Prepared by:
Allan Collins
Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.
To appear in
K. Sheingold & M. Tucker, (Eds.), Restructuring
for Learning with
Technology. forthcoming
The Role of Computer Technology in Restructuring Schools1
Allan Collins
Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.
Northwestern University
Computer technology and electronic networks have been
slowly infusing the schools (see Becker, 1986). This equipment is unlikely
to end up in closets or even sit idle most of the time, because of
the widespread and growing use of such technology in both business and the
home. Hence there is a kind of "authenticity" (Brown, Collins,
& Duguid, 1989) to using this equipment in the eyes of students and
teachers; students want to use the technology because it represents the
future. In a society where most work is becoming computer-based, "school
work" cannot forever resist the change.
When a technology becomes widespread, whether it is the
book, the automobile, or television, it has ramifications throughout society,
including education. For example, the invention of the printing press and
the book had profound effects on education (Boorstin, 1983; Eisenstein,
1979). It made the ideas of universal literacy and public schooling possible,
and led to a deemphasis in teaching the art of memory. The automobile and
bus led to the consolidation of rural schools and the dispersion of people
to the suburbs, and in turn to the split between urban and suburban education,
and busing to achieve racial integration. Television and video technology
is even now having profound effects on education, such as the decline of
print culture and the rise of a visual culture, low tolerance for boredom,
and the loss of innocence for children (Postman, 1982). Similarly the computer
and the electronic network are likely to have profound impacts on education,
and it behooves us to consider these as we think about the issue of restructuring
schools.
There are two views of education that have been at war
for centuries: the didactic or information-transmission view, and the constructivist
view (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Cohen, l988a). The didactic view
is the prevailing view among the general public. It holds that teachers
should be masters of particular knowledge domains and that their job is
to transmit their expertise about these domains to students by lectures
and recitations. Students should memorize the facts and concepts of the
domain, and practice the skills of the domain until they have mastered them,
and they should be able to demonstrate their mastery on appropriate tests.
The opposing constructivist view, which is characteristic of Dewey, Vygotsky,
and Montessori, holds that teachers should be facilitators, who help students
construct their own understandings and capabilities in carrying out challenging
tasks. This view puts the emphasis on the activity of the student rather
than on that of the teacher. Despite its predominance in the leading education
schools (Cohen, 1988a), the constructivist view has made little headway
in penetrating public education in America, or more generally in the world
at large. But the trends I describe below may change that.
There are three different uses of technology in classrooms:
(l) as tools for carrying out tasks, such as word processors, spreadsheets,
programming languages, and electronic network systems, (2) as integrated
learning systems, such as WICAT has developed, which include a set of curriculum
exercises that students work on individually and which keep records of student
progress for guiding the student and reporting to the teacher,2
and (3) as simulations and games, such as "Rocky's Boots" or "Where
in the World is Carmen San Diego," where students engage in computer-based
activities designed to be motivating and educational. The argument in this
paper is that the tool uses of technology are most likely to be the way
computers are widely used in classrooms, and that integrated learning systems
and simulations (though important for educational purposes) will only penetrate
schools to the degree that tool uses provide a rationale for buying computers.
So the trends discussed below assume the tool uses of computers, though
they apply to other uses as well.
It is obviously difficult to anticipate all the effects
of computer technologies, and it may well be that I will overlook some of
the most important of these. But researchers have begun to observe how these
new technologies are impacting the schools, so we can at least make some
informed speculations. There are at least eight major trends that can be
identified from the literature and from observations in schools where computers
are being used by teachers.
1. A shift from whole class to small group instruction
Where teachers use computers, normally one or two students
are assigned to each computer. Teachers do not find it feasible to maintain
all the students in lockstep, and so they move to an individualized instruction
model of teaching (Schofield & Verban, 1988). This shows up in Gearhart,
Herman, Baker, Novak, and Whittier's (1990) data on Apple Classroom of Tomorrow
(ACOT) classrooms as a dramatic decrease in teacher-led activities (from
over 70% of the time when computers are not in use to less than 10% when
computers are in use) and a corresponding increase in independent or cooperative
activities. This means teachers begin to talk to individual students, and
develop an idea of what their understanding and their confusions are. Usually
teachers have an inflated idea of what their students understand. So watching
individual students struggle with problems may give teachers a better understanding
of their students. It also means that students are more likely to go at
their own pace and often in their own direction (Scardamalia, Bereiter,
McLean, Swallow, & Woodruff, 1989), which for teachers can create problems
of control.
2. A shift from lecture and recitation to coaching
As part of the shift from whole class to individualized
instruction, there is a shift from didactic approaches to a constructivist
approach. Schofield and Verban (1988) document this shift in terms of language,
where there is a shift from second person constructions ("You should
do this") to first person constructions ("Let's try this").
Gearhart, et al. (1990) document this shift in ACOT classrooms from teacher-directed
activities (approximately 70% of the time off the computer to less than
10% on the computer) to activities facilitated by the teachers (from about
20% to 50%). The introduction of a third party, the computer, into the situation
encourages the teacher to play the role of a coach in many of the same ways
that a piano encourages the teacher to play the role of a coach in a piano
lesson. Much of the learning is meant to take place between the student
and the computer, and this puts the teacher into the role of observer and
guide to make sure those interactions are beneficial to the student's learning.
3. A shift from working with better students to working
with weaker students
In whole class instruction, teachers carry on a dialogue
with their better students (Schofield & Verban, 1988). This is because
it is the better students who raise their hands to offer ideas. Teachers
do not like to call on weaker students, because they do not `want to embarrass
them in front of the class. In a classroom where students are working on
computers, the teacher is naturally drawn to students who need help, which
is generally the weaker students. Schofield and Verban (1988) documents
that in one classroom where there were individual computers, two of the
weaker students received four to five times as much attention from the teacher
as the more advanced students. We see this same shift in the classrooms
we have observed in New York and Cambridge. However, as Schofield (personal
communication) points out there may be a tendency for the teacher to overlook
students who need help, but do not ask for it, because the teacher is usually
very busy in these classrooms.
4. A shift toward more engaged students
In settings where computers have been put at the disposal
of students in some long-term activity or project, researchers have reported
dramatic increases in students' engagement (Brown & Campione, in press;
Carver, 1990; Scardamalia, et al., 1989; Schofield & Verban, 1988).
For example, Carver finds that students who were so bored with their classes
that they would sleep through them, are eagerly engaged in a project to
construct a HyperCard museum exhibit about their city. Similarly, Schofield
and Verban report that students compare how far along they are in their
geometry curriculum and even fight over who gets to use the computer during
the time between classes. Dwyer, Ringstaff, and Sandholtz (1990) cite several
examples in ACOT classrooms where teachers were encouraged to do more activities
on computers, because students were so highly engaged during such activities.
It may be that the reported increases in engagement are due to the novelty
of the computer, but it is unlikely that this accounts for the entire increase.
To the degree that the computer supports long-term effort rather than short
exercises (a shift that Gearhart et al. (1990) find in computer-based language
arts, but not in mathematics), there is suggestive evidence from these studies
that students become invested in the activities they carry out on computers.
5. A shift from assessment based on test performance
to assessment based on products, progress, and effort
Assessment in most classes is based on students' performance
on tests given after different sections of the curriculum are completed.
The introduction of computer technology and the shift to individualized
instruction (see above) moves assessment away from the classroom test, which
seems inappropriate to teachers under the circumstances. Schofield and Verban
(1988) report that the geometry teacher they studied moved toward assessing
students based on the effort and progress they made: in that case the system
would not let them go on until they had solved each problem. Where the teacher
sets up a project-based curriculum, then evaluation of students tends to
be based on the products that emerge from the student's efforts. But for
the present this creates problems for many teachers, because they do not
know how to objectively assess such products. This problem has been solved
for writing assessment in terms of wholistic and primary trait scoring methods,
and clearly some such scheme is needed for project-based work (Frederiksen
& Collins, 1989; Wiggins, 1989; Wolfe, 1989).
6. A shift from a competitive to a cooperative social
structure
In the normal classroom, students are working individually
and competing against each other for grades, except where students drop
out of the competition because of social pressures or repeated failure.
Brown and Campione (in press), Newman (1990), and Scardamalia, et al. (1989)
find a shift toward a more cooperative social structure in their classrooms,
where a network provides a common database for students. Scardamalia, et
al. report how students comment on each other's notes, telling what they
find interesting and what they cannot understand. Dwyer, et al. (1990) report
striking increases in cooperative behavior in ACOT classrooms as reported
from the teachers' journals they collected. Gearhart, et al. (1990) found
an increase in cooperative behavior in mathematics classrooms (from 10%
of the time without computers to about 40% with computers), but essentially
no cooperative behavior in language arts classrooms in either case. Even
Harel (1990), who had fourth graders working independently to produce a
Logo program to teach fractions to third graders, found students sharing
ideas and expertise on how to accomplish certain things in Logo. However,
Schofield and Verban (1988) found an increase in competition in the geometry
classroom they studied, and it may well be that integrated learning systems
generally encourage students to compete to get through the material faster.
One study in Israel (Hativa, 1989) suggests that this depends on how easy
the program makes it for students to compare their progress.
7. A shift from students all learning the same things
to learning different things
An underlying assumption of the educational system is
that every student must learn certain basic knowledge and skills. This assumption
leads to failing students who haven't mastered parts of the curriculum,
and directing student's efforts to their weaknesses rather than their strengths
(Drucker, 1989). The electronic network and shared database foster a different
view of knowledge, where expertise is spread among different participants
and brought together in a common space (Pea, in press). The National Geographic
Kids Network (Foster & Julyan, 1988) is an embodiment of this idea of
distributed knowledge, where students all over the country collect scientific
data and exchange ideas with each other and working scientists. Because
of the trend toward individualized education, there is likely to be a secondary
trend toward breaking the lockstep of everyone learning the same thing in
the same way at the same time. This trend can be seen in the classrooms
described by Dwyer, et al. (1990), where students worked on different parts
of complex projects, such as a model of their city; in the classroom described
by Carver (1990), where students studied different aspects of their city
to develop a museum exhibit; in the classrooms described by Scardamalia,
et al. (1989), where students conducted research on different social studies
and science topics; and in the school described by Newman (1990), where
students collected different data on the weather. So the lockstep approach
in schools, where everyone had to master all of the same knowledge and skills,
is likely to change with the advent of computer technology.
8. A shift from the primacy of verbal thinking to the
integration of visual and verbal thinking
As Postman (1982) has argued, the invention of the book
transformed society from concrete, situated thinking to abstract, logical
thinking. The visual media, i.e., television, cinema, and computers, have
begun to develop a new kind of visual thinking, and a number of educators
(e.g., Bransford, Sherwood, Kinzer, & Hasselbring, 1987; Wilson, 1986)
have begun to explore how to use visual media to enhance learning. The computer
and electronic network potentially provide instant access to the world's
accumulated knowledge, in both verbal and visual forms. This development
may slowly undermine the primacy of the book, the lecture, and their accoutrements,
such as the multiple-choice test and the recitation class.
These effects of technology are subversive to some of
society's most deeply held beliefs and assumptions about education. In particular
they make tenuous the view that the teachers' job is to impart their expertise
to students, and that the role of assessment is to determine whether the
students have acquired the imparted expertise. So, inadvertently, technology
seems to be coming down on the side of the constructivists, who have been
trying to change the prevailing societal view of education, unsuccessfully
to date.
Resistances to Technology
Cohen (1988b) and Cuban (1986) have argued persuasively
that computer technology is likely to have little effect on the schools.
They argue that to the degree technology is flexible, it will be bent to
fit existing practice, and to the degree it can not be bent to fit existing
practice, it will not be used. People interested in restructuring schools
need to understand the resistances to change, some of which are particular
to technology, and some of which are general, in order to identify the key
leverage points on changing a well-entrenched system.
Any restructuring of schools can only take place over
an extended period of time. The effects of the printing press were still
being felt hundreds of years after its invention in the development of public
education. So I will take a long-term view of how restructuring schools
might take place and where a sustained effort is worthwhile.
Over the long term, important current issues, such as
the costs of computer technology, its unreliability, and teachers' unfamiliarity
with its use, become non-issues. The costs continue to fall, and as computers
become more integral to everything we do, this trend can only accelerate.
It is a fundamental trend in economics that in relative terms the cost of
goods decreases and the cost of labor increases (Drucker, 1986), so that
compared to teachers' salaries, computers will appear incredibly cheap in
the next century.
The problem of teachers' familiarity with computers will
also decrease as people come to rely on computers for writing, calculating,
and communicating. This can already be seen to be happening: It is easier
to type into a word processor than to write by hand.3
It is easier to do your taxes on a computer than to do them by hand. And
it is easier to send electronic mail than to post a letter. These uses will
become commonplace among college students, secretaries, and bookkeepers,
so there is every reason to believe they will become commonplace among teachers.
The problems of dealing with computers, such as getting them fixed, will
become minor when they are used much of the time.
But of course the resolution of those kinds of problems
does not mean that computers will be used in schools. Television is pervasive
in society, and will probably never be widely used in schools. So why should
computers come to be widely used when television is not? My argument is
that the computer's most pervasive uses, which are related to work, are
becoming necessary to accomplish school goals. Schools are in the business
of teaching students how to read and write and calculate and think. As the
computer comes to be an essential tool for doing these things in society
at large, its use by students for doing these things is inevitable. We do
not teach people how to drive cars by having them ride bicycles, nor will
we teach people how to work by having them use paper and pencil, arithmetic
procedures, and library card catalogues, when work has become computer-based.
There is a related argument that computers make the teacher's
job more difficult, just as do television and film strips on the one hand,
and the new science curricula of the 1960's on the other. The latter required
teachers to put in extra time gathering materials together and saddled them
with a difficult management problem of coordinating a class of students
working independently on experiments or discussing the meaning of what they
had done. It is true that computers make management more difficult when
there are only a few computers in the classroom. The teacher has to figure
out what other students will do when they are not working on computers,
or has to allow a few students to miss a lesson while they work on the computer.
But again, these are only problems in the transition to a society where
most work involves computers. If students have ready access to a computer
at all times, such as with a portable computer that can be connected to
a network in different places, then these management problems go away. Students
will do much of their work on computers instead of working with text books
or worksheets. The management problem, then, is likely to be similar to
that teachers currently face when children are working individually or in
small groups. To the degree the tasks students are doing with computers
are more engaging than those they currently carry out with textbooks and
worksheets, it will make the teacher's job easier.
Another argument against the widespread use of computers
is that teachers are not willing to give up their control and authority
over students to the computers. There are two aspects of this argument.
One aspect is that teachers want to be masters of everything that comes
up in their classrooms, and because computers contain more information than
teachers can possibly master, they will lose authority. The other aspect
is that teachers like to hold the attention of students, and if students
are off working on their own, then the teacher has lost their attention,
as well as control over what they are doing. The first issue is currently
exacerbated by the fact that teachers do not know a lot about computers,
which as I argued earlier is a problem in the transition to a more computer-literate
society. But there is a residual problem of giving students access to more
knowledge than a teacher ever can master, together with the second aspect
of students going off on their own. Both aspects of the problem of control
can only be overcome by a changed view of the teacher's role to that of
a facilitator of students' self-learning, rather than as a dispenser of
information. Such a change in belief will not come easily, and will only
come about slowly with the introduction of computers into school, as I discuss
below.
Dwyer, et al. (1990) report a a difficulty that many
of their teachers feel when they allow students to work on computers in
ACOT classrooms. They seem to feel guilty that they are not teaching the
students and they feel nervous about all the talking and sharing of information
among the students. These feelings alternate with very positive feelings
that the students are highly engaged and actively learning. So ACOT teachers
in the initial phases tend to vacillate between enthusiasm for having students
do a lot of their work on computers, and pulling back to use their old teaching
methods in order to keep the class under control. Dwyer, et al. argue that
it is important for teachers as they work through the transition to a more
constructivist view of teaching to have the support of other teachers who
have worked through or are working through the same transition.
Some people argue that teachers are not capable of using
computers effectively. For example, in science labs they usually have students
follow a fixed procedure (unlike scientific experiments), so that students
know at each step what is supposed to happen. The argument is that when
teachers use computers they will also follow a rigid format, since this
procedural approach stems from a desire to make sure all students succeed.
In fact, the computer-based integrated learning systems, such as WICAT's
math curriculum, partially incorporate such an approach. This argument is
surely correct to the degree that computers can be fit by teachers into
their normal way of doing things. But the tools and simulations in computers
are not content free. They make it possible for students to take over part
of their own learning. To the degree computers support students' autonomous
learning, and it is the goal of most educational software designers to do
so, the particular pedagogical approach of teachers will be less decisive
in determining how students learn.
A general view in organization theory is that American
schools form a loosely coupled system (Weick, 1976) and while they readily
adopt changes at the periphery of the system (e.g., model schools, computer
labs), it is very difficult to make pervasive changes at the core of the
system. While this may not be the reason constructivist teaching methods
have failed to penetrate the schools (Cohen, 1988a), it surely will slow
down any change that is introduced. But, if computers are widely perceived
as necessary for school work, it will not stop their general adoption. In
the next section I outline a set of principles designed to speed up adoption
of any beneficial innovation.
Counterposed to the view that schools are a loosely coupled
system, is the view that American schools have developed a system of institutions
including the graded school, multiple-choice testing, curriculum and materials,
teacher education, and lecture and recitation methods that are interlocking
and self-sustaining. If you perturb any one of those parts of the system,
the other parts will pressure the system to return to its original state.
All of these institutions derive from and support a didactic model of education.
Cuban (1986) makes an argument of this kind in terms of what he calls "situationally
constrained choice," which incorporates (l) school and classroom structures,
and (2) the culture of teaching, including the beliefs of teachers. These
work together in his view to restrict what teachers can do in adopting different
innovations.
On this argument, if you try to introduce computers for
students to do their work, then it will be sustained only to the degree
it fits this prevailing institutional structure. Since computers undermine
the lecture and recitation methods of teaching, and promote the student
as self-learner, they do not fit this institutional structure, and will
squeezed out by it. Integrated learning systems, such as WICAT, have dealt
with this problem by preparing curricular materials that fit easily into
the current system. The materials mimic the kinds of test items in prevailing
practice and so they produce gains on the tests that the current system
embodies. They may have some early success in penetrating schools, because
they have tried to fit into the current system. But my argument is that
it is the tool-based uses of computers in society that will ultimately sustain
their penetration of schools. The interlocking system described can certainly
slow down the process, but it cannot prevent it, because the nature of education
must inevitably adapt to the nature of work in society.4
Finally, there is a major resistance to the infusion
of technology into the schools from the underlying belief structure in the
society about the nature of education (Cohen, l988a, l988b). This didactic
view of education holds that teachers must be experts in their field and
that their job is to transmit their knowledge and skills directly to students.
On this view learning involves memorizing essential facts and concepts,
and performing procedures until they are automatic. The practices we cited
above, such as the lecture and recitation methods of teaching, and testing
for acquisition of facts, concepts, and procedures, are manifestations of
this underlying societal belief about the nature of education. The constructivist
view, that education should attempt to create environments where students
can construct their own understandings and skills, is held only by a small
minority of educators, and has no chance of affecting practice until the
underlying societal belief changes. On this view, technology will only be
used to reinforce existing practices, such as drill and practice and multiple-choice
testing.
I believe this argument is essentially correct and important
for technologists to understand. But even if technology is allowed into
the schools under the guise of reinforcing existing practice, once there
it will take on a life of its own. It is important to stress that many of
the tool uses of computers (e.g., word processing, mathematical computation,
graphing of data) are quite compatible with current practice. Teachers will
not object to students typing their essays, or even in the long run to their
using computers to solve mathematical problems. Once teachers let computers
in the door, then the kinds of effects described in the first section of
the paper will occur and teaching practices will change. And just as a change
in practices with respect to racial integration led eventually to a change
in racial attitudes,5 so a
change in practices will slowly lead to a change in the educational beliefs
of the society.
However, the arguments I have made so far only suggest
that a change to a more constructivist education is likely to occur over
the long run. A more salient question is whether there is anything that
can be done to speed up the change. The next section proposes a structural
change in school systems that would speed adoption of any change that improves
educational practice, whether involving computers or not. The final section
addresses the issues of how technology can most effectively be deployed
to foster educational reform.
Principles for the Design of A Self-Improving School
System
A major problem is that the present structure of schooling
militates against change. Students are assigned to schools and are required
to go to them. If they are bad schools they will continue to exist: there
is no way for them to fail. The only thing a school system can do to fix
a bad school is to send in a new principal, and usually she is prevented
from making many changes due to constraints of the situation.
Another problem is that it is difficult to start new
schools successfully. The problem isn't that parents or teachers are prevented
from starting schools, but that the incentive is for parents to keep their
children in free public schools rather than paying for them in private schools.
So the only schools that are started (other than those funded by foundations)
are schools for wealthy parents. This is not where our major educational
problems lie: they lie particularly among poor and minority populations.
What we need to encourage innovation is a system that
fosters creation of new schools and allows failing schools to die, particularly
in our large urban areas where the problems of American schooling are concentrated.
Such a system would stimulate existing schools to do everything possible
to insure their survival. We need incentives and constraints that operate
to make sure that the most difficult students and problems are dealt with,
and that natural selection operates on the basis of the quality of the schooling
and not on some extraneous basis, such as the race of the school principal,
the quality of the athletic program, or the endowment of the school with
facilities or technologies. A new system especially needs to avoid the current
problem of creating schools that serve as dumping grounds for the educationally
disadvantaged.
In order to facilitate innovations in schools, I would
like to propose the following design principles. They are an attempt to
synthesize the essential elements of various proposals that have been made
for a redesigned school system (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Reigeluth, 1987;
Tucker, 1989).
1. A mechanism whereby a group of parents and teachers
in a school district can start a school.
The idea is that if parents and teachers in a school
district want to start a school and they have a minimum of, say, 25 to 50
students, they should receive funds from the district at least equal to
the current cost per pupil in the district. They also should receive space
in a current building proportional to the number of students, from one classroom
to an entire building.6 Since
there will also be costs associated with starting a school (money for books,
technology, etc.), these should be provided by a special fund on a per pupil
basis. This fund should also provide resources for expansion of schools
to take on more pupils. In addition, the school district should provide
staff for encouraging successful schools, either within or outside the district,
to set up branches in the district.
2. A mechanism whereby schools are closed.
If an existing school loses enrollment below a certain
minimum (say 20 pupils), then it should be closed, and its students forced
to choose another school within the system (see below).
3. A national agency should provide information on each
school to parents and children.
To make effective choices, parents and children need
to be provided information relevant to the educational policy and success
of the schools, such as the kind of information available in national guides
to colleges (Reigeluth, 1987). This kind of information is best collected
by a national agency, to avoid dishonesty by local officials. The kinds
of information the agency might provide include information about dropout
rates, test scores of students in the school, college entrance and graduation
rates of graduates from the school, random samples of opinions of former
students and their parents, descriptions of the school's operation and facilities
by neutral observers, occupation profiles of former students, etc. Ideally
the test scores provided would be based on a "systemically valid"
testing system (see Frederiksen & Collins, 1989). Information should
be provided to all parents and children who will be making a school-choice
decision in the near future with respect to all the schools they might consider.
Where a school is new, only a statement of intent is possible, unless it
is a branch of an existing school or coalition of schools.
4. Students above some age level should be provided alternatives
to further schooling.
If students wish to drop out of school above some age
level, for example, 12 years of age (Sizer, 1984), then they should be allowed
certain options. One option might be to leave school, if they can find full-time
employment with a legitimate business enterprise. Another option might be
full-time participation in a licensed program, such as a music camp or boy
scouts. Most important, there should be a national alternative service program,
such as VISTA, that will accept any student over the legal age. But students
who take one of these options before age 18 should be encouraged once a
year to enroll in a school of their choice to continue their education.
As Drucker (1968) argues, we should be encouraging continuing education,
where people receive education throughout their lives, rather than extended
education, where they are kept out of the workforce through a longer and
longer adolescence.
5. Schools should be allowed to select the students they
prefer, but there should be incentives to choose hard-to-place students.
If the proposed system is successful, different schools
will specialize in the kind of education they offer. This means that their
educational policies will probably be more successful for certain kinds
of students than for others. If the system restricts schools' ability to
select their students, it will restrict their ability to specialize. This
would undercut a major goal of the plan. That raises the problem that schools
may all want to accept certain kinds of students and reject others. To offset
this tendency, greater financial resources should follow the hard-to-place
students. In fact, the resources need to be enough greater to offset the
systematic preferences of schools, which suggests some kind of market mechanism.
Both Reigeluth (1987) and Tucker (1989) have suggested such a mechanism.
These principles are designed to produce a system where
there will be both individual schools and coalitions of schools with specialized
goals. There might be technology-based schools, art schools, Montessori
schools, essential schools (Sizer, 1984), college preparatory schools, special
schools for handicapped children, vocational schools, schools for girls,
schools of design and engineering, schools for gifted in particular fields,
back-to-basic schools, schools for particular minorities, bilingual schools,
and even comprehensive schools that avoid specialization.
This goes against a philosophy of having every kind of
student in every school in order to foster overall integration of society.
I would argue that specialized schools should be restricted from discrimination
in the same ways that colleges and businesses are restricted.7
But to the degree schools want to cater to students with particular interests
or abilities, they may develop techniques that are particularly effective.
The economic argument for the benefits of specialization applies equally
well to schools as to business and labor. The moral argument against specialization
loses force, given the inevitable disparity between urban and suburban school
systems and the widespread tracking in the comprehensive schools.
One might argue that most parents and students will pick
schools on the basis of proximity, or athletic ability, or better facilities,
even if you provide them with information to make choices on the basis of
educational quality. It is certainly true that most people will make their
choices partly on such bases. But most people make choices by considering
multiple factors, so that educational values are likely to be a factor to
some degree in their decisions. The effect of proximity can be diminished
by having multiple schools in each building, so that choices are made among
equidistant schools. The effect of athletics could be diminished if we eliminated
interschool athletic competition (as opposed to intraschool competition)
in favor of Little Leagues or professional sports programs. The effects
of facilities will be diminished if we equalize the distribution of resources
on a per pupil basis as proposed in the first principle. To the degree school
effectiveness is weighed at all in people's choices, it will bring a gradual
improvement in the quality of schools. The more it is weighed, the faster
the improvement.
Such a plan does not assume that parents know what is
best for their children. There will undoubtedly be schools that emphasize
drill and practice rather than thinking and that teach creation science
rather than evolution, and these will appeal to many parents. But such problems
are pervasive in the current system; over 80% of elementary school teachers
think the phases of the moon are caused by shadows from the earth, and that
the seasons are caused by changes in distance of the earth from the sun.
The proposal does not solve these problems, but it would make it easier
for people like Marva Collins (the black woman in Chicago who started an
academically-oriented elementary school) to start schools. I would argue
that most parents would want their children to go to such schools if they
were available.
Another argument against the plan is that rich parents
will subsidize the schools they send their children to by various means
and this will undermine the mechanisms for establishing educational equity
and for placing less desirable students. If parents want to subsidize the
schools, that is in fact all to the good: It will give schools more resources
to improve education. Whatever parents contribute is not likely to unbalance
the funding of education more than the current system of suburbs with high
per pupil expenditures and cities with low per pupil expenditures. However,
if equality in educational opportunity is in society's interests, as I believe
it is, then there is a rationale for offsetting parent subsidies with higher
per pupil expenditures for schools that do not receive such subsidies. In
principle, a market mechanism for placing less desirable students would
automatically act to offset such subsidies, since the prospect of subsidies
would enhance the value of students from wealthy families. So a market mechanism
might be the least controversial way to offset parent subsidies.
One of the arguments that might be made against such
a proposal is that it will produce a system like the college system in America,
and colleges are not noted for their willingness to innovate. In fact, the
most tradition-bound colleges, such as Harvard, are the most prestigious
and therefore their practices serve as models for other colleges. This pattern
inhibits the introduction of new practices, and serves to maintain the didactic
approach to education that pervades the traditional colleges.
In organization-theory terms (Scott, 1987), the problem
of educational improvement derives in part because it is difficult for consumers
to tell a better product from an inferior product, unlike with restaurants
and medical treatments. So in choosing colleges people rely mainly on prestige,
and since prestigious colleges obtain the best students and most famous
professors, they appear to be better on paper than their educational practices
warrant. This effect tends to undermine the drive for self-improvement of
any such plan in education.
However, I think it can be argued that in fact colleges
have been much more innovative than the public schools in America and form
the strongest part of our educational system. Certainly from the point of
view of infusion of technology and flexibility with curriculum, colleges
have been much more innovative. For example, there is more pressure on students
in colleges to do their work on computers, and it seems likely that within
ten years every college student in America will have their own personal
computer. And when new disciplines emerge, such as psychology or computer
science, they are much more readily adapted into the college curriculum
than the public school curriculum. The continual birth and death of colleges
encourages all colleges to seek their own market niches and to create programs
that parents and children will find valuable. It is particularly among the
less prestigious colleges, which serve the non-elites, that experimentation
and improvement through natural selection occurs. In public schooling it
is with the non-elites that our major problems lie, so that innovation is
likely to occur where it is most needed under the proposed plan.
If a diversity of schools arises, and people are given
the information necessary to make informed decisions, then the thesis of
this paper is that the system will evolve toward better schools. The more
effective schools will thrive and multiply, the less effective schools will
die out. Existing schools and their personnel will do everything they can
to enhance their chances for survival. There might evolve a preponderance
of certain types of schools (e.g., essential schools), but that would only
happen if they fulfilled the educational goals of a majority of parents
and children. However, it is important to recognize that such a plan will
not solve many of our schools' problems: it will only make it easier for
change to occur in a very resistant system.
The Uses of Technology to Foster Educational Reform
The arguments in this paper have several implications
as to what course of action school reformers and technologists should take
to foster change in schools to make them compatible with the way society
is changing. In the next century, an educated person will need to be able
to learn and think in a computational environment. Most schools do not teach
students these abilities now, and so a major change ought to be made in
the way schools function.
One implication is that the first step is to put computers
with powerful tool applications into the schools in as large numbers as
possible. Many people might object to this step, particularly in light of
the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow (ACOT) efforts, which have had at best marginal
success to date (Baker, Herman, & Gearhart, 1989). They would argue
that it is better to spend resources developing good educational software,
teacher training, or computer coordinators, in order to make sure the technology
that goes into the schools is used effectively. The trouble with that argument
is that it presupposes that good educational software or teacher training
or computer coordinators will lead to more effective use. In a few cases
that is true, but on a wide scale it is likely to fail. I would argue that
if you have computers that are easy to understand and that are powerful
for doing school work, then people will eventually figure out how to use
them. Using computers effectively in schools is difficult because of all
the resistances described above, and so most things you spend resources
on to improve usage will not work. We should not expect efforts such as
ACOT to succeed immediately. But society at large is making the transition
to computers, and the massive educational effort to make the transition
is reaching both students and teachers; Simon (1987) refers to this as "education
by immersion." So my argument is to put powerful, easy-to-use computers
into place, so that society's retooling of itself will have something to
work with in the schools.
Let me also add that the most powerful educational uses
of computers in the future may not be their tool uses. Rather, the uses
of computers for simulation, reflection, and video may be even more powerful
educationally. But it is the tool uses that are becoming necessary to do
work, and their usefulness to students and teachers will become readily
apparent to everyone. The other uses of computers will come into play once
computers have found their way into extensive use by schools:
Computers as simulated environments:
Computers allow students to carry out tasks they cannot normally carry out
in school, from running a business or city to troubleshooting a faulty circuit.
The possibility of doing tasks that are difficult or impossible to do in
school is one of the major values of computers for educational purposes
(Collins, 1990; Papert, 1980).
Computers as reflective environments:
Another powerful use of computers is for students to compare their own performance
to other people's performances on the same task (Bransford, Franks, Vye
& Sherwood, 1989). For example, in teacher education there might be
a video segment of expert and novice teachers teaching some subject matter
to students, with critiques on each lesson by experts from different viewpoints
and explanations by the teachers of what they were trying to accomplish.
Then a student teacher could compare a video of their own teaching to those
videos of other teachers (Collins & Brown, 1988; Lampert & Ball,
1990).
Computers as video environments:
There are vast video libraries of information that have accumulated over
the last 100 years, and the output will multiply with the commercialization
of the video camera. Video is a concrete medium, and people remember visual
information more easily that verbal information (Bower, 1972). Having access
to visual materials and explanations may well extend people's ability to
learn, particularly those who have difficulty learning from books and lectures
(Bransford, et al., 1987; Wilson, 1986).
In summary, because the nature of work is changing to
incorporate computers in many aspects, the nature of school work will make
a parallel change. This means that computers will come to be seen as necessary
tools for students and teachers in their school work. But there are other
powerful potential uses of computers for educational purposes. These uses
will develop more slowly, but are likely to occur as computers become commonplace
in schools and homes. All these uses of computers tend to be subversive
to the prevailing didactic view of education in society. Using computers
entails active learning, and this change in practice will eventually foster
a change in society's beliefs to a more constructivist view of education.
References
Anderson, J.A., Boyle, C.F., & Reiser, B.J. (1985).
Intelligent tutoring systems. Science 228, 456-468.
Baker, E.L., Herman, J.L., & Gearhart, M. (1989).
The ACOT report card: Effects on complex performances and attitude.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research
Association, San Francisco.
Becker, H.J. (1986, June). Instructional uses of school
computers: Reports form the 1985 national survey. Newsletter of the Center
for Social Organization of Schools. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University.
Boorstin, D.J. (1983). The discoverers. New York:
Random House.
Bower, G. (1972). Mental imagery and associative learning.
In L.W. Gregg (Ed.), Cognition in learning and memory. New York:
Wiley.
Bransford, J.D., Sherwood, RD., Kinzer, C.K., & Hasselbring,
T.S. (1987). Macro-contexts for learning: Initial findings and issues. Applied
Cognitive Psychology, 1, 93-108.
Bransford, J.D., Franks, J.J., Vye, N.J., & Sherwood,
R.D. (1989). New approaches to instruction: Because wisdom can't be told.
In S. Vosniadou & A. Ortony (Eds.), Similarity and analogical reasoning.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, A., & Campione, J. (in press). Fostering a
community of learners. Human Development.
Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated
cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1),
32-42.
Carver, S.M. (1990). Integrating interactive technologies
into classrooms: The Discover Rochester project. Paper presented at
the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Boston.
Chubb, J.E., & Moe, T.M. (1990). Politics, markets,
and America's schools. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Cohen, D.K. (l988a). Teaching practice: Plus ça
change.... In P. Jackson (Ed.), Contributing to educational change: Perspectives
on research and practice. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.
Cohen, D.K. (1988b). Educational technology and school
organization. In R.S. Nickerson & P. Zodhiates (Eds.), Technology
and education: Looking toward 2020. Hillsdale,NJ: Erlbaum.
Collins, A. (1990). Cognitive apprenticeship and instructional
technology. In B.F. Jones & L. Idol (Eds.), Dimensions of thinking
and cognitive instruction. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Collins, A., & Brown, J.S. (1988). The computer as
a tool for learning through reflection. In H. Mandl & A. Lesgold (Eds.),
Learning issues for intelligent tutoring systems. New York: Springer.
Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines. New York:
Teachers College Press.
Drucker, P.F. (1968). The age of discontinuity.
New York: Harper & Row.
Drucker, P.F. (1986,). The frontiers of management.
New York: E.P. Dutton.
Drucker, P.F. (1989). The new realities. New York:
Harper & Row.
Dwyer, D.C., Ringstaff, C., & Sandholtz, J. (1990).
The evolution of teachers' instructional beliefs and practices in high-access-to-technology
classrooms. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational
Research Association, Boston.
Eisenstein, E.L. (1979). The printing press as an
agent of change. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Foster, J. & Julyan, C. (1988). The National Geographic
Kids Network. Science and Children, 25(8). Washington,
DC: NSTA.
Frederiksen, J.R., & Collins, A. (1989). A systems
approach to educational testing. Educational Researcher, 18(9),
27-32.
Gearhart, M., Herman, J.L., Baker, E.L., Novak, J.R,
& Whittaker, A.K. (1990). A new mirror for the classroom: Using technology
to assess the effects of technology on instruction. Paper presented
at Apple Classroom of Tomorrow Symposium, Cupertino, CA.
Harel, I. (1990). Children as software designers: A constructionist
approach for learning mathematics. The Journal of Mathematical Behavior,
9(l), 3-93.
Hativa, N. (1989). Competition induced by traditional
CAI: Motivational, sociological, and instructional-design issues. Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the Amercian Educational Research Association,
San Francisco.
Lampert, M., & Ball, D. (1990). Using hypermedia
technology to support a new pedagogy of teacher education. National
Center for Research on Teacher Education Issues paper, East Lansing, MI:
Michigan State University.
Newman, D. (1990). Opportunities for research on the
organizational impact of school computers. Educational Researcher,
19(3), 8-13.
Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms. New York: Basic
Books.
Pea, R.D. (in press). Distributed intelligence and education.
In D. Perkins, M. West, J. Schwartz, & M. Wiske (Eds.), Teaching
for understanding in an age of technology.
Postman, N. (1982). The disappearance of childhood.
New York: Delacorte.
Reigeluth, C.M. (1987). The search for meaningful reform:
A third-wave educational system. Journal of Instructional Development,
10(4), 3-14.
Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (in press). Higher
levels of agency for children in the zone of proximal development: A challenge
for the design of new knowledge media. Journal of the Learning Sciences.
Scardamalia, M., Bereiter, C., McLean, R.S., Swallow,
J., & Woodruff, E. (1989). Computer-supported intentional learning environments.
Journal of Educational Computing Research, 5(1), 51-68.
Schofield, J.W., & Verban, D. (1988). Computer usage
in teaching mathematics: Issues which need answers. In D. Grouws & T.
Cooney (Eds.), The teaching of mathematics: A research agenda (Vol.
1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Scott, W.R. (1987). Organizations: Rational. natural
and open systems. (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Simon, H.A. (1987, Spring). The steam engine and the
computer: What makes technology revolutionary. Educom Bulletin, pp.
2-5.
Sizer, T.R. (1984). Horace's compromise. Boston:
Houghton-MiMin.
Toffler, A. (1970). Future shock. New York: Random
House.
Tucker, M.S. (1989, June 21). Creating an 'entrepreneurial'
school system. Education Week, p. 36.
Wattenberg, B.J. (1974). The real America. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday.
Weick, K.E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely
coupled as systems. Administrative Science Quarterly, 21,1-19.
Wiggins, G. (1989, May). A true test: Toward more authentic
and equitable assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, pp. 703-713.
Wolfe, D.P. (1987, December). Opening up assessment.
Educational Leadership, 24-29.