Chapter 5: Education Rather than Training: Cognitive Pluralism and Preservice Science Teacher Education

Elliot Eisner wrote the above comments in the context of his concerns about how the language being used to describe education and schooling has shifted from words related to children and experience toward terms associated with factory production (e.g., outcomes, quality control, standards, management) and children as little more than “learners” on an assembly line. When language is used that describes the work of schools and teacher preparation as “training” rather than education, certain assumptions about teaching and learning are conveyed, and those messages serve to frame the dialogue that follows. Training is applied to contexts where the conditions are predictable and specific procedures can be used repeatedly with predictable results. Education, on the other hand, describes experiences that lead to the growth of the individual. An educated person has more than fixed rules and procedures, but uses a knowledge base flexibly in unpredictable circumstances. When asked what they want for their students at the end of a K–12 education, most teachers indicate that they want qualities associated with education: critical thinking, problem solving, communication, social skills, a deep understanding of fundamental concepts, and so on (Clough, Berg, & Olson, 2009; Goodlad, 1983). Yet close examination of many “intended outcomes” of schooling shows that skills and facts appear to predominate—indicating that “the dominant image of schooling in America has been the factory and the dominant image of teaching and learning the assembly line. These images misconceive and underestimate the complexities of teaching and neglect the differences between education and training” (Eisner, 2002, p. 361).