[NLA] Re: Science vs Educational Practice in Medicine, Physics, and Literacy

[AWilder106@aol.com]

Friends:

Now that the euphoria over my successful scramble to get to San Francisco and 
the 1 day Conference and then to get home again in one weekend has passed, I 
want to make a couple of comments about Tom's latest post.

Practically the last event of the Sunday session was a video of a class in 
Alaska.  The video came from a study by Judith Alamprese et al. about program 
design--what program features best support adults learning to read and write 
better.  The principles were those that good school teachers all over must 
use--students sitting at tables in a horseshoe so the teacher could reach 
everyone easily, student board work and interaction with other students, 
repetition in many ways (finger writing, reading, board underlining, 
speaking) of the lesson for the day;  teacher knowledge of the subject;  
visual guides for student learning--underlining, splitting by syllables;  a 
local newspaper story as the lesson focus; words taken from that story as key 
vocabulary;  homework.

There were other program features mentioned.  Basically, the program was run 
like a school, with classes following logically after each other, 
specific/specified entry and exit times into courses and the school, written 
reports for the students, end of year conferences with each student with 
recommendations for future course work.  As I recall, there was high 
retention.

1)  I came home to read Tom's post which said essentially that imprecise 
government language reflected an imprecise understanding of what is to be 
measured.  In adult literacy (or any literacy) the unit of analysis is THE 
CLASS.  In physics, whatever, the unit of analysis is THE STUDY.  So it's an 
apples and oranges problem.

2)  Tom also mentions double blind treatment studies which are a mainstay of 
medical research.  I would (and do) argue that it is unethical to hide from 
the teacher exactly what they are supposed to be doing.  The relationship 
between teacher and student is almost sacred--wasn't it Ellis who made up 
stories for his students at Mt. Holyoke, then billed them as truth?  Those 
outside don't understand why he was punished by not teaching for a year, I 
think teachers got it pretty clearly.  There is a difference--Ellis knew he 
was a fraud, the double-blind studies mask the knowledge from the researcher. 
 Again, the two situations don't compute.

3)  Ethics. If you have a fairly clear idea that one way of teaching is 
better than another, what business do you have setting up a treatment/control 
group model?

The above is a broad brush treatment of current issues, but I am pretty sure 
of my ground.  Thanks, Tom for making the issues so clear, your thinking is a 
great help in learning how to understand the arguments and counter them.

Andrea