Reconstructing Undergraduate Education

Using Learning Science To Design Effective Courses

Robert B. Innes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135616151
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is designed to introduce professors and administrators in higher education to the philosophical, theoretical, and research support for using a constructivist perspective on learning to guide the reconstruction of undergraduate education. It presents an original framework for systematically linking educational philosophy and learning theories to their implications for teaching practice. In this volume, Innes summarizes the sources he found most useful in developing his own set of teaching principles and course development process, and makes an argument for a particular perspective on learning--transactional constructivism--which is consistent with the philosophy of John Dewey and supported by current theory and research in learning science. Transactional constructivism, a combined approach, builds on the strengths of two competing views: psychological constructivism and the sociocultural perspective. Reconstructing Undergraduate Education: Using Learning Science to Design Effective Courses:
*overviews the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of the teaching model that is the focus of the volume;
*presents a summary of Dewey's educational philosophy and connects his work to current theory and research in learning science;
*examines psychological constructivism, one of the basic positions within the range of learning theories that takes a constructivist perspective;
*offers a case study example of a course designed and taught from this perspective;
*reviews the sociocultural and the transactional constructivist perspectives;
*explores the quality of dialogue and disciplinary discourse in the classroom--an issue that is critical to the success of models derived from a transactional constructivist perspective on learning; and
*explores broader issues related to reform in higher education. This volume is a vital resource for all professionals involved in undergraduate education.

Chapter 1

Overview of Constructivism

Constructivist views of learning include a range of theories that share the general perspective that knowledge is constructed by learners rather than transmitted to learners. Most of these theories trace their philosophical roots to John Dewey. This book explores the implications of constructivism and research in learning science for undergraduate education. It presents a model for undergraduate education, grounded in the educational philosophy of John Dewey and informed by theory and research in learning science.

The learning science revolution has had a broad impact on curriculum design and classroom teaching practices in primary and secondary education around the world. With notable exceptions, however, undergraduate education, especially at research universities in the United States, has been the least affected (Berger, 2002; Gardiner, 1994, 2000; Halpern & Hakel, 2003; National Center for Postsecondary Improvement, 2002; Stark & Lattuca, 1997). Yet there is evidence of growing interest in the implications of these theories for university teaching (Krockover, Shepardson, Eichinger, Nakhleh, & Adams, 2002; Marchese, 1997; Thompson, Licklider, & Jungst, 2003; Tien, Roth, & Kampmeier, 2002). In their report, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities, The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates (1999) issued a call for reform in undergraduate education. Although the Boyer Report did not include either the philosophical or research base that supported their recommendations, their conclusions were clearly consistent with Dewey’s philosophy and research in learning science.

This book introduces a range of constructivist positions and makes a case for a particular brand of constructivism—the combined or transactional constructivist approach. This approach draws from constructivist theories that focus on building internal cognitive structures as well as approaches that focus on the sociocultural context of learning. The combined position maintains the central roles of both ideas and social experience. A key feature of the combined position is that it proposes a transactional relationship between theory and practice. In this model, theory and practice inform each other through a recursive, iterative process that results in competent problem solving and well-formed abstractions that can be used to solve a class of problems in the future. Neither theory nor practice is privileged in this approach to teaching.

In this frame of reference, there are many ways to characterize the relationship between theory and practice (e.g., theoretical and practical understandings are recursive and transactional, theory and practice continually inform each other, conceptual and procedural knowledge reinforce each other to enhance problem-solving ability). These views of the relationship between theory and practice do not provide an obvious answer to the question of whether we should initiate a lesson by introducing theory or begin on the level of concrete experience. Traditional approaches to university teaching, which privilege theory over practice, usually start by presenting the theory. Constructivists usually begin on the level of experience (e.g., presenting students with a problem to solve, assessing the students’ previous experience and present understanding related to the content).

COMPETING VIEWS OF EDUCATION

In their classic article “Development as the Aim of Education,” Kohlberg and Mayer (1972) analyzed the basic positions that have framed the debate over educational reform over the last 100 years. They identified three streams of Western educational ideology: (a) romanticism—associated with Rousseau and other philosophers and educators who see the child as inherently good (for educators with this perspective, the emphasis is on allowing students to grow and develop unfettered by societal constraint); (b) cultural transmission— focused on passing along the knowledge, skills, and values developed by previous generations; and (c) progressivism—associated with the philosophy of John Dewey. Progressivism promotes development in students by presenting them with problems or conflicts they can solve through active engagement Kohlberg and Mayer concluded that, of these three approaches, only progressivism “sees the acquisition of ‘knowledge’ as an active change in patterns of thinking brought about by experiential problemsolving situations” (p. 455).

Education performs two important and potentially conflicting societal functions: maintaining cultural continuity and helping a society adapt to change. In his classic work, Democracy and Education, John Dewey (1916) made the clearest case for the critical role education plays in a democratic society. Dewey’s early work also provided one pole for a debate about how American education should be conducted. Dewey and his followers in the progressive education movement at the turn of the 20th century challenged the “essentialists,” who saw curriculum development as defining “what every educated person should know” and the goal of education as transmitting an externally prescribed and structurally intact body of knowledge into the minds of students, Dewey (1938a) summarized his view of the opposing positions:

The history of educational theory is marked by opposition between the idea that education is development from within and that it is formation from without; [for the essentialists]… The subject-matter of education consists of bodies of information and of skills that have been worked out in the past…the chief business of the school is to transmit them to the new generation. (see page)

Recent books by Hirsch (1987), Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, and Ravich and Finn (1987), What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?, and a debate between Hirsch (1998) and one of his critics (Feinburg, 1998) demonstrate that the shape of the debate between these two positions has not changed substantially over the last 100 years.

The essentialists (both past and present) believe that scholars in the academic disciplines have the expertise to organize knowledge in the most effective way. Dewey did not dispute this assertion, but he did not share their belief that learners can use the preconstructed knowledge of experts and scholars to guide their own lives and solve their own problems. Dewey’s theory of learning as reconstructing experience requires that learners take an active role in constructing their own knowledge.

WHY DEWEY?

When I make presentations about transactional constructivist models for undergraduate education, I am frequently asked some form of the question, “Why Dewey?” Although Dewey is back in fashion as a philosopher, many educators wonder why it is helpful to focus on the work of a philosopher whose work is now 50 to 100 years old. In or out of fashion, I have always found that Dewey’s philosophy provides important insights for theory building. As successive generations of philosophers, constructivist theorists, and researchers occupy extreme positions, new combined positions similar to Dewey’s continue to assert themselves and Dewey is rediscovered.

Dewey’s efforts to change the goals and methods of education were an extension of his project to develop American pragmatism. One of the most distinctive features of Dewey’s version of pragmatism was his attempt to reconstruct philosophy without the dualisms that characterized most of the work that preceded him (e.g., the physical world and the ideal world of forms, theory and practice, mind and experience). In each case, he positioned the focus of his analysis on the point of the dynamic transaction between the elements of the old dualisms. Following Dewey’s rejection of the traditional dualisms of philosophy always leads me to educational theories that make more sense than any of the radical positions taken by whatever theories are occupying the educational “right” or “left” at any particular time.

John Dewey also takes a middle-of-the-road position (or, more accurately, an on-a-totally-different-road position) on the long-debated and poorly resolved question of what is real and how we can know what is real. This question is relevant to several of the issues explored in this book. The question of what is real and the nature of the relationship between the thing in itself and what we can know about it “in our heads” has occupied a significant portion of the energies of both philosophy and psychology over their disciplinary histories. In Dewey’s philosophy, the individual mind and the real world still exist, but the action takes place in a transactional relationship that encompasses the person and the world. In effect this allows Dewey to free the mind from its location “in the head” and also avoids the conclusion that the mind is not in the head at all. Most important, it focuses our attention on understanding the nature of the transaction between ideas and social practices.

Every reader has his or her own preferences about how he or she would like to approach a topic. John Dewey and the constructivists recommend beginning with an unstructured problem situation that is likely to be relevant to the reader. Dewey’s method is anchored in inquiry and always begins with a problem situation that is relevant to the learner. Dewey’s approach toward the world is instrumental: finding problems and addressing them through inquiry and action. Most university courses begin by presenting students with the basic knowledge and theories of an academic discipline and then address how that knowledge can be applied to practice. This book asserts that, in the end, these two perspectives (theory and practice) must be interwoven in reflective practice. It presents the development of abstract conceptual knowledge and the ability to use that knowledge to recognize, define, and solve problems effectively as an iterative process. In the next section, I begin this process by presenting a problem: How would you redesign a traditional course in light of the constructivis t perspecti ve learning?

THE “UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONS” COURSE

I decided to build this book around a case study of a course called “Understanding Organizations,” which I recently began teaching again after a 10-year break. This book alternates between concrete descriptions of the changes I made in this course over a 3-year period and presentations of philosophy, theory, and research, The iterative approach of cycling back and forth between my concrete experience in the classroom and theory and research on learning fits Dewey’s approach to building useful knowledge and understanding.

I begin by asking you to compare the general descriptions and syllabi for a traditional version of the “Understanding Organizations” course and the current version of the course. I present the two versions of the course side by side to allow you to compare the general approaches and specific features of the two versions of the course.

This approach contrasts with the usual practice of presenting theory first and then using that theory to guide practice. There are many reasons that constructivists do not think it is possible to apply theory to practice. First of all, that phrase implies that the theories come first rather than being grounded in experience. Theories are tools for solving problems embedded in natural settings, If they do not work, we change them or throw them out. The idea of applying theory to practice also implies that the way a theory works in a real situation is unaffected by the social practices of the situation. The relationship that constructivists see between theory and practice is transactional; it involves constant interaction and dialogue between the theory and activity in the real setting. The practice of teaching takes place in a powerful social milieu that is difficult to change. In addition to designing an ideal constructivist course, professors interested in experimenting with this approach have to think about the process they will use to help themselves and their students make the transition from the traditional model to the constructivist model.

When we change the way we do things in the classroom, it disturbs a system that is working well on some level for both the students and professors. It is important to remember that we cannot change any system without causing a great deal of discomfort and resistance. This book does not take the problem of overcoming this resistance lightly. I believe there are many instances where the principles of good teaching and learning have to bend to the reality of the system. The trick is to move along a path that is taking us in a positive direction.

TWO VERSIONS OF THE “UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONS” COURSE

If you are familiar with the literature on organizational behavior, group dynamics, and organizational leadership, you may have some idea how you would design a course to introduce this content to undergraduates. It you take some time to think about how you would approach this task, it makes the exercise of reviewing the syllabi for the two versions of the “Understanding Organizations” course more useful. This approach toward developing understanding by first placing the learner in an authentic problem situation fits the constructivist model. When I teach a course, my problem at this point in the process is to overcome the students’ tendency—conditioned by years of schooling—to think of learning as a passive activity. Like most readers, I would resist stopping in the middle of the first chapter of a book to spend time thinking about how I would design a course I will not even have to teach. Nevertheless, taking time to explore your own approach enhances the usefulness of the exercise of reviewing the syllabi for the “Understanding Organizations” course. It would also be helpful to compare the two syllabi for the course with syllabi from your own courses,

The descriptions of the “Understanding Organizations” course that follow include two versions: a traditional one that I taught a number of years ago and the most recent one. Placing these two versions of the course in juxtaposition emulates a method used to introduce topics in many courses taught from a constructivist perspective. The contrasting cases method helps highlight the important differences between two models. In a science course, the professor might begin by asking a novice and a scientist to comment on what they see happening in an experiment. The students would be asked to compare the two explanations and generate hypotheses about why the novice and scientist see different aspects of the same situation. We would expect the scientist to describe the situation in terms of deep principles and the novice to describe surface characteristics. For this exercise, I would like readers to compare the two syllabi, note the differences, and generate their own ideas about why I might have made the changes I did.

OVERVIEW OF THE TRADITIONAL VERSION OF THE “UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONS” COURSE

I first taught the “Understanding Organizations” course about 10 years ago. I did not have the opportunity to teach it again until 3 years ago. I do not actually have a copy of the syllabus I used when I first taught the course. The syllabus that follows is a fictionalized version of the course that I taught. Although, like many TV shows, the syllabus is “based on a true story,” the course description has been altered to make the course more traditional than it really was and to draw a clearer contrast between the two approaches to teaching the same course. When I taught the course 10 years ago, I used an earlier edition of Daft’s (2000) popular text, Organizational Theory and Design. The competitive environment and the issues facing organizations have changed in the last 10 years. I designed this fictional course with the current edition of Daft’s book to make the topics parallel to the issues we address in the current course. The other readings listed in the syllabus are drawn from the current management literature and are also used in the current version of the course. In the original version of the course, all the students read the same articles. In the current version, different groups of students read different articles.

The original version of “Understanding Organizations” used a lecture and discussion group format. The professor delivered lectures to 80 students on Tuesdays, and four discussion groups of 20 students were conducted on Thursdays. The discussion groups were conducted by teaching assistants. The discussion groups gave students an opportunity to ask questions about the reading and lectures and to discuss the major issues in the course. Activities in discussion grou...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Overview of Constructivism
• Chapter 2: John Dewey and the Foundations of Constructivism
• Chapter 3: Psychological Constructivist Perspectives on Learning
• Chapter 4: Course Development Case Study I
• Chapter 5: Sociocultural Perspectives on Learning
• Chapter 6: Transactional Constructivist Perspectives
• Chapter 7: Open Dialogue, Disciplinary Discourse, and Diversity in the Learning Community
• Chapter 8: “Understanding Organizations” Case Study II
• Chapter 9: Developing a Transactional Constructivist Teaching Model
• Chapter 10: Curriculum Reform in Higher Education
• References
• Appendix A: Scoring Guide for Application of Theory for Cases in HOD 1200
• Appendix B: HOD 1200—Understanding Organizations