Literature Review
An education timeline
According to Gray (2008), “If we want to understand why standard schools are what they are, we have to abandon the idea that they are products of logical necessity or scientific insight. They are, instead, products of history. Schooling, as it exists today, only makes sense if we view it from a historical perspective.” Thus, this literature review shall start with a brief education timeline, in order to illustrate the progression of the subject matter throughout the ages. This will also aid to elucidate a few concepts, such as work and play, as well as how children have related to them. From hunters and gatherers to modern colleges, children have most often been submitted to the caprices of adults and their own agenda, ever since the distinction between play and work was established by Aristotle in Ancient Greece (D’Angour, 2013). To extrapolate even further, according to Phillips’ (1996) introduction to Ariès (1960) “the child became, one might say, something between a commodity and an object of sexual desire, a ‘toy’ to use one of the words in Ariès’s book.”
When Homo erectus began living as a collective of hunters and gatherers approximately 1.8 million years ago, children were free to explore and play on their own. They educated themselves while engaging on this process, under loose tutelage of their parents. “Adults in hunter-gatherer cultures allowed children almost unlimited freedom to play and explore on their own because they recognized that those activities are children’s natural ways of learning.” (Gray, 2008)
It is possible to trace a parallel with Nonviolent Communication, created by Marshall Rosenberg in the 1960’s. Rosenberg claims that during mankind’s period as hunters and gatherers, violence was minimal, as people were not trying to dominate one another. Humans were trying to survive, “they had to be able to take initiative and be creative in finding food and tracking game.” (Gray, 2008) It was a way of life based on skill and knowledge of the land, but not labor intensive, as groups did not distinguish activities between work and play. (Gray, 2008)
With the advent of agriculture, humans started to accumulate land, being able to subjugate nature to their own will. Exploring was reduced to a minimal, while long hours had to be dedicated to the field and crops. More food was produced and humans started to establish themselves on fixed dwellings, which enabled them to have more children of their own, who started to work at an early age. “Successful farming required long hours of relatively unskilled, repetitive labour, much of which could be done by children.” (Gray, 2008) Play and work were distinguished, as children had to suppress their desire to explore in order to help their families. The language of domination starts here, Rosenberg claims, either through the accumulation of land and resources, or through divine rights. “We started to live in cultures in which a few people claiming to be superior dominated others. And that requires a language of domination. A language where you classify people by what they are. (…) People that claim to know what is right and what is wrong. And they maintain their power through the use of power over tactics, such as punishment, reward, guilt, shame.” (Rosenberg, 2012) Children, therefore, started to live by the adults’ agendas instead of their own.
Further along the timeline, prior the fifth century BCE, Greeks saw work as the labour that was carried out in the fields, while children could play with words, music and drama. Play was an acceptable learning process, central to elements of Greek culture, such as “religious ceremonies and social events”. (Gray, 2008) There still was no formal education system, however the development of Greek culture created a need to educate children at an earlier age. “While musical and athletic accomplishments, as well as skills in verbal and rhetorical improvisation, remained key virtues for educated adult males in the city-states that flowered in archaic Greece, the growing importance of writing had impelled the teaching of letters.” (D’Angour, 2013)
While play was important for the absorption of Greek culture, “The Greeks considered scholarly study to fall into the category neither of play nor of work but of the productive use of leisure, schole.” (D’Angour, 2013) Plato believed that the concept of play was responsible for social stability in cities. If one regulated how children played, they would become better or more developed adults later in life. This lead to a more narrow view of leaving children free to discover letters and music, and to an attempt to organise how they used their leisure. Aristotle was even more rigid on his views regarding the distinction between education, play and work, as he believed that “education is a way to spend leisure-time edifyingly, whereas play is nothing more than a break from work. (D’Angour, 2013) According to D’Angour (2013), this was crucial to later formal education: “Aristotle’s reduction of work and play to a dichotomy may account for why the new understanding of play as educational for children, broached by Plato’s novel theorizing, disappeared from ancient thinking. It was not to be revived for over two millennia.” (D’Angour, 2013)
“One of the effects of pursuing such skills [writing, playing with music and drama] at higher levels was a desire to systematize the training of youth at earlier stages. This ultimately required a recognized teaching profession, with elementary schools, instruction manuals, prizes for achievement and so on — things for which slim evidence exists before the fifth century” (D’Angour, 2013) The Douris cup, painted in Athens in the 470’s, depicts what appears to be a classroom, with young men studying.
Despite the fact that the Greeks started a process of systemization of formal education, this was not the case in the early Middle Ages in Europe.
“The age groups of Neolithic times, the Hellenistic paideia, presupposed a difference and a transition between the world of children and that of adults, a transition made by means of an initiation or an education. Medieval civilization failed to perceive this difference and therefore lacked this concept of transition.” (Ariès, 1960)
The classroom as we know of today, and was even briefly structured in Ancient Greece and even depicted in the Douris cup, would take centuries to be formed. “But this structure, without which it is hard to imagine school life, dates back no further than the sixteenth or late fifteenth century, and did not assume its final form until the beginning of the seventeenth (…) in the ancient school, division into classes remained a superficial disciplinary practice.” (Ariès, 1960) Furthermore, childhood was not seen as a transition between being an infant in a mother’s lap and a full grown adult. “Before the seventeenth century people had been children; but before the seventeenth century there was no such thing as childhood.” (Phillips in Ariès, 1960) According to Ariès (1960), children were seen as miniature adults, even being depicted as such in paintings. From the age of seven, they were already inserted in the adult universe. Finally, due to the fact that children were often delegated into apprenticeships, this created an abyss between adults and their offspring: there was little interest in the processes that children engaged in.
Schooling started to rebuild itself in order to supply a need from the Church. “The pupils learned what they needed to know in order to say and sing the offices, namely the Psalms and the Canonic Hours, in Latin of course, the Latin of the manuscripts in which these texts had been established. This instruction was predominantly oral and addressed to the memory” (Ariès, 1960) Lessons were taught inside churches by priests. There was no separation by age or a set curricula to be followed. “People went to school when they could, very early or very late.” (Ariès, 1960)
Certain schools started to gain a reputation, especially after other subjects were added to the informal curricula at the time, such as arts, grammar and arithmetic. Furthermore, as health and hygiene improved in cities and the countryside, infant mortality decreased and the combination of these factors resulted in the rise of the school population in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Schools were not restricted to the elites anymore, as “many young nobles ignored the college, avoided the academy and went straight into active service in the army.” (Ariès, 1960) However, it was still gender restricted, as girls continued to suffer from the precocity originated in the Middle Ages: their childhood was minimal and many became mothers and wives as early as the age of ten. This culminated in the fact that most women could not read or write.
Throughout the end of the Middle Ages, moralists from the Jesuit and Oratorian religious orders fought for education and a more rigid structure to be followed by schools. This included a curriculum, a division of students regarding age and competence, more teachers and an appropriate environment for lessons. These elements were developed and proved to be essential for modern schooling as we know it. “In this prospectus Baduel points out that the division into classes is indispensable for the proper organization of the school: hitherto ‘everything had been mixed up and confused’. Henceforth, ‘the school will be divided into various classes according to the age and development of the pupils.’” (Ariès, 1960) Teachers started to feel the need to adapt what was taught to the level of their students, instead of just following their own desires: “Originally, ‘each master tried to attract the pupils, teaching not what was best, but what gave the more pleasure, and consulting not so much the students’ minds as their tastes’. These masters ‘read from authors above the age of their pupils, even when these readings could prove harmful to morals and judgement’. An Authority accordingly had to be imposed on these excessively independent masters (…) a rector was appointed.” (Ariès, 1960) Finally, the automation of industry decreased the number of children in labour, which in turn resulted in the rise of school population. Due to that, divisions had to be promoted, as some classes had up to two hundred students. This dissection of classes in different environment proved to be better for disciplining pupils (Ariès, 1960). “This discipline not only took the form of better supervision inside school, but it tended to force parents to respect the complete school cycle” (Ariès, 1960), which resulted in even more structure for the education system. Children now were classified per class, according to their age and competence, and had a certain number of cycles to complete before being ushered into the adult universe.
However, children were still following an agenda that was not theirs, either dictated by employers in industry, who “saw schooling as a way to create better work. To them the most crucial lessons were punctuality, following directions, tolerance for long hours of tedious work, and a minimal ability to read and write.” (Gray, 2006); or by national leaders, who “saw schooling as means of creating good patriots and future soldiers.” (Gray 2006); and finally, even by reformers of education, who had planned their students’ future as great scholars. Furthermore, children were all seen as a homogeneous mass, not as individuals with separate needs, being submitted to long hours of repetition and memorization. The distinction between work and play kept true ever since Aristotle, as school gradually became the child’s work, designed not by the child itself, but by professional educators. Even physical punishment was common, turning the already arduous process of learning into an unpleasant experience to many students.
If at that moment students made an effort to learn in order to “escape the threat of the birch rod or cane” (Skinner, 1968), in more modern forms of education they are concerned with other forms of punishment. “The child at his desk, filling in his workbook, is behaving primarily to escape from the threat of a series of minor aversive events — the teacher’s displeasure, the criticism or ridicule of his classmates, an ignominious showing in a competition, low marks, a trip to the office ‘to be talked to’ by the principal, or a word to the parent (…).” (Skinner, 1968) Children are still subjugated by adults on a daily basis and, according to Montessori (1966) “As a rule, we do not respect our children.”
Along the despise for punishment, constructivists like Montessori and behaviourists like B.F. Skinner were concerned with how schools often saw a group of students as a uniform mass of people, and not a collective of individuals. According to Skinner, (1968) “Teaching is simply the arrangement of contingencies of reinforcement.” In his view, each child will react differently to different types of stimuli in certain types of environment. This way, it is not possible to see one classroom as one homogeneous form, or to think that each lesson will impact the students in the same way. Sir Ken Robinson shares a similar view regarding the uniqueness of each pupil and so does Montessori. The latter believes that every student should be let free to explore on their own way and educators should often engage in observing their pupils, rather than interfering. However, this process of play and learn would have a certain structure to be followed. “Freedom without organization of work would be useless. The child left free without means of work would go to waste, just as a new-born baby, if left free without nourishment, would die of starvation. The organization of the work, therefore, is the cornerstone of this new structure of goodness; but even that organization would be in vain without the liberty to make use of it, and without freedom for the expansion of all those energies which spring from the satisfaction of the child’s highest activities.” (Montessori, 1966) In this definition of work and freedom, or even play, Montessori’s viewpoint resembles Plato’s, in Ancient Greece, in an attempt to regulate the amount and nature of play and work. It is possible to trace one more parallel between Montessori and Skinner in this case, as Skinner also believes in organising the act of learning: “Left to himself in a given environment a student will learn, but he will not necessarily have been taught. The school of experience is no school at all, not because no one learns in it, but because no one teaches. Teaching is the expediting of learning; a person who is taught learns more quickly than one who is not.” (Skinner, 1968)
Skinner was a firm advocate of the student taking an active role in the process of instruction. “‘We learn by doing.’ It is important to emphasize that a student does not passively absorb knowledge from the world around him but must play an active role, and also that action is not simply talking.” (Skinner, 1968) Combining individualized learning and learn by doing, Skinner spoke highly of what he called teaching machines. As each class often has one teacher who has difficulty in catering for each and every student’s needs, these machines “would permit each student to proceed at his own rate.” (Skinner, 1968)
Competition, Individualism and Cooperation
“But students, like the rest of us, don’t instinctively know how to interact effectively with others. Students must be taught the interpersonal and small-group skills required for high-quality collaboration and be motivated to use them.” (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994)
After conducting research on the field of individualized learning, with students progressing at their own pace and working on their unique skills, a concern was raised. If the Millennial generation, according to Thompson (2015), is already accused of being self centered and overly attached to its gadgets and the web, don’t we risk reproducing this behaviour on our younger students if overusing digital platforms? In an extreme picture, a school where kids are constantly working on computers on their own would resemble a massive call center. The only thing that would matter would be their own goals. Empathy and interpersonal skills would be left behind. Digital platforms would serve a counter purpose in this case, creating an abyss between students instead of bridging gaps and forming a spirit of community. According to
Cooperative learning could respond to this need. Its prime goal is to raise stronger individuals through teams. According to Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1994) in their book The New Circles of Learning, which was the basis of my research concerning cooperative learning, “If classrooms and schools are to become places where people achieve worthy goals, they must become places where students, teachers, administrators, and other staff cooperate in pursuit of those goals. Such cooperation must be consciously implemented until it becomes a natural way of acting and interacting.” This speaks to Maria Montessori’s idea of the purpose of schools in a child’s life, which is to teach children how to observe and absorb the environment that surrounds them. This would lead to more conscious and thoughtful people in future communities. (Montessori, 1966)
According to Robinson and Aronica (2015), most schools all over the world are today focused on a more industrialized form of education. Students are pushed in competitive environments, where grades are the priority. Efficiency is the order of the day. If the child does not meet certain criteria of behavior, immediately he or she is diagnosed with a learning disorder. Robinson (2006) talks about the false epidemic of ADHD and how children are just different. They learn in different ways and different rhythms. “Children are not, for the most part, suffering from a psychological condition. They’re suffering from childhood.” (Robinson, 2013)
In this context, especially in schools that push kids to get into top tier universities, a competitive atmosphere is installed inside classrooms. “In competitive situations there is a negative interdependence among goal achievements.” (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994) Children and teens view their peers as people who they must undermine in order to reach their objectives. This creates citizens that are prompt to dialogue in a violent fashion, where they try to subdue others to satisfy their needs (Rosenberg, 2012). Also, there are students who “take it easy because they don’t believe they have a chance to win.” (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994), which reinforces how inappropriate this kind of learning is. Kids are either fierce competitors or let go of any motivation, as they cannot visualize the purpose of even trying.
In some constructivist schools, like Escola da Ponte in Portugal, students progress on their own pace in the curriculum pathway. According to Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1994), this is not an ideal form of education as “students are expected and encouraged to focus on their strict self-interest (…) and view the success or failure of others as irrelevant”. If the goal is to create bonds between students, a pure individualistic regimen of work is subpar, as no interdependence is established between peers.
According to Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1994), “Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups that allows students to work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning.” In this context, positive interdependence is installed between students, which means that they all understand that they will only achieve their goals if the rest of their classmates get there too, therefore a “we instead of me” mentality. (Deutsch 1962; Johnson and Johnson 1991 in Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994).
Ideally, children and teenagers would enjoy working collaboratively, eventually even competing with one another for fun and conduct individual coursework at times. (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994) “Placing students in groups and telling them to work together does not in and of itself result in cooperative efforts.” (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994) This is an extremely important notion about teamwork. Most of the times, teachers will group three or four kids and hope for the best, instead of actually taking the time to teach essential teamwork components.
Positive interdependence
Positive interdependence is the basis for a cooperative classroom. As said before, it is the kind of mentality between peers that reinforces that everyone is in the same situation: one will thrive only if the rest of the group also achieves their goals. “Within cooperative learning situations students have two responsibilities: to learn the assigned material and to ensure that all members of their group learn it.” (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994) It is indispensable that students not only support and encourage each other, but also celebrate their joint success.
In order to establish positive interdependence, it is necessary to create a clear and structured goal and communicate it to all groups. To fulfill the lesson requirements, the teacher could assign roles and resources to each team member, to encourage individual accountability. Roles are complementary and the pieces of resource are interconnected, so each and everyone is needed to reach the end goal. After the task is completed, a reward is offered to the group and to each member, as the objective of cooperative learning is to raise strong individuals. They must commemorate together and rejoice in the power of their team. (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994)
Promotive interaction
Once positive interdependence is established in the classroom, promotive interaction will follow, as pupils will be actively supporting each other. “Promotive interaction refers to students’ facilitating each other’s success”. (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994) Through face-to-face encouragement, exchange of content and resources, feedback and intellectual challenge, students will constantly work together to succeed.
Individual accountability
According to Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1994) “Individual accountability exists when the performance of each individual student is assessed and the results are given back to the individual and to the group, who holds each person responsible for contributing a fair share to the group’s success.” It is essential that the teacher acts as an observer here, in order to ensure that everyone is participating in the work.
What happens in groups with no individual accountability is described by the term “social loafing”, where one or more team members will neglect their part of the assignment and leave it to the rest of the group (or even one lone soul) to do the whole work. (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994) Either that or team members will achieve a “Frankenstein result”, where because they worked more individualistically than as a crew, the final product will look fragmented and non-cohesive. Interconnected roles and resources are a good solution for this, as it will encourage everyone to participate in a unique way towards the final goal.
Interpersonal and small group skills
A fundamental part of a group’s dynamic is the relationship formed between team members. They must get to know and trust each other, communicate and treat one another with respect and transparency, while supporting others. Conflict must be handled in a constructive way when it arises. Many teachers would commit the mistake of separating groups that face any kind of hurdles. The correct course of action, according to Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1994), would be to let students sort their problems out, with the teacher possibly acting as a facilitator as to ensure that discussion follows a respectful path. If separated, the group would not have the opportunity to grow together and mature as they talk through what is hindering their process as a team.
Group processing
This action of reflecting about a group’s and/or individual’s process of learning and interaction is classified as group processing by Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1994) and considered an indispensable part of learning how to behave in teams. “The purpose of group processing is to clarify and improve members’ effectiveness in contributing to collaborative efforts to achieve the group’s goals.” (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994) It stimulates peers to share feedback with one another, celebrate their joint success and work through conflict.
In order for this dynamic to happen, a teacher must provide time for it and a clear structure for students to follow. Peers must be instructed to voice their concerns in a clear and respectful way and the teacher can act as a facilitator to ensure everyone is participating. (Johnson, Johnson and Holubec, 1994)
Arts and education
While Digital Media is a fairly new subject to primary and secondary schools, the teaching of arts is not. As stated before, the arts have been taught since the Middle Ages and have often been responsible for keeping students in classrooms. According to Sir Ken Robinson “Students from low-income families who took part in the arts at school were three times more likely to graduate from higher education than those who did not”. (Robinson in Morrison, 2015) Not only that, it can aid in the treatment of some physical and psychological disorders. (Robinson, 1982)
The arts are important for this study due to the fact that it stimulates divergent thinking in students. In other subjects, such as maths and sciences, often there is only one right answer, which demands convergent thinking. However, in the universe of the arts, pupils are pushed to explore and reflect about things from different points of view, almost as if the reasoning was a cubist painting, where one single object is depicted from various perspectives. “Rather than the ability to operate within the set patterns and structures of conventional thinking, it [divergent thinking] showed ingenuity, inventiveness, unconventionality and the ability to innovate and to solve problems.” (Robinson, 1982)
This concept of divergent thinking resembles play as the process hunters and gatherers would engage millions of years ago. It demands action from the students, exploring, experimenting and failing. The teaching of arts “means enabling children to ‘get their coats off’ and to ‘do’ the arts themselves: using the arts to formulate and clarity their own ideas and feelings, while developing their personal powers of creative thought and action.” (Robinson, 1982)
It is possible to approximate Digital Media from the arts, as the first can be a contemporary form of the second. Film, internet videos, photography, games and graphics are all types of Creative Digital Media, and if art is every kind of personal expression, then these elements can be considered art forms. Consequently, Digital Media stimulates students to think divergently, experimenting with different technical equipment and settings. This exploring also resembles the act of play, while utilizing familiar tools to the Millennial student, such as cameras, computers and mobile phones, creating a welcoming and pleasant experience for learning.
