I liked the juxtaposition of Dewey and Skinner for this week’s readings. Two people extremely influential in their fields but with very different ideas about the nature of science used for education and education as a science. It would be interesting to observe a conversation between the two about Skinner’s recommendations of how Behaviorism could be used in education. In Dewey’s writing he warns about the hasty use of science as a way of locking teachers into “rules” executed without increasing teacher intelligence for the change in actions. To me, Skinner’s article and recommendations of teaching mathematics solely through Behaviorism is a great example of a hasty use of scientific findings applied to education. Maybe, at the time, when Behaviorism was a hot topic, it might have felt like one of the few scientific options useful for “improving” educations. Though Skinner did not view Behaviorism as part of the Science of Education, Dewey makes the point that when other sciences are applied to education, they become the Science of Education. Maybe Skinner would have different recommendations if he viewed Education as a Science rather than a “Technology.” I think Dewey would rather view the findings of the Science of Education as lenses through which improve the art of teaching rather than a set of rules and guidelines to follow, as presented by Skinner. I love how Dewey presents the Science of Education to be more complex than Physics or Mathematics and, therefore, in need of the most judicious application of gained knowledge. I also believe that many of Dewey’s views and recommendations about the Science of Education are true today even though they were written in 1929 (though, as a Science, Education has come quite a long way). I have found threads from this reading woven in much of what I have learned previously about the Science of Education (and some about the Nature of Science for that matter).
Skinner’s articles presents me with the first definition of learning I have come across in the reading for this course. He writes ” an organism learns by producing changes in its environment.” – a definition of behaviorism. Skinner views his “training” of animals (and humans) as learning. I do not disagree, but I do think that Dewey would hope that learning encompassed more than “training” the student. Skinner’s ideas presented in the articles lead me to view his “machines” more as a training device than a device that would lead to student understanding. Not that I’m saying training doesn’t have a role in learning, it just doesn’t provide students with enough understanding to function in society. I would rather train a baby to roll over in a pool than wait until it is old enough to understand why it would drown. But students learning Mathematics through behaviorism will never understand why they behave the way they do and can’t build upon this understanding in new situations.
Tags: Behaviorism, definition of learning, Dewey, Science of Education, Skinner
I agree with all of your ideas. Before I began to read Dewey’s article, I had a bias about the validity of his writing on current educational studies since it was written in 1920s. however, I saw that I was wrong to suspect about the currency of the article, his ideas are still up to date.
I agree with you about Skinner’s idea of mathematics teaching. I also believe that with behavioral methods students can not understand the reasoning behind their actions and apply them in new situations.
I definitely agree that the Dewey article still makes a lot of valid and topical points with regards to the science of education, even though it was written over 80 years ago. Maybe one of the reasons it has held up well is because Dewey was more of a philosopher. His could present his views somewhat free of qualitative or quantitative research studies. He presented ideas and left it to others to refine, apply, and build upon them.