My best practices are better than yours ...

I've been sitting on this post for a while now.  A few weeks ago, I lurked an #edchat twitter chat on defining best practices in education.  I had to stop halfway through as I think I was close to having a coronary.  I will attempt to summarize the general flow of the conversation:

1. Best practices are awesome.
2. Umm, what are best practices exactly?
3. We should find a way of sharing best practices so we all can benefit from each others ideas.
4. Maybe best practices are not global, instead there are best practices for each teacher-learner-classroom combination.
5. The moment you say a practice is best it constrains the learning.
6. We should find a way of sharing best practices so we all can benefit from each others ideas.
7. The very idea of best practices is silly as all of our practices are best, it's all relative.
8. Head asplode ....

So, I have decided to lay out my ideas on best practices in education.  I recently finished reading Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape in which he attempts to define a scientific basis for human morality (which in itself is a fascinating idea).  In it, he defines the goal of morality as maximizing the well-being of the greatest number of people possible.  He defines a spectrum that ranges from the worst possible suffering to everyone (at the bad end in case you weren't following along) and the greatest possible well-being for everyone at the top.  He then posits that we can investigate moral choices that move us either towards the worst suffering or away from it.  This can then be analysed scientifically.  

I propose a similar model for defining best practices in education.  One in which have a spectrum from the worst possible education for everyone to the best possible education.  Of course, this requires that we decide what the goal of education is (one of my largest complaints about #edchat discussions is the lack of focus towards achieving a salient goal).  If we take Dewey's stated aim of education as the 'development of reflective, creative, responsible thought' as our goal we have a starting point.  Of course we would now all need to agree as to what that meant.  However, as Harris notes we are able to work towards a goal of improving health without having a clear definition of what health is (although the seeming popularity of pseudo-medicine may show that the lack of a clear definition is fundamentally unstable).

Once we have defined a goal, we can start to measure the results of various practices and if they move us towards or away from that stated goal.  In this regard we can measure the effectiveness of practices and therefore can isolate practices that cause the greatest progress and encourage those practices while stifling the practices that are detrimental.

Note that nowhere in this exposition did I state or imply that there is only one possible best practice.  As Harris states his moral landscape can have multiple peaks on it where being on top of that peak would be the greatest possible well-being; as would being on an alternate peak.  My ideas for best practices is similar, there could be multiple peaks where we achieve the maximum possible education for all people just as there could be multiple means of scaling those peaks.

To summarize, the idea of a best practice is moot without a clear statement of purpose for education.  We need to know what the end point is to define something as being best.  A best practice would then therefore be an approach that maximizes our movement towards this goal.  Although best practices may only exist in theory, they can still exist.  As I have argued before, it all comes back to the purpose, the goal of education.

Reading Dewey: The Introduction

So, I've decided to read my way through John Dewey's essays. I have quoted him a lot in a variety of my ed work and on Twitter but have never read anything by him. So, I've decided to rectify that.
I will be reading my way through:
John Dewey on Education, Selected Writings
Edited by Reginald D. Archambault
University of Chicago Edition 1974
ISBN: 0-226-14390-2

So, here goes my thoughts, reflections, and critiques (well probably no critiques as these ideas are amazing and I'm not learned enough to critique them) on the Introduction (by Reginald D. Archambault <- which is an amazing name):

It is commonplace that everyone talks about Dewey and no one reads him.
~ Preface

According to Archambault, Dewey's philosophy of education is based on his philosophy of science. He was a strong skeptic and scientist who believed that the scientific method could be applied to pretty much anything and should definitely be applied to education. This to me is a breath of (old) fresh air. I am a skeptic and scientists myself and believe that those two items (coupled with critical thought) form the basis of education.
Dewey felt the aim of education was the 'development of reflective, creative, responsible thought' (p. xviii). This is a well stated, succinct purpose for education. With this goal in mind, students will be able to a) teach themselves b) critique what they are shown and c) further their own growth through self-reflection.

Although perhaps not in the sphere of educational philosophy but still interesting (as a skeptic), Dewey felt that morals should belong within the world of facts, not distinct from it. As the act of valuing is susceptible to the scientific method.
Back on education, he felt that the ends of education are not a fixed point. For to be fixed is to have 'rigid, habitual forms of behaviour [that] can lead only to stagnation' (p. xx). Instead the goals of education must shift in relation to the changing environment and changes in society. It is a common question in the Twitterverse about the goals of education. Dewey I feel would argue that that is not a good question as in his mind, the goals must be stated in terms of processes (i.e. the promotion of reflective thought not reflective thought). This means that education is the end goal in itself. He felt that a major aim of education was to help students become morally responsible so they can, as adults, create new societal rules and become autonomous. To achieve this end, Dewey argues that the desires of the student must be heard, addressed, and acted upon where reasonable. In essence, he is arguing for more student control in their learning.

Back on the subject of ends, Dewey believed that if the end goals are to be meaningful they must be defined 'in terms of the means which would be used in their attainment' (p. xxiii). Dewey argued against vaguely stated goals for education (such as 'freedom' or 'wisdom' or 'the full development of the child') as in his mind they were stated as ends within themselves and precluded the notion of a means of attaining them.

Dewey also fought against traditional (and popular) methods of instruction that he called 'assign-study-recite' (p. xxiii). He felt that the justification for these methods was faulty: the belief in a Tabula Rasa state and the idea of a child as a passive receiver of information. Instead he argued for a method of instruction that focused on the 'live, meaningful, and important problem to be grappled with and solved' (p. xxv). This to me indicates a form of PBL, an active integration of content with the student's interests in a way that supports learning and does not stifle it.
He also argued against the idea of separating learning into distinct subjects. He felt this caused the subject to be viewed as an unchanging collection of facts to be learned either through 'classroom management' or by applying a sugar-coating to the material to make it more palatable. In relating this back to his ideas of ends and means, he deduces that this method of instruction actually prevented the achievement of its own aim (the absorption of the distilled subject knowledge) by promoting a hatred of the subject by preventing an open and free exploration of the subject. Instead the knowledge is not the driving force of education, it must be subservient to the purpose and method of instruction. Knowledge should not be presented based on the ideas of tradition but instead organized and structured based on its relevance to the problem at hand. I have created some illustrations to illustrate this.Whereas Dewey's approach would look more like this:Dewey argues that content must be defined in terms of the relationship between the teacher and the student and must not be the end in itself. The end is the application of content to a real problem thus proving the means for synthesis of the learning.

In Dewey's mind the teacher's role is not to disseminate of content but is instead tasked with 'prompting the development of ideas in the pupil' (p. xxvii). The teacher's role becomes one of helping the student to develop relations and connections and their own ideas. To accomplish this the teacher must be foremost a learner, armed with a broad general knowledge but based on a sound grounding of educational theory; especially the relationship between theory and practice.

The introduction ends with a quote from Dewey:

If we are willing to conceive of education as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow men, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education.

The editor concludes with a statement that in order to understand Dewey's thoughts on education, you must first understand his total philosophy. Let the education begin ...