Higher Education 2 (1973) 325-342 �9 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in the Netherlands

R E L E V A N C E IN T E R T I A R Y I N S T R U C T I O N :

A P S Y C H O L O G I C A L I N T E R P R E T A T I O N

JOHN BRUCE FRANCIS State University of New York at Buffalo

ABSTRACT

Relevance is an ill-used, sloganqike word which scholars eschew but which tertiary students persist in using as a criterion for success or failure of their classes. Those who would improve college instruction can facilitate student acceptance of their recommendation only by seeking to understand what relevance means to the learner, and by tailoring reforms to meet the learner's conceptions. Defining relevance as a kind of "goodness-of-fit" in teacher-student interaction, the author elucidates its cognitive, affective, and technological dimensions in the light of psychological research and theory. Students who demand relevance are asking for "meaningful" content which is appropriate to their developmental level and which is conveyed by media to which they naturally respond. The problems faced by teachers and curriculum plan- ners include: (1)understanding the nature of the students' classroom experience; (2) designing curricula and instructional procedures which are congruent with, rather than antagonistic toward, the aspects of that experience which facilitate learning; and (3) finding ways of implementing those procedures within a system not easily turned from its traditional path. Specific suggestions for attaining relevance are made; but the strongest recommendation is for increased understanding of the meaning of the word relevance itself - a development which would bring vigor to an important word now vitiated by misuse.

Pa radox ica l as it m a y seem, s tuden t d e m a n d s fo r re levance are b o t h a

sign tha t r e f o r m in college and univers i ty ins t ruc t ion is overdue , and a

serious obs tac le to tha t r e fo rm. T h o u g h in t ended to inspire and encourage

i m p r o v e d teaching, s tuden t d e m a n d s usual ly on ly i r r i ta te and f rus t ra te

academics , the ve ry ones u p o n w h o m respons ib i l i ty for r e f o r m falls.

A c a d e m i c i r r i ta t ion s tems f r o m a t rad i t iona l scholar ly dis taste for a

s logan- type word whose mean ings are so diverse and equivocal . A c a d e m i c

f rus t ra t ion derives f r o m the fact tha t s tuden t s pe r i s t en t ly charac te r ize teaching as re levant or i r re levant whi le of fe r ing bu t vague indica t ions o f w h a t they mean . T o m a k e m a t t e r s worse , the same cries fo r re levance

re f lec t the bases u p o n which s tuden t s judge suggested r e fo rms ; and m a n y t h o u g h t f u l changes which could i m prove ins t ruc t ion are r ende red largely

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ineffective for no other reason than that students ignore them or reject them as being irrelevant.

A case in point is the instructional objectives approach, a complex of principles and practices which places a premium on explicit planning of classroom procedures to achieve specific and clearly defined goals. It is widely accepted and practiced in elementary and secondary education (Kibler, et al., 1970). Ericksen has shown how it could contribute signifi- cantly to improving tertiary instruction (1970); but instances of its application are infrequent and, beyond Ericksen's statement, one finds meagre reference even to its theory.

One cannot attribute the infrequent appearance of the instructional objectives approach to some substantive inappropriateness. Its advantages for post-secondary instruction are too readily inferred from its rationale and use at other levels (Popham, et al., 1969). A more plausible explana- tion is found in the common reactions of college students, for whom the approach too often seems sterile, contrived, and devoid of stimulating content. They sum up their feelings by calling it and similar systematic approaches to instruction simply "irrelevant."

If organized attempts to reform tertiary instruction are to have any real impact, academics must overcome the irritation and frustration they feel at the notion of relevance. To ignore or reject it is to ignore or reject an important element in the instructional process - the student's feelings about his own learning experience. Such a counterproductive orientation by instructors will very likely invite a reciprocal rejection by students of any duly instituted reform. Instead scholars should subject "relevance" to a rigorous conceptual analysis leading both to an understanding of what it connotes to students in an instructional context, and to practical sugges- tions for integrating it into systematic reform. Such an analysis in psycho- logical terms is the purpose of this paper.

Relevance

There have been many attempts to define relevance, but these have so far led to no consistently acceptable formulation. Instead they have engendered ambiguity, confusion, and finally, as suggested above, frus- trated attempts to curtail the term's use. The definitions which have emerged can be roughly grouped into three categories (cf. Minahan, 1970). First, there is the simple substitution of a synonym such as "is related to" or "pertains to" to indicate a sense of connectedness among ideas. Second, an emphasis upon the instrumental nature of education leads to definitions which consider relevant those activites offering job-

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oriented skill-training; or more broadly construed, the facilitation of per- sonal development, both cognitive and emotional. Such instrumental definitions deem relevant those capacities and values which aid a person to adapt to his environment. A third form of definition calls relevant those educational activities having direct social value. Students with deep concern for the problems facing society and little patience with the apparent lethargy of establishment solutions insist that colleges and universities become actively involved. They speak of courses as relevant which foster critiques of society and which explore and advocate inno- vative attacks upon social problems.

The first type of definition is not very enlightening. Although it provides some guidelines for the word's use, mere substitution of a synonymous phrase offers little to the understanding of instruction. The second and third types, while more substantive, are weakened by being cast as qualities inherent in curricular offerings or in instructional prac- tices. One expects from such definitions broad-based agreement concern- ing the criteria both for defining relevance and for suggesting how it may be attained. This seldom occurs, not even in technical job-related fields such as Business Administration. Even when students apparently regard their program as relevant in the sense that it prepares them directly for a future career, one would find upon close inquiry a considerable amount of disappointment with individual courses. Thus relevance as it relates to instruction must be explored at the level of concrete classroom inter- action rather than in terms of program or curriculum.

Emphasizing the concrete and concentrating on the way students use the word "relevance" to describe their experiences suggests a fourth definition - the primary focus of this paper. Relevance, in this view, is a psychological construct describing the relationship between external events (e.g., the instructional process) and the ones who experience them (e.g., the students). The relationship itself becomes an experience, a phenomenon described by R. D. Laing as interexperience or "the relation between my experience of you and your experience of me" (1967, p. 19). Each student is affected indirectly by a teacher, by his ideas, and by the manner of his presentation, through the psychological medium of that student's unique perception. This is what is meant by the statement that students respond to instructional practices as experienced. Teachers respond analogously to students; and it is in the working out of their relations with each other, their interexperience, that the instructional situation succeeds or fails. Relevance is not then an intrinsic quality of some external event ( a book, a course, etc.), but a construct denoting congruence between student and teacher perceptions of the classroom experience (cf. Axelrod, 1970). To stretch but slightly the meaning of a

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highly technical statistical term, one might say that relevance is the student's name for "goodness-of-fit" in teacher-student interaction.

Instructional procedures which maximixe this goodness-of-fit, which tailor the teacher's intention to the capacities and interests of his students, are the ones most likely to be embraced by students. Effective reform of instruction at the college level depends, in the final analysis, on how aware teachers are of the way in which and the extent to which their techniques are accepted by students. While much of this awareness must involve careful on-the-spot attention to student reactions by each teacher in the classroom - a kind of formative evaluation - some advance knowledge of the cognitive, affective, and technological dimensions of classroom inter- experience can facilitate the development of teacher-student congruence, and the choice of instructional approaches designed to make opt imum use of it.

The Cognitive Dimension of Relevance

The cognitive aspects of educational reform at the college level are often overlooked by those who advocate change. Ericksen, commenting on Sanford's classic The American College, suggested that its only flaw was its lack of a chapter on subject matter or content learning (1962). Developing relevant instruction does not require de-emphasizing content but rather making it what Ausubel has called "meaningful" (1968). This word, like relevance, has a long history of confusion and equivocality; but for Ausubel it is a highly technical symbol characterizing the transmission, reception, and retention of verbal material. Analysis of his view reveals that meaningful learning depends upon cognitive goodness-of-fit between teacher and student and, as such, is virtually synonymous with the cognitive dimensions of relevance.

Ausubel develops his notion of meaningfulness in response to contro- versy between advocates of discovery learning and advocates of reception learning. He has always found himself in opposition to those who claim for discovery an inherent relevance (cf. Rogers, 1969) because of their tendency to insist that all other kinds of learning are rote, meaningless, and irrelevant. In a cogent discussion of the accusations usually leveled against verbal learning - that abstract concepts and generalizations are empty verbalism unless discovered autonomously - Ausubel shows them to be based on a "straw man" argument which magnifies and makes normative all of the worst abuses of verbal technique.

He also shows that the criticisms are based upon the fallacious equating of what are really separate bipolar dimensions of the learning

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process (1968, p. 476). One such dimension is the distinction between reception learning and discovery learning. In the former, material is presented to the learner in final form e.g., as a lecture; while in the latter the principal content of what is to be learned must be "discovered" before being incorporated into the learner's cognitive structure.

Another and independent distinction, between rote and meaningful learning, has to do with the processes by which the material is incorpo- rated. In rote learning incorporation is automatic assimilation of a fixed set of symbols with no attempt to assimilate what they signify. In meaningful learning, the material to be learned is related to constructs already present which organize the incoming material before or as it becomes a part of the cognitive structure. He shows that both reception and discovery learning can be either rote or meaningful and that the mode of incorporation rather than the mode of presentation is Of crucial significance.

The most serious disadvantage of the discovery method is logistical - it is simply too time-consuming for most college courses. As college enrollments increase this problem threatens to become acute. While some alternative educational forms which include the problem-solving aspects of discovery learning are becoming more widespread in higher education - such techniques as work-study, computer-assisted instruction (CAD, and experiential learning - the predominant mode of instruction for the foreseeable future will probably remain the large lecture and various technologically-supported variants of it, largely for reasons of efficiency. Instructing vast numbers of students in the enormously complex array of information which society demands they acquire can be handled only - if indeed it can be handled at all - by means of reception learning. The teacher's task is to ensure that reception learning is meaningful. How this can be done is suggested by another of Ausubel's notions. Meaningful reception learning, he says, depends upon "the availability in cognitive structure of specifically relevant anchoring ideas at a level of inclusiveness appropriate to provide optimal relatability and anchorage" (1968, p. 131). An earlier and more vivid description of the requirements for assimilation of content was contained in Compayr6's description of Herbart's notion of "preparation." What Ausubel called anchoring ideas, Compayr6 refers to as the "summoning up of a mental escort into the presence of the newcomer to welcome and introduce him" (Compayr6, 1908, p. 36). Cognitive-oriented educators agree that a student must be prepared to understand what he hears. He must be given a framework by which he can organize new information and relate it to what he has already acquired. His only alternative, when such anchoring ideas are unavailable, is to learn by rote; and this most college students reject. Relevant subject matter,

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then, is that for which students have anchoring ideas in readiness or for which the instructor can supply them. Instructors who carefully order their subject matter under adequate organizing principles and who insure advance understanding by students of those organizers will most likely be those whose content presentations are found more relevant and consequently more effective by students.

Fortunately, there is no lack of such organizing principles in most disciplines. In biology, for example, different theories of evolution (e.g., the Darwinian and Lamarchian) might serve as advance organizers to an understanding of the transmission of hereditary traits. Or, in physics, a general discussion of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle might facilitate the understanding of the relative advantages and disadvantages of particle vs. wave theories of energy. It can be seen from this that advance organizers differ from introductory overviews and from summaries in that their level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness is much higher. Indeed, to describe an advance organizer is to describe theory, not in t e r m s of substantive content but in terms of its rote in the learning process. And, as shown above in the biology example, even the juxtaposi- tion of conflicting organizers can be made relevant, not to mention less confusing, by higher-level advance organizers which integrate them. Prior understanding of such advance organizers should be a primary objective in all courses which have a heavy content emphasis. This, in addition to constant evaluation and modification in terms of feedback from students about its relevance, can help make subject matter learning more meaning- ful and effective.

The Affective Dimension of Relevance

Critics who call tertiary instruction irrelevant refer commonly to its failure to fulfill student needs and to facilitate their personal develop- ment, which they consider to be important objectives of a college educa- tion. Traditionalists who are not persuaded that affective development ought to be a conscious educational objective often overlook the fact that effective content learning is also influenced by affective factors. When students demand relevant instruction, they are asking that it fit their developmental stage; and when it does not, they respond by rejecting it. The affective dimension of relevance is as important to those whose goal is dissemination of knowledge as it is to those whose goal is personality development.

If one could remove all derogatory connotations from the word, young college students would not object to being called or to being treated as "adolescents." The psychological denotation of the term is

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quite innocuous; and, in western culture, its societal connotation of Sturm und Drang is a highly accurate portrayal of what college students experi- ence. Obviously, young men and women do not leave these stresses outside the college classroom door and it is both futile and dysfunctional for instructors to ignore them.

But ignore them they do, it seems; for most college instructional procedures derive not from pedagogical concerns but from the subject- matter demands of a discipline. Discipline-based instruction has two goals - to facilitate the production of new knowledge in a field, and to introduce students into the discipline (Foshay, 1970). To do this it is organized according to a logical structure, encompassing the range of phenomena to be studied - the domain of the discipline, and a set of rules acceptable to all members by which knowledge is to be generated within that domain. Ausubel, however, has pointed out in another context that disciplines also have a psychological structure which may be of greater significance when considering the ways in which they are transmitted and assimilated (1964). He develops the argument that the logical and psycho- logical structures of knowledge differ in meaning, process of organization, arrangement of component elements, and cognitive maturity of content; then concludes bluntly that: "the logical structure of knowledge is a topically systematized reorganization of the psychological structure of knowledge as it exists in mature scholars in a particular discipline" (p. 227).

If that description is valid and if instruction is built upon the logical structure of the disciplines, then the psychological structure of students, insofar as it differs from that of mature scholars, will probably be overlooked. The result may well be instruction which is not congruent with student structure - in other words, irrelevant.

Instructional reform must somehow take into account that a majori- ty of college students are passing through a stage of development variously categorized as late adolescence or, more recently, as "youth" (Keniston, 1970). Tendencies characteristic of youthful students (as well as those characteristic of more mature adult learners) need to be considered in the design and implementation of instructional procedures if goodness-of-fit is to be achieved. Procedurally, the formative evaluation of instructional forms can permit continual monitoring and modification of strategies to achieve such fit, but this will only be fruitful if more research is done on sequencing instruction from the learner's point of view rather than from the point of view of the discipline. The former is at present virtually ignored, while the latter tends to dominate. Research aimed at specifying which instructional approaches fit student psychological structure might, for instance, consider that adolescence is a time during which a high

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premium is placed upon acceptance by and conformity to one's peer group. Common procedures in the college classroom require, however, that students compete with their peers and that they be rewarded or punished in accord with their divergence from the group. This is a characteristic of norm-referenced grading or "grading-on-the-curve" so distasteful to many college students. A reform such as criterion-referenced grading in which all students are credited for the successful attainment of a specific objective, and in which differences among students are used to facilitate achievement by all would, if these considerations are valid, prove highly relevant.

Likewise, if one considers the emerging adult clientele of tertiary education, a whole new set of psychological structures must be taken into account. The mature clients of external degree programs and the ever more widespread continuing education programs do not respond to in- structional forms as do adolescent students, but neither are they attuned to the psychological structure of faculty (the "logical" structure of the disciplines). A whole new perspective needs to be developed regarding what kinds of instruction will be relevant to them. One may presume that much of their orientations will be practical and closely aligned to their vocational interests, but at least as many will be seeking general enrich- ment quite apart from any vocational interest. The needs of the mature student differ just as do the psychological strengths and weaknesses he brings to the instructional situation; and those who organize that situa- tion, if it is to be relevant, must be prepared to respond. There are numerous techniques available which provide alternatives to discipline- based, lecture-oriented procedures; but bringing them integrally into the learning environment to provide students a range of techniques to respond to is fraught with several problems. First, as suggested above, the availability of new instructional forms and even their intrinsic merit does not insure their effective use because students may not find them relevant, as they are presented. Second, the overcoming of resistance to such programs requires that faculty be attuned to the necessity of considering relevance a crucial factor in successful instruction, and be capable of generating a sense of the relevance of any technique to students. The former is a task of changing faculty orientations from traditional (and institutionally rewarded) attitudes of allegiance to discipline and logical structure, and toward a student-centered (and usually unrewarded) con- cern about teaching effectiveness. The latter is a task requiring consider- able re-training of faculty both in the use and in the marketing of alternative strategies. Third, much research is still needed before clear-cut relationships can be established between the needs, attitudes, and capabili- ties characteristic of different student developmental levels and the spe-

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cific kinds of instructional approaches which should be implemented and which can prove both relevant and effective.

At a practical level, each instructor must base his pedagogy on his own understanding of college student needs and values. In large classes, however, the instructor's ability to probe deeply the psychological struc- tures of individual students will be severely limited. He must, therefore, generalize but can enhance his probability of success by (a) developing a critical awareness of overt signs which point subtly to students "turning him off" and (b) making the problems and possibilities of adolescence a salient object of his own consideration and a set of factors having real influence on his teaching approach. Research which facilitates his atten- tion to these problems is sorely needed.

The Technological Dimension of Relevance

Despite the best efforts of instructors to organize their material or respond carefully to student needs, certain kinds of courses simply fail to excite undergraduates. These courses are usually those which make heavy reading demands or whose reading materials are of a highly organized technical nature. One reason why such courses are called irrelevant may be that they are not congruent with the technological predilections of stu- dents. This proposition can be clarified, if not validated, by an anecdote. Students at the State University of New York at Buffalo who embarked as part of a course in social change upon a study of emerging medical school programs in New York State showed themselves to be marvelously indus- trious in surveying scores of institutions by telephone and personal visit to determine the scope and planning of such programs. At no time during the course, however, did they exhibit the slightest inclination to examine documents describing extant programs, though many such documents were readily available. It simply did not occur to them that this was a useful way to gather information. Empirical evidence for student disincli- nation to read course-oriented material can be found in a recent survey of the book-buying and reading habits of 1025 college undergradu- ates (Logan, 1972). Students reported reading an average of seventeen hours per week of which eleven hours were devoted to class-related materials. This average was much lower than the twenty-six hours report- ed by faculty in the same study. Students generally claimed that they read basic textbooks and other required material, but only about one-fourth of them bought the required texts (a finding interpreted by the researchers as a sign of dissatisfaction). One frequently cited reason for this was that the books were "irrelevanti" These findings, coupled with testimony from

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numerous teachers to the apparent disinclination of present-day under- graduates to read anything resembling traditionally organized writing, suggests a technological gap between media responses of students and those of t'aculty.

Accounting for student aversion to conventional reading tasks by pointing to different technological predilections may appear implausible for, in the minds of most people, technology is a term inextricably related to machines and electronic equipment, to the tools which men fashion to control their environment. The average literate man gives the term no wider meaning than that of a mechnical method for achieving a practical purpose. This image of technology separates man from his environment and gives him the sense of being an agent who uses the tools to control the world. When, however, it becomes clear that civilized man's most impor- tant environment is his network of social, cultural, and personal inter- actions; and that his most crucial tools are those he uses to facilitate and organize such interactions (i.e., information-processing techniques), then technology takes on a wider meaning. This wider meaning is suggested by the controversial notions of Marshall McLuhan who sees technology as any extension of man which re-orders the "scale" whereby he communi- cates with others and with his environment, regardless of the content of that scale.

He conveys this idea succinctly by a now-famous phrase at the outset of his best known work: "In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that the medium is the message" (1964), p. 23). What he is saying and what he shows by the use of numerous ingenious examples is that the use of different media to communicate, in itself and without regard to content, affects the way people think and interact. The media of print, of slavery, of industrialization, of money, and (in our time) of electronic visual communication have had, he says, profound effects which can be conceptualized only with great difficulty.

These views were presaged in another context by Watts who spoke of the way in which our language structure subtly influences our thinking - that "the world is to us as we have means of assimilating it; patterns of thought-language in whose terms we can describe it" (I 963, p. 30).

McLuhan discusses the difference between what he calls hot and cool media in terms of the intensity and range of perceptual involvement. A hot medium is one involving a highly-defined data-full extension of a single sense in which little needs to be filled in by the receiver. Cool media, on the other hand, are those of low definition or high ambiguity, possessing less structure with much that needs to be added. A cool medium is consequently one which requires more involvement by the receiver.

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He points out how different are the experiences and processes which are generated by emphasis upon one or the other. For him, the spoken word is cool while the printed word is hot. He shows vividly the differ- ences between media by expressing the spoken media of a disc-jockey in written form. Those who have listened to disc-jockeys (or for that matter to private conversations among young people) will recognize the validity of his description of the cool individual who alternately groans, swings, sings, solos, intones, and scampers, always reacting to his own actions (p. 81) and always creating participation by the audience. He also con- trasts the amount of data which must be included in a written communi- cation to convey equivalent information, showing, for instance, that it often requires extended prose passages to express what is conveyed by a sob, a moan, a laugh, or a piercing scream (p. 82).

Because the written word is slow, detached, and sequential, it is natural for one operating in that medium to act with considerable detach- ment and a minimum of emotional involvement. The Western cultures have developed and gained step-by-step control of their environment by creating a highly-literate, abstract, and sequential mode of interaction, depending heavily upon print, and upon spoken communication having the detached, rational, well-defined, "hot" qualities of print. The entire educational structure of the West has been built upon this literate use of hot media.

The advent of mass communications, especially television, has created new stress on involvement, the nuance, the unstated meaning - all conveyed via the multi-sensual participation of the receiver. Quite natural- ly, the youth of this culture begin operating in that medium early and easily. Their elementary and secondary educational experience equip them while still young for dealing with highly abstract, multivariate concepts e.g., sets in New Math, which do not come easily to adults (cf. Platt, 1970).

As more and more students from "disadvantaged" strata of society seek post-secondary education and as more and more of their movement toward middle-class literacy develops from special televised educational programs such as "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company" (Lesser, 1972), the habit of interacting with "cool" media will become increasingly widespread.

In college, there is and will continue to be a conflict because the predominant emphasis is still on the literate, the academic, the carefully constructed written sequences of highly-defined "hot" expression. Stu- dents and teachers differ in modes of interaction by reason of the different media to which they have become accustomed, and through which they draw meaning from experience. A lack of relevance can be

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interpreted in this context as failure of faculty and students to operate on the same wavelength, in a most literal sense of that phrase.

Student disinclination to read rational treatises and to engage in rational discourse is particularly difficult for traditional educators to accept. Silber calls it a rejection of thought (1971, p. 4). Maxwell found its cause in a sense students have that works accepted by a corrupt system are not worth reading (1967). Cogley, in a recent editorial, attributes the unwillingness to study what has alreadY been written to a general desire to "escape from history." To radicals demanding an end to irrelevance, he says, the answer lies in "deposing all their professors and locking up their libraries," and in seeking a cleansed wisdom from their own heart (1971, p. 68).

But perhaps the answer is at once less polemical and significantly more complex. Just as present instructional practices may not fit the psychological structure of all students, so the medium of print may not be the most natural and effective means through which many modern stu- dents assimilate information. Perhaps the technology to which these students respond is not the technology to which faculty are attuned. Such students are responding in terms of their own media to materials prepared and presented via a medium more suited to the pre-electronic generation. The responses differ because the generations differ, far more profoundly than mere chronological age would suggest.

The fact that the psychological study of variety, complexi ty and novelty has paralleled interest in "cool" technology may be more than coincidental, and may also help explain student rejection of traditional approaches. Maddi and his associates (1968) have been studying the responses of students ,who are attracted to, rather than repelled by, change. They found that change-oriented students, in unstructured situat- ions, opted for complex, novel responses. When describing themselves, they indicated an aversion to order and rigidity, preferring instead diver- gent modes of thought. They expressed strong desire for new occurences and found the status-quo unsatisfying because it was "boring." In a different context Samuel B. Gould describes students who seek to change colleges and universities as "some of the brightest young people among us (tending) to value experience above observation and dispassionate ana- lysis, emotional vigor above calm reason, and direct engagement with nature and its beauty or with people and their plights above withdrawn study and contemplation" (1970, p. 19). It is small wonder that many of them find traditional forms of instruction dull, boring, and irrelevant.

If different response to media is a factor in bringing about relevant instructional reform, there can be little argument over which direction these reforms will take. The fact that electronic information processing

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will become more important to our society and that instructors will become perforce more and more involved with it argues for change by faculty in the direction of multi-disciplinary, multi-media instructional procedures. The alternative may well be communicative obsolescence for a large proportion of college teachers. Certainly there will be a continued need for courses and materials oriented toward more linear, "ho t" media, but these can be expected in future to serve fewer students at more advanced levels and in more specialized areas. For students engaged in such study, relevance is often an inherent characteristic of their drive toward professionalism and their identification with professors who com- mand their field. It is the undergraduate, the less specialized and more generally involved students, for whom the media changes are more crucial and technological relevance a salient factor.

Two further aspects of this problem must be considered if effective means are to be found to make college instruction technologically rele- vant. The first is the fact that faculty may have unnoticed and as yet unchanneled potential for adapting to and using new media .The second is that unless the system of rewards attached to instructional procudures changes, there can be small expectation that this potential will be realized.

Faculty may teach by the use of linear processes proper to the pre-electronic era, bu t there is reason to believe that they do not "learn" in this manner all new information and materials they see as meaningful. Instead they, like modern students and indeed any modern adult, respond to electronic "cool" technology such as television, films, and even face-to- face interactions at national conventions. Admittedly their response is not the easy, natural one of youth, nor would it be possible to introduce such processes into the traditional teaching practices of most professors with- out considerable effort and training - and teacher willingness to be trained; but the potential is there. Tapping it, however, demands that the second aspect be addressed, the reward systems which influence the kinds of teaching methods an instructor may use. The present tertiary education system simply does not provide enough support, economic or psychologi- cal, to the introduction and use of methods and materials chosen primarily for their relevance. Particularly do young teachers, who might be expected to be naturally closer to multi-media approaches due to their age and who often are desirous of introducing innovative relevant methods into their instruction, find it difficult to reconcile such practices with departmental demands for structured presentation of material and with disciplinary demands for rational structured publication. Again, as mentioned above, these ideas find their chief application in relation to undergraduate and adult education. Students seeking advanced degrees in highly specialized fields find a built-in relevance in traditional professional courses. Profes-

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sors in such areas who wish to introduce innovations may, paradoxically, produce the very irrelevance they seek to avoid. I f the relationship between technologically relevant instructional procedures and the real goals of teachers could be established with sufficient clarity, perhaps the institutional conditions for inducing faculty development in this area could be realized, without disruption and stress.

Summary and Conclusions

Ineffective instructional reform is worse than no reform at all, for each failure diminishes the chances for success of reforms to follow. Reforms which are otherwise sound but which fail because students regard them as irrelevant are particularly frustrating and disheartening to advo- cates of change. However, it is almost a contradiction to speak of "irrele- vant" reforms as "otherwise sound"; for if sufficient attention is not given to what makes an instructional procedure relevant, there can be little wonder that students refuse to accept it. For too long scholars have eschewed a term which refers to something crucial for students - the quality of their experience; and students have reacted by labeling with a negative derivation of the same term many scholarly approaches to in- structional reform. Those seeking to improve the post-secondary teaching- learning process cannot avoid the issue of relevance but must seek to understand it. The approach to relevance discussed here concentrates both on the instructional context and on the experience of the student, recognizing that a student's acceptance of any instructional reform is a prime requisite for its effectiveness.

Taking a psychological view, this discussion has focused upon three dimensions of the way in which classroom experiences affect students. The key to each dimension and to the aspects of relevance demonstrated by each is the notion of congruence in student-teacher interexperience. Instruction is relevant to the extent that it fosters congruence between the intentions of the instructor and the expectations of the student. Psycholo- gical theory and research in three areas are brought to bear upon the notion of relevance and lead to a series of ideas which both elucidate the term itself and suggest new approaches to acceptable reform:

1. Course content objectives have the greatest chance of being rele- vant when they exhibit the characteristics of meaningfulness i.e., when they are presented in non-arbitrary, optimally relatable language and are preceded by advance organizers which prepare the student's mind to understand and accept them. Practically, this point argues for carefully organized lectures which, if they present facts and information, do so

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after general organizing principles have established a groundwork. 2. Course materials and forms of instruction will be more acceptable

to a student if they are appropriate to his level of development. With regard to younger students, much research is needed if a theory of late adolescent learning is to be developed which adequately accounts for such problems as how value conflicts affect content learning at that stage. At present, some aspects of the instructional objectives approach, such as its de-emphasis on competit ion for grades, seem more appropriate to college students; but, again, considerable research is needed. In like manner, research is sorely needed to determine the way in which adults, the new breed of tertiary student, respond to different instructional procedures. Though this analysis has concentrated on adolescents because of their greater numbers and because their personality and attitude factors are more apt subjects for psychological analysis, it must be recognized that relevance will be a problem too - albeit a definitely different one - to the mature learners. Relevant reforms will need to satisfy both constituencies.

3. The electronic revolution to which young people are better at- tuned than faculty may be a source of irrelevance about which little can be done. If the suggestion that "ho t" faculty and "cool" students (to use McLuhanesque terms) are operating on different wavelengths is taken seriously, a number of profound questions arise about the respective roles of assigned reading and ordered rational discussion in tertiary instruction. What is needed at this time is forthright consideration of the possibility that relevance is influenced by media differences, and the generation of research to test that hypothesis. If the theory is found to have validity, media which fit students can and should be developed. Instructors with traditional backgrounds will find themselves needing to adjust to new instructional techniques; but there seems to be among college teachers no inherent inability to adjust perception and practice, only an inertia born of long training and habit, compounded by a system which rewards precisely the approaches students find irrelevant and which discourages overtly or covertly the innovative approaches of young faculty to which students might respond better.

But underlying all specific changes aimed at facilitating the teacher's task of selling relevant programs, is the philosophic problem of what relevance is as a concept. And the first step toward solving the problem of relevant instruction is for those involved in planning and implementing instructional procedures to become as deeply aware as possible of what the notion of relevance is, how it is perceived by both students and teachers, and what approaches are seen to relate to it both positively and negatively.

Regarding the word "relevance," the simple fact is that students

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have used it and will con t inue to use it to charac ter ize ins t ruct ion.

Whether they , as rec ip ients o f ins t ruc t ional re form, need a clear def in i t ion o f it is problemat ica l . T h a t advocates o f r e fo rm need to unde r s t and it to make thei r r e fo rms acceptable and thus effect ive is far more likely. This

paper , it is hoped , will have con t r i bu t ed to tha t unders tanding.

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