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Plowden (1967) Notes on the text Volume 1 (page numbers in brackets) Preliminary pages (i-xxii)
Part 1 Introduction
Part 2 The growth of the child
Part 3 The home, school and neighbourhood
Part 4 The structure of primary education
Part 5 The children in the schools: curriculum and internal organisation
Part 6 The adults in the schools
Part 7 Independent schools
Part 8 Primary school buildings and equipment; status; and research
Part 9 Conclusions and recommendations
Notes (486-495)
Research and Surveys about Plowden |
The Plowden Report (1967)
A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1967
[page 262] 722. The oldest and most universal aids to learning are the picture and the book. To these aids frequent reference has been made throughout the chapter on the curriculum. Two points should perhaps be emphasised. Books and illustrations must be accessible at least as much for individual as for class use. The implication is that, especially for the younger children, collections of books and illustrations should be housed mainly in the rooms or adjacent to the rooms where children are normally working. There must be a central collection as well, since some books, illustrations and maps are too expensive to be duplicated. Children should have access to books which are finely produced and illustrated and to some adult works of reference. These central collections must also be accessible and not shut away in a room so often occupied by a class that individual children can only use them once or twice a week. The school's collection of illustrations, tapes, filmstrips, photostats, discs and programmed texts needs to be indexed so that teachers and children can find out what material there is of interest to them. Much of this work can be done by a teacher's aide under the supervision of the head teacher or of an advisory teacher. 723. Some primary school teachers think that such aids to learning as broadcasting, television, cine film, filmstrip and discs are the negation of modern primary methods which stress individual learning. This helps to explain the relatively small use that has been made of them in some of the best primary schools. But it is a mistaken view. They should be used to bring into the classroom personalities and voices, scenes and places, that could never appear there by any other means. They enrich enormously the resources available to teachers and children. Intelligently selected and used, they provide excellent background material, historical, geographical, biological and aesthetic. Teachers have from the start been enabled by their membership of BBC and Independent Television Authority committees, and by requests for criticism, to play a big part in planning sound and television programmes. 724. There is a further reason for introducing more aids into school. Television is now, as films and sound broadcasting have long been, a part of ordinary life to which children are accustomed. It has even been described as 'a rival system of education'. Children must be taught to use it profitably and to associate it with learning as well as with entertainment. This point of view has to be balanced with another: for the youngest children in particular, who spend more time in front of the television screen than any other age group, there is a particular need for the school to provide direct experiences when all the senses come into play. In this way precision, associations and meaning can be added to what is seen and heard on television. 725. Many teachers in the past, with some reason, preferred cine film, filmstrip and discs, to broadcasting. The former can be seen or heard in advance, can be chosen by the teacher to suit his own purposes, can be used at the most suitable moment in the day and can be stopped or repeated by the teacher or [page 263] by the children themselves. Strips can be cut up and transformed into individual slides, a highly desirable method of dealing with them, since many filmstrips are too long and too repetitive. Many teachers, indeed, make their own slides. Flexibility of this kind has not in the past been shared by radio or television broadcasts save in so far as teachers could predict from the excellent supporting publications what was likely to be coming and could switch off the set if what in fact came was unsuitable. The tape recorder, and the permission given to schools to record and use sound broadcasts for a period of twelve months, have made it possible to use them in much the same way as discs and film and to reconcile their use with a flexible time table. Video tape may in the long run do the same for television broadcasts. 726. Another important development, perhaps potentially the most important of all those so far noted, is that it is no longer necessary for these aids to involve class teaching. Hand viewers and slide projectors are increasingly used by individuals and by groups. Earphones enable children to listen to speech recorded by themselves or teachers, or to the spoken word accompanying a written text. The more flexible school buildings become, the more they are provided with small group rooms, the easier it is for children to use aids without disturbing others. 727. Though some radio series are intended to be followed in sequence, others have been designed as an a la carte menu from which teachers choose individual programmes to suit the rest of the work that is being done with their classes. If unstreamed classes and provision for group viewing and listening become more general, more programmes might profitably be designed as entities to be followed by such particular groups as very able or very slow children. Programmed Learning* 728. We have left till last the consideration of the most recent and controversial of teaching aids, the making of teaching programmes and their presentation in books or by machines. It has roused strong feelings in the teaching profession because more than any other aid it has seemed to some that it might take over part of the teacher's job. Since most programmes for primary *A programme presents the learner with all the material he needs to master a particular task. At the present time most programmes are written on one of two systems. In linear programmes material is presented in a carefully prepared logical sequence and in such a way that progression from one small step (or 'frame') to the next is almost certain. The size of the steps and their sequence are determined empirically by trying out the programme on a representative sample of the pupils for whom the programme is intended and what proves difficult is altered until a successful approach is achieved. A basic principle of linear programming is that success should be virtually inevitable at every step and that the student should be told of his success at each point. The pupil's interest is held by the way the material is presented, the easy small steps and by the fact that he is told immediately he takes any action whether or not he has done right: the next piece of information is not presented until the one before has been mastered. In branching programmes, each step of the programme contains more material, is planned on the assumption that some mistakes will be made, and that the pupil will profit by discovering why he has gone wrong. This method is more closely related to that of existing teaching practice in that the writer of the programme sets out to anticipate the pupils' difficulties. At each frame the pupil is given a choice of responses: the correct answer leads him forward; an incorrect one takes him through a branch sequence designed to correct the error he has made. [page 264] school children have been concerned with the acquisition of factual knowledge, programmed learning has seemed counter to current trends of basing children's learning on interest and discovery. 729. Yet programmed learning could relieve the teachers of some routine tasks and free them to exercise their influence more constructively. The motive for learning may arise from the children or may be stimulated by discussion between teacher and children. The teacher can help children to become aware of problems and to recognise the need for specific knowledge. At that point a programme might provide knowledge, techniques and practice in them, its great advantage being that both the programmed text and the programmed machine can be used individually. Once children have assimilated knowledge, the possible uses to which it may be put become again a matter for discussion. Few programmes have been devised for or tested with primary school children and their use is not yet sufficiently widespread either here or in the USA for firm judgements to be made. 730. In one area teaching machines have been successfully used for teaching a few backward juniors and secondary pupils to read. It seemed from this experiment that children who, because of past failure, are too unsure of themselves to form a relationship with a teacher, can learn from a machine, gain in this way in confidence and so are helped to return to normal relationships. It is claimed that the machine and the programme have special advantages for this kind of child; the child learns in private and does not have to share his learning device; he has no fear of punishment, the small steps of the programme make success likely and yet the child can withdraw from the learning situation without seeming aggressive. We have also heard that some children become bored with programmed learning. 731. We are glad to know that the Department are supporting research projects which are designed to discover the best methods of programming school learning and of using programmes in schools of all kinds. The Department have also encouraged institutes of education to provide short courses to train teachers to write programmes. Until more programmes have been produced, research results cannot be convincing. Furthermore it is stimulating for teachers to make programmes since they are forced to think hard about what they are teaching and why and to test its success. Scrutiny of the difficulties encountered by pupils in using programmes can give teachers new insight into the processes of teaching and learning. 732. One final word should be added on these aids for teachers. It is often a matter for mild amusement at educational conferences that nothing is more certain than that, at a session in audio-visual aids, the aids will in some way fail: the films break, the record player is so sensitive that it exaggerates extraneous noise, and, at the very least, the plug is of the wrong size. There is here certainly a moral for the schools. Children are used to high standards in commercial film projection and in television. Not only must the standard of educational films, broadcasts and television be high but the machines themselves must be in good order. Local authorities might well employ technicians to service the mechanical aids which we hope will be found in most primary schools. It is, however, doubtful whether authorities should provide all this equipment automatically for schools. The automatic supply of equipment [page 265] does not ensure good use. But the allowance made to primary schools should be sufficient for them to buy and use such of this equipment as they are prepared to use to the full. 733. This is an age of increasing mechanisation. Inevitably, more and cheaper mechanical aids will find their way into the primary schools. Teachers must, therefore, consider how they can use them best to enrich the ways in which children can learn. 
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