Rudolf Steiner

In 1891, at the age of thirty, Rudolf Steiner wrote Credo: The Individual and the All. Behind him were his essays on Goethe's writings on natural science, and his book The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception: Fundamental Outline with Special Reference to Schiller. His doctoral thesis, Truth and Science, would be completed and accepted in the following year, and his masterpiece of philosophy, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity would appear in 1894.

CREDO The Individual and the ALL

The world of Ideas is the primal source and principle of all existence. In it is infinite harmony and blissful rest. The existence that it did not illumine with its light, would be dead, devoid of being, and would have no part in the whole life of the universe. Only that which derives its being from the Idea signifies something on the Universal Tree of Creation.

The Idea is the spirit, clear in itself, sufficient in and for itself. The individual, the particular, must have the spirit within, otherwise it falls away like a dry leaf from that Tree and was there to no purpose.

But man feels and knows himself as an individual when he awakens to his full conciousness. But in so doing there is implanted within him the longing for the Idea. This longing urges him on to overcome his separation, to let the spirit come to life within him, to be in accord with the spirit. All hat is of the self, everything that is selfish, that makes him into this particular separate being, this he must put an end to in himself, must strip off from himself, for it is this that darkens he light of the spirit. What proceeds from the sensenature, from instinct, desire, passion, that is only desired by this egotistice individuality. Therefore man must root out this selfwilling in himself; instead of what he as an individual wills he must desire what the Spirit, the Idea in him wills. "Let isolated separateness pass away, and follow the voice of the Idea in thee, for that alone is divine!" What man wills as a separate individual is a worthless point in the circumference of the cosmic whole, vanishing in the stream of time. What man wills "in the spirit," that is in the center, for it brings the central light of the universe to life within us; such a deed is not subject to time. If we act as single beings, then we shut ourselves off from the closed chain of cosmic action, we separate ourselves off. If we act "in the spirit," then we find our way livingly into the universal working of worlds. Slaying of all selfdom, that is the foundation for the higher life. For he who kills the selfdom lives an eternal existence. We are immortal to the degree in which we have allowed self to die within us. The mortal in us is selfdom. This is the true meaning of the saying: "Who dies not before he dies, perishes when he dies." That means, he who does not let the selfdom in him cease during the time of his life, has no share in the universal life that is immortal; he has never existed, has had no veritable being.

There are four spheres of human activity in which man devotes himself fully to the spirit, with a killing out of all selfcentered life of his own: in the search for Knowledge, in Art, in Religion and in the loving devotion in the spirit to another personality. He who does not live in at least one of these spheres, does not really live at all. Knowledge is devotion to the universe in thoughts, Art in beholding, Religion in heart and soul, Love with the sum of all our spiritforces, to something which seems to us a being of the world worthy of being treasured by us. Knowledge is the most spiritual, Love the most beautiful form of selfless devotion. For love is a true light of heaven in the life of every day. Devout, truly spiritual love ennobles our being to its inmost fibre, it exalts everything that lives within us. This pure devout love transforms the whole life of the soul into another that has relationship to the Spirit of the World. In this highest sense, to love means to carry the breath of divine life into regions where for the most part only egoism most deserving of abhorrence, and despicable passion are to be found. One must first know something of the holiness of love before one can speak of piety, devoutness.

If man, through one of these four spheres, has made his way out of isolated separateness and entered into the divine life of the Idea, then he has attained that for which the seed of striving was laid in his breast: his union with the spirit; and that is his true destiny. He moreover who lives in the spirit, lives in freedom for he has wrested himself free from all subordinate things. Nothing compels him save from. where he gladly suffers the compulsion, for he has recognized it as the highest. Let truth be changed into life; lose thyself in order to find thyself again in the spirit of the world.

The Relevance of the Constructivist Approach to Education.

"Multiple Intelligences After Twenty Years". - Howards Gardner

Found at: http://www.pz.harvard.edu/PIs/HG_MI_after_20_years.pdf

In this paper Gardner reflects on the origins and basis of his Theory of Multiple Intelligences. He describes some of his background as a psychologist that may have led to this theory and the many books he wrote.

It becomes very clear that the way he worked was to develop a theory and then go out and test it. He then would be looking for endorsement of his theory in all the experients he did rather than have the results of the experiments determine the next experiment and subsequently, the theory.

Piaget wrote of the different developmental stages of the child and this certainly could be looked at with the question of "Does the developmental stage fit with the outcomes of the ICT program proposed?"

Vygotsky's ideas centred around social interactions as a means for expanding the zone of proximinal development. He appears to refer to actual human to human contact rather than a text or blog interaction but with a bit of a stretch I suppose you could call these digital interactions "social".

Bruner looked at the structure of the content and context of the information presented. ICT does lend itself to this type of approach where structure is very flexible and presentation options are vast.

Gardner looked at education and intelligences in a much broader view and considered the various different intelligences. He looked beyond the IQ type tests which he considered as polarised towards verbal, logical-mathematical and spacial. Perhaps some of his theory of other intelligences does not quite fit into an ICT environment (eg bodily/kinesthetic) whereas other parts (eg visual/spatial with 3D graphics, music with online audio and intrapersonal with bloggs and chat) may apply.

From my experience, the idea of having one "theory" of how all or groups of individuals learn and then fitting then all into those groups is very limiting, narrow and unrealistic.

Gardner attempted to do this with his "Multiple Intelligences". My experience tells me that in a particular field a student may use their verbal intelligence particularly well and in another area the same student may be very logical-mathematical (or a mixture of all or any intelligences). I suppose that it is then left up to the teacher to observe this and make adjustments as required.

Many years ago I did a personal development course called "Money and You" with Robert Kyosaki. One of the games we played was to do a particular test on our own, then do the same test in a group with others. The results were mixed and inconclusive. Some people did much better on their own than in a group (me), for some it made little difference and others did better in groups. I know for a fact that in some tasks I do work better in groups. The conclusion could easily be that there is no clear conclusion that can be drawn from this except that everyone has their own preferred way of dealing with life.

In a distributed learning environment the question arises then, do you group a student who is well ahead with someone a bit slower or do you group the advanced students together? If you do the former, will the advanced student get bored and the other student get frustrated? If you do the latter will both students compete and attempt to "outdo" each other?

The concept of a distributed learning environment in my opinion is simply a reflection of reality and perhaps how apprentices learn from tradesmen. Here then could be the answer to how to group learners of different levels. Those that are behind will learn from the advanced and the advanced will learn, but not necessarily content, from those behind. This idea fits nicely with Vygotsky's concept of social interactions as a means for learning. However it does bring into question not all apprentices get on with the tradesman teaching them.

Does a computer fit into this concept of learning? Like all situations, the answer would be "it depends". For some students computers may be new (something to be explored), others it may be the unknown (something to be feared) or a playground (something to play with) and yet others it may be boring (something to be challenged). So really, simply the concept of using a computer may be an issue for the student even before the content is reached.

Howard Gardner

Multiple Intelligences
Howard Gardner

In 1983, Howard Gardner introduced his Theory of Multiple Intelligences in a seminal book, Frames of Mind. Based on his work as professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, his work as a psychologist researching brain injuries, and his long interest and involvement in the arts, he suggested that intelligence is not a single attribute that can be measured and given a number. He pointed out that I.Q. tests measure primarily verbal, logical-mathematical, and some spatial intelligence. Believing that there are many other kinds of intelligence that are important aspects of human capabilities, he proposed that they also include visual/spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal intelligences. More recently he added naturalist intelligence to this list and suggested that there may be other possibilities including spiritual and existential.

REF: http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/mi/front_mi.htm

Vygotsky

Social Development Theory (L. Vygotsky)

Overview:

The major theme of Vygotsky's theoretical framework is that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. Vygotsky (1978) states: "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals." (p57).

A second aspect of Vygotsky's theory is the idea that the potential for cognitive development depends upon the "zone of proximal development" (ZPD): a level of development attained when children engage in social behavior. Full development of the ZPD depends upon full social interaction. The range of skill that can be developed with adult guidance or peer collaboration exceeds what can be attained alone.

Vygotsky's theory was an attempt to explain consciousness as the end product of socialization. For example, in the learning of language, our first utterances with peers or adults are for the purpose of communication but once mastered they become internalized and allow "inner speech".

Vygotsky's theory is complementary to the work of Bandura on social learning and a key component of situated learning theory. Because Vygotsky's focus was on cognitive development, it is interesting to compare his views with those of Bruner and Piaget .

Scope/Application:

This is a general theory of cognitive development. Most of the original work was done in the context of language learning in children (Vygotsky, 1962), although later applications of the framework have been broader (see Wertsch, 1985).

REF:http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html

Piaget’s Theory of Development

Key Concepts of Piaget’s Theory of Development

Cognitive development refers to the changes that occur in an individual’s cognitive structures, abilities, and processes. Marcy Driscoll defines cognitive development as the transformation of the child’s undifferentiated, unspecialized cognitive abilities into the adult’s conceptual competence and problem-solving skill (Driscoll, 1994). However, what exactly changes with development? Piaget believed children’s schemes, or logical mental structures, change with age and are initially action-based (sensorimotor) and later move to a mental (operational) level. (Driscoll, 1994).

Further, Piaget believed the cognitive performance in children is directly associated with the cognitive development stage they are in. So, if a child were in the preoperational stage (age 2 to 6/7), he would not successfully be able to master tasks of a concrete operational stage (ages 6/7 to 11/12) child.

Piaget proposed this theory of childhood cognitive development in 1969. Since that time, there have been many criticisms of Piaget’s theory. Most notably, developmental psychologists debate whether children actually go through these four stages in the way that Piaget proposed, and further that not all children reach the formal operation stage. Despite this criticism, Piaget has had a major influence on all modern developmental psychologists. In addition to his proposed idea that children’s cognitive performance is directly related to the stage they are in, he proposed four major stages of development.

The Sensorimotor Period (birth to 2 years)

During the sensorimotor stage, infants and toddlers "think" with their eyes, ears, hands, and other sensorimotor equipment (http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kupsych/dennisk/Cog_Inf.htm). Piaget said that a child’s cognitive system is limited to motor reflexes at birth, but the child builds on these reflexes to develop more sophisticated procedures. They learn to generalize their activities to a wider range of situations and coordinate them into increasingly lengthy chains of behavior.

Preoperational Thought (2 to 6/7 years)

At this age, according to Piaget, children acquire representational skills in the area of mental imagery, and especially language. They are very self-oriented, and have an egocentric view; that is, preoperational children can use these representational skills only to view the world from their own perspective.

Concrete Operations (6/7 to 11/12 years)

As opposed to preoperational children, children in the concrete operations stage are able to take into account another person’s point of view and consider more than one perspective simultaneously, with their thought process being more logical, flexible, and organized than in early childhood. They can also represent transformations as well as static situations. Although they can understand concrete problems, Piaget would argue that they cannot yet contemplate or solve abstract problems, and that they are not yet able to consider all of the logically possible outcomes. Children at this stage would have the ability to pass conservation (numerical), classification, seriation, and spatial reasoning tasks.

Formal Operations (11/12 to adult)

Persons who reach the formal operation stage are capable of thinking logically and abstractly. They can also reason theoretically. Piaget considered this the ultimate stage of development, and stated that although the children would still have to revise their knowledge base, their way of thinking was as powerful as it would get.

REF: http://chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theorists/constructivism/Piaget.htm

J. Bruner

Constructivist Theory (J. Bruner)

Overview:

A major theme in the theoretical framework of Bruner is that learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current/past knowledge. The learner selects and transforms information, constructs hypotheses, and makes decisions, relying on a cognitive structure to do so. Cognitive structure (i.e., schema, mental models) provides meaning and organization to experiences and allows the individual to "go beyond the information given".

As far as instruction is concerned, the instructor should try and encourage students to discover principles by themselves. The instructor and student should engage in an active dialog (i.e., socratic learning). The task of the instructor is to translate information to be learned into a format appropriate to the learner's current state of understanding. Curriculum should be organized in a spiral manner so that the student continually builds upon what they have already learned.

Bruner (1966) states that a theory of instruction should address four major aspects: (1) predisposition towards learning, (2) the ways in which a body of knowledge can be structured so that it can be most readily grasped by the learner, (3) the most effective sequences in which to present material, and (4) the nature and pacing of rewards and punishments. Good methods for structuring knowledge should result in simplifying, generating new propositions, and increasing the manipulation of information.

In his more recent work, Bruner (1986, 1990, 1996) has expanded his theoretical framework to encompass the social and cultural aspects of learning as well as the practice of law.

Scope/Application:

Bruner's constructivist theory is a general framework for instruction based upon the study of cognition. Much of the theory is linked to child development research (especially Piaget ). The ideas outlined in Bruner (1960) originated from a conference focused on science and math learning. Bruner illustrated his theory in the context of mathematics and social science programs for young children (see Bruner, 1973). The original development of the framework for reasoning processes is described in Bruner, Goodnow & Austin (1951). Bruner (1983) focuses on language learning in young children.

Note that Constructivism is a very broad conceptual framework in philosophy and science and Bruner's theory represents one particular perspective. For an overview of other Constructivist frameworks, see http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/constructivism.html.

Ref: http://tip.psychology.org/bruner.html