Chapter 14a: The nature of subject matter

Chapter 14 puts a coda on the subject of professional development addressed in yesterday's entry. Dewey describes three stages in a learner's acquiring subject matter, applied here to acquiring knowledge of technology in education.

Stage #1: learning by doing...
"The knowledge which comes first to persons, and that remains most deeply ingrained, is the knowledge of how to do: how to walk, talk, read, write, skate, ride a bicycle, manage a machine, calculate, drive a horse, sell goods, manage people" (p. 152)...and to manipulate technology. When people encounter a new artifact--including new tools and technologies--they want first to find out how they work, what they can do, and not just to see them in action, but to try them out for themselves and get a feel for them in action.

Stage #2: learning is enhanced by the experience of others...
Learning is social in the sense that our own experience is enlarged by the experience of others. Others can help us to see what we might otherwise miss or to explore something new, whether directly in face-to-face interaction or mediated by books, film, recordings or other means.

Stage #3: learning matures in reflective thought...
Dewey points out that learning may be organized practically or scientifically. Using water as an example: I may know how to use water in everyday situations to drink, cook, wash etc. A scientific knowledge of H2O, however, is something deeper--what Dewey calls "logical warranty" (p. 157). In other words, scientific organization is the capacity to see something in cause-and-effect relationships--to understand what has led up to a thing and where that thing (material or conceptual) may lead.

In the context of adopting technology into education, these three stages of learning are why it only makes sense for teachers first to become comfortable manipulating applications directly, on those applications' own terms and in concert with other both novice and more capable explorers. Only then will they be ready to undertake a more logical approach to integrating technologies into their existing practice as well as extending those technologies in new ways.

What is known, in a given sense, is what is sure, certain, settled, disposed of; that which we think with rather than that which we think about (p. 155).

Only when we have established a known base in Dewey's first two stages, can we begin to think with technology and about its applications in our classrooms and in our society.