John Carroll and Minimalism
Thrown out there on April 4, 2009
I admire the work of John Carroll, whose minimalism theory finds its roots in constructivism. Although much of his work has been dedicated to studying human-computer learning contexts, I find that his work is relevant and meaningful to that for which I strive within my elementary classroom. In short, minimalist theory seeks to reduce the excessive, negative effects instructional materials have within the learning process while increasing activities which are driven by the learners themselves in order to achieve accomplishment (Carbonell, “John Carroll,” Rosson).
With endlessly proliferating elementary curricula (and the associated theoretical foundations), I’ve often wondered if less wouldn’t be more, so to speak. Carroll suggests that learners are more apt to do their job (learn) if they engage in meaningful, self-contained activities followed by quick implementation of realistic activities allowing for learner-directed reasoning and error recognition/recovery. In other words, the training (schooling) the learner endures should be close-knit with the real thing.
I have begun to practice this concept without realizing it. In mathematics, for example, I do not have my third graders use the textbooks I inherited with the classroom. It’s not that they’re forbidden—in fact, they’re in every desk in the room—they’ve just never been referenced by me and, consequently, rarely used except by the more curious within the classroom. Why? Because I’m not fond of the way the text crowds math problems onto a page. I dislike the claustrophobic feel of the textual instruction within each chapter. In my opinion, the textbook gets in the way of my students’ learning because the “activities” therein are not meaningful nor is the given practice related to the real world. Often the problems are repetitive and somewhat mindless—fostering the ability to make the same error over and over again rather than encouraging the learner to think through the reasonableness of an answer or approach. Instead, I might create a spacious worksheet (featuring a brief description of key terms or concepts) which force my students to underline key components within real-life problems, identify a strategy or approach for solving the problem, show or explain all the steps involved in finding a solution, label properly, then check to be sure a solution makes sense within the context of the original problem (whether by an informal check of logical possibility or through using an inverse mathematical relationship).
From a minimalist standpoint, I have removed the instructional materials which hinder many learners (with Gardner’s MI in mind) and, instead, created a simplified learning environment wherein the learner is free to think, understand, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate (Bloom’s taxonomy). This is exactly what Carroll sought to do when teaching his learners how to interact with an unfamiliar word processor in the late 20th century:
The training materials involved a set of 25 cards to replace a 94 page manual. Each card corresponded to a meaningful task, was self-contained and included error recognition/recovery information for that task. Furthermore, the information provided on the cards was not complete, step-by-step specifications but only the key ideas or hints about what to do. In an experiment that compared the use of the cards versus the manual, users learned the task in about half the time with the cards, supporting the effectiveness of the minimalist design (Kearsly).
John Carroll’s minimalist theory picks up where constructivism leaves off. Constructivism seeks to make “‘good’ problems…realistically complex and personally meaningful,” but minimalism wants to abandon even this for the sake of allowing learners to directly experience what it is they are learning within its own environment (computer interaction must be done on the computer as soon as possible rather than pouring over a textbook all about the interaction) (Carbonell). Similarly, instead of lazily letting my students pour over repetitive math problems, they must use the math they learn in a logical environment.
Some might say that the mathematical example I present here is not minimalist at all but nothing more than a simplified constructivist curriculum. However, given the fact that math is, in and of itself, theoretical with byproducts of applications, it must be carried out theoretically—just as word processing must be done on a computer, that is where it should be explored. While word processing has its applications in producing letters, e-mails, books, outlines, and recipes, minimalism does not go so far as to suggest that these must be produced—only that word processing is done within a computing environment. So, too, mathematics should be done within a logical environment (Kearsly).
Works Cited
Carbonell, Leilani. “Learning Theory.” My E-Coach. 27 March 2009.
“John Caroll.” Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology. 3 April 2009. http://ist.psu.edu/ist/directory/faculty/?EmployeeID=234
Rosson, Mary Beth, Carroll, Bellamy. “Smalltalk Scaffolding: A Case Study of Minimalist Instruction.” April 1990. IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. http://cscl.ist.psu.edu/public/users/jcarroll/Self/papers/MiTTS-CHI90.pdf
Kearsly, Greg. “Minimalism (J. Carroll).” Theory Into Practice. 27 March 2009. http://tip.psychology.org/carroll.html
