Diagrams in Lifelong Educating

Reviews the book, The Art of Educating With V Diagrams by D. Bob Gowin and Marino C. Alvarez (see record 2005-15961-000). The book highlights one of the author's preferences, the Gowin V diagram (first published in 1981). However, several others are used, namely Venn diagrams and flow charts, the latter presented as conceptual maps. Considering that diagrams receive the attention of the whole book, I would have liked to have seen a short section dealing with various other terms one encounters in the literature, namely illustrations, figures, graphics, relational-data net maps, mind maps, NETMAPS, concatenation diagrams (Wolf, 1988), and models. This well-illustrated book commences with an important preface that outlines nine principles, each of which guides the chapters in giving clear directions about how to use V diagrams to best guide critical thinking and imagination. These educating-related principles cover the following: the meaning of experience; the fact that sharing meaning simplifies complexity; parts of knowledge and their interrelations; the fact that V diagrams show the structure of knowledge, enhance human interactions, clarify ambiguities, and make events happen; the fact that V diagrams of knowledge provide a basis for evaluation by using criteria of congruence-correspondence, coherence-conceptual clarity, the question-event connection, and the fit between questions and answers; the way that the diagrams mediate conceptual and methodological design and practice; and the ways that electronic educating extends teaching, learning, and research beyond the classroom. The bulk of the book comprises four parts: (a) Four Commonplaces of Educating Plus One (art of educating, simplifying complexity), (b) The V-Diagram (thinking around the V, structuring knowledge, minding events and making a V, learning and teaching a V), (c) Analyzing, Evaluating, and Conducting Research (evaluating V diagrams, researching educating), and (d) Reasoning With Technology (electronic educating). Each part has a very welcome summary. Three appendixes deal with diagram scoring protocol, research phases and questions, and scoring criteria for concept maps. The preface, together with the foreword, proffers an introduction. The subject index is very inadequate; the name index is less important. The book's back cover makes it clear that the "book explains how educating works" and that the method extensively described can be "effectively used by teachers and students, parents