For those of you that know me, i have been immersed in a graduate degree program at San Francisco State University for the past year. Now, i suppose i’ll preface by saying that this is by no means an attack on any one individual, however i seek it to be an observation of what i believe to be a failed system of education.

The Traditional model of Education…

1) Sign up for classes each semester
2) Sit in a class for 1-3 days a week
3) Maybe do homework assignments, some projects related to the course material
4) Standardized testing periodically to check for retention of material

This model does not show the student how to apply the knowledge, it encourages book memorization as well as the ability to regurgitate facts, and maybe apply some concepts, in a standardized testing environment. This leaves those exiting the program with little understanding of how to apply this knowledge in an open setting. Graduate programs likely just produce more researchers, not necessarily more and/or better practitioners.

The Constructivist model of Education….

1) Receive ALL materials for the coursework of the degree
2) No class lectures, only open forum times for the students and faculty to meet, discuss the material, and ask questions of the academics in regards to how to traverse the course material. This encourages accountability on the part of the student to have read the material and formulate specific questions to help them teach themselves, as opposed to lecturing, which is not as effective
3) Internship or field experience required before entering the degree program as well as during the degree program. One must have the ability to apply as well as learn material simultaneously. Knowledge is useless without its proper application.
4) No time limit on the degree. People can take as much or as little time as they’d like. This takes the pressure of trying to jam material into one’s brain, allowing those that are slower to learn more time to absorb, think about the material, rethink, and apply. Our society’s emphasis on expediency comes at expense of others with practitioners working on half-truths, poorly understood principles, and little application.
5) Everyone will be allowed access to the material who wants it without having to get into the university, however the degree will require one to the work correctly. Also, the student can turn in the work as many times as he/she would like. Monetarily speaking, the student would have to pay each time they turned it in so that the professor grading the work is compensated for his time. This, in theory, takes the pressure off of having to just get it right the first time.

It’s not a mystery why so many people drop out of graduate degree programs, especially in the field of exercise science. The students are not encouraged to understand and apply simultaneously. At the same time, the system does not support self-accountability with personal support. If you are not doing the research that the professors are doing, chances are, you’re shit out of luck.

from Tynjala’s paper titled Towards expert knowledge? A comparison
between a constructivist and a traditional
learning environment in the university….

“According to Geisler (1994), during general education students operate in both
problem spaces, content and rhetoric, with naive representations. In the early years of
undergraduate education some students begin to work with more abstract representations
in the problem space of domain content. At the same time, however, their
rhetorical problem space remains basically naive. Late in their undergraduate education
or in graduate school, this naive representation of the rhetorical problem space
undergoes in some students a major reorganization and abstraction process, where
the rhetorical dimension of expertise emerges as distinct from domain content. This
growth of an expert representation of the rhetorical problem space is the “nal stage in
the acquisition of expertise. It is only when both the domain content and the
rhetorical process of a “eld are represented in abstract terms that they can enter into
the dynamic and mutually transformative interaction that produces expertise. **Knowing
that++ and `knowing how++ are linked with each other. Only a few people develop
362 P. Tynja( la( / Int. J. Educ. Res. 31 (1999) 357}442
integrated expert knowledge of this kind, although, as Bereiter and Scardamalia
(1993) have pointed out, schooling could be organized in a way that would promote
expertise in everyone.” (Tynjala, p. 362-363)

What is even worse is that those that do not make it into a graduate program in exercise science, for example, choose to go around it by seeking outside education through certifications, certificates of purported expertise in a specific area, and trade schools. These schools and certification seminars are stripped down versions of education, removing the fiber of critical thought, research, and problem-solving, leaving only the sugar-filled pamphlets of quick-fixes and algorithms for getting results for clients. These people are receiving knowledge second-hand, at best, from industry “experts”, naive to the fact that much of the research being disseminated could largely fall prey to the biases, opinions and interpretations of the person delivering the information. Wouldn’t it be great if, as a free service offered by universities, people could attend classes about how to critically analyze literature and then apply it?

As the dilution of information spirals down from researchers, to field experts, to novice practitioners, the mess of confusion, contradiction, and frustration leaves a broken system that has failed to do what it purports to do. What are we doing to ensure quality learning for ourselves, our friends, our colleagues, and our clients?

Charlie Reid Uncategorized