[From Chris Cherpas (951115.0918) PT)]
[re: > Kent McClelland (951115.0930 CT)]
[re: >> Chris Cherpas (951114.1846 PT)]
cc:
...any specific prescriptions for educational practice based on PCT?
KM:
Chris, if you're interested in educational issues and PCT, I'd also take a
look at Hugh Petrie's book, The Dilemma of Enquiry and Learning (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981). Hugh's book is helpful, but on a fairly
high abstractly philosophical plane.
cc:
Thanks for the reference -- I'll check it out.
KM:
The nuts-and-bolts-techniques-of-PCT-education primer you want
remains to be written, as far as I know.
cc:
An interesting challenge, no doubt. From what I can see so far
the PCT view of learning is a selectionist process, an approach
I've been pursuing for a while, but from behavioristic and/or
genetic algorithm/programming perspective.
KM:
One thing to consider about pedagogical techniques is that PCT is
unfriendly to any one-size-fits-all thinking. The "disturbances" offered
by a teacher in the classroom will be resisted in different ways by
different students, depending on the perceptions they happen to be
controlling. Thus, I expect that a variety of techniques may be a
practical necessity if you hope to reach all your students.
cc:
Sounds like another (unintended) parallel with Skinner's work, where
individualization is king. I believe that as much as 70% of what's done
in the classroom is better taught via a mentor, so that individualization
is paramount. I'd also say that over half of that tutoring/modeling/etc
could be done with computer/multi-media technology, but, then
it's my job to develop/believe in such systems, so I'm biased.
KM:
More generally, PCT seems to accord with the sorts of humanistic techniques
that treat each individual student as an independently guided control
system or, in conventional language, respect the integrity of each student.
cc:
Sounds, again, like individualization is a crucial piece. In my view,
unless there's an EDUCATIONAL reason for everybody to be herded together
(e.g., cooperative learning, socially-oriented skills, etc.), group schooling
is just coercion. Most of us spent, literally, YEARS sitting in an assigned
seat, being quiet, waiting for some little piece of what was going on to be
relevant to us. It's amazing how much boredom we've all endured or how much
we held back questions or new way of expressing something, because we didn't
want to be trampled by the lock-step cadance of the classroom routine.
Normal schooling makes me want to vomit. Of course, my wife says she
loved school.
KM:
My take on teaching is that the teacher is trying to help students develop
control systems similar to the ones the teacher himself or herself is using
and to recognize and adopt the reference standards that are generally
accepted by members of the academic community of the discipline being
taught.
cc:
Ah. This is helpful for me -- to hear this framed in PCT language.
KM:
PCT teaching and learning has an emotional side. In order to get students
to start reorganizing the relevant control systems, I think it's usually
necessary to present a disturbance ("new information" in conventional
terms) that is extreme enough to be impossible for the student to handle
with his or her current control systems. As the student then experiences a
prolonged perceptual error and tries to cope by learning through
reorganization, one inevitable side effect will be feelings of frustration
or distress.
cc:
Interesting. Not exactly "errorless" learning, eh? This whole issue is
unresolved for me: i.e., how much should the student effortlessly,
painlessly flow from one state of skill to the next _versus_ how much
challenge/perceived error should be involved along the way. I think
there's value in both approaches. My experience developing computer-
based education is that one shouldn't just dismiss the "errorless"
approach out of hand -- it can feel really good and can make you
learn very quickly, almost as if you knew it all along but now can
apply it or say it in a new way that works better than before.
[lab lore aside:
Ever see Herb Terrace's work on errorless discrimination training in
pigeons? Birds that learned with errors subsequently display stimulus
generalization gradients where the peak is shifted away from the
"S-delta" (non-reinforced training stimulus), whereas birds that had
the distinction between the two stimuli exaggerated at first, then
gradually faded, had few or no errors, did not display the flapping
and other emotional outbursts of the errorful birds, and had
generalization gradients where the peak was right at the training
value (reinforced, discriminative stimulus), instead of shifted away.
I don't know what the implications exactly are, but maybe errorless
learning, so-called anyway, leaves you with more accurate discriminations.
I really don't know.
]
KM:
That's why it's important, I think, for PCT teachers to work hard on having
good relations with their students and building up trust, so that the
challenging problems they present and the high standards they maintain
aren't perceived by the students as punitive. And when students do succeed
in building new perceptual systems, so that they can control perceptions
better than they did before, the resultant feeling of exhilaration should
help to improve the teacher-student relationship even further, giving the
teacher some scope for imposing further challenges or demands.
cc:
Nice prescription for parenting too, my friend.
Greatly appreciated,
cc
