Pragmatism
Action -> -> -> Destiny
Sow an action, reap a habit.
Sow a habit, reap a character.
Sow a character, reap a destiny.
–William James
(1) Role of Experience
• Primacy of experience
• Participation in (not using) language,
history, world
• Situated; contextual; historical
• Linking of fact/value
• Knowledge is constructed
Experience and Learning
• Tree figures
–School and Society
Ordinary Experience
The paradox is that Dewey achieved this viability, not by
having written for the future, but rather by writing out of his
own present experience. His attitude of affection for ordinary
experience remained a lifelong characteristic of his work. He
believed that ordinary experience is seeded with surprise and
possibilities for enhancement if we but allow it to bathe over
us in its own terms. The key here is to avoid derision and the
seduction of condescension to the seemingly obvious. In my
judgement, the central text in Dewey is found late in his
work, in Experience and Education.
–John McDermott, p. x
Experience
We always live at the time we live and not at
some other time and only by extracting at
each present time the full meaning of each
present experience are we prepared for doing
the same thing in the future.–p. 51
Intentional teaching => danger of separating
experience & school acquisition
– Dewey, Experience & Education, 1916, p. 9
Paul Valéry
It is more useful to speak of what one has
experienced than to pretend to a knowledge
that is entirely impersonal, an observation
without an observer. In fact, there is no theory
that is not a fragment, carefully prepared, of
some autobiography. I do not pretend to be
teaching you anything at all. I will say nothing
that you do not already know...
(2) Context/Purpose
• Earl Kelley: Car: on road / outside window
• Adelbert Ames;
– Rotating trapezoid
– Mis-scaled room
• Ihde; Necker cube
Causation
The notion that disease-causing agents and
therapeutic agents are things-in-themselves is
often ascribed to Pasteur, and it is therefore
salutary to remember Pasteur’s death-bed
words: “Bernard is right; the pathogen is
nothing; the terrain is everything.
–Oliver Sacks, Awakenings, p. 228
Lewis Thomas: Disease Theories
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Evil spirits: witch doctors
Bad humours: leeches
Germs: antibiotics
Off-center: throw pots, health food
Abstraction vs. Generalization
• It is a mistake to equate “abstract” with
“general”. Only the concrete permits a
general understanding of systemic
interconnectedness
• –Yrjo Engstrom, “Learning by Expanding”
(3) Social Construction
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Social embedding
Importance of community
Special meanings
Recognition of difference
Shift power relations
Discourse Community Formulations
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Bakhtin: speech genres
Peirce: community of inquirers
Dewey: community/education/social life
Bloomfield: shared linguistic rules
Labov: shared norms
Hymes: shared rules + use patterns
Fish: interpretive community
Swales: discourse community
Dewey: Community
• Interpersonal over cognitive
• Occasions to identify with others’ point of
view –Democracy and Education, p. 84
• Occasions to share differences –Public and
Its Problems, 155
Kuhn
• T. Kuhn, The structure of scientific
revolutions, 1970: to understand scientific
thought we must understand scientific
communities; scientific knowledge changes,
not as our understanding of the world
changes, but as scientists organize and
reorganize relations among themselves
Feyerabend
relations change as a consequence of changes
in economic and social relations in larger
communities
–P. Feyerabend, Against Method
Rorty
to understand any kind of knowledge we must
understand "the social justification of belief",
i.e., how knowledge is established and
maintained in the "normal discourse" of
communities of knowledgeable peers
–R. Rorty, Philosophy and the mirror of
nature, 1979
Bruffee
A writer's language originates with the
community to which he or she belongs. We
use language primarily to join communities
we do not yet belong to and to cement our
membership in communities we already
belong to
–K. Bruffee, "Social construction, language,
and the authority of knowledge . . .", 1986, p. 784
Interpretive Communities
"interpretive communities" are the source of
our thought and of the "meanings" we
produce through the use and manipulation of
symbolic structures; also source of what we
regard as our very selves
–S. Fish, “Is there a text in this class?: The
authority of interpretive communities,” 1980
(4) Construction Process
• Perspectivity (no understanding w/o
presupposition)
• Part-whole-part movement
• Dialectic process (no end point to
understanding)
• Knowing v. Knowledge
Thinking
• Occurrence of a difficulty
• Definition of the difficulty
• Occurrence of a suggested explanation or
possible solution
• Rational elaboration of an idea
• Corroboration of an idea and formation of a
concluding belief
–Dewey, How We Think
Dewey’s Feminism
By rejecting foundationalism, Dewey opens the door
to legitimizing claims for other forms of knowledge
and other ways of knowing... His views of a
progressive society as one that “counts individual
variation as precious” [His] theory of knowledge is
one that encourages respect for differences such that
we recognize that the goal of unified, static
knowledge is illegitimate.
– Jeanne Connel
Transmission Model of Theory
Formation
Constructions
Phenomena
Transmission
Derived
Constriuctions
Phenomena
Social Construction Model of
Theory Formation
Community
Insights of
"Experts"
Sharing
Attending to
Phenomena
Insights of
Learners
Constructivism as philosophical
position
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Ihde: Necker cube
Hacking, p. 81 in Lynch & Woolgar
All systems leak [E.Sapir]
Anyone who invents a concept takes leave
of reality [M.de Unamuno]
Constructivism as a method for
inquiry
• Critique of null hypothesis testing
• Generalization as rhetorical step
• Control group is the group you don’t control
[J. Zacharias]
• Ecological invalidity as an axiom of
cognitive psychology [Cole, Hood, &
McDermott]
• Formalization critique
Meaning Making
• EQ 8: Plato v Wittgenstein
• Black History Show
• Fish: community => interpretation =>
author/reader/text
• Koestler: Beyond Reductionism
• Rorty
• John Berger
Vygotsky
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Activity precedes learning
Development as a product of education
Personal invention / social convention
Cultural mediation
Material and symbolic cultural “tools”
Similarities in Piaget & Vygotsky
• Importance of intersubjectivity in social
interaction
• Point of departure for social influence:
child's understanding
• Cooperation in cognitive activity
Piaget versus Vygotsky
Issue
Piaget
V ygotsky
Locus of intersubjectiv ity
Indiv idual work with
independence and equality
Joint problem -solv ing between
partners on each others’ ideas
Model of effectiv e social
interaction
Cooperation between equals who
attem pt to understand each others
v iews through reciprocal
consideration of their alternative
v iews
Logico-m athem atical problem s
Joint problem -solv ing with
guidance by experts
Aspects of cognitiv e dev elopm ent
Age when social influence on
cognitive developm ent begins
Middle childhood
Peers vs. Adults
Interactions with adults do not
lead to cognitive developm ent
because of unequal power
relations
Prov ides inform ation for
becom ing aware of differing
perspectiv es and finding
equilibrium
Indiv idual
Cooperation
Cognitiv e Developm ent
Dev elopm ent of skills for
inform ation and application of
culturally dev eloped tools
Beginning: Indiv idual> Social;
Later: Social>Indiv idual
Ideal partners unequal in skills
and understanding
Use of joint problem -solv ing
process to expand understanding
and skills
Indiv idual appropriation of social
processes
Reader Response
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Construction of meaning
How communication fails and how it is possible
Our view of "text"
Broaden from comprehension to interpretation
Feminist perspectives on reading and writing
Relate theory & practice
Relations between language & power
Pedagogical Implications
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Rethink assessment
Examine the canon / the curriculum
Full range of cultural literatures & perspectives
Nurturing versus training
Understand own knowledge & interpretations
Richer view of language
Incorporate aesthetics
Support role of community
Value the individual response