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A Critical Thinker's Guide to Educational Fads: How to Get Beyond Educational Glitz and Glitter
The history of education is also the history of educational panaceas, the comings and goings of quick fixes for deep-seated educational problems. This old problem is dramatically on the increase. The result is intensifying fragmentation of energy and effort in the schools, together with a significant waste of time and money. Education will never be improved by educational fads, and the manner in which educational trends are marketed guarantees that they will be transformed into fads. In this guide, the authors briefly critique many of the current educational trends and fads. They focus on making the basic idea behind each of these fads intelligible so that its proper use — and likely misuse —can be taken into account. All educators and administrators, especially in K-12 instruction, should read this guide (to get off of and stay off of the education fad band wagon).
98 pages, Paperback
First published January 9, 2007
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About the author
Richard Paul
73 books72 followersLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 22, 2023
Mixed
Useful breakdown of possible uses and flaws of movements in education. It seems very much rooted in trends in the aughts. Also, while this is based on solid principles, it often doesn't have hard evidence for the arguments given.
Useful breakdown of possible uses and flaws of movements in education. It seems very much rooted in trends in the aughts. Also, while this is based on solid principles, it often doesn't have hard evidence for the arguments given.
November 28, 2016
A Critical Thinker's Guide to Educational Fads takes a look at 39 different educational concepts, that have been promoted over the last few decades, and analyzes the uses and potential misuse of the concepts. Each analyzed concept is broken down into three points, “Essential Idea”, “Proper Educational Use” and “Likely Misuse”. The “Essential Idea” is where the author describes the fundamental principle behind the concept and in most cases describes the flaws in the concept. “Proper Educational Use” explains how the concept should be implemented, this section tends to be optimistic and does not take into account real world problems. The last point is “Likely Misuse” where the authors will focus on where the concept falls short in practical application. Each of these points use general wide sweeping language to describe a concept’s application and flaws without giving any detailed solutions on how to specifically solve a problem or how to properly apply the concept.
The book covers several familiar concepts such as Bloom’s Taxonomy, Charter Schools, Constructivism, No Child Left Behind, School Choice and Learning Styles. By no means, do the authors intend for this book to be a comprehensive analysis of the various trends and recommends interested readers to use the Phi Delta Kappan for more detailed articles on the topic covered in the book. In the introduction the authors state that most educational trends are ineffective quick fixes for deeper rooted educational problems. They call on parents, educators and citizen activist to understand this problem and learn to distinguish substantive efforts at educational reform from superficial efforts.
One of the main concepts of the book is promoting a substantive understanding of education. The authors feel that this view of thinking is paramount in identifying educational fads and creating a clear idea of “the educated person”. The first sections of the book define substantive and non-substantive concepts of education. Substantive thinking has clear implications on understanding “the educated person” and design educational processes while non-substantive traits do not outline the basic intellectual traits or standards. Outlined traits include such values as intellectual humility, honesty, autonomy, empathy and fair mindedness in thought. The authors then suggest how these core values are needed in the thinking of parents, administrators, teachers, students, school board members, legislators and educational activists. After applying the substantive way of thinking to individuals the authors turn the substantive concept to improving the quality of the school system. At the end of overall explanation of the substantive concept there was an exhaustive list of question to educational reformists. The questions are meant to help identify and guide educational reforms and assist in molding a plan to conform to substantive thinking. They argue that disciplined, substantive thinking offer the best hope for long-term success in any type of educational reform. Throwing into the mix such things as individual personal beliefs, politics, corruption, ego and other human traits makes this unified way of critical thinking an impossible task. While the overall concept appealed to me logically and I agreed with most of the arguments, I still feel like there were no tactics suggested to rectify any of the observations and misuses of the educational trends.
In conclusion, A Critical Thinker's Guide to Educational Fads, is all it claims to be and that is a guide. The effectiveness of the arguments are food for thought but the book does not cite many clear references on the research behind their arguments. Footnotes are at a minimum and there are only 12 main references. The appendix cites the Foundation for Critical Thinking and offers links to many articles on critical, analytical and ethical thinking. Overall the book will guide you through many academic trends and with the substantive view, it gives you a set of tools in which to critically analyze each trend. The book gives you a set of questions and standards that are in alignment with the authors’ views on how reform should be approached so it tends to lean more toward the realm of opinion rather than research. Dr. Paul and Dr. Elder have written 23 books on the subject of critical thinking and further studies on the body of work, literary and academic, would reveal the reasoning behind their conclusions. In the end, I enjoyed the book as a whole and found its’ insights relevant but would have liked to see more research cited which supports the opinion of the authors.
A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Educational Fads: How to Get beyond Educational Glitz and Glitter ISBN-13: 978-0944583340 is published by the Foundataion for Critical Thinking for more information on Dr. Paul and Dr. Elder’s critical thinking guides and the foundation visit: https://www.criticalthinking.org/
The book covers several familiar concepts such as Bloom’s Taxonomy, Charter Schools, Constructivism, No Child Left Behind, School Choice and Learning Styles. By no means, do the authors intend for this book to be a comprehensive analysis of the various trends and recommends interested readers to use the Phi Delta Kappan for more detailed articles on the topic covered in the book. In the introduction the authors state that most educational trends are ineffective quick fixes for deeper rooted educational problems. They call on parents, educators and citizen activist to understand this problem and learn to distinguish substantive efforts at educational reform from superficial efforts.
One of the main concepts of the book is promoting a substantive understanding of education. The authors feel that this view of thinking is paramount in identifying educational fads and creating a clear idea of “the educated person”. The first sections of the book define substantive and non-substantive concepts of education. Substantive thinking has clear implications on understanding “the educated person” and design educational processes while non-substantive traits do not outline the basic intellectual traits or standards. Outlined traits include such values as intellectual humility, honesty, autonomy, empathy and fair mindedness in thought. The authors then suggest how these core values are needed in the thinking of parents, administrators, teachers, students, school board members, legislators and educational activists. After applying the substantive way of thinking to individuals the authors turn the substantive concept to improving the quality of the school system. At the end of overall explanation of the substantive concept there was an exhaustive list of question to educational reformists. The questions are meant to help identify and guide educational reforms and assist in molding a plan to conform to substantive thinking. They argue that disciplined, substantive thinking offer the best hope for long-term success in any type of educational reform. Throwing into the mix such things as individual personal beliefs, politics, corruption, ego and other human traits makes this unified way of critical thinking an impossible task. While the overall concept appealed to me logically and I agreed with most of the arguments, I still feel like there were no tactics suggested to rectify any of the observations and misuses of the educational trends.
In conclusion, A Critical Thinker's Guide to Educational Fads, is all it claims to be and that is a guide. The effectiveness of the arguments are food for thought but the book does not cite many clear references on the research behind their arguments. Footnotes are at a minimum and there are only 12 main references. The appendix cites the Foundation for Critical Thinking and offers links to many articles on critical, analytical and ethical thinking. Overall the book will guide you through many academic trends and with the substantive view, it gives you a set of tools in which to critically analyze each trend. The book gives you a set of questions and standards that are in alignment with the authors’ views on how reform should be approached so it tends to lean more toward the realm of opinion rather than research. Dr. Paul and Dr. Elder have written 23 books on the subject of critical thinking and further studies on the body of work, literary and academic, would reveal the reasoning behind their conclusions. In the end, I enjoyed the book as a whole and found its’ insights relevant but would have liked to see more research cited which supports the opinion of the authors.
A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Educational Fads: How to Get beyond Educational Glitz and Glitter ISBN-13: 978-0944583340 is published by the Foundataion for Critical Thinking for more information on Dr. Paul and Dr. Elder’s critical thinking guides and the foundation visit: https://www.criticalthinking.org/
December 2, 2015
I thought the ideas and information in this book were incredible. I have seen many of these fads come and go. I have met rabid supporters of some of these fads and others who were trying to fight against them with little success. I even showed one of the teachers I worked with the description of how one of the fads gets out of hand, she agreed that our department resembled the hazard of that fad.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews