Educational values and i.t.a.

JOHN DOWNING

Research and judgment Educational research is one of the several contributing sources of knowledge which provide the basis for judgment in educational theory. Educational researchers should not be debarred from mak- ing judginents and theorising on educational problems, but in doing so they must clearly distinguish between what is evidence from their research and what are their own personal value judg- ments. Also, while they have just as much right to make value judgments as their educational colleagues who do not specialise in research, the researchers’ special access to this source does not entitle their judgments to privileged consideration.

The objective findings of the first i.t.a. experiment were pub- lished recently by the National Foundation for Educational Re- search in England and Wales (1967) and a detailed account of all the research carried out on i.t.a. since 1960 has now been pub- lished (Downing, 1967). Value judgments were excluded from these research reports, but what follows in this article is written in the understanding of this relationship between educational research and judgment, and represents the author’s personal value judgments of the educational implications of the Initial Teaching Alphabet (i.t.a.).

From the beginning of the i.t.a. experiment it has been empha- sised that i.t.a. does not constitute a teaching method. Nor is it inevitably associated with any one set of methods of teaching read- ing and writing or any one set of educational values. The Initial Teaching Alphabet is purely and simply one with certain standard- ised spellings. Each teacher who uses i.t.a. is free to select the methods she believes will best help the individual girls and boys

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in her classroom. However, in conducting the i.t.a. experiment, a guiding principle has been to integrate the i.t.a. innovation into the general pattern of modem primary education. It was recognised from the beginning that the danger of introducing a major change such as i.t.a. is that it may disrupt this overall pattern. Therefore it has been urged consistently that i.t.a. is an alternative only to traditional orthography (t.o.)’and that there are many other im- portant educational considerations to be taken into account in judging how i.t.a. should be introduced into the present-day primary school.

Jerome Bruner (1960) has brought together and stated very succinctly a number of important recent developments in educa- tional theory which can be readily related to the educational im- plications of i.t.a.

Learning how to learn In recent years the importance of transfer of learning has been reinstated, chiefly through the experiments of Harry Harlow which show how learning to solve a specific problem leads not only to learning how to perform that particular task, but also to learning how to learn. Jerome Bruner states : ‘ Learning should not only take us somewhere : it should allow us later to go further more easily ’.

He indicates the importance in education of: ‘ the transfer of principles and attitudes. In essence it consists of learning initially not a skill but a general idea, which can then be used as a basis for recognising subsequent problems as special cases of the idea originally mastered. This type of transfer is at the heart of the educational process-the continual broadening and deepening of knowledge in terms of basic and general ideas ’.

It is not only that learning how to learn is intrinsically valuable in the educational process. We simply cannot meet the demands of today’s and tomorrow’s world unless we make ‘ learning how to learn ’ a central principle in education. Man’s store of knowledge has become so vast that no individual can carry even the knowledge of one specialised discipline in his head. The research ‘ explosion ’

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with its consequent growth in knowledge would make it impossible to cram in all the individual facts, even if we thought it desirable. Instead we must provide students with the learning, studying, discovering and structuring skills which will make them efficient in finding and utilising knowledge stored in libraries, computers, etc.

Furthermore, we are moving into an era in which change will be the norm, and re-training and new learning will be a constant need. In all our teaching efforts we have to be continually develop- ing with deliberate forethought the skills needed for new learning and an attitude of readiness for change and discovery. It is clear that the principle of learning how to learn and the aim of preserving and fostering children’s natural curiosity and drive for discovery are of central importance in today’s schools.

Discovery and learning how to learn through i.t.a. The greatest educational value of i.t.a. derives from the fact that it facilitates the discovery approach. The discovery of the structural relations of written English and spoken English comes more easily with i.t.a. For example, the sound common to fly, high, guy, mind, pe, rye, time is concealed in t.0. because the same sound is written in all these different ways-y, igh, uy, i, ie, ye, i-e (and others). In i.t.a. the linguistic structure stands out much more clearly, e.g.

flie, hie, gie, miend, pie, rie, tiem.

Educators who seek, as Jerome Bruner does, ‘ to present the fundamental structure of a discipline in such a way as to preserve some of the exciting sequences that lead a student to discover for himself’

will recognise the potential of i.t.a. for the discovery approach in primary education. They will want also to emphasise reading for meaning rather than the abstract analysis and rote learning of the alphabet and the sounds of English in alphabetic work books when the learning of reading begins. The important plus in learxiing $ow to learn, for children who begin with meaningful words and sgn- tences in i.t.a., is that they learn at the same Tihe tbe- correct orientation and attitudes for a lifetime of reading. The truth we want children to learn from the beginning in i.t.a. is that reading

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is getting information and pleasure from books (not making noises to letters-which is the orienting effect of beginning with abstract phonic analysis).

Most important of all, beginning with meaningful sentences and words in i.t.a. allows teachers to provide opportunities for children to make discoveries of the relations between speech and writing. The structural relations of letters and sounds ‘ hit you in the eye ’ in i.t.a. and this applies even in normal English sentences such as ‘ k liek mie pk ’, We do not need to hunt out strange situations of the ‘ Nan can fan Dan ’ variety. In other words, the regularity of i.t.a. makes even less valid the teaching of formal abstract phon- ics because the discovery approach is made so much easier by i.t.a. This is not to deny that phonetic analysis and synthesis are im- portant in learning to read. However, these skills must be developed in such a way and at such a time that it is clear to children that phonetic analysis and synthesis are only means to an end. If i.t.a. teaching begins with abstract phonic work books, the means may become confused with the end, and the chance for discovery is certainly lost. If, on the other hand, discovery of the structural nature of reading and writing comes after the correct orientation for the purpose of reading for meaning has been established, then children are more likely to perceive phonetic analysis correctly as merely a tool, and learning to read can fit naturally into the overall discovery approach in primary education.

Self-expression in i.t.a. When girls and boys discover for themselves that writing is ‘ talk written down’ the whole of their exciting world of activities, experiences and imagination can be communicated in the new medium of writing. The British research with i.t.a. has shown how t.0. frustrates the young child’s interest in communicating through writing. In contrast, i.t.a. makes it easier for children to :speak and think with their pencils ’. This potential for self- expressioa is another of the important educational virtues of i.t.a. which ought not to be wasted. To make the best use of it, a language- experience approach in which children’s i.t.a. writing is emphasised is essential.

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i.t.a. and the self-image The research on i.t.a. has been limited to measurable attainments, but it seems reasonable to infer that the success which is more certain and more rapid in beginning reading with i.t.a. brings with it more improvements in children’s attitudes towards learning. Such attitudes may be at least as important as the development of problem-solving skills. Jerome Bruner says :

‘ Mastery of the fundamental ideas o f a field involves not only the grasping of general principles, but also the development of an attitude toward learning and inquiry, toward guessing and hunches, toward the possibility of solving problems on one’s own ’.

And he suggests that in developing such attitudes,

‘ an important ingredient is a sense of excitement about discovery- discovery of regularities of previously unrecognised relations and similarities between ideas, with a resulting sense of self-confidence in one’s abilities ’.

Many teachers have commented on the beneficial effects of i.t.a. on the development of children’s self-confidence. For example, in our first experiment with i.t.a. for beginning reading, a headmaster commented :

‘ Probably, to a Head teacher, visiting the classroom from time to time, the change in the general attitude of the children is the most striking aspect of the experiment. It is not that they are better behaved as the word “ behaviour ” is generally used. They appear to have an uninhibited proficiency about them. They set about things with more purposefulness. To me they appear to manifest in their play and general attitude, a new competence which can, perhaps, be attributable to the self-sufficiency they have found in so easily mastering their reading ’ (In Downing, 1965).

Wilkinson (1967) in her review of the i.t.a. experiment in Bolton,

‘ All of them (teachers) agree that children bring to their task greater confidence and acquire more quickly the assurarxe that comes with the belief that they will succeed ’.

Lancashire, states :

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In a more recent survey of teachers’ reports on the use of i.t.a. in special schools for retarded pupils, the commonest type of spontaneous response from the teachers was to favour the use of i.t.a. for its effect in improving their students’ self-confidence, or independence. For example, a teacher from the Midlands in a special school with pupils aged eight to eleven years and with IQs of between 44 and 78 wrote : ‘ From the earliest days there was a noticeable improvement in atti- tudes toviards the reading situation, which was soon reflected in other subject areas. For the first time many of these children enjoyed feelings of success rather than failure. They clearly felt secure in the knowledge that the processes they were learning were simple, logical and could be relied on. They became more self-reliant and less demmding ’ (In Downing, 1967b).

Byron Ward and Joan Beauchamp (1966) have also written about the use of i.t.a. with the mentally retarded.

Thus a third important virtue of i.t.a. is the contribution it can make to the development of a healthy self-image. The damage caused by t.0. to children’s self-respect is probably greater than is generally realised, for failure in learning to read in t.0. often arises from the child’s application of correct reasoning to problems which have idiosyncratic or unreasonable solutions. Rationalisations such as ‘ I am not good at reading ’, or ‘ I am bad at writing ’, or even ‘ I am not a good student ’ are needed to explain why one’s attempts at rational problem-solving with t.0. have failed.

Although it cannot be claimed that objedve evidence of such influences exists, it does not seem unreasonable to surmise that the greater simplicity of i.t.a. which has doubled children’s reading vocabulary (as measured by objective tests) should also help to prevent the corrosive effects of the unreasonable demands of t.0. Is it not probable that i.t.a. will help more children to perceive themselves ss ‘ good at reading ’ and ‘ good students ’ because of their rapid success in a logically structured system which they can undersz-and ?

Bibliography BRUNER, J. (1960). The Process of Education. New York: Vintage Books.

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DOWNING, J. (1965). The i.t.a. Reading Experiment. London. Evans Bros. - (1967a). Evaluating the Initial Teaching Alphabet. London. Cassell. - (1967b). ESN schoolteachers assess i.t.a. Special Education, 66 (March),

NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH (1967). The i.t.a. Sym- posium. London. NFER.

W m , B. J., and BEAUCHAMP, J. (1966). j.t.a. and teaching techniques for the mentally retarded. In The First International Reading Symposium. Ed. DOWNING, J. London. Cassell.

WILKINSON, C. M. (1967). The Initial Teaching Alphabet. In The Second International Reading Symposium. Ed. DOWNING, J., and BROWN, A. L. London. Cassell.

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