After behaviourism, navigationism?

Abstract

Two previous articles in this journal advocate the greater use of a behaviourist methodology called ‘Precision Teaching’ (PT). From a position located within virtue ethics, this article argues that the technical feat of raising narrowly defined performance in mathematics and other subjects is not sufficient justification for the extensive use of behaviourist techniques such as this. The article uses ideas drawn from ancient Egyptian mythology as well as some more familiar Greek philosophy, to raise broader questions about the wisdom of relying too heavily on technical rationality in present-day educational practice. The polemical intent is to dismiss unreflective behaviourism and to offer a brief glimpse of a very new educational paradigm: ‘navigationism’.

Keywords:

• precision teaching
• behaviourism
• constructivism
• ethics
• navigationism

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to the former General Editor and to the two anonymous reviewers for their incisive comments on an earlier version of this article. Any infelicities that remain are my own.

Notes

1. Ironically, the prodigious feats of Georgian miner Alexei Stakhanov in the 1930s – which made him a hero of the USSR and a role-model for the workforce – were revealed by the Soviet press in 1988 to be an elaborate propaganda hoax (Bernard 1999, 343).

2. Eudaimonia in the ancient Greek scheme.

3. Aporia in the Greek.

4. In contrast to the debunking modus operandi of the historical Socrates in the earlier works of Plato.

5. Uncle Angus must not be a true Scotsman, because no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

6. The doctrine of reincarnation described in Meno comes to Plato from Pythagoras (of right-angled triangle fame).

7. Sophrosyne.

8. Blake calls prudence a ‘rich, ugly old maid courted by incapacity’, in Grayling (2001, 41).

9. In the intellectual sense, rather than that of risk-assessment.

10. Although claims have been made for the success of behaviourist techniques such as ABA – Applied Behavioural Analysis – in ameliorating some problems of children with autistic spectrum disorders, these are not uncontroversial.

11. This is of course a relative term, falling short of infallibility.

12. On the ancient Egyptian model, Set would generate the chaos and Horus would take care of its management.

13. Where two or more people (one of whom could be the teacher) jointly examine a piece of putative knowledge.