A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Toward a New Science of Instruction: Programmatic Investigations in Cognitive Science and Education--August 1993

Introduction

A Persistent Double Standard in Education

A century ago, in the newly industrializing United States economy, mass education evolved largely to serve the needs of mass production. Most workers were expected to perform isolated tasks within the production process, executing procedures rather than planning or evaluating them, and carrying out assignments rather than asking questions or offering ideas. It was therefore assumed that the majority of children, who would enter work of this nature, needed no more from their education than fundamental competency in reading and computation. Both job knowledge and the knowledge learned in school were conceived as sets of basic skills, applied to the job at hand with no necessary grasp of the larger purposes being served.

These larger purposes--the complex responsibilities of business, government, higher education, and the professions--were seen as the proper concerns of a small minority. As a result, a few students were held to higher expectations than the rest. They were encouraged to reach energetically for what today are called "higher-order" skills, which enable students to question and investigate assertions, devise and test hypotheses, analyze and solve problems, and apply knowledge beyond school boundaries. Education of this quality had been around for centuries, but it was reserved for those who would one day manage or govern.

These two standards of education--one for the majority and one for the elite--reflected the prevailing view that learning was a stepwise process, with sophisticated "thought" taking place only at the pinnacle. Learners were thought to acquire knowledge from the ground up, mastering elementary concepts and procedures before tackling complex problems. Moreover, it was thought that fundamental skills were best achieved through repetitive drill and practice and that factual content was best absorbed directly from declarative lectures or texts. "True" reasoning--the ability to interpret, assess, adapt and apply knowledge--was somehow activated only after enough basics were in place. Only a few students needed to proceed that far.

The double standard in American education may have evolved generations ago, but it persists today in the large gap between the quality of instruction received by students from privileged backgrounds and by children from economically disadvantaged communities. Though the distribution of the higher and lower standards may be somewhat different today than it was earlier in the century, those standards still fall on opposite sides of an economic dividing line. Today, however, that line frequently coincides with a racial or ethnic division, and another dividing line can often be perceived between boys and girls.

The Need for a Single Standard

Though it has long been clear to many scientists and educators that the hierarchic view of learning and the double education standard are outdated, replacing them is now urgent in this country. Rapid changes on several fronts--economic, demographic, and political--call for new forms of instruction that can raise all students to higher levels of thought and performance.

In the first place, the United States economy no longer relies so heavily on the manufacture of goods. Instead, the business of the country centers increasingly on an array of new commodities and services: information, communications, marketing, consulting, electronics. Where manufacturing continues to take place, its operations are being streamlined, with fewer workers taking more responsibility. Instead of working on fixed tasks in isolation from coworkers, employees are being asked by more and more companies to work in teams, set goals, meet budgets, solve on-the-job problems as they arise, and monitor productivity and resources. Moreover, research has begun to illuminate many complex forms of reasoning that underlie the performance of on-the-job work. These findings belie the notion that jobs can be performed unthinkingly and suggest that that idea has fostered too bleak a picture of human competence. As the workplace continues to change, workers will increasingly be expected to solve novel problems, to plan and communicate effectively, both orally and in writing, and to reason in a way that once was considered possible only at the peak of a long educational climb.

Second, as most Americans know, the transition to an altered economy coincides with extraordinary demographic changes. Growing segments of our population come from other parts of the world or from subcultures within our own country. Rising numbers of households are headed by women. More and more children are falling below the poverty line. As the standards of the workplace change, those entering the job market are increasingly women and/or members of racial or ethnic minorities. Unless long-standing patterns change, many who are most in need of better education will be the least likely to receive it.

Finally, the exercise of conscientious citizenship is becoming more demanding. Knowledge is expanding, and information is flowing at unprecedented rates. All Americans, native-born or immigrant, English-speaking or not, need to be able to understand and think critically about an intricate web of social and global concerns. What are the ethical implications of new technologies in medicine, biogenetics, artificial intelligence? Is it possible to repair environmental damage and still meet the needs of a growing world population? What are the potential hazards or benefits of economic protectionism? What are the comparative merits of plans to reduce the national budget deficit or to establish national health insurance? Voters will need to grasp such issues in order to be counted as members of an educated citizenry.

Newer Views of Learning

The growing complexity of the workplace and the world in general mean not only that we must enable all students to think and reason well but also that the tools and techniques applied to that goal must be sound. Fortunately, as the need for education reform and for a single education standard has evolved, a corresponding evolution has taken place in the science of human cognition. In recent decades, studies have shown that true learning is never passive or straightforward but richly active and complex. As NRCSL Director Lauren Resnick writes in the monograph Education and Learning to Think, the complexity of learning at all levels is "the most important single message of modern research." The "higher-order" skills of reasoning and problem solving are not the outcome of advanced education; they are integral to successful learning at every level, even the most lementary. "In fact," writes Resnick,
the term "higher-order" skills is probably itself fundamentally misleading, for it suggests that another set of skills, presumably called "lower order," need to come first. This assumption--that there is a sequence from lower level activities that do not require much independent thinking or judgment to higher level ones that do--colors much educational theory and practice. Implicitly at least, it justifies long years of drill on the "basics" before thinking and problem solving are demanded. Cognitive reading research on the nature of basic skills such as reading and mathematics provides a fundamental challenge to this assumption.
The challenge to which Resnick refers arises not only from evidence that intricate thought processes are involved even in simple addition and the fundamentals of reading but also from scientific findings about the nature of learning itself. Studies of human performance--in problem solving, expert instruction, text comprehension, the conduct of experiments, and the construction of arguments and explanations--all support the view that learning is a lifelong process in which new knowledge must continually be meshed with existing knowledge in the learner's mind. This process is greatly affected by the accuracy and coherence of new and existing knowledge and by every aspect of the setting in which learning and instruction take place, from the human interactions to the use of language and the management of time and materials.

People who learn and perform well are able not only to construct accurate mental representations of knowledge but to adapt and reconfigure these constructions in response to new information. They constantly assess their comprehension, connect new information with concepts they already have, repair mismatches between existing and new knowledge, identify barriers to further understanding, resolve ambiguities, and so on. The relation between knowledge and the mind of the learner can no longer be viewed as the relation between contents and container. Understanding is more organic than manufactured, and it is best attained by treating knowledge as if it were a living ecosystem rather than a static artifact.

The Proper Aim of Instruction: "Mindful Architects" of Knowledge

In a paper entitled "The Maturing of the Relationship Between the Science of Learning and Cognition and Educational Practice," NRCSL Director Robert Glaser recalls that "philosophers from Plato to Erasmus" regarded education as consisting not so much of instruction as of "study"--study being equated with reasoning and inquiry. Instruction played a subordinate role because it was meant to render itself unnecessary. Its purpose, Glaser says, was to turn students into "mindful architects of their own knowledge," master builders who could engage in constructive thought and exploration based upon their experiences. This did not mean that instruction was not of the utmost importance, but that it was an indispensable means toward an end that would supersede it.

But the double education standard in this country permitted an emphasis on instruction almost as an end in itself. It was possible to meet the need for a literate but not truly "mindful" workforce through drill, practice, memorization, and lecture, all of which worked best when students were passive and unquestioning. In a sense, cognitive science has rediscovered and elaborated what the ancient philosophers knew. By investigating the active, probing nature of true learning, research has reinforced the centuries-old idea that the point of education is not simply to deliver knowledge and pass along mechanical skills but to kindle in students an inquiring disposition and to engage them in developing the independent means of satisfying curiosity. From this revitalized perspective, research can now ask what instruction of this kind should look like today. As Glaser observes, findings from cognitive science's early focus on human performance--that is, on the outcomes of learning--are now able to support "an overlapping later phase [of research] in which learning processes are more central . . . . This phase is characterized by the analysis, design, and ealuation of conditions for learning in the light of modern knowledge of cognition."

A New Intersection of Research and Practice

As research moves more deeply into the study of educational means as well as outcomes, it naturally comes into more direct and sustained contact with the world of practice--a world in which school systems and classroom educators are under increasing pressure from politics and the public to produce sweeping, measurable improvements. That pressure is only compounded by the lack of consensus about the shape these improvements should take and the means for accomplishing them. Some people urge a return to basic skills, despite evidence that the basics will never again suffice. Others want to see "critical thinking" being taught directly. Still others focus on raising students' SAT scores, or reducing dropout rates, or minimizing drugs and violence in schools and on laygrounds.

In the face of such pressure, and amid the argumentative clamor for reform, it is easy for teachers to feel beset rather than supported. Many may dismiss research as irrelevant to an overload of daily responsibilities carried out with little opportunity even to talk with other teachers. Others may be intrigued by scientific findings but discouraged from further investigation by bureaucratic obstacles and requirements. Still others may be unaware that substantive research on classroom issues is even being conducted.

The fact remains, however, that even the most persuasive and applicable findings of science will languish unless teachers can put them into practice. Thus, if one challenge to cognitive science is to test and refine its findings until they can support truly effective reforms, another, inseparable challenge is to understand the texture and the daily tensions of a teacher's life. Research cannot begin to recommend or design realistic new strategies for instruction without being deeply familiar with the world in which reforms must take hold.

Similarly, classroom educators cannot permanently or effectively ease the pressure for change unless they absorb some scientific principles upon which to refine or reform their teaching. Once they have some knowledge about the world of research and the kinds of questions cognitive science asks and investigates, teachers can more confidently choose among the many prescriptions being offered for education's ills.

When experts from the two educational fronts--practice and research--are able to engage in genuine, sustained collaborations, they usually find that their joint concerns and methods produce outcomes that neither could have accomplished without the other. The territory in which they share their knowledge, work out their differences, and develop a common language has been labeled a "third space" by some researchers at NRCSL. It is a crucial space, and one that grows with each collaborative effort.

What comes out of this third space, however, depends on what is put into it. Researchers and practitioners alike must come to their collaborations with a deep understanding of their own world and of the problems they must address together. Important collaborations in mathematics learning and instruction have been launched through NRCSL, and their success has depended largely on analytic studies conducted at the center. These studies, and others, are discussed in this report together with descriptions of NRCSL's collaborative projects in mathematics.
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[Executive Summary] [Table of Contents] [Thinking Through Mathematics]