E I P

2. Educational Theory Underpinning the EIP Project [Next Chapter] [Previous Chapter] [Contents]

• 2.1 Introduction
• 2.2 Educating Aborigines: Historically a Deficit Model
• 2.3 Aboriginal Learners’ Needs: A Window to Mainstream Learning Issues
• 2.4 Shifting the Focus to a Developmental Model: Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development
• 2.5 Conclusion

2.1 Introduction

This chapter outlines the educational theory underpinning the EIP project. It provides an historical perspective on the ‘deficit model’ approach to facilitating the success of Aboriginal students in tertiary learning environments and describes a system of beliefs about learning and testing that are widely used to support the educational process. It argues that these beliefs are flawed in their implementation and offers an alternative to the ‘deficit model’ by adopting Vygotsky’s approach to teaching and learning, as encapsulated in the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’.

This theoretical base is used to:

• view the culture of the tertiary learning environment in which teachers and Aboriginal learners historically have been positioned;

• assess the goodness of fit between the espoused theories of teaching, teaching practice and student learning needs;

• underpin processes for aligning teacher and learner needs so that a learning environment is developed for mutual benefit; and

• present a basis for viewing equity groups, such as Aboriginal students, as a resource for the development of mainstream quality learning environments.

2.2 Educating Aborigines: Historically a Deficit Model

A major assumption underpinning strategies for increasing Aboriginal student participation in tertiary education has been the need to deal with knowledge, learning, language and cultural differences, construed as ‘deficits’. Some Aboriginal students lack specific school based knowledge, in particular, appropriate discourses to successfully communicate within discipline specific environments and within a university context. Some lack experience in seeking and supplying information, some either lack specific literacies related to testing or lack control of discourses that are necessary for the demonstration of knowledge acquisition. Whilst many Aboriginal students have achieved great success in tertiary education, others demonstrate a belief in their own deficits and this manifests itself in the need for support.

Universities have traditionally sought to determine student deficits by establishing individuals’ levels of knowledge through conventional means, such as:

• possession of a Higher School Certificate or TAFE Diploma; or by
• setting entrance tests.

Deficits exposed in this way have been addressed by: a range of mini courses in preparation for real learning tasks, for example:

• preparation courses in Law, Science, or Mathematics;
• provision of extra tuition in subject matter, essay writing and language/vocabulary;
• provision of classes that address skills through repetitive drills; and
• provision of concurrent academic support in discipline specific areas.

Table 2.1 illustrates five common beliefs about the relationship between learning and testing that are at the heart of the deficit model.

Table 2.1: Beliefs Underpinning the Educational Process

Beliefs 4 and 5 underpin university education and serve to separate it from other modes of learning. Nevertheless, testing and preparation for ‘university readiness’ is based on beliefs 1, 2 and 3, which underpin the deficit model. After enrolment students are required to demonstrate ability to operate according to beliefs 4 and 5 but when they do not perform at these levels they are commonly offered remedial tuition along the lines of beliefs 1, 2 and 3. This highlights a fundamental conflict between university practice and approaches to preparing students for success.

The Australian Government, through the Department of Employment, Education and Training also funds the Aboriginal Tutorial Assistance Scheme (ATAS) which provides additional subject tuition for both secondary and tertiary students. In practice, the major focus of the scheme is the provision of content rather than successful acquisition of skills and processes. At the level of educational practice ‘the student is given a fish rather than being taught to fish’ and in this way, the deficit model is reinforced. Whilst addressing immediate needs, this does not make students self sufficient by equipping them with discourses and strategies for immediate or long term success. Universities have invested in the deficit model by providing preparatory and supplementary classes rather than probe student needs or examine the effectiveness of teaching processes.

Reflecting on teaching strategies and consequent learning outcomes has not been at the forefront of teaching evaluation. The core issue for universities is teaching and teaching is evaluated in most cases in terms of the quality of didactic instruction (breadth and depth of material covered; logicality and flow of delivery style). From this viewpoint, teaching is not equated with learning or whether learning has taken place as a consequence of instruction given.

2.3 Aboriginal Learners’ Needs: A Window to Mainstream Learning Issues

The EIP project endeavoured to foster a new vision which shifted emphasis from Aboriginal students being identified as the most difficult students in need of remediation of deficits or as ‘patients’ needing special services, to a focus that emphasised the needs of Aboriginal students as highlighting the needs of mainstream students. In this shift of focus, Aboriginal students were viewed as key indicators of mainstream needs and key resources for improved processes of evaluation and development of quality teaching and learning environments.

This approach owes a debt to the work of Mindell (1988) who worked with psychiatric patients who were identified as experiencing extreme psychiatric states. Mindell developed the metaphor of ‘the city shadows’ in which clients considered to be the most difficult cases for social services departments were viewed as a reflection of the sickness of the society of which they were part. In Mindell’s shift of focus, ‘... these clients [are] meaningful for the city they live in’ (Mindell 1988, p. xiii).

The idea that Aboriginal students could be ‘viewed as key indicators of mainstream needs and key resources for processes of evaluation and development of quality teaching and learning environments’ was not greeted enthusiastically by some members of the University. One academic’s statements regarding Aboriginal students typify similar sentiments expressed by others, both before and during the project:

‘We have done everything we can;
‘We can’t do more!’;
‘This is not TAFE’;
‘Look at our teaching evaluations’;
‘It’s those students not us [who have problems’];
‘Well, we’re not going to drop academic standards.’ (Gluck & Spence 1994, p. 20)

Whilst students could be viewed as having ‘deficits’ requiring remediation and were seen by some to be a disturbance to teaching, the educational institution did not have to address the notion that its teaching and learning environment needed to change for the benefit of all. Mindell suggests that:

Such concepts are not always greeted enthusiastically by city officials. Like any family housing an ‘identified patient’, the city itself resists and will continue to resist the idea that it, too, may have to change if its ‘patients’ are to get better. The city’s attitude is understandable, yet it ignores any potential responsibility it may have in generating the difficulties in its communal family (Mindell 1988, p. xiii–xiv).

It is clear that the challenge to change tertiary teaching processes creates considerable personal and group discomfort. It would seem a more comfortable position to view Aboriginal students (or any equity group) as depleting resources, because to do so directs the focus for development away from teaching staff and away from the University as a whole.

... it is easier in many ways and perhaps less time consuming ... to describe disease characteristics and to recommend medicine for them than it is to determine, consider and probe the potential meaning and evolution of a ... process which so rambunctiously interrupts every normal state of communication and harmony (Mindell 1988, p. 11).

When so much has been invested in the current system in which equity students are perceived as identified patients needing remediation, it is easier to dismiss attempts to revisit the basis on which the remedial programs were developed. Mindell argued that:

Emotionally, it is difficult for a practitioner ... to review and speculate about the foundations of his [sic] work. This difficulty undoubtedly inhibits some professionals from thinking more deeply about their professions (Mindell 1988, p. 11).

Many university educators lack a background in pedagogical and androgogical theory and practice. The university ‘professional’ has, until recent times, been seen as an expert within a discipline rather than an expert educator within a discipline. Consequently, teaching has not been seen as a rewarding focus for reflection and it is this, it may be argued, that lies at the heart of the problem for tertiary education, as highlighted by the teaching needs of equity groups.

In order to address this environmental context, quality teaching was seen by the Project Director as needing a quality research base and it needed to include all stakeholders, equally. This project therefore adopted and adapted elements from a participatory and collaborative approach to evaluation, action research. According to Kemmis (1986), action research is research by people on their own work to help them improve their own teaching practices, improving their understanding of these practices and improving the situation in which these practices are carried out. In a practical sense, action research is a collective enquiry where individual teachers come together and share experiences and insights with others. Thus, action research is an enquiry undertaken by educators, learners and other community members who are interested in making the educational experience better through the creation of a reflective teaching and learning environment.

2.4 Shifting the Focus to a Developmental Model: Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development

This EIP project directly addressed teaching and learning strategies drawing on Vygotsky’s (1930) educational theory outlining a ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD) as a basis for reflecting on the alignment of current teaching models and practices with Aboriginal student learning needs. This model was selected because it provides an alternative conceptual framework to the deficit model and because it focuses on learning by equipping students to have control over their own learning. In so doing Vygotsky’s model provides a context for bringing learners and teachers into relationships that define the learning environment as student centred and empowering.

For Vygotsky, pedagogy creates learning processes that lead development and result in zones or areas of nearest (proximal) development. This is a view that is at odds with Piagetian emphasis on maturity as a precondition for learning or Binet’s assumption that development is always a prerequisite for learning; that if mental functions have not matured to the extent that they are capable of learning a particular subject, then no instruction will prove useful (Vygotsky 1978).

... [Binet’s] approach is based on the premise that learning trails behind development, that development always outruns learning, it precludes the notion that learning may play a role in the course of the development or maturation of those functions activated in the course of learning (Vygotsky 1978, p. 80).

Concentration on maturation of the learner as a necessary prerequisite for learning development forms the basis of the deficit model and underpins Beliefs 1 to 3 as described in Table 2.1 above. For universities, maturation has been linked, traditionally, to completion of twelve years of schooling wherein to have missed schooling is equated to lacking intellectual maturity.

According to Vygotsky, learning is development. Psychological development does not precede instruction, but essentially depends on it.

...the zone of proximal development ... is the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under ... guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (Vygotsky 1978, pp. 85–86).

For Vygotsky the ‘zone of proximal development’ was related to the process of interaction between scientific and everyday subjects, however, more recent scholars have focussed their attention on the establishment of a shared world, or the inter subjectivity between a learner and an instructor through the process of negotiation of meanings (Wertsch 1985, pp 158–66). It is this process of developing and achieving shared meanings that formed the methodological base of the teaching and learning processes investigated by the EIP grant.

The ZPD may be described in geographic terms as (learning) terrain to be crossed (by the learner) in order to reach some (knowledge) position predetermined (by others); a position of mastery that may include the attainment of certain skills or the acquisition of certain knowledge. Using a similar geographic metaphor, Bruner (in Wertsch 1987, p. 24) described the ZPD as having to do with:

... the manner in which we arrange the environment such that the [learner] can reach higher or more abstract ground from which to reflect, ground on which he [sic] is enabled to be more conscious.

The zone is a zone of potential cognitive development which shifts or advances as the learner achieves some predetermined goal, either independently or with assistance from a teacher or more competent peer. As the learner reaches one goal, another is offered.

Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development relies on the key concept of ‘internalisation’. He argues that all higher psychological processes are originally social processes, shared between people, such as children and adults or between instructors and learners. The novice first experiences active problem solving activities in the presence of others but gradually comes to perform these functions independently. The process of internalisation is gradual; first the instructor or knowledgeable peer controls and guides the learner’s activity, but gradually the instructor and the learner come to share the problem-solving functions, with the learner taking initiative and the instructor correcting and guiding. Finally the instructor cedes control to the learner and functions primarily as a supportive and sympathetic audience.

Wertsch (1978, pp. 15–18) describes this developmental progression from other-regulation to self-regulation as the essence of mother-child learning dyads, but it may be argued that age and the nature of the social agent are to some extent irrelevant. Teachers, tutors and master craftsmen in traditional apprenticeship situations all function as promoters of self-regulation by nurturing the emergence of personal planning as they gradually cede their own direction (Brown & French 1979, pp. 255–277).

Gallimore and Tharp (in Moll 1990) describe the process of internalisation as occupying four stages in the zone of proximal development, a gradual process through which the learner moves from assisted performance to unassisted and self-regulated performance:

Assisting the learner through the ZPD is Gallimore and Tharp’s definition of ‘teaching’. They state that:

Teaching consists of assisting performance through the Zone of Proximal Development. Teaching can be said to occur when assistance is offered at points in the ZPD at which performance requires assistance (Tharp & Gallimore 1988, p. 56).

Individuals’ learning experiences throughout life are made up of ZPD sequences, from other-assistance to self-assistance, in a recursive loop that facilitates the development of new capacities. For every individual, at any point in time, there will be a mix of other-regulation, self-regulation, and automatised processes (Gallimore & Tharp 1990).

The advantage of using the ZPD model is that it equips learners to move from one learning field to another without being considered to have ‘deficits’. The deficit model is avoided because it provides the teacher with a context for determining at what stage of learning, within a field, the learner is currently placed. It also identifies a direction to facilitate the student’s movement to the next stage. Consequently the focus is on the student’s learning process, rather than on content to be learned.

This EIP project addressed the relevance of university teachers’ existing teaching practice by assessing its congruence with the ZPD approach. The appeal of the ZPD model is its student-centredness and its fit with the Aboriginal student population learning needs. Its appeal also rests in its application to mainstream students’ learning issues.

2.5 Conclusion

This chapter provided educational theory and a direction to pedagogical practice used in this EIP project. The process investigated and developed relationships that enabled alignment of the needs of community, education, professional and employment sectors for Aboriginal professionals.

Simplistic notions that agreements between sectors, accompanied by intensification of current deficit-base instructional practices, will produce Aboriginal professionals needed by the community, employers and professions were rejected. Aboriginal students’ needs were recognised as a window to mainstream learners’ needs and provided a leading edge resource for restructuring tertiary learning environments for the benefit of all students.

Theoretical perspectives on learning and pedagogical processes were an essential ingredient in framing and implementing agreements to articulate the needs of all sectors. They provided a basis for explicitly recognising learners’ needs and learning environments as an essential fibre of frameworks to address the need for qualified Aboriginal professionals. They also supplied a context for the pipeline metaphor, community development, networking and social capital (Coleman 1994) considerations that were central to the success of the project in producing Aboriginal professionals. These considerations are presented in Chapter 3. Detailed reports on their application to Nurse education are presented in Chapter 4 and to other fields in Chapter 5.

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