Friday 18 February 2011

Formal teaching and purposive conversation

I have been reading Roland Meighan lately, on the topic of 'purposive conversation'. Both he and Alan Thomas, as well as many home educating parents, seem to imagine that this is somehow different from 'teaching'. It is not. When Socrates instructed his pupils while strolling about in Athens, he may not have used books and whiteboards but he was still teaching them about ethics and philosophy. He did this through the conversational technique which became known as 'Socratic Dialogue'. This is an early example of purposive conversation. Using this method did not make Socrates any less of a great teacher.

Now 'purposive' suggests that those initiating the conversation have some sort of reason or purpose in mind. This purpose is often in the mind of an adult talking to a child; they want to tell her something. Let us suppose that I think that my eight year-old daughter ought to understand the principle pf photosynthesis. I could get a book out and make her read a passage on the subject, but that would be a very inefficient way of going about it. Far better to wait until we are building a den in the forest and then ask her why she thinks that leaves are green. This is not an example of an adult non-question; most of us genuinely don't know why leaves are green. We might have some vague idea about a substance called chlorophyll, but why is it green and not blue? Children love questions of this sort, because they can then imagine blue leaves and a green sky; it touches their fancy.

This can lead naturally to looking closely at leaves and in particular observing the little holes on the underside where carbon dioxide enters and oxygen leaves. Wow, the kid's only eight and already she is learning about gaseous exchange! Most children like learning strange new words and will be enchanted to say 'stomata', the technical name for these holes. This can lead to painting clear nail varnish on the underside of a leaf, thus making a cast which we can examine and making it possible more clearly to see the stomata. We can crush the leaves up in surgical spirit and it will turn green as the chlorophyll dissolves out. Again, I defy anybody to find a child who does not enjoy mucking about in the kitchen like this. Now we can bring in history. People used to dye their clothes in this way with plant juices. Why not try various leaves and then dye little pieces of an old handkerchief ? We see at once that the colours produced in this way are muddy and dull. Let's watch a Hollywood film and see how bright the colours are in Robin Hood. Something wrong there! Perhaps we can visit the Science Museum and see how the first artificial dyes were produced. We can also test the colourless residue of the leaves which have had their chlorophyll removed; test them for starch using iodine.

Two things strike one at once about all this. Firstly, no books or written work at all have been involved. Secondly, although we have only been using what is called purposive conversation, it is still teaching. We have been teaching the child. The idea that there is any difference at all between what some call 'formal teaching' and the methods involving 'purposive conversation' is a myth; it is all teaching.

The second thing to strike us is that this is all stuff that children love. Mucking about with dangerous substances like surgical spirit (one can demonstrate how inflammable it is, this is always fun!), making different colours. One can do this with rose petals too and make an indicator which will change colour in the presence of acids. This is also fun, testing household substances to see whether they are acidic or alkaline. Introducing the idea of proton donors can then happen quite naturally. Many parents will happily suggests to their children that they might want to do some painting this morning; few seem to think of extracting chlorophyll from plants and teaching about gaseous exchange. This is true of the parents of both schooled and home educated children and it is a bit odd.

Teaching chemistry, history, physics and biology in this way is fun. It is fun for the children and believe me, it is fun for adults too. I certainly learned a lot during my daughter's education. Much of the time, we were discovering things together. As I show above, one does not even need any books to do this; it is a natural extension of roaming around in the woods. Teaching by purposive conversation is enormously effective, far more so than dividing subjects up into neat and self-contained categories. It can also lead effortlessly to formal qualifications, although that is not really necessary unless you particularly want to do that. Whether you do or not, it is essential for children to know many things about the world around them. This vital information can be transmitted without the use of any books; simply by means of conversations, playing around in the kitchen and visiting museums, art galleries and other places.

18 comments:

  1. Be careful Simon, you're getting dangerously close to what a lot of us call autonomous education. The walk in the woods is the innocent bait, the question about leaf colour is the hook and if swallowed, the rest follows on naturally with the full support of the child. If running around through the trees and playing is more important then it gets left for another day.

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  2. 'Be careful Simon, you're getting dangerously close to what a lot of us call autonomous education.'

    This was all ten or fifteen years ago; my views on the subject have not changed since then!

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  3. Dead right Simon! the thing is by doing all that the other stuff comes naturally as soon as it's needed and does not need to be pushed. But then we all waste some time providing safety nets we don't need.

    We started HE determined to do all the natural learning, and do formal stuff to back it up in case it didn't work, in fact we'd done a few weeks of school thinking we could "unschool" in evenings and weekends so that would've be the best of both worlds. School however turned out to be a damaging waste of time when contrasted with a family that was strengthening a faith in the natural learning power of the child's own development.

    There is some recent research done at York showing that talking and conversation have a better effect on literacy than direct work on reading, interesting huh!
    http://readingformeaning.co.uk/

    Schools that Learn is a good book on the power of conversation and dialogue in learning. Some tips in there for a HE family.

    There is a stack of work on the power of conversation in adult learning but this is rarely focused on wrt child learning. I guess that may be because most children have education in groups to large to get much conversation with the teacher.

    Elizabeth








    Another lovely book is Comprehension though Conversation: The power of purposeful conversation in the reading workshop. Written by an American teacher who knew the truth before it was backed up by the evidence of the York study.

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  4. 'I guess that may be because most children have education in groups to large to get much conversation with the teacher.'

    Another powerful reason to shun nurseries. Language development in small children is promoted by one-to-one conversations with adults which are best provided at home. Using conversation as a teaching method is a natural extension of this.

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  5. For all that you dismiss autonomous education, it sounds like you and your daughter did a fair bit of it yourself?

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  6. "This was all ten or fifteen years ago; my views on the subject have not changed since then! "

    In that case you've been educating autonomously all along. Welcome to the club.

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  7. 'For all that you dismiss autonomous education, it sounds like you and your daughter did a fair bit of it yourself?'

    Not really. I had a plan; various topics which I wished to cover in a certain period. I used the most effective method to achieve this end. My understanding is that in autonomus education, it is the child herself who decides what she is interested in and wishes to study.

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  8. A key difference between Simon's pedagogical approach and that of parents who educate 'autonomously' is that in his case he decides that the child *ought* to learn about photosynthesis and *he* asks *her* why she thinks leaves are green. I used to hate this when I was at school. An autonomously educating parent would wait for the child to ask the question.

    I used to hate 'why do you think...?' questions when I was a kid - you could be sure that the adult in question was going to use it a) as an opportunity to show that your idea of what was going on couldn't cut the mustard, and b) as an excuse to tell you a lot of stuff you probably didn't want to know.

    If I asked my son leading questions like this he would say "I have absolutely no idea and I'm not interested. Now, let's carry on with our discussion about atmospheric pressure on Mars".

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  9. 'suzyg said...
    A key difference between Simon's pedagogical approach and that of parents who educate 'autonomously' is that in his case he decides that the child *ought* to learn about photosynthesis and *he* asks *her* why she thinks leaves are green.'

    Yes, I think that this just about sums up the case.

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  10. 'If I asked my son leading questions like this he would say "I have absolutely no idea and I'm not interested. Now, let's carry on with our discussion about atmospheric pressure on Mars". '

    Except if we were working on Martian studies I wouldn't ask the question in the first place. If you're walking in the forest and the child's interest is engaged, then it becomes an appropriate question. I've already used the hook-and-bait concept above, that's how we do things to offer possible subjects of interest and follow up on the ones that are grasped.

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  11. 'A key difference between Simon's pedagogical approach and that of parents who educate 'autonomously' is that in his case he decides that the child *ought* to learn about photosynthesis and *he* asks *her* why she thinks leaves are green'

    Yet I suspect that even the most autonomous parent would not hesitate to ask her child if she wished to do some painting. Offering the chance to investigate gaseous exchange though, seems to be placed in a different category. I wonder why this should be?

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  12. Ah, now we're getting on to how children differ. If my son and I were building a den in the forest, it is quite possible that he would be speculating about atmospheric pressure on Mars, or gold refining by the ancient Egyptians even if we weren't working on 'Martian studies'or "Ancient Egyptian studies', but on early building techniques.

    I've become very accustomed to what I would call opportunistic learning, where my job is to extend whatever he is focussed on.

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  13. 'Yet I suspect that even the most autonomous parent would not hesitate to ask her child if she wished to do some painting. Offering the chance to investigate gaseous exchange though, seems to be placed in a different category. I wonder why this should be?'

    Our learning is almost entirely 'autonomous' in the sense that I've had to start from my son's areas of interest in order to get him to learn anything. I offer a varied menu of activities during the course of the day, but they are frequently refused. The only 'hook-and-bait' that works is if I start the activity myself, and then he will often join in.

    In my son's case, given a choice of painting or investigating gaseous exchange, would go for the gaseous exchange any day. As it happens, he's familiar with photosynthesis, but only because it features in the development of the earth's atmosphere. See what I mean about extending whatever he's focussed on?

    It's all too easy to dismiss autonomous education as a soft option because you hear reports about 7 year-olds making cookies, painting and going to the park. You can learn a great deal from such activities if you have a parent who responds promptly to your questions and can rustle up the resources you need to explore them further. The key is having a learning parent, rather than one who already knows what you *ought* to know.

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  14. Suzyg wrote,
    "'A key difference between Simon's pedagogical approach and that of parents who educate 'autonomously' is that in his case he decides that the child *ought* to learn about photosynthesis and *he* asks *her* why she thinks leaves are green'"

    Not really, at least not in our experience. The key difference for us depends on the child's reaction to the question. If they seem genuinely interested the discussion continues. If not, it ends. The decision to continue or not is the child's, the beginning of the conversation would look the same. Asking questions or suggesting things that may interest my children, along with trips out, having lots of different books in the house, trips to the library, etc, etc, are just different ways to enable a child to find and develop interests of their own choosing. They are not going to discover many interests in a bare room on their own! I would probably ask if they want to know why leaves are green rather than 'why are leaves green?', but I'd imagine it could work both ways.

    "I used to hate 'why do you think...?' questions when I was a kid - you could be sure that the adult in question was going to use it a) as an opportunity to show that your idea of what was going on couldn't cut the mustard, and b) as an excuse to tell you a lot of stuff you probably didn't want to know."

    My kids don't seem to mind. Maybe because they know I'll shut up if they want me to?

    Simon wrote,
    "Offering the chance to investigate gaseous exchange though, seems to be placed in a different category. I wonder why this should be? "

    My kids used to love it when I suggested an experiment! They do their own now.

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  15. You've just described autonomous education, Simon. Unless you would have ridden roughshod over an obvious desire on the part of your child not to find out why leaves are green? That would not be AE.

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  16. And AE can include formal teaching too, if the child requests it (as ours have at various point in time).

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