Month: June 2010

I am writing and attempting to make my way between the conflicting views on instructional strategies. The controversy between those who support direct instruction and those who support authentic, problem-based learning activities has always troubled me. Both seem to make sound arguments and those supporting direct instruction point to multiple meta-analyses demonstrating the superiority of greater structure. We want to offer teachers sound advice and we would feel more comfortable if we could come to some personal way to resolve what seem to be inconsistent positions.

Strange as it may seem my person way of thinking about this situation has been informed by a topic I cover when teaching Introduction to Psychology. There was an interesting and long term controversy within the field of perception that concerned the mechanism by which we experience color. One position, the trichromatic theory of color perception, proposes that we have three types of color receptors differentially sensitive to red, green, and blue. The ratio of neural activity generated by the differential stimulation of these three types of receptors is thought to generate what we perceive as color. There is good evidence for this position. There are different patterns of color blindness, but the specific colors that cannot be identified by those with different types of color blindness can be accounted for by assuming that one or more of the three types of receptors are missing. The competing theory, the opponent process theory, assumes that color perception is the result of receptors that are sensitive to a continua – white to black, red to green, and yellow to blue. The experience of a negative afterimage, the color you see after staring at a color for some time and then looking at a white background, offers convincing evidence for the opponent process explanation. On some occasion, you may have experienced a demonstration in which you stared at an American flag with green and blue stripes and black stars against a yellow background and then viewed the colors of the actual flag when looking at a pure white background.

What is challenging about this controversy and what may be germane to other disputes is that the competing explanations are each supported by convincing evidence. Each side holds on to its position and unique evidence not really addressing the evidence that supports the other perspective. With color vision, eventually a more general theory was offered to reconcile these competing theories. It was proposed that these mechanisms were both valid but operated in stages. The trichromatic theory appeared to apply to the cones and the opponent process theory at a latter point as information moved from the eye to the brain. It turned out both explanations made a contribution and both were necessary. A Nobel award was involved.

I think the same model may be applied to experiential and direction experiences – maybe both are useful. Sometimes, a learner has little personal experience and some experiences might be the way to begin. Sometimes, learners have many experiences but no model for understanding them. Perhaps this is when direct instruction makes sense. It may be the mix and the order that we should be discussing rather than blasting away with a model takes all approach.