Adams FIVE LITTLE FRIENDS La Rue THE F-U-N BOOK UNDER THE STORY TREE IN ANIMAL LAND Ross READING TO FIND OUT Nida FOLLOWING COLUMBUS FOLLOWING THE FRONTIER These are but a few of the many titles in supplementary reading described in our catalogue on BOOKS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING and FOR SCHOOL LIBRARIES Send for this attractive illustrative booklet, New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Boston Atlanta Chicago Dallas San Francisco DUGATION Devoted to the Science, Art, Philosophy and Literature VOL. XLV. of Education DECEMBER, 1924 Directing Learning No. 4 E. E. CLINE, PRINCIPAL OLIVER P. MORTON SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL., T RICHMOND, IND. XANDRE HE discussion of supervised study directed attention to a neglected part of the teaching process, although good, thoughtful teachers had independently discovered the gap and were using various devices to bridge it. The special discussion of the question of supervised study, therefore, with the consequent lengthening of periods and the conscious development of technique merely provided more adequate tools for the good teacher and specific standards for improvement for the others. But there was one harmful result of focusing the pedagogical spotlight on supervised study as such: the supervision of study was lugged in by the ears and treated as a special procedure, detached from the rest of the teaching process; bells ringing in the middle of the period to indicate that a break had come and as an imperative warning that something else was due, the decision that all the studying was to be done at school, may have served to bring supervised study into the schools but not necessarily into the teaching process. Then came the reaction; experimental tests proved that supervised study (all studying done in school) did not in all respects show the expected superiority over home study and had even some dis advantages; in many systems teachers did not know what to do, and, therefore, were doing nothing; supervised study is no panacea; better teaching is. So the argument went. And now, when supervised study is discussed, it is rather vaguely dismissed as a synonym for better teaching and we are urged to seek after the latter. But lately attempts have been made to treat supervised study as a part of the teaching process or rather to treat the teaching process in its entirety as including the supervision of study and of the studying process as the most important part of the whole. The whole teaching process is regarded as the direction of learning or as the training of pupils to think, in which the emphasis is shifted from the checking and the grading of pupils' unaided, groping, solution of school assignments to the careful oversight of the young minds while they are learning to think. The fundamental fact is that now the entire learning process has been put into the school and directed learning is for the first time possible; the better teaching is possible. This is the first basic principle that should govern any consideration of supervised study or directed learning. Once all the learning was left to the pupil, shifting for himself alone at home, while the "teacher" spent the entire class hour finding out how much learning had taken place and bestowing praise or blame, good grades or poor grades, accordingly; the pupil was to teach himself and report progress to the school. In the second stage of development in method a small part of the recitation hour was spent in "going over" the assignment and at least starting the pupil in the proper direction. The third stage recognizes that the studying and learning activity is that by which the child grows and transfers this activity, therefore, for the most part to the supervision of the school. The child's outside work is confined to research, experiment, and application along the same lines and with the methods he learns to use in school. In this way the child learns to study, finds satisfaction in study and forms the habit of study which continues after school hours and after school life and leads to continued learning and growth of the individual; his capacities under supervision are discovered and directed; the knowledge is gained with less waste of pupil energy and time, is more complete, better organized, more vitalized, than when the pupil had to shift for himself. Not so much time is wasted "reciting" what has been learned because the teacher sees the learning as it goes on. The supervision of study is not to be regarded as a third disparate step in the learning process. We do not want recitation and assignment and supervised study but a continuous series of recitation-assignment-supervised study-recitation. ., each one growing out of the preceding situation and leading logically into the following one. Such continuity in the whole process over which the school has control is the second basic principle in the consideration of the supervision of study. Such a situation is what we mean by and desire from supervised study or directed learning. Such a conception of teaching will not alter radically methods used by good teachers but will change the emphasis and give us more conscious teaching and less of conventional school ceremonies. This conception gives a new aim in teaching; not to see whether the learning (or thinking) has taken place but to see that the learning does take place; the former which was once the aim of teaching now becomes the means and merely one minor means to attain the latter. This is the third important principle. The new learning unit is no longer a recitation, an assignment, and some study more or less supervised, or any combination or purely chronological arrangement of these three; it is a pupil experience: a child meets a situation, reacts to it and becomes a different child about to have another experience, and so on in an endless series of such units. Directed learning implies a scheme to control this entire learning unit. Therefore, recitation, assignment, supervised study, prepara tion, presentation, etc., are only handy divisions of the labor involved in handling the unit in its entirety. It will be noted that, just as recitation, assignment and supervised study were parts of a continuous series, so the learning units are parts of a continuous series. Directed learning becomes continuous development under expert supervision. Such a conception unifies and gives meaning to our procedure and places it all under the direct control of the school. It also fixes responsibility definitely on the school. The recitation is no longer a means of finding out whether the child and the home have accepted the responsibility; it is now as much a test of the teaching as of the learning. But while it fixes responsibility, it also gives the school and the teacher the means of meeting it adequately. The question of outside study occurs. The idea that no outside study should be done when study is supervised in school seems foolish. As well say that no books are to be read outside of school or that no scientific experimentation or thinking is to be done outside of school because these activities sometimes occur in school; that is often the result of our labors, but certainly not the desirable one. A student attitude toward life and the habit of valid thinking are the most valuable acquisitions in education; why establish a situation that tries deliberately to divorce them from real life and makes them appear only school processes? We have already blundered enough in that way. Directed learning was not designed to remove thinking from life outside the school but to insure that it go on and go on efficiently. The pupil should be encouraged, even required, to continue out of class the studying and thinking processes he has learned to use in class. Directed learning does not require any special length of period because, as we said above, the period is not the teaching or learning unit. The length of the periods and the amount of outside study required can be so adjusted that no one will be overworked; as a matter of fact the supervision of the learning is the only sure way to find out whether any one is asked to work beyond |