REPORT ANALYZES NEW EDUCATIONAL APPROACH
AUSTIN, Texas: A University of Texas professor who specializes in the assessment of educational reform has favorably reviewed the KPM Approach to Children in a new report that compares the approach to other progressive teaching methods such as Waldorf and Montessori.
Dr. Gary Borich, an educational psychologist at U.T.-Austin, spent two years studying schools in Austin and in southern India before completing Vital Impressions: The KPM Approach to Children. The KPM Institute, which operates the Austin school, published the report this fall.
"What I saw was an unusual combination of what educators like myself have been trying to put into the public school systems, as well as alternative systems of education, for the better part of the last century," Dr. Borich said. "Public school as well as private school teachers have much to learn from the KPM Approach in different ways. The public school system is not set up to implement the KPM Approach in the way it can be implemented in a private school setting, because there is so much more freedom in how a private school can organize itself. However, individual teachers in the public schools will find that they can use KPM principles to enhance their everyday classroom activities in ways that help their learners unleash their intuitive and imaginative capacities and increase their joy of learning. Parents and home schoolers, too, will find it valuable, as the approach speaks to how children best learn in school as well as at home and how parents can inspire the trust and confidence in their children that will help them learn more in school."
The KPM Approach to Children does not mandate specific teaching practices, but instead advocates guiding principles and the importance of the teacher-child relationship. In this relationship, the adult unconditionally values the child so the child cannot fail. In the early grades, the approach does not emphasize homework or testing, but instead provides opportunities for students to pursue their unique interests, with teachers as resources.
Dr. Borich is an internationally known researcher who has published dozens of books and reports. He recently helped design an innovative assessment system for the public schools of Singapore and conducted a seminar in mainland China on the KPM Approach to Children in Summer 2002. He admits he initially reacted with skepticism when approached by the KPM Institute, which, along with Atma Vidya Educational Foundation in India, commissioned the study resulting in the Vital Impressions report.
"As I got into it, I went from skeptic to dispassionate observer and wound up as an advocate," Dr. Borich said. "What sparked that transformation was the opportunity to observe over an extended period of time the model school in Malakkara, India. To traditional educators, accustomed to seeing kids lined up in neat rows in a classroom, it looked like controlled chaos with kids running all over the place. But a closer look revealed how methodically these kids followed their natural curiosities and even academic interests without imposition and in the process unleashed their intuitive and imaginative qualities in ways a traditional school setting does not achieve. A more traditional mindset would overlook a fundamental concept of the KPM Approach, that learning is fun and children naturally want to learn, without coercion. For a KPM child, the journey is as important as the destination, inspiring the natural love of learning."
Vital Impressions compares the KPM Approach with Montessori and Waldorf methods, noting commonalities and several key distinctions.
"While Montessori gives the child freedom to follow his own course," the report states, "it adjusts the course when he strays from the norm." KPM gives the child freedom from adult expectations, while slowly increasing levels of guidance and structure through the upper grades. Montessori prepares the environment to elicit the outcomes the teacher wants to see. The KPM environment provides opportunities for learning from which students can choose.
"The Waldorf approach employs regular classrooms, while KPM children alternate at will between the learning environment of the entire school and specially prepared classrooms devoted to rotating demonstrations, investigations and illustrations that children may attend according to their interests. For both Waldorf and KPM, the relationship between teacher and child is key. However, for the KPM Approach this intimate familiarity is focused on valuing the child unconditionally, so the child can explore and discover on his own."
Comparing these methods, Dr. Borich concluded that the KPM Approach is "a grander synthesis of three important alternative education movements in American education in the last century: the holistic, humanistic, and Dewey's progressive education movements. KPM has taken the best components of those three that many parents and teachers have used intuitively for most of the last century and blended them into one seamless approach."
"Most of my professional life has been devoted to educational assessment," Dr. Borich said. "I have evaluated many innovative reform practices in American education, trying to answer the question, 'Do these practices work?'"
The report notes that in 1999 and 2000 the 10th grade students at the school in India took the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education examination (similar to the American SAT) and did exceedingly well. The KPM students scored well above the national average, and 20 percent or more passed the exam with distinction both years. These results provide a more conventional indication of student achievement, since the KPM Approach does not track student academic progress through standardized testing.
"Like most standardized national assessments," the report concludes, "that exam, for administrative convenience and scoring simplicity, tends to favor basic facts and skills that support a model of knowledge as collections of bits of information. The exam demands fast responses, militates against reflection, and tends to require a single correct answer rather than engagement in interpretation and problem solving. Although it was at odds with the KPM Approach to learning, students did well on this exam, supporting the KPM belief that discrete facts and knowledge are best learned and remembered when they follow larger understandings."
Although the Indian exam results are impressive, Dr. Borich says they miss the point of his report, which focuses on the fundamental KPM concept and its value for children.
"The KPM report explains how a program that appears so radically different to traditional eyes actually has a solid pedagogical foundation in the modern science of cognitive psychology," Dr. Borich said. "AND, it shows how children can actually do well over the long haul on standardized tests. When larger understandings acquired in authentic, life-like environments in pursuit of one's own interests precede, rather than follow, the nuts and bolts of an academic subject, whether it be elementary school reading or high school physics, the child is more likely to want to study and remember the nuts and bolts. The traditional sequence can squelch the joy of learning while the KPM Approach unleashes it. KPM students can't compete year for year with students used to studying the bits and pieces of an academic discipline measured by standardized tests, but they're going to wind up superior in the long run."
The nonprofit KPM Institute
founded the Austin school in 1995, following the creation of the first
model school in southern India in 1987. Sri Atmananda Memorial School
is named for a great Indian teacher, Sri Krishna Menon
(Sri Atmananda), who was also a lawyer
and scholar. The KPM Institute mission is to transform education through
its teaching approach. Information on the KPM Approach to Children and
the demonstration schools can be found online (www.avef.org and www.samschool.org).
Or, send email to KPMInstitute@pobox.com or phone the KPM office in Austin
at (512) 467-2820.