Read the Passage carefully and answer the questions that follow: If the vision…
2020
Read the Passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:
If the vision of the learner in the initial period was predominantly as an empty organism and in the next as an active organism, in the period that followed it was as a social organism. The beliefs regarding the nature of the learner in the first period drew heavily from the associationist view of the human being, in the second from the Gestalt and personalistic views; later they also drew from the emerging social psychological and group dynamic views.
The child as learner as envisioned as a social organism, and learning was perceived as occurring through interpersonal actions and reactions, each person in the classroom serving as a stimulus for every other person. It is hard to overemphasize the impact on the classroom of the "group climate" concepts and studies by Lewin and his associates beginning in the late 1930s, which were given added cogency by the ideological issues of World War II. Innumerable treatises, textbooks, and programs applied these ideas and findings to the classroom, and such terms as "authoritarian", "democratic", and "laissez-faire" became, for good or ill, integral parts of the educational vocabulary. Experimenters in the learning laboratory became concerned with such previously unheard-of matters as "interpersonal cohesion" and "small group processes", and teachers in the classroom with "sociometric structure" and "group dynamics".
Concomitant changes in the image of the ideal classroom could again be observed. If the child is primarily a social organism, then the objectives of his education should be primarily social in character. And if learning is a social or group process, then a circular or group-centred classroom where everyone faces everyone else (as once they had been forced to face only the teacher) is the most sensible and practical, even necessary, learning environment. And this indeed became a favourite image of the classroom.
Ques: In the learning laboratory, the focus shifted to
- A.
Production of textbooks
- B.
Creation of educational vocabulary
- C.
Democratisation of the process
- D.
Understanding group dynamics
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept
In a reading-comprehension "the focus shifted to" question, the answer is the idea the passage explicitly names as the NEW concern of the people in question. Do not infer from outside knowledge: locate the sentence that directly describes that group's attention and match the option to the specific words used there.
Application
The passage states that experimenters in the learning laboratory "became concerned with such previously unheard-of matters as 'interpersonal cohesion' and 'small group processes'." Both phrases describe how members of a group influence one another, which is exactly what is meant by understanding group dynamics. So the learning-laboratory focus shifted to studying group dynamics.
Why the others do not fit
Production of textbooks: the passage links textbooks to the people who APPLIED the ideas to classrooms, not to what the laboratory experimenters studied.
Creation of educational vocabulary: terms like 'authoritarian', 'democratic' and 'laissez-faire' entered the educational VOCABULARY in the classroom context, not as the laboratory's research focus.
Democratisation of the process: this is a value drawn from the classroom image, not the new subject matter of the learning laboratory.
Result: the focus in the learning laboratory shifted to understanding group dynamics.