Outcomes of the model Integration Days project

1. Very high long-term retention of course contents by students (and recovered retention of prior learnings).
   
   
2. Very high quality understandings by students of course contents, past, current and subsequent.
   
   
3. Very much higher quality of performance by students in courses taken subsequent to the project.
   
   
4. A very much higher rate of usefulness of course contents, in the subsequent lives of the students, however measured. A far higher proportion of learning will transfer from initial learning context to other contexts.
   
   
5. A body of integral understandings useful not only to the participating students, but as a supplemental resource for such teachers and other students as will find such matters to be of interest.
   
   
6. Higher morale among students finding such gains in their experience, and among their parents, and eventually among the sources of support for the school.

We think the results of this project, if closely monitored and measured, will encourage further such investigations, and bring us considerably closer toward the educative ideal where, for each student, everything learned and everything encountered adds rich meaning to everything else ever learned or ever encountered, forever.

Interested persons are requested to contact the writer at Project Renaissance toward helping make this project and this ideal happen.

References

[1] Oliver L. Reiser, The Integration of Knowledge (Boston: Porter-Sargent, Publishers, 1958).

[2] Jerome S. Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1966). See also his popular and more assertive The Process of Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962). For more on the Piaget-like theory of a core of codified experiences with which one processes his subsequent experiences, see Bruner's private monograph, Processes of Cognitive Growth in Infancy, The Heinz Warner Lectures (Worcester, Mass: Clark University, 1963), as well as his more widely read work with Jacqueline J. Goodenough and George A. Austin, A Study of Thinking (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1953).

[3] F.W. Ford and Laurence Pugno (eds.), The Structure of Knowledge and The Curriculum (Chicago: Rand McKnally and Co., 1964).

[4] Win Wenger, Breakthroughs (Gaithersburg, MD: Project Renaissance, 1994). This document is now out of print, but similar discussions have been rendered at numerous points throughout this Project Renaissance website. Moreover, this extension of psychology's Law of Effect to not only all living systems but to most complex non-living systems behavior is a core element in the writer's forthcoming book, Toward A General Theory of Human Development, Learning, Creativity and Genius.

[5] Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (New York: Doubleday-Anchor, 1961). Wiener developed the now generally accepted case that since all information is a form of energy and all structure is a form of energy, the laws of thermodynamics — which apply to all forms of energy — describe and account for the phenomena of information, information processes and structures. His physics was more pessimistic, though, than modern formulations, which recognize on various bases the negentropic or self-organizing characteristics of both the physical universe and these energy aspects thereof. (See Wenger's The Progressive Strangification of Order for an example of this perspective.)

[6] Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications (New York: George Braziller Press, 1966). His is one of the most widely accepted general expositions of general systems theory.

[7] Irvin Laszlo, A Systems View of the World (New York: George Braziller Press, 1968). Using basic concepts of systems theory, thought and perception to view various societal issues.

[8] Alfred Kuhn, The Study of Society:  A Unified Approach (Homewood, IL: Irwin-Dorsey, 1964). An outstanding unified description of twenty-some specialized socio-behavioral fields through a cybernetic model closely related to the general systems model — and an overview of some larger issues of science; passim, but invaluable if you can obtain a copy.

[9] James O. Miller, a series of papers on "Living Systems," published in successive issues of Behavioral Science throughout much of the 1960s and 1970s.

[10] Win Wenger, A General Theory of Systems: One Man's Window on the Universe (Gaithersburg, MD: Library of the Republic of the Sciences, Psychegenics Press, 1987). You can read a review of this book in the Book Reviews section of this website.

[11] Win Wenger, How To Be A Better Teacher, Today - While REDUCING Your Workload! (Gaithersburg, MD: Project Renaissance, 1994, second edition). This is an expansion of the Dynamic Format procedures abstracted from several and various creative group problem-solving systems. These and other creative methods revolve around modern versions of Socratic method, enabling people to develop their perceptions by describing them within an appropriate focus. This book is also reviewed here.

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