Tower of EduBabble

Newoldschoolteacher is guest blogging at EduWonk this week and compares and contrasts the course title at KIPP Summit 2006 with those given at the April conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). First a few course offerings from the Kipp Summit:

• Basics on Advising College-Bound Students
• Analyzing Test Scores
• Activities and Questioning with Bloom's Taxonomy
• Informal Assessment of Reading Difficulties
  

Now a few from AERA:

• English-Language Learning in a 3-D Virtual Environment: Native/Non-Native Speaker Dyads Co-Questing in Quest Atlantis
• Resisting Resistance: Using Eco-Justice and Eco-Racism to Awaken Mindfulness, Compassion, and Wisdom in Preservice Teachers
• The Formation of the Subjectivity of Mail-Order Brides in Taiwan and Their Educational Strategies Toward Their Children
• 'Ho No Mo': A Qualitative Investigation of Adolescent Female Language Reclamation and Rejection.

Welcome to the world of impenetrable edu-jargon. Edu-jargon is not your garden variety jargon. Normally, jargon is used by practioners as a shorthand to simplify complex ideas or things to avoid excessive verbiage. In contrast, edu-jargon is used to obfuscate simple ideas using overly-complex and high-falutin terminology to give the impression that what you're saying is more important than it really is and to disguise soft-headed thinking.

I have a simple rule when it comes to edu-jargon:

Anyone who uses edu-jargon has nothing serious to say.

It's quite a time saver. Once I come across edu-jargon in a paper, I stop reading; it's a waste of time to read any further.

The rule doesn't just apply to the field of education -- it applies to all scholarly fields. The more "edu-jargon" a profession uses the less it has to say and the less usful it is to society. Compare the writings in a serious field like computer engineering which continues to pump out useful ideas and inventions and generally has made life better for all of us to the writings in any of the liberal arts which has failed to generate anything useful to society in the past 50 years at least.

Here is an excellent takedown of some constructivist nonsense by Martin Kozloff:

"From this perspective, learning is a constructive building process of meaning-making that results in reflective abstractions, producing symbols within a medium." (Fosnot, 1996, p. 27). "Reflective abstraction is the driving force of learning." (Fosnot, 1996, p. 29).

First, notice the circularity in the line, "learning is a constructive building process of meaning-making that results in reflective abstractions, producing symbols within a medium," followed by "Reflective abstraction is the driving force of learning." One moment reflective abstraction is the result of learning (meaning construction). The next moment reflective abstraction is the driving force behind learning. Well, which is it?

Second, the excerpt contains examples of reification: learning is not said to be like a building process; it is a building process. Likewise, reflection is said to be a driving force. But what is reflection? Reflection means talking to yourself. What kind of force is that? How can talking to yourself drive learning? Do you talk first and then learn? Nonsense! [But in the field of education, this sort of piffle is commonly seen as wisdom.]

Third, notice how the author connects phrases into what comes off sounding profound, but means nothing. What, after all, is "meaning-making"? Is it something persons do alongside acting? "I'm writing a paper. Occasionally I stop to make meaning." And the phrase "producing symbols in a medium" is simply incomprehensible. What medium? A dish of agar?

As they say, read the whole thing.