S-R learning models vs Discovery -

"Educational theorists no longer explain learning with behaviourist theories about stimulus-response connections. More recent studies recognize the role of the student in the feedback process"

I had a class in my masters program on learning and literacy - this was, concisely stated, the point of one of the learning units.

"They study the kind of feedback given and the context in which it is presented. What we now realize is that the message sent is filtered through the students perception as it becomes the message received"

hmmmm - isn't the point of s-r that the response is the result of filtered perception - filtered from the prior knowledge of how a response to given stimulus will be rewarded or punished.. I still stumble on this notion that the s-r folks are ignoring the individual in the model. Making it a black box isn't the same as ignoring it. Indeed, the notion of a block box, in engineering, comes from being able to characterize the function of an item based on what output it gives to input. If all the characteristics of output as a function of interesting inputs can be described then the black box is in fact, for all practical purposes, known. It's not exactly that the box is ignored, it's characterized from the outside.

"The student's job is to make meaning from schoolwork, not to respond to stimuli", well yes ok i would mostly agree. Yet still, I have students that can make meaning out of multiplication but don't respond correctly to stimuli such as what is 7x6. They can make meaning with pictures and groups and yet their lack of fluency causes exploration of deeper problems to get sidetracked by what should be rote knowledge.

The above was all from Brookhart, S (2008) page 3 - How to give effective feedback to your students. ASCD.

Speaking to the above point is this quote from a different source, "Research on expertise in areas such as chess, history, science, and mathematics demonstrate that experts' ability to solve problems depend strongly on a rich body of knowledge about subject matter" (p.9). In other words, experts in their field know stuff and use it make meaning and solve problems. It sometimes seems to me that modern pedagogy attempts to short cut to the meaning and problem solving before there's some stuff to work with.

The above from Bransford, J et. al.(2000), How people learn: brain, mind, experience and school. National Academy Press.