First Day of School

Last night I attended my first class at Temple. I am taking a course on learning theories taught by Dr. David Timony.

In the first lecture of the course, Dr. Timony described what is meant by a “learning theory” and what such theories ought to be able to do. According to Dr. Timony, a learning theory should offer a perspective on what is meant by learning, explain why certain outcomes related to learning occur, and describe the “inner workings” of the learning process. Our goals as students are to compare and evaluate theories, to understand the role learning theories play in guiding educational practice, and to understand how to use learning theories to promote development of students.

According to our textbook, Cognitive Development and Learning in Instructional Contexts by James P. Byrnes, as quoted in Dr. Timony’s Unit I PowerPoint slides, we can understand and distinguish between learning theories based on their answers to the following:

“1. What is the nature of knowledge?

2. How do people acquire knowledge? Why does it grow?

3. What does it mean to be self-regulated?

4. How are memories stored and retrieved?

5. Is the theory compatible with what we know about the brain?

6. What are the instructional implications of this theory?”

I think these are interesting questions, and I expect this to be a very interesting course. Since I have a strong philosophical interest in the American pragmatist tradition, I wonder how John Dewey, the classical pragmatist who was particularly concerned with educational theory, would have answered such questions. I know Dewey almost solely through his most eminent modern proponent, Richard Rorty, but I have begun to read Dewey’s Democracy and Education to get a firsthand account of Dewey’s critiques on the available learning theories of his day, what theory or theories he defended, and where his thought may fit in or fail to fit in (perhaps in a good way) with the predominant theories today.

I sense some possible tension between my understanding of Dewey’s thought and Dr. Timony’s with regard to the nature of theory itself (the theory of theory?) when he writes, “By conducting experiments, we can see which theories provide more accurate answers to these questions; instruction should be based on the most accurate theories.” The pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey anticipated Thomas Kuhn’s work on the way scientific theories function, and a Kuhnian and pragmatic notion of theory eschews the criterion “accuracy” when taken to be some sort of agreement with The-Way-Things-Really-Are irrespective of human purposes. The attempt to get consensus on a single coherent account of reality that best enables us to predict and control (Rorty’s pragmatic take on the scientific endeavor) is not a way of enabling us to step outside of our own skins to achieve a God’s-Eye-View through a set of descriptions which are independent of human needs and interests. Rather, that endeavor itself--finding such a view which is independent of human needs and interests--is only pursued because we humans have the needs and interests we have. Thus, for pragmatists, the concern for a theory is never accuracy taken to be adequacy to reality but rather accuracy taken as adequacy to some specifiable human purpose or purposes. In other words, we can test the accuracy of our predictions but the accuracy of our descriptions is an unintelligible concept. There are surely better and worse descriptions as some are more or less adequate to the purposes for which they were created, but unless someone can explicate a method for comparing a description of some aspect of reality with a bit of un-described reality for accuracy without tacitly smuggling in a set of "subjective" human needs and interests, the accuracy of a description as adequacy to "objective" reality remains a nonstarter.

When Dr. Timony writes, “At present, all theories provide our best guesses about inner workings; all have strengths and weaknesses. Given that instruction will only work if it is compatible with what we know about the mind, it is vital that theories are accurate,” I am concerned that he may be holding out a Platonic hope that somewhere “out there” waiting to be discovered is the one True Theory of Learning. Once we have it, we will presumably be able to make use of it to determine the best approaches for instruction under any circumstances, but since there are an incalculable number of particular knowledge sets that may need to be taught to any individual within any possible context, it seems quite implausible that we could ever expect a theory of learning to do that sort of heavy lifting. It is therefore likely that the sort of accuracy Dr. Timony is seeking as compatibility is not a concern for getting in touch with that one True theory but rather achieving coherence between the practices and beliefs of educators with regard to what works in the classroom, a theory that guides thinking about the learning process, and what science reveals about the brain--a goal that a Deweyan pragmatist can share. 


Based on several comments in his first lecture, I suspect that Dr. Timony would also share a Deweyan vision of the role of education and learning theories as existing to serve our democratic hopes. For example, Dr. Timony explained that he sees his role as an educator with regard to the question of fairness not as giving everyone the same thing but of giving everyone what they need. For Dr. Timony and for a Deweyan pragmatist, our duty is to one another rather than to a particular mathematically ideal allocation. Perhaps then another question ought to be added to the list of six important question relevant to learning theories cited above. Dewey is not just concerned with the perpetuation of society through education but also the question of what kind of society is worth perpetuating. So am I.