Re views

environment-based learning (the good guy). As this chapter was based on a background paper it tends to be blacks and whites with the cards stacked against the teacher. The impor- tant aspect of resource centres with packaged materials is stressed but the idea that they can be used by, ‘those teachers excellent with children but relatively inexpert in a subject or in its latest development’ is hardly calculated to win friends and influence people. All the factors regularly listed in support of packages are mentioned such as independence, absence, shortages of staff and small units.

Next the seven stages of development of a learning system are discussed. They bear quite a resemblance to Programmed Learning in its early years and also show the test construction in its pedigree. A systematic approach can still be ‘open’ and two Swedish courses are used as examples. The new role of the teacher is again stressed.

The remainder of this section deals with appraisal and evaluation, wisely avoiding saying that cost-effectiveness in education is easily proved, but advocating that all countries should develop learning systems, and indicating the constraints, now known as ‘frame factors’, within which any system will work.

The second section of the book discusses the ‘How’ problem and suggests a need to co- operate with commercial interests for publica- tion and for materials, a need for effectively spreading information and a need for training teachers and all who work in Education. Finally there is a plea for qualitative planning and the setting up of national institutes. There is some confusion about qualitative and quantitative planning resolved by saying they are complementary and the shape of the proposed Institutions is seen by citing the National Board of Education (Sweden), Council of Innovation (Norway) and Schools Council (England and Wales) although all fall below the ideal.

This small book comes up with an enormous

conclusion that all countries should set up Educational Development Institutes @DI - what else?) and indicates their function both by a chart and by explaining the functioning of Regional Development Laboratories in USA. Such an audacious suggestion justifies pro- ducing a ‘book of the proceeding’ but one wonders how it can now be taken further. Perhaps a history of the Swedish, Norwegian, English and American Institutions mentioned explaining how they came into being and what they do would be a good way to start before old men forget.

Individualised Anthologies David G. Hawkridge

The author is Director of the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University

Perspectives in Individualised Learning and Developmental Efforts in Individualised Learning Edited by Robert A. Weisgerber. F. E. Peacock Publishers. $9.50 cloth, $6.50 paper, each.

The editor of these companion volumes is a Senior Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research in Palo Alto, at which Project PLAN, a computer-monitored in- dividualised education system, was recently developed. Previously, Dr Weisgerber was at San Francisco State College, where he was Director of the Audio Visual Center.

The contributors include many well known to readers of this journal: Gagn6, Briggs, Guilford, Holland, Cronbach, Della-Piana, Carpenter, Suppes, Flanagan, Glaser, Lindvall and Goodlad, to mention a few. Each con- tributes a chapter - 27 in the first volume, 29 in the second. With such an array one would expect both a guarantee of high quality and also rather a wide range of topics subsumed under the heading of individualised learning.

The quality of the contributions is uneven. Most of the better ones have been published

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before, either in similar books or in journals or proceedings. In the first volume, however, who would miss the chapters by Powell, Wolfe, Southworth, Haefele and Hoban? Powell attempts to explore the nature of individual differences in 144 pages in a paper that was probably well-suited to the conference on reading, for which it was originally prepared. Wolfe’s paper was prepared for the same occasion; it does little more than annotate some references, many of them ephemeral, and define some educational jargon. Southworth gets badly tied up in his lists of over 100 objectives for teachers being trained to individualise instruction. Haefele’s three pages represent an unworkable transla- tion of Mager on objectives, ostensibly to help teachers develop learning modules. Hoban’s chapter is a polemic on instructional tech- nology; it reflects superficial reading and a failure to appreciate the nature of human beings!

The second volume is rather different in character from the first. In the first, there is much talk of principles and underlying assumptions. In the second, we find action, as the title suggests. The first 90 pages go to Project PLAN, the next 78 to Individually Prescribed Instruction (IPI). The second half of the volume is a patchwork made up chiefly of contemporary reports of minor projects in scattered US school districts.

Inevitably, we must ask the question ‘How much of all this will stand the test of time?. Project PLAN and IPI both represent large- scale schemes supported now by powerful interests - more powerful than those behind the Winnetka Technique or the Dalton Plan. The work in small communities, such as that reported by Hargis or McDonough and Blum, depends greatly upon individuals, and seems likely to pass into oblivion. What will we learn from it?

Against these chapters that might not have been missed we should set the ones that should indeed receive a new and wider audience. Again from the first volume, Gagnk gives us a brilliant resum6 of the implications for independent learning of some learning theories notably those that support a multi-stage model, such as Hull’s. Baker, Schutz and Sullivan report a well-conceived, if limited, study of Guilford’s structure of intellect. Messich contributes a fully-documented chapter on cognitive learning styles. Cronbach’s paper on adapting instruction to individual differences is dated, as he himself would probably admit, but reads like an Old Testament prophet in places: so much has come true in the years since it was first published, even if wide adoption is far off. Weisgerber himself has contributed an original chapter (23) on factors to consider in using various media for individualising learning. He avoids the tempta- tion of assuming that all media can be used effectively by the individual, and provides an analysis of five critical variables. Bundy offers a tour of CAI in 1968 with ample supporting evidence.

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But what is most notable about the descrip- tions in this volume is that none contains evaluative data on the project being described except Prince’s on the McComb CAI scheme. The gospel is preached, but we do not learn how many reach heaven. Perhaps we never shall, but it is disappointing in both Rahmlow’s chapter on PLAN and Bolvin’s on IPI to find little evidence of how data from students is used to improve the learning of students, the individualisation or other aspects of these projects. Is this because in fact nobody knows how it shall be done? The piles of student performance printouts are apparently in- adequate to induce change in two systems that have already become institutionalised. For all these criticisms of the volume, readers in this country can learn a great deal from both PLAN and IPI, and the chapters by senior staff on both projects are well worth reading. From the second half, the chapters by Prince (see above), Postlethwait (on audio-tutorials) and Goodlad (on educational futures) are the best of an anthology that may appeal to young teachers anxious to try new ways of organising their classrooms.