Name Floyd Robinson | ||
Floyd Grant Robinson (born 1931) is a teacher, education theorist and curriculum developer. He has written many works on the topics of stimulating complex thinking and the importance of education across the entire lifespan. Robinson is most notable for his work done while at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) between 1965 and 1991.
Contents
During his time at OISE the major goal of Robinson’s applied research was to foster problem solving, critical thinking and other forms of complex thinking in elementary and secondary school learners and post-graduate students. In retirement his interest has broadened to facilitate inter-agency collaboration in support of comprehensively defined human development and empowerment.
Education and personal life
Robinson was born and raised in Humberstone, Ontario, in a family of four brothers, all of whom became secondary school and/or university teachers. He obtained four university degrees, the most influential in his professional work being a master's degree in pure mathematics from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Alberta. In 1955 he married Mary Lucy Ruggiero, a RN (Registered Nurse) from Port Colborne, and together they had four children and five grandchildren. Since 1972, the Robinsons have resided at their rural property in mid-northern Ontario.
Career
Robinson began his professional career as a secondary school teacher of mathematics and physics. After completing his doctorate in 1959 he became, in succession, the Research Director of The Canadian Teachers' Federation and the first Director of The Canadian Council for Research in Education, – the latter founded to promote the establishment of a research presence and influence in educational practice.
When the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education was created in 1965, Robinson became the founding Head and professor of the Department of Applied Psychology. In 1968 Robinson elected to work in OISE’s Field Centres and until retirement was successively Head and Field Professor in the Niagara, Northeastern Ontario, and Mid-northern Ontario Centres. He believed that the best chance of improving education occurred when field-based education professors determined by sustained, on-site contact, the learning objectives of educational practitioners (teachers, principals, consultants, superintendents) and the practical schema they were employing to achieve them. This understanding then enabled the academic to help practitioners use research results and theoretical concepts to both upgrade and better achieve their goals. It was part of Robinson’s professional code that he always volunteered to risk being the first to teach any proposed new intervention.
Over his more than two decades in the field, Robinson formalised his approach in a comprehensive system that is recognized for “the powerful procedures it contains for developing and analyzing curriculum… rooted in a clear conception of inquiry and problem solving”. Several hundred of Robinson's publications have been disseminated.
In 1983 Robinson received the Colonel Watson Award from the Ontario Association for Curriculum Development “for the extensive influence he has had on other academics, curriculum leaders, curriculum innovators, ministry personnel, teachers, and most significantly, the students in the classroom”.
Since his formal retirement in 1991, Robinson has been a volunteer learning consultant with professionals in health, education, adult literacy and a variety of other social service agencies that see the need to introduce formal curriculum design concepts into their increasingly pro-active (educational) professional work. Working from the principle that the collective mission of these agencies should be to foster the optimal development of community members, an ongoing thrust is to develop the robust conception of a fully functioning human being that is needed to cumulate the impacts of their individual programs.