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Chapter 1 - Eisner. Where are we heading?. The educational imagination. The process of education always occurs within a context and decisions about educational practices need to be sensitive to that context. Some items to ponder.
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Chapter 1 - Eisner Where are we heading?
The educational imagination • The process of education always occurs within a context and decisions about educational practices need to be sensitive to that context.
Some items to ponder • How does one make valid comparisons among students in programs that differ in content and in aims? • Is a common standardized curriculum appropriate for a nation with 45 million students attending 110,000 schools in which 2 ½ million teachers work? • Is it fair to hold teachers and students accountable for achieving common outcomes in the face of such ‘savage inequalities’?
Policy • Policymakers themselves often do not see and therefore do not know the people their policies affect.
Thorndike • His work represented a vision of what he believed a science of behavior could do for the realization of social ambitions. • Behavior is controllable • Behavior can be shaped by method • Philosophically compatible with the scientific management of human behavior
Dewey • Growth was not the result of a set of externally reinforcing agents that Thorndike had described, but rather the outcome of an effort by the child to convert what Dewey called an indeterminate situation into a determinate one. • Considering ‘recipes’ for the classroom – If students were uniform in background, desires, and aptitudes, recipes might be useful.
Tyler • Tyler’s Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction published in 1949 • Tyler’s 4 ?s are fundamental to the concept of schooling: • What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? • What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? • How can these educational experiences be effectively organized? • How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?
An examination of 3 beliefs • American education costs too much. We spend more on our schools than any other country. • American students are not doing as well as they once did in school; in fact, they know far less than their parents did at the same age. • Our educational position among nations lags far behind our economic competitors.
The goal • To complicate, not simplify… • Bring an appropriate uncertainty to mind as you think about the functions of education and the forms it can take