Educational Insanity

Once upon a time, when I was a graduate student at Boston College, I studied under a professor named Dr. Michael Schiro.  He had published a book called Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns.  In that book, he spells out four “conflicting” theories of curriculum. I won’t detail them here other than to say that each of the theories (or ideologies) is backed by psychological theories/principles.  For my final paper for his class (this was over a decade ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday), I challenged his whole premise and asserted that there were essentially only two schools of thought with respect to curriculum: one school based on principles of developmental psychology and the other based on behavioral psychology.

This wasn’t completely novel thinking, but for a masters level student, it was pretty heady stuff.  Years later, I read Kieran Egan’s article, “Why education is so difficult and contentious” wherein Egan asserts that “thinking about education during this century has almost entirely involved just three ideas -socialization, Plato’s academic idea, and Rousseau’s developmental idea.” Egan goes on to argue that “[a]ll educational positions are made up of various mixes of these ideas. The problems we face in education are due to the fact that each of these ideas is significantly flawed and also that each is incompatible in basic ways with the other two. Until we recognize these basic incompatibilities we will be unable adequately to respond to the problems we face.”  In other words, attending to academics, socialization and child development were each flawed goals for schooling and when pursued simultaneously, they conflict.

Leaving out the socialization piece, Egan’s thesis further strengthened my belief in the ultimate pitting of principles of development psychology and behavioral psychology in the enactment of schooling. Lately, I’ve been imagining this as more of a continuum than a dichotomy.  Interestingly, this new(er) thinking has been influenced by my observations around parenting as much as schooling.  I’m a father of two kids under 5 years old, and we interact with lots of parents of young kids.  What I have noticed is adults who tend to parent in ways that are heavily developmentally-focused, heavily behaviorally-focused, or some mix of the two.

These observations and ideas are not entirely original, but there’s another dimension to add that I think is equally important to my own (maybe original) developing theory of schooling and parenting.  This second dimension (or continuum) has to do with intentionality.  That is, adults interact with kids in ways that are more or less intentional.  Some things we do with kids are done with great intention, while other things are done without much thought at all (sometimes even by accident).

If we cross these two dimensions, we end up with something like this:

[how's that for advanced use of my tablet PC?]

So, the more deliberate/intentional/purposeful adults are in their interactions with children (as educators and/or parents), the further to the right of the graph they are.  The more developmentally-focused one’s actions are, the higher on the y-axis they fall (and the more behaviorally-focused one is, the lower on the y-axis they fall).  For instance, consider rewards systems for kids (e.g. “read 25 pages per night and earn 5 gold stars on the reading chart!” or “poop on the potty and earn 5 M&Ms!”). Those are interventions based on principles of behavioral psychology.  Thus, they’d be pretty far down on the y-axis.  Where that interaction would be plotted with respect to the x-axis depends on how purposeful the adult(s) was(were) in choosing that strategy. I submit that many educators and parents engage in such activities without much thought as to why they are doing it.

I try not to be judgmental about how people parent their kids. We all have unique needs and circumstances and have to make very personal parenting decisions.   My wife and I are very, very deliberate about our parenting. It is hard for me to imagine that anyone has read more books and thought more about parenting than my wife.  As a result, just about everything we do as parents would be plotted far to the right on the graph above.  We’re also very committed to a developmentally-focused orientation towards parenting called Attachment Parenting. So, we try to be as high and far as possible into the upper-right quadrant of the graph above.  That works for us.  It doesn’t work for most; I fully recognize that.  All I’ll say beyond that about parenting is that I am concerned that too many parents are not intentional enough about what they do.

In fact, I feel pretty strongly that all of our interactions with children should be as intentional as possible.  With respect to schooling, I strongly favor developmental approaches; I’m not shy about that bias.  However, if educators use behavior-based approaches, I can be more supportive if it is done so with great purpose/deliberation (e.g. “I know there are consequences, particularly with respect to motivation, to implementing a rewards program, but I believe the benefits outweigh the disadvantages…”). In most cases, though, behavioral approaches to teaching/learning are undertaken without much deliberation.  This default, behavior-based orientation to schooling troubles me immensely.  I have great fears about exposing my children to that form of schooling.

Some other thoughts about the graph:

• I believe that the majority of educators and parents engage kids in ways that would be plotted in the bottom half of the graph.
• In the world of schooling, I believe the majority of interactions between adults and children would be plotted in the lower-right quadrant.
• I believe very few interactions between adults and kids would be plotted in the upper-left quadrant.  Especially in the Western Hemisphere, the default parenting orientation tends toward behaviorism.

That’s all I’ll say for now. I hope to revisit these ideas on occasion.  I also hope you’ll help me think through them.

Thanks to Will Richardson for alerting us to an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that’s disturbing to the core (IMHO).  Clearly, there are details of the “technology initiative” (odd language, seems more like they just built a new school with cool stuff in it) that we’re not getting.  But, I wonder, did, as the author suggests, the administration just buy a whole bunch of stuff without considering the curriculum and/or the teaching needs?  I doubt that’s entirely the case, but it did remind me…

There have been many great sports coaches who were successful based on a “system” they installed.  Bill Walsh and the so-called “West Coast Offense” is one example.  Pete Carrill’s “Princeton Offense” is another.   Numerous proteges of those coaches have left the nest to coach their own teams using the system they learned.  These coaches struggle at first because certain types of players thrive within their system and those players are not necessarily the ones they inherit on the new team.  In other words, they inherit a team of players not necessarily suited to thrive in the system to be implemented.  Thus, it takes the coaches a couple of years to get appropriate players in place for their system to succeed.  Urban Meyer, the head football coach at the University of Florida brought his “Spread Offense” from the University of Utah to Florida.  He inherited a quarterback who was pretty good (although U of  F fans tend to disagree on that), but who did not possess the skill set to thrive in Meyers’ offense.  Once Meyers got a quarterback who could operate his system well, he was more successful.  Now, we see Rich Rodriguez bringing his version of the Spread Offense from WVU to the University of Michigan; the rising sophomore quarterback who would’ve been the starter had a coaching change not happened has transferred because he’s not at all the type of QB who can run the new “system.”

Some professional coaches have a harder time implementing systems because they can’t  as easily recruit the right kinds of players.  Long-term contracts and salary caps often force professional coaches to think differently.  Therefore, a successful pro coach is often one who is able to adjust his system to the personnel.  Bill Parcells is a great example.  He won the Super Bowl as the coach of the New York Giants with his system (ball control/rushing attack on offense; tough D).  When he took over as coach of the Patriots, he had a team more suited to the passing game.  So, he adjusted and was quite successful.  He made similar adjustments when he took over the Dallas Cowboys.

So, what does this all mean for education?  Well, I think educational leaders/policymakers are guilty of installing systems without regard to the personnel.  Much more so than in professional sports, school leaders inherit a team; absent retirements or mass exoduses, teaching staffs often remain fairly stable.  Yet, the ed. tech. policy agenda has been dominated by a focus on infrastructure development supported by a bit of professional development.  In other words, the “systems” have been installed and the leaders are then forced to try to fit the personnel into the system.  “Hey, we’ve got all these great technologies, now figure out how to use them!” (and that may or may not have been the case in the high school referenced in the op-ed piece; we don’t know)

Technology planning needs to be done with curriculum and teaching at the forefront.  In other words, the technology should be mapped to the curriculum (NOT the other way around) and the infrastructure should be shaped around the strengths/weaknesses of the team members (the teachers).  From there, as new teachers are added, they can be purposefully selected (i.e. they should be hired because they “fit” within the system that’s been implemented).  That means including curriculum specialists in the technology planning process and, more importantly, involving teachers. 

Make the system fit the team, not vice versa.