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Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Piagetian concepts do not hold sway |
Posted by: | Theo Dawson |
Date/Time: | 2009/4/19 9:13:30 |
As a graduate student I took a great deal of inspiration from Shayer and Adey's work, and cite it frequently when explaining the value of a cognitive-developmental approach to teachers and administrators. However, I'd still like to see highly relevant work of this kind conducted in more knowledge domains, with a wide range of age groups, and in a wide range of contexts, using todays more finely tuned metrics. Perhaps one of the reasons this kind of work is relatively uncommon is that it does not receive the kind of attention it deserves. Or perhaps it is difficult to publish and is therefore unrewarding to researchers. I know it is difficult to find schools that can participate in this kind of research. They are too busy preparing students for NCLB tests. I can relate to your and Trevor's frustration over the failure of Adey and world on fire. I have worked for over 15 years on the development of a set of evidence-supported methods that could, if researchers, policy-makers, and educators had the will, be employed to transform our educational system into one that is grounded in evidence about how students actually learn specific concepts and skills over time, while eliminating the need for grades and high stakes multiple choice exams, making learning more fun, and providing the knowledge and support teachers need to meet the particular learning needs of individual students. At the last JPS meeting I attended, my proposed symposium, which described this work, was downgraded to a poster, and I could count on one hand the number of people who stopped to read that poster. Now, it is true that people could be turned off by our "grandiose" claims, or conclude that we are a bit batty, but the point is that what we claim to be able to do should be of interest to people who have a stake in the development of children on the right track, the world could soon be equipping children with far more relevant and developed skills than those currently on offer. I don't think I need to expand on why this might be important. I've been around long enough to know that change is slow, and I've been in academia long enough to know what kind of research leads to tenure, so I'm not really surprised by the lack of interest in the kind of work we do from JPS members, who are almost all academics. But it is disheartening. |