PhD - The Topic Plan

  1. An Overview of the context of educational theories
    1. Mentalism/Cognitivism - This considers the mental processes, i.e. how people perceive, think, remember, learn, solve problems as well as how they direct their attention between competing stimuli.
    2. Behaviourism - This deals with studying learner behaviours that can be observed and measured.
    3. Radical Behaviourism - This adds thoughts, emotions and other thought behaviours to the standard behaviourist model.
    4. Instructivism - A variant of behaviourism that is the opposing view to constructivism.  Here is it the teacher who is deemed to be best placed to create and deliver a curriculum.  This is the prevailing view in education today.
    5. Cognitivism - This considers the mental processes, i.e. how people perceive, think, remember, learn, solve problems as well as how they direct their attention between competing stimuli.
    6. Connectivism - This assumes that learner will work with a range of sources and media to improve their understanding and share these with those around them, usually through social contact or social media.
    7. Constructivism - Where learners interact with the environment and then construct their own knowledge based on that interaction.
    8. Radical Constructivism - Knowledge is the result of a self-organized collection of understandings which may or may not agree with others around them.
    9. Grounded Theory - This was put forward by Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L, Strauss in 1967.  This argues that usual method of creating a theory and then testing it could be turned on its head.  Here, the data is analysed to generate a theory, i.e. the theory is grounded in the data.
    10. Pedagogy - The process adults helping children to learn in a teacher-pupil relationship.
    11. Andragogy - The process of adults helping adults learn and encompasses the relationship between them.
    12. Heutagogy - The process of self-directed study, i.e. the counter-point to current educational systems.

  2. A brief history of the English curriculum
    1. Pre-industrialisation - private tutoring and public universities (The Romans, Oxbridge and the personal tutor)
    2. The Apprenticeship System
    3. Church schools - 1811 National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church
    4. Philanthropic schooling - Rowntree, Cadbury, Lever Bros., etc.
    5. Primary education - 1870 Elementary Education Act
    6. Secondary education - 1902 Education Act
    7. Education for all - 1944 Education Act
    8. The National Curriculum - 1988 Education Reform Act
    9. OfSTED - 1992 Education (Schools Act)
    10. The Utilitarian view of education - Teach for employability skills

  3. The opposing view - theory and practice
    1. Learning through discourse - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and de Bono
    2. Teach the child to think - Comenius, Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Fröbel
    3. The theory and practice of education - Steiner and Montessori
    4. Social behaviourism - Dewey
    5. 1960's and 70's rebellion - Bruner, Holt, Frier, Goodman, Herndon, Postman and Weingartner, Illych, Kohl, Silberman and Dennison
    6. Current campaigners - Gatto, Khan, Kozol, Siemens and Robinson
    7. The Idealist view of education - Educate for personal fulfilment

  4. An overview of teaching theories
    1. Stages of learning - Steiner, Piaget, Bloom, Kolb
    2. Conditioning - Twitmyer, Pavlov, Skinner
    3. The zone of proximal development - Vygotsky, Ausbel
    4. Metacognition - Flavell
    5. Learning strategies - Pask, Entwistle, Marton and Säljö
    6. Learning styles - Dunn and Dunn, Honey and Mumford, Myer and Briggs, Felder and Silverman, Fleming, Gregorc, Hermann
    7. ... and their refutation - Reiner and Willingham
    8. The nature of intelligence - Gardner, Sternberg
    9. Experiential learning - Kolb, Bonwell and Eison, Lave and Wenger
    10. Adaptive hyper-media - Brusilovsky, de Bra
    11. The physical learning environment - ???
    12. Connectivism - Downes and Siemens
    13. Mathematical treatment of education - Marzano, Hattie, Siemens
    14. Classroom flipping - Salman Khan

  5. Meta-Analysis - An overview of Visible Learning
    1. The student
    2. The home
    3. The school
    4. The teacher
    5. The curriculum
    6. The approach to teaching

  6. Combining theory and meta-analysis - The triangle of virtuous education
    1. The round-trip approach to developing axiomata

  7. Applying the axiomata - What should education look like?
    1. In the classroom
    2. In a technologically enhanced environment
    3. In a social context (vicarious learning)

  8. Testing the theory
    1. Ethical issues
    2. Design of the product to be used
    3. Selecting the test sample
    4. Feedback from the test sample
    5. Learning dissonance
    6. Analysis of the results
    7. Conclusions

  9. Future work - Reconciling the two systems
    1. The matrix of qualifications
    2. The Educational Management System
    3. Making the data available
    4. National, local, school and family level monitoring