PART 1
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 both
Dewey and Piaget were (a) "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?
"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.