Applying Standards Based Constructivism:
A Two-Step Guide for Motivating Students
Madeline Hunter's Mastery Teaching Model

Hunter’s model is a practice model. While it has contributed mightily to the field of education, in many ways, as a training model it has done little to promote understanding of the type needed in a modern economy/polity.

DESCRIPTION

For several decades, Madeline Hunter served as education’s most widespread name. From her position at UCLA’s campus school, she pulled together many accepted findings and practices from various sources and produced her TIP (theory into practice) model. Taking many forms, depending on which version was being disseminated, Hunter’s plan had seven steps and a closure activity. It was easy to follow, seemed to give good advice and keep things under control in a classroom: it also gave us a vocabulary that many teachers still use today:

CLOSURE

Hunter’s thinking can be described as following this logic: the teacher has to hook the students to get started, then tells them the objective and gives the new “content”. They must see the teacher “do” the new content correctly and then they get to practice it themselves; first, with help, second working alone. At that point, the lesson could be concluded in a way that makes the students aware of what the teacher had taught them.

In a nutshell, a nice tight self contained lesson that follows behaviorist traditions and which makes learning an issue of effective practice.

COMPARISON

Because this plan of teaching is so familiar to teachers (in fact, many see it as synonymous with teaching), the author wishes to take extra care with this comparison. Many teachers equate “teaching” with telling and therefore see dissemination of information, usually by lecture, as appropriate and this model validates that thought as long as the SET precedes the INPUT. We can pretend that students are absorbing knowledge…and later, they will practice it, and therefore think of it as active engagement.

However, three huge flaws hamper this approach:

(l) as designed, Hunter’s (ANTICIPATORY) SET is a quick, teacher-led brief activity that is supposed to get students’ minds off their own lives and get them started on the new material. However, this process takes longer, is more involved and may require different procedures to initiate different students, than she was willing to give. It is not the first minute! To access prior knowledge and develop interest, students must become involved in using their experiences and schema and connect their understanding with classmates’ and the teacher’s in a way that facilitates their own learning.

Our exploratory phase is much larger, longer and more involved than is her set. Giving Hunter credit, she understood that students had to be hooked but her model did a perfunctory job of it; the two-step model carefully accesses student knowledge and raises real issues that students “feel” before they investigate the topic/content.

(2) Hunter’s notion of INPUT is in direct opposition to our notions. To her, knowledge is fixed and external to individuals and they must be prepared to accept it. Images of “pouring liquid in” or “stamping in a response” or “hammering the truth home” abound from this metaphor: knowledge has to be drilled into unwilling youngsters.

Yipes!

We see that information is external and it becomes knowledge as an individual human being uses it for some specific end. If INPUT is new knowledge, the two-step model doesn’t drill it in, it exists as a resource that students will choose to transform meaningfully as it is used. Although this renders up images of “anything goes constructivism”, done properly, STUDENTS WILL INTEGRATE NEW KNOWLEDGE into a schema that makes sense to them, which is consistent with what we know about learning. Students master new material, not by practice, but by use.

One final thought on this issue is warranted here. Hunter did suggest that INPUT could be gained through lecture and film and reading, but also by discussion or by an investigation. However, that issue was seldom addressed or explained. Moreover, ignoring both Vygotsky and Piaget, she never really thought that the knowledge had to be internalized in an individual’s idiosyncratic and original way: she suggested that if ten people in a room agreed that “The US had to fight in Viet Nam” or “2 + 2 =4”, that we all agreed in the same way. The generalization had been stamped in to each of us. This just isn’t true: we have to make our own schema, and we “have to learn it for ourselves”.

Each of us has to individually internalize the wheel, or at least our conception of it

(3) The third flaw in Hunter is this concept of PRACTICE. Because she anticipates that frequently kids get graded on what is mostly a rehash of verbal questioning now expressed in multiple-choice contexts, she wants the teacher desired verbal response to be forthcoming when sought.

For example:

“What is the capital of New York?” says the teacher.

“Albany”, says Marsha.

“Good” says the teacher, who may or may not be aware that Marsha has no idea what a capital is, no idea where Albany is, and frankly, has no vested interest except keeping the teacher happy in mind.

One favorite of these is found in math teaching:

“When dividing fractions, invert and multiply. Repeat after me, invert and multiply”. Twenty trials later, all kids chant…"invert and multiply”.

Of course, practice works: they can state the rule. However, only some can apply it to actual problems and NONE can explain what it means to “divide by a fraction” (NOTE: that is NOT the same as dividing by two).

A classic example is told of the honors students who were confronted with the problem of how to remove a tree whose branches were overhanging a home without having the tree fall on the home. All of the students were stumped until given the hint that the Pythagorean Theorem might apply. Instantly, the students were able to solve the problem. This is an example of students who memorized the formula (and probably got full credit on all short answer tests, but were unable to apply the information in an appropriate situation.

If real learning is developed by the use of information to solve problems and create products, the students need a different kind of experience than is typically provided by PRACTICE. Despite arguments that have been made, when one hears a teacher say “practice”, few teachers think that students are investigating, comparing, creating, examining, designing or categorizing ….the image conjured up is [mindless] rehearsal.

Hunter’s model is a practice model, a training model that has done little to promote understanding of the type needed in a modern economy/polity. If you are training pigeons, it is fine; if you are teaching humans, either abandon it or modify your conceptions of SET, of INPUT and PRACTICE to more align with constructivist practices. Behaviorism theories were developed using lab rats and other animals that don’t have cerebral cortexes, the part of the brain humans use to think.