Productive Learning: Science, Art, and Einstein’s Relativity in Educational Reform , Stanisłlaw D. Głazek and Seymour B. Sarason , Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2007. $75.95, $35.95 paper (269 pp.). ISBN 978-1-4129-4059-7, ISBN 978-1-4129-4060-3 paper
Productive Learning: Science, Art, and Einstein’s Relativity in Educational Reform is a collaboration between a physicist and a psychologist. Stanisław Głazek is a professor of physics at Warsaw University in Poland, and Seymour Sarason is a professor emeritus of psychology at Yale University. The premise is intriguing: Głazek teaches Sarason relativity while Sarason teaches Głazek about productive learning, and their shared educational journey is documented in a book. But such a text must naturally contain two very different voices. Successful ways that other authors have handled this potential problem are to either clearly identify who is speaking in a given section or hire a good editor to harmonize the distinct styles and generate a seamless flow. Unfortunately, Głazek and Sarason chose neither approach.
The first four chapters were probably written by Sarason, because they deal primarily with educational matters at pre-college levels. In later chapters that deal with the physics, the reader regularly bumps up against paragraphs that compare school-based learning to the way scientists make discoveries or that change the focus to issues related to learning and teaching. The effect on the reader is much like the effect on a dancer when the music suddenly stops for an announcement: It takes time to get the rhythm back. As a result, much of the book is hard to read. The authors could have made the reading less jerky by putting the comments related to education in a box, in a footnote, or at the beginning or end of a chapter. The comments interrupt the “storyline,” a favorite term of the celebrated physicist and teacher Arnold Arons.
A peculiar aspect of Głazek and Sarason’s book is that it seems to have been written in a theoretical vacuum. I am mystified that the authors make no reference to more than 30 years of systematic research in physics education. Thousands of papers have detailed the many conceptual and reasoning difficulties that students have had with a variety of physics principles, and teaching approaches for overcoming those difficulties. The authors also make no reference to the vast science-education and cognitive-science literature on conceptual change, constructivism, and various aspects of cognition. Equally surprising is the almost blanket condemnation of much of the US education system without reference to the numerous innovations in physics curricula or to the many successful education programs and initiatives for science teachers at all levels of the education system. The lack of contextualization of their work, combined with their harsh criticism of US education in general, gives the writing an air of arrogance.
Chapters 1 through 4 and the final chapter, 17, desperately need editing. They are excruciatingly ponderous, repetitive, and patronizing. Few new insights, entwined as they are among the excessive verbiage and over-generalizations, are visible in the discussions. One example of a sweeping generalization is found in the last chapter, in which the authors write that educational reform has been a failure, with a few exceptions that “refer to single classrooms or single schools but never to a whole school system” (page 185). Their analysis is simply untrue. For example, the website sponsored by the department of teacher education at Ohio’s Miami University (http://www.units.muohio.edu/eap/departments/ted/centers.html) states that “Ohio’s systemic initiative, Discovery, has promoted systemic change in science and mathematics teaching and learning by providing high-quality, sustained professional development to teachers and administrators throughout Ohio since 1991.”
Głazek and Sarason also write, “On the basis of our experience, we have concluded that the basic problem that has gone unexamined is the concept and process of learning” (page 190). It is a pity that their experience does not extend to reading books such as How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (National Academy Press, 1999), edited by John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking.
The shortcomings mentioned above refer mostly to the portions on education; by contrast, the portions that treat the physics are wonderful. Beginning in chapter 6, readers are taken on a fascinating journey from Nicolaus Copernicus to Albert Einstein in a quest to understand time and other concepts associated with the theory of relativity. We learn who did what and why, how each discovery was built on an earlier one, and what critical questions drove the scientists of the day. Simple explanations of relevant physics concepts and vivid, everyday analogies are woven into the text along the way. The story is engaging, and the writing is easy to understand and fluid, except when interspersed with comments on education.
However fascinating the authors found their experience of working together, Productive Learning as a book does not work. It reads like two books glued together. If they could be unglued, I would highly recommend the one about relativity and suggest leaving the other on the shelf.
