Michael J Wallace on science, theory and practice
All from Training Foreign Language Teachers, most of which seems to be viewable on Google Books here.
“Atkins points out that craftsmen in metallurgy have been successfully making metals for hundreds of years, with apprentices learning from masters. However, the science of metallurgy has not yet fully succeeded in explaining everything that goes on in this process. Atkins asks whether teaching is not at least as complex as metallurgy” page 7
“in the field of language teaching, it could be argued that the most ‘scientific’ method in recent times was the ‘audio-visual’ or ‘structural drill’ method. This methodology was firmly anchored in the ‘scientific’ basis of the dominant psychological theory of the time, namely Behaviourism
Many people now claim that this led to unmotivating and irrelevant learning experiences. Yet it is interesting that the ‘revolution’ which displaced this methodology did not take place at the classroom level (where the damage was allegedly being done), but at the academic level, with the advent of Chomsky’s Transformational Generative Grammar (TG). This development, in its turn, led to some bizarre attempts to teach language through ‘transformations’, which fortunately only lasted a brief time.” pg 11
“… the workaday life of the professional depends on tacit knowing-in-action. Every competent practioner can recognise phenomena- families of symptoms associated with a particular disease, peculiarities of a certain building site, irregularities of materials or structures- for which he cannot give a reasonably accurate or complete description. In his day-to-day practice he makes innumerable judgements of quality for which he cannot state adequate criteria, and he displays rules for which he cannot state the rules and procedures.”
Schon 1983: 49, 50, quoted on pg 13
“One striking feature of classrooms is the sheer complexity, quantity and rapidity of classroom interaction. As many as 1,000 interpersonal exchanges each day have been observed, and the multiplicity of decisions which have to be made, and the volume of information relevant to each decision are such that for the teacher logical consideration and decision making would seem to be impossible…”
MacLeod and McIntyre 1977:266, quoted on page 13
February 9th, 2010 at 3:05 am
I am looking for an old friend, Michael J Wallace. I think he’d be happy to hear from me. I knew him when he was in San Diego California. I hope you’ll forward my email to him. I am divorced now and studying in the medical field.
Sincerely yours,
Wendy McDowell