David E. Hunt and Lawrence Kohlberg have researched positions that are of interest to science instructors. These findings have been further analyzed and developed by Charles Jung. Teachers who are confronted with criticism from today's students or who are unhappy with their teaching outcomes need to study these positions carefully.
Just as Jean Piaget has theorized stages of development for youngsters, Hunt and Kohlberg have proposed levels of moral and cognitive awareness that parallel chronological stages of development for adolescents and post-adolescents. Their disclosures may offer some insight for teachers who are trying to understand today's youth. This article is an attempt to merge their salient concepts of concern to science teachers. The Hunt, Kohlberg, and Jung articles are thorough in treatment and should be studied by those wishing additional information. Each paper promotes the notion of levels of understanding or awareness, which follow a progression from the need for structure to the need for less structure on the part of learners. Only the last four levels need discussion. While it is never a safe procedure to classify or categorize people, readers who are familiar with today's student should recognize the four levels or phases discussed.
The Stereotype Learner
The Level One individual is most often encountered in
high school and elementary school, although a few occasionally find their way
to college and beginning undergraduate sections. This individual has responded
to the adult world's promotion of role expectations that neatly fall into specific
stereotyped occupations. The Level One individual lacks the basis for forming
individualized or personalized opinions regarding career choices. Course work
for these individuals appeals if there is a direct, immediate relationship with
what the learner perceives as relevant for an expected occupational role - often
the parent's occupation or one designated for the learner by the parents. The
Level One student lacks an experimental or cognitive base for evaluating the
importance of assignments. There may be a rejection of course assignments which
often leads to academic failure. Level One students may do an adequate job in
classes if direct occupational relevance is demonstrated. However, most need
considerable direction and guidance from the instructor. Thus, programmed materials,
workbooks, worksheets, readings related to the text, and structured lab experiences
offer the best methods for this student. Jung calls this individual the stereotypic
learner.
The Opinionate Learner
The Level Two learner may be termed the opinionate learner.
These individuals may compose about one-half of most elementary and high school
level classes. The opinionate learner is happiest in the world of low level
cognitive information. Information is viewed as a collection of non-redundant
absolutes. Right-wrong, black-white, yes-no specifics are learned with enthusiasm.
This learner will rarely Question assignments, learns cognitive information
willingly and is most comfortable if the information is in the text or carefully
explained in a lecture. There is little pleasure found in real-world experiences.
An opinionate botany student would easily learn that there are four cell layers
in the cross-section of a leaf. The learner would draw and label such a cross-section
in earnest, feeling comfortable that all leaves hold that anatomical configuration.
The opinionate learner likes instruction from lectures, handouts, teacher directed discussions, workbooks, structured labs, reports, teacher-generated library assignments, and films and materials that do not present gray area inconsistencies.
The current trend toward standard based course objectives may be the product of Level Two thought and probably appeals most to Level Two individuals.
The opinionate learner is the pivotal-type in the hierarchy of awareness levels. In time, and with the appropriate awareness of increasing stimuli, the opinionate learner will begin to exhibit behavioral change. Two form of stimuli are of interest today - documentary television and the Internet, which is of significance to high school-aged individuals, and debate and discussion with peers at Levels Three and Four. The outcomes of debate and additional input of information often focus on the realization that there are not as many black-white concrete answers to today's complexities as imagined. Television is not directly responsible for changing many opinions about basic facts or concepts. Rather, television forces young people to question values once held as sacred. A concomitant of this situation from the Internet is the realization that there is too much to learn; a feeling of despair and frustration is often noted after realizing that it is impossible to learn it all. The individual who learned about four cell layers in the leaf cross-section is dismayed upon discovering that all leaves do not exhibit this pattern. A result of this new awareness is that once-opinionated students begin to question or reject statements that adults in teaching or authority positions make. At the same time, there are concomitant changes in dress, appearance, and behavior. These signal the beginning of Level Three awareness.
The Existential Learner
Jung terms Level Three individuals existential learners.
As the existential them implies, time awareness is worth nothing. Where stereotypic
and opinionate learners tend to live for the future and speak often of the past,
existential types are not concerned with the past, thus rejecting most information
which alludes to historical positions or opinions. Neither are they concerned
with what is to come. This student lives mainly in the here and now . Today,
this type is to come often exhibits dress patterns considered bizarre by opinionates.
Some characteristics of this individual may include alternate lifestyles, drug
use, varied religious expression, and (importantly for the teacher) questions
about what is worth studying. Members of prior generations have arrived at Level
Three awareness without manifesting the overt characteristics noted above; however,
they usually can relate some existential behavior common to their era.
The existential Period is the phase that gives teachers and administrators their most difficult moments. The protests of the late 1960s were the product of existential types for the most part. Existential students prefer teaching methods that allow for options and independent learning such as teaching-learning contracts, open-end problems, open experimentation and student-led discussions. Traditional science teaching methods are rejected by most existential learners. Many espouse the notion that they are better able to structure their own courses and methods for evaluating progress. Many teachers who have taught for several decades and who have observed the emergence of the existential type are dismayed at the thought of allowing students to take part in formulating decisions about course content, procedure, and methods of evaluation. Science teachers who are not cognizant of the demand for a say about course structure are often victims of poor student ratings, student dissension, and poor cooperation.
One chemistry teacher met the demands of existential types by first incorporating traditional means to teach basic quantitative procedures. Chromotography, spectrophotometry, and titration techniques were taught during the first weeks of the semester. This was followed by allowing students to choose problems that would test their analytic skills. Working on their own or with limited assistance, students discovered the rigors of analytic chemistry and learned technique while attempting to determine the amount of fluorine in a commercial toothpaste, the amount of zinc in a soil sample, or the amount of fumaric acid in green fruit samples.
There is no set length of time for an individual to stay at awareness Level Three, nor is there a specific age at which people enter this period. Often, people will move in and out of the preceding and following levels, which point is of interest to those studying learning theory.
The existential period terminates when the learner reaches an awareness about the finiteness of life and the realization that the individual is responsible for making choices and decisions that affect the outcomes of life.
The Creative Learner
The final level of awareness is what may be termed the
creative stage. At this point in development, learners have the realization
that life might be purposeful and that they are free to make choices which will
affect their lives. This differs from the blind acceptance of purposefulness
found in Levels One and Two. The learner takes charge of life. Many teachers
and parents will note that the once-recalcitrant, existential learners will
seek them out and begin study with a zealousness that is startling. These people
will often emerge in graduate school. The freedom wanted by this type of learner
generates a great deal of independence; work is genuine, creative and unencumbered.
In Maslow's terms, this individual would be considered "self-actualizing".
Having entered the creative phase, the learner accepts that all behavior represents the possibility of choice for exposing, or not exposing, oneself to change. There is an acceptance of responsibility fro an active part in creating "self" from that point on.
Most learning of the stereotypic and opinionated individuals occurs as a result of reinforcement via grades and adult acclaim.. This type of learning is rapidly forgotten and is generally applied under those conditions for which it was learned. By contrast, learning Level Four, which involved insight, is easily retained, needs little or no reinforcement, and is broadly generalized in behavioral applications. Thus, inductive teaching procedures are best for Level Four individuals.
Problems of learners are compounded by differences in awareness exhibited by teachers and adults. As expected, adults have also evolved to specific levels of awareness. When adults at Level Two attempt to teach or relate to Level Three and Level Four individuals, conflict arises. Many Level Two adults not only cannot teach Level Three and Level Four people, but also fear and often fight then while misinterpreting their behavior. Kohlberg reports that, while increasing numbers of youth are moving to advanced stages of awareness, most teachers are only at Level Two, with only 10% reaching the final stage. He further reports that an individual who stays fixed in a stage for too many years loses the capability of moving to the next stage.
Conclusion
Kubie and Kohlberg have indicated that in the past, preoccupation
with academic achievement has contributed primarily to human worth, while inadvertently
maintaining many conditions that inhibit self-evolution. With new, clearer definitions,
science educators will be able to provide a better combination of conditions
which maintain high academic achievement for human worth, along with experiences
in decision making and other forms of self-awareness which provide for human
dignity and freedom. The increased creative and destructive capabilities of
recent cultural and technological advances in society make such improvement
not only possible, but also extremely important to the welfare of mankind.
A person at a low conceptual level might resond with "Nuke 'em!" An individual at a higher conceptual level would reflect that the issue is highly complex and might write out several paragraphs which would outline all sides of the situation.