Alfie Kohn’s critique of explicit instruction and Cognitive Load Theory reveals more about his educational philosophy than about how learning actually works
“This is the piece Kohn habitually gets backwards. He wants motivation to precede success. But in reality - and this is backed by a substantial body of research in educational psychology - motivation is often a result of success, not its precursor. Students become motivated when they feel competent.”
This is the essential rub. I started off my career being fed Kohn - and found very quickly what actually motivated my struggling learners was a taste of legitimate success - and if I could scaffold their experience (no, not water it down - they’d know it if I did anyway) enough to get them that often first taste of competence, it would become the drug they’d be addicted to the rest of their lives. AND they would have the motivation to take more and more learning “risks” with me - as their trusted guide.
It’s almost like Kohn wants to ensure that most students remain frustrated, disengaged, and demoralized by their educational experience.
Thanks for this deeply thorough dive into this deeply flawed argument. And for the lit review. (Do you sleep?)
We were exposed to quite a lot of educational research on my PGCE (and later in a pointless teaching Masters) and I was more up for engaging than some in my cohort. But it usually ended up being something like 'we interviewed 7 teachers in Delaware in 1974' or 'we studied tribal initiation rights in Kenya' or worst of all some meta-analysis of 25,000 studies about CPD or some such. And then in school extremely tentative or niche conclusions were presented as the 'evidence base' for some policy of dubious relevance. The whole experience left me rather cynical, as you can probably tell.
It's striking that these folks group "guided play" together with "Spontaneous Exploration and Discovery" as if they were one and the same and represent largely the same approach.
When I was critiquing the WNCP curriculum framework here in Western Canada years ago I noted how often the phrase "personal strategies" and "child-invented procedures" was used in the framework documents alongside descriptions of exactly what procedures are expected to manifest: doubling, counting on, regrouping etc etc, in a manner clearly designed to encourage teachers to "nudge students toward these" or even present them with templates which are then sold to students as if they were their own ideas. Many of these "strategies" came with standard names of their own, well-worn by use in the teacher consultant industry, putting the lie to the idea that children typically invent them out of whole cloth without teacher input. Instead, one is left with the impression that teachers are to play stage manager (or magician), being as subtle as they possibly can, in steering students to "discover" predetermined methods and approaches. Once you see it the amaterish hocus-pocus of the idea is ludicrous and the impression does not go away.
Don't get me wrong -- I don't think it's inappropriate to guide students into making "discoveries" you have planned for them to stumble upon. This is a tried-and-true approach, in the best tradition of Plato, and everyone knows that children delight in such findings. But it is NOT what the label on the box claims: original inventions of the child; teacher input and guidance is an essential ingredient. And construing the two as one and the same is a misrepresentation of a fundamental principle of instruction. Further, marketing research about adult guidance and nudging of children in a mode of discovery as "independent" discovery is simply fraudulent. It needs to be called out for what it is.
“This is the piece Kohn habitually gets backwards. He wants motivation to precede success. But in reality - and this is backed by a substantial body of research in educational psychology - motivation is often a result of success, not its precursor. Students become motivated when they feel competent.”
This is the essential rub. I started off my career being fed Kohn - and found very quickly what actually motivated my struggling learners was a taste of legitimate success - and if I could scaffold their experience (no, not water it down - they’d know it if I did anyway) enough to get them that often first taste of competence, it would become the drug they’d be addicted to the rest of their lives. AND they would have the motivation to take more and more learning “risks” with me - as their trusted guide.
It’s almost like Kohn wants to ensure that most students remain frustrated, disengaged, and demoralized by their educational experience.
Thanks for this deeply thorough dive into this deeply flawed argument. And for the lit review. (Do you sleep?)
We were exposed to quite a lot of educational research on my PGCE (and later in a pointless teaching Masters) and I was more up for engaging than some in my cohort. But it usually ended up being something like 'we interviewed 7 teachers in Delaware in 1974' or 'we studied tribal initiation rights in Kenya' or worst of all some meta-analysis of 25,000 studies about CPD or some such. And then in school extremely tentative or niche conclusions were presented as the 'evidence base' for some policy of dubious relevance. The whole experience left me rather cynical, as you can probably tell.
It's striking that these folks group "guided play" together with "Spontaneous Exploration and Discovery" as if they were one and the same and represent largely the same approach.
When I was critiquing the WNCP curriculum framework here in Western Canada years ago I noted how often the phrase "personal strategies" and "child-invented procedures" was used in the framework documents alongside descriptions of exactly what procedures are expected to manifest: doubling, counting on, regrouping etc etc, in a manner clearly designed to encourage teachers to "nudge students toward these" or even present them with templates which are then sold to students as if they were their own ideas. Many of these "strategies" came with standard names of their own, well-worn by use in the teacher consultant industry, putting the lie to the idea that children typically invent them out of whole cloth without teacher input. Instead, one is left with the impression that teachers are to play stage manager (or magician), being as subtle as they possibly can, in steering students to "discover" predetermined methods and approaches. Once you see it the amaterish hocus-pocus of the idea is ludicrous and the impression does not go away.
Don't get me wrong -- I don't think it's inappropriate to guide students into making "discoveries" you have planned for them to stumble upon. This is a tried-and-true approach, in the best tradition of Plato, and everyone knows that children delight in such findings. But it is NOT what the label on the box claims: original inventions of the child; teacher input and guidance is an essential ingredient. And construing the two as one and the same is a misrepresentation of a fundamental principle of instruction. Further, marketing research about adult guidance and nudging of children in a mode of discovery as "independent" discovery is simply fraudulent. It needs to be called out for what it is.