EDD 5229

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EDD 5229 Liberal Studies in Knowledge Society
Lecture 5 Understanding the Curriculum
Content of Liberal Studies I Society and Culture
in Informal-Global System
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From Metacognition to Metatheory

• Conception of metacognition
• Flavell defines metacognition as ones knowledge
  concerning ones own cognitive processes and
  products (1976, quoted in Son and Schwartz,
  2002, P.16)
• Hacker defines the concept of metacognition as
  thinking about ones own thoughts. This thinking
  can be of what know (i.e.metacognitive
  knowledge), what one is currently doing (i.e.
  metacognitive skill), or what ones current
  cognitive and affective state is (i.e.
  metacognitive experience). . Metacognition
  sometimes has been defined simply as thinking
  about thinking, cognition of cognition, or using
  Flavalls (1979) word, knowledge and cognition
  about cognitive phenomena. (Hacker, 1998, p. 1)

http//logic.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/b885764/Metacogniti
on2.html
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From Metacognition to Metatheory

• Conception of metacognition
• Nelson and Narens model of metacognition
• Levels of cognition
• Object-level cognition
• Meta-level cognition
• Process of metacognition
• Monitoring
• Control

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Meta-level
RETRIEVEL
Confidence in Retrieved Answers
Termination of Search
Output of Response
Monitoring
Control
Self-directed Search
Selection of Search Strategy
Feeling-of-knowing Judgments
RETENTION
Flow of Information
Termination of Study
Maintenance of Knowledge
Allocation of Time
ACQUISITION
Judgments of learning
On-going Learning
Selection of Kind of Processing
Ease-of-learning Judgments
In Advance of Learning
Object-Level
Source Nelson and Narens, 1994
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From Metacognition to Metatheory

• Two paradigms in cognition (Bruner, 1996)
• Computionalism
• Culturalism

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From Metacognition to Metatheory

• Metatheory in understanding the curriculum of
  liberal studies
• Metatheory has been perceived by social
  scientists as the fundamental theoretical
  framework underlying theories on social phenomena
  
• Accordingly, metatheory underlying any
  disciplinary-based school curriculum is the
  knowledge system of the respective discipline
  itself.
• However, in understanding the curriculum of
  liberal studies, which is interdisciplinary or
  integrative based, the metatheory or metatheories
  underlying the curriculum do not come with a
  well-established discipline and teachers have to
  constructed them by themselves.

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From Metacognition to Metatheory

• Metatheory in understanding the curriculum of
  liberal studies
• Examples of metatheories in understanding the
  curriculum of liberal studies in the context of
  knowledge society.
• Society and culture in informational-global
  system
• Self and identity in post-traditional and
  individualized society
• Science and technology in reflexive-modernity and
  risk society

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Final Version 2007
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Final Version 2007
To what extent does science and technology
enhance the Development of public health
2. Science, technology and public health
How do energy technology and environmental
problems relate to each other?
1. The influences of energy technology
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Understanding the Structure of the Areas of
Study Society and Culture

• The formal structure outlined by the CCD and
  HKEAA
• Module 2 Hong Kong Society
• Theme1 Quality of life
• Theme2 Rule of law and socio-political
  participation
• Theme3 Identity
• Module 3 Modern China
• Theme1 Chinas reform and opening-up
• Theme 2 Chinese culture and modern life
• Module 4 Globalization
• Theme Impact of globalization and related
  response

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Understanding the Structure of the Areas of
Study Society and Culture

• The organic theoretical structure
• Globalization under the information technology
  paradigm
• Social consequences in HK and China
• Cultural consequences in HK and China

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Globalization under the in the Age of Information
Technology

• Debate on the origins of globalization
• A.G. Frank Grill (1993) World History
  Perspective Originated 5000 year ago
• Braudel (1979) Wallerstein (1974) World-system
  Approach Originated from the 16th century and
  the rise of mercantile capitalism
• J. W. Meyer (1979) World Polity Perspective
  Originated from the late 18th early 19th
  century and the constitution of inter-state
  competition world polity
• M. Castell (1996) M. Carnoy (2000) Global IT
  Economy Perspective Originated from 1970s

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Globalization under the in the Age of Information
Technology

• Globalization under the Information-Technology
  paradigm
• Compression of time and space In connection to
  the penetrating, reconfiguring and converging
  capacities of IT, the globalization at the end of
  the twentieth century has outgrown its ancestors
  in bridging if not annulling the temporal and
  spatial distances between human societies and
  cultures
• Anthony Giddens (1994) in The Consequences of
  Modernity indicates that globalization is
  really about the transformation of space and
  time. I would define it as action at distance,
  and relate its growth over recent years to the
  development of means of instantaneous global
  communication and mass transportation. (1994, p.
  22)

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Globalization under the in the Age of Information
Technology

• Globalization under the Information-Technology
  paradigm
• Compression of time and space
• Zygmunt Bauman (1998) Globalization as
  annulment of temporal/spatial distances (1998,
  p.18).
• David Harvey (1989) in The Condition of
  Postmodernity has simply defines globalization as
  time-space compression. It signifies processes
  that so revolutionize the objective qualities of
  space and time that we are force to alter how
  we represent the world to ourselves. (p. 240)

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Globalization under the in the Age of Information
Technology

• Globalization under the Information-Technology
  paradigm
• Space of flow Manuel Castells (1996) in The
  Network Society defines globalization as the
  process of separating simultaneous social
  practices from physical contiguity, that is
  time-sharing social practices are no long
  embedded in space of physical place. As a result,
  the traditional notion of space of places has
  been transformed into space of flows. As a
  result, the globe is now able to work as a unit
  in real time on a planetary scale.

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences I The
Advent of Community of Flow

• The advent of the virtual community
• Transformation of pattern of communication
• Instantaneous social practices are separated
  from physical contiguity, the traditional
  face-to-face and time-consuming communications,
  which are the cornerstone of primary association,
  have given way to fast, cheap and forgetting
  communications (Benedikt, 1995, quoted from
  Bauman, 1998, p.16).

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences I The
Advent of Community of Flow

• The advent of the virtual community
• Dissolve of community of yoke
• The so-called 'closely knit communities' of
  yore were brought into being and kept alive by
  the gap between the nearly instantaneous
  communication inside the small-scale community
  (the size of which was determined by the innate
  qualities of 'wetware', and thus confined to the
  natural limits of human sight, hearing and
  memorizing capacity) and the enormity of time and
  expense needed to pass information between
  locality. On the other hand, the present-day and
  short life-span of communities appears primarily
  to be the result of the gap shrinking or
  altogether disappearing inner-community
  communication has no advantage over
  inter-communal exchange, if both are
  instantaneous. (Bauman, 1998, p.5)

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences I The
Advent of Community of Flow

• The advent of the virtual community
• Cultural-spatial based communities are replaced
  by virtual community
• Erosion of spatial based communities scattered
  around factories and industrial compound in
  advanced industrial societies as globalized and
  flexible economy emerged. Class-based and
  ethnic/religious-based communities also
  evaporated with the factory-location based
  communities
• The emergence of the cyberspace The space of
  place and that based on physical contiguity is
  replace by the space of flow and that based on
  informational flow.

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences I The
Advent of Community of Flow

• The advent of the virtual community
• Cultural-spatial based communities are replaced
  by virtual community
• In their replacement advents the virtual
  community.
• Howard Rheingold in The virtual community
  Homesteading on the electrical frontier (1989)
  specifies that
• Virtual communities are social aggregations
  that emerge from the Net when enough people carry
  on those public discussions long enough, with
  sufficient human feeling, to form webs of
  personal relationship in cyberspace. (p.3)

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences I The
Advent of Community of Flow

• New notions of community in knowledge society
  (Carnoy, 2000)
• In flexible economy new communities will have to
  incorporate workers who are more educated, more
  choice-oriented, more flexible, more
  time-conscious, and more eager to influence their
  environment. The new bond that holds these
  individuals together in the global information
  age is the search for knowledge. (Carnoy, 2000,
  p. 171)

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences I The
Advent of Community of Flow

• New notions of community in knowledge society
  (Carnoy, 2000)
• Accordingly, Martin Carnoy categorizes these
  knowledge-searching communities into
• The self-knowledge community Ethnicity, gender
  and cultural identity. For examples, black Muslim
  communities in the US constituted in the 1960s,
  feminist communities emerged in the 1980s,
  fundamentalist Muslim in global context since the
  late 1990s.
• The knowledge-use community Professional
  identification and work networks
• Informal work-information network
• Temporary agencies as knowledge-use networks
• Computer networks as knowledge-use communities

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences I The
Advent of Community of Flow

• New notions of community in knowledge society
  (Carnoy, 2000)
• Accordingly, Martin Carnoy categorizes these
  knowledge-searching communities into
• The knowledge-production community Schools as
  community centers
• Knowledge-production centers themselves can
  be the organizing space for new communities.
  Individuals and families may no longer be linked
  socially to a particular neighborhood, but those
  with children are increasingly linked to
  child-care centers, preschools, and elementary
  schools. Children and parents build friendships
  and social and civic activities around their
  childrens care and learning, wherever it takes
  place. Thus, their community space is defined
  by their childrens day care and schooling rather
  by where they live. (Carnoy, 2000, p. 183)

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences II The
Advent of Flexible Family

• The brief history of the fundamental unit of
  social integration Family
• Family in agrarian society
• Family as reproduction unit of society
• Family as production unit of economy
• All members held designated role in the
  production process and were interdependent on
  each others
• Family in early industrialized society
• Structural differentiations between reproduction
  and production functions of family
• Man and matured children usually boys worked away
  from home
• Man assumed the breadwinning role and woman
  submitted to the dependent role in the family
  structure

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences II The
Advent of Flexible Family

• The brief history of the fundamental unit of
  social integration
• Family in Post-WWII welfare-state
• Welfare-state intervened into family functions
  through social policy measures, such as
  birth-control policy, child labor laws, education
  policy, housing policy, social welfare policy
  etc.
• Family was deprived of most of its functions
  reproductive, productive, and socializing
  functions and left with only emotional and
  spiritual supportive function.
• Nevertheless, family assume a new function in
  mass consumption society, i.e. as consumption and
  even investment unit
• Woman liberation movement spawned structural
  changes in the role/power structure of family.
  Woman would no long assume to dependent or even
  submissive roles in the patriarchal structure of
  family

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences II The
Advent of Flexible Family

• Flexible family and flexible work
• The very concept of a job is changing. In the
  years after World War II, industrial societies
  constructed the ideal of a full-time, secure job
  working thirty years for one company with
  ever-rising real wages. Pay in this job would be
  high enough that within American family
  households, only the man had to work. His wife
  could stay at home, raising the children and
  managing the household. The ideal of secure work
  and increasing consumption was matched by
  government policies that constructed social
  security (old-age pension, unemployment
  insurance, and health insurance) largely around
  the ideal of a men and very little paid work for
  women is going by the boards, and the new
  information technology is only one cause of
  change. The simplest description of the nature of
  this transformation is increased flexibility.
  (Carnoy, 2000, p.64-65)

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences II The
Advent of Flexible Family

• Flexible family and flexible work
• Flexibility in work implies
• Flexible in work schedule as well as work
  duration
• Flexible in work locations as well as positions
• Flexible in work conditions, flexibility has
  replaced fixed-term contract and long-term
  commitment between employers and employees
• With increased competition in the globalized
  economy and the rapidly rising capacity to use
  world time to enhance productivity, the very
  best workers are now those who never sleep, never
  consume, never have children, and never spend
  time socializing outside of work. (Carnoy, 2000,
  p. 143)

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences II The
Advent of Flexible Family

• Flexible family and flexible work
• In knowledge economy and lifelong learning
  society, family is demanded to assume a new
  function. It is expect to be the basic unit
  supporting the everlasting learning projects
  demand for both working parents and their
  children
• Fundamental contradiction in functions of
  flexible family
• What result is a serious social
  contradiction the new workplace requires even
  more investment in knowledge than in the past,
  and family are crucial to such knowledge
  formation, especially for children but also for
  adults. The new workplace, however, contributes
  to greater instability in the child-centered
  nuclear family, degrading the very institution
  crucial to further economic development. (ibid,
  p.110)

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Globalization and Its Social Consequences II The
Advent of Flexible Family

• Changes in family structure in flexible economy
• Less people would enter into marriages. Even if
  they did, they were much more likely to be
  divorced than in the 1960s.
• Marriages were delayed and child rearing were
  also delayed or even more likely forgone.
• A smaller percentage of the population lived in a
  nuclear family household headed by a married
  couple with children.
• More percentage of the population lived in
  nuclear family with no child or even stayed
  single.

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• The Advent of Post-Traditional Society
• Culture as the symbolic universe of a society
• Time-space compression entails compression of
  symbolic universes
• Legitimation bases of symbolic universes under
  threats
• Detradionalization and the rise of
  post-traditional society
• A post-tradition social orderis not one in
  which tradition disappears - far from it. It is
  one in which tradition changes its status.
  Traditions have to explain themselves, to become
  open to interrogation or discourse. In a
  globalizing, culturally cosmopolitan society,
  traditions become forced into open view reasons
  or justifications have to be offered for them.
  (Giddens, 1994, p.23)

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• The Advent of Post-Traditional Society
• The rise of fundamentalism
• "The rise of fundamentalism has to be seen
  against the backdrop of the emergence of the
  post-traditional society. What is
  fundamentalism? It is, so I shall argue, nothing
  other than tradition defended in the tradition
  way - but where that mode of defence has become
  widely called into question. In a globally
  cosmopolitan order such a defence become
  dangerous, because essentially it is a refusal of
  dialogue." (Giddens, 1994, p.23)
• An explanation of the September 11 incidence
  Terrorism in post-traditional and global
  societies

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• Cultural logic of late capitalism in the
  information age
• Production of information and knowledge replacing
  production of manufacturing goods, especially
  heavy industrial goods, as the core of
  productivity enhancement and wealth accumulation
• The rise of mass production, mass distribution,
  mass consumption, and mass communication
• Accelerations of the commoditfication cycle
  M?C?P?C?M, i.e. Money capital ? Commodity (i.e.
  labor and the means of production) ? Production ?
  Commodity (products) ? Money

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• Cultural logic of late capitalism in the
  information age
• The commodification of culture and information
• The use value of cultural products Communicative
  values and meaningfulness
• The exchange value of cultural products Reifying
  cultural meaningfulness into cultural commodities
  and cultural industries
• Culture of signifiers of referent depth was
  replaced by self-referencing and free-floating
  signifiers, information, data, icon
• Empirically and objectively existing reality
  replaced by hyper-reality and virtual reality
• The proliferation of simulacra and the coming of
  the culture of simulacra
• The culture of heritage and tradition was
  replaced by culture of pastiche and hybrid

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• The rise of culture of consumerism
• Retreat of culture of production and spirit of
  capitalism Culture of asceticism and endurance,
  industrious, and enterprising investment

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• The rise of culture of consumerism
• Constituents of culture of consumerism
• Hedonism Consumption as desire-satisfaction was
  replaced by consumption as desire-creation.
  Desire does not desire satisfaction. To the
  contrary, desire desires desire." (Bauman, 1998,
  p. 25)
• Ephemeralism "Consumer goods are meant to be
  used up and to disappear the idea of
  temporariness and transitoriness is intrinsic to
  their very denomination as objects of
  consumption" (Bauman, 1998, P.28)

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• The rise of culture of consumerism
• Constituents of culture of consumerism
• Instantaneousness "Ideally, the consumer's
  satisfaction ought to be instant, and this in a
  double sense. Consumed goods should bring
  satisfaction immediately, requiring no delay, no
  protracted learning of skills and no lengthy
  groundwork but the satisfaction should end the
  moment the time needed for their consumption is
  up, and that time ought to be reduced to a bare
  minimum." (Bauman, 1998, p. 25)
• Fetishism From consumption of commodity to
  collection of commodity from consumption as act
  of desire-satisfaction to consumption (or
  possession) as identification of status and life
  style

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• The constitution of culture of Information
  Management and Publicity
• Rational critical citizens of the 19th century
  relegate to clients of the welfare state and
  consumers of welfare services in post WWII
• From culture-debating public to culture-consuming
  public
• The rise of cultural industry and mass media
• Commodification of culture Meanings and
  consensus are no longer constituted through
  critical-rational debates but manufacture by
  cultural industry and mass media
• The rise of the professions of public relation,
  publicity and image consultancy

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• The constitution of culture of Information
  Management and Publicity
• From culture-debating public to culture-consuming
  public
• The replacement of a reading public that debated
  critically about matters of culture by the mass
  public of culture consumers (Habermas, 1989,
  p.168)
• Going to salons and book clubs are replaced
  by going to movies, listening to radio and
  watching TV. These activities are noncommittal,
  one-sided non- participatory activities
• Debating public relegated into captive audience

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• The constitution of culture of Information
  Management and Publicity
• Rational public debates relegated to administered
  or even commercialized projects
• Public debates were taken over or even
  monopolized by
• compartmentalized intellectual minority,
  professionals and specialists in cultural
  industry and mass media
• lobbyists of organized interests,
• think tank of political parties and the state,
• specialist in information management, public
  relation and publicity, spin doctors

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Globalization and Its Cultural Consequences

• The constitution of culture of Information
  Management and Publicity
• Rational public debates relegated to administered
  or even commercialized projects
• Public debates were commercialized, standardized
  and be consumption-ready, Cultural goods had to
  be packaged into consumption items, e.g.
• literary communications were pushed aside by
  illustrative, pictorial, sensational
  representations, the constitution of TV news and
  then news in global network (CNN)
• delay reward news (public affairs, social
  problems, education, and health) were pushed into
  the background by immediate reward news
  (comics, corruption, accidents, disasters,
  sports, recreation, social events, and human
  interests). (Habermas, 1989, p. 170)

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Lecture 5 Understanding the Curriculum Content
of Liberal Studies I Society and Culture in
Informal-Global System End