The purpose of this research is to examine Poplin and Stone's article on the differences between the learning-disability treatment paradigm classified as reductionism, which parses learning-instruction strategies to treat disability symptoms with a view toward providing them with the ability to reach meanings, and that of constructivism, which aims to "assist students in creating new meanings of their own" (153). The plan of the research will be to set forth characteristics of each paradigm and then to discuss how Poplin and Stone come to favor a paradigm known as holistic constructivism.
Reductionist strategies are classified as medical, psychological, behavioral, or strategic, but what they share is a tendency to treat a part of the student's learning disabilities rather than the student as a whole organism. The result appears to be that the focus is on the practitioner rather than the student, on teaching rather than learning. Poplin and Stone basically argue against the teaching paradigm and for the learning paradigm.
This differentiation explains problems with maintenance or retention of skills among the learning-disabled who have been diagnosed and treated according to various reductionist programs. The problem appears to be that the emphasis of treatment is wrong; this question of emphasis seems precious but in fact is decisive. Behavior modification, for example, is less concerned with the stake the subject has in learning than with the instructional goal of transforming the subject's behavior, based on the expert's assessment of the subject. Meanwhile, "each model attempts to segment learning into parts" (156), even as the instructor develops the instructional strategies that are meant to result in the subject's acquisition of learning strategies. But the problem is that treating specific symptoms, with appropriate subject responses being determined by the practitioner, is not the same as making learning possible for the...