[AAACE-NLA] Associationism, Behaviorism, Constructivism

[Andrea Wilder]

Tom--

I love it.  Thanks for filling in this essential history.  With brain 
scans we can now see how this works.


Andrea

On Jun 30, 2007, at 7:31 PM, tsticht at znet.com wrote:

> June 30, 2007
>
> Associationism, Behaviorism, Constructivism: The ABCs of Adult Literacy
> Education
>
> Tom Sticht
> International Consultant in Adult Education
>
>> From World War I in 1917, through World War II in the early 1940s, 
>> and up to
> the Vietnam War of the 1960s and early 1970s, the teaching of reading 
> to
> illiterate, poorly literate, or non-English speaking solders was based 
> on
> three different theoretical understandings of what makes learning
> effective.
>
> During World War I,  J. Duncan Spaeth, Director of Education at Camp
> Wheeler, Georgia and Camp Jackson, South Carolina, wrote the Camp 
> Reader
> for American Solders for teaching illiterate adults and non-English
> speakers to speak, read, and write the English language. In what is the
> earliest discussion of the theory of learning applied to adult 
> literacy and
> language learning that I have found, Spaeth explains the four 
> communication
> processes of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. He goes on to
> explain, "All four processes involve the formation of association 
> habits,
> and the first principle to be emphasized is therefore repetition." This
> principle followed from the understanding that  learning involves the
> formation of connections or "habits" among ideas or thoughts and that 
> this
> happens automatically when the ideas are associated together 
> repeatedly.
>
> In the latter part of 1929, the Secretary of the Interior in the
> administration of President Hoover appointed a National Advisory 
> Committee
> on Illiteracy. The next year, Dr. William S. Gray of the University of
> Chicago was asked to prepare guidance for teachers of adult literacy. 
> In
> response, he prepared the Manual for Teachers of Adult Illiterates.  In
> 1934 this was revised by Caroline Whipple, Mary Guyton, and Elizabeth
> Morriss, all adult educators, and renamed Manual for Teachers of Adult
> Elementary Students.
>
> While the shift from "illiterates" to "adult elementary education"
> represented a major redirection in thinking about the needs of adult
> literacy and non-English speaking adults, the learning theory of
> associationism was still in effect. This is clear in a section on 
> teaching
> reading to native-born adults or limited education: "During the first
> period students acquire a sight vocabulary of words of immediate value 
> in
> adult reading and learn to read and interpret simple sentences 
> relating to
> familiar experiences. This is a period in which special effort is 
> necessary
> to establish rich, vivid, and permanent associations between printed or
> written words and their meaning and pronunciations."
>
> During World War II, Paul Witty, a student of William S. Gray's, was 
> called
> upon to develop literacy programs for illiterate, poorly literate, and
> non-English speaking recruits into the Army. As with Spaeth and Gray, 
> Witty
> also followed the associationist principle of repetition, repetition,
> repetition to form associations among sight words and their underlying
> meanings. However, in addition to associationism, Witty was aware of 
> the
> growing interest in behaviorism, with its understanding of learning as
> stimulus-response sequences. In a 1939 textbook entitled Reading and 
> the
> Educative Process, Witty and his co-author, David Kopel, state, 
> "Perhaps
> the unique characteristic of modern education is its recognition and
> application of the principle that the results of instruction should 
> affect
> and influence behavior (p. iv). In designing the Army Reader Witty 
> divided
> it into four units which progressed in difficulty. In keeping with the
> behavioral approach, he developed pre-unit and post-unit tests to 
> measure
> the student's change in reading behavior.  This approach to the 
> application
> of behavioral principles to the design of instruction was to find a 
> much
> larger educational application in later years with the introduction and
> widespread use of programmed instruction.
>
> In the late 1960s and early 1970s I was called upon to develop literacy
> programs for soldiers during the Vietnam War and into the All Volunteer
> Army. In developing what was called the Functional Literacy (FLIT) 
> program
> I made use of associationism, behaviorism, and the newly emerging
> constructivism. The latter was based on the cognitive psychology that
> followed behaviorism in the mid-1950s and incorporated the concepts of
> mental functioning between stimulus and response that were excluded in
> behaviorism. The information processing models of mental functioning, 
> with
> concepts of sensory memory, working memory and long term memory 
> provided a
> cognitive architecture for analyzing some mental functions between 
> stimuli
> and responses, and the central idea was developed that knowledge is
> actively constructed during learning rather than resulting from the
> automatic formation of associations due to repetition.
>
> In the FLIT program two curriculum strands were developed. The first 
> strand
> followed behavioral principles and consisted of instruction sequenced 
> in
> modules similar to Witty's World War II Army Reader, with pre-and
> post-module tests to assess learning mastery of the material in the
> modules. This was self-paced, individualized learning in a 
> semi-programmed
> manner. In strand two students worked in teams to study written 
> passages of
> some 300-400 words and transform them into either pictures, matrices, 
> or
> flow charts. These were social constructivist activities involving the
> active use of prior knowledge to transform the new information in the
> written passages from one form of representation into another
> representation of the knowledge in the passages.
>
> An important point is that, in the movement from associationism, to
> behaviorism, to constructivism in World Wars I, II, and the Vietnam 
> War,
> all the literacy programs used functional context materials 
> representing
> the daily lives of the soldiers and the future work they would be 
> doing.
> This ensured that experiential prior knowledge was formed as the basis 
> for
> comprehending new knowledge, it motivated learning by making clear the
> connection between the content of the lessons and its practical use, 
> and it
> facilitated transfer of literacy learning from the classroom to the 
> "real
> world" in which the soldiers would live - - or die.
>
> It is now clear, after over a hundred years of the practice of adult
> literacy education, that the ABCs of learning are still valid in 
> various
> teaching and learning situations. Repetition, observations of changes 
> in
> behavior, and the active construction of knowledge all have their
> applications in the teaching and learning process. And always, 
> teaching the
> ABCs in a functional context serves the interests of adult learners.
>
> Thomas G. Sticht
> International Consultant in Adult Education
> 2062 Valley View Blvd.
> El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
> Email: tsticht at aznet.net
>
>
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