ABSTRACT: I argue that the criticism of Piaget by Catherine Scott in
a recent AERA-D post is problematic, and close with three questions:
(1) Does Kieran Egan ("Getting it Wrong from the Beginning: Our
progressivist inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean
Piaget") or anyone else give any solid evidence for such criticism?,
(2) Would anyone, care to comment on Kieran Egan's opinion that (a)
both Dewey and Piaget were "wrong from the start", and
(b) heavily influenced by Herbert Spencer?", (3) If Dewey was and
still is WRONG, why is Dewey-like pedagogy so seemingly successful in
introductory physics education?
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Matthew Schulz, in response to my post "Has Piaget Gone Down For the
Long Count?" [Hake (2005a)] wrote, in an AERA-D post of 6 Sep 2005
09:26:02-0500 titled "Re: Piaget down for the count":
". . . in reading Mr. Metzenberg's (undated #2) delightful essay . .
.[for another such "delightful essay" see Metzenberg (undated #1)] .
. . , I must
say, it reinforces my opinion that Mr. Piaget's influence on
education, like Freud's influence on psychology, is in part due to an
inane research sense among many in the social sciences."
To which Dan Laitsch (2005) responded in an AERA-D post of 6 Sep 2005
09:36:53-0700:
"[Metzenberg's (undated #2)] is an interesting article, but I'm not
sure that I see why one piece of contrary research should throw out
all of Piaget's theory. Scientific method would dictate that we
theorize, experiment, replicate and revise. Where does the
all-or-nothing stance of Metzenberg come from? I fear it comes from
ideology and belief, and not from any type of scientific approach to
the issue. Do look at the essay. The document is an opinion piece,
and not scholarly look at the issue."
******************************************
ASIDE: Why Metzenberg's all or nothing stance? The senseless
polarization of traditionalists such as Metzenberg and some
progressives, is bemoaned by Martin Bickman (2004) in "Won't You Come
Home John Dewey?" Because Bickman's take on Dewey seems rather
different from that of Kieran Egan (see below), I'll quote Bickman
[bracketed by lines "BBBB. . ."; my CAPS]:
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
One of the reasons this continuing conflict is so heartbreaking is
that, around the turn of the last century, JOHN DEWEY WAS ABLE TO
CREATE RESOLUTIONS BOTH IN A PHILOSOPHIC AND PRACTICAL SENSE. He
looked out on an educational landscape torn between similar
apparently competing philosophies. One group centered on the notion
of 'child-study' and the person of G. Stanley Hall. This group had a
Rousseau-like sentimentality about nature and children, and it was
more concerned with what it saw as health and wholeness than with
intellectual growth. On the other side was a group that stressed high
academic achievement as defined and organized by curricula and
textbooks, led by William Torrey Harris, U.S. commissioner of
education. In this view, the standard curriculum - arithmetic,
geography, history, grammar and literature, the "five windows of the
soul," as Harris called them - rescued the young mind from its
immediate narrowness. Instead of enlisting on one side or the other,
Dewey, in a crucial 1902 article, "The Child and the Curriculum,". .
. .[now in Dewey (1990)]. . . conceptualized each position so that
it would no longer seem a matter of the child versus the curriculum.
DEWEY'S CRUCIAL POINT WAS NOT MERELY THAT NEITHER SIDE WAS RIGHT,
BUT THAT THE PROBLEMS WERE CREATED BY THE POLARIZATION ITSELF, BY
TURNING A DYNAMIC PROCESS INTO HARDENED, STATIC OPPOSITIONS. His
solution was to stop thinking of the child's experience as also
something hard and fast, and instead see it as something fluent,
embryonic and vital. EXPERIENCE WITHOUT CONCEPTS IS SHALLOW AND
STAGNANT; SIMILARLY, CONCEPTS WITHOUT IMMEDIATE CONNECTIONS TO
EXPERIENCE ARE INERT AND USELESS." See also Bickman (2003).
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
End of ASIDE
******************************************
Laitsch's (2005) post prompted Catherine Scott's (2005) AERA-D post
of 7 Sep 2005 [bracketed by lines "SSSSS. . . "; my CAPS and inserts
of references and URL's within square brackets]:
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
[Laitch (2005) wrote] "[Metzenberg (undated #2)] is an interesting
article, but I'm not sure that I see why one piece of contrary
research [ ]"
There is many decades worth of work that shows quite clearly that
PIAGET GOT IT WRONG. See 'Getting it wrong from the beginning' by
Kieran Egan [2004] for a good summary. Or visit Kieran's homepage
[<http://www.educ.sfu.ca/kegan/>] at Simon Fraser U.
Piaget is hailed these days as being both highly original and as
having derived his theories from observation. Neither is the case.
His thoughts about human development were much in accord with that of
19th and the early 20th centuries. AND HE TRIMMED THE CONCLUSIONS HE
DERIVED FROM HIS OBSERVATIONS TO FIT WHAT HE ALREADY 'KNEW' TO BE THE
CASE. That is, before he spent time watching his own infants he
already 'knew' what he would find.
If people more clearly understood the basis of his thinking they
might be much less likely to champion his ideas.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Catherine's claim that Piaget:
(a) was not highly original,
(b) did not derive his theories from observation,
(c) derived his thoughts about human development from ideas of the
19th and the early 20th centuries [Catherine may be thinking of the
ideas Herbert Spencer set forth in "Education: Intellectual, Moral,
and Physical" (Spencer 1854-1859) which, according to Egan, heavily
influenced both Dewey & Piaget],
(d) trimmed the conclusions he derived from his observations to fit
what he already 'knew' to be the case,
are serious charges.
However, they seem to be inconsistent with the opinions of Philip
Adey, John Anderson, Howard Gardner, Alan Kay, and Ernst von
Glasersfeld as quoted in Hake (2005a), and my own reading on Piaget's
developmental theory [Bybee & Sund (1982), Gardner (1985), Inhelder
et al. (1987), Phillips & Soltis (1998)]. Although I have not rolled
up my sleeves, polished my French, and studied Piaget's *original*
works as advised by PhysLrnR's Dewey Dykstra, the books by Bybee &
Sund (1982) and Inhelder et al. (1987) contain essays by those who
worked with Piaget and thus have first-hand knowledge of his work.
I also must confess to having read only the online introduction
<http://www.educ.sfu.ca/kegan/wrongindex.html> to Egan's (2004)
"Getting it Wrong from the Beginning: Our progressivist inheritance
from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget." Therein Egan did
not quite make the bold charges set forth above by Catherine Scott,
but perhaps he does that elsewhere in his book. Egan wrote in his
introduction [my CAPS]:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
In Chapter 1, I outline some of the basic ideas of progressivism,
showing their early expressions in the work of Herbert Spencer. I
also consider the strange case of Spencer's immense influence and
almost vanished reputation. In Chapters 2 through 4, I look at
progressivist ideas about learning, development, and the curriculum.
In each case I begin with Spencer's formulations - which will, I
suspect, surprise many readers, as they may have come to take such
ideas as obviously true and might even believe them to have been
originally Dewey's ideas. I show how SUCH FIGURES AS DEWEY AND PIAGET
ELABORATED [SPENCER'S] IDEAS, HOW THEY HAVE FOUND THEIR WAY INTO
CURRENT PRACTICE, AND HOW THEY HAVE BEEN WRONG FROM THEIR BEGINNING
AND HAVEN'T BECOME ANY LESS WRONG FOR A CENTURY'S REITERATION. In
Chapter 5, I argue that much modern educational research is flawed by
related presuppositions to those I identify in progressivism.
Throughout, I indicate the direction we need to move in to get beyond
the pervasive flaw.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
But if Dewey's ideas were, and still are, WRONG, it's not easy to see
why physics education research [for a review see Heron & Meltzer
(2005)] strongly suggests that Dewey-like pedagogy [Ansbacher (2000),
Hake (2005b)] can yield normalized gains in conceptual understanding
that are almost two-standard deviations superior [Hake (2002)] to
those induced by traditional direct instruction.
Three questions:
(1) Does Kieran Egan or anyone else give any solid evidence for
Catherine Scott's criticism?
(2) Would anyone, care to comment on Kieran Egan's opinion that (a)
both Dewey and Piaget were "wrong from the start", and (b) heavily
influenced by Herbert Spencer?"
(3) If Dewey was, and still is, WRONG, why is Dewey-like pedagogy so
seemingly successful in introductory physics education?
Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
24245 Hatteras Street, Woodland Hills, CA 91367
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi>
"Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and
memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like
passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving. Not that it always
effects this result; but that conflict is a sine qua non of
reflection and ingenuity."
John Dewey "Morals Are Human," Dewey: Middle Works, Vol.14, p. 207.
REFERENCES
Ansbacher, T. 2000. "An interview with John Dewey on science
education." The Physics Teacher 38(4): 224-227; freely online at
<http://www.scienceservs.com/id13.html> as a 1.3 MB pdf. A thoughtful
and well-researched treatment showing the consonance of Dewey's
educational ideas (as quoted straight from Dewey's own writings, not
from the accounts of sometimes confused Dewey interpreters) with the
thinking of most current science-education researchers. Ansbacher's
valuable web site is <http://www.scienceservs.com>.
Bickman, M. 2003. "Minding American Education," Teachers College
Press; for a description see
<http://www.mindingamericaneducation.com/>.
Bickman. M. 2004. "Won't You Come Home John Dewey?" Los Angeles Times
OpEd piece, online on the Dewey-L archives at
<http://listserv.sc.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0407C&L=DEWEY-L&P=R2&I=-3&X=6479B91D4C2E4F8473&Y=rrhake%40earthlink.net>.
Originally more meaningfully titled "The Needless War Between
Traditionalists and Progressives and How to End It," but retitled by
the LA Times OpEd editor [God save us from such!].
Bybee, R.W. & R.B. Sund. 1982. "Piaget for Educators." Waveland
Press. See especially Chapter 1 "Jean Piaget: An Exploration of His
Life and Work."
Dewey,J. 1990. "The School and Society, The Child and the
Curriculum," with an introduction by Philip W. Jackson. Univ. of
Chicago Press. Originally published in 1956. "The School and Society"
was written in 1902.
Egan, K. 1998. "The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our
Understanding." University of Chicago Press. For Egan's homepage
presentation of the introduction and reviews see
<http://www.educ.sfu.ca/kegan/EdMind.html>.
Egan, K. 2004. "Getting it Wrong from the Beginning: Our
progressivist inheritance from Herbert Spencer, John Dewey, and Jean
Piaget." Yale University Press. For Egan's homepage presentation of
the introduction and reviews see
<http://www.educ.sfu.ca/kegan/wrongindex.html>. See also Egan (1998,
2005).
Egan, K. 2005. "An Imaginative Approach to Teaching." Jossey Bass.
For Egan's homepage presentation of the introduction and reviews see
<http://www.educ.sfu.ca/kegan/J-BassIndex.html>.
Gardner, H. 1985. "The Mind's New Science: A History Of The Cognitive
Revolution." Basic Books, especially "Jean Piaget's Developmental
Concerns," pp. 116-118.
Hake, R.R. 2002. "Lessons from the physics education reform effort,"
Ecology and Society 5(2): 28; online at
<http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol5/iss2/art28/>. Ecology and Society
(formerly Conservation Ecology) is a free online "peer-reviewed
journal of integrative science and fundamental policy research" with
about 11,000 subscribers in about 108 countries.
Hake, R.R. 2005a. "Has Piaget Gone Down For the Long Count?" online
at <http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509&L=pod&O=D&P=2834>.
Post of 5 Sep 2005 08:30:25-0700 to AERA-D, AERA-J, AERA-K, AERA-L,
AP-Physics, ASSESS, Biolab, Biopi-L, Chemed-L, EvalTalk, Math-Learn,
Physhare, PhysLrnR, TeachingEdPsych, TIPS.
Hake, R.R. 2005b. "Re: Interview with Dewey," online at
<http://listserv.sc.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0501d&L=dewey-l&D=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=2117>.
Post of 23 Jan 2005 20:19:30-0800 to AERA-K, AERA-L, AP-Physics,
Dewey-L, EvalTalk, Math-Learn, Physhare, PhysLrnR, & POD.
Heron, P.R.L. & D. Meltzer. 2005. "The future of physics education research:
Intellectual challenges and practical concerns," Amer. J. Phys.
73(5): 390-394; online at
<http://www.physics.iastate.edu/per/articles/index.html>, scroll down
to "invited papers," or download directly by clicking on
<http://www.physics.iastate.edu/per/docs/Heron-Meltzer.pdf> (56kB).
Inhelder, B., D. de Caprona, and A. Cornu-Wells, eds. 1987. "Piaget
Today." Erlbaum. See especially the Introduction by Inhelder and de
Caprona " Piaget in the Light of Current Research," and Chapter 9 by
S. Carey "Theory Change in Childhood."
Laitsch, D. 2005. "Re: Piaget down for the count," AERA-D post of 6
Sep 2005 09:36:53-0700; online at
<http://lists.asu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509&L=aera-d&T=0&F=&S=&X=5EFAC46B8B017DDBE1&Y=rrhake%40earthlink.net&P=743>.
Mertzenberg, S. undated #1. "Reading: The Most Important Science
Process Skill," Antenna; online at
<http://www.youth.net/ysc/educnews/readscie.htm>. Metzenberg opined
"What has been left unsaid is that real scientists don't actually
spend very much of their day 'observing' and 'measuring.' They read!
Reading for understanding of content is the core process skill of
science, and there is no substitute for practice at an early age. . .
Hands-on investigative activities ought to be sprinkled into a
science program like a 'spice' they cannot substitute for a 'main
dish'. The best 'hands-on' program would be one in which students can
get their 'hands on' an informative textbook!"
Mertzenberg, S. undated #2. "Piaget goes down for the Long Count,"
Antenna; online at <http://www.youth.net/ysc/educnews/piaget.htm>.
Phillips, D.C. & J.F. Soltis. 1998. "Perspectives on Learning."
Teachers College Press, third edition, esp. Chapter 5, "Piagetian
Structures and Psychological Constructivism."
Scott, C. 2005. "Re: Piaget down for the count," AERA-D post of 7 Sep
2005 09:37:18 +1000; online at
<http://lists.asu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509&L=aera-d&T=0&F=&S=
&X=1692FB50949D2BD50D&Y=rrhake%40earthlink.net&P=839>
Spencer, H. 1854-1859. "Education: Intellectual, Moral, and
Physical," republished in 2002 by Cambridge Scholars Press. For
information on Spencer see e.g., Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer>, and Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spencer/>.
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