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P. Rzepny

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10/24/05Article Review # 6

Heshusius, L. (1984). Why would they and I want to do it? a phenomenological-theoretical view

of special education.Learning Disability Quarterly, (7), 363-368

Lous Heshusius advocates for a phenomenological approach to special education theory

and practice, as opposed to practices based on a mechanistic-reductionist approach. A

phenomenological view of the world suggests that people construct or make meaning of their

lives through on-going transformative processes with their own experiences and interactions with

the world that occur in the complexity of social relationships. This approach also views

education more as a holistic, participatory endeavor, in which students and teachers are involved

together in an exploration of the whole of things, and attempt to understand the parts in terms

of the whole. A holistic view of education embraces the interests of students and allows them to

guide or provide the starting point to the learning process.

A mechanistic worldview reduces the natural world into bits of matter that operate

according to a set of predictable and well-defined laws. This view of the natural world also came

to be applied to education with the idea that how and what students learn could be predicted,

controlled, and measured according to precisely defined objectives. A mechanistic view of

education suggests that the whole of a subject should be broken down into small parts to be

examined as separate entities, which would then be recombined and lead to an understanding of

the whole. The mechanistic paradigm also separates facts from values, ethics, and meanings,

yet this is an artificial and arbitrary separation. People are inherently meaning-makers, and

purposeful in our actions. I agree with Heshusius that we need to search for more meaningful

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ways of knowing that seek to engage students in a holistic, participatory process of learning,

which integrates facts, values, ethics, and meanings, rather than continue to view students as

passive recipients of the latest scientific theory or model.

Heshusius describes how the Newtonian-mechanistic, reductionist paradigm of the past

300 years has dominated and shaped special education theory and practice, through fragmented

instructional approaches that have decontextualized curriculum by reducing learning objectives

into a series of activities and tasks that are little more than bits and pieces of things. For example,

programmed materials, worksheets, and phonics exercises are often offered as ends in

themselves, instead of as a means to the end of learning. Tasks are broken down into smaller and

smaller parts, eventually stripped of their context and meaning, with the result that materials used

in special education classrooms often make no sense, and indeed are nonsensible.

Heshusius writes, students who dont learn are telling us something. Instead of

questioning the theoretical assumptions behind our practices, however, we continually test and

diagnose children to determine their deficiencies, defects, and disabilities, while ignoring a

major reason students do not learnthey are bored. Students are bored because what they learn

is often irrelevant to their interests. According to Heshusius, the problem is that learning does not

occur in a piecemeal, contextless fashion, but in the context of personal experience and

purposelearning occurs when students perceive instructional material as useful and important

to their lives. Students learn by the connections they make from educational activities to real life.

Heshusius makes a plea for the educational system to build its theories of learning on the basic

assumption that learning only occurs when it is perceived by the student to have real purpose.

Heshusius addresses the problem of boredom in a rather humorous manner by suggesting

that we might change the system by using the system. She writes that perhaps we could develop

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an instrument that would determine a students level of boredom. (The student would define

boredom). We could then write an end of the year goal on a students IEPa desired level of

boredom. This would force us to officially address boredom, and require that we determine how

to remediate it. Heshusius makes the point that this would, at once, acknowledge the student as

an active, meaning-creating, and meaning-needing person, thereby paling the importance of all

other test outcomes that merely address fragments of the child void of a meaningful context.

The idea of making boredom an IEP goal sounds absurd, but Heshusius indicates that the

suggestion springs from the frustration and depression she experienced during her teaching years

when trying to work meaningfully with special education students who could see the

meaningless in piece-meal educational activities.

At some point, Heshusius decided to stop using the programmed materials, worksheets,

etc., and start using regular library books of the students choosing. Needed concepts were

taught through the process of what the students wrote, projects they developed, films they

watched, and newspapers they read in the context of functional skills that were applicable to their

personal lives. Even though she felt guilt over not doing what the system said she should be

doingcounting, charting, manipulating IEPs, not testing, not teaching decoding skillsshe

also felt good for not giving control of her teaching to theories. As Heshusius writes, When real

progress happens, nothing stays the same. When new knowledge is added, the student is no

longer the same person. The person is reconstructed, continually transformed by his or her

experiences.

Heshusius sees hopeful signs for the future, and hears the call for change being expressed

in all fields. We can continue to conform our teaching and learning processes to the mechanistic

paradigm, search for new and more meaningful ways to practice education, or walk away.

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