, it is like teaching novice soccer players (novice
readers) via repetitive practice how to head, kick, and dribble the ball
(identify and sound out letters and words), that is the basics, for


prolonged periods before they ever get to play the game. Furthermore,
the "slow" soccer learners get to head, kick and dribble the ball for
even longer, before having the opportunity to engage in and make
sense of the whole game (read extended text for meaning) until "the
basics" have been thoroughly mastered. Despite these, and other
problems, behaviourism has had a powerful influence on views of
learning, approaches to teaching, and classroom management
strategies in education systems across the world. Furthermore,
formally and/or informally, many compensatory (targeted initiatives to
overcome disadvantage) and remedial (with a high concentration of
educationally disadvantaged students) interventions have been
profoundly influenced by behavioural assumptions about learning.

Writing in an Irish context, although not addressing educational
disadvantage per se, Dunne (1995, pp. 74-75) comments on the
importance of engaging students in the fullness of human social
practices such as reading and writing, claiming that

It seems likely many people have been greatly
shortchanged in their education, precisely because they
were introduced to these activities not as practices, but
rather as sites where decomposed drills, exercises and
micro-skills were rehearsed as means, while a taste of
the whole activity as an end was continually deferred or
displaced.

The apparently concrete, "practical" and observable nature of drills
and micro-skills, allied to the assumption of vertical transfer, gives a
compelling validity to these pedagogical strategies, and resonates with
Anyon (1981) and Oakes (1986) research that educationally
disadvantaged students (read lower working class) typically
experience diluted curricular experiences, involving task
decomposition and infrequent opportunities to engage in higher order
thinking.

The cognitive-rationalist perspective: creating contexts for
making meaning through guided discovery

Drawing upon continental rationalism, typified by Descartes and Kant,
cognitive theory's key assumption is that learning occurs as the mind
imposes order on the world through its own particular structures such
as the order-imposing structures inherent in information processing
schema theory, Piaget's schema-based stage theory of cognitive
development, or the modular structures of the mind underpinning
Gardner's multiple intelligences, MI, theory. Kant, responding to the


British Empiricists, argued that the mind imposes, rather than detects,
order in the world (Case, 1996). A corollary of these assumptions is
that knowledge is not a copy of reality. Resnick (1989, p. 2) conveys
this position well commenting that "Learning occurs not by recording
information but by interpreting it". In sum, these assumptions amount
to viewing learning as the active construction of knowledge by the
individual learner.

of knowledge, intelligence, and pedagogy? From this perspective,
knowing involves the structures of knowledge and processes that
construct patterns of symbols to understand concepts and deploy

general problem solving and reasoning strategies (e.g. Piagetian
position that learners deploy general logico-mathematical thinking
across contexts). Thus, knowledge rather than being "out there", the
basic assumption from behaviourist-empiricist stance, is constructed
by our actions on the world. As such, knowledge is made as we
engage with and experience the world. Intelligence is viewed as an
individual trait and portrayed as either a unitary (lumper position, e.g.
dominant "g" based views of IQ) or a multifaceted (splitter position,
e.g. Multiple Intelligences theory) commodity. The cognitive
perspective has provided many important insights with which <to plan
classroom teaching. Among the most important of these are the that
learning is active, learning is about the construction of meaning,
learning is both helped and hindered by our prior knowledge and
experience, learning reorganises our minds, the mind develops in
stages, and learning is more often than not unsettling. Based on these
insights, a diverse range of strategies has been developed for
classroom practice many of which are evident in various textbooks,
teacher handbooks, and curricular documents in Irish education over
the last thirty years. Much of the appeal of cognitive theories, in the
Irish context, grew out of the desire to move away from didactic and
transmission oriented teaching. Many advocates of active learning
would echo Dewey (1933/1993, p. 201), who in his book How We
Think, in opposition to the didactic nature of classroom teaching at
that time, spoke out against "the complete domination of instruction
by rehearsing second-hand information, by memorizing for the sake of
producing correct replies at the proper time". Anticipating some of
the arguments and claims made by cognitive and educational
psychologists over the last forty years, Dewey argued for the
importance of students' active involvement in the learning process and
problem solving as the context within which to learn information.


In sum, implications flowing from behavioural and cognitive
epistemologies are familiar to most educators and embedded in
policies and practices of teaching and learning in classrooms. For
example, it is my contention that pedagogy in educationally
disadvantaged settings is heavily influenced by behavioural principles
of learning in particular, and many remedial teaching strategies
borrow heavily from both behavioural and to a lesser extent cognitive
principles. Furthermore, various forms of programmed instruction or
mastery learning (Skinner, 1954) emanate directly from behavioural
assumptions about learning. While behavioural and cognitive theories
are based on very different assumptions about learning, knowing and
intelligence and have very different implications for classroom

practice, they share one defining feature, namely their focus on the
solo learner. Rather than viewing the learner as part of family,
community and social group embedded in a particular time and place,
both the behavioural and cognitive perspectives portray learning as
primarily a solo undertaking. Thus, what is neglected, in this focus on
the solo learner, is how the learner is situated amidst levels of
guidance by more knowledgeable others, nurtured via social support,
influenced by peer norms, and shapes and is shaped through engaging
in communication with other humans and various media within
evolving cultural and historical circumstances. As such, from a
learning perspective, attempting to understand and ameliorate
educational disadvantage, based on the assumption of the solo learner,
forecloses on opportunities to interrogate the extent to which
educational disadvantage is culturally and socially constructed in
classrooms, schools, and communities.

The socio-cultural perspective: promoting a community. of
learners

Rooted in the socio-genetic philosophies of Hegel and Marx, socio-
cultural theories assert that the mind originates dialectically through
the social and material history of a culture in which a person inhabits.
This position is in marked contrast to the view that the mind has its
primary origin in the structures of the objective world (behaviourist
position), has its origin in the order-imposing structures of the mind
(cognitive/Information processing position), or has its origins in the
interaction of the individual learner and the objective world
(cognitive/Piagetian position) (Case, 1996).

of knowledge, intelligence and pedagogy? Knowledge, from a socio-
cultural perspective, is viewed as a construction of groups and as such


is distributed as individuals and groups shape and are shaped through
various social practices. Learning occurs, not through order-imposing
structures of the mind, but through initiation and participation in out
of or in school social practices. In marked contrast to conventional
views of intelligence rooted in a cognitive perspective (here I include
traditional notions of singular intelligence and multiple intelligences),
intelligence is seen as distributed across a group and is not necessarily
the property of individuals but refracted through the lens of "learners-
in-context" as they use culturally valued tools, symbols and other
artifacts that assist social and cognitive performance.

In terms of pedagogy, socio-culrural theories put a heavy

emphasis on fostering communities of learners (FCL), which provide
not only opportunities for cognitive development but also the
development of students' identities as literate and numerate members
of knowledge-building communities. In her classic article, "The
Advancement of Learning" (Brown, 1994), first delivered as the
Presidential address at the American Educational Research
Association (AERA) annual meeting in 1994, the late English born
and US based educator, Ann Brown outlined a coherent set of
principles underpinning the notion of a "community of learners" as
well key strategies for its implementation. These principles are:

• Academic learning as active, strategic, self-motivated and
purposeful
• Classrooms as settings for multiple zones of proximal
development
• Legitimization of differences
• Developing communities of discourse and practice, and
• Teaching deep conceptual content that is sensitive to
developmental nature of students' knowledge in particular
subject areas

The integrated implementation of these five principles forms the
support for the emergence of communities of learners in classroom
settings. First, based upon the insight that much academic learning is
active, strategic, self-motivated and purposeful, Brown emphasized
how FCLs ought to focus on the development of students' capacity to
think about thinking, that is engage in meta-cognition. As such, a key
feature of FCLs is the promotion of a culture of meta-cognition,
directed toward the development of learning to learn strategies.
Second, drawing upon Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development
(ZPD), that is the difference between what a learner can do by

Conway learning cop-ies02

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Was ist angesagt?

Was ist angesagt? (9)

Andere mochten auch

Andere mochten auch (9)

Ähnlich wie Conway learning cop-ies02

Ähnlich wie Conway learning cop-ies02 (20)

Mehr von Emma Grice

Mehr von Emma Grice (20)

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

Conway learning cop-ies02