To: research@nctm.org
Commentary to “Using Research to Improve Teaching” by Cathy L. Seeley, NCTM News Bulletin, April 2005, Volume 41, Issue 8
I
think this is a move in a right direction.
“We
need evidence-based research to guide our teaching practice”, “We experience a
lack of available research findings in a format that is easy to grasp”,
“Research seems to give us conflicting results or that particular studies are
not designed to be immediately applied in the classroom”, etc, etc.
I
would say, the main question the author wants but afraid to erect is “Don’t we
spend to much money on research which absolutely useless to the everyday
teaching practice?”
I
think the author knows the answer on this question, the answer is “Yes, we
spend to much money on research which absolutely useless to the everyday
teaching practice”. But it would not be politically correct for the NCTM
President saying openly such a shocking news.
So, she make a clever move, the main idea is “We need to perform some
research on our research, what is good for a teaching practice, what is not”.
As
the first step of that kind of research she is asking to teachers “Help us to
make research findings more accessible by letting us know what your concerns
and questions are. What do you most need to know to improve teaching and
learning in classroom, school, district? Send your thoughts” In other words, I
would interpret this call as “Tell us what you don’t want to bay from our
scientists and what you want to bay from them”.
Let
me repeat briefly some ideas I have written on my page http://mathhealth.com/3reasons.htm
The
way the educational research are organized today dose not help much to improve
the results of school education.
We
have to many useless research, but even if we combined together the newest and
the best existed learning instruments and tried using it at a class we would
create a terrible situation to
students.
Learning
is a long and complicated process; as any process it has stages and fazes which
are consist of sequences of learning actions like “reading the text of the
problem”, “making a sketch”, “lessening the explanation”, “writing the
question”, “observing the dates”, and hundreds of others. Each single learning
action takes a certain period of time (different to different students, by the
way). An effective/efficient learning process obeys the certain timing, that
mean an effective/efficient teaching process must obey the same timing.
However, you will not find a researcher today who would care much abut time
frame of using of his/her new learning tool. May be this textbook or that
collection of assignments is a good indeed, but a teacher is just unable to fit
it in the existing time frame of teaching. But if he/she would try to put all
the new learning tools into the lessons, the whole learning process would be
get just broken down.
The
main reason of the “crisis of variety” of educational instruments is that there
dose not exist yet a remedy/means to combine/cooperate/unite all the creative
works in educational research.
What,
for example, had made united all the scientists, engineers, generals and all
the staff of Manhattan Project? If you said “The mutual goal”, it would not be
specific (too general). And, such a goal as “Making a new high destructive
weapon” could only separate people because everybody has the own idea on “high
destructive weapon”. But, the goal “Making a U-bomb” had made people united,
because this goal was an absolutely specific object/outcome, which “everybody”
could see, touch, use. Analogically, “Making a good education” is not the
uniting goal. But “Making a certain/specific educational tool” could be the
one. The efficiency of the result of the achieving the goal would depend on the
specificity of the goal/tool chosen to create. If we want
significant/structural changes, the outcome of future using of the tool has to
have nationwide influence(*).
But
it seems that not many people really wants seeing the reform been succeeded.
I
mean, the majority of the people involved in the reformation objectively do not
interested in the finishing the reform. Why?
To
support our life we need to be needed(!), and it is not just our wish, it is a
strong motive of our activities which is hidden deeply inside of a human nature
on the biological level.
We
are successful until we are needed; we are successful until there are other
people who want something from us. This idea governs our life from a birthday
to a death. Everybody obeys to this “rule of life” unconsciously, just because
we all are biological systems.
It
is good to be needed, but what if we feel a risk to become being not-needed?
Our brain can always feel these things and when it dose happen the brain starts
looking for any way to escape that kind of a risk and keep us being needed –
even if consciously we do not have any suspicions on what is going on. Can you imagine
what people are going to do if they see/understand the risk to become
not-needed (recall all the movies on CIA or so, where some bad guy from an
agency wants to blow up civilians pretending the terrorists would did it only
because the government wants to cut off the budget)?
So,
people always want to be needed. Sometimes to keep themselves to be needed
people even fake (consciously or unconsciously) the necessity of the work they
are doing. I mean, they do everything to convince other people that the work
they are doing is really important and useful and promising and, etc, etc, etc.
But, the truth is that the work is needed to the authors of the work only. Two
kinds of professionals (beyond just salesmen) used to be very persuasive in
convincing of importance of their work – politicians and researchers. The
difference is that politicians usually do it on purpose (absolutely
consciously), though researchers usually do it unconsciously. But, the fact is that today you can find
lots of researches, which are not needed to anybody but the authors, including
the field of educational research(**).
There
is, of course, an important question, how can one estimate the
valueless/value-ness of a research? There is not a general answer on this
question, but I would offer my view on an educational research.
Talking
abut education and all matters connected with it we should consider the whole
system of education as a “salesman – customer relationships” system. The main
rule for that kind of relationships is that; if customer does not want to by a
product, hence, a salesman must invent something new to sell or go out of the
market.
Who
is a central person that must being considered as a most important costumer
among such professionals as teachers, researchers, officials and politicians?
It
might sound strange, but researchers, officials and politicians are not really
interested in significant improvement of a system of education. Why? Because if
everybody had already a perfect school, perfect college and had got a perfect
education, all those “big fishes” would go out of job (hence, out of money). I
do not want to say that every researcher, official or politician is faking the
importance/necessity of his/her work. All I want to say that there is a
tendency – hence, a possibility – that the person can do that (we do not care
about consciously or not the one dose it).
However,
there dose exist a professional, who is really looking forward for the perfect
educational system, at least for as-good-as-possible system of education. This
professional is a teacher. It is obviously, that the better school, college,
textbooks, curriculum, etc, etc, the easier the teacher’s job. Only a teacher
is really interested in significant improvement of system of education (the
teacher’s partner outside the educational system but also interested in the
improvement is a parent).
This
logic leads us to a simple conclusion. In a system of education a teacher must
play the role of a customer, whereas researcher (official, politician) must
play the role of a salesman. As a customer a teacher must make a decision on
what textbook/curriculum/research/etc he/she wants to use to do the teaching
work as good as it possible.
Accepting
this principle, we have to reconsider relationships between all the players on
the field of education, but it is really hard to expect form politicians,
officials and especially from scientists to consider a teacher as a number one
figure in an educational system.
In
the end I would like to repeat again I agree with the main idea of the
publication we are started our talk from, but without significant changes in
the state educational policy the situation with educational research well
remain significantly ineffective.
Thank
you,
Valentin
Voroshilov, Ph.D.