Teaching For wisdom in High
School English Class
Michel Ferrari, Joan Peskin, Anda Petro & Nic
Weststrate
Two Wisdom Traditions
• “Before you retire, teach him about what has been said in
the past; then he will be an example to the children...,
when understanding and precision have entered into him.
Instruct him, for no one is born wise.”
• The Maxims of Ptahhotep (c. 2450 BCE)
Two Wisdom Traditions
• “‘This is what Zeno said.’ But what do you say? ‘This is
Cleanthes’ view.’ What is yours? How long will you march
under another’s orders? Take command and say
something memorable of your own....It is one thing to
remember, another to know. To remember is to
safeguard something entrusted to the memory. But to
know is to make each thing one’s own, not to depend on
the text and always look back to the teacher....Let there
be a space between you and the text.”
• Seneca, Letters, 33 (c. 64 CE)
Two Wisdom Traditions
Contemplative Wisdom (Ancient Near
East/Judeo-Christian)
Wisdom is a self-transcendent understanding
of divine patterns that govern the human world,
passed on through maxims. (Aristotle’s
‘sophia’)
Personal-Political Wisdom (Ancient Greek)
Wisdom is expressed though the ‘art of living’
an ideal human life,
with interpretative knowledge gleaned from
rationally examining personal lived
experience
and sound judgment about how to act
appropriately and ethically in particular
situations. (Aristotle’s ‘phronesis’)
RENAISSANCE WISDOM TRADITION
These traditions continue to the Renaissance,
when wisdom is again secularized (Rice, 1958)
Culminating example: Pierre Charron's
(1601) de la Sagesse (on Wisdom).
Distinguishes three kinds of wisdom:
worldly wisdom needed for material and social
success(expertise),
human wisdom needed for the art of living, and
divine wisdom, a gift of God that brought ultimate
truth and meaning about human life.
Pierre Charron
1541-1603
de la Sagesse mainly concerns human wisdom
and had a strong ethical dimension.
Charron also laments that there is no public
schooling and so much human potential is
wasted.
After the Renaissance, pursuit of wisdom and
happiness is abandoned for the pursuit of truth
and utility
Science of Wisdom: A new
Renaissance
An explosion of scientific interest in wisdom since the 1980s
But the science of wisdom is still ‘pre-paradigmatic’ (Kuhn)
Varieties of scientific approaches to wisdom
Implicit or Folk Theories of wisdom (Sternberg, Jeste)
Explicit Theories of Wisdom
Self-Transcendence tradition (Levenson)
‘Art of Living’ tradition
Personal Disposition toward Wisdom (Ardelt)
require: cognition, affect, reflection
Wisdom as expertise about the ‘fundamental
pragmatics of life’ (Baltes & Staudinger)
Teaching is a context that develops wisdom
Narrative theory of wisdom and identity (Ricoeur)
Wisdom involves judgment that improves on personal
narrative possibilities in light of what one most values.
Teaching for Wisdom
Sternberg (2004, 2007) proposes that teaching for wisdom goes beyond
memorization of school subjects, or critical thinking about them, to
include socially responsible decision making.
Study: Students in Grade 8 history are encouraged to transcend their
own egocentric perspectives to generate ‘balanced’ decisions about
historical events in US history through units on nation-building and
slavery.
They are also encouraged to apply this kind of balanced thinking in
their own lives.
Teachers are responsible for setting tasks to accomplish these learning
objectives; students are responsible for gaining insight into their own
lives through these activities.
Results are still being analyzed, but this is work is in line with Ricoeur’s
theory of wisdom as involving reflection on personal identity, constructed
between literature and history.
Teaching for Wisdom
Four models of Biblical reading for wisdom (Schüssler Fiorenza, 2003 )
Teacher Cognitively Responsible
(1) Master-disciple (seminar) model, where students learn via
cognitive apprenticeship from the teacher (this has a long intellectual
and religious tradition).
(2) Banking (lecture) model, in which the teacher (or course content)
deposits knowledge; students accumulate this knowledge for later
use, like money in a bank.
(3) Consumer satisfaction models, teaching is adjusted based on
students’ satisfaction with particular topics.
Student Cognitively Responsible
(4) Radical democratic emancipatory models of socio-political and
religious movements for change, where students make texts their own
and are personally transformed by reading them.
Two studies of Teachers’ Wisdom
Study 1: Teachers vs. non-teachers
Study 2: Expert teachers vs. novice teachers.
Self-Report Questionnaires
Wisdom
Self-Transcendence (Levenson et al., 2005)
3D Wisdom Questionnaire (Ardelt, 2003)
Motivation
Purpose in life
Self-Directedness
Life Attitude & Well-Being
Life satisfaction
General well-being
Study 1: Wisdom of Teachers vs. NonTeachers
Sixty-seven adults from the GTA were given questionnaires designed to assess
their level of wisdom, and its relation to general well-being.
56 general population of adults (31 women, 25 men)
37 teachers (26 women, 12 men)
Groups differed on Ardelt’s 3D wisdom questionnaire: teachers are wiser on 2
dimensions.
Cognitive – F(1,89) = 15.724, p = .001
Reflective – F(1,89) = 4.214, p = .04
Affect – ns
No significant gender differences or interactions between teaching group
and gender were observed
No difference for wisdom as self-transcendence (Levenson et al., 2005)
There were no significant gender or teacher differences on outcome variables:
self-directedness, purpose in life, well-being, or life satisfaction.
Study 2: Comparing Expert &
Novice English Teachers
Participants
12 expert teachers had at least 10 years experience and
were nominated by their principles as being exemplary
teachers.
15 novice teachers were nominated by their Curriculum
and Instruction teachers as having been exemplary in their
practicum, but had not yet formally begun to teach.
Narrative Wisdom (Paul Ricoeur),
Wisdom involves transcending available narratives to arrive
at new stories in light of what we most value.
English teachers are well-placed to develop personal
wisdom through a mimetic consideration of their lives via
literature.
Study 2: Comparing Expert &
Novice Teachers
Tasks
Teachers were given three texts frequently used in senior
high school English curricula
the opening of Bertrand Russell’s autobiography,
the poem Bushed by Earl Birney,
a scene from Macbeth.
Questions about the Texts
Participants were asked how they would they teach these materials,
specifically:
1. The most important aspects of each text to present to a grade 12
class.
2. How to teach each text.
3. What activities would they have students to do to follow up on the
lesson?
(They were invited to make notes, but not specific lesson plans.)
4. Can these texts teach about life? (if so, how?)
5. Can these texts teach for wisdom? (if so, how?)
Procedure
Interviews lasted about 1.5 hours and participants were met at their
convenience, usually in their school setting.
All interviews were recorded and later transcribed.
Results
Wisdom
No group differences in Personal or Self-Transcendent wisdom.
Women tend to be higher in personal wisdom, according to the 3D
scale (F(1,23) = 2.976, p = .11, Cohen d=.69),
Self-Directedness
Experts tended to score higher than novices (F(1,23) = 6.28, p =
.08, Cohen d=.84)
Women tended to score higher than men (F(1,23) = 4.30, p = .05,
Cohen d=.76)
Purpose in life
Women tended to score higher than men (F(1,23) = 3.420, p =
.09, Cohen d=.65).
Life Attitude and Well-Being
No difference in Life Satisfaction or General Well-Being
Qualitative differences in
Teaching for Wisdom
Overall
Novices were more task and lecture focused,
Experts were more student focused, calibrating their
activities in light of cognitive objectives, often concerned
with how to get students to understand the deep
structure of the English material.
Teachers used a range of pedagogical approaches to teach
about life and for wisdom
Mastery
Lecture
Student Interest
Emancipatory
Teaching for Wisdom: Task
Focused
•
Teaching Russell’s autobiography
•
“I would not give them a lot of questions because.. it does take a long time to go
through even something as short as this so I might give them 3 or 4 questions
and ask them specific questions about the text..[I- right.] P- and then.. um I might
ask them what they noticed stylistically about it.. so you know about repetition..
um what else did I- I notice.. you know poetry.. (pause).. passion.. things that..
they're part of speech but also I found in his autobiography so I might ask them ..
you know about .. about those types of things that they see.” (N1)
•
Wisdom comes from content mastery:
•
“Umm I'm not sure about the Birney one because again I'm not sure about about the
content of it [but] Bertrand and the Macbeth.. yes.. there's lots to be learned and there's
lots to.. you know.. things that you should do you should not do—and especially with
someone like Bertrand Russell who is a philosopher.. you know you need to do a
lot of deep thinking and you might come to a higher level of wisdom after reading
someone like him.”
Teaching for Wisdom:
Didactic Models
“.. the excerpt of Macbeth. [...] I’d want to teach them to
understand that he was appealing to audiences at that time and
use that sort of lesson to help teach them how to generate
things with the audience in mind... so... I don’t know if I said that
clearly... but ... [I- makes sense] it’s literary devices to get the
audience attention... so the way I wanted to do this was to start
by showing like the most famous one... or one of the more
famous scenes from anything Shakespeare... I just wanted to
show Romeo and Juliet like the first part of the Bass Luhrmann
movie....um... and yeah get some class discussion on how
Luhrmann is actually making it interesting cause it’s the most
successful Shakespeare movies that’s come out but actually
about one of his plays... and yeah there’s a lot of reasons for
that so I want the class to see some of those reaons..(N2)
Teaching for Wisdom:
Mastery Models
Experts
“if I taught this early on in the process I would uh....model you know how you write a
paragraph about diction I would put the students in groups and try and get them to
write a paragraph together...and then I would give them some feedback like they’d
stand up say you know if this was your text this would be what it was worth and this
is the rubric what would you do with it? “ (E2)
•
This can’t be used to teach for wisdom
•
You see with the problems in our schools right ....I’m going to Downsview
Collegiate tomorrow half the kids fail the grade 10 literacy test...and so.... like
wisdom...it’s such – it’s so far away from that I mean... the problems are real and
so....you know if you’re trying to give a student wisdom I think you should be a
poet or a ....you know a religious leader...or uh... what else I don’t know I guess
that...like I don’t think that I don’t think that’s what we do.
Teaching for Wisdom:
Satisfaction Models
“I tried to have conversations that were more political, ideological
etc., and they struggled even with that so incredibly because abstract
thought was such an amazing challenge for them. They, these were
kids who had almost no intellectual stimulation in their life, and
completely unprepared for abstract thought and it became pretty
clear to me, pretty quickly that they needed me to help them to be
successful in the small ways in life, above all else. They had to pick
up certain skills such as, you know, arriving place, punctuality, uh
speaking politely to each other and to others because in the work
world, you know, these are the kind of kids who lose jobs all the time
because they don’t know how to communicate with the people. Uh
anger control (laughs) uh and basic literacy skill that they would need
for employment, for raising a family at some point. And so my
teaching became much more skills focused, very quickly, then I ever
imagined it when I was thinking of becoming a teacher. (Expert4)
Teaching for Wisdom:
Satisfaction Models
Cant’ teach for wisdom, just life’s complexity
•
S- Yeah, I’d be pretty reluctant for wisdom, uh, in them. Again uh, Shakespeare,
I’m very confident he’s not showing us Macbeth as any sort of role model and, and
I think, I mean Shakespeare’s brilliance is in the fact that he shows us humans
with all their foibles and mistakes and complexities, [a]nd I think Shakespeare
presents us a world in which wisdom is very rare. [...] No, I can’t find, I can’t find
wisdom but to me, what I keep coming back to is letting the kids know in class
“Wow, life is so complex!” Trying, all the best that we can hope for, is to try and
understand and our situations and others better [...] Uh, so if, again if I have
another, any other piece of wisdom is that I’m more and more certain that there’s
no right answers, that I’m no, I don’t even look for right answers: I look for the
answers that’s right for me right now. And I think of intellectual approaches to
literature in English, most be as pleasure. Analyze the poem for pleasure! What do
you get out of it? And if, what emotionally, intellectually what do you get out of it?
[…] and just enjoy that process but try and be aware of how your life experiences
have led you to the conclusions that you came out to, that you found at any one
time. (Expert 4)
Teaching for Wisdom:
Emancipatory Models
“well probably the most obvious one [to use in teaching for wisdom] is Bertrand Russell
because he is talking about life and in a sense he is talking about wisdom I suppose. Um so
yeah he talks about what he has found he says ‘This is what I sought and though it might
seem too good for human life this is what I have found’ so lets take a look at what are we
seeking, what was he seeking and what are you seeking? What are some of the other
authors we have looked at seeking? What’s Earl Bernie seeking? Or the person he’s
created here. But it always has to come back to what are you seeking and what have you
learned so far? Has it been easy to learn? Has it been hard to learn? Has it been painful?
Where id you learn it? Did you learn it by sitting and thinking? Did you learn it by reading?
Did you learn it from experience? [...] You know this is what I think it has to come back to
you. How does this text speak to you? How do you feel about being ambitious like this?
Have you every gone to a psychic? Have you ever you know looked at your horoscope how
seriously do you take it? And how far would you go you know if you were told that you’re
going to come into possession of a gazillion dollars, how far would you go to make sure
that that really happened? And I think that’s how we start to acquire wisdom, because you
have to start to look into your own heart. (E8).
Wisdom of Crowds
•
(3. Aristotle Politics Book 3, ch.11. 1281a43-b9)
•
So Aristotle agreed that collective understanding and collective wisdom
typically surpassed that of even very knowledgeable individuals.
Recommendation
Transcendent wisdom is often tied to particular ideologies,
typically religious ideologies (christianity, Islam), and have no
place in a secular classroom that relies on a transmission model
of teaching.
We should mot be teaching particular values, as happens in
‘Character Education.’
Knowledge Building classrooms can better create the
emancipatory conditions for acquiring personal wisdom.
even discussions of transcendental wisdom may naturally
emerge as children carry knowledge building about wisdom
outside of the classroom and the educational institutions.
Wisdom and character emerge through knowledge building
about personal life.
Conclusion
Despite the difference in the richness with which expert teachers are able to
engage students in English class, their students often remain subordinate to
the teachers’ cognitive objectives.
An emphasis on knowledge building and collective understanding can enhance
teaching for wisdom:
Not in the trivial sense of conveying some specific life-lesson from the texts,
but in the much more profound sense of having students engage the
English curriculum in such a way as to deepen their knowledge about life
and to foster a climate that promotes the development of emancipatory
personal wisdom.
But it is essential to give students responsibility for the learning objectives of
the curriculum, especially as regards what they find important about life and
what literature and poetry can teach them.
Only with this kind of teaching can they please a Seneca, by having something
memorable wisdom to say for themselves.
Contact Information
• For more information or to collaborate on projects, please
contact us
•
•
•
•
International Wisdom Project
Human Development & Applied Psychology
OISE University of Toronto
mferarri@oise.utoronto.ca
FIN
Process of Education
“The process of education, academic and otherwise,
encompasses four equal elements:
(1) epistemology, that is, what we know and how we can
know what we know;
(2) pedagogy, the critical articulation of educational theory;
(3) didactics, the how-to techniques of educational practices
in the classroom; and
(4) communication, the critical reflection on how we make
known what we know and the exchange of these ideas.”
(Schüssler Fiorenza, 2003)
12 Principles of Knowledge
Building
1. Real ideas. Authentic problems (trying to
understand the world; problems people care
about
2. Improvable ideas (ideas can have better
quality, coherence, utility)
3. Idea diversity (provides a rich env for ideas to
evolve)
4. Rise above (more inclusive principles,
syntheses out of diversity)
5. Epistemic Agency (debate and coordinate
with others, not follow them.
12 Principles of Knowledge
Building
7. Democratizing knowledge (all participants legitimate
contributors to communal goals and take pride in them)
8. Symmetrical knowledge advancement (expertise is
distributed within and between communities—giving knowledge
is getting it.)
9. Pervasive knowledge building (KB occurs in and out of
school)
10. Constructive use of authoritative sources (knowing state of
the art of a field and being critical of it)
11. Knowledge building discourse (knowledge itself is
transformed through KB discourse).
12. Embedded and transformative assessment (assessment is
integral to advancing knowledge, by identifying problems; KB
communities develops their own assessments better than
external ones to assure highest quality knowledge)