Education Commons^™

Dewey, Bruner, And "Seas Of Stories" In The High Stakes Testing Debate, Kristen Campbell Wilcox

Educational Theory and Practice Faculty Scholarship

This paper proposes that many of the questions surrounding high stakes testing being debated today are important, yet fall short of moving teachers, parents, students, administrators and legislators to think deeply about how optimal teaching and learning can be achieved in a high stakes testing environment. Finally, the high stakes testing debate is viewed, to borrow a term from Bruner, as a "sea of stories" in which the stakeholders see the same things, but come away with remarkably differing stories of what is happening (1996, p. 147). The principles of learning espoused by Dewey and Bruner put these "seas of …