Through Myth to Reality: Reframing Education as Academic Development

Research Findings: There is ample evidence that true educational progress has been elusive, even after decades of countless school reform efforts. Practice or Policy: In this article, barriers to meaningful transformation in the form of common, persistent, and resistant educational myths are presented and summarily debunked. An alternative and more facilitative conception of formal education as academic development is then offered, and the positive ramifications of this orientation for the fostering of learners' cognitive and socioemotional competences are overviewed. If we set aside, for the moment, our concerns with the questions of how people learn and look simply at the outcomes of schooling, what do we see? Are students acquiring enough knowledge, or the right kind of "knowledge"? Or, in a more nearly ultimate sense, are they becoming more competent, more able to adjust to and cope with living in our complex society, more capable of practical problem solving, increasingly able to find a satisfying quality to their lives? (Gagne, 1977, p. 411)