John -
Excellent point. I suspect that the deduction/induction distinction is
so prominent that we tend to overextend it. To logicians, I think, the
main difference between the two is based simply on how necessarily true
the claim is, given the premises; induction always gives you probability
statements, since what you're observing might be a fluke. Charles Peirce
came up with the somewhat unfortunate term "abduction" to describe how
most people's hypotheses work, and most of what goes on in classrooms is
probably abductive in this sense (if I'm understanding Peirce's
definitions correctly, which is a big if).
There's a concept from cognitive psychology that seems to more directly
address the problems inherent with old-fashioned drills - "depth of
processing." It comes from work done by Craik and Tulving in the 70s; my
now rather archaic memory-psych textbook (Stern 1985) quotes Craik and
Tulving's main claim as follows (p. 219):
It is abundantly clear that what determines the level of recall or
recognition of word event is not intention to learn, the amount of
effort involved, the difficulty of the orienting task, the amount of
time spent making judgments about the items, or even the amount of
rehearsal the items receive; rather, it is the qualitative nature of the
task, the kind of operations carried out on the items, that determines
retention.
Craik and Tulving were talking only about memory for specific word
presentations, but the basic principle was, if I remember correctly,
borne out more generally for other kinds of learning (with "learning"
here meaning very narrowly "encoded in long-term memory"). When subjects
were asked to relate words to other information (synonyms, for example),
they remembered them better than when they related them only to other
words based on sound (rhyming), etc.
It's a bit of a leap (yes, that was an official Hedging Comment; I'm way
outside my field here), but one can see the depth of processing idea as
supporting the notion that the further up Bloom's hierarchy of critical
thinking skills students are required to go with a particular subject,
the better they'll remember it. And instructors can design both
"top-down" and "bottom-up" classroom activities that are fiendishly
clever, and require lots of critical thinking.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of john whicker
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 1:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Inductive - Deductive:was New discussion intelligence and
grammar learning
As an adjunct instructor, I usually content myself to read these
discussions with interest, but some of these seem to be worth chiming in
on despite the possibility of looking foolish in front of people with
many more years of experience.
I always tend to question distinctions of induction and deduction
because it seems that inductive reasoning ultimately rests on deductive
reasoning or assumptions. In Johanna's examples or even in Ron's more
"inductive" strategy, the exercise is created to arrive at a
convention/rule/"rule of thumb" that has already been deduced by the
instructor.
The questionable distinction between deduction and induction is
something brought up in Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor's 1983 article
"Teaching Argument: A Theory of Types", an article I have sometimes used
to discuss argument with students. In the article Fahnestock and Secor
cite Karl Popper who argues:
But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observation
alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is
absurd...
Twenty-five years ago I tried to bring this home the same point
to a group of physics students in Vienna by
beginning the lecture with the following instructions: "Take pencil
and paper; carefully observe and write down what
you have observed!" They asked, of course, what I wanted them to
observe. Clearly the instruction 'Observe!' is
absurd.... Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen
object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a
problem."
--Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of
Scientific Knowledge. Harper and Row 1963
Essentially, we cannot begin to inductively reason until we have
deductively determined an idea to base the induction on. In Johanna's
examples, she is leading students to the deductively determined idea.
Ron's alternatives present more accurately a teaching method that
instructs students simply to "Observe!" and draw conclusions--likely
removing the very element that might make Johanna's tactics so useful.
Even in Ron's examples, instructors already have a deductive rule that
they want the students to arrive at inductively; highlighting the
subjects and predicates reveals the deduction present.
Ultimately, I think the question of induction vs. deduction is moot.
Whether tactics focus on applying a rule to a specific example or using
multiple examples to arrive at a rule, the real question is whether they
work for students. As a student, I always chaffed at "inductive"
pedagogies because, in my pride, I felt somewhat insulted by the round
about method the teacher was using to tell us what she/he wanted us to
know. I cannot, however, deductively assume that I was a typical
student. Many students likely benefit from discovering something
themselves instead of being told a principle first then shown
examples--a tactic I employ often myself in spite of my own aversion to
it. For different students, we need different approaches.
That is my understanding and take on the subject, but I look forward to
more experienced views.
John H. Whicker
Adjunct Faculty
Department of English
Utah Valley State College
and
Salt Lake Community College
----- Original Message -----
From: Ronald Sheen <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 8:44 PM
Subject: Re: Inductive - Deductive:was New discussion
intelligence and grammar learning
If one takes the descriptions of the two approaches given below
(From TESOL's web page), Johanna's examples from her teaching of German
are orthdox uses of the approaches.
However, in the first example below which she terms 'inductive',
isn't there a problem? In my view, it is not inductive but more a rule
of thumb for finding the subject of the sentence. In fact, isn't it
more deductive because one deduces the subject by following a rule.
There is no induction involved.
An inductive approach would entail (as a first step, for
example) more presenting students with diffferent syntactic forms with
let's say the subjects highlighted in red and the objects of the verb
highlighted in blue and getting students to work out what the reds and
blues have in common. And then go on from there.
This is a subject which seems pretty straightforward but it can
become more difficult when one starts to examine Johanna's examples.
And then. after all, it doesn't matter too much what you call an
approach if you're using it successfully.
Ron Sheen
> Inductive approach to finding the subject of a sentence:
>
> Create a tag to go with the sentence, then use the pronoun in
the tag
> to "erase" or replace the appropriate portion of the base
sentence.
>
> For example:
>
> The students chosen to compete in the spelling bee will take a
bus to
> New York City tomorrow.
> Add tag: The students chosen to compete in the spelling bee
will take
> a bus to New York City tomorrow, won't they?
> [The students chosen to compete in the spelling bee] They will
take a
> bus to New York City tomorrow.
>
> This is a problem-solving approach, as it gives the student a
> procedure to apply to data in order to find a solution
(identifying
> the subject of the sentence.) The student proceeds by
constructing a
> tag, then using the pronoun in the tag to find the subject of
the
> base sentence. It's very important that this exercise is for
native
> speakers, who do not need to consult conscious knowledge to
construct
> the tag; this is done in milliseconds and without
deliberation. The
> "erasure" procedure is, however, done explicitly, with the
check of
> the result relying on native-speaker intuition.
>
> There are many such tricks, for tasks ranging from deciding
what is a
> complete sentence, to deciding between 'who' and 'whom', to
> identifying participles vs. gerunds (among verbs ending in
'-ing'. No
> explicit knowledge of grammar is needed to apply these tests;
they
> are tools for making one's subconscious knowledge of grammar
explicit
> and learning terminology and analysis skills to do so.
>
> Deductive approach:
>
> The subject of a sentence is the noun phrase that would be
replaced
> with a pronoun in a tag added to the sentence.
>
> To my mind, this would reverse the procedure: The student
would look
> for the subject of the sentence, then create a tag, making
sure that
> the pronoun in the tag agreed with the subject. The choice of
pronoun
> would not be intuitive, but explicitly thought through.
>
> Maybe this is bogus, but this is my understanding. To give an
example
> from my German classes: I would present students with paired
> sentences, and ask them to discover a rule, in this case, verb
> placeement in subordinate clauses.
>
> Peter war heute nicht in der Klasse. Er ist krank. (Peter
wasn't in
> class today. He is sick.)
> Peter war heute nicht in der Klasse, weil er krank ist. (Peter
wasn't
> in class today, because he is sick.)
>
> Ich lernte in der Bibliothek. Nachdem bin ich
schwimmengegangen. (I
> studied in the library. Afterwards, I went swimming.)
> Ich bin schwimmengegangen, nachdem ich in der Bibliothek
lernte. (I
> went swimming after I studied in the library.)
>
> Students would notice that the verb "moves" to the end when a
> sentence becomes a subordinate clause. This is the rule.
>
> A deductive approach would be to state the rule: In German
> subordinate clauses, the tensed verb occurs at the end of the
clause.
> Then I would present the sentence pairs in order to
demonstrate the
> rule. No action except paying attention and copying the rule
is
> necessary here. To me, that's boring, dry, external to the
learner,
> and not engaging.
>
> To me, the first way of presenting things just seems naturally
more
> interesting and engaging. The students' own discovery of the
rule is
> what, to me, gives the oomph necessary to retain the rule
better than
> in the deductive method. The student might remember the
experience of
> discovery more keenly than the dry presentation of the rule --
the
> accustomed way of learning language rules, which so many
students
> find deadly boring.
>
> In my experience of learning folk dances and drum rhythm
sequences, I
> retain patterns better once I discover whatever logic they
have --
> logic that is difficult for a teacher to point out unless s/he
is
> quite talented. But this kind of learning involves motor
skills,
> which, if Oliver Sacks is correct in citing and claiming in a
recent
> New Yorker article, are stored elsewhere in the brain than
factual
> knowledge (the procedural/factual difference). Perhaps I find
> inductive learning more interesting because it does draw on
> procedural skills, while deductive learning depends on
memorizing
> factual statements, and applying them afterwards. Maybe the
> difference is not all that significant. But I truly believe
inductive
> presentations are more engaging. I take care of the poor
problem-
> solvers by providing a deductive statement as a kind of
review.
> Perhaps this puts them at a disadvantage, but I usually have
the
> inductive work done in groups, so weaker students can observe
the
> stronger ones and still see what the answer is; they can also
try the
> procedure quietly on their own paper and not be punished or
> embarrassed if they fail.
The deductive approach represents a more traditional style of
teaching in that the grammatical structures or rules are dictated to the
students first (Rivers and Temperley 110). Thus, the students learn the
rule and apply it only after they have been introduced to the rule. For
example, if the structure to be presented is present perfect, the
teacher would begin the lesson by saying, "Today we are going to learn
how to use the present perfect structure." Then, the rules of the
present perfect structure would be outlined and the students would
complete exercises, in a number of ways, to practice using the
structure. (Goner, Phillips, and Walters 135) In this approach, the
teacher is the center of the class and is responsible for all of the
presentation and explanation of the new material.
The inductive approach represents a more modern style of
teaching where the new grammatical structures or rules are presented to
the students in a real language context (Goner, Phillips, and Walters
135). The students learn the use of the structure through practice of
the language in context, and later realize the rules from the practical
examples. For example, if the structure to be presented is the
comparative form, the teacher would begin the lesson by drawing a figure
on the board and saying, "This is Jim. He is tall." Then, the teacher
would draw another taller figure next to the first saying, "This is
Bill. He is taller than Jim." The teacher would then provide many
examples using students and items from the classroom, famous people, or
anything within the normal daily life of the students, to create an
understanding of the use of the structure. The students repeat after the
teacher, after each of the different examples, and eventually practice
the structures meaningfully in groups or pairs. (Goner, Phillips, and
Walters 135-136) With this approach, the teacher's role is to provide
meaningful contexts to encourage demonstration of the rule, while the
students evolve the rules from the examples of its use and continued
practice (Rivers and Temperley 110).
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