Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Mon, 22 Feb 1999 08:51:34 +1000 (EST)
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 08:51:34 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: IFETS-DISCUSS Digest - 20 Feb 1999 to 21 Feb 1999
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On Sun, 21 Feb 1999, jspears wrote:
> It seems to me that until we develop a better, deeper understanding of how
> individuals learn, the wise course is to incorporate as much variety in to
> instructional systems as is reasonable (without distracting the learner) and
> evaluate the outcomes over time. Not a very flashy solution.
A hope that one day we may know more about how individuals learn may not
equal a hope that this will mean some sufficient knowledge about the
students so that "instruction can be customer-taylored". The reason that I
signal a concern here is that a hope to know more about learning reflects
a tendency toward a research direction which in fact may finish nowehere.
I think the search for an efficient learning environment, one where a
learner is thrown into a processing machine and spet out at its end
after the appropriate adjustments had been made along the way, symbolises
a dream of industrial societies for a factory of education where one
starts with a blubber and finishes with the rainboots which we all can
recognise as a familiar object and hence we can applaud the manufacturer.
However, if the task to accomplish were no longer to know your learner,
what would it be? My worry is that a lot of time is spent on describing
the learner (like THE structure of THE language that does not exist), and
years down the track, we still have little to show for.
It is not the point of this mail to deny value in such a research.
However, at least in my field, years have been devoted to the task of
describing the learner, and, if many of us do agree with the assumptions
of the Chaos-theory [which we all probably have to], one will have to
admit, the best we can achieve is a statistical probability. Considering
the number of variables, the probabilities will be highly speculative.
Furthermore, a probability is not a certainty. This may prove a catch 22.
best,
Ania Lian
http://education.canberra.edu.au/~andrewl/mlal2
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