Adding to the Debate on Human Intelligence

Adding to the Debate on Human Intelligence Originally presented at the First National Spirit of Education Forum , Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, Baxter, Victoria, Australia 1997 (Revised September 2000) Don E Tinkler

The Forum Coordinator first suggested that I title this presentation 'The Missing Link in the debate on Human Intelligence', but I could not be so arrogant as to imply that I can provide the 'missing link' in a debate that has been raging for generations. However, as the subject has fascinated me for years, and that fascination has led me through a study of education and philosophy at four universities and wide reading of psychology, theology and cosmology, there might be something that I can add to the on-going debate on human intelligence.
My first interest in the notion of 'intelligence' was aroused as an eight year old, being taken aside on two Saturday mornings, and put through a series of tests by an older cousin, a teacher in training at Melbourne Teachers College. Next experience of intelligence testing was in my early twenties after a period of hospitalization and the need to reconsider the commercial career that I had embarked upon. I underwent some tests to establish what sort of vocation I might be suited for. The following year, accepted as a primary school teacher in training, I studied the subject of intelligence and measures for assessing it. I remember at one point our lecturer in psychology mentioning the idea of there being multiple intelligences—an intriguing thought ... but more of that later.

For twenty-five years I have been seeking learning theories to fit the practical experience of the classroom, whether that has been in primary schools or teaching post- graduate university studies. The search has produced a challenge to Kantian notions of a priori concepts, a questioning of behaviourism, and an alternative to the 1960s 'stages' theory of Piaget. Drawing upon fresh insights, a constructivist model of knowledge acquisition has been developed, and an eclectic approach adopted in producing a new-type curriculum design. Ideas as they have developed since 1978 have been shared at national and international conferences.

A Call to Re-Think the Fundamentals

We have been told that we must work smarter if Australia is to become the 'clever' country. However, rather than re-thinking education fundamentals, decision-making in matters of education is still dominated by economic rationalism. Even after much reorganization and systems restructuring, in the matter of fundamentals, education continues very much 'business as usual'.
Addressing the fundamentals of learning, a UNESCO conference in Beijing in 1989 declared:
the need for a new view of knowledge;
a greater integration of knowledge;
a renewed commitment to lifelong learning;
an education system with shifts of emphases from conformity to creativity and innovativeness, from competitiveness to co-operativeness, from private benefits of learning to public benefits, from instruction to learning how to learn, to nourishing the higher-order skills, to positive aspects of personal development, to promote tolerance in interrelating with others.
Taking account of the emerging ecological and global threats to survival, the UNESCO conference cautioned that educational planners will need to restructure education to fit people for the twenty-first century, which, in their words, 'now will probably be rather different from what we would have predicted as recently as five years ago' .

Brain Research, Learning and Intelligence

The Club of Rome's report, No Limits to Learning (1979), can now be considered a landmark document which drew attention to the need to 'bridge the human gap', to grasp the significance of what humankind is doing to the environment in the name of 'progress'. A basic assumption of the report was that humans 'possessed still untapped resources of vision and creativity as well as moral energies which could be mobilized to bail humankind out of its predicament', a plea for learning to be seen as a liberating force. The authors of the report in 1974 drew attention to the two cornerstones of this undertaking as neurophysiological brain research and socio-psychological research. To quote from the report:

A quick glimpse into all the sciences concerned with learning ... reveals that the subject of learning is at present being researched on a scale far below that warranted by its importance and pervasiveness. ... It is difficult to imagine a greater breakthrough for the humanities and social sciences than to make progress in acquiring an understanding of how learning processes work
. Education has a propensity to be driven by fads and fancies which generate such power as quickly to become an accepted part of the educational mythology. Unfortunately, much of the mythology surrounding education has tended to limit rather than liberate human capacities. Hopefully, most teachers have given up the idea of the mind as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge as one might fill a bucket with water. But, even assuming that to be so, there are many other myths about learning and teaching yet to be challenged and dispelled.

The unravelling of the mystery of the brain has depended largely on the work of neurosurgeons called upon to treat patients with pathological disorders due to disease or violence. In certain cases surgeons have found it necessary to sever the corpus callosum, that bundle of millions of nerve connections that link the two halves of the cortex, contributing what is known as the 'evidence from split-brain research'. Split-brain research has been used to prove that the hemispheres of the cortex have separate roles in the learning process. Writers have associated analytical/rational/mathematical tasks with the left brain, and activities relating to imagery/creativity/insights/understandings of relationships etc. with the right. Taking that position, it has been asserted that education should broaden its focus to accept more of the activities associated with the right brain.

The assertion seems to overlook the fact that critics of formal education have long claimed there is too much concentration upon linear thinking, logico-mathematical reasoning, rote learning, and recitation responses, to the neglect of such aspects as insight, imagination, the use of creative thinking and the exploration of relationships.

Some people, and I count myself among them, have insisted on addressing the needs of the whole person in aspects of physical, mental, social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Whether or not there is validity in the left-right argument, to place such emphasis on left brain–right brain distinctions is to ignore the total complexity and the interconnectedness that characterizes the brain and its operation. MacLean drew attention to this interrelationship with his ‘three-brain’ theory (Pearce, 1992). He pointed out that there is the cortex, the mid-brain and the brain stem to be considered, all three major sectors of the brain interconnected and usually operating as one harmonious whole.

With the advent of the micro computer, one group of theorists suggested that not only did the brain resemble the computer, but that the brain was in fact a computer. Thus they began modelling learning processes using computer-type diagrams, even suggesting that teachers might look for ‘bugs’ in thinking, to correct the faulty learning as one might rectify a fault or ‘bug’ in a computer program.

The human brain is far more sophisticated than any computer so far designed, or even contemplated.

A simple analogy:

If we were to lay out on a table the various components of a crystal radio, we would have one, plus one, plus one ... and so on, to the sum of the parts on the table. If without adding anything, we were to place those components into a particular relationship, we would gain something extra—the capacity to receive a radio signal at a certain frequency. Thus we would have one, plus one, plus one ... to the original sum of the parts, but in addition, we would have the added capacity to pick up a pre-existing radio signal.
If the crystal set componentry can gain such a capacity, how much more likely is it that the physical componentry of the brain with its trillion or so of interconnected cells, could gain additional capacities—the so called mental attributes or emergent properties of the brain?

We could speculate that as well as receiving information from outside ourselves, the brain might be capable of transmitting signals which could be picked up and interpreted by other brains, even though incapable of being detected or measured by our currently developed technologies.

Although only speculation, the analogy could help to chip away the materialist notion of the brain being just a lump of meat, as seems to be the view of such writers as Marvin Minsky. It could also throw some light on the various powers some claim for the mind, whether influencing physical matter or influencing other minds, and on the whole domain of human communication.

Karl Pibram (1982), neurophysiologist at Stanford University, suggested that the 'firing' at the junctions between neurons in the brain produces wave frequencies which interact to form images like those produced by holography. Ken Wilber (1982) posits a holographic brain and, in fact, a holographic universe.

Bob Samples, one of the early advocates for the need to introduce more activities using the right hemisphere, admitted later that 'left/right brainedness deteriorated quickly in the educational marketplace to slogans and instruments for zealotry'. Samples (1982) commented further that while the lateralized brain gave us permission to acknowledge the diversity in the modes of knowing, the holographic brain 'insures the simultaneous legitimacy of the interconnectedness of that knowing'. Accepting the holographic metaphor, we can discount the notion of specific locations for the processing and storing of vision, auditory signals, speech etc., in favour of the idea that those capacities are distributed throughout the brain.

There is strong evidence that learning activity could result in an increase in the number of synaptic connections within the brain. It may be that images, memories, thoughts and ideas result from those electrical, and chemical transmissions—the so called 'firing'—across the nerve synapses.

This paper builds on an assumption that the brain and the mind, an emergent property of the physical brain and its interconnected central nervous system, can be treated as one.

In writing The Mind Machine , Colin Blakemore (1988: viii) attempted 'to convey to a broad audience something of the significance of brain research'. In a radio interview in 1989 he referred to consciousness as 'being a tiny veneer on unconsciousness, that the really fantastic things we do are below consciousness which provides only an inaccurate glimpse of what is going on'. He described his book as covering 'something of brain research, modern psychology—particularly cognitive psychology—trying to understand how our minds work and function, a little bit of philosophy, anthropology, a general look at artificial intelligence, the impact of computers on our understanding of the brain ...'

Blakemore drew attention to what has been a fundamental difference between the brain and computers. The brain as a parallel system is capable of carrying out so many separate processes simultaneously, while the computer, a serial system, is able to complete only one step at a time—even though capable of going through a long series at the speed of light. Technologists working in the area of artificial intelligence are only now beginning to develop parallel processing computers, but to date they fall far short of replicating human capacities.

Referring to the test in 1997 of human against computer, one caller on a talk-back radio program suggested that while the computer [Big Blue] 'gets better', the chess champion, Kasparov, 'remains the same'. The comment raises all sorts of issues. How does the computer 'get better'? What is the nature of human intelligence? What is the connection between human intelligence and artificial intelligence? What are seen as the limits of artificial intelligence today? Linear thinking, logico-mathematical reasoning, rote learning, and recitation of responses are processes that now come within the domain of computers, but what of the other processes that are characteristic of human minds—the ability to feel pain and express pleasure—and the capacity for insight, foresight, creative thinking, intuition and exploration of new connections and new relationships?

Much has been made by educators of Howard Gardner's claim that there was not just one intelligence but 'multiple intelligences'. Since the publication of Frames of Mind in 1983, schools across the globe have adopted the notion of multiple intelligences in rethinking their pedagogies and redesigning their curriculums. I listened intently and rather bemused to Gardner's various radio interviews when in Australia in 1991. He claimed in one interview that in his research he had discovered 'a whole range of human abilities, talents, intelligences, faculties, whatever you want to call them', and then went on consistently to refer to seven intelligences. I had at that time recently been a participant at the Australian Council for Educational Research International Seminar on Intelligence. It puzzled me that whereas the world psychology community was admitting to difficulty in reaching a satisfactory definition of 'intelligence', one of their number would claim that there was not one but 'many intelligences'.

My confusion abated somewhat when in a later publication The Unschooled Mind (1991:12) Gardner explained it thus:

I have posited that all human beings are capable of at least seven ways of knowing the world—ways that I have elsewhere labeled the seven intelligences.
In an address to the 37th Annual Conference of the Orton Dyslexia Society in 1986, reported in Multiple Intelligences: A Collection (1995: 83), Gardner also admitted that he had 'decided to call the different kinds of minds intelligences', adding that had he called them talents, 'people would have said, "Oh, yes, yes, people have many talents," and then would have just gone about their business . ..

He then gave his definition of 'intelligence' as an ability to solve a problem or to fashion a product which is valued in one or more cultural settings.

It still leaves us with an unresolved question: Are there really separate and distinct 'ways of knowing' that can be applied to language, maths, spatial awareness, music, physical skill development, and interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships? Teachers have expressed to me their concern about the same issue as they have attempted to implement curriculum change based on the notion of multiple intelligences, asking the question: How can I know which intelligence the children are using as they go about their work?

The great educational theorist, John Dewey, once enjoyed a favored status in American education for his theories of experience and learning. Bob Samples (1976: 54) revealed that Dewey fell from grace, being replaced by Jean Piaget, when the Russians in 1957 won the race to put a manned satellite into orbit. In blaming Dewey for the national disgrace it seemed to escape the notice of those at the Woods Hole conference of scientists and educators in 1958 that almost twenty years earlier in Experience and Education the seventy-nine year old Dewey attacked not only traditional approaches, but was trenchant in his criticism of what the 'progressives' had done in distorting his educational theory. As Dewey put it then (1938: 20):

... the problem for progressive education is: What is the place and meaning of subject-matter and of organisation within experience?"
It may come as something of a surprise that, to quote Dewey (1938: 27): 'Everything depends upon the quality of the experience which is had'. While we would do well today to re-visit the ideas of Dewey written more than fifty years ago, perhaps we should spend some time looking again at 'learning' per se, and ask such questions as:
What happens in the process of acquiring knowledge?
What part does experience and sensory perception play?
What conditions optimize the process?
If we can throw some light on these issues, we may find a way to avoid the excesses of traditionalism at one extreme and of progressivism at the other. Hopefully, we would be able to incorporate the best of both and offer new freedom for learner and teacher alike. At the same time we may be able to answer Dewey's question as to 'the place and meaning of organisation within experience'. Additionally, we might consider the point at which appropriate measures could be implemented to make the shift from traditional school practice to some more desirable alternative. Constructivism: Going Beyond Behaviourism

The dominant theory driving education for several decades to the mid 1980s was 'behaviourism'. As a university graduate returning to the classroom in 1976 and being in charge of the field experience program for teachers in training, I was told by the teacher-training institution that all learning objectives were to be couched in 'behavioural' terms. As supervising teachers, we could write about children copying, spelling, writing, reading, repeating, patterning, but not about such aspects as understanding, comprehending or appreciating.
Behaviourism allows for the observation and reporting of observed behaviour, but cannot offer much in explanation of those observations. Behaviourism overlooks the role that the brain/mind might play in learning and ignores the point that all observed behaviour might be preceded by some brain/mind activity.

It is now generally accepted that the emphasis needs to be shifted from teaching to learning. Rather than asking what must I do to teach, teachers should be asking what must I do that the students will learn—and learn with understanding?

However, it is not just at the classroom that a shift will be required. There will need also to be a re-thinking of the way that measurements are made of student achievement. No longer will it be sufficient to assess a student's capacity to come up with the right answer; it will be essential to look at how the answer was derived and what understanding the student has of the subject being assessed.

It will also require students to look at their own learning in new ways.

For students to have more control over the pace and direction of their own learning they need to examine and evaluate the learning strategies that work for them. This involves the processes both of cognition—what it is to know, and metacognition—awareness of awareness or awareness of that knowing.

Among the foremost researchers in cognitive psychology is Lauren Resnick working at the Learning Research Development Centre at the University of Pittsburgh. Resnick suggests that we 'need a constructivist theory of instruction ... a theory that places the learners active mental construction at the very heart of the instructional exchange'. To quote Resnick (1983):
The human mind has been rediscovered, or at least reaffirmed; reasoning and thought are central objects of scientific study ... It seems evident that a cognitive theory of instruction ought to be emerging alongside our increasingly elaborated theories of cognitive performance and development. Resnick’s criticism of associationism and behaviourism is that they have little to say about thinking and knowledge. On the other hand Piaget and the gestaltists have little to say about instruction. As used by Resnick, 'instruction' is taken to mean all the things a teacher might do in intervening between the learner and the environment in which the learning takes place.
In recent years numbers of teachers at all levels of the formal system, disenchanted with traditional theory, have attempted to improve their effectiveness by adopting a range of innovative approaches such as experiential learning, inquiry learning, problem solving, cooperative group learning, and negotiating curriculum with students. Teachers have found that there are educational benefits accruing from each of these strategies. Students just seem to learn better.

'Constructivism' provides the supporting rationale for each of these innovative approaches to learning. Further, it supports the importance attributed in learning to self-esteem and 'metacognition' and is consistent with the conclusions of research into novice-expert representations of knowledge.

Simplistically stated:

constructivism goes beyond behaviourism and suggests that the learner constructs his/her own world picture from individual experience
If there is a limited experience the result is a limited 'world picture'. In contrast, if there is an elaborated experience, an elaborated world picture results.
Meaning is given by the connections that are made with prior experiences.

From the constructivist position, the learner is seen as an active constructor of knowledge. The role of the teacher then is to facilitate that process, helping the learner to construct a reality that is both sensible and 'correct'.

Some educators have tended to confuse constructivism with 'constructionism'. Constructionism emphasises the value of students being involved in constructing physical objects and it may arise from adopting a constructivist approach. However, it is not the same as constructivism which relates specifically to mental constructions or 'pictures' of the world.

Constructivism was the theory accepted as central to the Report of the Victorian Government Working Party on the Use of Technology as an Education and Communications Facility in Schools (The Smith Report: 1994). In the investigation for the Employment and Skills Council of NBEET in 1995, respondents responsible for an 'exemplar of change' consistently claimed that their approach had been influenced by constructivism. Similarly, those selected as 'leading edge individuals' accepted constructivism as the pedagogical principle that should inform/shape the use of technologies applied to learning.

Mental Abstraction and a Constructivist View of Learning

In the late sixties, while working on the introduction of a new science curriculum for Victoria derived from the Nuffield Science program developed in England, I had been impressed by and lectured widely on the theories of Jean Piaget which underpinned the approach. A short time later, I began a formal study of the impact of Immanuel Kant’s two hundred years dominance of educational thought and practice. In challenging the notion of a priori concepts, according to Kant, 'knowledge absolutely independent of all experience', the idea of 'mental abstraction' emerged, explained then as the 'activity of the brain/ mind in matching, comparing, analyzing and synthesizing the mass of percepts—impressions coming in through the various sense receptors—leading to the formation of concepts'.
To understand mental abstraction as a theory of knowledge acquisition, the following might be of some assistance:

A very young child becomes aware of object "A" as her sense receptors inform her of a bundle of "cat" sensations. Such sensations as colour, shape, proximity, feel, smell and sound are received by the sense receptors and recorded by the brain/mind as percepts and establish an "identity" for that object. In Fig 1, identity "A" applies only to this special cat, the family cat.

Later, when the child observes a similar object, say, the Persian cat from next door that produces a similar set of sensory input, her mind becomes active on the new percepts, establishing a new identy "B". In matching and comparing the two identities and focusing on the similarities, the mind generates the idea of "catness"—a first-level category/abstraction.

So it is with further objects producing similar percepts— the tabby or the ginger cat that crosses the garden—all come to be grouped by the mind under "catness"—still a first-level category/abstraction.

At some time, the child may observe a tiger in a circus or at the zoo. Until her mind becomes aware of the dissimilarities between the tiger and those objects that have been lumped together under "catness" the likely inclination will be to group the new object in the same category as the family cat, the tabby and the Persian.

The tiger is seen as a "cat".

(Fig 1)

The child may for a time retain "tiger" as a separate identity, but with further experiences of tigers the mind may focus upon the startling differences between what she has previously experienced as belonging to catness and what she is now experiencing—for example, this new object is larger by far and makes a loud growling noise—thus producing a new first-level category/abstraction new identity can then be seen as belonging to 'tigerness', a new first-level abstraction of "tigerness" (see Fig 2). Identities "D" and "E" then are seen as belonging to "tigerness"

Tigerness can itself be grouped under a yet higher level category/abstraction, "catness"which can be expanded to include both domestic cats and tigers.

Eventually, that same higher-level category/abstraction "catness’ may with further experience be expanded to include such things as lions, leopards, pumas and jaguars.

(Fig 2)

In a similar way the identity "dog" and the first-level category/abstraction "dogness" are formed by the mind as it sorts, compares, analyses, and synthesizes in a process of "mental abstraction".

(Fig 3)

From "catness" and "dogness" and similar first-level category/abstractions can be formed eventually second-level and even higher-level category/abstractions such as notions of 'mammalness', 'animalness', and 'livingness'—all higher level abstractions generated by the mind as it further processes the individual's sensory input (see Fig 3).

There are no fixed, established hierarchical relationships. "Identities" and "abstractions" can be grouped or re-grouped under different higher-level categories/ abstractions. For example, an identity may be processed by the mind as a "cat", a "pet", an "animal", a "nocturnal creature" or a "living thing", depending upon the capacity of the mind for abstraction, the language ability, and the requirement of the person at a particular time.

The model does not assume that all people have the same capacity for sensory input from experience. Abstractions are formed using the input from whatever senses can be applied. A non-sighted person would form abstractions using their senses other than sight.

Even without the "tags" of language being attached to the identities or categories/ abstractions, the mind is capable of generating a series of higher-level abstractions. However, the symbols provided by language generally do play a significant part in this process of mental abstraction.

What should be pointed out is that a child's "catness" would of necessity be qualitatively different from the "catness" of most adults. The more experiences, the richness of the experiences (either first hand or vicarious) the more elaborated will be the identity, and the greater will be the information available for constructing or reconstructing categories or abstractions.

To put it another way, a veterinarian would carry a different mental representation of "catness" from that of, say, the non-veterinarian/ non cat-owning conservationist concerned about the destruction of small native fauna in the Australian bush by feral domestic cats.

Identities enable recognition of individuals, but both identities and first level category/abstractions can be re-grouped, to be subsumed under new higher-level category/abstractions. If an identity cannot be subsumed , the percepts may be used to establish new category/abstractions. Sometimes a subsumed identity is extracted from one to be included in yet another new category/abstraction.

It may be that ' mental abstraction', briefly defined as the 'activity of the brain/ mind in processing sensory inputs', draws on short term memory and contributes to long term memory. It may be that we use stored information (memory) from the process of mental abstraction to distinguish elements that enable identification of individual objects or parts thereof. It may be that it is the stored information that enables the recognition of the 'face in the crowd', the 'tool in the tool box' or the 'family car in the parking lot'.

Identities and various-level categories/abstractions provide the raw material for thinking as the disparate images, ideas, memories and understandings are drawn upon to develop meaning and such other aspects from thinking as inferences, options, generalizations and conclusions.

A Constructivist Theory

The learning theory that generated from the ideas of 'mental abstraction' is essentially 'constructivist' in nature. It suggests that we each construct our own 'reality' or 'world picture' through the processing by the brain of sensory input, the reality being dependent upon both the range and the quality of that sensory input.

Ten years ago on Radio National, my comments relating to 'mental abstraction' triggered off a vigorous on-air discussion on 'constructivism'. Time prevented all but a brief outline of the notion of mental abstraction which I suggested offered so much for learning and teaching at every level. One of the contributors to the program claimed that 'perceiving just is' and that we can go wrong in drawing inferences due to prejudices and biases. How, he asked, do we ever reach a common idea of the real world and how do we communicate with each other if our world pictures and world views have this quality of uniqueness?

This brings up new questions: How do we develop those prejudices and biases? Is it sufficient to then say that these prejudices and biases just are? It follows from the mental abstraction model that identities and various-level category/abstractions provide the raw material for thinking as the disparate images, ideas, and memories are drawn upon to develop inferences, options and conclusions, all of which contribute to our value sets, prejudices or biases.

While our world picture is constructed from the input conveyed by our senses, our world view—the way we view the world— is constructed from the input of our senses influenced by the feelings or emotions such experiences generate. For example: a bite from a dog may influence the way we will in future view all dogs. An unpleasant later experience may become associated in our minds with something that earlier we found quite tolerable.

Writing for the U.S. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development about the uniqueness of each brain, Professor Renate Caine of the Californian State University commented (1991:87):

Although we all have the same set of systems, including our senses and basic emotions, they are integrated differently in every brain. In addition, because learning actually changes the structure of the brain, the more we learn, the more unique we become.
Because each of us constructs a unique world picture, and carries a unique world view, it is easy to see why communication between individuals is often difficult. In fact, the wonder is that harmonious communication can be achieved at all. The burgeoning industry providing strategies for personal counseling and contributing to the resolving of conflict would hardly be necessary if every person carried in his or her mind an identical world picture and a shared world view.

Earlier in the same publication, Caine and Caine had been critical of those who assume that learning takes place primarily through memorization of facts and specific skills (1991:4):

Almost ignored [by educators] is the immense capacity of the brain to deal with and instantly remember the moment-to-moment events that constitute life experience. Even more neglected and underused is the innate predisposition of the brain to search for how the brain makes sense, to search for some meaning in experience.
They make the claim that 'experiences actually shape our brains and therefore shape future learning'.

Here we can return again to Dewey's question about the place and meaning of organisation within experience, for it is from experience that the mind generates percepts, identities, categories and concepts.

Piaget and Cognitive Growth

In presenting his theories in the 1960’s, Piaget suggested that mental development progressed in stages. Although they could vary with individuals as to time of appearance, the 'stages' were considered to be invariant in order. The factors that influenced the growth through the stages, according to Piaget, were:

(i) Nervous maturation
(ii) Experience
(iii) Social transmission
(iv) Equilibration
Piaget’s theory of 'stages' and 'equilibration' produced a revolution in teaching. Teachers accepted that they should provide experiences and then await the child’s progress through the 'stages'. They were encouraged to allow students to proceed at their 'own pace', and to promote 'peer interaction' as the best form of classroom learning.

The message to teachers seemed to be quite clear: Do not intervene; do not attempt to advance children through the stages. The message transmitted to parents was also clear: Do not force the children, and leave the teaching to those who know—the teachers at school.

Looking back, educators created yet another myth, and that myth is sustained even today. Perhaps Piaget was a victim of historical circumstance. May-be educators made more of Piaget’s theories than he had intended.

Having been 'discovered' by the conference at Woods Hole in 1958, Piaget visited the United States in 1964 for the 'Jean Piaget Conferences on Cognitive Studies and Curriculum Development' held at Cornell and Berkeley. The impact of the visit was immediate. Its significance can be measured in the hundreds of research projects it stimulated in universities and the material those research projects produced for colleges of teacher education, not only in the United States, but in countries all over the world. The statements of 1964 are still being presented in some teacher training institutions as representative of the views of Piaget about ‘stages’ and cognitive growth.

However, it is important to stress that Piaget continued to write, researching and modifying his views, for a further sixteen years. A Dutch researcher, Rita Vuyk (1981), reported of her study of Piaget and his ideas at Geneva in the late 1970s that Piaget had become 'less and less interested in stages', and had introduced a new term, 'reflective abstraction', which he considered to be so close to equilibration as 'to seem the same mechanism described in two different languages and from two points of view'.

The 'Supportive' Model, An Alternative to Piaget

Piaget’s 1964 theory can be referred to as the 'autonomous' model—autonomous, because growth was claimed to be determined by 'equilibration', his invented term for a self-regulatory mechanism which acted to correct any disequilibrium brought about by new experiences. Equilibration raised an individual to a higher 'stage' of cognitive growth.

In developing an alternative 'supportive' model of mental or cognitive growth, I have discounted Piaget’s 'stages' in favour of the idea that the growth is continuous, though irregular; the irregularity being influenced by four factors: (i) The total state of the brain and the central nervous system;
(ii) The level and quality of the experiences;
(iii) The level and quality of social interaction; and
(iv) Sound pedagogy (the art/craft of teaching) Those factors can be explicated as follows: Factor (i): The total state of the brain and the central nervous system
'Maturation' (Piaget’s term) is but one aspect of the total state of the brain and the central nervous system. The supportive model takes account of the information being generated by the brain scientists in their attempt to analyze and synthesize what happens as the billions of cells and neural connections in the brain respond to information inputs. From what limited understanding we have of how the brain functions, we can say that no person operates at a constant level of efficiency. Chemical imbalance, physical or emotional trauma, illness, prescription or other drugs, hunger and dehydration, can contribute to changes in brain efficiency.

Factor (ii): The level and quality of the experiences

From what was written earlier in explaining 'mental abstraction', experience is an important factor, but, in the words of Dewey (1938): 'It is not enough to insist upon the necessity of experience, or even the activity in experience. Everything depends upon the quality of the experience which is had.'

Factor (iii): The level and quality of social interaction

There has been in recent years an increasing focus upon self esteem as being important to effective learning. Of major importance to mental development are the kinds of relationships that develop in personal social interaction and interaction within groups, whether that might be within the family, among peers, or with students and teachers.

Factor (iv): Sound pedagogy (the art/craft of teaching)

In searching the dictionary for a term to describe teacher-intervention, a vital element in the learning-teaching equation, the nearest approach was 'pedagogy', defined as the 'science or profession of teaching: also the theory or the teaching how to teach'.

This factor relates to the other three factors. Teachers should recognize that no individual can work at a constant level of efficiency, not that teachers can do much about the state of the brain, but they can make allowances for the fluctuations, and in the case of states brought on by emotion or trauma can intervene to reduce some of the impact.

In the contrived environment of the classroom, teachers should select experiences largely on criteria of quality, trying to establish levels of student prior experience before contriving and presenting a teaching activity.

Care should be taken to establish a climate built on concern for and a warm acceptance of each member—a climate in which honesty, open-ness and mutual trust can develop.

Classrooms are by nature busy places and each of the human components enter with a personal background and contribute to a 'class' history that is completely unique. The general climate should provide a warm acceptance for each of its members.

'Sound pedagogy' is much more than 'instruction'. In applying sound pedagogy, the role of the teacher expands to include all of the following:

• selecting experiences using quality as a measure of appropriateness;

• organizing, timing, monitoring and managing the experiences;

• providing order in the experiences presented (giving consideration to the scope and sequence in what is developed and presented as curriculum);

• attempting to reduce some of the complexity of the material or information being presented. (The world for both children and adults is indeed complex, but if the complexity is reduced in presenting ideas initially, the learnings often make more sense when later placed back into their original complexity);

• drawing learners into purposeful two-way communication (generating a climate where learners are free to inquire, to explore issues, to formulate questions, to express ideas, to debate points of view, and to seek solutions to problems);

• extending the learners’ interaction with the learning environment (extending the range and variety of the learning context).
As we move towards a new century where continuous and accelerating change it seems will be one of the few constants, there is need for an emphasis to be given to professional preparation and re-orientation training of teachers in new pedagogical skills.
Novice-Expert Representations

The Learning Research and Development Centre at Pittsburgh introduces yet another perspective. It looked at the way an educational task is perceived by novices and experts and discounts the view that experts simply carry out a task faster, and thus more efficiently. The evidence is that experts carry a different mental representation of a task to those considered to be novices. Centre Director, Lauren Resnick, concludes:
... the task of the instructor is not to search for ways of presenting information that directly match the thought or performance patterns of experts. Rather it is to find instructional representations that allow learners to gradually construct those expert representations for themselves. Assuming a continuum with the 'novice' representations being to one end and 'expert' representations to the other, the challenge for teachers is to find ways of meeting the students where they are along that continuum.
Again, applying 'sound pedagogy', the skilled teacher (the expert) should attempt to match the mental representations of the students (the novices) drawing them forward over time towards more expert representations.

The implications for education of novice-expert research are many. The findings help to explain how some teachers gain consistent classroom success. They also provide information that could make good teachers even better teachers. One view is that the research offers new directions for teaching into the future.

If knowledge continues to expand at an exponential rate, there could be a time when no amount of subject study will keep teachers up to date with the latest developments in their chosen fields. It is suggested that teachers in the future should focus upon the process skills, becoming in fact 'experts' in the processes that optimize learning. From such a position of competency, teachers could then become 'facilitators' of learning, being prepared to explore new subject content alongside their students. Whether or not the learning-teaching interaction takes place in the formal institutional settings of today, teachers would thus continue to perform a very vital community role long into the future.

The traditional view has been that teaching is a process of transmitting knowledge, the extent of such knowledge being measured by its product, student achievement. However, research now suggests that it is the student himself or herself that mediates the message coming from the teacher, the influences affecting that mediation being student behaviour, prior learnings (Fig 4), and the capacity for mental or cognitive processing. To take this a little further: Accepting the "constructivist" position, it is impossible to perceive the quality of the mental activity as it takes place in the mind of the student, an observer being restricted instead to reading certain of the signals transmitted by the student in the teaching-learning exchange.

(Fig 4)

Teaching craft or 'sound pedagogy' in this model becomes extremely important. Depending upon the reading of the student response signals, the teacher attempts to gain optimum learning, varying his or her teaching strategies in accordance with the interpretation given to those signals.
'Organization within experience' relates directly to structure of curriculum. As Jerome Bruner once wrote: '... knowledge one has acquired without sufficient structure to tie it together is knowledge that is likely to be forgotten.'

In the contrived environment of the school, teachers should provide experiences selected on criteria of 'quality'. Those quality experiences should be presented in multi disciplinary and cross disciplinary activities to help students become aware of interconnectedness of knowledge.

Concern for the Future

It should be of global concern that we have a generation of young individuals who have not been well served by our delivery of education. There is compelling evidence of students being alienated by the school system, based as it is on a mythology they do not seem to understand.

Kantian notions of absolutes; testing for I.Q. levels; compartmentalization of knowledge; seeking short-term results of learning; rewards and punishments; summative evaluation strategies that rely so much on the ability to memorize; tertiary entrance rankings; and even Piaget's stages of cognitive growth have acted to restrict learning opportunities. Streaming and grading of children on the basis of test performance tends to promote extra opportunities for those who achieve, while restricting the opportunities for those who do not.

Given the opportunity, students who have struggled for years may suddenly find in a minor achievement a new sense of success that seems to trigger off further successes and in a very short time they appear to leap ahead.

One should not underestimate the capacities of any individual, rather that through education the capacities of all individuals might be optimized. Teachers may find that by working to improve student self concept, struggling students in effect improve their educational potential.

The term 'intelligence has been coined to signify certain capacities of the brain. And yet, when we consider what the brain technologists are telling us, it becomes obvious that the way we have used the term in the past has been limiting rather than liberating.

Talk of intelligence and intelligence testing must draw us to ask: What is it that is being tested?

Most tests administered to assess intelligence are culturally bound, in essence assuming the children to be part of 'normal' society. If one has gone through a period of enculturation one can more readily answer the questions and thus score higher on the tests. A lower score then may have more to do with the level of socialization, the level of social interaction, less quality experiences, or the failure of long-term memory, rather than that an individual is any less intelligent.

And yet, for years we have given the impression that the measure is of intelligence—a measure of the potential of the brain.

It seems on balance that intelligence is related to the capacity of the brain for mental abstraction, but how does one measure such a capacity. Admittedly, all humans are different and in so many ways unique and that some have superior natural equipment than others. (In the 'supportive' model of cognitive growth it is this aspect which is adverted to by the factor, 'state of the brain and the central nervous system'.)

The work to establish the constructivist theory opens up new dimensions and educators should be prepared to pursue and test the emerging ideas to see if there are implications they can draw for learning, and out of that, for teaching.

All sorts of issues could be teased out, but it is not my intention to make a definitive statement about any one of them, except to say that all the mythology behind intelligence and intelligence testing should be up for re-examination and review.

Until the focus moves to learning, student understanding, and an examination and improvement of teaching skills, education will be unable to play its proper societal role, that of helping to shape and achieve preferred global 'futures'.

Epilogue:

A Proposal for a Television Series 'About Learning'

At the request of the New York UNICEF headquarters for a teachers kit on 'Learning About Learning', the UNICEF Committee of Victoria, between 1982 and 1984, prepared several drafts of a position paper addressing the topic. I was invited to a workshop to respond to the second draft in March 1984. The focus of the draft was on filming children 'at learning in different Third World countries'. In discussion following my response and that of Mr Trevor Hay, these key points emerged (Report to the National Education Committee of UNICEF Australia 1994):

• there was a need to broaden the focus on 'schooling' to 'learning in general' as much learning goes on outside formal education systems;
•   to avoid any suggestion of cultural condescension, programs should stress the positive aspects of cultural differences, and not imply cultural deficiencies in countries of the developing world;

•   the proposal should address the common factors of culture dealing with: what it is to learn, what this implies for children and adults of all cultures, and that such a presentation be designed to enhance international understanding in all participating countries;

•   programs should not be structured on a country by country approach which might highlight specific inadequacies;

•   the proposal adopt a 'futures' orientation.

The workshop appointed a three-person Project Planning Committee (PPC) with the task of proving the feasibility of a television series addressing learning, culture and institutionalized approaches to education.
After some eight months of research and dialogue with numbers of interested parties in Australia and from overseas, we developed the scenarios of a television series of seven one-hour programs with the tentative working title, About Learning, with the following statemen (O'Brien etal 1984):

•   This is a proposal for a series of seven one-hour television programs that will explore the notions of learning, schooling and culture, and which will speculate on their future relationships.
•   The series will be a broad summation from the best available research and experience in the world today.

•   The series will take a global view. It will build on world-views on 'learning' promoted by UNICEF in the seventies, especially through Faure's Learning to Be (1972) which suggested that humans have to become aware of their place in society over and above their roles as producers and consumers, and must be offered a vision of the world in which they have to live so as to enable them to decide on their approach to the future.

•   The series suggests that we may have reached a significant turning point in our understanding of human potential . Evidence for this is found in a critical analysis of research in learning psychology and related fields.

•   The series supports the positive and optimistic approach to learning in the Club of Rome report: No Limits to Learning (1979), and shares the report’s sense of urgency in suggesting that for humankind to survive its present crisis—including such factors as the threat of a nuclear holocaust, vast international inequalities and problems in resources development and maintenance—learning everywhere must become increasingly 'participatory' and 'anticipatory'. The series accepts the need for a new approach to learning, including learning in formal education, to prepare people to live in a future world of their own making.

The ability to anticipate the future and to participate cooperatively in shaping it is a critical skill necessary to ensure our very survival.

•   The series explores the relationship between culture and learning in a new light. 'Culture' is to do with the meaning we give to living and what choices we make individually and collectively in how we want to live.

It is possible to strip away superficial differences in ethnicity to demonstrate that culture is dynamic and to do with increasingly conscious, deliberate and changing choices.

•   It is part of UNICEF's brief to develop inter cultural understanding. Part of this it attempts through 'development education'. The series will reinforce UNICEF's leadership role in international education by using a state-of-the-art view of human learning as a firmer underpinning for development education so that it is not just seen as an exploration of how people in developing countries are attempting to improve their lot through education, but as an exploration of humankind's attempt to make a quantum leap to an improved future. Whether viewers be from technologically rich or from poorer developing countries they may gain from seeing themselves as members of a global village whose future will depend on the choices we all make.

• The programs will be realistic and positive in outlook, avoiding bleak negativism on the one hand and unjustified optimism on the other. Although answers to some very teasing questions will be attempted in the series, other questions will be left for viewers to ponder upon or until time itself can offer solutions.

The Seven Programs

Program one, Awareness Unfolds , examines what it is to be human and traces the ideas of knowledge, learning and culture across the centuries since the time of Plato and … 'poses questions about being human and what it is to learn, and moves through time and across cultures in an attempt to gain an understanding about the learning process'.

Recapitulating briefly the philosophic tradition, the program moves to review the contribution to learning theory this century of psychology, previously referred to as mental philosophy. The launching of Sputnik in 1957 is suggested as a major political influence on world education as the United States administration called for a re-examination of the then current learning models. The significance of Piagetian theory in the 1960s is treated in some detail.

Program two, Towards a New Holism, looks at experience, the importance of sensory perception in the development of concepts, and the plea by the authors of No Limits to Learning for the subject of learning to be researched on a scale warranted by its importance and pervasiveness. A challenge is mounted against some aspects of the prevailing 'Western' learning paradigm and criticism is developed concerning the assumptions and/or interpretations of Piaget. A call is made for an examination of what a new holism—the integration of philosophy and brain science—might mean for learning and the practice of teaching.

This continues on from the first program with a consideration of the constructivist view of learning, examining how it is that we use the five senses to construct our idea of reality. … The implications of the emphasis on 'failure' in schooling are examined, as are problems in defining development education. The program ends with a review of attempts to develop a more holistic approach to learning.

Program three, The Institutionalization of Learning — What is a School?, deals with such issues as charter and legitimization, individual status and identity, competition, cooperation, credentialing and management. The program looks at the historical development of 'schools' in various cultures and analyzes their basic characteristics, demonstrating a high level of commonality across cultures.

The various ways in which schools are measured for effectiveness, the balance in schools between teaching for individual development as against social cohesion, the role of schools in promoting intercultural understanding, and the use of schooling as social sorting mechanisms, are also considered.

Program four, Learning and schooling: National Traditions and Aspirations, examines further the development of school systems, in particular the ways in which systems have been transplanted from European countries to their colonies with consequent mismatches occurring. The theme concerning anticipatory/participatory learning is reiterated as a survival imperative.

Programs five and six, Cultural Evolution and Learning, suggest a notion of culture which does not emphasize ethnic or national systems of thought, but points instead to cultural evolution as a matter of dynamic choice for humanity. It suggests that the future of human cultural evolution is dependent upon the further development of creative self-awareness. During the program attention is drawn to the potential of the human brain as a crucial tool for cultural creativity.

The extent to which human beings choose between ways of thinking will depend to a large extent on what they know of the possible choices—and this in turn may depend upon a revolution in self-awareness based on constructive use of the knowledge to be derived from the very recent convergence of fields normally neglected by educators, such as anthropology, brain sciences and cognitive psychology
… As we grasp the significance of what may be a kind of 'cognitive revolution' every bit as significant perhaps as the industrial revolution, it will be possible to look beyond the confines of traditional education and to make acts of cultural choice in organizing truly 'participatory' and 'anticipatory' forms of learning.

… During the program an analogy is suggested between the development of language and the development of knowledge of the potential of the human brain as crucial tools for cultural creativity.

In the foreword for program seven, Into the Future, the following statement appeared:
The next moment in time cannot be predicted with any certainty. The future is completely unknown. We can cast back into time, examine events and perhaps trace their consequences to the present. We can look at present events and trace back to antecedent causes. Other programs in this series have already allowed us so to do. However, in describing reality we may go no further forward than the instant in time we call the 'now'. A program addressing the future must then be largely speculative.
Even in the world of ideas nothing seems to remain constant for long. Theories held to be true are continually being challenged and modified or replaced. … In spite of the constant changes occurring in society, there are those who seem to hold the view that in education the future will repeat the present. According to such a view, all that is required is to hold to the steady state. Already, however, there are all sorts of voices telling us they are not happy with what is going on. At the same time there are all sorts of voices suggesting that we should go in a different direction. Unfortunately almost none of those who demand a different direction for education have attempted to draw their scenarios into a cohesive whole.

… The choice then is between changes, desirable and undesirable, in short, choice between alternative futures. Such choices must be made concerning the pursuit of knowledge, strategies to optimize human learning potential, and the institutional settings for that learning to take place.

The program offers an agenda with options such as Anticipatory Learning; Handling Change; Optimizing Human Potential; Learning to Learn; Training and Re-training of Educators; Institutionalized Learning; and Curriculum and Change.
It is suggested that importance should be given to the explosion within brain science in knowledge related to the learning process and asserts that one topic, 'Many Cultures—One World', should be included as this item emphasises new imperatives where choices for the future are not for one individual or sector of society, but for the whole of humankind—a cultural choice about future survival.

Proposal Well Received, But ...

Despite being well received and highly regarded by UNICEF in New York, the involvement of UNESCO over a number of years, the agreement of the late Audrey Hepburn to anchor the series, the appointment of a producer and the efforts of the steering committee to generate publicity and funding, the project did not proceed to production.
Officially, the ideas remained 'on the back-burner' until the early 1990s. Under an agreement, UNICEF retains the intellectual property rights.

In looking back, each year that has passed has been cause for greater personal regret that the efforts of 1984 did not bring to fruition a television series intended to raise important educational issues for consideration by the peoples of the world.

However, the months of research and writing have been a factor influencing the direction my work has taken since 1984. As well as four years of post graduate university teaching, general educational consultancies and a number of conference presentations in Australia and other countries, the involvement contibuted significantly to the teacher handbook, Social Education for Australian Primary Schools (1989, 1990), designed to explicate and accompany the curriculum chart that I had developed a year or so prior to the UNICEF project. The involvement has also been an important influence in recent years developing strategies and advising on policy initiatives at State and National levels in Australia relating to the application of information and communications technologies to various levels in formal education.

Foot note: The iterative process that followed presentation of the report of the original three-person Project Planning Committee to the National Education Committee of UNICEF Australia (O'Brien et al 1984), and thence to UNICEF New York, involved the setting up of a Project Steering Committee to collaborate with UNESCO, and included several years of re-drafting. A further re-writing of the scenarios was made in 1989 to form a package considered more suitable for promoting the project to likely sponsors.

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The Author:

Former primary school teacher, teacher educator, researcher and freelance consultant in education, Don Tinkler has made a study of learning theory, curriculum design and implementation and the administration of change, over a period of thirty years. Author of an innovative curriculum chart, the Humanities Core Curriculum (1981,1989) and the teacher handbook, Social Education for Australian Primary Schools: A Futures Perspective (1989, 1990), he has consulted widely across education and presented on his research in journals, on radio and at national and international conferences.
Since 1992 he has led commissioned inquiries into the application of information technologies to support enhanced learning, first in higher education for the Australian Federal Government, then in school education for the Victorian State Government, and later, examining the possible impact of the convergent information technologies on the future work of educators across the whole education spectrum for the Employment and Skills Council of the National Board of Employment Education and Training (NBEET). He was also co-author of a report to the Broadband Services Expert Group forecasting the possible take up of broadband telecommunication services across the Australian education sector to the year 2009.
From 1996 to 2001, he was consultant in education and instructional design to Global Vision Productions (Melbourne) in developing an Internet-ready CD-ROM, One Destiny! The Federation Story. One Destiny! tells the story of the people and the events leading to federation of the six Australian states in January 1901. The CD-ROM project was based to a large extent on his developed theories of learning. Copies of One Destiny! were sent to all Australian schools in 1997 by the Curriculum Corporation, an advanced version was launched on the general market by the Governor General, Sir William Deane, in 1998, and a new multi-platform version of One Destiny! is proposed to be distributed to all schools by the Curriculum Corporation in time for the Centenary celebrations in 2001.

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