Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
As its preface tells us, this work is an updated and expanded spinoff
volume from the twelve-volume second edition of the International
Encyclopedia of Education published in 1994 under the editorship of Torsten
Husn and T. Neville Postlethwaite. The new tome comes from a combi-
nation of the entries published in the IEE sections on developmental
psychology and instructional psychology: each contributor has updated
his contribution and in addition about ten new articles were commissioned.
Thus as well as the editors introduction, the volume contains 173 entries
by a total of 195 authors, arranged in 17 sections, a list of contributors,
plus separate name and subject indices.
The idea for this combination of sections came, De Corte and Weinert
tell us, from the integrative trend that has seen a blurring of the frontiers
between developmental and instructional/educational psychology, which
started the century with quite distinct orientations and approaches, but which
have come together particularly strongly in the last few decades. Doubtless
the publishers also saw commercial potential in such a venture, but for
consumers this is also a welcome enterprise in that we have here a much
more affordable and very useful resource that is focused, up to date and
authoritative. Any institution concerned with education or training will
find it most useful to have this item amongst its reference materials.
Its up to date authoritativeness is apparent in the very high quality of
the entries generally and the pre-eminence of a good proportion of its con-
tributors. These come overwhelmingly from North America on the one hand
BOOK REVIEWS 93
and Northern Europe on the other, especially if not surprisingly the Benelux
countries and Germany; Britons and Antipodeans, on the other hand, are
somewhat conspicuous by their absence. The references and further reading
typically include very recent items and whilst the topics range considerably,
current psycho-pedagogical themes are very much in evidence, including
the nature and implications of skilled expertise, neo-Vygotskyan and situated
cognition/cognitive apprenticeship emphases on both social and construc-
tive dimensions of knowledge and its development, and the need for
attention to the interaction of influences, such as cognitive, affective and
conative factors, in the promotion of learning.
The form and organisational structure of the sections and their several
entries also give the book very useful potential for direct but also critical
access to this modern range of pedagogical resources, even for the relatively
uninitiated user. Thus, in traditional encyclopedic style, entries average
around six twin-columned pages in length and tend on the whole to be
densely referenced, sometimes with further reading suggestions, although
there are some that stand out for a more prosey account with less refer-
encing to threaten their fluency. Thus entries can generally be accessed
relatively speedily as a first base from which to explore in more depth.
Not only this, but two further features also assist the user to grasp and
appraise the material in a critical way. A first is the provision of various
introductions and overviews, notably those in the books first section,
covering a general framework of human development, learning, and instruc-
tion in educational perspective. These generally give well crafted plans
of the forest whilst other entries fill out the picture of particular copses
and trees. A second feature is the overlapping nature not only of the entries,
but also, to some extent, of sections. Thus, for instance, Section VIII is titled
Theories and Models of Learning in Educational Settings and contains
an entry on Cooperative Learning by Robert Slavin, whilst Section XIII
on Classroom Learning Environments offers an entry on Group Processes
in the Classroom by Neville Bennett. Now it will be recognised that the
interrelated and interactive nature of learning, development and instructional
processes is such that even in principle classification and sequencing would
pose severe difficulties in a collection like this. And it is likely that this
overlappingness feature will be found frustrating by anyone approaching
this tome with an overly concrete-minded approach that ignores such messy
complexities and expects neat answers in segmented treatments. Au con-
traire, however, the overlaps and similarities of entry and section titles ought
in practice to attract the user with a particular topic in mind to consult a
number of entries. And this should in turn make it likely that he or she
will become aware of the range of ideas and findings of potential relevance,
their strengths and weaknesses, and the dangers of exclusive focus on any
particular bandwagon.
It will be clear, then, that I believe this carefully compiled work offers
immense utility both as an up-to-date reference work for anyone already
working in the field of pedagogy and as an introductory resource for those
94 BOOK REVIEWS
REFERENCES
Bereiter, C. & Scardamalia, M.: 1996, Rethinking Learning, in D. R. Olson & N. Torrance
(eds.), The Handbook of Education and Human Development, Blackwell, Oxford.
Kelly, G. A.: 1955, The Psychology of Personal Constructs. 2 Vols. Norton, New York.
Simon, T. J. & Halford, G. S.: 1995, Developing Cognitive Competence: New Approaches
to Process Modeling, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, N.J.
Tomlinson, P. D.: 1992, Psychology and Education: What Went Wrong Or Did It?, The
Psychologist: Bulletin of the British Psychological Society 5, 105109.
The editor of this volume and her twelve contributors are all based in
institutions of higher education in New Zealand. They include some
who served as members of technology curriculum working parties and
writing teams for the implementation of the 1993 New Zealand Curriculum
Framework. Others have extensive experience of teaching technological
subjects at tertiary level. Their collective aim is to provide a resource for
New Zealand teachers faced with the task of introducing what for many
in primary and secondary schools amounts to a new subject.
It might be thought that this specific antipodean context and role of the
book would place considerable limits on its value to those from elsewhere
in the world. Any such concerns would be largely misplaced, however. There
is much in the volume to interest anyone engaged in the challenging task
of establishing technology as a central component in the education of all
children. At the very least, it is always intriguing to have a sight of how
others are tackling matters. But what they count as problems and why,
and how they formulate and attack these problems, has intellectual currency
at many levels beyond casual curiosity.
The book is structured in two distinct, though complementary, parts. In
the first (six chapters), some general issues are identified and explored.