The way we learn is summarised by the old adage, “Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand.” The saying has not changed, but currently the focus of learning and the perception of a ‘good’ education have shifted from ‘tell me’ (i.e. the traditional passive absorption of core content) to ‘involve me’ (i.e. an active process, requiring thinking and understanding by the learner). This is because the required basic workforce skills of today’s world are broad understanding, critical thinking and life-long learning habits that quickly adapt to new job-skill demands in an ever-changing workplace environment, where specific job skills are not as important as the basic workforce skills, which are needed to work smarter.

Prior to 1970, the ‘tell me’ behavioural doctrine (Skinner) of instructing core content and tightly sequencing curricula was the education paradigm of the United States. In April 1983, the publication of ‘An Open Letter to the American People: A Nation at Risk, The Imperative for Educational Reform’ by The National Commission on Excellence in Education challenged this mode of teaching and called for a pedagogical shift from transmitting a body of expected core knowledge that is largely memorised to one that is largely process-oriented (cognitive and constructive learning). Eleven years later, on the 31st March 1994, the Goals 2000: Educate America Act was enacted into law. It mandated the education of students to use their minds well, so that they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in the nation’s modern economy.

General Education Requirement (GER) is the educational strategy adopted by NUS (NUS, 2001) and many research-based universities throughout the world, including the US, to meet the requirement for ‘work-smart’ basic workforce skills. Central to the GER initiative is inquiry-based learning and ‘general’ distribution requirements. Through inquiry-based understanding of the procedures and practices in diverse disciplines, GER exposes students to the modes of inquiry in multiple disciplines, and trains them to think in various settings.

Inquiry is an approach to learning that involves the Socratic method (Dye, 1999) of exploring and asking questions to seek cognitive and constructive understanding (Hartshorne & Weiss and Burke, 1997; North Central Education Laboratory, 2001; Piaget). It must be pointed out that a shift in the learning paradigm from ‘tell me’ to ‘involve me’ should also involve a corresponding shift in the teaching paradigm from instructing to facilitating. Unlike passive absorption of intact knowledge structures, which is Platonic and common to all (Plato; Skinner), thinking is an active Socratic process that is contextual and unique to each individual. Different things suggest their own appropriate meaning and tell their own unique stories in very different ways with different persons (Dewey, 1991). In the inquiry-based ‘involve me’ mode of learning, the teacher does not teach thinking. Thinking and life-long learning habits cannot be taught, but can be facilitated in both cognitive and constructive instructional designs. The shift in roles of the teacher from traditional ‘tell me’ mode to facilitative ‘involve me’ mode is outlined in Table 1 below.

References

B.K. Skinner Foundation, The B.K. Skinner’s Bibliography. http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~allanr/biblio.html. (Download Date: 3 May 2001).

Dewey, John. (1991). Experience and Education. New York: Macmillan (originally published in 1938). For a list of writings by and on John Dewey, please consult: Janicke, Lisa. (1994). John Dewey. http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/janicke/Dewey.html. (Download date: 3 May 2001).

Dye, James. (1999). Socratic Method and Scientific Method. http://www.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Dye/method.html. (Download Date: 3 May 2001).

United States of America. 103rd Congress, Second Session. (1994). Goals 2000: Educate America Act. http://www.ed.gov/legislation/GOALS2000/TheAct/. (3 May 2001).

Hartshorne, C. & Weiss, P. (Eds., Vols. 1-6) & Burke, A.W. (Ed., Vols. 7-8). (1997). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Pierce. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. For a list of writings by Charles S. Pierce, please consult: http://www.peirce.org/writings.html. (Download Date: 3 May 2001).

Jean Piaget Society, The. (2001). http://www.piaget.org/. (Download Date: 3 May 2001). At the website, please click on ‘About Piaget’ for ‘Short Biography of Jean Piaget’, ‘Principal Publications’, ‘Autobiography’, ‘Main Works’, and ‘Further Reading’ lists.

National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). An Open Letter to the American People: A Nation at Risk, The Imperative for Educational Reform. http://www.goalline.org/Goal%20Line/NatAtRisk.html. (Download Date: 3 May 2001).

North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Constructivist Model for Learning. http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/content/cntareas/science/sc5model.htm. (Download Date: 3 May 2001).

NUS. (2001). General Education Modules. http://www.nus.edu.sg/gem/. (Download Date: 18 October 2001).

Taylor, Brian. Plato (427-347 B.C.): Plato’s Life. http://www.briantaylor.com/Plato.htm. (Download Date: 3 May 2001).