Fads

Every teacher with a few years of teaching experience has experienced and was subjected to educational fads. These fads invariably lacked evidence for effectiveness, enriched consultants, created more work for teachers, failed in practice, but remained in place years after everyone know they were nonsense. Fads in everyday life are typically harmless (like pet rocks), but educational fads invariably are to the detriment of learners.

Teachers in South African will soon have to earn CPD (Continuing Professional Development) points. The signs are already there that the purveyors of educational bullshit are sharpening their teeth for what will be a lucrative market. It is now the time to identify pseudoscientific approaches that may eventually become fads. Looking at the characteristics of educational fads can help one spot looming fads.

Prof. Martin Kozloff (see in Rate My Professors what his students think of him), wrote an excellent article, Fad, Fraud and Folly in Education. He is a controversial figure, but his views on teaching and evidence are sound.

Kozloff named some of ideas that he regarded as educational fads:

" ... the history of innovations in education (ranging from questionable to destructive), such as additive-free diets, "gentle teaching," "sensory integration," "full inclusion," and "facilitated communication" for persons with autism and other developmental disabilities; whole language, invented spelling, inquiry learning, discovery learning, learning styles, multiple intelligences, "brain-based teaching," constructivist math, portfolio assessment, authentic assessment, "journaling," self-esteem raising, "learning centers," "sustained silent reading," "developmentally appropriate practices," and "student centered" education for more typical students."

His opinion of full inclusion is instructive (although I wonder whether he is exagerating - creating a straw man?):

"For one thing, ordinary fads are cheap and harmless. ... In contrast, pernicious innovations in education waste time, money, energy, hope, learning opportunities, and the chances for beneficent outcomes. Instead of being taught to feed himself, walk, point to things he wants, operate a tape player or computer, look at the faces of his parents, and turn the pages of books, the fully included 16 year old student with severe mental retardation sits strapped into a wheelchair in a high school history class. He learns nothing whatever; his teachers know it's a cruel hoax, but "inclusion specialists" are satisfied with "social progress" (increased tolerance and social justice) and have higher self-esteem for a job well done."

He summarized his views:

"There are two sorts of pernicious innovations in education: passing fads (e.g., "multiple intelligence") and chronic malignancies (whole language). Both waste time, money, energy, teachers' efforts and goodwill, and children's opportunities to master skills. Both forms of pernicious innovation rest on the emotional appeal of an empirically empty Romantic modernist critique of contemporary social institutions and values (primary folly) translated into progressivist education shibboleths and jargon (derivative folly) that are used to generate and then to sustain allegedly-novel (but rarely field tested and almost always worthless) "practices" (fraud) that provide prestige, tenure, privilege, publication, easy money, and power to their promoters. Fads, folly and fraud are to a great extent located in schools of education, and will continue as long as they are allowed."

Other online resources I found useful are by an anonymous writer who calls himself Prof. Plum. His useful articles Logical Fallacies in Edubabble and Logical Fallacies, look at logical fallacies contained in some educational fads and the marketing of these fads.

Enjoy your reading.