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Wayne Bishop (2004), in his recent Math-Teach post "Direct
Instruction in Science," first quotes (without citing the source)
cognitive scientist David Klahr as reported in Adelson (2004):
"The United States produces proportionately fewer scientists than
many other 'competitor' countries, so better science teaching is
certainly a national priority if we are to maintain our scientific
leadership. Early mastery of the basics of the scientist's toolkit
can help kids to understand and appreciate science."
Bishop then delivers his coup de grace:
"AND DELIBERATE, DIRECT INSTRUCTION IS MORE EFFECTIVE YET AGAIN.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE. REPLICATE A REPLICABLE EXPERIMENT AND YOU GET THE
SAME RESULTS. IT'S THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH."
Eagerly hammering the nail into the coffin of discovery learning,
Bishop then references Adelson (2004), along with Adelson's
misleading header:
"Instruction (sic) versus exploration in science learning: Recent
psychological research calls "discovery learning" into question."
Bishop overlooked his chance to quote Adelson's
direct-instruction-boosting sub-header: "Klahr's controlled studies
demonstrate that, at least for many of the multistep procedures used
in science, direct instruction works and generalizes better."
According to Adelson (2004), Klahr's research shows that (at least
for many of the multistep procedures used in science) "direct
instruction" (DI) is more effective than "discovery learning" (DL).
As I have discussed [Hake (2004a, pp. 20-21)] popular terms such as
DI, DL, "Hands-on," and "Active Learning" are rarely defined
OPERATIONALLY. What does Klahr mean by "direct instruction" and
"discovery learning"? Klahr & Nigam (2004) write:
"In our discovery learning condition, there is no teacher
intervention beyond the suggestion of a learning objective: no
guiding questions and no feedback about the quality of the child's
selection of materials, explorations, or self-assessments.
Correspondingly, we use an extreme type of direct instruction in
which the goals, the materials, the examples, the explanations, and
the pace or instruction are all teacher controlled with respect to
both its content and its epistemology."
Thus Klahr's research compares an extreme and rarely used from of
"discovery learning" with a form of "direct instruction" defined in
such a way that many examples of "interactive engagement" [e.g., Hake
(1992, 1998b)] would probably be classed as "direct instruction" by
Klahr.
In "Direct Science Instruction Suffers a Setback in California - Or
Does It?" [Hake (2004a)] I wrote [bracketed by lines "HHHHHHHHHHHH. .
. . . . ."; see that article for the references other than Klahr &
Nigam (2004), Arons (1983), and Hake (1998a,b; 2002a,b; 2004b)]:
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
There is a substantial amount of scientific research evidence [for
discussions of what constitutes "scientific research evidence" in
education see Shavelson & Towne (2000) & Burkhardt & Schoenfeld
(2003)] that "hands-on guided-inquiry methods" [commonly called
"inquiry" or "interactive engagement" methods] are far more effective
than "direct instruction" for promoting student learning *in
conceptually difficult areas* [for reviews see e.g., Hake (2004a);
Doss- Hammel (2004); Lowery (2003); and the literature references in
AAAS (1993, 2004), NRC (1996; 1997a,b; 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003),
Bransford et al. (1999), and Donovan et al. (1999)
[The California Curriculum Commission (CCC)] appears to inhabit a
"private universe" [Schneps & Sadler (1985)], seemingly oblivious of
the literature of cognitive science [see, e.g. Bransford et al.
(1999)] and three decades of science-education research showing the
superiority of hands- and minds-on pedagogy to direct instruction in
conceptually difficult areas [see e.g., Karplus (1974, 1977, 1981);
Arons (1960, 1972, 1974, 1983, 1985, 1997, 1998); Shymansky et. al.
(1983, 1989, 1990); Halloun & Hestenes (1985a,b); McDermott & Redish
(1999); Hake (1998a,b; 2002a,b); Lopez & Schultz (2001); FOSS (2001);
Pelligrino et al. (2001); Crouch & Mazur (2001); Fagen et al. (2002);
Fuller (2002)]; Redish (2003); and Belcher (2003). NOTE THAT NONE OF
THE ABOVE RESEARCH CONCERNS UNGUIDED "DISCOVERY LEARNING," an evident
bugaboo of CCC's Stan Metzenberg and executive director Thomas Adams
(2004).
Still other references showing the superior effectiveness of hands-on
guided inquiry methods over direct instruction are Bredderman (1982,
1983, 1985), Kyle et al. (1988), Jorgenson & Vanosdall (2002), GLEF
(2001), and Anderson (2002). In addition, the eleven K-12
science-education studies listed in Table 1 of Lipsey & Wilson (1993)
(where the test group is characterized by reform methods) yield a
total N = 888 students and average effect size <d> = 0.36 [Cohen
(1988)]. Most of these studies include grades 4 or 6 to 12 with the
effect size control group being traditional direct instruction and
the measurement unit being "achievement" or "learning" (presumably as
measured by tests). Cohen's rule of thumb - based on typical results
in social science research - that d = 0.2, 0.5, 0.8 imply
respectively "small," "medium," and "large" effects, but Cohen
cautions that the adjectives "are relative, not only to each other,
but to the area of behavioral science or even more particularly to
the specific content and research method being employed in any given
investigation." My own survey [Hake (1998a,b)] yielded a much larger
effect size of d = 2.43 [Hake (2002a)] and such large differences in
the effectiveness of interactive engagement vs direct instruction
have been corroborated by many other physics education researchers as
discussed in Hake (2002a,b).
In sharp contrast there is, as far as I am aware, ZERO SCIENTIFIC
EVIDENCE for the superiority (in conceptually difficult areas of
science education) of "direct instruction" [in any of its many guises
[see Sec. III (8) below] to "inquiry" [operationally defined by
Alberts (2000)] or "interactive engagement" [operationally defined by
Hake (1998a,b)].
Of course, NEITHER "INQUIRY" NOR "INTERACTIVE ENGAGEMENT" METHODS
SHOULD BE CONFUSED WITH THE EXTREME "DISCOVERY LEARNING" MODE,
RESEARCHED BY KLAHR & NIGAM (2004). Their research suggests that, not
surprisingly, an EXTREME mode of "discovery learning," in which there
is almost no teacher guidance, is inferior to "direct instruction"
for increasing third and fourth grade children's effective use of the
control of variables strategy, a so-called "process skill." It might
be interesting for Klahr & Nigam to extend their study to more guided
forms of "discovery learning" and to children's acquisition of
"operative knowledge" [Arons (1983)].
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Emphasizing the fact that Klahr is beating a sick (if not dead)
horse, Stanford's Richard Shavelson is quoted by Adelson (2004) as
follows: "totally unguided discovery of the type used in the study is
rarely used in the classroom. . . . I'd like to see a replication
with [the more typical] guided discovery. Plus, the extent to which
results would travel to classrooms with varying teacher quality,
opportunity to learn, et cetera, has yet to be found out."
"Above all things we must be aware of what I will call 'inert ideas'
- that is to say, ideas that are merely received into the mind
without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations.
Alfred North Whitehead, "The Aims of Education" (1929).
REFERENCES
Adelson, R. 2004. "Instruction versus exploration in science
learning: Recent psychological research calls 'discovery learning'
into question," Monitor On Psychology, 35(6):34; online at < >. It's
unfortunate that reports of Klahr's research are hot-linked by
Mathematically Correct's antediluvian "Science Corner"
<http://mathematicallycorrect.com/science.htm>, and by
direct-instruction zealot Wayne Bishop (2004), in attempts to thwart
the adoption of effective [Hake (2004a)] interactive-engagement
science curricula.
Arons, A.B. 1983. "Achieving Wider Scientific Literacy," Daedalus,
Spring. Reprinted in Arons (1997) as Chapter 12, "Achieving Wider
Scientific Literacy." Arons wrote: "Researchers in cognitive
development describe two principle classes of knowledge: figurative
(or declarative) and operative (or procedural). 'DECLARATIVE
KNOWLEDGE' consists of knowing 'facts'. . . . [cf. Metzenberg
(1998)]. . . ; for example, that the moon shines by reflected
sunlight, that the earth and planets revolve around the sun . . . .
'OPERATIVE KNOWLEDGE', on the other hand, involves understanding the
source of such declarative knowledge (How do we know the moon shines
by reflected sunlight? Why do we believe the earth and planets
revolve around the sun when appearances suggest that everything
revolves around the earth? . . . .) and the capacity to use, apply,
transform, or recognize the relevance of the declarative knowledge to
new or unfamiliar situations. *To develop the genuine understanding
of concepts and theories that underlies operative knowledge, the
college student, no less than the elementary school child, must
engage in deductive and inductive mental activity coupled with
interpretation of personal observation and experience.*
Unfortunately, such activity is rarely induced in passive listeners,
but it can be nurtured, developed, and enhanced in the majority of
students PROVIDING IT IS EXPERIENTIALLY ROOTED AND NOT TOO RAPIDLY
PACED, AND PROVIDING THE MIND OF THE LEARNER IS ACTIVELY ENGAGED. [My
CAPS.] See also Hake (2004b).
Hake, R.R. 1992. "Socratic pedagogy in the introductory physics lab."
Phys. Teach. 30: 546-552; updated version (4/27/98) online as ref. 23
at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>.
Hake, R.R. 1998a. "Interactive-engagement vs traditional methods: A
six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory
physics courses," Am. J. Phys. 66: 64-74; online as ref. 24 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>.
Hake, R.R. 1998b. "Interactive-engagement methods in introductory
mechanics courses," online as ref. 25 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>. Submitted on 6/19/98 to the
Physics Education Research Supplement (PERS) to Am. J. Phys. but
rejected by its theoretician editor on the grounds that the very
transparent Physical-Review-type data tables were "impenetrable"! PER
suffers because it has no Physical- Review-type archival journal.
This paper is a crucial companion paper to Hake (1998a): average
pre/post test scores, standard deviations, instructional methods,
materials used, institutions, and instructors for each of the survey
courses of Hake (1998a) are tabulated and referenced. In addition the
paper includes: (a) CASE HISTORIES for the seven IE courses of Hake
(1998a) whose effectiveness as gauged by pre-to-post test gains was
close to those of T courses, (b) advice for implementing IE methods,
and (c) suggestions for further research.
Hake, R.R. 2002a. "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 "peer-reviewed journal of
integrative science and fundamental policy research" with about
11,000 subscribers in about 108 countries.
Hake, R.R. 2002b. "Assessment of Physics Teaching Methods," in
"Proceedings of the UNESCO ASPEN Workshop on Active Learning in
Physics," Univ. of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, 2-4 Dec. 2002; also online
as ref. 29 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake>.
Klahr, D. & M. Nigam. 2004. "The equivalence of learning paths in
early science instruction: effects of direct instruction and
discovery learning." In press at Psychological Science; online at
<http://www.psy.cmu.edu/faculty/klahr/papers.html>.
Metzenberg, S. 1998. Testimony before the U.S. House of
Representatives; online at
<http://mathematicallycorrect.com/moremetz.htm>. Metzenberg says: "I
vehemently disagree with [the approach of the AAAS and the NRC's
National Education Standards], because UNDERSTANDING IS BUILT ONLY
UPON A SOLID FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE OF FACTS. . . .[my CAPS].
Biologist Metzenberg appears to champion DECLARATIVE knowledge with
little appreciation for OPERATIVE knowledge - see e.g., Arons (1983)].