July 3, 2002
As a student, I was largely unaware of the large body of learning theory that presumably lay behind my instructors' teaching methods. I have had no formal teaching experience or training, nor have I ever taken so much as a survey course in psychology, so most of the theories I've encountered in preparing for the BI project have been new to me. Although I recently had the opportunity in my Advanced Information Resources and Services (LIBR228) course to put together a BI module, we focused on the instructional design aspects of teaching, rather than on theory.
I began by familiarizing myself with the basic tenets of the various theories, looking primarily at the behaviorist, cognitive, and constructivist theories, as well as investigating Multiple Intelligence (MI), Learning Styles (LS), and Experiential Learning (EL). The more I read through the various theories, the more overlap I saw between many, such as MI and LS theories, or between constructivist and EL theories.
As a starting point for thinking about learning, I looked at a set of principles of learning enumerated in Hein (1991) (summarized):
One of the most useful, albeit commonsense, statements I've read (in the context of LS) has been that "teachers generally teach according to their own style of learning" (Bodi, 1990). In LS theory, learners may be classified in a variety of ways, including visual, auditory or tactile/kinesthetic, with the added dimension of field-dependent/field-independent. "Field-dependent individuals are considered to be more group-oriented and cooperative and less competitive than field-independent individuals" (Heredia, 1999). The larger the divergence between the teacher's and a student's learning styles, the less effective the teaching may be (depending on the student's ability to adapt to different styles). This may be self evident, but certainly good to keep in mind. Gardiner (1998) echoes this idea when he notes that a national research study concluded that college level instructors "seemed to teach as they had been taught."
Whether instructors are teaching to their own learning style or teaching as they have been taught, they run the risk of missing a significant proportion of their students. In the context of Gardner's MI theory (1990), instructors likely are teaching to their own particular intelligences, which have overlap with the LS cateogies.
Another useful idea is that the appropriate learning theory depends on the level of instruction. Ertmer and Newby (1993) argue for taking different approaches, based on two factors: the learners' knowledge level and amount of thought and reflection required by the learning tasks. They suggest that the right approach for a given learning task depends in part on the learner's knowledge of the subject. As the amount of thought and reflection required for a learning task increases, the appropriate approach moves along the scale from behaviorist to cognitive to constructivist. A behavioral approach is useful for learning facts and rote tasks ("knowing how"). A cognitive approach is suited to teaching problem solving, where strategies learned in one situation can be transferred to another ("knowing what"). A constructivist approach, on the other hand, is useful when the problems aren't well defined and require more creativity in solving them ("reflection-in-action"). No single approach serves all tasks or users; the instructor must consider both factors before deciding on a theory or instructional approach.
I suspect most instructors probably do apply different theories in teaching different types of material to different levels of students, whether at a conscious level or not. An instructor will not take an abstract approach to teaching a rote task to beginners unless the she or he doesn't care about the students' success. Gardner, in a 1997 interview (Chekley, 1997), admitted that MI hadn't changed his teaching significantly because "there are only so many ways" to teach undergraduate students psychological theory, although he claims he now consciously works with more varied teams in his research projects.
Gardiner (1998) argues that a great deal of research shows that college students' ability to reason with abstractions is "strikingly limited;" in cognitive theory's terms, they haven't yet reached a "formal operational" level. Critical thinking is one form of higher-level reasoning that is important both to society and to faculty, and consequently, important to students' academic success. Thirty years of research seems to indicate that most college students (and by extension, many post-college adults?) see the world in black-white/right-wrong terms with knowledge passively received from authorities. They, and many others, don't appear to understand that "knowledge is constructed by a very active, personal making of meaning. They don't understand the role played by evidence when they select from among competing hypotheses, opinions, and values. In other words, they do not understand critical thinking processes." (Gardiner, 1998, 72-73).
If MI Theory is correct, the Piagetian model is flawed (Gardner & Hatch, 1990); the type of abstract thinking expected from college instructors will be met best only by those students whose logical-linguistic intelligences are most fully developed. At the very least, the type of intelligence required for critical thinking should be encouraged more widely earlier in student's schooling. Gardner (1983) wrote, "many schools and educators do not even have the idea that understanding is both important and elusive. Most schools are bent upon the mastery of facts, even though facts have nothing to do with disciplinary mastery or with understanding. Most standardized tests are also fixated on the accreditation of facts. Thus, everything from our teachers to our tests to our television game shows projects precisely the wrong image of what it is to be an educated person." (p. 3-4)
Kornhaber and Gardner laid out groundwork for teaching critical thinking in the context of MI Theory in their 1989 article, "Critical thinking across multiple intelligences." I was unfortunately unable examine a copy of this work.
Although Piaget observed that children couldn't grasp concepts from a higher level of cognitive development than they had reached themselves, I suspect the seeds of the concepts could be planted in student's minds. In my own schooling, I don't recall learning explicitly about critical thinking until I began college. Although my ability to think critically may be poorly developed (as a result of my particular set of intelligences? Or due to lack of early training?), teaching students to do so is a valuable skill, whether in the classroom, in the library, or in the world at large.
Hein (1991) defines constructivism as "the idea that learners construct knowledge for themselves - each learner individually (and socially) constructs meaning - as he or she learns. Constructing meaning is learning; there is no other kind. The dramatic consequences of this view are twofold:
Some writers note the close match between constructivist theory and critical thinking, even if critical thinking has not yet become associated with a particular pedagogical style: "the fit between the constructivist methods of struggle with and reflection upon experiences and data, and the critical thinking methods of dialogue, questioning and reflection is one that facilitates both critical-thinking and construction of knowledge" (Davis-Seaver, Smith & Leflore, 2001). But if Gardiner's analysis is an accurate assessment of students' levels of reasoning (presumably true for an even larger number of upper division high school students), then the usefulness of a constructivist approach may be quite limited unless students have been in constructivists classrooms throughout their primary and secondary schooling!
In Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory (ELT), learning takes place both on a concrete level (or more emotional level; in the older parts of the brain) and on an abstract level (or more intellectual level; in the new parts of the brain); effective learning engages both levels simultaneously and forms a dialectic between the two (Kolb, Baker & Jensen; 2002, in press). Learning often takes place in a structured and cyclical pattern of two or more steps that include, at minimum, a do/review (or experience/reflection) pattern (Greenaway, 1995).
In all of the above theories, the students' knowledge and experience plays an important role. Instructors must keep in mind both the learning tasks and the strengths of their students; the theory that best fits the instruction may change with the tasks and students - and aspects of several theories may be found at work simultaneously in classroom practice. They would do well to look carefully at the situation and tailor their approach accordingly, similar to Donovan's (2002) description of applying cooperative learning theory to a classroom in a poor section of Dublin. A cookie cutter approach to teaching, whether in the classroom or in BI/IL will prime too many students for failure.
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