CJE Vol. 16, No. 2

Transcription

CJE Vol. 16, No. 2

Contents /
Table des matières
Articles
Noëlle Sorin
et Rachel Desrosiers-Sabbath
121
L’impact de l’apprentissage de LOGO sur
la structuration du récit
John E. Lyons,
Bikkar S. Randhawa,
& Neil A. Paulson
137
The Development of Vocational Education
in Canada
Peter Coleman,
Lorna Mikkelson,
& Linda LaRocque
151
Network Coverage: Administrative
Collegiality and School District Ethos in
High-Performing Districts
Jessica Latshaw
168
Middle Grade Students’ Responses to
Canadian Realistic Fiction for Young
Adults
Dianne L. Common
184
In Search of Expertise in Teaching
Research Notes /
Notes de recherche
Laverne Smith
198
The Gender Composition of the Pool of
Prospective School Principals
David W. Jardine
& James C. Field
206
Critical-Interpretive Explorations of
Innovative Language Arts Practices at the
Elementary School Level
James C. Field
210
Educators’ Perspectives on Assessment:
Tensions, Contradictions, and Dilemnas
Discussion Notes / Débat
Roland Case
215
The Anatomy of Curricular Integration
Janet Stern
225
French-Language Minority Education in
Ontario and Changing Levels of
Educational Attainment
Book Reviews / Recensions
Laurie Walker
229
The New Literacy: Redefining Reading and
Writing in the Schools, by John Willinsky
Jean-Pierre Chartrand
231
Savoir préparer une recherche: la définir,
la structurer, la financer
par A.P. Constandiopoulos,
F. Champagne, L. Potvin, J.-L. Denis et P.
Boyle
Richard Courtney
233
Primary Understanding: Education in Early
Childhood, by Kieran Egan
Lise Saint-Laurent
234
Élèves en difficulté d’adaptation et
d’apprentissage par Georgette Goupil
Neil Sutherland
236
Education, Change and the Policy Process,
by Harold Silver
Aimée Leduc
239
Le ministère de l’Éducation et le Conseil
supérieur: leurs antécédents et leur
création, 1867–1964 par Arthur Tremblay
avec la collaboration de Robert Blais et
Marc Simard
Benjamin Levin
240
Scrimping or Squandering: Financing
Canadian Schools, edited by Stephen
Lawton & Rouleen Wignall
Jeff Hughes
242
Learning Difficulties and Emotional
Problems, edited by Roy I. Brown &
Maurice Chazan
Jean Moisset
243
Le monopole public de l’éducation par JeanLuc Migué et Richard Marceau
Murray Ross
247
Curriculum and Assessment Reform, by
Andrew Hargreaves
Geoffrey Milburn
249
Asia and the Pacific: Issues of Educational
Policy, Curriculum and Practice, edited by
Donald C. Wilson, David L. Grossman,
& Kerry J. Kennedy
L’impact de l’apprentissage de Logo
sur la structuration du récit
Noëlle Sorin
Rachel Desrosiers-Sabbath
université du québec à montréal
Le développement cognitif en situation d’apprentissage s’avère une des préoccupations éducationnelles prioritaires comme en témoigne l’intérêt actuel pour les
démarches de résolution de problèmes. Par ailleurs, nombre de théoriciens et
praticiens concentrent leurs efforts sur les problèmes intrinsèques de l’apprentissage de la langue maternelle. Ils s’interrogent entre autres sur nos programmes
scolaires qui ne parviennent pas toujours à former des personnes possédant les
habiletés langagières de base, notamment à l’écrit. L’objectif de la recherche
rapportée dans cet article consiste à démontrer que le transfert d’habiletés joue un
rôle appréciable dans le développement cognitif, en partant de l’hypothèse que
l’apprentissage de la programmation informatique en langage Logo favoriserait
l’expression écrite. La programmation en Logo pourrait alors devenir une
stratégie de développement cognitif, aussi bien au niveau de l’enseignement
primaire qu’en andragogie ou en alphabétisation, du fait que les habiletés
cognitives développées se révèlent transférables à des domaines autres qu’informatiques et qu’elles facilitent d’autres apprentissages. Ainsi, il serait possible
d’utiliser ces nouvelles habiletés pour structurer un récit, dans une démarche de
plus en plus logique, les manières de penser en informatique et en littérature
n’étant peut-être pas aussi cloisonnées qu’on le pense.
Recent interest in problem solving shows how far cognitive development has
come to dominate educational discussion. The learning of mother tongues is open
to such inquiries. Why, for example, do our curricula sometimes fail to transmit
basic language skills, especially in writing? Our research shows how far transfer
plays a part in cognitive development. We thought that learning Logo computer
language should improve learners’ writing skills and stimulate cognitive development. This would be so at primary and at adult levels—including adult basic
education—since cognitive skills built up in computing should transfer to other
fields and other sorts of learning. New skills should help learners more logically
to organize a narrative, since computational and literary resoning are less distinct
than one might think.
Depuis plusieurs années déjà, les sciences de l’éducation tentent de se
définir en tant que discipline avec pour objet d’étude, la situation pédagogique et pour unité de base, l’apprentissage. La didactique focalise alors ses
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REVUE CANADIENNE DE L’ÉDUCATION
16:2 (1991)
122
NOËLLE SORIN ET RACHEL DESROSIERS-SABBATH
préoccupations sur l’élève et intervient auprès de lui en fonction de théories
axées principalement sur le fonctionnement de la cognition et des conditions
de son développement. Les deux grands chefs de file du développement
cognitif restent indéniablement Piaget (1965) et Bruner (1966). En s’inspirant de ces mouvements de pensée, le développement cognitif peut donc se
définir comme un processus de construction, de transformation et d’organisation des structures cognitives d’une personne, dans lequel l’environnement
a une influence incontestable. La plupart des courants éducationnels s’intéressant au rôle de l’apprentissage dans le développement cognitif s’accorde
sur le fait que le développement s’élabore à travers l’interaction de la
personne avec son milieu par l’intermédiaire des outils cognitifs (Bruner,
1969; Inhelder, Sinclair, & Bovet, 1974; Piaget, 1965; Vygotsky, 1962;
1978).
L’apprentissage, partie intégrante de l’environnement, occupe donc une
place privilégiée dans le développement cognitif. On se trouve ici face à une
conception de l’apprentissage (Brien, 1981; Côté, 1987; Gagné, 1975) en
tant que processus interne permettant une modification de comportement
devant être due à une expérience ou à un exercice et ce, de façon durable,
où l’élève dispose d’un certain nombre de structures cognitives qui vont
l’aider à acquérir des habiletés nouvelles et qui devront également être
modifiées en fonction des exigences de la réalité. On peut donc utiliser un
ensemble d’activités initiées par l’élève ou mises à sa disposition sous forme
imposée ou suggérée, susceptibles de déclencher chez lui ce processus
interne, en vue d’atteindre des objectifs pédagogiques du domaine cognitif,
élaborés à partir de taxonomies précises (Bloom, 1956/1969; Gagné, 1975/
1976). En effet, le développement cognitif peut être stimulé et même
facilité, en particulier grâce à l’influence décisive que l’environnement, celui
de l’école notamment, exerce sur lui (Papert, 1981; Schwebel, 1983).
Forts de ces prémisses, il nous a semblé intéressant de démontrer que le
développement cognitif, correspondant donc essentiellement à l’acquisition
de structures opératoires desquelles dépendent des habiletés telles l’application, l’analyse, la synthèse et l’évaluation (Bloom, 1956/1969), ou le rappel
et la généralisation (Gagné, 1975/1976), est possible, du moins en partie,
grâce à un transfert d’habiletés, en partant de l’hypothèse que l’apprentissage de la programmation informatique favorise l’expression écrite. Parmi
les différents langages de programmation existants, un choix s’imposait.
Sans avoir procédé à une étude comparative des langages de programmation
structurée pour identifier les plus susceptibles de contribuer de manière
importante au développement cognitif, il nous est apparu que le langage
Logo, de par sa structure même et de par son accessibilité—du moins quant
à la géométrie de la tortue—représentait un choix raisonnable. En effet,
Logo-géométrie est constitué d’un ensemble de mots, les primitives, qui
traduisent les concepts de base. Ces mots peuvent être combinés en vue
d’écrire un programme ou procédure. On attache à cette suite de mots qui la
compose, un autre mot qui servira à la désigner. À partir des primitives
L’APPRENTISSAGE DE LOGO
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donc, l’utilisateur crée des mots nouveaux, les procédures dont il a besoin
pour résoudre ses problèmes, procédures qu’il peut imbriquer les unes dans
les autres selon une structure modulaire. On n’enseignera pas directement à
l’enfant comment programmer la tortue symbolisée à l’écran par un petit
triangle, il le découvrira par lui-même grâce à une technique heuristique,
prônée par Papert lui-même (1981), ce qui permettra à l’enfant de réfléchir
sur sa propre action et sur sa propre pensée. Le langage Logo, déjà utilisé
avec succès dans divers domaines pédagogiques et psychopédagogiques, a
donc été employé cette fois-ci au primaire deuxième cycle, pour développer
des habiletés cognitives transférables qui seront ensuite utiles lors de la
structuration d’un récit, par exemple.
RÉSOLUTION DE PROBLÈMES AVEC LOGO
Résolution de problèmes
La programmation en Logo est une démarche procédurale qui vise la
résolution de problèmes où la logique et l’heuristique y sont interdépendantes. Depuis les années 1980, le concept de résolution de problèmes s’est
imposé dans le milieu éducatif (D’Hainaut, 1985; Feldhusen & Guthrie,
1979; Gagné, 1970; Lavallée, 1975; Lemaître, 1983; Smith, 1979) où on
l’appréhende comme un apprentissage qui implique des structures nouvelles
aux niveaux de la situation, du processus ou de la solution, et qui met en jeu
des connaissances, des habiletés et surtout des règles, apprises antérieurement mais mises en oeuvre dans le but de produire une nouvelle capacité
dépendante d’une nouvelle règle.
Dans l’activité de résolution de problèmes, le sujet traite la situation
problématique selon un processus qui fait intervenir un ensemble d’opérations cognitives étroitement liées aux étapes de résolution de problèmes. À
ces opérations correspondent des habiletés qui par le fait même vont se
trouver activées ou développées. Les principales habiletés cognitives engagées lors de la programmation, et Schwebel (1983) nous les rappelle,
s’énumèrent ainsi: la planification, l’analyse des problèmes et de leurs
données, la production et la vérification d’hypothèses ou recherche de
solution. La métacognition est une autre des habiletés qui a un rapport direct
avec la programmation structurée, puisque, selon Vygotsky (1962), le rôle
personnel du sujet qui programme, consiste à employer délibérément des
stratégies pour se remémorer l’information dont il a besoin et l’utiliser pour
résoudre des problèmes.
Logo et objectifs de transfert
Il importe de savoir si les habiletés cognitives acquises par l’apprentissage
de la programmation Logo sont applicables à d’autres activités quoiqu’aucune formation ne vise délibérément à les rendre transférables. Il s’agit de
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vérifier si cet apprentissage modifie la manière dont se posent les problèmes
et ouvre de nouvelles perspectives, et s’il entraîne l’acquisition d’habiletés
durables, utiles et utilisables dans des domaines extérieurs à son propre
champ, donc, si ces habiletés sont transférables, et ce, sans que l’élève
apprenne à transférer. Le transfert se définit comme un processus cognitif
qui permet de mettre en oeuvre des savoirs, des savoir-faire et des savoirêtre que l’on possède déjà, dans des situations différentes de celles de
l’apprentissage, mais de même nature cependant, pour bâtir de nouvelles
connaissances (Klausmeier & Goodwin, 1966; Sawrey & Telford, 1968). Il
existe trois théories généralement admises au sujet du transfert (Klausmeier
& Goodwin, 1966; Sawrey & Telford, 1968): la théorie des éléments
identiques (Identical Elements), le sujet procède par identification, par
analogie, par assimilation (Thorndike, 1903) et par accommodation (Piaget,
1946); la théorie de la généralisation (Generalization Theory) (Judd, 1908)
qui est une extension de la première, le transfert se fait par généralisation de
l’expérience et la compréhension des principes; la théorie de rapport (Relationship Theory) héritée de la Gestalt (Kohler, 1929), le transfert se fait par
la compréhension des relations entre les faits, les processus et les principes.
Cependant, dans les trois théories, le transfert est nettement favorisé si la
personne perçoit la situation nouvelle comme étant similaire à la situation
initiale. Les méthodes d’apprentissage ont également un impact sur le
transfert (Klausmeier & Goodwin, 1966), principalement celles qui se
réfèrent aux processus d’apprendre comment apprendre. La technique
heuristique adoptée lors de l’apprentissage de Logo s’inscrit bien dans cette
ligne et appuie une certaine affiliation de cette recherche à la théorie de
rapport.
Des objectifs de transfert peuvent être émis puisque la capacité de transférer les apprentissages semble capitale dans les démarches pédagogiques,
mais ils s’avèrent difficilement mesurables, car, comme le soulignent De
Landsheere V. et G. (1982), ils portent sur les processus, et non sur les
résultats de ces processus, d’autant plus qu’au fur et à mesure que l’apprentissage progresse, le transfert devient plus subtil, plus profond. On différencie habituellement deux types de transferts impliqués dans les habiletés
intellectuelles (Gagné, 1975/1976; Klausmeier & Goodwin, 1966). Le
transfert vertical permet le transfert des habiletés à un niveau supérieur plus
complexe. Ce transfert dépend donc de l’apprentissage préalable d’habiletés
plus simples. Le transfert latéral quant à lui se réfère à la généralisation et
l’application d’habiletés apprises à des situations différentes de l’apprentissage initial. D’Hainaut (1985) distingue trois niveaux de transfert latéral: le
transfert académique, le transfert opérationnel et le transfert intégral. Le
transfert académique qui nous intéresse est le plus facile à identifier, permettant de mettre en évidence quelques principes susceptibles d’influencer le
transfert d’habiletés entre deux tâches (Krasnor & Mitterer, 1984). Il faut
que le processus soit similaire dans les deux tâches. Le sujet doit reconnaître
si la nouvelle situation problématique est semblable à une situation déjà
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rencontrée ou si les problèmes sont isomorphes. Si les instructions découlent
d’un principe ou d’une règle générale, le transfert est facilité. Le degré de
transfert peut dépendre de l’état complet du savoir et aussi de l’exposition
à une grande variété de situations nécessitant les mêmes habiletés spécifiques.
Maintes recherches empiriques sur l’implantation et l’évaluation de Logo
recensées dans le domaine de l’éducation ont tenté de déterminer dans quelle
mesure programmer en Logo accroît la capacité des élèves à résoudre des
problèmes. Cependant, le bilan est peu probant (Bossuet, 1983; Bower,
1985; Kurland & Pea, 1983; Pea, 1983; Pea, Kurland, & Hawkins, 1985;
Tetenbaum & Mulkeen, 1984).
Certains chercheurs se sont davantage penchés sur les habiletés transférables lors d’une approche de résolution de problèmes avec Logo, tentant de
démontrer que les stratégies élaborées lors de l’utilisation de la tortue sont
transférables à d’autres situations (Bideault, 1985; Krasnor & Mitterer,
1984). Ils n’ont abouti à aucune conclusion sérieuse dans ce sens, mettant
ainsi en doute la possibilité même de transfert et ce, malgré certaines
composantes éducatives propres à Logo qui favoriseraient le transfert comme
la tortue et la facilité de structuration d’un programme ainsi que d’autres
éléments, non inhérents au langage lui-même: l’absence de stress face à
l’échec, la convivialité et la motivation. D’autres chercheurs critiquent le
manque de preuves objectives (Ginther & Williamson, 1985) ou de données
accessibles (Michayluk, 1985) quant à la généralisation des habiletés de
résolution de problèmes et à leur transfert.
Des expériences ont été menées dans le domaine de l’apprentissage de la
langue maternelle (Côté, 1984), que ce soit au niveau grammatical (Caron,
Jutras et Massé, 1984; Hopper, 1985), au niveau de la création de phrases
(Emirkanian et Bouchard, 1984) et même de la composition de texte dans
une mise en parallèle avec la composition d’un programme Logo (Newkirk,
1985). Mais, on ne s’est jamais véritablement penché sur la question de
transfert d’habiletés lors du programme d’expression écrite, et plus précisément lors de la structuration d’un récit.
Rappelons que, pour qu’il y ait transfert, il faut que le processus de
résolution de problèmes soit similaire dans les deux tâches et que les
situations requièrent des habiletés cognitives semblables. Il nous faudra donc
établir si la construction d’un récit est une démarche procédurale de résolution de problèmes similaire à celle vécue lors de l’écriture d’un programme
Logo. Il nous faudra aussi vérifier si les habiletés cognitives développées
aux cours d’expression écrite sont comparables à celles mises en évidence
dans l’expérience Logo. S’il appert qu’il y a similitude, et dans le processus,
et dans les habiletés, alors le transfert des habiletés développées par Logo,
au domaine de l’écriture d’un récit, est envisageable. Nous nous intéresserons ici uniquement au récit en tant que structure narrative évacuant du coup
tout apport affectif et créatif impliqué dans sa rédaction.
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EXPRESSION ÉCRITE
Structure du récit
Les sciences humaines, suite aux travaux de Lévi-Strauss (1958) imposant
l’approche structurale comme méthode par excellence, visent à définir un
fait humain en fonction d’un ensemble organisé, et à rendre compte de ce
dernier à l’aide de modèles. Dans cette étude de l’impact de Logo, le récit
s’avère intéressant car sa structure interne, ou logique des événements,
s’apparente à la démarche procédurale d’un programme Logo. Or, le récit
peut être analysé en terme de structure univoque, donc généralisable
(Barthes, 1981). D’une façon courante, communément admise, le récit est la
transformation d’une situation donnée en une situation nouvelle, par l’intermédiaire d’une suite d’événements, ces événements concernant des personnages. Pour bien délimiter ce qu’est le récit, il faut distinguer l’histoire,
c’est-à-dire la succession des événements, de la narration, c’est-à-dire la
manière de raconter ces événements (Dumortier & Plazanet, 1980; Génette,
1983). Mais avant tout, pour devenir un récit, c’est-à-dire le discours oral ou
écrit qui raconte les événements (Génette, 1983), ceux-ci doivent être
temporellement organisés et former une histoire (Barthes, 1953). C’est ce
qu’on pourrait appeler la dimension épisodique. Cependant, il existe une
dimension configurationnelle qui permet de saisir ces événements successifs
dans leur ensemble et de traiter les informations avec cohérence (Bersani,
Autrand, Lecarme et Vercier, 1982).
On doit au formalisme russe, et à Propp (1928/1970) en particulier, une
analyse de la structure du récit. Celui-ci a travaillé avec précision la dimension chronologico-séquentielle du récit, démontrant le retour des mêmes
actions—des mêmes fonctions—s’enchaînant dans un ordre immuable, dans
chaque conte. La notion de fonction est entendue ici dans le sens que lui
conféra Propp, c’est-à-dire “l’action d’un personnage, définie du point de
vue de sa portée significative dans le déroulement du récit” (p. 36). De
nombreuses études furent menées par la suite pour prouver que cette
formalisation était transposable à toute espèce de récit (Barthes, 1981;
Bremond, 1973; Todorov, 1967, 1968).
Le récit s’organise en unités minimales, les propositions narratives ayant
des liens entre elles (Todorov, 1968). Les propositions s’ordonnent en
cycles. Ces unités supérieures sont appelées séquences. Au niveau du texte,
on rencontre toujours plus d’une séquence. C’est le Français Bremond
(1973) qui a mis au point le premier, un système fonctionnel s’adaptant au
récit en général. Il a repris la notion de séquence tout en considérant que
chaque processus se déroule en trois phases, ou triade, associant trois
fonctions: situation ouvrant sur une possibilité; actualisation ou non-actualisation de la possibilité; succès ou échec. Trois types de combinaisons entre
les séquences sont possibles (Todorov, 1968): l’enchâssement (une séquence
entière se substitue à une proposition de la première séquence); l’enchaîne-
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ment (les séquences sont mises à la suite l’une de l’autre au lieu d’être
imbriquées); l’alternance (qui met à la suite l’une de l’autre, tantôt une
proposition de la première séquence, tantôt une de la seconde). Les actions
des personnages, ou fonctions, s’enchaînent selon une certaine logique de
façon à former la trame du récit, leur succession n’étant pas arbitraire mais
obéissant à une certaine nécessité (Bremond, 1973; Todorov, 1967, 1968).
Chaque récit respecte inévitablement cette logique dans une suite d’événements ordonnés, sous peine d’être inintelligible, et permettant ainsi son
analyse structurale.
Acquisition du récit
Mais, se pose ici le problème de l’acquisition des récits, la genèse de leur
production, leur compréhension et leur mémorisation (Fayol, 1985; Holland,
1986). Il faut souligner les travaux de Bartlett (1964) s’intéressant aux
aspects psycho-sociaux de la mémoire. Celui-ci introduisit la notion de
schéma narratif. Cette notion relève à la fois d’une organisation générale
inhérente au récit et de la connaissance préalable de l’individu se remémorant le récit. Cette connaissance englobe son savoir factuel et aussi son
expérience antérieure des trames narratives. Elle lui permet de filtrer le texte
et détermine la sélection d’éléments saillants. Il peut alors introduire une
certaine hiérarchie entre les énoncés, le schéma correspondant à cette
structure hiérarchisée.
Cette structure dynamique semble très tôt opérationnelle, susceptible de
guider la compréhension et la reconstruction du récit (Fayol, 1985). Le
schéma narratif serait en place dès six ans mais il serait plus ou moins
précocement mobilisable, selon le type de tâche. Ainsi, en ce qui concerne
les histoires inventées, à sept ans et demi, il n’est mis en oeuvre que par un
tiers des sujets. Quant aux histoires faisant référence à des événements
vécus, le schéma correspond le plus souvent à des séquences temporelles
d’actions, constituant le squelette du récit. C’est vers onze ans et demi que
le sujet est susceptible d’organiser la représentation des événements et de
structurer son texte en fonction d’un interlocuteur et d’une situation d’énonciation. Des enfants de 10–11 ans rédigeant un récit peuvent donc le doter
d’une structure logique.
Schémas fonctionnels
Inversement, l’analyse structurale du récit est également possible. À cette
fin, pour des raisons méthodologiques, un des constituants élémentaires du
récit, l’histoire, sera isolé. Les mêmes fonctions s’enchaînant dans un ordre
immuable, ceci a permis de créer des schémas dits fonctionnels qui fournissent à l’avance les grandes articulations de l’histoire (Larivaille, 1974).
Ceux-ci s’appuient sur la séquence de Bremond correspondant à un
processus dynamique de transformation agie ou subie, tout en considérant
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que cette suite d’événements transforme une situation donnée en une situation nouvelle; il y a donc un état initial d’équilibre et un état final d’équilibre également qui ne sont pas événementiels (Todorov, 1978). Ce schéma
fut déjà positivement utilisé pour l’analyse structurale du récit (Dumortier et
Plazanet, 1980; Fayol, 1985; Larivaille, 1974).
Logo et récit
En partant du principe que le transfert d’habiletés cognitives entre deux
situations problématiques n’est possible que si le processus de résolution est
similaire dans les deux tâches—ou si les problèmes sont isomorphes—et
que si les deux situations nécessitent les mêmes habiletés spécifiques, il est
aisé d’établir l’analogie entre les deux processus de résolution de problèmes,
que ce soit dans l’écriture d’un programme informatique en Logo ou dans la
rédaction d’un récit. En effet, en Logo, les capacités de structuration jouent
un rôle important: l’enfant structure son projet, notamment lorsqu’il utilise
la séquentialité et le mode procédural. Par la structure séquentielle, il a
appris à mener à terme chaque programme, en suivant l’enchaînement
logique et l’ordre de succession des instructions dans l’écriture des procédures. Il est alors porté à compléter la séquence événementielle de la
structure du récit, dans un enchaînement logique des actions. Les combinaisons de séquences, quant à elles, évoquent la structure modulaire d’un
programme Logo, avec l’utilisation de procédures et de sous-procédures.
Il reste à déterminer si les habiletés de résolution de problèmes développées par Logo s’apparentent à celles qui sont nécessaires à la structuration
d’un récit. Quiconque écrit un récit doit s’attacher aux séquences événementielles—ou schéma narratif (Fayol, 1985) en portant son attention sur
l’ensemble du texte dont il surveille l’enchaînement logique des idées,
l’agencement des parties et l’unité de composition. Dans la structuration
d’un récit, on utilise donc sensiblement les mêmes habiletés que dans le
processus de programmation: dans l’étude du sujet proposé, il faut d’abord
identifier le problème (ce qui est demandé) et les buts visés (structurer un
récit), ensuite, il faut chercher l’information pertinente puis l’analyser,
toujours en fonction du projet d’écriture; dans la résolution, on trouve des
solutions en élaborant divers plans de textes et divers développements
possibles, puis on en choisit un; l’étape pratique correspond à l’écriture d’un
texte au brouillon puis sa transcription au propre. Cette habileté ultime que
présuppose l’acte d’écrire atteint son rendement maximum par l’utilisation
de l’objectivation. Celle-ci est un processus méthodologique de rétroaction
par lequel un sujet se distancie du discours signifiant pour le considérer en
tant qu’objet: il l’identifie, l’analyse, l’évalue et vérifie les conditions de sa
production (ministère de l’Éducation du Québec, 1979). Ainsi, l’objectivation intègre la métacognition et permet de vérifier la construction du texte,
et plus particulièrement sa cohérence. Elle sous-tend l’organisation cognitive
ou sémantique d’un texte et varie suivant le genre de celui-ci. Dans le cas
129
du récit, elle s’attache aux séquences événementielles—ou schéma narratif
(Fayol, 1985). Tout se déroule dans le même ordre: les faits, les idées et les
actions.
Le transfert d’habiletés cognitives semble donc possible de la situation
Logo à une situation d’écriture d’un récit. L’apprentissage de Logo, grâce à
la structure du langage de programmation mise de l’avant et grâce aux
habiletés cognitives qu’il développe, pourra-t-il aider l’élève à structurer son
récit selon un enchaînement logique et cohérent de tous les événements? En
d’autres mots, y aura-t-il transfert d’habiletés? Cela paraît probable, car,
dans l’élaboration d’un programme en Logo, ou dans la structuration d’un
récit, les deux situations suivent des processus similaires de résolution de
problèmes, à travers une démarche procédurale, et utilisent des habiletés
cognitives voisines: le traitement de l’information, la planification, l’analyse
et la critique, la production, la vérification et la métacognition.
MÉTHODOLOGIE
Le transfert des habiletés a été vérifié à partir de l’hypothèse suivante: les
élèves qui ont été initiés à la programmation en Logo produiront des récits
écrits plus structurés selon les schémas fonctionnels, que ceux qui n’ont pas
reçu cet entraînement. L’expérimentation s’est déroulée selon une démarche
quasi expérimentale, durant quatre mois, avec des élèves de 5e année du
primaire provenant d’une école privée de Longueuil, soit deux groupes
d’enfants de 10–11 ans. L’un des groupes (34 élèves) a reçu une initiation
à la programmation en Logo, constituant ainsi le groupe expérimental E;
l’autre (33 élèves) devenant le groupe témoin T. L’initiation à la programmation en Logo fut dispensée par l’expérimentatrice qui était aussi titulaire
de la classe représentant le groupe E.
Les variables dépendantes étaient les apprentissages cognitifs inhérents au
français écrit, soit la structuration d’un récit au niveau de la séquence, que
nous nommerons le niveau 1, et au niveau des combinaisons de séquences,
que nous nommerons le niveau 2. Ces variables furent mesurées à l’aide de
deux épreuves de rédaction de récits administrées aux deux groupes: l’une
fut donnée au début du trimestre scolaire, servant de prétest, l’autre à la
mi-décembre, étant le post-test. Ces variables furent observées par rapport à
la variable indépendante qui était la soumission ou non à l’étude de la
programmation en Logo.
La structure des récits écrits par les élèves a été vérifiée au moyen de
schémas fonctionnels selon les deux niveaux. Au premier niveau (niveau 1),
celui des fonctions organisées en séquences, on a utilisé le schéma de
Larivaille basé sur le modèle fonctionnel de Bremond. Les résultats ont été
calculés comme suit: si un élève avait les 5 étapes d’une séquence, selon le
schéma de Larivaille, cela lui donnait 5/5; s’il lui en manquait une, 4/5. Au
second niveau (niveau 2), l’analyse porte sur le récit en tant que combinaisons de séquences, d’après le répertoire de Bremond: séquences ternaires
130
additionnées les unes aux autres ou imbriquées les unes dans les autres,
selon une échelle nominale dichotomique de l’existence ou non des combinaisons de séquences.
Dans notre recherche, les enfants ont procédé à la structuration de deux
récits. Or, la structure de ces récits était inhérente aux sujets proposés. En
effet, un sujet de rédaction, pour des enfants de 10–11 ans devant rédiger un
récit, se présente souvent sous forme d’un résumé de l’histoire, ne gardant
que les événements ayant une conséquence dans la suite du récit. Pour les
récits que devaient écrire les enfants, leur structure était déjà présente dans
le sujet à développer (figures 1 et 2). Il était donc aisé d’analyser ces récits
à l’aide de schémas fonctionnels inspirés de Larivaille, puisque chaque
événement important de l’histoire, contenu dans le sujet, correspond à une
fonction. Cette analyse permettra de vérifier si les enfants auront doté leur
récit d’une bonne structure. À cette fin, leur texte sera d’abord interprété à
un premier niveau (niveau 1), celui des fonctions et de leur arrangement
linéaire en séquences, puis à un second niveau (niveau 2), plus ramifié,
correspondant aux combinaisons de séquences.
Sujet 1: Un soir, un bruit dans le garage! Tu t’y aventures avec une lampe de
poche. Tu en reviens avec un petit chat aussi effrayé que toi . . .
HISTOIRE
ÉVÉNEMENTS
Situation
initiale
Provocation
Action
Sanction
C’est le soir
Un bruit
dans le
garage
Je m’y
aventure
avec ma
lampe de
poche
Je trouve
un petit
chat
effrayé
lui aussi
SI
F1
F2
F3
Situation
finale
FIGURE 1
Sujet de rédaction au prétest
Schéma fonctionnel inspiré de Larivaille (1974)
(SI: situation initiale; F1, F2, F3: fonctions 1, 2 et 3; SF: situation finale)
SF
131
Sujet 2: Tu découvres dans un grenier une vieille paire de raquettes. Elles sont
enchantées et t’entraînent dans une forêt profonde d’où tu sors avec
difficulté.
HISTOIRE
ÉVÉNEMENTS
Situation
initiale
Provocation
Action
Sanction
Dans un
grenier
Je découvre
des
raquettes
enchantées
Elles
m’entraînent
dans une
forêt
profonde
Je m’en sors
avec
difficulté
SI
F1
F2
F3
Situation
finale
SF
FIGURE 2
Sujet de rédaction au post-test
Schéma fonctionnel inspiré de Larivaille (1974)
(SI: situation initiale; F1, F2, F3: fonctions 1, 2 et 3; SF: situation finale)
Déroulement de l’expérimentation
Au début de la session, pour vérifier l’équivalence des deux groupes, outre
leurs résultats en français et en mathématiques lors de l’année scolaire
précédente, les deux groupes se prêtèrent au test d’intelligence logique de
Lidec élaboré par l’Institut Pédagogique St-Georges.
Les deux groupes ont reçu un enseignement comparable pour ce qui est
du français écrit, à l’aide du manuel Place au français: méthodologie 5 de
Pelletier, Marcotte Nahorny et Lemay (1981). L’objectif premier de cette
méthode est d’initier l’élève à une démarche systématique de structuration
d’un texte: dégagement des composantes d’un texte; énonciation, formulation et développement d’un sujet; utilisation d’éléments descriptifs et de
dialogues; identification de l’idée directrice d’un texte; rédaction au brouillon, révision et transcription au propre d’un texte à partir d’un sujet donné.
Le cours de rédaction fut dispensé en raison de séances hebdomadaires
d’une heure et demie, soit 30 heures pour la session, par les titulaires
respectives des classes en question, tout en étant supervisé par l’expérimentatrice. Lors du post-test, le premier objectif avait été atteint dans les deux
groupes.
132
Le groupe E fut initié au langage Logo lors de séances de 30 à 45 minutes, trois fois par semaine, pendant 15 semaines. Le temps hebdomadaire
était réparti comme suit: une demi-heure d’exposés et d’explications au
groupe-classe, sur le langage lui-même; une heure à une heure et demie de
travail individuel à l’ordinateur, trois postes de travail étant accessibles.
Chaque élève a donc été en contact avec Logo une heure et demie, en
moyenne, par semaine, ce qui fait un total d’environ 30 heures pour la
session. Les élèves n’ont eu accès qu’à une des possibilités de Logo: le
graphique—ou Logo-géométrie. Tout en respectant le rythme de chacun et
le côté facultatif de l’exploration de Logo, l’expérimentation s’est déroulée
en 6 phases de durée inégale: lancement de l’activité (I), initiation (II),
exploration en mode direct (III), accès à l’éditeur et écriture de procédures
en mode programmé (IV), les variables (V), les projets libres (VI). Tous les
élèves ont travaillé en mode programmé; très peu ont découvert les variables, surtout par manque de temps pour approfondir le concept; par contre,
la majorité a accédé à la phase VI, en négligeant les variables.
Techniques de traitement
Les données pertinentes à la vérification de l’hypothèse furent traitées sur
ordinateur à l’aide de la programmathèque de SPSSX. Il a fallu en premier
lieu, établir l’équivalence des deux groupes, avant l’expérimentation, à l’aide
du test t de Student pour groupes indépendants et ceci, à partir de trois
variables: les résultats de l’année précédente, en français et en mathématiques, et les quotients d’intelligence logique. Ensuite, on a vérifié l’équivalence des deux groupes au prétest, avec le test t de Student pour groupes
indépendants, pour la structuration du récit, niveau 1, et avec le test du
chi-carré, pour la structuration au niveau 2, la grille de correction étant une
échelle nominale dichotomique.
ANALYSE ET INTERPRÉTATION DES RÉSULTATS
Avant l’expérimentation, l’équivalence des deux groupes a été vérifiée:
t=1,25, d.l.=65, p=0,11. En outre, il n’y avait pas de différence significative
au prétest quant à leurs résultats en structuration du récit, niveau 1: t=–0,36,
d.l.=65, p=0,36 et niveau 2: X 2=0,045, d.l.=2, p>0,95.
Par contre, on a constaté une différence statistiquement significative entre
les groupes, expérimental et témoin, en faveur du groupe E, lors du posttest, par rapport à leurs résultats en structuration du récit, niveau 1: la
séquence: t=1,85, d.l.=65, p=0,018, et niveau 2: les combinaisons de séquences: X 2=9,25, d.l.=3, 0,02<p<0,05.
L’hypothèse de cette recherche voulant qu’un entraînement à Logo
permette la production de récits plus structurés, selon les schémas fonctionnels, se trouve vérifiée. Le groupe E qui a pratiqué Logo a progressé pour
chacune des composantes de la structuration du récit tel que prévu par
133
l’hypothèse. Quant aux résultats en structuration, niveau 2, ils démontrent
que les élèves du groupe E manipulent beaucoup plus aisément l’enchâssement. En effet, dans leurs rédactions, les actions s’enchaînent d’une façon
ramifiée; elles s’imbriquent les unes dans les autres, alors que celles du
groupe T restent linéaires.
Le groupe expérimental est donc devenu statistiquement supérieur en
structuration du récit. Ceci peut être imputable à l’apprentissage de l’écriture
de procédures en mode programmé, lors de l’entraînement à Logo. Les
résultats semblent démontrer l’efficacité de Logo, au niveau de la structuration du récit.
Toutefois, ces performances peuvent-elles être exclusivement attribuées à
Logo, ou, plutôt à un ensemble de facteurs dont il ne serait qu’une partie?
Dans quelle mesure l’enseignement du français portant sur une démarche
systématique de structuration d’un texte, reçu pendant la même période,
a-t-il influencé les résultats? On peut aussi interroger le transfert lui-même.
Les élèves du groupe E possédaient peut-être déjà une certaine habileté à
transférer, avant l’expérimentation. L’équivalence des deux groupes n’ayant
pas été établie en ce sens, il est difficile d’en débattre. Cependant, les
résultats obtenus ici laisseraient présager que Logo a été un facteur déterminant dans cette réussite, malgré le fait que de nombreux ouvrages et
articles lui soient peu favorables (Thérien et Paret, 1988). Logo-géométrie
semble donc fondamentalement analyco-constructiviste car l’analyse est celle
de la construction, de la structuration. Il permettrait l’acquisition d’une
méthode de travail, de stratégies de raisonnement, d’analyse et de résolution
de problèmes généralisables à d’autres secteurs et, en particulier, à celui de
l’écriture, lors de la structuration du récit. L’apprentissage de Logo pourrait
faire partie intégrante du programme scolaire au primaire. Plutôt que de
manipuler des logiciels questions-réponses, l’enfant apprendrait à programmer. Cela favoriserait son développement cognitif et l’aiderait, entre autres,
à structurer un récit, à raisonner et à résoudre des problèmes. On pourrait
alors développer une stratégie d’écriture inspirée de l’analyse structurale du
récit et de Logo, selon une analogie entre la composition littéraire et ce
langage de programmation particulier. Ce pourrait être aussi une nouvelle
approche de l’écriture avec la conscience d’une situation de communication
où le message serait littéraire, mais dans une démarche de résolution de
problèmes proche de celle proposée par Logo. Logo deviendrait alors une
stratégie de développement cognitif, rien n’étant difinitivement joué dans ce
domaine.
CONCLUSION
Il appert donc que la programmation en Logo pourrait s’utiliser comme
méthodologie de développement cognitif au primaire. En effet, elle favoriserait l’émergence d’habiletés transférables à d’autres domaines. Ainsi, les
résultats de l’impact de Logo sur la structuration du récit sont statistiquement significatifs. Concrètement, au lieu de demander aux élèves
134
d’analyser la structure d’un récit dans le but de rédiger un texte convenable,
dans une approche des plus traditionnelles et des plus arides, ils atteindraient
les mêmes objectifs grâce au transfert d’habiletés cognitives, dans une
démarche plus ludique en jouant avec Logo et sa tortue. Les résultats
obtenus sont issus d’une quasi expérimentation, ils sont donc difficilement
généralisables. Dans une planification didactique, cette recherche ne représente que la simulation d’un prototype. Avant que cette intervention didactique n’entre dans un modèle d’enseignement, il faudra la ré-analyser, la
re-synthétiser et la ré-expérimenter maintes fois par un processus de rétroaction. Alors, peut-être, l’apprentissage de la programmation en Logo
s’inclura comme modèle d’enseignement dans un curriculum d’informatique
pour des élèves du primaire, modèle répondant bien au contexte pédagogique et social actuel. En effet, aucun modèle ne permet d’atteindre tous les
buts, et les élèves n’ont ni les mêmes caractéristiques, ni les mêmes besoins
qu’il y a quelques années, surtout depuis l’avènement de l’ordinateur,
l’importance de l’information et le développement des communications. Au
lieu de rechercher la bonne méthode, en éducation, il est préférable de
profiter des avantages d’une pluralité d’approches. Un modèle doit donc être
considéré comme complémentaire à d’autres. L’apprentissage de la programmation en Logo serait un de ces modèles inspirés du traitement de l’information qui visent à développer chez l’élève, des habiletés cognitives et des
stratégies utiles à la résolution de problèmes dans une pluralité de situations.
Si le transfert d’habiletés semble probable lors de la structuration d’un récit,
au primaire, alors, il pourrait être envisageable dans maintes situations et
dans d’autres secteurs éducationnels, comme l’andragogie ou l’alphabétisation. L’apprentissage de Logo, en tant que modèle d’enseignement, élargirait
ainsi son champ d’interventions, rendant le retour aux études ou le recyclage
moins ardu et moins rébarbatif, qu’avec des modèles plus traditionnels.
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The Development of Vocational Education
in Canada
John E. Lyons
Bikkar S. Randhawa
Neil A. Paulson
university of saskatchewan
Our article considers the roots of prejudice against vocational education, surveys
its history, and examines constitutional dilemmas that have inhibited its development. We emphasize that as technological advances draw the world more closely
together, vocational preparedness becomes increasingly important. In an era of
international cartels and free trade associations, “muddling through” no longer
works. Since Canada cannot expect immigration to solve its labour problems, it
requires a national system of vocational training, a systemic solution that ensures
young people see vocational education as challenging and worthwhile.
L’article suivant cherche à identifier les sources des préjugés contre l’enseignement professionel, rappelle l’histoire de cet enseignement et fait le point sur les
dilemmes constitutionnels qui ont entravé son développement. Les auteurs soulignent l’importance grandissante de la préparation à la vie professionnelle au fur
et à mesure que le monde devient, en raison des progrès de la technologie, un
village planétaire. Dans une ère de cartels internationaux et d’accords de libre
échange, il n’est plus question de seulement “se tirer d’affaire.” Comme le
Canada ne peut pas compter sur l’immigration pour résoudre ses problèmes de
main-d’oeuvre, il faut un système national de formation professionnelle, une
solution systémique qui permettra aux jeunes de voir l’éducation professionnelle
comme quelque chose de stimulant et qui en vaut vraiment la peine.
Canadians have historically considered vocational education to be preparation for second-class citizenship. Until recently, we did not treat domestic
programs for training highly skilled workers as vital to the nation’s interest.
Whereas European countries had programs to prepare craftspeople for skilled
trades, Canada relied on immigration to fill these jobs. Vocational preparation in North America came to be seen as a
social policy measure directed at society’s marginal or outcast elements such as
orphans, young people with criminal records and slow learners. . . . It seems that
apprenticeship training in Canada never has been able to completely change this
stigma, for it has always been considered the lowest form of training or education, to be mounted mainly to satisfy the needs of underprivileged groups.
(Weiermair, 1984, p. 5)
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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION
16:2 (1991)
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We here explore the roots of Canadian prejudice against vocational education, survey the Canadian history of the field, and examine constitutional
dilemmas that have inhibited appropriate development of vocational education.
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
Formal vocational education in Canada dates back to the late seventeenth
century. To make the fledgling colony self-sufficient, the intendant and
bishop of New France tried to establish both secondary industries and a
trade school. Their work affected only a small percentage of the population;
most people continued to see education primarily as an academic activity.
By the end of the nineteenth century, most provinces had established
compulsory, tax-supported elementary schooling. Public interest in education
grew, and commercial and industrial leaders supported the drive toward
universal basic literacy. Traditional interpretations see these industrialists as
practicing a kind of bourgeois “noblesse oblige” because they recognized the
need for an educated electorate in a democracy.
More recently, revisionist historians of education have reinterpreted the
nineteenth-century compulsory education movement as a capitalist plot to
oppress the common people (Prentice, 1977; Spring, 1972). Such historians
see compulsory schooling not as a way to provide commoners with the
means of upward social mobility and intellectual liberation, but as a training
and conditioning mechanism to transform an agricultural society into an
industrial one, and to prepare children to become punctual, diligent, and
submissive workers. Such views are probably extreme, but by the end of the
nineteenth century, when sizeable numbers of pupils began to remain in
schools beyond the standard eight grades, the industrial lobby began to
question the kind of education being provided at the secondary school level
(Gidney & Millar, 1990).
High schools in English Canada could follow one of three educational
models. From England came the tradition of preparing sons of gentlemen for
university in schools originally called Latin Grammar Schools and later just
grammar schools. These emphasized a classical curriculum and gave high
priority to sports, all under the Anglican church’s watchful guidance (Mangan, 1981). Scotland, a poorer nation but with a strong commitment to
education, had developed a more general curriculum for secondary school
students (Hamilton, 1970). Scottish secondary schools accommodated
capable students from all social classes, preparing students both for university matriculation and for more practical pursuits. Bookkeeping, navigation,
and other applications of academic study were common courses in Scottish
secondary schools. The third model was that of the English dissenting
academies, which revealed their middle-class roots and aspirations by
discarding much of the traditional, classical curriculum and by almost solely
offering practical courses.
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION IN CANADA
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Because early nineteenth-century colonial administrators in British North
America came mainly from the English upper classes, they selected the first
model. Those colonists who aspired to join the petty aristocracy supported
the establishment of grammar schools for their children. This English
transplant did not flourish on Canadian soil. Largely Anglican, in a society
increasingly non-conformist, and offering a curriculum totally unrelated to
colonial life, grammar schools had trouble attracting students (Wilson,
1970).
By the mid-nineteenth century, the reins of power in Ontario had largely
been assumed by the middle class. Because most who presumed to leadership belonged either to the Methodist or to the Presbyterian church, their
orientation toward secondary education came from either the Scottish or
non-conformist tradition. As a result, in 1871, Ontario passed an act replacing the old grammar schools with two distinctly different institutions:
Collegiate institutes, offering a classical program to prepare students for
university admission, and high schools, offering English, natural sciences,
and commercial subjects.
Canada, however, found it difficult to maintain two distinct kinds of
secondary schools. For one thing, the population was small; only in the
largest centres were there enough students to support both a collegiate
institute and a high school. There was also the problem of social aspirations—immigrants came to North America believing social mobility
possible, if not for them, at least for their children. People, therefore, often
demanded secondary education that would open doors. They wanted their
children to take Latin and Greek, allowing access to university, and not just
bookkeeping and agriculture, which would limit their prospects. Smaller
centres, therefore, often developed collegiate institutes rather than high
schools. When high schools were established, parents often pressured them
into providing those academic subjects that would gain university admission
for graduates. High schools’ boards of trustees frequently acceded to such
requests because schools offering academic subjects often received larger
government grants.
Were this not complicated enough, in the late nineteenth century universities changed their courses of study by introducing the natural sciences. The
collegiate institutes followed suit and also began to offer sciences originally
intended to be taught by high schools. By the turn of the century, therefore,
despite differences in name, most Canadian secondary schools offered a
rather general but distinctly academic curriculum with only slight attention
to practical subjects.
Canada was then just beginning to function autonomously. It had become
self-governing in 1867 and, in its second decade, had launched a protectionist “national policy” to encourage and to stimulate economic self-sufficiency.
By the mid-1890s, this policy began to bear fruit, largely because of the
ending of prolonged, world-wide economic depression, and settlement of the
Canadian prairies. In the improved economic climate, with ample natural
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resources and a sizeable captive market in the west, industrial and commercial interests campaigned for state-supported technical and vocational
education.
The Canadian Manufacturers Association (CMA), formed in 1887 to
further the cause of secondary industry, led this campaign. Assisted by such
groups as the Trades and Labour Congress and the Dominion Board of
Trade, the CMA became the primary lobby force pressuring the federal
government to promote vocational education. It argued that to compete with
other industrialized states, Canada needed more skilled workers.
The lobbyists aimed at the federal government in Ottawa rather than at the
various provincial governments with constitutional responsibility for public
education. There are several reasons why these special-interest groups
believed vocational education was Ottawa’s responsibility. First, they saw
industrial development, including vocational education, as an economic
aspect of nation-building—a federal responsibility. Second, the building of
the Canadian Pacific Railway started a tradition of government-industry
co-operation. Because of a shortage of capital, the federal government was
the only adequate source of Canadian finance for major projects; industrial
groups therefore looked to Ottawa to launch vocational education (Stamp,
1970a). Moreover, various interest groups wanted the kind of standardized
programs only federal government could provide. The lobbyists did not want
a patchwork approach, with each province establishing its own unique
program.
The CMA was fortunate in the timing of its lobbying efforts. The development of vocational education required the combined effort of both provincial
and federal governments. Canada’s first three decades had been fraught with
federal-provincial tensions, but the new government elected in 1896 eased
these disputes and opened the way for more co-operation.
The first step was the establishment of the Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical Education (1910). This was due in no small
measure to the efforts of the Minister of Labour, William Lyon MacKenzie
King. King brought new understanding of the problems facing industry, as
his diary shows:
I am pressing hard in Cabinet for the Comm’n, and see the need for it more &
more strongly as I read up the matter, see what other countries have done & how
far we are behind. (Quoted in Stamp, 1970, p. 454)
The Royal Commission was Canada’s first federal commission on education. Its mandate was broad in scope, concerned with all aspects of vocational education at all levels. The Commission’s report emphasized the need
for massive federal funding for the broad field of vocational education.
Although such recommendations were hailed by vocational education’s
supporters, they created jurisdictional problems for Canada.
A review of three sections of the Constitution Act (1867) indicates something of these problems’ scope. Section 91 lists the exclusive constitutional
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legislative responsibilities of the federal government. Section 92 lists the
responsibilities of the provinces. Section 92 Article 13 clearly assigns
non-criminal matters to provincial control and gives provinces exclusive
legislative authority over property and civil rights. This subsection protects
the provincial power to certify vocational teachers and tradespeople, to
regulate contracts of employment, and to legislate labour laws. Although
Section 93 provides provincial governments with exclusive constitutional
responsibility for education, the jurisdictional responsibility for vocational
education has never been clear. Despite Section 92 Article 16, which gives
provinces constitutional legislative responsibility for “Generally all Matters
of a merely local or private nature in the Province,” Section 91 states as
follows:
It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the advice and Consent of the
Senate and the House of Commons, to make Laws for the Peace, Order and good
Government of Canada, in relation to all Matters not coming within the Classes
of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces.
The federal government has argued that Section 91 gives it emergency
powers to legislate outside of its constitutional legislative responsibilities.
Agriculture was one of the fields in which the provincial and federal
governments shared constitutional responsibility. Because Canada then was
still primarily an agricultural nation and because most members of parliament represented agricultural constituencies, few persons argued against
funding this agricultural vocational education. Agricultural education,
therefore, was the first field to receive federal funding.
The Agriculture Aid Act of 1912 allocated $500,000 for the support of
agricultural education for one year. Subsequently, the Agriculture Instruction
Act of 1913 provided $10 million over a ten-year period. These funds were
allocated to the provinces on the basis of population, to be spent almost
unrestrictedly by federal regulations. The provinces used these federal
agricultural education funds for their own initiatives. In Alberta, Quebec,
Ontario, and Nova Scotia, these grants led to establishment of agricultural
colleges. Most provinces also implemented some form of agricultural
education in public schools (Johnson, 1968).
Demand for a national education policy on technical and industrial
education grew during World War I as the inadequacies of the Canadian
industry became apparent. When war ended, the Canadian government
passed the Technical Education Act (1919). Under its terms, the federal
government was to provide $10 million to the provinces, to be spent over a
ten-year period, to promote technical education at the secondary school
level. The federal government’s funding regulations for this program,
however, were considerably tighter than for agricultural education. The
restrictive provisions excluded poorer provinces, and by 31 March 1929,
only Ontario had claimed its share of the federal funding. As a consequence
Ontario’s vocational education programs funded under the Technical Educa-
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tion Act were implemented much earlier than those in some poorer and less
industrially developed provinces. Almost 15 years’ easing of federal restrictions was required before all provinces participated (Stamp, 1970b).
The 1930s depression severely constrained new federal government
initiatives, preventing much development of vocational education in most
parts of the country. Ironically, Saskatchewan—the most agricultural
province in Canada—was the exception. As the province’s net agricultural
incomes plummeted and farmers were driven out by drought, dust, and
grasshoppers, entire municipalities were depopulated. Those young people
who remained in the province stayed in school longer because there were no
jobs (Lyons, 1986). Many were not interested in higher education, but
wanted more schooling to improve their chances in the job market. Recognizing this, in 1938 the provincial government modified the Saskatchewan
Secondary Education Act, making it easier for school boards to offer
vocational education.
When war came again in 1939, Canada found itself little better off
industrially than it had been in 1914. The situation was far more serious,
however, because the Nazi blitzkrieg overran France and destroyed much of
the industrial strength of Britain, leaving overseas members of the British
Commonwealth to produce vitally important war matériel.
The federal government responded to the need for more Canadian manufacturing by passing the Vocational Training Coordination Act (1942), to
federally fund a variety of programs for servicemen, veterans, the unemployed, and supervisors in industry. The programs ranged from vocational
courses in secondary schools to apprenticeships. As with previous federal
funding arrangements, the federal government laid down conditions or
restrictions to determine a province’s eligibility for funding. The Vocational
Schools Assistance Agreement (1945) went even further by providing
federal, shared-cost assistance to create provincial composite high schools.
It is unclear whether the federal government justified its involvement in a
clearly provincial matter on the basis of Section 91 of the Constitution Act
or on the war-time application of the War Measures Act (1914). What is
clear, however, is that vocational education could be directly and indirectly
affected by federal initiatives.
The federal government, especially during the rapid industrial expansion
after World War II, solved the demand for tradespeople by encouraging
highly skilled workers from war-torn Europe to emigrate to Canada. Because
they could turn to foreign countries as a source of skilled workers, provincial authorities generally saw trades training as a minor aspect of the
educational system (Weiermair, 1984). This policy allowed Canada to avoid
paying the cost of training workers and, instead, to rely on other nations to
pay the costs and set the standards.
Ottawa believed it could fulfill demand for highly skilled labour through
immigration. In effect, Canada made itself dependent on other countries’
skilled-labour pools. The underdeveloped state of Canadian vocational
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education virtually ensured that Canadian children would be disadvantaged
in the work force. In 1960, the federal government again intervened in
vocational education by introducing the Technical and Vocational Training
Assistance Act (1960), which continued the program established by the
Vocational Training Coordination Act and expanded it to include the
preparation of technical-vocational teachers. Although the federal government’s funding priorities induced the “provinces to expand opportunistically
in the direction of federal support” (Weiermair, 1984, p. 15), this funding
was not used very efficiently for training highly skilled workers. Furthermore, although federal aid amounted to 75% in some programs, poorer provinces lacking a revenue surplus or in debt could not always participate
because they were unable to match the federal funding. Therefore, benefits
accrued to richer provinces or to those whose priorities matched Ottawa’s
(Johnson, 1968).
As abruptly as Ottawa had entered vocational training, it left—without
consulting the provinces. At a federal-provincial conference in October
1966, the federal government announced it would withdraw from the field
of vocational education to enter that of adult occupational training and
retraining, and to increase its assistance to universities. Federal officials
argued previous programs had distorted educational services by encouraging
provincial governments to develop only programs whose costs Ottawa would
share and to neglect others financed solely out of provincial coffers. Distinguishing between short-term retraining, for which federal authorities should
have responsibility, and long-term vocational preparation, a provincial
matter, the federal government launched the Adult Occupational Training
Act (1966–67) (Stamp, 1970b).
This shift in federal priorities created some major problems. During the
1960s, there was a major campaign to entice adolescents to remain in
school. Because under the Technical and Vocational Training Act federal
funds had paid up to three-quarters of vocational education programs’ cost,
part of the campaign involved creating alternatives to academic high school
programs. Withdrawal of federal funds left the provinces and school boards
to pick up the full cost of vocational programs.
By the 1970s, the diminished birthrate and improved economy in Western
Europe was affecting Canada’s ability to attract skilled workers. At the same
time, Europe’s increased industrial productivity was beginning to hurt
Canada’s international balance of trade. Since Canada had not made training
skilled labour a national priority, the country had to start virtually at the
beginning as it tried to catch up to such other industrialized countries as
Japan and West Germany.
The federal government reacted by replacing the Adult Occupational
Training Act. The basic difference between the National Training Act (1982)
and its predecessor was that the new act increased federal control. This
program targeted specific occupations to meet employers’ anticipated needs.
It marked a shift away from previous programs, which had encouraged
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individual choice, to one in which the federal government aligned itself
more closely with interests of business. The government supported preparation for these occupations by means of the Skills Growth Fund (Canada
Employment and Immigration, 1982–83). Promotion of certain fields
without regard for regional differences or aspirations, centralized vocational
education.
Ottawa’s current employment policy is embodied in the Canadian Jobs
Strategy (CJS) (Canada Employment and Immigration, 1985). The federal
government lists several principles or objectives for funding job experience
and skill training in certain occupational programs. The first principle of
CJS decrees that “training and job creation . . . be economic in orientation
with emphasis on small business and support of entrepreneurship” (Canada
Employment and Immigration, 1985, p. 8). That this program funds training
in some skills but not others, further shows the federal government’s shift
towards alliance with business. The House of Commons Standing Committee
on Labour, Employment, and Immigration (1988) concisely summarized
CJS’s claimed innovations:
It is an attempt to shift away from short-term cyclical measures and provides a
combination of skill development and job experience, it attempts to better reflect
the needs of local labour markets by facilitating more flexible programming and
greater input at the local [level]. . . . In addition, a special focus is provided to
youth under the Job Entry Program. (p. 2)
It also marked a new approach in both employment and pre-employment
education by “setting of fair employment targets for women, Natives, the
disabled, and visible minorities” (p. 18). Although the latest federal initiatives may facilitate accomplishment of aims espoused by the CMA at the
turn of the century, they have not been universally applauded. Failure to
encourage women to enter and succeed in non-traditional jobs and funding
of programs stressing specific, non-transferable skills indicate this program
is not completely successful (McKeen, 1987).
One of the program’s weaknesses may be its broad scope. Although the
program is mandated to provide money for training in occupations where
there are personnel shortages, only one aspect of it emphasizes anticipated
shortages. Although it increased the amounts available for apprenticeship
training, it provides less for vocational training than for job experience
programs. Overall, CJS is an affirmative action program to provide work
experience, not a plan to prepare highly skilled workers for projected
shortages in identified trades.
Because the program’s objectives differ widely, the Auditor General was
unable to assess the financial accountability of either the work experience or
the skills programs. The success of the CJS on a cost-comparative basis is
therefore unknown (Auditor General’s Report, 1987).
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INTERPROVINCIAL CO-OPERATION AND DIVERSITY
Vocational education has, since its inception, depended on federal funding.
The Constitution Act (1867) made education a provincial constitutional
responsibility, so Section 93 did not define vocational education per se.
Section 91 Article 2A of that act, however, conferred exclusive legislative
authority over unemployment insurance to the federal government, a responsibility that includes assisting people with relocation and training for new
career opportunities. Although the provinces relied on federal funding for
vocational education, each one initially pursued its own unique program.
Federal programs such as the Vocational Training Coordination Act and the
Vocational Schools Assistance Agreement made interprovincial co-operation
unnecessary by providing the federal government with wider scope in
negotiating the terms of agreements.
Formalization of apprenticeship training took place at various times
throughout the country. Because trades training falls under provincial
jurisdiction, each province has drawn up its own legislation, in many cases
with little or no reference to procedures in neighbouring provinces, and this
provincialism has produced separate and often different systems of training
and certification. Although these systems have evolved since their introduction, lack of uniform standards for training and certification has made it
impossible to integrate the provincial systems into one national system.
A 1952 national conference on apprenticeship recommended federal-provincial co-operation in analysis of a number of trades (Canada Employment
and Immigration, 1988). The resulting Interprovincial Standards Program
Coordinating Committee undertook “the standardization of provincial
training and certification programs . . . to thereby increase the mobility of
apprentices and journeymen in construction, maintenance, repair, and service
trades and occupations” (Interprovincial Standards Program Coordinating
Committee, 1987, p. 2). Under this program, over 150,000 Canadian workers
have qualified for interprovincial certification in the twenty-four trades that
make up the program, and their ranks grow by at least 10,000 new workers
annually.
This committee’s existence attests to inter-governmental co-operation. The
Interprovincial Standards Program exemplifies the benefits of standardized
certification, and its success may provide an incentive for incorporating
other trades into the program.
CURRENT ISSUES IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
In 1988, Canada and the United States signed the Free Trade Agreement
(FTA), which in effect provides for economic integration of the North
American continent. It is unclear how the FTA will affect the demand for
skilled and unskilled workers in Canada. Because the Canadian economy is
also influenced by global and internal factors, it is difficult to determine
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which occupations, industries, and regions will be positively or negatively
influenced by the agreement.
The aging of Canada’s population is beginning to cause shortages of
workers. The economic strength of the industrial heartland, which has
recently undergone a decade of extraordinary growth (Ontario Ministry of
Skills Development, 1988), negatively affects other parts of the country.
Growth in both the service and manufacturing sectors has caused labour
shortages in several occupations in Ontario despite the relocation of workers
from other regions.
As technological innovation accelerates, the demand for highly skilled
employees increases. One solution has been to expand the labour force.
Women and minorities are being advised to broaden their career choices to
meet this demand for workers. Often, however, women and minorities lack
the qualifications needed to move into the skilled work force. Although 54%
of women are now employed outside the home, most remain concentrated in
occupations traditionally considered female preserves (Canada Employment
and Immigration, 1987). Canada Employment and Immigration has recently
been unable to persuade highly skilled foreign workers to emigrate. Not only
did companies give low priority to company-based worker training programs, but also these programs have been inconsistent in quality and
quantity because of variations in the business cycle.
Ontario provides an example of industrial strategy for the service sector
based on reasonable projections derived from accurate information collected
from various provincial sub-economies. The strategy identifies strengths of
the provincial economy, defines or targets international markets in which the
province wishes to compete, and builds on those strengths to achieve
specific goals. The ministry has identified need for greater investment in
worker training to meet anticipated demand for certain occupational groups.
The strategy is simple and workable.
Most factors that shaped Canada’s vocational education in the past are
unlikely to change. Although the weight given to particular factors may
diminish or increase, their interaction will shape vocational education’s
future development.
The most promising trend is co-operation among government, industry,
and labour on interprovincial certification to increase worker mobility and
to help the Canadian economy grow. This may lead to continuous dialogue
extending beyond interprovincial certification to such issues of mutual
concern as finance of vocational education and standardization of programming on a cost- and power-sharing basis. Incentive for greater co-operation
may come from increased competition in the international marketplace.
Canada now has to supply its own highly skilled workers. There is today
more need than ever for timely information, co-ordination, and co-operation
among government, industry, and labour to create and to modify a unitary
industrial development strategy.
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Fiscal accountability is intricately tied to the issue of program evaluation.
In the past, programming was not jointly initiated and continuously evaluated. Increased international competition may make the co-ordination of
programs an economic necessity. Before that can happen, the various
interested parties need to establish specific national objectives so they may
evaluate the effectiveness of particular programs. In the post-industrial era,
it is doubtful whether Canada will be able to maintain a high standard of
living without a national strategy.
As a former British colony, Canada has distanced itself from its colonial
master, but it is not clear that it is prepared to accept responsibility for
charting its own economic destiny. The FTA may bind Canada’s economy
to a continental economic agenda not of Canada’s making. Since the FTA’s
purpose is greater than merely reducing tariffs, further integration of Canada’s economy with that of the United States and separation from other
trading partners may be inevitable. It has yet to be shown, however, that
Canada could pursue economic neutrality, like Switzerland and Sweden. The
United States continues to advocate the advantages of laissez-faire capitalism
and the removal of existing trade barriers in the marketplace. Adam Smith’s
belief in the “invisible hand,” operating to promote both the individual’s and
society’s self-interest through competition, accommodated the greed of both
individuals and society. Capitalism’s proponents argue the free market
allows the most equitable distribution of goods and services. In other words,
competition to supply demand will reward the efficient. Greed may, however, produce such inequitable consumption that it results in economic and
social malaise.
Economic and social trends influence each other, and also embody the
dreams of a country’s greatest resource—its people. Economically successful nations, such as Japan, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland, have committed themselves to developing their citizens’ potential. To participate in
the post-industrial marketplace, a country needs a well-educated and welltrained work force. Educational and training programs to meet national
post-industrial strategies do not evolve by invisible hands but require the
consensus of government, industry, and labour. As further international
competition concentrates industries in the hands of fewer but larger multinational corporations, competition to lure companies to specific countries
will increase, and nations will have to provide incentives such as a highly
educated and skilled work force. Through programs like Ontario’s servicesector strategy, government will target specific industries for worker training
but withdraw from others. Canada must necessarily make education and
training of its people one of its highest priorities.
Growing public awareness and concern for human rights, social justice,
protection of the environment, and sustained growth for future generations
are only a few of the world-wide populist movements influencing political
decision making in matters affecting education. Although competition as an
ideology may be at its apex of popularity, it may be challenged by forces of
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co-operation. Populist concern for the planet’s continued existence may
make development of the world’s human resources, through education and
training, not only a Canadian but a global priority.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Development of vocational education in Canada has been hampered by a
number of factors. Canada inherited from Britain a tradition that valued
academic studies more than manual ones. Immigrants, anxious to have their
children succeed in the new world, accepted these educational values. As a
result, during the nineteenth century, while European countries evolved
well-grounded systems of training skilled craftspeople to support industrial
growth, Canada developed a dependence on skilled immigrants to meet its
labour needs.
As the country became more industrialized, demands arose for some form
of vocational education in Canadian schools. Lobby groups such as the
CMA favoured federal involvement in this field, so as to ensure countrywide standards and approaches. Although such uniformity made sense to
Canada’s industrial and commercial interests, it ran afoul of the constitutional division of powers. The Constitution Act, which did not distinguish
between training and education, gave provinces exclusive control over both.
Federal involvement in education began in the field of agriculture, one
area of shared constitutional responsibility. Under the Agricultural Instruction Act, the federal government granted the provinces funding to promote
agricultural education. This set a precedent for the Technical Education Act,
by which the federal government granted provinces funding to encourage
technical education. Although there was no provision for shared power in
this field, Canadian industrial weaknesses during World War I provided a
practical justification for the move. Because the federal government also had
the constitutional power to pass legislation to ensure “the peace, order, and
good government” of the whole country, it may also have had the legal
power. This was the first in a long series of acts under which the federal
government financed vocational education.
Federal involvement served as much to distort as to encourage vocational
education. Because most federal programs were based on matching grants,
they worked to the advantage of richer provinces—thus increasing the
country’s economic disparities. Furthermore, blinded by the availability of
federal funds, most provinces failed to realize their own responsibility for
providing vocational education. In most provinces, vocational education
programs were exotic transplants that did not grow up as a result of provincial initiatives and were therefore of little assistance in meeting local needs
or in promoting local economic structures. Moreover, they tended to flourish
like hothouse flowers as long as funding lasted, but wilted as soon as federal
priorities and dollars shifted. Over the years, only Ontario, the country’s
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richest and most industrialized province, took maximum advantage of
federal programs.
The original intent of the vocational education lobbyists was to increase
the number of skilled workers in Canada. In provinces that promoted the
“cultural” aspects of practical courses, however, industrial arts courses did
little to advance this aim. To survive in the modern world, Canada must
ensure that its young workers are equipped with the best and the latest
skills. Hands-on practical experience must be combined with essential
technological knowledge. Although the apprenticeship system has worked
well, it tends to reinforce traditional approaches; to encourage innovation,
vocational training must be upgraded to meet modern needs.
At the end of the nineteenth century, a “National Policy” of tariff protection launched Canada into the industrial age; perhaps a new national policy
is needed. As technological advances draw distant parts of the world ever
more closely together, vocational preparedness has become increasingly
important. In an era of international cartels and free-trade associations,
“muddling through” no longer works. Since Canada can no longer look to
immigration to solve its labour problems, the country must develop a
national system of vocational training.
Although provincial control of education has worked reasonably well in
academic fields, it has not worked well for vocational education. Canada’s
lack of national standards has inhibited development of a national industrial
policy. In this regard, the country is in almost the same situation as it was
at the turn of the century. Canada needs a system which will ensure that
young people, both men and women, will see vocational education as
challenging and worthwhile, not just as a ticket to second-class status.
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John E. Lyons, Bikkar S. Randhawa, and Neil A. Paulson teach at the College of
Education, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, S7N 0W0.
Network Coverage: Administrative
Collegiality and School District Ethos
in High-Performing Districts
Peter Coleman
simon fraser university
Lorna Mikkelson
bc school district #36 (surrey)
Linda LaRocque
university of alberta
We interviewed administrators in two high- and two low-performing school districts in British Columbia to see if interactions between district- and school-based
administrators (and interactions within the latter group) would distinguish
between these pairs of districts. We asked if administrator collegiality would
characterize the first pair but not the second.
Respondents in high-performing districts often referred to their satisfying professional relationships with colleagues. Respondents in low-performing districts
barely mentioned collegial contact except where principals thought they had to
present a united front against district policy threatening their “turf.” In high-performing school districts, collegiality included issues of school improvement.
Superintendents act like effective principals—they create an “associative” climate
at district level in which climate “district-regarding principals” seek the greater
good.
There is greater similarity in district interaction patterns within the two performance groups than there are sharp distinctions between them.
Nous avons interviewé, en Colombie-Britannique, des administrateurs de quatre
circonscriptions scolaires—deux à faible rendement et deux à rendement élevé—
afin de vérifier si les interactions des administrateurs des circonscriptions et des
écoles (et des administrateurs d’école entre eux) se distinguaient selon les deux
paires de circonscriptions. Nous cherchions à savoir s’il y existait, dans la première paire, une collégialité chez les adminstrateurs, qui serait absente dans la
seconde.
Les répondants dans les circonscriptions scolaires à haut rendement ont souvent fait allusion aux relations professionnelles satisfaisantes qu’ils entretenaient
avec leurs collègues. Ceux des circonscriptions scolaires à faible rendement ont
à peine fait mention des contacts avec leurs collègues, à l’exception des directeurs d’école qui estimaient devoir faire front commun contre les politiques des
circonscriptions menaçant leur “territoire.” Dans les circonscriptions scolaires à
haut rendement, les questions ayant trait à l’amélioration de l’école étaient associées à la notion de collégialité. Les administrateurs en chef agissent comme le
font des directeurs d’école efficaces: ils créent, au niveau de la circonscription,
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COLEMAN, MIKKELSON,
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un climat tel que les directeurs d’école cherchent ce qui contribue davantage au
bien de la circonscription.
Il y a plus de similitudes que de grandes différences entre les types d’interaction au sein des deux groupes de circonscriptions.
We began with the proposition that quantity and content of interactions
between district and school-based administrators, and within the latter group,
would be different in low-performing and in high-performing school districts. This analysis of administrator interview data from two high-performing and two low-performing school districts in British Columbia tests that
proposition. Our four-district subset represents the ends of the performance
continuum of a sample of ten districts in a larger study (Coleman & LaRocque, 1990).
The original study proposed a cluster of “ethos” characteristics of school
districts analogous to the characteristics of effective schools. These characteristics may help to explain variations in school district performance on cost
and achievement measures (Coleman, 1986).
TABLE 1
District Ethos and District Tasks
District Tasks
Six focuses
(District ethos)
A. Be accountable
B. Improve/adapt
C. Set expectations
Learning Focus
1. Focus on
instruction
program effectiveness assessed?
changes to improve
instruction?
instructional goals
most important?
Accountability
Focus
2. School
accountability
schools
accountable for
performance? for
practices?
changes to improve
school
accountability?
monitoring and
instructional goals
linked?
Change Focus
3. Organizational
change
changes as
response to performance data?
changes as
response to
environment?
changes in
goals/goal-setting
processes?
Commitment Focus
4. Commitment to
effort
commitment to
accountability
created?
commitment to
change efforts
created?
commitment to
school/district goals
created?
Caring Focus
5. Consideration
concern for community opinion on
performance?
decisions reflect
concerns of
community?
emphasis on
affective goals?
Community Focus
6. Community
integration
schools/district
involve community in monitoring?
community
involvement in
change efforts?
community
involvement in
setting goals?
NETWORK COVERAGE
153
“Ethos” is borrowed from the work of Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, and
Ouston, and signifies a set of shared norms, values, and attitudes manifested
in practices that “become characteristic of the school as a whole” (1979, p.
179). The original B.C. study (Coleman & LaRocque, 1990) discriminated
between high-performing districts and others, describing a productive ethos
that consists of six activity and attitude “focuses” affecting the ways districts
cope with common administrative tasks (Berman & McLaughlin, 1979;
Coleman, 1972). The tasks and focuses combined yield a conceptual framework—and research questions (see Table 1). “Productive district ethos”
conveys purposefulness of the organization’s “shared understandings, norms,
and values” (Jelinek, Smircich, & Hirsh, 1983), and links norms to administrative practices that embody the norms. Principal collegiality might constitute one means by which such sharing of values and practices occurs. Since
only high-performing districts have productive ethos, then if collegiality
discriminates between districts, such collegiality is important to district
quality.
CRITICAL PRACTICES OF COLLEGIALITY
Little’s (1982) work on teacher collegiality suggests some possible conditions of principal collegiality in districts:
1. frequent opportunities for focussed talk about instructional policies and
practices;
2. district expectation of continuous improvement in core educational
outcomes;
3. district expectation that principals work collaboratively toward solving
problems.
Such opportunities and expectations may both support and reflect norms of
collegiality, which can be said to exist when most principals in the district:
1. express respect for the work of colleagues;
2. describe peers and superordinates as resource persons and sounding
boards;
3. refer positively to opportunities for collegial contact;
4. express instructional concerns in a shared language;
5. exhibit a common pool of information;
6. exhibit knowledge of, and commitment to, district goals and expectations;
7. refer positively to programs and practices in other schools in the district;
8. express support for district processes such as monitoring and assessment.
Professional collegiality among teachers is critical to school effectiveness
(Little, 1982) and to a professional culture (McLaughlin & Yee, 1988).
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COLEMAN, MIKKELSON,
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Developing an “associative” climate among teachers is an important part of
the work of the principal (Blase, 1987).
Opportunities for Collegiality
It is necessary to demonstrate, first, that there are sufficient opportunities
and venues in the day-to-day life of principals corresponding with those
available for teacher collegiality, and second, that principals use these
opportunities to engage in collegial interactions with peers.
Wolcott (1973) notes the flexible nature of the principal’s schedule.
Principals also have access to a variety of suitable venues, including formal
principals’ meetings with central office staff, principals’ association meetings, committee meetings, conferences, and retreats. A variety of informal
occasions also provide opportunities for collegial interactions.
The second consideration is the question of preferred resources. Wolcott’s
study shows that principals tend to avoid initiating interactions with superordinates; they wish to avoid critical attention. Similarly, problems are not
normally shared with subordinates. To do so might invite unwanted speculation on the principal’s ability to lead. Peers are left as the most likely
choices for interaction.
Previous Research on Principal Collegiality
Little research deals specifically with relationships between working principals. Principals are rarely helped by other principals or by central administrators in dealing with change (Fullan, 1982). Fullan contends that “teachers
and principals desire more social contact about professional matters, if it can
be done in a supportive climate” (p. 142). The cautious and restricted nature
of principal-peer relationships is also revealed in studies by Licata and Hack
(1980) and Johnson and Licata (1983). These researchers describe the
informal communications network or “grapevine” among school principals.
In both studies, patterns of informal interactions are typically issue-specific
and limited to one or two trusted individuals.
The potential of informal networks in educational contexts is well known,
and the deliberate strengthening of such networks frequently suggested.
Goodlad (1984) recommends linking “key” or experimental schools to
universities and to one another in a “communicating, collaborating network”
(p. 301). The importance of collegial relationships is demonstrated in the
implementation literature (Berman & McLaughlin, 1979; Huberman &
Miles, 1984). Huberman and Miles (1984) “found that efforts to develop
cooperation, coordination and conflict resolution across the differing worlds
of administrators and users were often critical to successful implementation”
(p. 280).
NETWORK COVERAGE
155
METHODOLOGY
Data for this reanalysis came from the original study, in which are found
important differences between British Columbia school districts in both
student achievement (the measure was of aggregated achievement data from
provincial test series in reading, mathematics, and science) and in levels of
expenditures (the measure used was district-level costs-per-pupil over several
years) (Coleman, 1986). These differences persist even when two major and
largely unalterable predictor variables, family education level (for achievement) and mean school size (for per-pupil costs), are controlled. Some
districts succeed very much more than others in combining relatively high
levels of student achievement with comparatively modest levels of expenditure.
Sample of Districts
For this study, districts R and J represent the high-performing group, M and
H the low-performing group. These four districts also differ with respect to
size and location. Districts R and J are medium-sized by B.C. standards
(2101 to 5600 students). Each serves a small city and the surrounding rural
area. District M, also medium-sized, is located in a well-established small
city. Its schools serve a concentrated urban population. District H is a small
rural district serving a resource-based community. It is composed of one
high school and several scattered elementary schools.
Data Pool and Analysis
From the interview data files compiled in the Coleman and LaRocque study
(1990) for these districts, the first four focuses (instruction, accountability,
change, and commitment) were selected for investigation across all three
district tasks (see Table 1).
We asked: Can consistent differences be found between the high-performing and the low-performing districts with respect to the frequency, content,
and context of administrator interactions? If so, can these differences in
collegial interaction patterns be connected by internal evidence with school
district performance? Our procedure was as follows:
1. We identified interactions between administrators in the four selected
districts, some by inference, most directly.
2. We then coded each interaction as to content, context, and focus. Coding
included inferences/references as to inferred or explicit, structured or ad
hoc, and two-way or one-way features. For example, we coded reciprocal
(as opposed to one-way) interactions on the basis of principals’ references to consultation, discussion, debate, input, feedback, and committee
work; meetings the respondents described explicitly as primarily two-way
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COLEMAN, MIKKELSON,
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LAROCQUE
rather than informational; sharing of ideas; requests for assistance or
information.
3. We analyzed interactions in each district as to their frequency, focus,
venue, and consistency.
4. We compared interaction patterns both between and within the two
performance groups.
The coded passages were collated into a chart for each district, labelled a
Master Interaction Chart, showing each interaction as reported by a respondent. Our results are drawn from this chart.
RESULTS
Nature and Salience of Administrator Interactions
A simple tabulation (Table 2) of interactions per district shows differences
between high-performing and low-performing districts in total number of
interactions and in types of interactions from the transcripts. In particular,
Explicit instances in districts R and J (118 and 113, respectively) outstrip
those in either district M or district H by a ratio of about 3 to 1.
High-performing districts also provide many more structured opportunities, and more consultative (two-way) rather than informational (one-way)
interactions. Workplace conditions in districts R and J satisfy one supporting
condition Little (1982) identifies: relatively frequent opportunities for
administrators to engage in focussed debate about instructional issues.
TABLE 2
Type and Frequency of Principal Interactions by District
District
Type of Interaction
M
H
R
J
Inferred
Explicit
14
42
25
38
31
118
33
113
Structured
Adhoc
39
17
42
21
111
38
86
60
Two-way
One-way
32
24
36
27
112
37
96
50
Totals
56
63
149
146
157
NETWORK COVERAGE
TABLE 3
Number of Interactions Reported by Respondents
District
Respondent
M
H
R
J
District
Administrators
1.01
1.02
1.03
15
6
1
9
—
3
9
23
12
21
11
18
22
12
44
50
14.6
16.6
Total
Average
Principals
2.01
2.02
2.03
2.04
2.05
2.06
Total
Average
Overall district
average
7.3
6.0
10
6
11
7
—
—
8
13
14
2
6
8
25
10
17
14
19
20
10
7
8
13
18
18
34
51
105
96
8.5
8.3
17.5
16.0
8.0
8.0
16.5
16.2
When interactions are analyzed by individual, respondents in districts R
and J averaged twice as many per person as their counterparts in districts M
and H (Table 3). Every respondent in districts R and J reported many
interactions. However, for one district administrator in district H and for two
principals in district M we could find no reported interactions at all.
An issue is described as “salient” when district administrators and principals agree on its importance and are positive about it. Table 4 gives an
analysis of the range and salience of instructionally focussed issues to see if
the sample districts had three of Little’s (1982) normative conditions for
collegiality and continuous improvement:
1. the range of instructional issues discussed among practitioners;
2. the salience of these issues both within and between respondent groups;
3. the consistency of opinion expressed with respect to the issues both
within and between respondent groups.
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COLEMAN, MIKKELSON,
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TABLE 4
Range and Salience of Issues:
Response Consistency by District and Respondent
Administrator Consistency Rating
M
Issues
H
R
J
DA
P
DA
P
DA
P
DA
P
Monitoring issues
test score
school assessment
school goals
district goals
+
+
N
N
X
N
N
X
X
X
—
S
S
N
N
N
++
++
++
+
++
++
++
+
++
++
++
++
++
++
+
++
Evaluation issues
principals
programs
teachers
report cards
N
N
+
N
N
N
X
N
N
N
N
N
+
N
N
+
++
++
+
+
+
++
+
N
+
++
++
N
+
++
+
N
Decision-making issues
text selection
d-m process
staffing
principal input
improvement programs
test selection
pro-d topics
principal transfers
+
+
N
++
+
N
N
+
++
—
S
S
N
N
N
+
+
+
++
S
N
-N
N
++
+
+
S
N
S
N
N
++
++
++
++
+
++
+
N
++
++
++
++
++
++
++
N
++
++
+
++
++
+
++
N
++
++
+
++
++
+
++
N
Relationship issues
communications
P/P relations
DA support
principal autonomy
DA leadership style
DA/P relations
attitude to change
effects of restraint
++
N
N
+
+
+
N
N
—
X
N
—
—
—
S
S
—
N
N
N
N
N
-N
S
N
N
N
+
S
—
N
+
+
+
++
++
+
++
N
++
++
++
++
++
++
++
N
++
+
++
N
++
++
++
+
++
++
++
+
+
++
++
N
Key: ++/-- two thirds or more of the respondents commented positively/negatively
+/— one to two thirds of the respondents commented positively/negatively
N not mentioned by two thirds or more of the respondents
S split opinion among the respondents
X specifically mentioned by one third or more of the respondents that the issue is not discussed
High-performing districts differed from low-performing districts on all three
of these conditions. Of the 24 issues extracted from the Master Interaction
Charts, respondents in district R reported interactions in connection with all
but two: principal transfers and budgetary restraint. Similarly, district J
respondents reported interactions on all issues except two: principal transfers
and report card development.
NETWORK COVERAGE
159
District M respondents did not mention interactions associated with 8 of
the 24 issues: district goal review, principal evaluation, program evaluation,
report card development, test selection, professional development, collegial
contact among principals, and district support for school initiatives. Of these,
district goal review and principal collegiality were specifically not discussed.
I can’t think of what [the district’s goals] would be. I don’t think they have ever
been stated, unless they were in the Superintendent’s message in September.
(M2.02)
We are not a collegial district at any level. . . . Nobody trusts anybody else, and
it goes all the way from bottom to top. (M2.01)
(Quotations are broadly representative of respondents’ commentary in a
district. Each quotation identifies the district and speaker in parentheses.)
Administrators in district H did not mention interactions associated with
10 issues: school assessment, program evaluation, teacher evaluation and
report writing, instructional improvement programs, professional development, principal transfers, principal collegiality, district support for school
initiatives, principal autonomy, and the effects of restraint. One district
administrator stated explicitly that school improvement was not discussed:
“Self-improvement has not been a focus in the district” (H.1.03).
As Table 4 shows, district R administrators agreed on 16 of the 24 issues.
That is, at least two-thirds of respondents in each group were positive in
discussion of interactions about 16 issues. There was relatively close agreement (one-third of the respondents) about the remaining eight issues. There
were no instances of split opinion in a respondent group.
Responses in district J were also remarkably consistent. There was
agreement as to weighting and stance between administrator groups with
respect to 18 of the 24 issues, and close agreement (within one-third) about
the remaining six issues. As with district R, district J respondents reported
a uniformly positive stance on the issues.
Districts M and H vary markedly from R and J with respect to salience of
issues. District M respondents were in agreement about only one
issue—principal transfers. Opinion is divided between district administrators
(positive) and principals (negative) on several important issues. District H is
characterized by a similarly divided response pattern. Respondent groups
agreed positively on only one issue: the decision-making process. District
administrators referred specifically to test score analysis and school assessment as issues not discussed in the district. Their opinion was split on the
issues of staffing and district goal review. Since there were only two respondents in this group, divisiveness must begin at the top. Principals were
divided on the issues of test score analysis, principal input, test selection,
communication, and collegial relations between administrators.
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COLEMAN, MIKKELSON,
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TABLE 5
Opportunities for Interaction:
Mechanisms and Efficacy
Administrator Efficacy Rating
M
H
R
J
Mechanism
DA
P
DA
P
DA
P
DA
P
Structured
meetings
committees
DA formal visits
retreats
workshops
evaluation team
P formal visits
—
++
N
N
N
N
N
S
S
N
N
N
N
N
—
N
N
N
N
X
N
+
+
N
N
N
—
+*
++
++
++
N
+
N
N
+
+
++
N
++
+
N
++
++
++
+
+
++
N
++
++
++
N
++
++
N
Ad hoc
DA informal visits
other DA informal
P informal visits
other P informal
N
++
N
N
N
+
N
N
N
++
N
N
+
++
N
+
++
++
N
+#
+
++
N
++
++
++
N
+#
++
++
N
++
Key: ++ two thirds of the respondents commented positively
+ one to two thirds of the respondents commented positively
N not mentioned by two thirds or more of the respondents
— one to two thirds of the respondents commented negatively
S split opinion among the respondents
X specifically mentioned by one third or more of the respondents that the mechanism is not in
place
+* one third of the principals reported visiting schools, but only in other districts
+# one third of the district administrators reported informal contacts between principals
Interaction Mechanisms
The range of mechanisms or venues available to district administrators and
principals for interaction purposes characteristic of districts in the sample,
together with administrator attitudes about the efficacy of these mechanisms,
appears in Table 5. High- and low- performing districts differ in responses
about the range and efficacy of mechanisms. Administrators in districts R
and J reported that 8 of 11 mechanisms were used and useful. In district R
all respondents strongly affirmed district administrators’ formal visits to
schools, and their informal contacts with principals. Respondent groups in
district J agreed strongly about the efficacy of six mechanisms: meetings,
committees, district administrator formal visits to schools, evaluation team
visits, and other district administrator informal contacts with principals.
Excerpts from the transcripts show not only the range of issues and
mechanisms available to respondents, but also evidence of collegial norms.
NETWORK COVERAGE
161
The fact that no interview questions called for these comments strengthens
their credibility as descriptions of characteristic district practice.
I think we work at [problems] with [principals] as colleagues. The principals will
call one or the other without hesitation; they know they won’t be judged badly
if they call for help. (R1.02)
The administrators talk together a lot and many have taken courses together, so
they have a common language. We support one another’s efforts; we share a lot.
(J2.03)
The response pattern in district M is markedly different. Respondents in
district M reported positive support for only 1 of the 11 interaction mechanisms—informal district administrator contacts. The one issue in district M
that prompted considerable discussion among principals was a proposed new
policy concerning principal transfers. The interactions generated by this
issue illustrate what can be labelled “territoriality” or the “dark side” of
collegiality.
The principals have a strong sense of territory—“this is my school.” Therefore,
although they do not always agree with one another, there is an unwritten law
that we hang together at meetings with district staff. We agree on a position and
hold it in meetings with central office. (M2.01)
Principals describe themselves as engaged in a continuous struggle for
control of the schools. Similarly, the one mechanism for interaction that
prevails in district M—one-on-one negotiation—contributes to a destructive
use of “end runs” and a general lack of commitment to district decisions.
There seems to be, to almost every decision made, one or more schools who
have a reason for not abiding by the decision that everyone else has to live by.
There are always concessions, amendments, a reluctance to say, “We’ve heard
everyone, considered all the information, this is the decision, now do it.” (M2.04)
Divisiveness among this district’s respondents is unsurprising considering
comments of the following sort (the interviewers in the original study,
Coleman and LaRocque, noted that such comments were frequently heard in
district M):
I don’t think we have an obligation to a C-minus teacher just because my
colleague down the road is not screening properly. (M2.02)
Similarly, in district H both respondent groups were strongly positive only
about informal district administrator contacts. Both respondent groups in
district H describe administrative meetings as less interactive than desired.
Sometimes things are floated out and reaction is gauged. After-the-fact testing of
ideas. Some of the process of consultation is window-dressing. (H2.05)
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COLEMAN, MIKKELSON,
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The dark side of collegiality identified in district M also surfaces in district
H, although the divisiveness is here less pronounced.
Most of the time when we meet we don’t come to a consensus. I guess we all
have our territory to protect, and we seem to be concerned just with our territory
when we meet. (H2.03)
One-on-one negotiation, rather than the more difficult group consensusbuilding carried on in high-performing districts, characterizes district H, as
it does district M.
Recurring Themes and Patterns
The major theme in from the data is the remarkable similarity in district
interaction patterns within the two performance groups, as compared to the
clear distinctions between them.
The high-performing districts R and J operate under a “monitored autonomy” model (Cuban, 1984; Coleman & LaRocque, 1990). District administrators are highly visible leaders.
We see a lot of [the District Administrators] in spite of the distance. I appreciate
their presence; they are on top of things. They do get around and their follow-up
is good. (J2.06)
[The Superintendent] spends a lot of time out in the schools rather than in his
office. I think a lot of people appreciate that. (R2.03)
District administrator expectations of principals with respect to outcomes are
clear and demanding. They ensure compliance with district objectives
through well-defined monitoring practices. Commitment to these objectives
is achieved through consultative decision making on substantive issues. Most
principals in these districts consider their input meaningful.
I think we really are consulted. That is, I think we really are consulted although
the direction has been determined by the Superintendent. (R2.05)
However, principals are also aware that if they do not work collaboratively
to achieve consensus among themselves to produce workable process
documents, a decision will be imposed. In this way, principals in districts R
and J are given both the opportunity and the impetus to interact collegially.
A second interaction pattern characterizing the two high-performing
districts is the tendency to a district-regarding perspective among principals.
[W]e would have to talk about [teacher transfers] with the Superintendent or at
least with the Supervisor of Instruction and then look at the needs of the whole
district, not just this school. (R2.04)
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163
This tendency is reminiscent of LaRocque’s (1983) district-level description
of school-regarding teachers, who share a strong concern for the welfare of
the whole school as well as for their own classroom.
The district-regarding perspective characteristic of districts R and J may
be generated partly by district administrators’ coaching/modelling leadership
style, which encourages collaboration and sharing of ideas.
You’re spread pretty thin [but] one of the priorities in my estimation is helping
schools get off the ground with this effectiveness stuff. I don’t just tell people
things anymore, I coach them, provide them with feedback. I help them do what
they set out to do. (J1.03)
Respondents in these districts respectfully acknowledge the work of their
colleagues.
Our view of the school staffs by and large is that they are good people. . . . We
have good teachers . . . good principals. We are impressed by their hard work.
(R1.01)
A third common thread in the interaction patterns of high-performing
districts is shared responsibility for initiating improvement programs.
In-service programs for teachers are largely school-based, with district staff
providing support.
We allow the principals a lot of autonomy, at the same time trying to give them
as much support as possible. (R1.03)
You are encouraged to try things, and if an idea works, others will take it up.
(J2.07)
Norms of continuous improvement (Little, 1982) are evident not only in
their monitoring practices but also in the frequent discussions of instruction.
Administrators in districts R and J also believe in the efficacy of various
interaction mechanisms available to them. They generally describe administrative meetings as moving toward a better balance between an informational
type of agenda and a more participatory, two-way format. They see committee work as influential in developing procedures and sometimes policies.
Involvement in decision making is described as high at all levels. Throughout the interview data, respondents in districts R and J refer frequently to
their satisfying professional relationships with colleagues and to their belief
that collaborative work being done in their respective districts is contributing
to continual improvement in educational programs.
The patterns of interaction in low-performing districts M and H similarly
indicate a top-down information-giving leadership model. Decision making
on substantive issues is centralized at district level with little monitoring of
decision implementation in schools.
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LAROCQUE
(Probe re involvement of principals) Bad. Previously all school-related matters
were taken to Administrative Meetings and decided there. That’s no longer the
case—it sometimes happens, but not always like it used to. (M2.04)
Because the district doesn’t insist on conformity, commitment to decisions
is further weakened. A district propensity for one-on-one negotiation rather
than development of group consensus encourages principals to circumvent
or to ignore district decisions.
Although central office administrators in districts M and H express
concern for instructional issues, they are not particularly visible in the
schools and are generally perceived as managers rather than as instructional
leaders. There is virtually no mention of collegial contact in these districts.
Principals tend to view their colleagues as allies of convenience in the
struggle to maintain control over their schools rather than as partners in the
educative process. Remarks alluding to the work of other principals are more
often disparaging than respectful.
Finally, there is little evidence in the low-performing districts that instructional change, other than that mandated by the Ministry, is a priority. In fact,
mistrust of and resistance to change is a more characteristic.
In this district we are very conservative and reluctant to change, to do anything
differently from the way it’s been done in the past. (M2.02)
A sense of powerlessness is evident at the central office level and appears
throughout the district.
Morale is a real problem—there is a lot of uneasiness and anxiety. (M1.01)
Summary of Findings on Interactions
The high-performing districts R and J can be described as operating under
a monitored autonomy model (Cuban, 1984). District administrators ensured
compliance with district objectives through well-defined monitoring practices. Commitment to these objectives was achieved through a consultative
approach to decision making on substantive issues and procedures. Principals were given both the opportunity and the impetus to interact collegially.
A second interaction pattern characterizing the two high-performing
districts was a “district-regarding” perspective among principals. This was
generated both by a strong district presence and by expectations of the
principals communicated by district administrators. Principals in these
districts have apparently agreed to subordinate their particular schools’
priorities from time to time to meet the district’s needs. They seek opportunities to create networks with other schools to stimulate staff development
and to develop better articulation between system levels. Respondents in
these districts respectfully acknowledged their colleagues’ work.
NETWORK COVERAGE
165
Administrators in R and J also shared a belief in the utility of various
interaction mechanisms available to them. They thought administrative
meetings were participatory, committee work influential in developing
procedures and policies, and involvement in decision making high at all
levels. Respondents refer frequently to their satisfying professional relationships with colleagues. Principals link collegial interaction patterns amongst
administrators, administrator efficacy, and district instructional effectiveness.
The low-performing districts M and H had a top-down informational
leadership model, with decision making on substantive issues centralized at
the district level. Commitment to decisions was weakened in these districts
by the lack of district press to conform. The only mention of collegial
contact was where principals believed they must present a united front
against any district policy they thought might threaten their “turf.” Remarks
alluding to other principals’ work were more often disparaging than respectful.
District Leadership
The data revealed that the district superintendent’s leadership style had an
important influence on interaction patterns between administrators. Several
factors partly under control of the superintendent either constrain or promote
collegial practices among principals. We now consider relationships between
administrators from a number of perspectives, including characteristics of
educational organizations and leadership styles.
Constraints on the development of collegial practices among school
administrators may lie in school systems that are loosely coupled (Weick,
1976) or institutionalized (Rowan, 1981). Since collegiality is an instructional notion, in loosely-coupled systems one would expect relatively
infrequent interactions between principals for instructional purposes. Yet
superintendents in districts R and J emerged as highly visible instructional
leaders who managed to spend a relatively large portion of their time on
collaborative activities with principals aimed at improving school and
district performance. As a result, districts R and J display simultaneous
loose-tight characteristics (Peters & Waterman, 1982), as indicated by their
decentralized decision-making models, and by the very high degree of
agreement between principals on significant improvement issues.
Thoughtful principals and superintendents adopt leadership styles helpful
in creating consensus. Blase (1987) examined effective school leadership
from the teachers’ standpoint. Teachers identified nine leadership dimensions
associated with task-related competencies: accessibility, consistency, knowledge/expertise, clear and reasonable expectations, decisiveness, goals/
direction, follow-through, time management, and problem-solving orientation. These factors were closely intertwined with five consideration-related
qualities: support in confrontations/ conflict, participation/consultation,
fairness/equitability, recognition, and willingness to delegate authority. Blase
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COLEMAN, MIKKELSON,
&
LAROCQUE
found these “leadership factors affected teacher motivation, involvement, and
morale and, in general, enhanced the possibility of productive interactions
between teachers” (1987, p. 606). Superintendents in districts R and J act
similarly by providing opportunities and establishing expectations for
productive interaction.
SUMMARY
In high-performing districts there is a rich variety of collegial activity, much
of it aimed at instructional improvement and at generating the shared
working knowledge which is a critical element in a productive district ethos
(Coleman & LaRocque, 1990). These conditions do not exist in the comparison districts. High levels of principal collegiality, of productive ethos, and
of district performance go together. Superintendents act in ways resembling
effective principals—they create an “associative” climate at district level, in
which “district-regarding” principals seek the greater good, rather than
protect their own turf. High-performing districts differ sharply from less
successful districts with respect to principal collegiality.
REFERENCES
Berman, P., & McLaughlin, M.W. (1979). An exploratory study of school district
adaptations. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.
Blase, J.J. (1987). Dimensions of effective school leadership: The teachers’
perspective. Educational Administration Quarterly, 24, 589–610.
Coleman, P. (1972). Organizational effectiveness in education: Its measurement
and enhancement. Interchange, 3, 42–52.
Coleman, P. (1986). School districts and student achievement in British Columbia: A preliminary analysis. Canadian Journal of Education, 11, 509–521.
Coleman, P., & LaRocque, L. (1990). Struggling to be ‘Good Enough’: Administrative practices and school district ethos. London: Falmer Press.
Cuban, L. (1984). Transforming the frog into a prince: Effective schools
research, policy, and practice at the district level. Harvard Educational Review,
52, 129–151.
Fullan, M. (1982). The meaning of educational change. Toronto: OISE Press.
Goodlad, J.I. (1984). A place called school: Prospects for the future. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Huberman, A.M., & Miles, M.B. (1984). Innovation up close: How school
improvement works. New York: Plenum.
Jelinek, M., Smircich, L., & Hirsh, P. (1983). Introduction: A code of many
colors. Administrative Science Quarterly, 28, 331–338.
Johnson, R.B., & Licata, J.W. (1983). Urban school principal grapevine structure.
Urban Education, 17, 457–475.
LaRocque, L. (1983). Policy implementation in a school district: A matter of
chance? (Internal research report). Burnaby, BC: Simon Fraser University.
Licata, J.W., & Hack, W.G. (1980). School administrator grapevine structure.
Educational Administration Quarterly, 16(3), 82–99.
NETWORK COVERAGE
167
Little, J.W. (1982). Norms of collegiality and experimentation. American Educational Research Journal, 19, 325–340.
McLaughlin, M.W., & Yee, S.M. (1988). School as a place to have a career. In
A. Lieberman (Ed.), Building a professional culture in schools (pp. 23–44).
New York: Teachers College Press.
Peters, T.J., & Waterman, R.H. (1982). In search of excellence. New York:
Harper and Row.
Rowan, B. (1981). The effects of institutionalized rules on administrators. In S.
Bacharach (Ed.), Organizational behavior in schools and school districts (pp.
47–75). New York: Praeger.
Weick, K.E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 21, 1–19.
Wolcott, H.F. (1973). The man in the principal’s office. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart
& Winston.
Peter Coleman is in the Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby,
BC, V5A 1S6. Lorna Mikkelson is in School District #36, 14225-56th Avenue,
Surrey, BC, V3W 1H9. Linda LaRocque is in the Department of Educational
Administration, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2G5.
Middle Grade Students’ Responses to
Canadian Realistic Fiction for Young Adults
J.L.K. Latshaw
university of saskatchewan
Students’ response to realistic fiction is best understood through a mix of
qualitative and quantitative research methods. My research therefore included (a)
qualitative analyses of open-ended interviews with students (types of response,
response styles, and my influence on response), and (b) quantitative evaluation
of the total probe-response relationship. The major finding concerns how the
different roles I adopted influenced students’ responses. As co-explorer and
modeller of comprehension strategies, I got students to respond more broadly to
fiction than I did in other roles.
Pour bien analyser les réactions des élèves à des textes de fiction à saveur
réaliste, il est préférable d’utiliser à la fois des méthodes de recherche qualitatives et quantitatives. L’auteure a donc réalisé des analyses qualitatives d’entrevues à questions ouvertes (types de réponses des élèves, styles de réponses et
influence de la chercheuse sur les réponses) et une évaluation quantitative de la
relation globale exploration-réponse. L’un des principaux résultats de l’étude
concerne la manière dont les divers rôles joués par la chercheuse a influencé les
réponses des élèves. En tant que coexploratrice et personne capable de mettre sur
pied des stratégies efficaces de compréhension, elle a amené les élèves à réagir
de façon plus vaste à la fiction qu’en jouant d’autres rôles.
Schema-based perspectives on reading comprehension (Anderson & Pearson,
1984; McNeil, 1987; Weaver, 1988) are now thought compatible with
Response Theory (Rosenblatt, 1983) perspectives. Thus researchers of
students’ responses to literature may draw on both perspectives in bridging
theory and practice. In this study, I examined students’ responses to Canadian realistic fiction for young adults in open-ended interviews (Stewart &
Cash, 1978), using questions and inferences drawn from both research
traditions. My aims were to discover response types, to detect students’
“response styles” (Galda, 1983, p. 4), and to see if the data-collecting
method influenced students’ responses.
RELATED RESEARCH
In the first wave of “response research,” investigators relied on Rosenblatt’s
(1983) notions of reader-text transaction to support a wide variety of empirical studies. We now know about students’ responses at different age levels
168
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STUDENTS’ RESPONSES TO REALISTIC FICTION
169
(Eeds & Wells, 1989; Galda, 1982; Hynds, 1989; Latshaw, 1985; Mauro,
1983; Yocum, 1987), developmental characteristics of their “sense of story”
(Beach & Wendler, 1987; Cullinan, Harwood, & Galda, 1983; Hade, 1988;
Mikkelson, 1983; Pappas & Brown, 1987; Rubin & Gardner, 1985; Wells,
1986), and their “response styles” (Cooper & Michalak, 1981; Dillon, 1982;
Galda, 1983, 1989; Odell & Cooper, 1977; Vipond & Hunt, 1984).
Since the late seventies, a second wave of reader response research has
made naturalistic studies of students’ responses. These studies discuss
learning environments that support development of an increased sense of
story (Hickman, 1979; Hepler, 1982) and examine the characteristic interactions of students in teacher-student book conferences (Hill, 1986).
In parallel with my research, two recent studies gathered information
about schoolchildren’s responses. Watson and Davis (1988) studied
responses to a literature-centred reading program, and Knipping and Andres
(1988) examined literature study groups. These investigations show that
when literature is used as the text resource for teaching reading, teachers and
students must adopt new roles in learning. Watson and Davis (1988)
observed that “Literature study groups do not have much of a chance if the
teacher fails to accept his or her primary role as a contributing member of
the group, understanding that no member has the right to dominate” (p. 65).
These naturalistic studies are particularly promising in the move from
theory to practice. Still, our understanding of students’ responses in a wide
variety of teaching situations and of ways teachers may assist students is
incomplete. My findings add to this growing body of knowledge, providing
information about seventh grade students’ responses to Canadian realistic
fiction in “the zone of proximal development,” which Vygotsky (1978)
defines as “the distance between the actual development as determined by
independent problem solving and the level of potential development as
determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration
with more capable peers” (p. 86).
My work also shows how compatible qualitative and quantitative research
methods may be used in studies of literary education.
THE STUDY
The Readers and Texts
I provided a classroom teacher with criteria for selecting students and texts.
Criteria for participants included that
1. they would score at or above grade level on reading comprehension tests
administered by the school division;
2. both males and females would be included, preferably in equal numbers;
and
3. students would agree to participate in the study, and their parents or
guardians would grant their permission also.
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J.L.K. LATSHAW
Seven students (four girls and three boys) agreed to participate.
Criteria for selection of the texts were as follows:
1. the novels must vary in reading difficulty as determined by the Fry
Readability Graph (1977);
2. participants have not read the novels;
3. the novels are thematically related; and
4. the group of novels contains both male and female protagonists.
(The teacher’s selection of novels appears in Appendix A, along
with brief summaries of two novels discussed in the interviews.)
Interviews took place in a school library conference room, arranged to
create a comfortable, intimate setting.
Before turning to the novels, I talked informally with the students about
forthcoming school events. Then I asked them to give their initial response
to one of the books. I consciously employed more “wait time” (Cooper,
1982, pp. 177–178) than is usual in classroom interaction between teachers
and students. The discussions ended when the student had nothing more to
say or became restless.
Stewart and Cash (1978) claim open-ended interviews allow considerable
latitude in deciding the amount of structure needed to encourage response.
If subjects respond easily, researchers offer verbal and nonverbal encouragement, signalling interest in their speech. When subjects stop speaking,
researchers may change the question or refer to something said earlier
(Latshaw, 1985, p. 117). Open-ended interviews, backed up by informal
probes (Gorden, 1969), provide students with consistent encouragement and
assist them in elaborating and clarifying their responses.
Analysis of Data
Transcripts of the interviews were prepared along Wells’ (1986) guidelines.
The transcriptions, sound recordings, and observation notes provided evidence of students’ types of responses and response styles, and allowed me
to consider how the data-collecting method influenced responses.
To categorize students’ responses, I used analytic induction (Bodgen &
Biklen, 1982; Patton, 1980; Williamson, 1977) to construct a taxonomy of
response types (see below). To do this I read through the transcripts several
times, noting in the margins distinctive features of each student’s responses.
From these notations I identified clusters of features showing how readers
respond to events (Harding, 1968). Next, the clusters were combined
whenever possible to form supra-categories. Through “triangulation” (Denzin, 1988, pp. 511–513), I refined the definition of the supra-categories until
the description accounted for all responses placed in them. I continued this
highly recursive procedure until the taxonomy contained descriptive categories for all responses, aiming finally to classify oral responses in various
“styles” as Galda (1983) did, that is, by combining Purves’ (1968) categories
and Applebee’s (1978) hierarchical model of evaluation (Appendix B).
171
After categorizing the responses, I considered the influence of my datacollecting method on students’ responses, first, by quantitative analysis of
probe-response relationships and, second, by additional qualitative analysis
of selected portions of the interviews. Quantitative and qualitative methods’
compatibility has two aspects. First, both are capable here of producing
thorough descriptions. Although testable under quite different inferential
rules, the categorized underpinnings of the descriptions are mutually understandable. Second, both point to theories of language, communication, and
“interest,” many of which may overlap or (even) coincide.
FINDINGS
My major finding concerns the importance of assisting students to explore
their responses in discussions. I therefore combine findings on types of
responses and how they were observed.
Types of Responses
At the start of the interview, students talked easily, with little if any encouragement. After a few minutes, pupils needed increasing amounts of encouragement and assistance to respond. Types of responses in the less-assisted
context differed from those in the more-assisted context.
Less-Assisted Responses
Typically, students talked about themselves as readers before reporting parts
of the novel they had difficulty comprehending. These responses were given
without probes. Students who read Mama’s Going to Buy You a Mockingbird reported similar pre-reading expectations and explained why they did
or did not modify them. The following illustrates both types of responses
from four interviews:
Beth: I got kind of bored with it so I didn’t read it anymore. Then I found after
the first couple of chapters . . . then I thought it was better.
Fred: When I read the first chapter, it didn’t seem like a book I’d like. Then I
kind of got into it and then kind of enjoyed it more and understood what was
happening and in the end I was glad I read it.
Joan: I didn’t know if I’d like it at first . . . it wasn’t very interesting at first.
John: I thought it was so big that, uh, I wouldn’t get finished . . . like it took so
long for . . . like, for some things to happen. . . . Like, ah, two chapters for
him [Jeremy] to get moved into the apartment.
In contrast, students’ less-assisted responses to Hunter in the Dark centred
on the same comprehension problem. They did not understand Hughes’ use
of flashbacks and symbols:
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J.L.K. LATSHAW
Myra: I didn’t like how it changed from one chapter to the other . . . it was
kinda hard, but at the end I was used to it . . . I liked the present events that
occurred in the present because it was more exciting.
Tony: I thought he was going to be . . . like I didn’t think it was going to have
anything to do with when he was in the hospital and that. I thought he was
just going to be like the way he was outside the forest when he was hunting.
I thought he was going to stay there and have some things like that.
Cara: I lost myself when I was reading about the deer . . . I thought there should
have been more danger. I didn’t quite understand what they [the author] meant
. . . like when, uh, that he was trying to kill a deer and then get its head to
hang on his wall as a trophy. Then at the end he realized a deer is just trying
to be safe, just as he is. I didn’t quite know . . . it was kind of . . . I didn’t
particularly like that.
Besides talking about themselves as readers and reporting the same
comprehension problems, students talked about specific characters and
events near the end of the story. Several types of responses intertwine. For
example, in the following responses, Tony combines identification of the
doctor and description of his actions, and Myra combines identification of
three characters with a subjective evaluation of their relationship.
Tony: The doctor, he really enjoyed life and that. He really knew how he [Mike]
felt. It was like he, the doctor, already went through it, and he knew all the
things that was wrong, and he would always try to help Mike.
Myra: It was kinda funny how the parents acted. They wouldn’t tell him what
was wrong with him.
Less-assisted reponses had two additional characteristics. First, the students identified characters by relational terms, such as “friend” and
“brother,” not by given names; reports of characters’ actions included more
information about the students’ thoughts and feelings than information given
by the author in the texts. Second, students identified events at the beginning and end of the novel more often than events in the middle; the identified events were either ones the students had difficulty comprehending or
ones they thought unrealistic, such as Mike’s parents not telling him he had
cancer in Hunter in the Dark.
I selected the terms “Identification/Description” and “Identification/Evaluation” to describe the intertwined nature of the students’ main types of
responses to realistic fiction.
More-Assisted Responses
Increased direct questioning and clarification probes helped students interpret
the meaning of some events they identified during the less-assisted discussions. Interpretations were given when I either requested students to
hypothesize the possible meaning of an event, or encouraged students to
clarify responses. The most distinctive feature of these responses is that they
173
Taxonomy of the Subjects’ Types of Responses
Identification/Description—readers identify characters by use of pronouns
and relational terms such as “he,” “the friend” and “the sister” rather than
by given names in the context of describing actions and thoughts of the
character.
Identification/Evaluation—readers identify characters by use of pronouns
and relational terms coupled with evaluative statements about the characters.
Personal Connections—readers identify and discuss past experience that is
related to narrative content.
Researcher’s Statements—the researcher shared past experiences related to
narrative content.
Interpretations—readers formulate and “test” hypotheses about the meaning
of characters’ behaviour or an event after reflecting on personal past
experiences.
Questions—readers request that a question or statement be repeated.
were stated far more tentatively than other types. The important characteristic of students’ interpretations is not the quality of insight but rather how
they occurred: all are linked with students’ recognition of pertinent prior
knowledge related to narrative content. These types of responses are identified as “Personal Connections” in the taxonomy.
The last type, “Questions,” was observed least; most responses were
limited to student requests that I repeat probes. A taxonomy of student
response types appears above.
My examination of the more-assisted responses also showed that students
independently read texts shorter and less complex structurally and conceptually than the two novels selected by the classroom teacher. As well,
students’ sense of story does not include an understanding of the characteristic of more complex forms of narrative. When choosing books for independent reading, students use selection strategies compatible with their existing
reading interests; however, these strategies do not assist them select from
among texts of children’s literature recommended for middle-grade readers
(Huck, Hepler, & Hickman, 1987; Norton, 1987).
In summary, students’ unfamiliarity with Hughes’ narrative techniques
prevented them from identifying prior knowledge that would have assisted
them to respond more independently. The students who read Hunter in the
Dark required assistance in comprehending events before they could begin
exploring their meaning from different perspectives.
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J.L.K. LATSHAW
Characteristics of Response Styles
Students’ response styles were examined from two perspectives: characteristics of the combined responses and characteristics of each group of readers.
The first perspective provides general information about the students’
response styles; the second, information about the influence of text features
on style.
General Characteristics
Students adopted a text-centred stance for making all types of responses;
however, the strength of this preference varied considerably among different
types. When students made comprehension responses, for example, they
preferred this stance only slightly. In contrast, they adopted a strong textcentred stance when making involvement and interpretation responses (See
Appendix B).
All students made comprehension and involvement responses; a few made
inferences and personal connections; none made generalizations. Individual
differences in response style centred mostly on the ability to adopt both
stances and to make slightly less subjective evaluative statements about
narrative content.
Text-Related Characteristics
Response styles varied more among students who discussed Hunter in the
Dark than they did among those who read Mama’s Going to Buy You a
Mockingbird. Also, the first group’s response style included less mature
evaluation responses; for example, most students who discussed Mama’s
Going to Buy You a Mockingbird made analytical evaluations, but only one
student who read Hunter in the Dark made evaluative statements beyond
categoric evaluations.
Discussion
By comparison with Galda’s (1982) students, mine showed less literary
awareness. In a study of fifth-grade students’ responses to realistic fiction,
Galda (1982) described individual differences in response as follows:
Emily was reality bound, uncertain of the rationale behind her responses.
Charlotte was more objective but still limited by her dependence on real life as
a measure. Ann analyzed both the text and her own responses as she sought
explanations for both literary and real life experiences. (p. 17)
My study did not include an “Ann,” but did include two “Charlottes”—
Tony and Beth. The remaining students’ response styles fell between
“Emily” and “Charlotte.” Further, Galda’s observation that “Emily’s evalu-
175
ations were almost always unelaborated, with no details from the text
provided” (p. 8) was true as well for five students’ evaluative statements in
my study; therefore, the students were more like Emily than Charlotte, who
could be specific in her criticism of an author’s point of view (p. 12). My
group’s less mature sense of story is most likely linked to differences in
reading background and general academic achievement. A further difference
is that Galda’s students were from a private school in New York, whereas
the students in my study were from an urban public school in Saskatchewan,
Canada.
Influences on Response
Students’ types of response and response styles indicated differences in
response to the two texts and in the amount of instructional scaffolding
needed by readers of each text. I adopted two approaches in determining
how the data-collecting method influenced response: a quantitative evaluation of the total probe-response relationship and additional qualitative evaluation of portions of the interviews.
Probe-Response Relationship
Quantitative evaluation of the total probe-response relationship indicates
General Encouragement Probes (GE probes)—which include nonverbal and
brief verbal cues that encourage natural interpersonal communication—
elicited approximately one-third of the total responses. These form approximately half the comprehension responses and half the evaluative statements
observed in the study. Questions that were predominantly open-ended
elicited approximately one-third of the total response but, unlike GE probes,
resulted in students making more types of responses. Clearly, only encouraging the students to talk about the novels provided an insufficient instructional framework to elicit their broad response. Clarification probes and
my statements elicited approximately one-fifth of the total response. Clarification probes, like Questions, similarly elicited different types of answers.
In contrast, my remarks influenced particular types; one-third of students’
interpretation responses were elicited by this probe. This means my comments helped students make interpretations more than did the combined
influence of Questions and GE probes. At the same time, my statements
elicited very few evaluative replies.
These findings support Watson’s and Davis’ (1988) assertions about
teachers’ crucial role in discussions and indicate the possibility that teachers
assist students more in making inferences than by questioning, sharing their
own tentative thoughts and feelings, or providing GE probes. A quantitative
view of these findings is presented in Table 2.
176
J.L.K. LATSHAW
TABLE 2
Total Probe-Response Relationship
Types of Responses*
Comprehension
Types
of probes**
Questions
General
encouragement
Clarification
Elaboration
Researcher’s
statements
Total (%)
Involvement
Inference
Evaluation
Total
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
No.
%
19
(25.6)
14
(26.0)
22
(27.1)
16
(25.3)
71
(26.3)
30
12
5
(40.5)
(16.2)
(6.7)
16
10
3
(30.7)
(19.2)
(5.7)
4
19
7
(4.9)
(19.7)
(8.6)
35
8
0
(55.5)
(12.6)
(0.0)
85
49
15
(31.5)
(18.1)
(5.6)
8
74
(0.8)
(27.4)
9
52
(17.3)
(19.3)
29
81
(35.8)
(30.0)
4
63
(6.3) 50
(23.3) 270
(18.5)
(100.0)
*From Galda (1983).
**From Gorden (1969).
Researcher’s Role
Because the examination of the probe-response relationship indicated my
responses influenced students’ ability to make inferences, I examined
interactions beforehand. The findings indicate I influenced responses by
encouraging students to reflect on past experience and to explore this
meaning from more than one perspective, and by modelling metacognitive
skills for monitoring comprehension processes. Excerpts from the discussions with John, Beth, and Tony provide operationalized views of these
forms of instructional infrastructure. Here I encourage John to reflect further
on his past experience:
Researcher: Tell me more about your feelings . . . about the characters.
John: Well . . . I thought . . . I could relate to it how Jeremy. . . . One of my
friend’s dad died.
Researcher: Umhum.
John: And—.
Researcher: Did this happen recently?
John: That was about a year ago almost. He never talked about it or anything,
and I knew kind of how he felt, and. . . . Well, it was just like some books
you read. That’s how it is. . . . You don’t hear about it happening usually . . .
[but it] happens all the time . . . I didn’t know what to say to him. I couldn’t
talk about it.
Researcher: But you felt—?
John: What could I say?
177
John is encouraged to talk more about his past experience, knowing the
researcher accepted his observed association. As he talks, he reviews from
a broader social perspective what he observed and felt originally. He then
concludes by sharing candidly the sense of inadequacy most individuals feel
in such circumstances. Most importantly, John retains ownership of the
exploration of meaning for himself.
In the discussion with Beth, I modelled “drafting processes” as described
by Tierney and Pearson (1983, pp. 571–572). In the following excerpt, Beth
does not perceive personal connections with the events in Mama’s Going to
Buy You a Mockingbird until I share John’s responses:
Beth: Um, sometimes the part I don’t like . . . I hate when people—in this book
die, you know. And it talks about how, um, people have to like put their life
back together again. I don’t like that because it’s, um, kind of not dull, but I
like happy stories. This is kind of a sad story.
Researcher: O.K.
Beth: But at the end it you know it’s—
Researcher: Were you uncomfortable reading that part?
Beth: No, I probably would be if my dad died or something—.
Researcher: Another student said the father of one of his friend’s died, and he
didn’t really know what to say. He realized from reading this story that
someone else could be that uncomfortable too. He was surprised that parents
could be that uncomfortable.
Beth: Before I moved here, like, there was a boy in my old school. His mother
died, and he kind of cried, like the day after he came to school and everything.
And he acted like it bothered him, and Jeremy, he never acted that way. Like,
he thought about a lot in his mind, but he never showed any real feelings. But
at the beginning he did kind of and. . . .
Researcher: Was he maybe numb?
Beth: Well, he probably didn’t know what to do, so he probably thought he
didn’t cry because he didn’t really, um, I don’t know how to say it . . . took
a little while to get like that his father—.
Researcher: Um—.
Beth: And same with the little sister Sara. She, like, she didn’t really understand
the word “dead” because there is a part of the book where it said, um, that,
like, she asked when is Daddy coming home? Like, she thought he’d gone
away, like, on a trip or something.
The question, “Was he maybe numb?” models a basic drafting process,
making and testing hypotheses. Because the researcher’s hypothesis was
stated tentatively, Beth was invited to examine it as a co-explorer. Her
response indicates that this assistance was enough to help her extend her
understanding of the characters’ behaviour. From a process-oriented perspective, John explored the broader meaning of his personal connection
response; Beth identified personal connections she used to extend her
response.
178
J.L.K. LATSHAW
Finally, when I asked Tony to hypothesize why Mike did not shoot the
deer in Hunter in the Dark, he demonstrated a tacit knowledge of the
thematic emphasis:
Researcher: What would be your best guess?
Tony: Well . . . I think he was just going around and thinking he could actually
shoot one, but I don’t think he had the guts enough to actually shoot a deer
because inside he knew the deer was like him.
In response to GE probes that preceded this direct question, Tony had
simply retold bits and pieces of the story. A process-oriented question
helped him organize his perceptions and respond more broadly.
In summary, the findings indicate students’ less-assisted responses did not
go beyond literal reconstruction of the two Canadian novels for young
adults. Reconstruction was done for the purposes of reporting comprehension problems and making evaluative statements about characters and events.
However, in most instances, when I modelled metacognitive skills, students
extended their less-assisted responses. Individual students differed mainly in
their ability to adopt both reader-centred and text-centred stances in making
different types of responses. I found that students who adopted both stances
did so by utilizing prior knowledge for making the meaning of the story and
communicated this meaning successfully.
Discussion
Students’ less-assisted responses provide much food for thought concerning
students’ role in selection of texts for group studies. We may be reasonably
certain that students’ responses would have been quite different if they had
taken an active role in selecting the topic. It is likely that “coping with
death” would not have been their first choice! The students’ attitude towards
the assignment might also have been more positive had they been given a
selection from which to choose.
My findings do not provide much information about “revising processes”
(Tierney & Pearson, 1983, pp. 576–577). All discussions except that with
Beth centred on assisting students in formulating responses. However, the
findings do indicate conscious self-monitoring of response, and that additional use of “wait” time (Sadker & Sadker, 1982) may be used effectively
to help students with comprehension problems. Equally important, this
assistance may occur without leading students to discover and adopt the
teacher’s broader perspective of events. According to Tierney and Pearson
(1983), the functional importance of composing processes comes together
when students are able to judge the quality of their developing ideas:
It seems that students rarely pause to reflect on their ideas or to judge the quality
of their developing interpretations. Nor do they often reread a text either from the
same or different perspective. In fact, to suggest that a reader should approach
179
text as a writer who crafts an understanding across several drafts—who pauses,
rethinks, and revises—is almost contrary to some well established goals readers
proclaim for themselves (e.g., that efficient reading is equivalent to maximum
recall based upon a single fast reading). (p. 577)
Most students adopted, albeit for a short period of time, more than one
alignment to events in the novels. Except for Myra, the coherence of their
responses increased during the probe-response aspect of the discussions—
although the combined findings indicate that for the entire group to have
achieved greater coherence would have required several additional discussions.
Practically speaking, giving enough assistance in whole-group discussions
would be difficult, if not impossible, because teachers must manage the
group while briefly assisting individual students. The combined findings
support teaching aligning processes in other contexts. The feasibility of
fostering development of these processes through informal drama and art
activities merits future research.
Several students demonstrated tacit knowledge of monitoring skills;
however, they did not utilize these skills without modelling and encouragement. According to Rowe (1988), the importance of the monitoring process
is as follows:
Metacognition assists not only in the organized recall of previously acquired
knowledge and experience, in learning and problem solving, but also in maintaining and strengthening of concentration, motivation, interest and self-esteem. (p.
228)
My findings strongly support the view that students should have a role in
selecting what they read, talk about reading informally in social contexts
other than whole-group discussions, and construct representations less
influenced by teacher responses. This supports arguments for the reconceptualization of reading as interaction and transaction (Hunt, 1990).
Finally, my research shows that teachers’ potential roles in less-structured
discussions of children’s literature must be quite different from their existing
roles in directed reading lessons. Evidence strongly supports viewing the
teacher’s role as a primary influence in students’ development of a broad
response to literature.
REFERENCES
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Applebee, A. (1978). The child’s concept of story. Chicago: University of
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Beach, R., & Wendler, L. (1987). Developmental differences in response to story.
Research in the Teaching of English, 21, 286–297.
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Bogdan, R., & Biklen, S. (1982). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods. Toronto: Allyn and Bacon.
Cooper, C.R., & Michalak, D. (1981). A note on determining response styles in
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Cullinan, B., Harwood, K., & Galda, L. (1983). The reader and the story:
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Denzin, N.K. (1988). Triangulation. In John P. Keeves (Ed.), Educational
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Dillon, G. (1982). Styles of reading. Poetics Today, 3, 77–88.
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Fry, E. (1977). Elementary reading instruction. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Galda, L. (1982). Assuming the spectator stance: An examination of the
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Galda, L. (1983). Research in response to literature. Journal of Research and
Development in Education, 16, 1–7.
Galda, L. (1989). Readers, texts and contexts. The New Advocate, 2, 92– 102.
Hade, D. (1988). Children, stories, and narrative transformations. Research in the
Teaching of English, 22, 310–325.
Harding, D. (1986). Response to literature: The report of the study group. In J.
Squire (Ed.), Response to literature (pp. 11–28). Champaign, IL: National
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Hepler, S. (1982). Patterns of response to literature: A one-year study of a
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Hickman, J. (1979). Response to literature in a school environment. Unpublished
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Hill, S. (1986). Children’s individual responses to literature in the primary
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Huck, C., Hepler, S., & Hickman, J. (1987). Children’s literature in the elementary school (4th ed.). Toronto: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston.
Hughes, M. (1984). Hunter in the dark. New York: Avon Books.
Hunt, R.A. (1990). The parallel socialization of reading and literature. In D.
Bogdan & S.B. Straw (Eds.), Beyond communication: Reading comprehension
and criticism (pp. 91–105). Portsmouth, NH: Boyton/Cook-Heinemann.
Hynds, S. (1989). Bringing life to literature and literature to life: Social constructs and contexts of four adolescent readers. Research in the Teaching of
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Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Latshaw, J.L.K. (1985). An in-depth examination of four preadolescents’
responses to fantasy literature. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University
of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.
Little, J. (1985). Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird. Markham, ON:
Penguin Books.
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Mauro, L. (1983). Personal constructs and response to literature: Case studies
of adolescents reading about death. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rutgers
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McNeil, J. (1987). Reading comprehension (2nd ed.). Glenview, IL: Scott,
Foresman and Company.
Mikkelson, N. (1983, May). Patterns of story development in children’s response
to literature. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Teachers
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Norton, D. (1987). Through the eyes of a child: An introduction to children’s
literature. Toronto: Merrill.
Odell, L., & Cooper, C. (1977). Responding responses to a work of fiction.
Research in the Teaching of English, 5, 5–23.
Pappas, C.C., & Brown, E. (1987). Young children learning story discourse:
Three case studies. Elementary School Journal, 87, 455–466.
Patton, M. (1980). Qualitative evaluation methods. London: Sage.
Purves, A., & Rippere, V. (1968). Elements of writing about a literary work: A
study of response to literature. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of
English.
Rosenblatt, L. (1983). Literature as exploration (3rd ed.). New York: Modern
Language Association. (Original work published 1938)
Rowe, H. (1988). Metacognitive skills: Promises and problems. Australian
Journal of Reading, 2, 227–237.
Rubin, S., & Gardner, H. (1985). Once upon a time: The development of sensitivity to story structure. In C. Cooper (Ed.), Researching response to literature
and the teaching of literature (pp. 169–189). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Sadker, M., & Sadker, D. (1982). Questioning skills. In C. Cooper (Ed.), Classroom teaching skills (2nd ed.) (pp. 176–183). Toronto: D.C. Heath.
Stewart, C.J., & Cash, W.B. (1978). Interviewing. Dubuque, IA: William C.
Brown.
Tierney, R., & Pearson, P. (1983). Toward a composing model of reading.
Language Arts, 60, 568–580.
Vipond, D., & Hunt, R. (1984). Point-driven understanding: Pragmatics and
cognitive dimensions of literary reading. Poetics, 13, 261–272.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Watson, D., & Davis, S. (1988). Readers and texts in a fifth-grade classroom. In
B. Nelms (Ed.), Literature in the classroom (pp. 59–68). Urbana, IL: National
Council of Teachers of English.
Weaver, C. (1988). Readers theory and practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Wells, G. (1986). The meaning makers: Children learning language to learn.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Williamson, J. (1977). The research craft: An introduction to social research
methods. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.
Yocum, J.A. (1987). Children’s responses to literature read aloud in the classroom. Dissertation Abstracts International, 48, 091 (University Microfilms No.
87-26, 750).
Jessica L.K. Latshaw is in the Department of Curriculum Studies, College of
Education, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 0W0.
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APPENDIX A
I. Books used in the unit of study:
Cleaver, V., & Cleaver, V. (1970). Grover. New York: Lippincott.
Hughes, M. (1984). Hunter in the dark. New York: Avon Books.
Little, J. (1984). Mama’s going to buy you a mockingbird. Markham, ON:
Penguin Books.
Lowry, L. (1977). A summer to die. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Paterson, K. (1977). Bridge to Terabithia. New York: Crowell, 1977.
II. Brief summaries of the two novels discussed by the subjects:
Mama’s Going to Buy You a Mockingbird
Eleven-year-old Jeremy and his younger sister, Sarah, spend the summer at their
aunt’s cottage because their father is terminally ill with cancer. After his father
dies, Jeremy handles the difficult task of supporting his mother and sister while
dealing with his own grief. “His new but tentative friendship with a lanky
classmate Tess and a move to a new apartment where he adopts a grandfather
help cheer him” (Huck, Hepler, & Hickman, 1987, p. 500). Gradually, Jeremy
learns “the ‘more difficult’ joy that remembering brings” (p. 500).
Hunter in the Dark
Mike’s life changes abruptly when he collapses during a basketball game at
school; the medical examination indicates he has leukaemia. Mike’s parents
decide not to tell him the seriousness of his illness until his hair begins to fall
out from chemotherapy treatments. Consequently, Mike is confused by his
growing weakness. After Mike knows what is wrong, he musters the needed
strength and courage to take a solo hunting trip. During this trip he begins to
accept the challenge before him.
APPENDIX B
Summary of Galda’s (1983) System of Categorizing Oral Responses
1. Comprehension—Text-centred: restatements of the plot, description of the
characters, or relating facts about the setting. Reader-centred: often includes
complaints about a lack of comprehension (all comprehension statements
reflect literal comprehension).
2. Involvement—Text-centred: statements indicate the reader’s perception of the
text in terms of real-world knowledge. Reader-centred: statements about using
the text as a virtual experience.
3. Inferences—Text-centred: statements that evidence interpretation of the text
and state that which is implicit in the text. Reader-centred: interpretation
includes an inferred reason for the interpretation.
183
4. Evaluation—The perspective of evaluation is how the reader evaluates rather
than what is evaluated (Applebee, 1978).
(a) Undifferentiated—Response and object are not separated, as in “It’s good
because I like it” (Applebee, 1978, p. 99).
(b) Categoric—This kind of evaluative behaviour includes systematic classification of responses into categories with well-defined attributes. The
attributes may describe attributes of text or a personal response; however,
frequently differentiation between self and text is not clear.
(c) Analytical—Statements about how the text works as a restructured whole
and how personal responses are shaped by that whole.
(d) Generalization—Text-centred: statements about the work’s depth, uniqueness, meaningfulness, and relationship to the author or the world in
general (Applebee, 1978, p. 131). Reader-centred: statements concerned
with how the reader’s ideas about the world are affected by the work.
(Galda, 1983, p. 5)
In Search of Expertise in Teaching
Dianne L. Common
lakehead university
This essay isolates and explains three essential qualities of the expert teacher,
examining the practices of three teaching masters—Zeno of Elea; Lao Tzu of
Ch’U; Jesus of Nazareth—to do so. My premise is that teaching expertise is a
function of a particular type of educational relationship between teacher and
student. Three qualities characterize educational relationships having exceptional,
perhaps extraordinary, quality. First, students regard the teacher’s curriculum as
having profound moral and cultural worth; second, engagement of the imagination not only initiates the educational relationship but sustains it to its conclusion; third, the primary form of pedagogy is the story.
Cet essai met en lumière trois des qualités essentielles de tout excellent enseignant par l’étude de trois grands maîtres—Zénon d’Élée, Lao Tzu et Jésus.
L’auteure pose comme hypothèse que l’excellence dans l’enseignement repose
sur un type particulier de relation entre le maître et l’élève. Trois traits caractérisent les relations pédagogiques de nature exceptionnelle, voire extraordinaire.
D’abord, les élèves considèrent l’enseignement du maître comme ayant une
profonde valeur morale ou culturelle; ensuite, l’imagination joue un rôle non
seulement dans l’établissement, mais aussi dans le maintien de telles relations;
enfin, le principal outil pédagogique utilisé est le récit.
A long tradition of research on teaching has illuminated relationships
between teaching strategies and academic achievement. Yet, many
researchers and professionals are dissatisfied with what we have learned
from this body of research, in part because it says very little about the
expert professional. Our schools require not just effective teachers, but rather
teachers with a level of mastery far beyond the ordinary, perhaps even
beyond the expert, perhaps to the extraordinary. It is now time, as Berliner
argues, for the emergence of a second stage of research on teaching, a
second stage devoted to the study of the expert pedagogue.1
The first daunting difficulty in such study is the identification of “expert”
pedagogues. Because teaching expertise is poorly understood, criteria on
which to identify experts are obscure. Nonetheless, some renowned pedagogues come to mind.
In every profession, there are those who stand apart from all others, those
who are excellent, perhaps even extraordinary. Teaching is no exception.
Over the past twenty-five hundred years, many cultures in different ages
have declared the same very few teachers to be exceptional. Three of these
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16:2 (1991)
EXPERTISE IN TEACHING
185
great masters are Zeno of Elea, Lao Tzu of Ch’u, and Jesus of Nazareth.
These three teachers not only made a profound difference to their contemporaries’ lives and to the nature of their societies, but their influence continues to be felt today.
Anthony Barton’s intensive study of these three masters invites further
inquiry, both interpretive and analytical.2 Barton’s central argument is that
there is more to teaching than its technology. The what of teaching, curriculum content, should determine the “how,” or the form in which it is taught.
This challenges the conventional theory of instruction that content should fit
the instructional forms, such as lecturing and questioning, and that effective
teaching depends on technique.3
In his discussion of the teaching approaches of Lao Tzu of Ch’U, a
contemporary or contemporaries of Confucius, Barton emphasizes that
scholar’s didactic teaching about the effective government of the state.
Barton believes Lao Tzu’s teaching judiciously balanced curriculum content
and student access to content.
Zeno of Elea was a contemporary of Socrates and perhaps his teacher.
Barton argues that Zeno was master of the instructional technique of question and answer, sometimes referred to as conversation. Zeno’s paradoxes
forced students to deal with not only argument forms and evidence but also
with the very presuppositions of their own thinking.
Jesus of Nazareth, only a few generations later, talked with people in
small groups, out of doors and away from political interference. He encapsulated his ideas in catchy phrases, and in short stories, anecdotes, and parables.
Barton concludes that all three master teachers invented methods appropriate to the curriculum content and to the students endeavouring to learn,
and therefore proposes that there is no sure way of teaching. Still, Barton
surmises there was something about the teaching manner of Lao Tzu of
Ch’U, Zeno of Elea, and Jesus of Nazareth that commanded attention, but
concludes (too quickly) that this almost-magical quality defies explanation.
However, such a conclusion invites another question and therefore another
answer. What if this mysterious, ephemeral “something” were the particular
blending of what was taught with the methods by which it was taught?
If so, then I think certain qualities typify these experts’ teaching and that
a theory of expertness will show what all three brought to their teaching
practices.
THE EXPERT PEDAGOGUE
I begin with my conclusion. The expert pedagogue’s traits are significant in
their relational quality. Traits such subject-matter knowledge or regard for
students are significant only if they contribute to the creation of an educational relationship between teacher and students. That the relationship is an
educational one is essential since that quality distinguishes relationships in
186
DIANNE L. COMMON
teaching from those in, say, coaching, parenting, therapy, or ministering. The
three masters certainly created and maintained educational relationships,
characterized by three qualities that warrant the qualifier “extraordinary.”
First, students regarded the teachers’ curriculum as having profound moral
and cultural worth. Second, imaginative engagement initiated the educational
relationship and sustained it. Third and finally, the primary form of pedagogy was the story.
The three master teachers’ educational relationships exemplified these
qualities to varying degrees. And although conceptually distinct, the qualities
were not mutually exclusive at a practical level. Rather, they formed a small
but commanding constellation of interrelated and interdependent fundamental elements of expert teaching.
CURRICULUM AS HAVING PROFOUND MORAL AND CULTURAL WORTH
Jesus of Nazareth practiced as a teacher almost two thousand years ago. His
students believed his curriculum momentously important to them personally
and to the turbulent society in which they lived. Through his teaching, Jesus
examined his students’ personal moralities and the collective morality of the
authority structures of their society. He enabled his followers not only to
understand the collective immorality of the excesses of the Roman government but also to regard such immorality not as particular to Romans only
but as an extension of their own personal relationships. He pressed them to
assume responsibility and to do something to ensure that all were regarded
equal not only in the eyes of God but, as important, before Caesar and the
state’s justice system. His lessons were simple, easily remembered, and
profound. He not only taught his lessons, he lived them, and he expected his
followers to do the same: “If a man in authority makes you go one mile, go
with him two” and “If a man wants to sue you for your shirt, let him have
your coat as well.”4
Jesus behaved like a servant and identified intimately with outcasts and
children. His curriculum forced his followers to confront, as Northrop Frye
explains, “. . . the master-slave dialectic on which the whole of human
history turns.”5 He enabled his students to accept that all people, depending
upon the settings, will ultimately play both master and servant roles, and
that personal and societal morality hinge on the clear understanding of these
dual roles and how they come together.
The specific goals of Jesus’ curriculum were to facilitate maturation of his
followers’ personal conscience, to further moral exercise of power by
individuals and by the governing body of the collectivity, and to enhance his
followers’ faith in God. Jesus argued there could be no moral exercise of
power without the consent of those governed, and intended not only to
enlighten his students but to enable them to bring about a new social order
based on justice, fairness, and equality. In this new social order, each person
might assume different responsibility and hence exercise different authority,
187
but all would be equally worthy. To accomplish his first curriculum goal,
Jesus created conditions enabling his students to understand themselves as
political beings who are members of a given social order. However, he was
fully aware of the dangers of rapid change and warned, in the parable “New
Wine in Old Wineskins,” that not only would new wine poured into old
skins burst the wineskins, but that consequently both would be lost. Thus he
argued that understanding both the old and the new were indispensable to
social progress. His followers learned about the possibility of better worlds
on earth and in heaven, and acquired techniques to help them bring about
desired changes.
Lao Tzu taught that civil servants’ moral duty was to the state. Personal
attainments were of secondary importance. The state was the highest order,
an order as elusive and sustaining as water—although it cannot be wrestled
with or possessed, it constantly benefits its “myriad creatures without
contending with them.”6 The state, although sacred like all natural things,
will benefit its people only if there is a means to regulate its activities, to
redistribute its wealth, to sanction its detractors, to reward its benefactors,
and ultimately to enable its people to progress. Lao Tzu’s teachings helped
produce a great state in China, and through his students led others
subsequently to build great states administered by the ubiquitous but essential civil service.
The critical factor distinguishing the relationships of teaching as practiced
by the two masters from other forms of human relationships is the educational development of the participants, those whom we call students. However, the cases of Jesus of Nazareth and Lao Tzu of Ch’U help us to
understand that there necessarily is a purpose, or to put that another way,
ends towards which the education is to be directed. What those ends are
today is a question debated by many and answered especially well by
Gutmann, and by Nyberg and Egan.
Gutmann quite correctly points out that although education may be
broadly defined “to include every social influence that makes us who we
are,”7 the inclusiveness of such broad definition subsumes the concept of
political socialization. Both Gutmann and Nyberg and Egan8 are careful to
argue that much of what occurs during socialization can best be described as
unconscious social reproduction. Such socialization is an essential feature of
organized life because societies thus perpetuate themselves. However, it is
not the means by which societies change and their members improve their
lot. To Gutmann, if the objective instead is to understand how members of
a society “participate consciously in shaping its future, then it is important
not to assimilate education with political socialization.”9 It is within and
from the educational relationship that understanding and plans for action can
be advanced in order to make life in society “more worthwhile.”10 It can be
argued that this educational posture encapsulates the educational objectives
or ends-in-view of both Lao Tzu of Ch’U and Jesus of Nazareth.
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DIANNE L. COMMON
Through their teachings, these expert teachers related particular things to
some larger and profoundly significant purpose that enabled their teaching
to travel beyond the technical and to embrace the moral.
Fenstermacher has tried to isolate the moral dimension of the teacher’s
curriculum. His point is that teaching, as medicine, is a form of skilled
practice, and becomes almost incomprehensible when disconnected from its
fundamental moral purposes. “A teacher without moral purpose is aimless,
as open to incivility and harm as to good.”11 To understand teaching,
Fensternmacher argues we must dispense with such contemporary concepts
as skill and competence because they do not capture the essential meaning
of teaching. Goodlad, however, contends that such concepts do provide one
way of thinking about teaching, but offer only a partial picture of the nature
of teaching. He proposes there is a “richly layered context within which
teaching decisions are made.” One layer of choice is about technique and
strategies; another about content; a third about forms of relationships.
Nonetheless, normative considerations “pervade the whole, becoming moral
imperatives for teaching, a profession of teaching, and teacher education.”12
Perhaps Nord put it best when he wrote,
Morality orients education: it directs, structures, sometimes constrains, and
provides content for teaching. In fact, the primary purpose of education is to
initiate students into an informed, critical appreciation of the moral dimension of
life. This being the case, it follows that moral knowledge is the knowledge most
worth having for teachers.13
Fenstermacher proposes that there are three ways in which teachers can
be what he calls moral educators and moral agents. They can teach directly
or didactically about moral values; they can teach about morality through
courses in family life, religion, or philosophy; or they can act as models of
a particular set of moral values. To Fenstermacher, it is the third which has
the greatest potential “to shape and influence student conduct in . . . educationally productive ways.”14 The third way embodies the moral character of
the teacher and pervades the teacher’s total “manner” in the educational
relationship. It is clear that both Lao Tzu of Ch’U and Jesus of Nazareth
practiced all three ways. However, there can be little dispute that it was by
acting as a model of a form of life, by his manner, that Jesus had and has
his great impact. Perhaps an apt expression of the presumed ends-in-view
that characterize the teaching of Jesus is found in Ryle’s words:
What will help to make us self-controlled, fair-minded or hard-working are good
examples set by others, and then ourselves practicing and failing, and practicing
again, and failing again, but not quite so soon and so on. In matters of morals,
as in the skills and arts, we learn first by being shown by others, then by being
trained by others, naturally with some worded homily, praise and rebuke, and
lastly by being trained by ourselves.15
189
Gutmann best links the development of a personal morality with that of
a cultural morality, both of which were of such great importance to Lao Tzu
and Jesus of Nazareth. In a democratic society, she argues, the morality of
the culture can be expressed and preserved. Democratic virtue should be the
essential characteristic of all citizens and of all teaching. It is precisely in a
pluralistic society rife with disagreement over morality and the nature of the
good life that democracy can be a point of agreement. Teachers must enable
their students to acquire the essential virtues of all democratic citizens—
tolerance, reasonableness, nondiscrimination—and to develop a deliberative
character that predisposes them to participate as if by habit in open and
informed conversations about moral and political issues. In sum, then,
Gutmann argues that if teachers are to provide for moral, and therefore
cultural, development of the kind embodied in Lao Tzu’s and Jesus’s
practices, then they (and policy makers today) must be guided by a democratic theory of education. Such a theory
recognizes the importance of empowering citizens to make educational policy
and also of constraining their choices among policies in accordance with those
principles—of nonrepression and nondiscrimination—that preserve the intellectual and social foundations of democratic deliberations. A society that empowers
citizens to make educational policy, moderated by these two principled constraints, realizes the democratic ideal of education.16
THE IMAGINATION AS THE CENTRE OF THE EDUCATIONAL RELATIONSHIP
To Lao Tzu, in the imagination every question has an answer, every problem a solution. To him, in the imagination even the way of heaven can be
known. In one of his memos he wrote about the centrality of the imaginative
mind in understanding.
Without stirring abroad
One can know the whole world;
Without looking out of the window
One can see the way of heaven.
The further one goes
The less one knows.
Therefore the sage knows without having to stir,
Identifies without having to see,
Accomplishes without having to act.17
Lao Tzu engaged his followers’ imagination through the employ of a
combination of the poetic form and analogy. It is a methodology Barton
describes as the draping of pragmatism with mystery. An excellent example
of this is found in one of Lao Tzu’s memos about the good life. He enjoins
us to remember that:
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DIANNE L. COMMON
In
In
In
In
In
In
a home it is the site that matters;
quality of mind it is the depth that matters;
an ally it is benevolence that matters;
government it is order that matters;
affairs it is ability that matters;
action it is timeliness that matters.18
If Lao Tzu stirred the imaginative mind with poetry, Zeno of Elea’s way
of quickening the imagination of his students was through the riddle. Zeno’s
most famous riddle is familiar to all: the race between the tortoise and the
hare. Who will win the race? Another is about the relative speeds of three
chariots—one that is parked; one that is heading up the street; another
heading down the street. What is the speed of the chariot in the middle? A
third famed riddle is about the falling millet seed. When it lands, does it
make a sound?
Zeno’s approach was subtle yet profound. He would pose a superficially
benign riddle. His students would quickly solve it on premises drawn from
conventional wisdom. If their premises were faulty, as often was the case,
his students would reach bizarre or silly conclusions. From such an intellectual position there was truly only one sane escape—laughter at one’s own
specious reasoning. Within such a setting mirth and delight came easily and
the conditions were set forth in the imaginative mind to range and to
consider. Relaxed defences led to an eagerness to tackle the argument again.
However by this time, the minds of the students would be prepared enough
to imagine different premises from which to construct the argument which
could depend on premises paradoxical to common sense. For Barton, the
power in this type of educational relationship resides in students’ developing
the ability “to discard faulty assumptions in favour of new ideas of a higher
order.”19
These two masters, and Jesus especially, understood that the imagination
is a natural quality of mind. We have records of many famous examples of
the imagination at work: Albert Einstein claimed he achieved his insights
into the fundamental nature of space and time by visualizing systems of
light waves and idealized physical bodies (including clocks and measuring
rods) in states of relative motion. Indeed, the riddle that eventually led him
to conceive the special theory of relativity first became apparent to him
when he was only sixteen years old as he imagined he was travelling
alongside a beam of light at a velocity of 186,000 miles per second. Other
great scientists such as James Maxwell and his electromagnetic waves,
Michael Faraday and his magnetic fields, James Watt and his steam engine,
James Watson and his DNA double helix claimed that fanciful imaginings
fuelled by metaphors, allegories, and images were the basis of their great
discoveries.20
To be able to imagine is to be free of convention; sometimes it is to be
free of circumstance. Imagination is personal and comes from within. It
enables the construction of a world that is as free from the empirical world
191
of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures as one wishes it to be. Imagination can be a means of human freedom as no other. To Northrop Frye,
imagination is “. . . the constructive power of the mind set free.”21 It is
construction for its own sake. “In the world of the imagination, anything
goes that’s imaginatively possible, but nothing really happens.” If something
does happen, then the world of imagination has been left for the world of
action. However, to Frye, there is more to the mind than the imagination,
and it is this other that can come to educate the imagination through the
imposition of language. It is through language that epistemology, that is,
human knowledge, is constructed. Therefore, language and imagination are
intimately linked in the educational relationship.
Imagination is not all there is to the mind. Frye argues that there are three
levels of mind: the level of personal consciousness and awareness of the
world beyond self; the level of social participation and procedures for how
to do or act; and the level of the imagination. Each level employs not a
different type of language but a different reason for using language in
particular ways. That is, the imaginative mind would use the same words but
for different ends than would the social or the personal mind. Frye underscores this point by distinguishing between language use in the arts and in
the sciences. Science, he says, explains the world by collecting data about
it, then formulating its laws as best it can. Once laws are established,
science “moves towards the imagination: it becomes a mental construct, a
model of a possible way of interpreting experience.”22 The more that science
becomes a mental construct and the less a set of empirical propositions, the
more it will use the language of mathematics, “one of the languages of the
imagination, along with literature and music.” On the other hand, art, Frye
proposes, begins with a mental construct, wholly of our making. Art “starts
with the imagination, and then works towards ordinary experience: that is,
it tries to make itself as convincing and recognizable as it can.”
The final measure of worth of the imagination resides in its products.23 If
we choose to reside in our imagination, we remain detached from the
outside world. Such a state is not the desired goal of the educational relationship. Education in its manifest form is public and has a public product,
an educated person. An educated person can act in and upon the world in
worthwhile ways so as to bring understanding to, and exercise influence in
that world for its betterment. The imagination in education is not for detachment, although detachment is sometimes a prior and necessary step
along the educative road. Rather, imagination is the means of educational
engagement—an engagement with the world of values, ideas, actions, and
things.
THE PEDAGOGY OF THE STORY
The three expert teachers practiced a pedagogy which shares its roots with
the origins of verbal language ability: the story. Jesus of Nazareth and Zeno
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DIANNE L. COMMON
of Elea told stories of such significance and importance that many of our
cultures have been subsequently and profoundly changed. The method, as
Kieran Egan has simply and aptly termed it, was teaching as story-telling.24
Zeno of Elea’s riddles were locked in stories. Barton suggests his stories
“. . . must be one of the most powerful ruses ever devised by a masterly
thinker.”25 In the design of his curriculum, Zeno first determined the riddle
and then crafted the story. The most famous of his riddles is found in the
old chestnut of the handicap race between Achilles (who has subsequently
and unfortunately become a hare) and the tortoise. Told one way, and
Achilles is the victor; told (mathematicians would say proven) another way
and the tortoise wins. Zeno of Elea became so famed for his stories that his
most renowned student, Socrates, came to adopt not only his actual stories
but also this pedagogical method as one central feature of his teaching.
Perhaps the most famous of all story-tellers is Jesus of Nazareth. His
teachings were not impromptu discourses, but in fact stories or parables of
particular poetic beauty and simplicity. The imagination of his followers was
stimulated by such popular and well-known parables as the “Wise and
Foolish Builders,” the “Good Samaritan,” the “Lost Sheep,” the “Prodigal
Son,” the “Labourers in the Vineyard,” and the “Sower.” His stories, usually
told in pairs, presented his followers with a principle or a rule and then with
a way of living or practice that exemplified the rule.
A story is a form that embodies some structure of the mind. It is an
archetype of human thought. To Harold Rosen, the story is “a primary and
irreducible form of human comprehension”26 in that it not only represents
but bodies forth patterns toward which human thought is disposed.
The words in a story are not arbitrarily selected; they are included only if
they contribute to the shaping of the events of the story or the placing of
events in context. Words are relative in two ways: first they are relative to
each other in their sentence syntax and paragraph sequence; second and as
important, they are relative to their place in the story form. As Egan puts it,
a story is to be thought of as a “linguistic unit that carries its context around
with it.”27 In placing these words in context—setting, character, plot and
circumstance—we shape them into events and thus understand their relative
importance to the story as a whole. The context determines which words
belong and which do not.
Stories have the potential to provide some of the conditions for the
educational relationship because they unleash the imaginative power of the
mind, and harness this power through language. Maxine Greene offers an
explanation of how this happens through her theory of poetry as a place for
the genuine. Poets, she says, are literalists of the imagination who present
for our consideration imaginary gardens with real toads in them.28 Importantly, though, she uses this theoretical construct to show how literature, broadly
conceived through its story form, enables both the cognitive and emotional
engagement of the students with the curriculum content. Greene’s real toads
constitute the cognitive content of stories for teaching. In fact, they comprise
193
the cognitive content or text of stories everywhere and for every purpose.
The imaginary garden constitutes the emotive content of stories which only
comes to life as we engage the cognitive content. The emotive content is not
“in” the story, as with the cognitive content. Rather, it is “in” the reader or
listener of the story. Henry Aiken also made this point, but he put it this
way: “The predominant power of words to arouse, sustain, and project
emotion is a function, not of their quality as sounds, but of their meaning.”29
Students’ imaginations are tapped through the inescapable process of
reenactment. Stories present in their cognitive content an image of something that, by virtue of the form, is reenacted in the mind. It cannot be
otherwise. The educational significance of this resides in the fact that this
reenactment can only occur in the imagination. Hence, because of students’
natural compulsions, it is their inescapable obligation to reenact the cognitive content in their imagination. In so doing they unleash the constructive
power of their minds.
As students go through this imaginative act of reenactment, the story
becomes a part of them, which, says Maxine Greene, enables their “release
into” the story.30 As the students read or listen, the feelings aroused in them
“. . . will magnetize a variety of energies, perceptions, and ideas to be
patterned in accord with the form” of the story. As this arousal occurs, the
emotive content of the story is developed by each student in individual
terms. The emotive content of any story will be different for each and every
student, shaped by the uniqueness of each. As their imaginary gardens grow,
the engagement of each with the cognitive content becomes richer. Once the
students are held fast in the embrace of the garden, then the teacher is able
to bring mental discipline to the matters of the real toads through the
imposition of language for the purposes of education. To Greene, “the very
process of putting the experience into words helps to organize what has been
undergone. Once expressed, it becomes a kind of content, a structure which
may well give rise to questions never framed before.
AN EXAMPLE
Some might dismiss this essay’s argument by asking, “who am I to be able
to teach like Jesus of Nazareth, Meno of Elea, or Lao Tzu of Ch’U?” The
point is that if we understand something about what enabled each of them
to be expert pedagogues, to transcend the ordinary, the simply effective,
then it is quite possible that some of the extraordinary might grace our own
teaching.
Imagine a real toad, a topic in almost all science subjects in our
schools—the dinosaur. Next, imagine two settings in which an educational
relationship is to be created and maintained. In the first instance, there is a
grade three teacher and his class of twenty-five eight-year-olds. In the
second, there is a grade eleven biology teacher and her class of twenty-nine
adolescents.
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DIANNE L. COMMON
The primary grade teacher begins planning by determining that his
students are to understand the great struggles among these great beasts as
they foraged for food in a time long, long ago. Some dinosaurs ate plants,
others animals. Each type of dinosaur had special physical adaptations
enabling them to eat certain diets: some had long necks to reach into the tall
trees; others had huge hind leg muscles to enable them to chase down their
fast moving prey; still others had crops containing grit and sand to assist
them to digest their food. The teacher begins to tell a story. The educational
relationship begins through the imagination.
To stimulate the primary student’s imagination, the teacher introduces a
very tiny dinosaur, a Compsognathus, no larger than the size of a small
chicken, which is attempting to forage for food in a land of the great, fierce
carnivores such as Tyrannosaurs, Allosaurus, and Ceratosaurus. Shattering
preconceived notions about dinosaurs as huge as houses will surely cause
primary children to wonder. Imagine, a dinosaur they could hold in their
hands or even hide in their packs! The teacher has given this little dinosaur
a name. She is Boreal, and she is terribly hungry and very, very frightened
in a world fraught with danger. Problems abound when Boreal decides when
and how to eat safely, and how she might cleverly protect herself from
being a dinner rather than having one. This is the plot of the teacher’s story.
As the students enter into the story and reenact the days in the life of
little Boreal, they create the imaginary gardens of their emotional content.
The teacher introduces the appropriate cognitive content to enable the
students to understand why Boreal ate plants and was specially adapted to
do so, why Allosaurus ate meat and hunted smaller dinosaurs, and how
Boreal survived, or perhaps did not, in the complex struggles for survival
180 million years ago.
Although the story describes what and how they ate, it is in depth about
dominance and subservience and the struggle for survival typical of all life
forms. It is a story only in small part about eating; it is fundamentally a
story of power and powerlessness, life and death. It has great moral, and
therefore cultural, significance.
In the second case, the secondary school teacher wants the students to
understand there is considerable uncertainty about the accepted scientific
claim that dinosaurs were dull in colour. Simply, new research suggests that
dinosaurs were avant-garde in their appearance. This in itself should quicken
the imagination of fashion-conscious adolescents who would be intrigued to
learn that a new theory proposes that dinosaurs were not only very colourful, to the point of gaudy, but were decorated with ornamental bumps and
swirls and horny protrusions. She wants them to question the accepted claim
of the scientific community that dinosaurs were drab and dull in their
camouflage grey. Her end-in-view is to enable her students to understand
how scientific knowledge is constructed through the cut and thrust of debate
about evidence and the application of the imagination to the findings.
195
Because of the students’ age, they could find the situation of a scrappy
underdog appealing. So, first, a story of dinosaurs as brightly coloured as
skiers on the slopes of the Canadian Rockies. More, a story about a young
rebel trying to convince a group of established university professors that this
could have been the case! Therefore, the story is also about sculptor Stephen
Czerkas,31 a man who without a doctorate and a university position challenges accepted scientific claims about dinosaur skin colour. Through the
study of recently discovered pieces of the skin of a carnataur, Czerkas has
concluded not only that this animal had been richly coloured, but probably
most other dinosaurs had been as well. Not only is Czerkas questioning
accepted theories, but in so doing questions the authority of tenured university professors.
The teacher’s story is about the development of scientific knowledge. It
reveals that the pursuit of scientific truth is not always the idealized activity
it is often made out to be. The understandings that the students would
develop would touch the very heart and fragile nature of scientific method
and the political and moral circumstances in which we struggle to discover
the truth. It is a story to enable students to question the limits of their own
personal knowledge and that of the research worlds around them. It is an
extraordinary story having profound consequence.
CONCLUSION
I have so far avoided defining expertise since a useful definition depends on
some future mapping of its contours, boundaries, elements, and patterns. A
lack of definition did not prevent consideration of three expert pedagogues
who went beyond the usual, the ordinary, and the customary. We know of
these three, Lao Tzu of Ch’u, Zeno of Elea, and Jesus of Nazareth, not
because educational researchers were able to draw some significant correlations between process variables and products of student academic achievement, but because of the extraordinary consequences of their teaching.
Because of their teachings, their students were able to make a profound
difference to their own and the lives of others around them, and to the
cultures in which they lived.
One conclusion at least is warranted. The proper measure of expertise in
teaching is found not in what teachers do, rather in what their students do
because of the teaching. This study claims that the essence of expertise
resides in the educational relationship between teacher and students, a
relationship characterized by at least three qualities not the stuff of contemporary theory. Zeno of Elea, Lao Tzu of Ch’u, and Jesus of Nazareth
implemented curricula students deemed to have moral and cultural significance; they centred their teaching in the human imagination; and they
practiced their pedagogy through the telling of stories. Their teaching
deliberately created an educational relationship characterized by these three
interrelated qualities. Through this creation their artistry was displayed and
196
DIANNE L. COMMON
because of it, continues to be celebrated. Expert teachers are not born.
Rather all who aspire to become expert are born with the ability to learn
how to create the necessary characteristics of this educational relationship.
When teaching is done with such extraordinary expertise, as it has been
done on occasion, it becomes, as Alfred North Whitehead proposed, an
enterprise of cosmic significance.32 We Canadians should remember that the
most telling indication of any society’s future greatness will be found in the
expert pedagogues it nurtures.
NOTES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
David Berliner, “In Pursuit of the Expert Pedagogue,” Educational
Researcher, 15 (1986): 5–13.
Anthony Barton, “The teaching methods of three famous teachers,” Journal
of Educational Administration and Foundations, 2(1) (1986): 4–19.
Barton, op. cit., p. 16.
Susan Stodolosky, The Subject Matters (Chicago: University of Chicagao
Press, 1988).
Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (Toronto: Academic Press, 1982), p. 91.
Ibid., p. 8.
Amy Gutmann, Democratic Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1987), p. 14.
David Nyberg and Kieran Egan, The Erosion of Education: Socialization and
the Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 1981).
Gutmann, op. cit., p. 15.
Nyberg and Egan, op. cit., p. 2.
Gary D. Fensternacher, “Some Moral Considerations on Teaching as a
Profession,” John I. Goodlad, Roger Soder, and Kenneth A. Sirotnik, eds.,
The Moral Dimension of Teaching (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990), p.
133.
John I. Goodlad, “The Occupation of Teaching in Schools,” in John I.
Goodlad, Roger Soder, and Kenneth Sirotnik, eds., The Moral Dimensions of
Teaching (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990), p. 19.
Warren A. Nord, “Teaching and Morality: The Knowledge Most Worth
Having,” in David D. Dill and associates, What Teachers Need to Know (San
Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1990), p. 173.
Fenstermacher, op. cit., p. 134.
Gilbert Ryle, “Can Virtue Be Taught?” in R.F. Dearden, P.H. Hirst, and R.S.
Peters, eds., Education and the Development of Reason, Part 3: Education
and Reason (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 46–47.
Gutmann, op. cit., p. 14.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 14.
Roger Shepard, “The Imagination of the Scientist,” in Kieran Egan and Dan
Nadaner, eds., Imagination and Education (New York: Teachers College
Press, 1988).
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
197
Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination (Toronto: CBC Enterprises, 1963),
p. 5.
Ibid., p. 6.
Sharon Bailin, Achieving Extraordinary Ends: An Essay on Creativity (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988).
Kieran Egan, Teaching as Story Telling (London, Ont.: Althouse Press,
1986).
Barton, op. cit., p. 11.
Harold Rosen, “The Importance of Story,” Language Arts, 63 (1986): 231.
Kieran Egan, Primary Understanding (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 109.
Maxine Greene, “Real Toads and Imaginary Gardens,” in Adrian Dupuis, ed.,
Nature, Aims, and Policy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970).
Henry D. Aiken, “Some Notes Concerning the Aesthetic and the Cognitive,”
in M. Philipson, ed., Aesthetics Today (New York: Meridian, 1961).
Greene, op. cit., p. 303.
Don Lesson, “Skinning the Dinosaur,” Discover, 10(3) (1989): 38–44.
Alfred North Whitehead, Essays in Science and Philosophy (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1948).
Dianne L. Common is dean of Professional Studies, Lakehead University,
Thunder Bay, ON, P7B 5E1.
Research Notes / Notes de recherche
The Gender Composition of the Pool of
Prospective School Principals
Laverne Smith
york university
Although about 60% of Canadian teachers are women, women hold only a
small minority of decision-making positions in education. For example, only
about 16% of school principals are women.1 Three common explanations for
this underrepresentation are that women are not interested in holding administrative responsibility, that they are not capable, and that they are not
qualified (Haddad, 1987; Nixon, 1987; Rees, 1990; Shakeshaft, 1987). I am
concerned to know whether qualified women are available for appointment
to positions of educational leadership, and to indicate lines of research that
could adequately account for the present situation. The usual research
paradigms for explaining “availability” of persons for various occupations
come from sociology, social psychology, and psychology (Acker, 1983,
1989; Betz & Fitzgerald, 1987; Bordo, 1986; Eccles, 1986; Gilligan, 1982,
1988; Gottfredson, 1981; Holland, 1985; Kahn & Robbins, 1985; Marini,
1978; O’Brien, 1990; Osipow, 1990; Singer, 1989; Stewart, 1989). Because
I am concerned with the social reasons for women’s preferences, and not
just with measures of social readiness to accept women (for example,
measures of gender mobility in the education hierarchy), my arguments and
proposals draw both on psychological and on sociological methods.
The 1960s and 1970s saw a revolution of rising expectations and aspirations for women, of changing self-concepts, and of consciousness-raising
sisterhood. Was the 1980s the decade of breakthrough for women becoming
qualified and beginning to attain middle-management positions? I think that,
in fact, many women have obtained the relevant credentials; that there has
been a rapid and substantial increase in the proportion of women certified to
become school principals; that, in short, women have demonstrated they are
ready, willing, able, and qualified to hold positions of administrative responsibility in education in Canada.
THE LITERATURE
A search of Canadian and American literature identified only a few studies
on women’s search for qualifications for promotion. These studies suggest
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16:2 (1991)
RESEARCH NOTES
/
NOTES DE RECHERCHE
199
there have been substantial increases, particularly in the past decade, in the
number and proportion of women in the pool of qualified prospective
administrators.
Nixon’s (1985) descriptive Canadian study reported an increase in the
proportion of woman graduates from Master’s of Educational Administration
programs at the University of Alberta: from 9 out of 263 graduates in 1958
through 1970, to 66 of 135 in 1981 to 1984. In their reviews of literature on
women in school administration in the United States, Adkison (1981) and
Yeakey, Johnston, and Adkison (1986) note an increase in women earning
Master’s degrees in Educational Administration: from 8% in the late 1960s
to 29% in the mid-1970s. At the same time, the proportion of doctorates in
Educational Administration earned by women rose from 6% to 20%.
Although “women have traditionally not been found in administrative
training programs” (Shakeshaft, 1987, p. 128), our limited information
shows a recent and substantial increase in the number and proportion of
women in the pool of qualified prospective school administrators. How rapid
and extensive is this change in Canada, and is it affecting elementary and
secondary levels differently? Since this important area of policy research has
long been of concern and yet very neglected, these articles are valuable for
having begun to identify and discuss the issue of prospective woman
administrators’ credentials. However, they merely whet our appetite for
research that goes beyond descriptive summaries of some facets of eligibility. They suggest questions about whether credentialling systems and
requirements are similar across Canada and whether there have been changes
in the proportion of women obtaining certification. They also invite more
analytic investigations that would offer and test alternative explanations for
their data.
Further, many studies and speculations in the area of occupational mobility rest heavily on psychological factors such as candidates’ motivation and
aspirations, and focus on gender differences. Clearly, this approach should
be complemented by better descriptions and interpretations of women’s own
experiences and perspectives, and by analyses of differences among women
themselves. As well, more sociological considerations should lead to examination of how such external factors as organizational structures, opportunity,
normative expectations, and the power of various political interests affect
individuals’ mobility, aspirations, and career choices.
PROVINCIAL QUALIFICATIONS FOR SCHOOL PRINCIPALSHIP
In Canada, two main patterns characterize requirements for holding a
principalship. Some provinces require formal credentials. However, in most
jurisdictions there are no province-wide certificate requirements, but rather
a loosely defined set of preferred characteristics. These provinces, and
especially their large school boards, prefer candidates who hold Master’s
degrees, particularly in Educational Administration; yet, even in these
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NOTES DE RECHERCHE
boards, principalships may be held without specialized advanced credentials.2
The different patterns invite numerous questions. One set concerns why,
historically, these different patterns emerged. Did they arise from different
political cultures or traditions, with more or less formalistic emphases? Has
size of the province, degree of urbanization, or internal mobility had any
effect? Did adoption of the more formal credentialled approach stem from
or serve the political interests of the government bureaucracy or university
community by giving them more control over certification? Is the more
formal approach, such as Ontario’s, symptomatic of excessive fascination
with credentialism and other trappings of “rational bureaucracy” (Weber,
1947), or is it part of an effort to break up “the old boys’ network” to
women’s benefit? Research in historical anthropology, the politics of
administration, and the like would be useful in examining these and related
jurisdictional differences.
A related facet of these historical/political questions, within either the
more formal or informal structures, is how the criteria for eligibility or
relevance are established. Through what political processes is policy in this
area set, and whose interests are served? Another set of questions concerns
the effects of these different structures. For example, does a more informal,
vague, or open-ended structure encourage or discourage women from
seeking administrative credentials and opportunities? In addition to comparing quantitatively women’s participation in certification programs in two
types of jurisdictions, one would have to explore qualitatively their perceptions and attitudes. One might ask if “old boys’ networks” function more
effectively in more informal structures, whereas formal certification, such as
Ontario’s, is perceived as less subjective, and in turn encourages women to
aspire to move—with confidence they will be treated more fairly.
Data from two provinces without formal principal’s certification requirements (Alberta and British Columbia) indicate a substantial increase in the
proportion of females to males attaining Master’s degrees in educational
administration. In Alberta, female graduates have increased from 4% to
almost 50% in the past fifteen years (Nixon, 1985). Their proportion has
risen similarly in British Columbia.3 For example, in 1981, 2,627 teachers
held Master’s degrees relevant to administrative positions, of whom 626 or
24% were female. By 1987, 3,455 continuing teachers held such Master’s
degrees, of whom 1,042 or 30% were female. Of 828 new holders of such
Master’s, 416 were women—slightly over 50%.
In Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Ontario, government regulations
require special certification through formal courses for the principalship. In
New Brunswick, the proportion of female candidates obtaining principal’s
certification increased from about 10% in the early 1970s to about 40% in
recent years.4 Ontario has also experienced a dramatic increase in the
percentage of women obtaining certification for principalships: from about
7% of the graduating cohorts in the early 1970s to about 45% in the mid-
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201
1980s.5 Further, as Figure 1 indicates, the number of women obtaining
Ontario certification has risen from about 38 per year in the late 1960s to
over ten times that number in recent years.
Various factors likely helped to bring about these dramatic changes; they
include the presence in the teaching force of women who have been socialized into less traditional conceptions of gender roles and have strong
self-concepts and rising aspirations, particularly those associated with
feminist movements and general cultural changes towards a more egalitarian
ideology (Reich & LaFountaine, 1982; Smith, 1988; Yeakey, Johnston, &
Adkison, 1986). Other factors to investigate would include the increased
presence on school boards of woman trustees who may have helped create
more opportunities for promotion of women; the increased sensitivity of
government to the political desirability of affirmative action; and the elimination of Ontario’s quota system,6 which served as a rigorous filter controlled
by male-dominated decision-making bodies (Smith, 1987).
Continuing with the extensive Ontario data, the under-representation of
women at the secondary level suggests disaggregation by level could reveal
even more substantial gains by women at the elementary level. In the period
1985–1987, an average of 53% of elementary-level candidates receiving
principal’s certification were female (up from 30% in 1979–1981). This
contrasts with 32% female at the secondary level (up from 14% in the
earlier period). The difference suggests female elementary teachers more
actively seek principal’s certification than do secondary teachers. However,
the proportion of female secondary teachers obtaining principal’s certification closely approximates the proportion of women teaching at the secondary level, whereas the proportion of female elementary principals is substantially below the proportion of women teaching at the elementary level.
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Further research should attempt to account for this difference. Perhaps
there are contrasts between the interests and career aspirations of secondary
and those of elementary female teachers. Still another set of explanations
might arise from the different administrative structures of secondary schools
that allow more opportunities (such as department headships) for women to
be socialized through anticipatory administrative experiences.
Although more females now obtain administrative certification, one might
ask if they form a “weak” part of the pool of prospective principals. Have
they less administrative experience? Some preliminary data are available
from one Ontario institution’s (York University’s) first graduating cohort of
341 candidates in spring 1983. I initially sorted candidates into two categories based on their statements of their positions: (1) classroom teachers
and (2) those holding positions that afford relevant administrative experience
(department head, vice principal, consultant, and resource teacher). Administrative responsibilities were reported by 67 of 114 (59%) of the woman
candidates and 136 of 227 (60%) of the men.
Of course, one should be cautious about generalizing from this particular
group. For example, the data do not indicate how many years candidates
have held these or other positions. Nevertheless, the data do not indicate that
female candidates form a less experienced part of the pool of prospective
principals.
We require further research on the extent and depth of experience women
find relevant. Given the scarcity of women in more senior administrative
positions, it is likely many have been stalled or “bottled up” at more junior
administrative levels. Examination of their backgrounds may not support the
common assumption that women’s experiences are less extensive than
men’s.
CONCLUSION
Many questions remain. Is the pattern of women’s increasing eligibility
essentially the same in other jurisdictions and professions in Canada and
beyond? Are there comparable changes in eligibility for senior management
positions? If there are differences among jurisdictions, what factors account
for them? For example, do different certification requirements or the linkage
of certification to university programmes affect the proportion of women
who obtain qualifications or actual positions?
What is(are) women’s pattern(s) over time and across jurisdictions of
movement into positions of additional responsibility? Do more formal
certification requirements involve more objective criteria and therefore
facilitate gender equity? How does the phenomenon of women increasingly
obtaining relevant certification and positions in educational administration
compare with their progress in other professions? Is education at the forefront? If so, why?
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203
My data are preliminary, yet they show major changes over the past
decade, especially in the gender composition of those qualified for educational leadership in schools. Many more women are obtaining qualifications
required or preferred for key middle-management positions in schools, and
a much larger proportion of those being qualified are female. In jurisdictions
across Canada where data are available, the proportion of female candidates
eligible for principalships has changed dramatically: from less than one tenth
in the early 1970s, to between one third and one half now. Clearly, fundamental and far-reaching social change is affecting aspirations, expectations,
and qualifications for educational leadership.
NOTES
1
2
3
4
5
6
See Statistics Canada (1988) for cross-Canada data on the teaching profession
and administrative positions. For detailed data on one province, see Federation
of Women Teachers’ Association of Ontario (1987). For additional data and
further discussion, see MacLeod (1988), Porat (1985), Rees (1990), and
Swiderski (1988).
Confirmed in communications from government officials in these provinces and
territories.
David A. Sutherland of the Systems Services Branch of the British Columbia
Ministry of Education provided these data.
Kevin McCluskey of the Teacher Certification Evaluation Branch of the New
Brunswick Ministry of Education provided these data.
Ms. Sherron Hibbitt, formerly Manager, Registrar Services, Professional
Development Branch, Ontario Ministry of Education and Ms. Shirley Robb,
Senior Clerk, Principals/Supervisory Officers Program of the Ontario Ministry
of Education made available these data.
Until 1981, entry to Ontario’s principal certification courses was based on
nomination by candidates’ school boards. Each school board was allotted a
quota (based on sized) of attendees annually. Under this system, few female
candidates were nominated and thereby allowed to acquire the necessary
credentials for line authority positions.
REFERENCES
Acker, S. (1983). Women and teaching: A semi-detached sociology of a semiprofession. In S. Walker & L. Barton (Eds.), Gender, class and education (pp.
123–139). Sussex, UK: Falmer Press.
Acker, S. (Ed.) (1989). Teachers, gender and careers. Sussex, UK: Falmer Press.
Adkison, J.A. (1981). Women in school administration: A review of the research.
Review of Educational Research, 51, 311–443.
Betz, N.E., & Fitzgerald, L.F. (1987). The career psychology of women. Orlando,
FL: Academic Press.
Bordo, S. (1986). The Cartesian masculinization of thought. Signs: Journal of
Women in Culture and Society, 11, 439–456.
Eccles, J. (1986). Gender-roles and women’s achievement. Educational
Researcher, 15(6), 15–19.
Federation of Women Teachers’ Association of Ontario. (1987). Affirmative
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action report 1987. Toronto: Federation of Women Teachers’ Association of
Ontario.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s
development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Gilligan, C. (1988). Mapping the moral domain: A contribution of women’s
thinking to psychological theory and education. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
Gottfredson, L. (1981). Circumscription and compromise: A developmental
theory of occupational aspirations [Monograph]. Journal of Counselling
Psychology, 28, 545–579.
Haddad, J. (1987). Women in educational administration in Saskatchewan: Lack
of career commitment or an internally segregated profession. Unpublished
paper for the Women in Education Advisory Committee of the Saskatchewan
Teachers’ Federation.
Holland, J. (1985). Making vocational choices: A theory of personalities and
work environments. Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Kahn, E., & Robbins, L. (1985) Social-psychological issues in sex discrimination.
Journal of Social Issues, 41(4), 135–154.
Macleod, L. (1988). Progress as paradox: A profile of women teachers. Ottawa:
Canadian Teachers’ Federation.
Marini, M. (1978). Sex differences in the determination of adolescent aspirations:
A review of the research. Sex Roles, 10, 723–753.
Nixon, M. (1985). Women in administration: Is it wishful thinking? Alberta
Teachers’ Association Magazine, 65(4), 4–8.
Nixon, M. (1987). Few women in school administration: Some explanations.
Journal of Educational Thought, 21, 63–69.
O’Brien, M. 1981. Political ideology and patriarchal education. In F. Forman et
al. (Eds.), Feminism and education in Canada (pp. 3–26). Toronto: Centre for
Women’s Studies in Education.
Ontario Ministry of Education. (1988). Education Statistics, Ontario, 1986.
Toronto: Queen’s Printer.
Osipow, S.H. (1990). Convergence in theories of career choice and development:
Review and prospect, Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 36, 122–131.
Porat, K.L. (1985). The woman in the principal’s chair in Canada. Phi Delta
Kappan, 67, 297–301.
Rees, R. (1990). Women and men in education. Toronto: Canadian Education
Association.
Reich, C., & LaFountaine, H. (1982). The effects of sex on careers in education.
Canadian Journal of Education, 7(2), 64–84.
Shakeshaft, C. (1987). Women in educational administration. Newbury Park, CA:
Sage.
Shakeshaft, C. (1989). The gender gap in research in educational administration.
Educational Administration Quarterly, 25, 324–337.
Singer, M. (1989). Individual differences in leadership aspirations: An exploratory study from valence, self-efficacy and attribution perspectives. Journal of
Social Behaviour and Personality, 4, 253–262.
Smith, D. (1987). An analysis of ideological structures and how women are
excluded: Considerations for academic women. In J.S. Gaskell & A.T. McLaren (Eds.), Women and education: A Canadian perspective (pp. 241–264).
Calgary: Detselig.
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Smith, L. (1988). Social justice and school administration: An agenda for our
future. Journal of Educational Thought, 22, 228–233.
Statistics Canada. (1988). Education Statistics Bulletin, 10(8), 1–7.
Stewart, E., Hutchinson, N., Hemingway, P., & Bessai, F. (1989). The effects of
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Swiderski, W. (1988). Problems faced by women in gaining access to administrative positions in education. Education Canada, 28(3), 24–31.
Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization (A. Henderson & T. Parsons, Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Yeakey, C., Johnston, C., & Adkison, J. (1986). In pursuit of excellence: A
review of research on minorities and women in educational administration.
Educational Administration Quarterly, 22, 110–149.
Critical-Interpretive Explorations of
Innovative Language Arts Practices
at the Elementary School Level*
David W. Jardine
James C. Field
university of calgary
We recently undertook to explore problematic features of the practice of
“whole language instruction” as elementary school teachers saw them. We
were interested in work identifying a broad-based cultural malaise (for
example, Lasch, 1979; MacPherson, 1962; Smith, 1988, 1990), work that
may illuminate recent “dis-eases” about innovative language arts practices
at the elementary school level.
Although British Columbia’s Year 2000 (1989) and a recent NCTE
document (Suhor, 1988) show acceptance of holistic and child-centred
notions of pedagogy, other work on language instruction shows increasing
dis-ease with teaching practices and student activities named, often inappropriately, “whole language.”
The NCTE document expressed concern with the “basal-ization of whole
language.” Scibior (1987) discussed the “band wagon” character of this
approach, worrying about its uncritical acceptance. Smith (1988) described
the often unbridled enthusiasm of such language instruction, and its easy
assimilation to such consumeristic notions as “customer satisfaction,” in
which children are encouraged to be relentlessly “happy” about writing.
O’Reilley (1989) struggles with the issue of language instruction as a form
of “emancipation” and considers the extent to which this view is
pedagogically responsible. Mitchell and Cheverie (1989) show how emphasis on “fluency” can unwittingly create ethical dilemmas about the teacher’s
authority to demand of students that they write about what deeply interests
them. Walmsley and Walp (1990) and Mosenthal (1989) point out the
unrealistic demands placed on teachers’ time, interest, and energy. Walmsley
and Walp also discuss the political naïvete of encouraging what Smith
(1988) called “self-annunciation” in “whole language” instruction promoting
*The co-investigators gratefully acknowledge funding of this study by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant #410-91-586).
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“getting children to just write.” Willinsky (1990) details the potential
violations involved in forcing writing, often a private activity, to be a public
act.
We end up with a bizarre sort of “public privacy” and a language to
accompany it, rife with often uncritically formulated terms such as “authorship,” “empowerment,” “voice,” “ownership,” “personal knowledge,” and
the like. We suspect that, under the honourable intent of removing oppressive notions of “authority” in language instruction (the strict formalism of
grammar lessons or worksheets, prescribed “correct” interpretations of a
particular text), language is in danger of losing altogether its integrity and its
formative power.
One hypothesis of our study is that emerging problems with whole
language practice are indicative of a more broadly based cultural malaise.
“Whole language” can be (mis)interpreted as implying a sort of “possessive
individualism” (MacPherson, 1962) and self-absorption, severed from any
“community of conversation” (Gadamer, 1982) in which language may
count as a lived reality. In theory, “whole language” resists this sort of
severance by encouraging children to “connect” with what they write. In
practice, such connections veer dangerously close to creating an isolated
sense of “ownership” with no strong sense of a community of conversation
other than the individual writer “sharing” what he or she has produced.
Moreover, notions of “ownership” and “personal voice” produce an image
of language that glosses over issues of privacy and confidentiality. Unobstructed—in fact, often required—access to “what the student deeply wishes
to write about” has built in a potential violation. We have found that this
requirement may force young “authors” to protect themselves from revealing
too much, or leave them vulnerable. The result can be disengagement from
the creative potencies of language. Paradoxically, it is precisely an
engagement of language as personally/publicly formative that lies at the
core of the new approaches to language education. By forcing it into the
open as a mandated feature of the language arts curriculum, we may
unwittingly forfeit just such engagement.
The co-investigators in this study are two university-based researchers and
four elementary school teachers (grades 4 and 5). We are pursuing an
“interactive/collaborative process that focuses on theoretical and practical
aspects of education [and] ensures the deliberate integration of practice and
theory” (Inquiry, 1988, p. 3). Our study “acknowledges the expertise of all
associated parties” (p. 4) and thus designates all concerned parties as full
co-investigators.
This is consistent with an interpretive approach to educational inquiry.
Our work aims to break down the distinction between investigator (usually
taken to be the university researcher) and investigated (the teacher as
“participant” rather than “co-investigator”). We begin with the interpretive
assumption that the issues discussed involve us all. As practitioners of
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student-teacher education, the university-based investigators are engaged by
the very issues that our school-based co-investigators confront.
Over the three-year course of this study, the six co-investigators will
conduct monthly reflexive conversations (Dexter, 1970) of approximately
two hours each. This type of reflexive conversation is referred to as “deep”
(Schatzman & Strauss, 1973) or “intensive” (Mishler, 1986). Once the broad
context of the project topic is established, questions and issues to be
explored will come from the conversations. Similar methodology in sociology (Blumer, 1989), in medicine (Mishler, 1986), and in education has
helped discover the images practitioners have of their practice (Clandinin,
1986). The approach is marked by “give and take” dialogue and exploration
of collective sense-making. The procedure is summarized and presented
below in condensed form:
1. An exploratory conversation is conducted, where the six co-investigators
discuss the problematic situations or “messes” (Schon, 1983) they confront in their daily use of innovative language arts practices.
2. This and ensuing conversations are recorded and transcribed, and transcripts are circulated to all participants. Each investigator identifies
important “themes” in the text and prepares a summary.
3. These texts form the backdrop for the next conversation. Other texts (for
example, research articles or work produced by the participants) relevant
to the unfolding issues are introduced into the conversation.
4. Because these conversations are potentially sensitive, strict precautions
are been taken to protect the school-based investigators.
We believe our work has hit upon a connection between recently
expressed dis-eases with whole language instruction and work on the broadbased cultural malaise called “possessive individualism.” If this connection
is borne out, we believe it is not enough to attempt “surface repairs” on
whole language arts practices, as if the current dis-eases with those practices
were simply problems of “incorrect application.” Rather, the full contours of
this connection and its implications must be made explicit. Our aim in this
explication is not to suggest a reactionary reversion to previous language
arts practices. Rather, our aim is to salvage what we consider to be the full
potency of whole language instruction from potentially distorting mis-interpretations.
REFERENCES
Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Clandinin, J. (1986). Classroom practice: Teacher images in action. Philadelphia:
Falmer Press.
Dexter, L. (1970). Elite and specialized interviewing. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press.
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209
Gadamer, H.G. (1982). Reason in the age of science. New York: Harper and
Row.
Inquiry into teaching and learning: U.E.S. and Faculty of Education collaboration. Produced by the U.E.S./Faculty of Education Liaison Committee, 19
January 1988.
Lasch, Christopher. (1979). The culture of narcissism. New York: Norton.
MacPherson, C. (1962). The political theory of possessive individualism. London:
Oxford.
Ministry of Education, British Columbia. (1989). Year 2000. Victoria: Province
of British Columbia, Educational Programs.
Mishler, E. (1986). Research interviewing. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mitchell, C., & Cheverie, A. (1989). “Now that we’ve got them writing . . .”:
Addressing issues of ethics, aesthetics, taste and sensibility within the content
of student writing. Reading-Canada-Lecture, 7, 180–190.
Mosenthal, P. (1989). The whole language approach: Teachers between a rock
and a hard place. The Reading Teacher, 42, 628–629.
O’Reilley, M. (1989). “Exterminate the brutes”—And other things that go wrong
in student-centered teaching. College English, 51, 142–146.
Schon, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York: Basic Books.
Schatzman, L., & Strauss, A. (1973). Field research: Strategies for a natural
sociology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Scibior, O. (1987). Resistance to whole language: Reactionary or healthy?
Reading-Canada-Lecture, 5, 183–186.
Smith, D. (1988). On being critical about language: The critical theory tradition
and implications for language education. Reading-Canada-Lecture, 6, 243–
248.
Smith, D. (1990, June). Modernism, hyperliteracy and the colonization of the
word. Presented at the tenth invitational conference of the Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies, Lethbridge, Alberta.
Suhor, C. (1988). NCTE position statement.
Walmsley, S., & Walp, T. (1990). Integrating literature and composing into the
language arts curriculum: Philosophy and practice. Elementary School Journal,
90, 251–274.
Willinsky, J. (1990). The new literacy. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Educators’ Perspectives on Assessment:
Tensions, Contradictions and Dilemmas
James C. Field
university of calgary
BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE
Researchers and teachers have both vigorously pursued and violently
condemned the search for an “objective measure” of reading ability since at
least the early part of this century (Johnston, 1984, 1988; Resnick, 1982).
That search has distracted us from understanding the subtle, yet profound
influence of human consciousness and social conditions on both the procedures and artifacts of reading assessment (Johnston, 1984; Madaus, 1986;
Shulman, 1986).
My research is about beliefs, values, and assumptions that have enjoyed
“uncritical privileging” in reading assessment. It examines the orientations
of seventeen educators, from teachers through Ministry of Education officials, and the circumstances that have helped shape the construction, administration, and interpretation of reading assessments in the elementary public
school system of British Columbia.
The sociological discipline of symbolic interactionism provides the
construct of perspective (Becker, Geer, Hughes, & Strauss, 1961; Janesick,
1977; Mead, 1934) to characterize “where” the educators in this study
“stand and assess from.” It uses the construct of a negotiated order (Hall,
1987; Strauss, 1978) to view the situated activity of these people and to
study the social forces that helped shape their points of view. I wish better
to understand the dynamic nature of assessment as a social-psychological
phenomenon.
QUESTIONS
The following questions guided analysis and defined the limits of the study:
1. What beliefs, values, and actions constitute the various perspectives
toward reading assessment?
2. Are there commonly held perspectives, or common elements of different
perspectives?
3. What are the forces, both inter- and intrapersonal, that shape the perspectives held?
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4. Is there a historical precedent for the various perspectives, their elements,
and the forces that shape them?
METHODOLOGY
Participants in this study worked in elementary schools, district offices, and
the Ministry of Education; they included teachers, principals, supervisory
personnel, school board members, and Ministry officials. Each of the
seventeen participants was interviewed between one and seven times, for a
total of fifty-five interviews. Of these, forty-two were transcribed completely. These texts, as well as primary and secondary documents, were examined
for the symbols people used; the norms, values, and imperatives they
attended to; the assumptions they tactily accepted; and the conflicts, contradictions, and ambiguities they had to negotiate in carrying out their responsibilities in assessing students in an institutional setting.
RESULTS AND IMPLICATIONS
I present here general themes running through the data, without accompanying quotes and extended explanations.
Preliminary analysis reveals that assessment as a social-psychological
phenomenon is fraught with tensions, contradictions, and dilemmas that
cannot be solved or eliminated simply through application of technicalrational thinking or scientific procedure.
THE MILIEU
In the social or macro-order, the forces affecting participants’ perspectives
were: constant change; uncertainty and ambiguity; the existence of multiple,
often conflicting perspectives; prevalence of weak communication links
between the various contexts of situated activity (classrooms, schools, and
districts); and historically produced and embedded conventions for “doing”
assessment.
At the macro-order level, there are few constraints on the pluralism
inherent in education. There are a multiplicity of assessment frameworks;
there is also a general lack of agreement about which criteria should be used
to judge growth and ability in reading in the elementary school. Despite a
common symbol system—that is, letter grades and standard phrases such as
“working at [or above, or below] grade level”—and standardized reporting
procedures, the meaning attached to these signs varies considerably between
classrooms, schools, and districts.
The exception to this general state of affairs came at individual school
sites, where ambiguity and discord were held at arm’s length, and negotiation of “what counts” was tightly constrained by formulation of and
adherence to assessment programs built around a core of standardized tests.
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PERSPECTIVES EMBEDDED IN THE MILIEU
Three fundamental perspectives appear thus far in the data. The participants
hold two, the population of students and parents having a direct stake in the
products of assessment hold the other. The orientations stem from practitioners’ beliefs about the nature of knowledge, the nature of individuals and
their development, and the relationship between individuals and society.
By far the most pervasive and widely held perspective is the rationalanalytic. Participants holding this view value impartiality, certainty (as
“number”), scientific expertise, uniform procedure, and analysis that reduces
complex social-psychological “wholes” into separate independent elements.
Problems in assessment are problems of methodology. The answers lie in
devising, implementing, and rigorously adhering to a set of procedures that
will best serve the management of social affairs: allocating grades, classifying students, selecting them into groups, matching them with resources, or
“fixing up” their deficiencies. The value of assessment derives from its
utility in gathering and using information to make value-free decisions.
The less pervasive orientation, which is intuitive-wholistic, is largely in
reaction to the rational-analytic. Persons having this perspective value their
connection to their students. They believe their judgments’ authority is based
in this personal connection. They rely more on common sense, intuition,
insight, and the ability to talk with, listen to, and observe children than on
standardized procedure.
The third perspective, present among students and parents, has been
termed consumeristic by Broadfoot (1984). Parents and students are less
interested in assessment procedures than in outcomes. In this view, assessment provides the “hard currency” of the system: letter grades and their
equivalents. Marks are like “capital”: they are “earned,” to be “saved” and
used to “purchase” scarce but highly valued places in the social order. Value
is placed on “finding out what counts,” and then acting accordingly. Competition, independent achievement, and accumulation of private “wealth” are
valued. Whereas the first orientation places value on method and precision,
and the second a sense of community, the third presumes “possessive
individualism” (McPherson, 1962).
PRELIMINARY FINDINGS: DILEMMAS AND CONTRADICTIONS
EMBEDDED IN THE PERSPECTIVES
On the underside of these perspectives and social conditions are dilemmas
and contradictions participants find to be inescapable aspects of assessment.
Preliminary analysis of the transcripts revealed the following “tensions”:
1. Teachers are expected to be accurate in their judgments of something
unavailable for direct observation, and not yet fully understood.
2. They are consequently compelled to be clear, unbiased, and comprehensive in their description of a phenomenon that has yet to be adequately
described, using a language laced with values and ambiguity.
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213
3. They must write their judgments, and in doing so inadvertently fix and
stabilize something known for its emergent, unstable nature.
4. They are expected to know the way in advance, when in essence they
must “muddle through” and risk trial and error.
5. They are expected to be honest and forthright, but must not shake confidence or create self-fulfilling prophesies or false hope leading to surprise.
6. They must take personal responsibility for performances that are largely
beyond their control, and for a history of collective activity to which they
are not party.
This study is innovative in dealing not with available techniques or methods
of assessment, but rather with what lies underneath or behind them. Inherent
in such techniques are disparate and discordant perspectives that give rise to
tensions and contradictions often overlooked in research on assessment. By
conducting conversations with educationists immersed in problematic
situations of assessment, this study has discovered unresolved tensions and
contradictions that in past were thought resolveable through the invention
and implementation of “new and improved” methods.
By taking these tensions and contradictions seriously as unresolveable
features of the human phenomenon of assessment, this study makes possible
a more realistic starting point for deliberations about the nature of assessment in the public school system. Possibilities for future research include
investigating children’s investments in assessment, thereby perhaps striking
a better balance between the powerful (those who conduct the assessments)
and the powerless (those who are assessed) (Broadfoot, 1984).
REFERENCES
Becker, H.S., Geer, B. Hughes, E., & Strauss, A. (1961). Boys in white. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Broadfoot, P. (1984). Selection, certification and control: Social issues in
educational assessment. New York: Falmer Press.
Broadfoot, P. (1979). Assessment, schools and society. London: Methuen.
Farr, R., & Carey, R. (1986). Reading: What can be measured? Newark: IRA.
Hall, P. (1987). Interactionism and the study of social organization. Sociological
Quarterly, 28, 1–22.
Janesick, V. (1977). An ethnographic study of a teacher’s classroom perspective.
Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University, East Lansing.
Johnston, P. (1988, July). Constructive evaluation and the improvement of
teaching and learning. Paper presented at the International Symposium of
Language and Learning, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Johnston, P. (1984). Assessment in reading. In P.D. Pearson, R. Barr, M. Kamil,
& P. Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (pp. 147–182). New
York: Longman.
Madaus, G. (1986). The perils and promises of new tests and new technologies:
Dick and Jane and the great analytical engine. In The redesign of testing in
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the 21st century: Proceedings of the 1985 ETS Invitational Conference (pp.
11–21). Princeton: ETS.
McLean, L. (1985). The craft of student evaluation in Canada. Toronto: Canadian Educational Association.
McPherson, C. (1962). The political theory of possessive individualism. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Mead, G. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Resnick, D. (1982). Educational policy and the applied historian: Testing competency and standards. Journal of Social History, 4, 539–559.
Shulman, L. (1986). Paradigms and research programs in the study of teaching:
A contemporary perspective. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on
Teaching (3rd. ed.) (pp. 3–49). New York: Macmillan.
Strauss, A. (1978). Negotiations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Discussion Notes / Débat
The Anatomy of Curricular Integration*
Roland Case
simon fraser university
Integration has long been a fact of educational life—more accurately, it is
an unavoidable feature of educators’ work. Any intentional uniting or
meshing of discrete elements or features constitutes some form of integration. The very act of learning typically involves integration—new beliefs are
filtered through and connected to the individual’s prior beliefs. Despite its
ubiquity, educational debate about integration has been contentious, but not
contentious about its merits. Who would want learning to be fragmented?
Rather, the polemics are rooted in ambiguous and loose conceptions of what
is intended (Dressel, 1958, pp. 7–8; Jacobs, 1989, p. 6).1 There are, beginning with Plato, countless ways integration occurs in education. We educators should be explicit about the varieties of integration we recommend.
I wish to anatomize the amorphous notion of integration, identifying
factors educators should consider when deciding about curricular integration.
More specifically, I examine eight formal components of integration:
domain, form (including elements), dimension, objective, mode, locus,
coherence, and degree. By defining and explaining these components, and
by pointing out implications of the distinctions among them, I hope to
facilitate discussion of and planning for curricular integration. Finally, I
offer a brief prognosis of the current interest in curricular integration.
DOMAINS OF INTEGRATION
The “domain” of integration is the broadest category of components of
integration, that is, the general field of human or natural endeavour wherein
integration occurs. Integration, the uniting of discrete elements into a whole,
occurs in such varied fields as economics (for example, integrated econ-
*
This paper forms a part of a larger research initiative on curricular integration in the
Tri-University Integration Project (Simon Fraser University, University of British
Columbia, and University of Victoria) supported by the Ministry of Education,
Province of British Columbia.
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omies), electronics (for example, integrated circuits), and sociology (for
example, integrated communities), and may divide further into subdomains.
In education two obvious subdomains are integration of classrooms or
schools and curricular integration. Classroom (or school) integration refers
to ways of constituting class (or school) membership so that segregation
along certain lines is reduced or eliminated. Thus proponents of “mainstreaming” seek to integrate students with physical and/or intellectual
disabilities into “regular” classrooms. However, classroom integration can
occur along many other lines: gender, race, nationality, socioeconomic
background, personality type, behavioral disposition, personal interests, and
so on. Integration along each of these lines would be a different form of
classroom integration.
This paper’s central concern is curricular integration. It emphasizes the
dynamics of integration of educational goals, content, methods, and procedures. I mean both the formal (or planned) curriculum—the learning
experiences educators intend, and the informal (or hidden) curriculum—the
experiences inside and outside the classroom that determine what students
actually learn from schooling.
FORMS OF INTEGRATION
The elements to be united determine the “form” of integration. For example,
mainstreaming is distinguished from another form of classroom integration,
say that of racial integration, by virtue of the elements each integrates.
Integration of the former brings together students with differing abilities; the
latter brings together students with differing racial backgrounds.
Among forms of curricular integration are suggested: (a) integration of
content; (b) integration of skills and processes; (c) integration of school and
self; and (d) holistic integration. Educational outcomes are frequently
divided into “content” and “process” outcomes (Brandt, 1988, pp. 3–4).
Loosely defined, content refers to propositional knowledge—the substantive
beliefs and understandings that educators hope to foster. Processes or skills
refer to procedural knowledge—the methodological strategies and abilities
that educators hope to foster. Learning about the customs of another culture
would qualify as educational content; learning how to conduct interviews
(that is, learning “the interview process”) would qualify as a skill.
Integration of content means connecting the understandings promoted
within and among different subject areas or disciplines. For example, a
course on environmental problems might integrate information from biology,
geology, economics, and cultural anthropology. Integration of skills and
processes refers to so-called generic skills and processes. The call to “teach
reading and writing in the content areas” is an example of integrating
reading and writing “skills” into subjects such as social studies and science.
The defining elements of this form of integration are generic skills and
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217
processes. The defining elements of the integration of curricular content are
the discrete understandings and “pieces” of information we want students to
acquire.
Another form of integration, what I call integration of school and self,
refers to the integration of what students study in school (both “content” and
“processes”) with students’ concerns, desires, needs, queries, aspirations,
dilemmas, and so on. The discrete elements of this form of integration are
aspects of school curriculum, and “things” that students care about. For
example, showing students how they might use geometry in pursuing their
outside interests would be an attempt to integrate school and self.
Finally, holistic integration refers to the integration of all further schoolrelated experiences not expressly identified in the other forms of curricular
integration. Elements of this form of integration include formal and informal
practices, routines, methods, rules, and school-based influences on students’
learning. Historically, calls for this form of integration arose most often in
religious education or political indoctrination (Badley, 1986, p. 75). Proponents of an integrated Christian education, for example, would wish all school
influences, including teacher role models and latent messages communicated
on the sports field, to support Christian ideals. More generally, writers on
the hidden curriculum argue for this form of integration. For instance,
although teachers verbally affirm the importance of teaching critical thinking, many teacher-made tests mainly require recall of factual information.
The tacit message of such assessment practices powerfully affects what
students regard as important. More recently, it has been suggested that the
traditional high school timetable, where students are shunted among five or
six different teachers every day, impedes student learning (Jacobs, 1989, p.
15).
DIMENSIONS OF INTEGRATION
Tyler’s notion of horizontal and vertical relationships in the curriculum
suggests a further distinction significant to integration:
When we examine the relationship between the experiences provided in fourthgrade arithmetic and in fifth-grade arithmetic we are considering the vertical
organization, whereas when we consider the relationship between the experiences
in fourth-grade arithmetic and fourth-grade social studies, or between the experiences in fourth-grade arithmetic and the fourth-grader’s learning experiences
outside of school, we are considering the horizontal organization of learning
experiences. (Tyler, 1958, p. 107)
This spatial metaphor suggests that the previously discussed forms of
curricular integration operate on two temporal dimensions: integration at any
given time, and integration over time. There may be important consequences
to emphasizing one dimension of integration of whatever form at the
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expense of integration along the other dimension. Consider for example
content integration. The use of theme-based units in integrating curriculum
suggests horizontal integration is the most common dimension of content
integration. Ironically, this emphasis may undermine efforts to promote
vertical integration of curricular content (Knudsen, 1937, p. 22). If everything in one study unit is closely tied to the theme of, say, bears, and the
next unit’s theme is weather, students going from unit to unit may become
increasingly confused about the connections among their studies. In other
words, increased horizontal content integration may be purchased at the cost
of decreased vertical content integration.
The integration of school and self raises this same question. Preoccupation with the horizontal dimension—that is, integrating units of study
exclusively with students’ current interests, aspirations, and needs—may
undermine students’ beliefs about the long-term relevance of schooling.
Since many student concerns are of only passing interest and value, we
should connect current studies with more enduring student interests. Similarly, successful horizontal holistic integration does not obviate the need for
vertical holistic integration.
OBJECTIVES OF INTEGRATION
Tyler (1958) observed that “the effectiveness of curriculum organization in
facilitating integration depends on the extent to which it aids the student in
perceiving appropriate relationships” (p. 105), thus emphasizing that curriculum integration is a strategy, not a goal. In planning for curricular integration, we should be clear about our objectives, and have grounds to believe
our proposed curriculum reorganization will promote desired objectives.
Consider briefly the objectives apparently motivating each form of curricular
integration considered above. Four interrelated objectives may justify
integrating content: (a) dealing with the complexity of the world; (b) overcoming rigid perceptions of subject boundaries; (c) respecting the seamless
web of knowledge; and (d) promoting greater efficiency.
The most common motive for content integration is that the world does
not completely organize itself according to the disciplines or the traditional
school subjects. Many phenomena cannot be adequately understood solely
from one disciplinary perspective. To take a contemporary example, to fully
understand the Middle Eastern crisis requires (at least) insights drawn from
world and regional history, cultural anthropology, religious studies, and
economics. In fact, recognition of social complexity spurred the move in the
1920s to integrate various social sciences into the “new” social studies
(Case, 1985, p. 52). Note, however, that many phenomena can be understood sufficiently well through a single (traditional) subject. Thus, if the
motive for content integration is to make complex phenomena understandable, only when a particular phenomenon cannot be understood sufficiently
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219
well under the existing curricular arrangements would further curricular
integration be required.
A second reason for content integration is students’ narrow perspective on
their school subjects.2 Many students perceive subjects as arbitrarily
arranged and rigidly separated; consequently, they have no idea how one
subject connects with or could contribute to an understanding of others. The
difference between the previous justification for content integration and the
latter one is that the richer perceptions to be promoted by the latter are not
of the world at large but of the subjects students encounter in school.
A third motive for content integration is predicated on the belief that
knowledge is a seamless web—all knowledge is interrelated.3 Unlike the
first objective, where the motive for content integration is restricted to those
occasions where the complexity of the phenomena to be understood requires
that connections be drawn, the objective is to enable students to see connections among any pieces of information.
A final motive for integrating content is efficiency. Some educationists
suggest that teaching two aspects of the curriculum concurrently works at
least as well as teaching those aspects in isolation. In such cases it is more
efficient to integrate curriculum content. For example, historical novels
might be used effectively to teach about a literary genre and an historical
period.
The dominant objective behind integration of skills and processes is
functional competence. Often, students are taught how to perform a certain
task but cannot transfer the “skill” it requires to another situation. The
desired competencies may involve transfer from an hypothetical to a real-life
situation, or from application in one subject to another. So-called generic
critical thinking skills are particularly relevant candidates for integration of
skills and processes. The criteria on which a student might assess the
soundness of a theory in history would not be identical to those appropriate
for assessing a theory in physical sciences, and “textbook” problems will
have to be extended to realistic applications. To acquire competence in
assessing theories, students would likely need opportunities to study and to
apply the criteria in each relevant context.
Proposals to integrate school and self are generally based on a desire to
increase students’ perceptions of the relevance of school. In extreme cases
students claim to see no connection whatsoever between what goes on in
school and their own questions and interests. The most commonly recommended strategy for integrating curriculum, organizing instruction in themebased units, may not enhance students’ perceptions of school’s relevance; if
the organizing themes hold little significance for students, it could instead
exacerbate the problem.
The likely objectives behind holistic integration are to promote efficacy
and equity. The complex matrix of curricular, instructional, and administrative practices must be integrated so that they foster (or at least do not
impede) achievement of the intended outcomes of education and so that
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students who may be particularly vulnerable to failure or discouragement
will not be denied equality of educational opportunity.
MODES OF INTEGRATING
Educationists have repeatedly suggested that integration involves making
connections between discrete parts in aid of wholeness or integrity. There
are at least four recognized strategies for drawing connections between
elements of the curriculum (Badley, 1986, pp. 64–77): fusion, insertion,
correlation, and harmonization.4
“Fusion” refers to joining into a new single entity curricular elements
previously taught separately. Meshing English and social studies into
Humanities exemplifies fusion.5
“Insertion” (Badley calls it incorporation) refers to adding or absorbing
one curricular element into a larger constellation of curricular elements.
Introducing into a social studies course a few lessons on reading historical
documents, or on interpreting the art of an historical period, are instances of
insertion. Generally, the integrity and basic structure of the subject into
which an element is inserted is unchanged.
“Correlation” implies drawing connections and noting parallels between
elements that remain separately taught.6 Reference to concepts or skills
acquired in another subject, or timing topics so the history and literature of
a particular period are taught concurrently, are examples of correlation.
“Harmonization” is another mode of integrating, wherein disparate
elements are made compatible with or promotive of each other. Although
harmonization involves some changes, the elements are not fused with, or
inserted into, other elements. Harmonization is a principal mode of holistic
integration, although it is also appropriate with other forms of integration.
For example, transfer of skills to other subject areas may be enhanced if
teachers agree on a common way to carry out inquiries in various subjects.
LOCI OF INTEGRATION
A further aspect of curricular integration is the locus (or level of decision
making) of efforts to integrate the curriculum. There are three obvious loci:
the state (in British Columbia, for instance, this is the provincial level), the
district or school, and the classroom.
Provincial-level integration emphasizes curriculum and program development. Generally, integration at district and school levels involves changes in
scheduling, course delivery, and teacher deployment. At the classroom level,
individual teachers have responsibility for planning and carrying out units of
study. Any particular mode of integration could be used at any or all levels.
Correlation, for example, can involve provincial synchronization of
curricula, school-based interdisciplinary teams of teachers, and individual
teachers’ attempts to connect subjects.
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221
COHERENCE
Until now, I have implied that curricular integration requires merely that two
or more curricular elements be somehow united. This is an incomplete
account of the minimal requirements of curricular integration. Although it is
always possible to find a common feature or underlying principle among
elements, the connection may be trivial. An underlying principle may simply
organize the curriculum into a block or constellation; the curriculum may
still lack coherence. Suppose, for example, the curriculum were to be
organized alphabetically, according to the first letter of each topic taught.
The first unit in the curriculum would cover “abbreviations,” “apostrophes,”
“archaeology,” “atlases,” and so on. The underlying principle of the units
(all topics in a unit start with the same letter) provides no educational
coherence—connections within and among the units are contrived and
trivial. Although this example is obviously silly, it illustrates well that not
all possible connections among elements are educationally significant or
worthwhile.7 A principle provides coherence if it imbues the curriculum with
an educationally significant unity or integrity.8
The traditional complaint against integrating different disciplines is that
this has led to “vagueness, lack of precision, and a failure to offer training
in disciplined thinking” (Taba, 1962, p. 191). This may be due, at least in
part, to educationists’ failure to identify an educational significant principle
(or set of principles) that would give coherence to any multidisciplinary
study. The disciplines, for all their narrowness, provide strong integrative
principles: disciplines are fields of inquiry that share common standards for
evidence, a set of fundamental explanatory concepts, and, generally, established methodological procedures (Hirst, 1978, pp. 132ff.).
DEGREES OF INTEGRATION
A further dimension of curricular integration insufficiently appreciated is
that of the degree or extent of integration. Some educationists believe the
more curricular integration, the better. This view is at best misleading, more
likely incorrect. I suggested that one objective of content integration is to
assist students to see how material covered in one subject connects with
material covered in another. Although this justifies some integration, it is not
obvious that it warrants fusion of such subjects as English and social
studies; occasional correlation of the subjects by English and social studies
teachers might sufficiently establish the point. Our integrative efforts often
have hidden costs. Certainly an obvious trade-off arising when fusion is the
dominant mode of integrating content occurs when educators are required to
teach outside their developed areas of expertise.
Taba’s (1962) classic work on curriculum development emphasizes the
need to recognize the multiplicity of factors at stake and to not aggrandize
the role of any single principle. After she criticizes the myopic oversimplifi-
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cation of those who would regard either child-centredness or subject-centredness as the sole foundation for the entire approach to curriculum, she adds:
A similar tendency is illustrated by the way that the principle of integration of
knowledge is applied in discussions of the core curriculum. According to
theoretical statements, the chief principle of the core curriculum is supposed to
be integration of knowledge. Yet trouble brews if this simple principle overrides
the consideration of the unique requirements of the various areas of knowledge
and if integration is effected without sufficiently considering what the appropriate
threads of integration might be and what aspects of the content of various
disciplines can appropriately be brought together. (p. 414)
CONCLUSION
Curricular integration has been a serious, recurring educational recommendation. This pattern has a double-edged message. In support of integration, the
recurring call for greater curricular integration testifies to persistent and
important inadequacies in our curricular arrangements.9 Against integration,
the fact that, for the most part, these calls have been ignored or rejected
suggests the appropriateness of reservations and care in implementing
curricular integration.
Many current proposals for curricular integration are analogous, in at least
two ways, to treating undernourished persons by promoting gluttony. First,
much popular rhetoric about integration implies that integration in any form
will meet students’ needs for a more integrated curriculum. This is analogous to recommending that undernourished persons simply eat more. Both
strategies are based on an inadequately crude diagnosis of the root problems—an undernourished person often needs specific nutrients, not merely
calories; so too, students’ needs for integration are not undifferentiated.
Students who crave greater curricular relevance will not be satisfied by a
curriculum whose content is simply more integrated horizontally.
Second, the push to maximize curricular integration is as dangerous as
urging that undernourished persons eat as much as possible. Contrary to the
familiar adage, one can have too much of a good thing. For example,
students who don’t see how science has anything to do with music need not
always be shown every possible connection between the two subjects.
Integration of discrete curricular elements is purchased at the expense of the
benefits of studying unique features or of undertaking in-depth inquiries. By
promoting excessive integrative measures we may undermine the health of
our educational system, by creating additional and possibly more serious
problems.
Of course, we must not allow these potential pitfalls to be used as
excuses not to attend seriously, or carefully, to the present lack of curricular
integration in its various forms.
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223
NOTES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Ciccorico (1970) provides a short history of the term ”integration” from 1855
to 1968. For a bibliography of three hundred titles on the topic, see Clark
(1991).
This motive is suggested by Dressel’s (1958) observation that the underlying
goal of integration is “to replace a mystifying mosaic of many separated
courses and unrelated extracurricular experiences by an educational program
which has unity in the eyes of most students” (p. 23).
In his classic article on this subject, Pring (1973) raises fundamental
epistemological questions about this view.
I do not use all of Badley’s terminology, but the basic conceptions are those
he identifies. Dressel (1958, pp. 15–16) shows that confusion about the term
“correlation” dates back to 1895.
Sometimes the combining of English and social studies into “humanities”
amounts to little more than teaching English the first half of a double block
and social studies the second. This would not be fusion, although on occasion
it might involve other modes of integrating.
Some writers (Oliva, 1988, p. 504) contrast correlation with integration; others
see it as one mode or type of integration (Dressel, 1958, p. 16).
This concern is not entirely hypothetical, as evidenced by the following:
“Organizing integrated learning experiences reflects an orientation that
acknowledges the interconnection that exists between and among all things”
(emphasis added; Ministry of Education, 1990, p. 27).
See Case (1985, pp. 58–64) for discussion of the distinction between principles of organizing and of “integrating” in the context of the social studies
curriculum.
Speaking for the blue-ribbon committee preparing NSSE’s 1958 yearbook,
Dressel (1958) writes, “the committee came to feel that this problem of
integration is truly the central problem of education” (p. 5). Jacobs (1989, p.
3) reports that a 1988 sampling of key educational leaders in the Association
for Supervision and Curriculum Development identifies curricular integration
as the top priority.
REFERENCES
Bloom, B.S. (1958). Ideas, problems, and methods of inquiry. In N.B. Henry
(Ed.), The integration of educational experiences: The fifty-seventh yearbook
of the National Society for the Study of Education (pp. 84–104). Chicago:
Brandt. R.S. (Ed.). (1988). Content of the curriculum: 1988 yearbook of the
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Alexandria, VA:
ASCD.
Case, R. (1985). On the threshold: Canadian law-related education. Vancouver:
Centre for the Study of Curriculum and Instruction, University of British
Columbia.
Ciccorico, R.A. (1970). “Integration” in the curriculum: An historical and
semantic inquiry. Main Currents, 27, 60–62.
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Clark, P. (1991). A bibliography on curricular integration: Fundamental issues
and approaches (Forum on Curricular Integration Occasional Paper No. 1).
Burnaby, BC: Tri-University Integration Project, Simon Fraser University.
Dressel, P.L. (1958). The meaning and significance of integration. In N.B. Henry
(Ed.), The integration of educational experiences: The fifty-seventh yearbook
of the National Society for the Study of Education (pp. 3–25). Chicago:
Hirst, P.H. (1978). Knowledge and the curriculum: A collection of philosophical
papers. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jacobs, H.H. (Ed.). (1989). Interdisciplinary curriculum: Design and implementation. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Knudsen, C.W. (1937). What do educators mean by “integration”? Harvard
Educational Review, 7, 15–26.
Ministry of Education, British Columbia. (1990). The Intermediate Program:
Learning in British Columbia (Response Draft). Victoria: Province of British
Columbia, Educational Programs.
Oliva, P.F. (1988). Developing the curriculum (2nd ed.). Boston: Scott, Forsman.
Pring, R. (1973). Curriculum integration. In R.S. Peters (Ed.), The philosophy of
education (pp. 123–149). London: Oxford University Press.
Taba, H. (1962). Curriculum development: Theory and practice. San Francisco:
Harcourt, Brace.
Tyler, R.W. (1958). Curriculum organization. In N.B. Henry (Ed.), The integration of educational experiences: The fifty-seventh yearbook of the National
Society for the Study of Education (pp. 105–125). Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
French-Language Minority Education in
Ontario and Changing Levels
of Educational Attainment
Janet Stern
tvontario
The Francophones in the English schools are constantly aware of their
minority status, feel inadequate compared to their English-speaking peers, have
a low academic self-concept and do not feel themselves capable of doing university work. The Francophones in the French-language schools, on the other
hand, can forget about their minority status in the province, since it does not
infringe on the classroom. (Porter, Porter, & Blishen, 1982, p. 269)
As educationists continue to debate minority language rights, the case of
Francophone Ontario illustrates to what extent access to French-language
education contributes to higher levels of educational attainment. Claudette
Tardif’s (1990) recent article on French language minority education highlights evidence that “Francophones may underachieve because they receive
low levels of educational services in their mother tongue” (p. 403). A shift
in focus from possible causes of underachievement to evidence that higher
levels of academic attainment are linked to availability of minority language
education makes an even stronger case for broader-based educational
services and autonomy in school governance.
Broader-based service is urgently required, expecially because underachievement has heavy social and personal costs. Until the last decade,
French-speakers were more likely than English-speakers to abandon their
studies. Analyses of dropout rates and their causes (Karp, 1988; Radwanski,
1987; Sullivan, 1988) document the correlation between low self-image and
dropping out. They demonstrate how a personal sense of academic inadequacy and low aspirations affects the social fabric through the cycle of
dropout, unemployment, poverty, and distress, a cycle that becomes perpetual unless a new element breaks the cycle.
Implementation of legislation granting the right of French-language
instruction and of self-governance is in large part responsible for increased
levels of academic achievement in the Franco-Ontarian community.
(Because immersion courses are programmes of French second-language
instruction designed for non-francophones, they are not included in this
discussion.) Earlier studies showed that average levels of educational
attainment for French-speaking Ontarians were lower than those for English
speakers (Churchill, Frenette, & Quazi, 1985; Quirouette, 1988; Savas,
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1988). A new reading of 1986 census data shows that French-speaking
Ontarians’ levels are no longer lower (Stern, 1990a), and this fact may be
linked to the availability of French mother-tongue instruction in the secondary schools.
Porter, Porter, and Blishen say the two key factors in enhanced educational achievement are language of instruction and working language of the
school in which instruction takes place. A brief examination of the recent
legislative history of French-language instruction in Ontario shows one
province’s steps towards improved status for French and thus for higher
educational attainment. Analysis of census data collected after the adoption
of the language legislation brings to light the relationship between legislation and academic attainment.
Bills 140 and 141, adopted in 1968, set the stage for creation of Frenchlanguage secondary schools and allowed for university-level French courses.
Previously, publicly funded French-language instruction had been limited to
elementary schools, public or separate. Some separate schools offered
courses through grade 10 but not higher. Prior to the passage of Bills 140
and 141, in order to complete high school and to enter a course of postsecondary study, Franco-Ontarians had either to attend private school or to
study in their second language.
Franco-Ontarians’ levels of educational attainment throughout the period
preceding full implementation of the 1968 legislation were clearly below
those of the English-speaking majority. The creation of publicly-funded
French-language high schools has led to increased rates of academic activity
within the Franco-Ontarian community.
In 1986, census information for Ontario indicated a considerable gap in
educational levels between English and French speakers, aged 15 years and
older (Statistics Canada, 1987). Among francophones of that age group, only
the youngest, those 15 to 31 years of age, went through the educational
system when French-language publicly-funded secondary education was
available; most persons older than 15 had not had access to secondary
education in French. Of the 15+ population, 21.5% of French-speaking
Ontarians indicated their highest level of educational attainment was partial
or completed elementary school. The comparable figure for English-speaking
Ontarians was 9.9%, representing a gap between the two populations of
11.6%.
A different picture emerges, however, if we look at figures for the
population between the ages of 20 and 24 (Ministry of Citizenship, 1989).
Persons in this age group in 1986 had access to French-language education
through the secondary level. They are of an age to have completed high
school and to have begun, if not completed, post-secondary studies. For this
group, only 1.8% of French-speaking Ontarians declare their highest level of
education was elementary school, in part or in whole. The English-speaking
population records a figure of 1.5%; thus the gap all but disappears. Not
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227
only does the gap almost close, but also the 1.8% figure compares dramatically to the earlier rate of 21.5% of the population.
At the other end of the academic scale, figures for participants in postsecondary education show the same trends. Analysis of the 15+ age group
again reveals a clear advantage to English-speaking Ontarians, of whom
59.1% indicate some post-secondary education, with or without a degree,
6.3% higher than the comparable 52.8% rate for Franco-Ontarians. When
analysis is limited to levels attained by persons aged 20 to 24, the picture
again changes. In fact, there is a reversal: 76.8% of Francophones indicate
having undertaken post-secondary instruction, with or without a diploma,
while the rate is 73.4% for English-speaking Ontarians, a reverse gap of
3.4%.
The increased levels of academic attainment are highlighted with analysis
of data for more narrowly defined populations. Figures for the 15+ age
group used in earlier discussions of Franco-Ontarians’ levels of academic
achievement (Churchill, Frenette, & Quazi, 1985; Quirouette, 1988; Savas,
1988) unwittingly conceal advances of those in the 15 to 31 age group who
had been able to attend French-language school to the end of the secondary
level. The majority of the 15+ age group had not had this access, and their
lower levels of attainment strongly colour the picture of the 15+ group.
Figures for the 20 to 24 age group show the effects of Bills 140 and 141,
and also allow for Ontarians who may have taken a year or two off to work
before continuing their studies. Analysis of this narrower age group’s
academic levels alters the picture (Stern, 1990a).
Legislation governing rights to French-language education reversed the
cycle of limited academic pursuit and low aspirations within the FrancoOntarian community. And if this holds, further changes in levels of
academic attainment are to be expected. In 1986, Bill 30 was passed,
guaranteeing the financing of separate school education through grade
13/OAC (university-entrance level). Through this bill, students in separate
schools, which is to say the vast majority of French-speaking students, could
aspire to courses leading to college or university entrance without leaving
their schools or boards. And Bill 75, also passed in 1986, defined necessary
conditions for establishing French-language sections in boards. The sections
were given exclusive jurisdiction in planning, creating, administering, and
shutting down school units they govern. Creation of two unilingual
Francophone school boards resulted from this bill: the Metropolitan Toronto
French-Language School Council and the Ottawa-Carleton French-Language
School Board. Other unilingual boards are currently being planned elsewhere—for example, in the East, in Prescott-Russell; in the North, in
Sudbury; and in the Centre, in Simcoe.
The network of educational and administrative structures in support of
French-language education in Ontario is evolving (Stern, 1990b). Our
findings suggest the likelihood of similar gains elsewhere, as a consequence
of the Supreme Court decision on interpretation of the Canadian Charter of
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DÉBAT
Rights and Freedoms, Article 23, on minority-language school governance.
Legislation allowing for instruction in the minority language and for selfdetermination generates new educational aspiration and higher educational
attainment.
REFERENCES
Churchill, S., Frenette N., & Quazi S. (1985). Éducation et besoins des FrancoOntariens: le diagnostic d’un système d’éducation (Vols. 1 & 2). Toronto: Le
Conseil de l’éducation franco-ontarienne.
Karp, E. (1988). Le phénomène des décrocheurs dans les écoles secondaires de
l’Ontario. Toronto: Ministry of Education.
Ministry of Citizenship. (1989). Maps and demographic statistics for selected
mother tongue groups, Ontario, 1986. Toronto: Ministry of Citizenship.
Porter, J., Porter, M., & Blishen, B. (1982). Stations and callings: Making it
through the school system. Toronto: Methuen.
Quirouette, P. (1988). Décrocheurs francophones: une étude du dépistage des
décrocheurs probables au sein des écoles secondaires françaises de l’Ontario.
Toronto: Ministry of Education.
Radwanski, G. (1987). Étude sur les systèmes d’éducation et les abandons
scolaires en Ontario. Toronto: Ministry of Education.
Savas, D. (1988). Profile of the Franco-Ontarian community. Toronto: Office des
affaires francophones.
Statistics Canada. (1987). Profil des étudiants du niveau postsecondaire au
Canada. Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services.
Stern, J. (1990a). La jeunesse franco-ontarienne aux études. In É. Legault & J.
Stern, À l’écoute de la jeunesse (pp. 31–57). Toronto: TVOntario, Planning
and Development Research.
Stern, J. (1990b). La typologie des écoles de langue française. Toronto: TVOntario, Planning and Development Research.
Sullivan, M. (1988). Analyse comparative des décrocheurs et des non-décrocheurs dans les écoles secondaires de l’Ontario. Toronto: Ministry of Education.
Tardif, C. (1990). French-language minority education. Canadian Journal of
Education, 15, 400–412.
Book Reviews / Recensions
The New Literacy: Redefining Reading and Writing in the Schools
By John Willinsky
New York: Routledge, 1990. xix + 275 pages.
REVIEWED BY LAURIE WALKER, UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE
Language arts is a curriculum puzzle to outsiders. They find it hard to grasp
and accept language-across-the-curriculum, reader response theory, and,
above all, that most dangerous of innovations, whole language. John Willinsky’s book tries to make sense of an apparently disparate set of innovations
in the teaching of reading writing, and literature that, over the past 20 years,
have become a progressive orthodoxy in language arts education.
Willinsky courageously attempts to unite these instructional innovations
under the label, ‘‘The New Literacy.’’ He gives us an erudite account of the
assumptions around which these instructional practices cohere: their faith in
the individual’s own experience and language as the foundation of literacy
instruction, and their location of meaning not in the authoritative text
mediated by the authoritarian teacher but in the reconstructive activity of
readers.
In Willinsky’s account, The New Literacy has adopted the language of
the New Education via the Progressive Movement: it is child-centred; it
relies on organic metaphors to explain learning; it is an attempt to reform
the generally static public school curriculum. Willinsky is interested in The
New Literacy’s roots in the Romantic Movement of Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Shelley. But ‘‘roots’’ is the wrong metaphor for Willinsky’s approach,
for he draws parallels between the present practices that constitute The New
Literacy and various intellectual traditions, old and new. The result is a
rather sweeping, grand assertion of correspondences between, for example,
contemporary faith in the authorship of six-year-olds and Wordsworth’s
reverence for the imagination of the child.
Willinsky’s discussion of the parallels is provocative. He is strong on
Romanticism in a chapter that amplifies his 1987 article in Curriculum
Inquiry (not included in the impressive list of references). He is interesting
on the topic of popular literacy in England, and this allows him to make
useful observations about the political implications of The New Literacy. It
is Willinsky’s willingness to infer applications that takes him beyond
Lankshear’s fuller historical account of popular literacy in the nineteenth
century. On the other hand, I found less useful his exploration of meaning
and the self through a juxtaposition of Bruner, Britton, Bakhtin, Vygotsky,
and the French post-structuralists.
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16:2 (1991)
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The main message of the book is that none of the instructional practices
that constitute the New Literacy is merely a new method for more effective
teaching of reading or writing. None is a technique that a teacher can pick
up and apply without changing most profoundly classroom endeavour.
Willinsky’s argument is based on the widely accepted premise that literacy
is not a neutral commodity acquired in some educational vacuum, then
applied to whatever purpose. It is instead a social practice linked to the uses
to which people put it. In his words, ‘‘literacy takes on the contours of its
context’’ (p. 232).
Moreover, if students are given some control over their texts and over the
meanings they construct from them, the relationship between student and
teacher is necessarily altered, and the teacher’s role radically changed. No
longer are students confined to reading teacher-selected texts, finding the
‘‘right’’ answer to externally assigned questions, and writing set pieces for
teacher adjudication. Teaching and learning literacy in schools are no longer
private matters between individual student and teacher, where the classroom
is merely a convenient aggregation of individual, competing learners. The
New Literacy classroom is a sociable place where students help each other,
where learning proceeds through talk, and where individual writing voices
find audiences in colleagues. For Willinsky, these are radical and subversive
proposals. He maintains that advocates of New Literacy methods have been
naïve about their agenda and its political dimensions.
Willinsky recommends that The New Literacy look beyond the liberal,
optimistic naïveté that has rendered it vulnerable to criticism from the
political right. Conservatives claim that it has abandoned literacy teaching’s
traditional role of passing on the cultural heritage. It has also drawn fire
from the political left on account of its failure to embrace critical literacy,
the deliberate agenda of teaching people to use their literacy to read, not
only texts, but their world in order to participate in its shaping.
There are two problems with this second point. Willinsky has shown how
a central principle of The New Literacy is the student’s participation in the
choice of reading material, writing topics, formats, and purposes, and in
literary response. Yet critical literacy restores authority to the teacher who
decides what the problem is in the students’ lives and then proceeds to
devise a curriculum project that will explore that problem. In this sense, it
is hard to see how critical literacy can remain New Literacy in the way that
Willinsky has defined it.
The second problem is implied by the parallel Willinsky draws between
the New Literacy and movements for popular literacy in England in the
early nineteenth century. When members of the working classes began to
organize themselves into corresponding societies, using literacy to advance
their political and social aspirations, the authorities responded with coercion,
taxation, and a state education system to bring literacy under control.
Willinsky uses this parallel to warn that school literacy is contested. It is
hard to imagine that provincial education systems, some of whom have
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231
embraced aspects of The New Literacy in its liberal form, would be able to
countenance an official literacy curriculum that is overtly critical of existing
social relationships.
The New Literacy is a considerable achievement and a very useful
contribution to literacy scholarship. Willinsky has grasped a number of
different threads in language arts instruction and pulled them together in a
loosely woven fabric. It is a work of grand assertion, showing a penchant
for dichotomies and stark contrasts that have interpretive power, but which
probably do violence to the day-to-day experience of literacy teaching in
actual classrooms. The book repays a close reading, more as a provocation
to thought than as any definitive statement about the teaching of reading and
writing, new or old, in the 1990s.
A final note about the authorial voice. John Willinsky is a Canadian and
this book was written while he was a faculty member at the University of
Calgary. He mentions his own teaching in Northern Ontario. What is
curious, though, is that Willinsky writes as a citizen of North America. He
is well aware of British scholarship; he recognizes the Atlantic Ocean but
not the 49th Parallel. There is some mention of work in Canada, but
described as though Toronto were simply part of North America. In a book
discussing literacy as a social practice embedded in particular political,
economic, social, and cultural milieux, the obliteration of a national boundary is ironic. Maybe one aspect of the politics of literacy, New or Old, is the
academic publishing business.
Le ministère de l’Éducation et le Conseil supérieur: leurs antécédents et
leur création, 1867–1964
par Arthur Tremblay avec la collaboration de Robert Blais et Marc Simard
Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1989. 426 pages.
RECENSION PAR JEAN-PIERRE CHARTRAND, UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL
La Révolution tranquille date maintenant de trente ans et il fallait s’attendre
à ce que ses artisans ou ses témoins commencent à nous livrer bilans et
mémoires. Paul Gérin-Lajoie (1989) le faisait il y a peu en nous rappelant
son itinéraire, ses motivations dans Combats d’un révolutionnaire tranquille.
C’est plutôt un ouvrage à caractère scientifique sur la création du ministère de l’Éducation au milieu des années 1960 que nous donne, à son tour,
Arthur Tremblay. On en saura peu sur l’homme après avoir lu ce livre mais
son ton, ses silences amusés (sur la nomination de Mgr Parent à la présidence de la Commission) et surtout sa précision dans la description des
événements et des initiatives alors prises rappellent qu’il s’agit bien de
l’oeuvre d’un témoin attentif et non uniquement celle d’un chercheur qui ne
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serait familier qu’avec le sujet en raison d’un travail de documentation.
C’est, en d’autres mots, l’ouvrage de celui qui était là!
Soulignons, en premier lieu, que les dates données au titre ne doivent pas
tromper. L’essentiel de l’oeuvre porte sur la réforme survenue à la fin des
années 1950. Une quarantaine de pages seulement sont allouées à la description succincte du contexte scolaire de 1867 à 1955. La majorité des chapitres de la première partie concernent la pré-réforme, c’est-à-dire les
événements qui vont de la Commission royale d’enquête sur les problèmes
constitutionnels à l’action de Gérin-Lajoie comme ministre de la Jeunesse.
La seconde partie porte largement sur la Commission Parent: le cheminement de cette Commission, ses propositions et les réactions au Rapport que
cette Commission a produit.
La troisième partie a trait aux péripéties de l’adoption du Bill 60. Partout
on constate un souci marqué de rappeler la participation des différents
organismes et des différents individus qui se sont intéressés aux débats
entourant la création du ministère de l’Éducation. Le cheminement des
diverses propositions est bien décrit ainsi que les institutions finalement
créées.
Il faut bien l’admettre, l’ouvrage de Tremblay est surtout intéressant par
sa patiente reconstitution des événements ainsi que par l’identification des
différents acteurs et de leur rôle. Cependant, il n’ajoute que peu de choses
à la compréhension de la société québécoise d’alors. La brève évocation de
la grande noirceur, dans la présentation faite par Pierre W. Bélanger, ne
laisse pas de place à la nuance lorsqu’il est question d’affirmer qu’‘‘un
siècle séparait deux générations consécutives.’’ Un tel texte fait oublier tous
les changements qu’avaient connus les Québécois; Duplessis n’avait pas
alors arrêté le temps . . .
Les premiers chapitres de l’ouvrage de Tremblay ne font que relater
quelques initiatives sans établir de liens entre l’organisation scolaire, ses
limites et la réalité québécoise. Même dans les parties consacrées au contexte bouillonnant des années 1950, l’auteur ne fait aucune tentative pour
présenter tous les changements survenus dans les questions scolaires qui ont
été exprimées face à la nécessité d’adapter le réseau scolaire aux réalités
économiques ou sociales nouvelles. Les motivations demeurent implicites et
nous restons avec l’impression d’avoir examiné à la loupe les acteurs,
d’avoir entendu chacune de leurs paroles, lu leurs écrits, sans vraiment avoir
été mis en contact avec la scène sur laquelle ils se sont agités. Leurs motivations, la nature exacte de leurs attentes, les réalités sociales qui les ont
portés à agir restent toutes dans l’ombre. Tremblay n’est pas même explicite
sur ses propres actions et sur ses propres motivations.
C’est bien l’ouvrage de celui qui a vu! Les lecteurs qui ont vécu cette
époque se souviendront, aidés par les évocations qui y sont contenues, du
climat du régime Duplessis. Ils se souviendront également de la soif de
changements chez les jeunes gens les plus scolarisés et les plus ambitieux
d’alors, de l’impression si grande d’avoir piétiné longuement, de la joie de
voir les changements se bousculer au point qu’ils donnaient l’impression
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233
d’une débâcle. Ils se souviendront aussi avec plaisir des différents acteurs et
essaieront de se rappeler leurs propres motivations. Tremblay présente si
bien la succession des événements, des interventions, que la mémoire devrait
faire le reste . . . L’impression qui se dégage de l’ouvrage de Tremblay est
celle que l’auteur a voulu produire des mémoires d’un genre particulier,
adressés aux gens de sa génération.
La difficulté de cet ouvrage, c’est l’absence quasi complète d’une
articulation sur le contexte historique. Malgré la déclaration d’intention de
la présentation où Bélanger rappelle la nécessité de se souvenir, dans un
Québec où l’enseignement de l’histoire récente fait défaut, il y a peu de
chances que les jeunes lecteurs puissent se faire une idée exacte de la
signification de la réforme de l’enseignement à la lecture de Tremblay. À
moins qu’ils ne potassent sérieusement, dans un premier temps, l’Histoire du
Québec contemporain: le Québec depuis 1930 de Durocher, Linteau, Ricard
et Robert (1986) et ne cessent de s’y référer tout au long de la lecture de
l’ouvrage de Tremblay!
RÉFÉRENCES
Durocher, R., Linteau, P.-A., Ricard, F. et Robert, J.-C. (1986). Histoire du
Québec contemporain: le Québec depuis 1930. Tome 2. Montréal: Boréal.
Gérin-Lajoie, P. (1989). Combats d’un révolutionnaire tranquille. Montréal:
Éditions CEC.
Primary Understanding: Education in Early Childhood
By Kieran Egan
New York: Routledge, 1988. xvi + 287 pages.
REVIEWED BY RICHARD COURTNEY, ONTARIO INSTITUTE FOR STUDIES IN
EDUCATION
Kieran Egan has done it again! He has written an excellent book that will be
read world-wide and shows how he has moved on from his earlier books,
Teaching as Story Telling, and, with editor Dan Nadaner, Imagination and
Education. After touching his forelock to Plato and Rousseau, Egan leaves
behind simplistic educational dichotomies (traditional vs. progressive, child
centred vs. subject centred, experience vs. basic skills, and so on), stating
that early childhood education should not be seen as something we leave
behind. Rather, the achievements and experiences of ECE are constituents of
our later selves (‘‘the child is the father to the man’’).
But there is a curious dichotomy in Egan’s writings. His primary perspective is clearly from Aristotle’s acorn: ‘‘We have infinite, indeterminate
potentials, and we need to describe precise ends which will provide criteria
to guide our choices of which potentials to stimulate and develop. Our
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fulfilment comes precisely through our initiation into a particular culture and
our fitting into a particular society and its economy: our nature is cultural’’
(p. 2).
The first sentence has the ring of the next century, and may have caught
the essence of non-mechanical education. The second sentence, however, has
the flavour of the determinism of the last century (Darwin, Marx, Fraser,
and Freud, with their modern inheritor Lévi-Strauss), though whether this is
inherent in Egan’s thought, or whether he is merely doffing his cap to the
series in which the book appears is questionable. The collapse of the Berlin
Wall and Marxist states everywhere must create doubt about the intellectual
efficacy of determinism. In 1991 we have returned to Percy Nunn’s educational principle that there is both nature and nurture.
Some of Egan’s terminology and references confuse both us and him. His
typologies are quite strong enough without recourse to Lévi-Strauss’s binary
categories, now seen as simplistic by Greimas and those semioticians who
follow him. In modern holistic and creative education, for example, ‘‘opposites’’ have given way to ‘‘contrasts’’—a natural successor to Kierkegaard’s
attack on ‘‘the either/or.’’ And the use of Lévi-Straus’s peculiar class of
Bonnes à penser only serves to make Egan’s argument seem more obscure
than it actually is.
But when Egan speaks in his own voice, and does not rely on false
academic props, there is no more interesting educational thinker writing
today. The practicality of the last two chapters, for example, makes them
hard to put down. Throughout, readers will find themselves applauding,
arguing, debating, and disagreeing with the author. Thus, although his
curriculum principles (p. 194) are salutary, when he interprets them in terms
of binary opposites (pp. 232–233) I want to dissent. When he promotes
mythic understanding and organization of classroom content in story form,
I applaud. But then, because he is dealing with primary children, why does
he not move from the media of oral and written story to other media that
young children use equally with story, like drama and dance?
Anyone concerned with education should read this book. It will not only
make them think, but think deeply about the key issues that affect our
children and their future.
Élèves en difficulté d’adaptation et d’apprentissage
par Georgette Goupil
Montréal: Gaëtan Morin Éditeur, 1990. 346 pages.
RECENSION PAR LISE SAINT-LAURENT, UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL
Cet ouvrage d’introduction comble un vide important dans le domaine de
l’adaptation scolaire. Il existe plusieurs volumes américains sur le sujet, mais
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aucun en français avant celui-ci. Il s’adresse au futur intervenant scolaire,
surtout au primaire. L’auteure a adopté une présentation très pédagogique:
objectifs au début et à la fin du chapitre, mots-clés, questions et activités
suggérées. L’ouvrage comprend quatre parties correspondant aux grandes
catégories d’élèves en difficulté. Chaque partie a la même structure. L’auteure présente d’abord les définitions, les conceptions et les causes, puis elle
aborde l’évaluation et l’intervention.
La première partie porte sur les enfants en difficulté d’apprentissage. Le
texte est clair et fournit une grande quantité d’informations. Entre autres, on
y trouvera des références très utiles sur les productions de la Commission
des écoles catholiques de Montréal concernant l’intervention pédagogique
auprès des élèves en troubles d’apprentissage. Une grande place est consacrée aux aspects historiques et aux différentes conceptions de ce type de
difficulté. Or, la valeur des différentes approches n’est pas discutée. Il aurait
été important de situer le lecteur vis-à-vis les différentes conceptions des
troubles d’apprentissage. Cette partie passe également sous silence les
développements récents dans le domaine (Gearheart & Gearheart, 1989). Les
principaux chercheurs actuels dans ce domaine ne sont pas cités. Une
deuxième faiblesse de cette partie est l’absence de prise de position quant à
la validité de différents outils d’évaluation et modes d’intervention. Par
exemple, l’auteure présente des tests d’évaluation des difficultés en lecture
qui ne sont pas conformes aux programmes d’étude actuels. Une discussion
critique des avantages et inconvénients de tel outil ou de telle stratégie
pédagogique aurait été utile.
La partie consacrée aux enfants en difficulté d’adaptation et de comportement est bien développée et constitue une très bonne introduction à ce
domaine complexe. L’auteure a réussi une synthèse judicieuse et utile pour
le futur intervenant scolaire. Cependant, dans les causes des troubles du
comportement, l’auteure a passé sous silence les travaux de Thomas et
Chess sur le tempérament de l’enfant. Par ailleurs, l’auteure met l’accent sur
la théorie des additifs alimentaires comme cause de l’hyperactivité alors que
cette théorie de Feingold est jugée sans fondement par les principaux auteurs
dans le domaine (Barkley, 1981; Conners, 1980). Le chapitre sur l’évaluation est bien manié. Celui sur l’intervention est bien structuré et comporte
des exemples pertinents. Cependant, les développements récents dans
l’intervention de type cognitif auraient dû être abordés (Hughes & Hall,
1989).
Dans la partie traitant de la déficience intellectuelle, l’auteur fait une
excellente synthèse des définitions et causes de ce handicap. Le chapitre sur
l’intervention effleure trop le sujet pour être utile. À souligner ici une
faiblesse au niveau de l’absence de distinction entre les degrés de déficience
par rapport à l’intervention pédagogique. Un bref relevé des écrits sur les
modes de scolarisation porte sur la clientèle déficiente intellectuelle légère
uniquement.
La dernière partie traite des déficiences sensorielles (visuelle et auditive)
et physiques. Chacune des déficiences est traitée succinctement et habile-
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ment. Dans un texte clair, le lecteur trouvera les informations de base sur les
caractéristiques et causes des déficiences. Les principes de base pour
l’intervention pédagogique peuvent être très utiles pour un futur intervenant
scolaire.
Ce livre s’appuie largement sur les travaux québécois dans le domaine,
ce qui constitue un aspect positif. Malheureusement cependant, certaines de
ces références québécoises ont une faible pertinence. Malgré certaines
réserves, ce livre de Goupil constitue un ouvrage d’introduction à recommander aux étudiants de premier cycle en éducation et en psychologie. Il
constitue une très bonne synthèse d’un domaine vaste et complexe. Des
lectures additionnelles seraient nécessaires pour le lecteur qui voudrait
approfondir un aspect particulier de l’adaptation scolaire. Le format très
pédagogique est un atout de cet ouvrage.
RÉFÉRENCES
Barkley, R.A. (1981). Hyperactive children: A handbook for diagnosis and
treatment. New York: Guilford Press.
Conners, L. (1980). Food additives and hyperactive children. New York:
Plenum.
Gearheart, B.R., & Gearheart, C.J. (1989). Learning disabilities: Educational
strategies (5th ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill.
Hughes, J.N., & Hall, R.J. (1989). Cognitive behavioral psychology in the
schools: A comprehensive handbook. New York: Guilford Press.
Education, Change and the Policy Process
By Harold Silver
London: The Falmer Press, 1990. vii + 248 pages.
REVIEWED BY NEIL SUTHERLAND, CANADIAN CHILDHOOD HISTORY PROJECT,
UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
In this fine book Harold Silver accomplishes three important tasks. First, he
presents a convincing case that those who conduct policy analyses without
including history as one of their essential disciplinary tools inevitably limit
the usefulness of their work. To be effective, he argues, policy analysis must
be rooted in such systematic academic disciplines as political science,
economics, psychology, sociology, and history. It is, Silver explains, ‘‘the
historian’s engagement with change, as well as the difficulties of representing it in policy analysis, that require the historian’s presence in the contemporary educational arena, not only to trace ancestries, but also to illuminate
processes’’ (p. 16).
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Second, he shows how those historians who think there is something
‘‘disreputable in the here-and-now’’ and hold that ‘‘history must not . . .
have its targets defined by the structures, political concerns and ideologies
of contemporary society,’’ severely limit the usefulness of their work (p.
213). ‘‘At its most theoretical,’’ Silver continues, the analysis of policy ‘‘is
concerned with what happens and why; at its most pragmatically historical
it asks what, in known instances, seems to have happened’’ (p. 213). Historians, surely, have competencies they should contribute to these tasks.
Third, and most importantly, Silver provides us with examples that show
how historians can help us to find ‘‘a future in the past’’ (p. 5). Such
‘‘futures,’’ he argues, assist us to avoid the apocalyptic-style analysis and
accompanying rhetoric that often characterize contemporary educational
debate. Historians committed to a ‘‘recent-historical, policy focussed
approach to education’’ can help marry
the problematics of historical research with the fumbling yet confident generalizations of model makers, in order to bring both more realistically and usefully to
an understanding of the central processes at work in the ‘concrete terms’ of ‘this
world’. (p. 221)
Silver draws his examples from the very recent past. Canadians working
in such diverse domains as higher education, international education, or
vocationalism in education are likely to find in Silver’s analysis ideas,
frameworks, or analogies that would be suggestive or useful in their own
research. In a brief review it is impossible to comment on each of his
examples. Instead, I shall suggest how Canadians might employ notions
Silver has developed from British (mostly English) and American literature,
official reports, and much other data under the heading ‘‘Socially Disadvantaged Children in School, 1920-1980.’’ Nonetheless, even in the case of
a single example it is difficult to do justice to the necessary complexity and
subtlety of his arguments. Indeed, the book inveighs against glib summaries
and simple explanations in analysing policy in this or any other area. It is,
of course, a truism that while some children do well in school, others do
not. Our century has been characterized by a bewildering array of explanations and remedies for this situation. Thus, one of the historian’s jobs ‘‘is to
trace the process by which vocabularies come to express or to conceal
realities’’ (p. 189). ‘‘Socially disadvantaged children’’ have been ‘‘cloaked in
the unstable and elusive vocabularies of social analysts, policy and judgement makers of many kinds.’’ Such children ‘‘are not just in education, they
are in families and welfare systems, urban and rural environments, and many
other categorizations—all of which affect the understanding, even the
definition, of educational processes’’ (pp. 188-189).
Employing the Bibliography of Canadian Childhood’s index category
‘‘exceptional children,’’ I skimmed sequentially its hundreds of entries for
some of the terminology Canadians have used in this area. There I found
such words and phrases as ‘‘mental hygiene,’’ ‘‘the inheritance of talent,’’
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‘‘mentally deficient,’’ ‘‘special education,’’ ‘‘gifted children,’’ ‘‘under-functioning pupils,’’ ‘‘multidisciplinary approaches,’’ ‘‘psycho-social adjustment,’
’
‘‘special children,’’ ‘‘learning assistance,’’ ‘‘diagnostic remediation’’ and
many, many more. Embedded in each item is not only a philosophy, a
research tradition, and a world view held by those who originally framed it,
but also a history that the particular form of the concept itself cumulates,
and that in turn stretches back to ‘‘feeble-mindedness’’ and other precursor
notions. Although we have ostensibly relegated many of these words to the
museums of education, most of them are still with us. They persist in
unrepealed legislation passed while they were fashionable, and in the minds
of teachers, administrators, and school board members who absorbed them
as they grew up or as part of their professional training. Some who use the
latest vocabulary do it in a way that demonstrates that they really do know
the history packed into each word; others merely use it as the newly fashionable ways to describe phenomena they still think of according to an
earlier fashion. To situate each label in its context raises such questions as:
‘‘Was the disadvantaged child being rescued or blamed? Was the disadvantaged child deficient or difficult? Did the explanations and strategies being
evolved stem from middle-class values, and did they aim at more subtle
forms of social control?’’ (p. 196). My superficial survey confirms that in
Canada, as in Britain and the United States, ‘‘disadvantage has been psychological, economic, social and educational, . . . the schooling responses differing according to the condition they are invited to address’’ (p. 200).
Silver concludes his essay by arguing that both historians and theorists
bear responsibility for our lack of a clear sense of the sequences involved in
the emergence of the concept ‘‘disadvantaged child.’’ Historians disregard
‘‘the theoretical niceties involved in understanding the social settings out of
which the concept arises,’’ while theorists are ‘‘tempted towards monocausal
historical explanations’’ (pp. 202-203). Turning to historians in particular,
Silver notes first that children must be the focal point of any analysis of
disadvantage. ‘‘Why, then,’’ he asks, ‘‘in the account of the disadvantaged
child in school . . . is so little said about the child, as distinct from the
educational condition of the child?’’ (p. 203). He responds by explaining that
in the ‘‘history of education attention wanders to an extent which often
makes the object of attention almost impossible to recognize’’ (p. 203).
Silver is particularly critical of Lawrence Cremin’s extremely wide perspective on what constitutes the field of study of the history of education but
also castigates others who write administrative history, or about broad
effects of such constructs as social control and in which there is ‘‘no need
to focus on people as participants’’ (p. 205).
To follow Silver’s suggestion to make children the central object of
historians’ attention will certainly help us to clarify our understanding of
educational policy on the disadvantaged. Taking this step would also lead to
enormous gains in other areas of educational policy analysis. We could, for
example, greatly sharpen the focus of both curriculum and administrative
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studies if we were to concentrate them much more than we presently do on
a well-rounded understanding of the lives of the children who inhabit our
classrooms and schools.
Savoir préparer une recherche: la définir, la structurer, la financer
par A.P. Constandiopoulos, F. Champagne, L. Potvin, J.-L. Denis et
P. Boyle
Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1990. 197 pages.
RECENSION PAR AIMÉE LEDUC, UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL
Le livre de Constandiopoulos et al. s’adresse à des chercheurs qui préparent
une demande de subvention de recherche. Il décrit ‘‘les étapes que doit
franchir un chercheur pour arriver à un protocole de recherche convaincant
et réalisable’’ (p. 9).
Comme le souligne Marc-Adélard Tremblay, dans la préface, la monographie de Constandiopoulos et al. ‘‘comble [ . . . ] un vide et sera d’une
grande utilité tant aux chercheurs en phase d’apprentissage et aux équipes de
recherche en émergence qu’aux chercheurs dont l’expertise méthodologique
et instrumentale est reconnue’’ (p. 3).
De plus, toujours selon Marc-Adélard Tremblay, ‘‘[un] autre mérite [de
la monographie est] la juste place accordée aux méthodes et techniques
qualitatives et aux méthodes et techniques quantitatives échelonnées sur la
trajectoire complète du processus de recherche . . .’’ (p. 4).
Dans un premier chapitre, les auteurs traitent de la conceptualisation du
problème de recherche, i.e. de la définition du problème de recherche, de
l’état des connaissances, du modèle théorique et des hypothèses ou des
questions de recherche. Le chapitre 2 porte sur le choix d’une stratégie de
recherche; il s’agit de l’identification du type de recherche et du choix d’un
devis ou d’un protocole expérimental. Le chapitre 3 décrit les éléments qui
sont impliqués dans la planification opérationnelle d’une recherche. Il
comprend quatre sections: la première traite de la population cible et de
l’échantillon; une deuxième porte sur la définition des variables et sur la
collecte des données; la troisième section s’intéresse à l’analyse des données—analyses quantitatives et qualitatives—et la quatrième porte sur
l’échancier et sur le budget. En conclusion, il est question de la pertinence
de la recherche et de considérations éthiques. La première annexe est
consacrée à la mesure de la fiabilité d’un instrument et la seconde présente
trois exemples de protocoles de recherche accompagnés de commentaires.
Dans le chapitre sur la conceptualisation du problème de recherche,
j’aurais souhaité que les auteurs accordent plus d’importance au rôle qu’une
théorie formelle explicite peut jouer dans le processus d’élaboration d’une
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recherche. Une telle théorie peut, par exemple, permettre d’expliquer, du
moins en partie, les résultats souvent contradictoires des études antérieures
sur un phénomène donné. Elle peut aussi jouer un rôle dans le choix des
instruments de mesure et dans l’interprétation des résultats.
Au niveau de la recension des écrits, les principes énoncés par les auteurs
me paraissent intéressants et justes. J’aurais cependant souhaité trouver, dans
cette section, une description plus précise des tâches impliquées dans une
recension des écrits. À ce sujet, Jackson (1989) identifie six tâches fondamentales qui sont: “a) le choix des questions ou des hypothèses, b) l’échantillonnage des études, c) la représentation des caractéristiques des études, d)
l’analyse des résultats, e) l’interprétation des résultats et f) le rapport de la
recension” (p. 14).
Les chapitres sur le choix d’une stratégie de recherche et sa planification
opérationnelle offrent au chercheur qui est familier avec ces principes et
concepts un excellent rappel des étapes qu’il doit franchir. Le chercheur qui
est moins averti aura probablement de la difficulté à utiliser les propositions
des auteurs de la monographie. Les sections sur la pertinence de la recherche
et les considérations déontologiques me paraissent tout à fait adéquates. Les
exemples de protocoles de recherche de même que les commentaires qui les
accompangnent sont fort intéressants. Là encore, j’aurais souhaité des
commentaires plus élaborés sur la théorie ou les modèles théoriques.
En résumé, il s’agit d’un volume fort bien fait qui me paraît de nature à
aider les chercheurs à préparer une demande de subvention de recherche.
Les quelques réserves que j’ai exprimées tiennent peut-être au fait que
j’aurais souhaité des élaborations de certains thèmes; elles témoignent donc
de l’intérêt avec lequel j’ai lu la monographie.
RÉFÉRENCE
Jackson, G.B. (1989). La méthodologie des recensions intégratives d’écrits.
Comportement humain: psychologie, éducation, médecine et thérapies comportementales, 3, 11–28. (Traduit par A. Leduc) (Article original publié en
1980)
Scrimping or Squandering: Financing Canadian Schools
edited by Stephen Lawton & Rouleen Wignall
Toronto: OISE Press, 1989. 214 pages.
REVIEWED BY BENJAMIN LEVIN, UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA
Because there is so little scholarly literature on the financing of Canadian
education, almost any new contribution is welcome. Fortunately, there is
more to appreciate in this volume of readings than simply its being in print.
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The volume’s contents do include some significant contributions, although
it also has some of the problems common in books of readings.
There are a total of seventeen papers (plus an introduction) divided into
five sections. Most of the papers were originally given at a Canadian
conference on school finance in early 1988. The first two sections deal with
overview issues, such as the meaning of quality in education (Jerry Paquette), the impact of demographic change (David Foot), and the changing
ability of governments to afford education (Wilfred Brown). The next two
sections treat finance issues in various provinces, with essays on Quebec
(Philippe Dupuis), B.C. (Barry Anderson), Alberta (Brian Fennell), Newfoundland (Ed Godsell), and Ontario (four essays). A final section has three
papers on policy and management aspects of finance and quality. The
conceptual design of the volume is thus quite interesting, moving from
general issues of finance and quality to their treatment in specific situations,
and finally to management implications.
The intent of looking at finance issues in their economic, social, political
and administrative context is a good one, but it is not fully realized. In the
course of working through the volume, one can learn quite a bit about the
financing of Canadian education, and some of the dynamics that drive it. Of
particular interest to me were the chapters on finance policy in the various
provinces. These are useful in contributing to a national perspective on
educational issues, so often lacking in the Canadian literature because of the
difficulty of staying in touch with what is happening in the various provinces. In this regard, more chapters about other provinces might usefully
have replaced one or two of the pieces on Ontario.
The editors’ introduction emphasizes issues of costs, quality, and efficiency. As in most edited volumes, however, the contributions are quite
diverse in approach, content, and style. Some of the essays are primarily
conceptual, while others are reports of empirical studies. A few of the latter
are rather specialized and may not interest many readers. Some treat the
issues primarily from a policy/politics point of view, while others present
data almost devoid of political context. Although the bulk of the volume
deals with public schools, there are also papers on the financing of day care
and of adult education.
All of these issues and approaches have their place, and can contribute to
our understanding of finance issues. However, the integrative contributions
that might have helped the reader make more of the papers are not in the
book. Thus, although many interesting things are said about the various
themes along the way, the reader will not necessarily end the book feeling
any of them has been explored comprehensively. This may be an unfair
expectation of a book of readings, but it is a feeling familiar to many
readers of edited collections.
Nonetheless, the book will be of interest not only to those working in the
area of educational finance, but also to those interested in the politics of
education, in policy development, and in the various substantive areas
considered in the book.
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Learning Difficulties and Emotional Problems
Edited by Roy I. Brown & Maurice Chazan
Calgary: Detselig Enterprises, 1989. 239 pages.
REVIEWED BY JEFF HUGHES, UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA
This book is based on papers delivered at the International Study Group for
Special Needs Education at the University of Calgary in 1987. The editors
intended to provide readers with a range of views from international authors
about learning difficulties and emotional problems, and to produce a book
of interest to a wide audience. The editors have succeeded admirably in
providing international flavour: a major feature of the text is its substantial
international authorship, which provides a refreshing view of the topic for
North American readers. However, the editors have clearly had more
difficulty compiling a text with wide appeal: the articles’ uneven quality
diminishes the impact of major themes underlying the more substantial
chapters.
One underlying theme is the need to redesign the delivery system in the
mental health field to allow (or require) clients to take more responsibility
for their own programs. The notion of empowering individuals to take
control of their own lives is not new but its role in mental health remains
controversial. In view of the criticisms of current models of delivery, the
arguments in support of an alternative model are persuasive and worthy of
further investigation. I found the chapter recommending the use of drama as
a vehicle through which clients can explore more assertive social roles a
valuable and practical illustration of how to go about empowering individuals.
A second major theme, linked to the first, is the use of metacognition as
a strategy for enhancing the learning of those with learning problems. Both
Ward and Ryba compellingly argue the value of ‘‘visual self-instruction
training’’ and ‘‘cognitive self-management.’’ The discussion of programs of
instruction, including Feuerstein’s ‘‘Instrumental Enrichment’’ program and
Das’s ‘‘Information Processing’’ program, provide the reader with a very
useful evaluation of these and other specific strategies, and represent vital
reading for professionals in this field.
This book shows that educational failure and personal failure are inextricably linked, and together result in people whose lives are characterized by
lack of maturity, poor judgments, and missed opportunities, and are all too
often touched by violence. In view of the personal and social disorganization
that so frequently surrounds these people, it is little wonder that they do not
have an advocacy agency working on their behalf. For readers working in
rehabilitation or special education, the relationship between academic failure
and emotional and behavioural stability will come as no surprise, but the
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suggestions for assistance with these problems will come as a welcome
addition for most professionals.
Despite the uneven nature of the contributions, the breadth of views and
the importance of some of these views to those concerned with the relationship between emotional problems and learning difficulties makes this book
a valuable addition to the library.
Le monopole public de l’éducation
par Jean-Luc Migué et Richard Marceau
Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1989. 195 pages.
RECENSION PAR JEAN MOISSET, UNIVERSITÉ LAVAL
Le secteur de l’éducation, au Québec comme ailleurs, n’est pas réputé pour
être particulièrement révolutionnaire. Mais sous les dehors d’un conservatisme certain, suite à un mouvement de fond lent traversé à l’occasion de
quelques fortes vagues, les systèmes d’éducation, un peu partout dans les
pays industriels, ont connu des changements relativement importants depuis
la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Pour le meilleur, diront certains, pour
le pire, répondront d’autres. Mais, ajouterais-je, sûrement en réponse spontanée ou délibérée à des contraintes inexorables de sociétés elles-mêmes en
évolution. L’enjeu ici est de taille, tant sont nombreux et pesants les liens
que l’éducation entretient avec les autres secteurs, économique, politique,
social et culturel de la vie d’un pays.
En ce qui concerne le Québec, si l’ouvrage de Migué et Marceau, Le
monopole public de l’éducation, risque de ne pas être ce pavé dans la mare
que pourraient espérer bien des gens, il est et sera là en tout cas pour
démontrer, s’il en était besoin, que rien dans ce domaine n’est jamais
définitif ou définitivement acquis. Ce qui n’est pas une mauvaise chose en
soi, si cela signifie que ‘‘le système d’éducation est un champ continuel de
recherche, de développement et d’innovation, jamais statique mais plutôt
évolutif,’’ pour reprendre les termes de Gérard Éthier (1989, p. 7).
Il s’agit pour les auteurs de démontrer, à l’encontre de l’histoire dite
conventionnelle et de la pensée reçue, d’une part que le résultat de la
réforme scolaire des années 1960 au Québec n’a pas été la démocratisation
de l’enseignement mais plutôt la mainmise de l’État (ministère de l’Éducation) québécois sur le système scolaire et, d’autre part, que la plupart des
maux dont souffrent depuis les écoles . . . publiques québécoises pourraient
se résorber suite à un retour au régime de libre choix intégral et à la concurrence entre les établissements scolaires largement privatisés. Cela est peutêtre vite dit!
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Certes, le raisonnement, sous-tendu par le postulat de l’efficacité du
régime de libre concurrence et des vertus de l’autonomie individuelle, se
poursuit clair, rigoureux et bien documenté, même si les données empiriques
proviennent surtout des régions anglo-saxonnes voisines, à travers neuf
chapitres d’un texte dense et par moments ardu. Neuf chapitres, si l’on ne
tient pas compte d’une part de l’introduction dont la forme allégorique ou de
conte pour enfant: ‘‘Il était une fois, l’école fictive’’ n’illusionnera pas
longtemps le lecteur sur le caractère sérieux, voire austère de l’objet d’étude
et, d’autre part, de la conclusion dont le développement en ‘‘quelques
préceptes généraux’’ est bien conforme au ton général quelque peu pontifiant
de l’ouvrage.
Ces neuf chapitres pourraient être regroupés comme suit: une toile de
fond historique brossée à grands traits de l’évolution de l’enseignement
précollégial au Québec au cours des trois dernières décennies (chap. II, p.
5–24) et concluant sur le double paradoxe de la forte poussée des dépenses
et de la faiblesse des rendements scolaires d’une part, et de la survie de la
croyance dans l’injection de ressources additionnelles comme moyen d’améliorer la performance des écoles d’autre part; une analyse économique
(coûts-performance) de l’école privée et publique qui forme l’élément central
de l’ouvrage (chap. III, IV et V) et qui conclut à la supériorité nette de la
première sur la seconde, même si ‘‘le mérite de l’excellence et de l’autonomie n’est pas exclusif à l’école privée’’ (p. 57); une analyse politique de la
place des pouvoirs publics dans l’éducation et de la convergence des intérêts
entre deux groupes d’acteurs-clés du système, les politiciens et les votants
médians (classes moyennes) d’une part, les administrateurs scolaires et les
enseignants d’autre part (chap. VI, VII et VIII); une analyse sociologique
des organisations scolaires sous deux angles, politique et économique,
concluant à la nécessaire ‘‘médiocrité de l’école’’ fonctionnant comme une
entreprise bureaucratique dans le cadre d’un régime de monopole public
(chap. IX et X).
Contre les retombées positives traditionnellement reconnues à la réforme
scolaire du Québec, notamment l’accélération de la scolarisation et une plus
grande égalité des chances, les auteurs rétorquent: qu’il n’y a pas de relation
positive nécessaire entre école publique et qualité des services éducatifs
dispensés; qu’il n’y a pas de relation négative nécessaire entre école publique et coût des services éducatifs dispensés; qu’il n’y a pas de relation
positive nécessaire entre école publique et rendements scolaires des élèves;
qu’il n’y a pas de relation positive nécessaire entre école publique et démocratie. Les données à cet égard sont pour le moins ambiguës et contradictoires; qu’il n’y a pas de relation positive nécessaire entre monopole public
de l’éducation et l’égalité des chances ou la mobilité sociale pour les moins
fortunés. Au contraire!
En réalité, soutiennent-ils pour finir, la réforme scolaire a plutôt abouti
à “l’explosion des budgets et des coûts tandis que la performance des élèves,
loin de s’améliorer, régressait, . . . et à la réglementation centralisée de
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l’administration du personnel, du régime pédagogique et du financement” (p.
177).
Malgré tout, dans la perspective d’une recherche de solutions, les auteurs
reconnaissent que ‘‘le Québec jouit d’un certain avantage institutionnel, celui
de n’avoir pas à inventer de toutes pièces un réseau inexistant’’ (p. 181). Ce
n’est pas rien puisque, pour combattre la ‘‘médiocrité uniformisée’’ qui est
devenue la marque de fabrique de l’école . . . publique québécoise, ‘‘il lui
suffit (au Québec) d’ouvrir sans réserve ni contraintes factices le régime
public à la concurrence privée. Ce choix franc élargira le choix des parents
et, l’histoire le confirme, les amènera à collaborer plus intensément à la
marche de l’école. La concurrence sur le marché des étudiants et des autres
ressources servira de substitut aux contrôles hiérarchiques néfastes et
suscitera l’autonomie souhaitée’’ (p. 181).
Plus qu’‘‘une réflexion sur la démocratie, appliquée à l’école, à la
lumière de l’économique’’ (préface de Jean-Paul Desbiens, p. ix), le livre de
Migué et Marceau me semble un acte de foi dans l’autonomie individuelle
et un hymne à la libre concurrence.
Les auteurs réussiront-ils à convaincre de leur point de vue? Aux lecteurs
de répondre, mais je soulignerai pour ma part que l’argumentation est
tricotée serrée et bénéficiera sans doute de l’auréole scientifique qu’apportent généralement les analyses quantitatives. Le chapitre V sur les bons
d’étude et les crédits fiscaux et le chapitre VII sur les choix politiques et la
tendance centrale sont à ce double égard exemplaires.
Pourtant, comme si c’est trop beau pour être vrai, les auteurs eux-mêmes
donnent l’occasion de penser que, si adhésion il y a à leur thèse, elle ne sera
ni totale ni contagieuse. Certes, écrivent-ils, ‘‘en dépit du préjugé nettement
favorable dont jouit l’école privée chez nous, on ne discerne pas de mouvement de fond en faveur de l’option du libre choix malgré sa supériorité
manifeste’’ (p. 183). À cela, deux raisons, semble-t-il, pourraient être
invoquées qui, si elles n’invalident pas la thèse des auteurs mettent en relief
son caractère par trop extrémiste. La première est fournie par le théorème du
votant médian lui-même qui, somme toute, trouve son intérêt dans la situation actuelle de services éducatifs estimés valables, distribués de manière
plus ou moins uniforme entre les diverses régions du Québec et dispensés de
façon plus ou moins équivalente aux élèves, quelle que soit leur origine
socioéconomique et ethnoculturelle. La seconde est liée un peu à l’histoire
et pourrait être ainsi formulée: le régime de libre entreprise ou de libre
concurrence n’est pas une entité abstraite, mais une réalité vivante qui a pris
naissance dans un contexte historique déterminé et qui s’est développé
depuis. Il a fait ses preuves, pourrait-on dire, et si on en connaît les vertus,
on en connaît également les limites.
Est-il nécessaire de traduire en rappelant que la formidable machine à
produire et la croissance économique phénoménale qui en ont résulté, durant
ses plus beaux jours, n’avaient pas empêché—et c’est un euphémisme!—
l’exploitation et la marginalisation de millions d’êtres humains? Faut-il aussi
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rappeler que, laissé à lui-même et poussé à l’extrême dans sa logique, ce
régime avait déjà entraîné le monde au bord de l’abîme?
Nous voilà bien loin de l’éducation. Pas tellement! De toute façon, ce
sont les auteurs qui nous y auraient conduits. Certes, l’histoire nous montre
également qu’au Québec comme dans la plupart des pays industriels avant
la prise en charge par les états centraux des systèmes d’éducation, l’enseignement restait le privilège d’une certaine élite. Cela étant d’autant plus vrai
que l’on monte dans l’échelle de cet enseignement. Je ne me risquerais pas
cependant à dire si cet enseignement était de qualité supérieure ou inférieure
comparativement à celle de l’enseignement dispensé aujourd’hui. Une telle
question, tranchée allègrement par certains observateurs et analystes, est
beaucoup plus délicate et complexe qu’on le croit. Il en est de même de la
comparaison entre la performance de l’école privée et celle de l’école
publique. Quoiqu’il en soit, la présence de l’école privée dans le réseau
scolaire québécois est légitime et cette légitimité se passe bien de l’affaiblissement sinon de la suppression de l’école publique. Et réciproquement . . .
De la même manière, il ne doit pas y avoir grand monde à être contre une
saine émulation entre les institutions, voire entre les élèves. Voilà déjà
pourtant longtemps que la sagesse ancienne condamnait les extrêmes,
invitant à rechercher la vertu du juste milieu.
C’est que l’homme, homo oeconomicus ou homme tout court, n’est pas
un être parfaitement rationnel au comportement purement logique. Les
qualités, ou mieux les aspirations, qui sont les siennes, notamment celles de
liberté, d’égalité et de fraternité, sont forcément contingentes. Évidemment
une société constituée d’individus de ‘‘rationalité limitée,’’ pour reprendre
l’expression de Herbert Simon, ne peut pas être parfaitement rationnelle, ni
les gouvernements, même démocratiquement constitués, qui en émanent. De
ce point de vue, le coupable, si l’on peut parler ainsi, référant aux tragédies
qui ont jalonné la marche en avant de l’humanité, n’est ni la ‘‘main’’ du
libre marché d’Adam Smith, ni le ‘‘pied’’ de l’intervention étatique de
Milton Friedman mais le magique ‘‘invisible’’ naïvement recherché par les
uns et par les autres, avec les conséquences néfastes qu’on lui connaît. Et,
en éducation comme dans les autres secteurs, dans notre monde de plus en
plus de turbulences et d’incertitudes, le progrès véritable, nous semble-t-il,
devra emprunter la voie certes difficile de la conjugaison de la ‘‘souplesse
de l’autonomie et de la décentralisation’’ et de la ‘‘synergie des orientations
et des choix transversaux.’’
Il n’y a pas à dire! Qu’on soit d’accord ou pas avec les auteurs, on
trouvera dans cet ouvrage un véritable stimulant pour la pensée, tant par la
richesse des informations qu’il a réunies que par la densité de la réflexion.
Puissent donc lecteurs et lectrices en être nombreux.
RÉFÉRENCE
Éthier, G. (1989). La gestion de l’excellence en éducation. Québec: Presses de
l’Université du Québec.
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Curriculum and Assessment Reform
By Andrew Hargreaves
Toronto: OISE, 1989. xiv + 192 pages.
REVIEWED BY MURRAY ROSS, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
Andy Hargreaves’ Curriculum and Assessment Reform is a critical discussion of recent British attempts to reform curriculum and methods of
assessment. Its chapters consist of articles which have appeared elsewhere
during the last decade, and which represent Hargreaves’s thinking on such
topics as school centred curriculum reform, the National Curriculum,
discipline-based curriculum, teacher culture, and the dangers of assessmentdriven curriculum planning.
In Part One, Hargreaves is concerned with school centred innovation
(SCI), the reasons for its lack of success, and the manner in which its failure
paved the way for the centrally mandated National Curriculum. To a large
degree Hargreaves sees the anti-research mentality of teachers as a root
cause of the failure of SCI. He claims that teachers’ mistrust of educational
research has combined with their faith in teacher experience and folk
wisdom to dissipate the counter-hegemonic potential that school centred
curriculum reform might have had for working-class children. Teachers’
knowledge and experience, says Hargreaves, are too narrow to be sufficient,
too divorced from the wider determinants of classroom practice—the
economics and politics of education—to offer the guidance necessary for
effective reform. However, the pernicious influence of the culture of
teachers can be minimized by reforming the school and social structures that
interfere with teachers’ critical reflection on current practice.
In his discussion of assessment, Hargreaves draws on Jürgen Habermas
and Michel Foucault to provide an interpretive framework for understanding
the importance which educational policy makers have placed on assessment.
Hargreaves deploys Habermas’s work on the state’s role in managing
legitimation crises to explain the political necessity of curriculum and
assessment reform. He then utilizes Foucault’s notions of discipline and
panopticism to describe the manner in which crises of motivation are being
managed with examinations and records of achievement. Hargreaves notes
that assessment reform has been justified in terms of the need to motivate
disaffected students and aid employers in selecting qualified job candidates.
His analysis attempts to show that the current and proposed forms of
assessment will not succeed in this dual task, that in fact they will likely
intensify the sense of alienation felt by many students and further disincline
them from engaging in serious study.
Genuine curriculum reform will not take place, he suggests, without
changes to the work and culture of teachers. Nor will it take place unless we
reverse the trend toward centralized models of curriculum development
which preserve and strengthen ‘‘the hegemonic, academic curriculum.’’
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These models, along with the emphasis on system-wide pupil assessments
and standardized records of achievement, will continue to tighten the links
between education and social selection to the detriment of comprehensive
schooling.
Curriculum and Assessment Reform is somewhat of a disappointment.
The discussion, although wide-ranging and periodically illuminating, is too
often superficial just when careful and detailed argument is called for. For
example, Hargreaves’ condescending treatment of teachers and their distaste
for educational research invites the reader to suppose that teachers, their
subject loyalties, and their faith in experience are among the main obstacles
barring the path of progress. He insists he is not interested in blaming
teachers, who are ‘‘neither foolish nor dumb’’ (p. 91). It is the conditions of
their work, controlled by others, that shape teaching practice and limit the
vision of teachers. But to insist that teachers fail to see that their vision is
limited and their horizons circumscribed by the authority structures of
education is to imply that they are being somewhat foolish or dumb. Among
those in authority who do shape the conditions of teacher work are
researchers and experts, but Hargreaves suggests that teachers are wrong to
dismiss them. It is ironic that Hargreaves recruits Foucault in order to make
the rather obvious point that examinations and assessments sustain hierarchy
and threaten pupil autonomy, while he ignores Foucault’s work on the role
of the expert in the disempowerment of the subjects and objects of study.
While his analysis may prove to be the correct one, it is not evident from
his sketchy argument that it is so. Much more needs to be said before it is
clear that teachers are not justified in their contempt for educational ‘‘expertise,’’ or in their commitment to the academic-based curriculum.
Hargreaves notes that the ‘‘hegemonic, academic curriculum . . . has a
tenacious grip on the educational systems of most modern societies,’’ and
gives ‘‘disproportionate weighting to academic, intellectual achievements
above all others’’ (p. 165). Since Hargreaves is discussing education he
ought to explain why an academic focus is misplaced in educational institutions. On what conception of education is Hargreaves drawing?
In his discussion of the National Curriculum he bemoans the fact that
mathematics, English and science are given the highest curricular priority,
followed by modern languages, history, geography, creative arts, and
physical education. To strengthen this point he elsewhere draws an odd
distinction between ‘‘practical, aesthetic, and personal and social achievements’’ and ‘‘intellectual, and academic ones’’ (p. 165). What are personal
and social achievements, and in what way are they not intellectual achievements? If they are indeed intellectual achievements how is it they cannot be
pursued and developed within the academic curriculum? Hargreaves complains that ‘‘there will be little time or place for social and personal education, political education, environmental education, development education,
integrated studies . . . and peace studies’’ (p. 64). It is not clear why issues
in political education, development education or environmental education
cannot be taken up in the disciplinary frameworks of history, geography or
science. Indeed they commonly are. It may be granted that what typically
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249
passes for science, history or mathematics in schools is too narrow or dull
or too removed from pressing social issues. This fact, if it is a fact, does not
support the conclusion that science, history, or mathematics as intellectual
disciplines do not deserve the priority they are given in schools. At least it
is not obvious that it does, and so further argument is called for.
Asia and the Pacific: Issues of Educational Policy, Curriculum and Practice
Edited by Donald C. Wilson, David L. Grossman, & Kerry J. Kennedy
Calgary: Detselig Enterprises, 1990. 198 pages.
REVIEWED BY GEOFFREY MILBURN, UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO
The theme of Asia and the Pacific, a selection of papers read at a recent
international social studies conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, is
clearly stated: given the shift in political and economic interests towards the
Pacific region in the last quarter century, the school curriculum should now
be changed both in subject matter (a greater focus on the countries of the
region) and in method of delivery (with special attention paid to cooperative
learning) to prepare students to face the future with greater knowledge and
confidence. In any such revision, the major burden will fall on social
studies: “Can social studies education,” a conference organizer asks, “which
tends toward a static view of the world . . . deal with the dynamics of global
change as reflected in the rapid emergence of Asia and the Pacific in world
affairs?“ (p. ii).
To give credit where due, the various contributors to Asia and the Pacific
have succeeded in indicating where these new directions may lead. The first
five papers are devoted to such “policy issues” as Canada’s role in the
Pacific, and national plans for educational change in South Korea and the
Philippines; the second group of articles deals chiefly with the state of the
social studies curriculum in such countries as Tonga, Malaysia, Japan, and
South Korea; and the final section consists of outlines of ten classroom
activities designed to encourage cultural understanding and social responsibility. Introductory essays and commentaries on each section give a certain
cohesion to a diverse group of papers written by authors from a dozen
countries. The overall project, edited by scholars in three countries (a more
onerous task, I suspect, than they have reported) is clearly successful in
terms of a useful exchange of ideas on an important subject by a very
diverse group of authors.
It is not clear to me, however, that the school systems are ready to deal
with, or ought to deal with, “Asia and the Pacific” in the way the co-editors
intend. It must be very difficult to study a region if you are not sure what
countries, or which parts of countries, should be included: the map on the
front cover (which includes part of Lake Michigan but excludes South
America) is symptomatic of difficulties in this regard. More importantly, I
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am not persuaded that an emphasis in the curriculum on studies of particular
regions—especially if those studies seem to be stimulated largely by economic pressures—is entirely warranted. I was disappointed by the disproportionate attention paid to motives for study not based on a clearly defined
conception of what an entire educational programme ought to include. It
may indeed be important for students, for example, to examine the development of South Korea in recent years, but the educational reasons for so
doing—for including that item of subject matter in the curriculum— ought
to be made very clear.
In this context, some statements in the book are problematic. A conference chairperson wishes to “attempt to align our contradictory past into a
workable congruence with our future” (p. ii), a phrase which would surely
have struck a sympathetic note in certain offices in 1984. If an editor’s call
for a “new agenda for social studies education—one that will provide new
directions, new metaphors and new structures that will allow educators to
help young people enter the next century” (p. 3) is intended merely to jolt
readers into considering alternative content and procedures in social studies
education, perhaps its use may be justified. But if it is representative of the
kinds of argument that will be used to demand revisions to social studies
education in the next two or three years, then it should be set in a much
wider context. Important prior questions about the purpose of social studies
in schools and about the relationship of social studies to other subjects
should be answered before those revisions are introduced.
The emphasis of the volume (perhaps inevitably, given the location of the
conference at which the papers were originally delivered) is North American. Over half the authors are North American, as are two editors. The
book’s tone book is to some extent set by the first two chapters, which
consider first Canada’s role in the “Pacific Era” (the introductory address for
the conference), and then British Columbia’s “initiatives designed to address
the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region” (p. 17). After such
official pronouncements, I found the text (and the sub-texts) of the articles
by authors from other countries to be a decided contrast. Several authors
make reference directly or indirectly to difficulties in providing education in
authoritarian countries. On occasion, a governing ideology is frankly admitted; “students should form a correct attitude towards labor” (p. 126) is an
example of a “basic guideline” for curriculum reform offered in one article.
The issue of ideological loadings in curricular principles imported into the
Pacific region from North America is raised directly by only one author, but
hinted at by several others.
The “classroom activities” presented in the book (about 40% of the
chapters, but only 25% of the pages) are worth careful study. Although there
is a touch of condescension about their inclusion—the sample lessons in this
book should be looked upon “with generous spirit,” observes a commentator
(p. 195)—their recommended classroom procedures are often imaginative
and provocative. But in terms of content and commitment they are also
symptomatic of the many difficulties facing social studies in contemporary
schools.

CJE Vol. 16, No. 2

Transcription

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