Skills versus knowledge in education: a false dilemma

5 Comments on Skills versus knowledge in education: a false dilemma

Fjbisset on Thu, 7th May 2009 4:11 am


Excellent article Matt!
Are you familiar with Rasmussen’s skill-rule-knowledge framework? It might provide another way of looking at and remedying the above disagreement by implying that both a ‘purely skills based’ and a ‘purely knowledge based’ approach (if such things actually exist) are in need of development in how they visualise their respective impacts on education.

By my interpretation of Rasmussen’s model and by applying it to this situation – education is actually about defining Rules (in the controlled environment of the classroom, lab or lecture theatre). Rules can be derived from Knowledge (the abstract models you mention) this Knowledge might be the product of rigourous empirical research or the product of an individual’s (the educator’s) extensive experience of applying, deriving and testing such rules in an empirical fashion. This can be considered ‘controlled’ or optimum behaviour in controlled conditions.

Thus well established rules of behaviour in a given context become what can be commonly perceived as knowledge. This is perhaps what a Knowledge based curriculum might advocate as its approach.

These Rules can then be applied by the student to their own experiences from thenceforth (and reflectively) to develop Skills. Skill specifically in this context can be considered ‘automatic behaviour’ in the real world. This will result in inevitable compromises and adjustment of the ‘Empirical Knowledge Based’ Rules in response to ‘the real world’ depending on how well they understood the rules and how good the education system/educator/curriculum was at defining these rules and advising on their application in the first place. It is this that a skills based curriculum might say that is its practice.

http://www.fergusbisset.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/srk-framework-education-300×100.jpg

What you seem to focus on here and what I admire in your perspective is questioning how to what extent, either towards knowledge or experience these rules are expected to stretch and most significantly – which of these is better for the actual student.

Thank you for posing this excellent question.

Fergus Bisset

Fjbisset on Thu, 7th May 2009 4:16 am


Slightly larger image:

http://www.fergusbisset.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/srk-framework-education.jpg

Matt Grist on Fri, 8th May 2009 2:40 am


Thanks for your excellent comments Fergus. I was replying to your comments when I decided to make a post out of what I was saying. So see blog for more on this.

Thanks again, Matt

Richie on Sat, 9th May 2009 11:51 pm


I agree with almost everything you have written in your last two posts. I think its very true that knowledge provides the currency in which skills trade.. knowledge is substance and skills are process.. knowledge provides the emotional salience around which habit (skill) can be formed; both are necessary.

But for me what is needed to complete your account is a clear understanding of the way in which kids do discover general rules from specific cases, and thus also the extent to which particular skills are unitary and transferable.

For example, in your last post you spoke about skill #3 – “sensitivity to the particular features of things”. I’ve no question of its importance, but to what extent is learning to be sensitive to the tone of someone’s voice generalisable to a sensitivity the colours that make up a painting?

Do we have to teach kids to be sensitive to colours in art class, and sensitive to the tone of a poem in english class, and is that it, or are we hoping that those experiences will be complementary? It might be, if kids can make associations between colour and tone, see similarities and differences accross domains. But if this is possible it isn’t easy.

More generally, what I’m saying is that perhaps this process of generalising is a skill in itself; if so, surely a crucial one that needs to be added to your list and taught, if it can be.

Might not the truth about the connection between knowledge and skills come from our understanding of the relationship between declarative and procedural memory – of the way in which habits are constructed out of specific content? It’s been a while since I looked into this area, but I’m not sure if the science is quite up to the task yet.

Matt Grist on Mon, 11th May 2009 6:03 am


‘But for me what is needed to complete your account is a clear understanding of the way in which kids do discover general rules from specific cases, and thus also the extent to which particular skills are unitary and transferable.’

‘More generally, what I’m saying is that perhaps this process of generalising is a skill in itself; if so, surely a crucial one that needs to be added to your list and taught, if it can be.’

Thanks a lot for this Richie, you get straight to the nub of the problem. I guess what worries me is that if we started teaching this kind of ability of ‘generalising a skill’, that this would not be very helpful in developing the skill – i.e. it would be a deathly boring list of general attributes. Perhaps it could be done subtly – by alluding to similarities and differences and general principles across areas of subjects. The new organisation of the National Curriculum seems to go in the right direction. And as you suggest, teaching should be informed by the latest science here.

Ultimately I suppose I think good teachers, with a little prompting on methodology, will just get this and communicate it to the kids so that ‘the light dawns slowly on the whole’, to paraphrase Wittgenstein. But perhaps that’s naïve.

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