Pragmatism

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Pragmatism
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Action -gt -gt -gt Destiny

• Sow an action, reap a habit.
• Sow a habit, reap a character.
• Sow a character, reap a destiny.
• William James

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(1) Role of Experience

• Primacy of experience
• Participation in (not using) language, history,
  world
• Situated contextual historical
• Linking of fact/value
• Knowledge is constructed

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Experience and Learning

• Tree figures School and Society

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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

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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 gt danger of separating
  experience school acquisition
• Dewey, Experience Education, 1916, p. 9

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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...

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(2) Context/Purpose

• Earl Kelley Car on road / outside window
• Adelbert Ames
• Rotating trapezoid
• Mis-scaled room
• Ihde Necker cube

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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 Pasteurs death-bed words
  Bernard is right the pathogen is nothing the
  terrain is everything.
• Oliver Sacks, Awakenings, p. 228

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Lewis Thomas Disease Theories

• Evil spirits witch doctors
• Bad humours leeches
• Germs antibiotics
• Off-center throw pots, health food

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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

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(3) Social Construction

• Social embedding
• Importance of community
• Special meanings
• Recognition of difference
• Shift power relations

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Discourse Community Formulations

• 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

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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

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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

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Feyerabend

• relations change as a consequence of changes in
  economic and social relations in larger
  communities
• P. Feyerabend, Against Method

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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

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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

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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

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(4) Construction Process

• Perspectivity (no understanding w/o
  presupposition)
• Part-whole-part movement
• Dialectic process (no end point to understanding)
• Knowing v. Knowledge

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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

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Deweys 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

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Transmission Model of Theory Formation
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Social Construction Model of Theory Formation
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Constructivism as philosophical position

• 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

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Constructivism as a method for inquiry

• Critique of null hypothesis testing
• Generalization as rhetorical step
• Control group is the group you dont control J.
  Zacharias
• Ecological invalidity as an axiom of cognitive
  psychology Cole, Hood, McDermott
• Formalization critique

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Meaning Making

• EQ 8 Plato v Wittgenstein
• Black History Show
• Fish community gt interpretation gt
  author/reader/text
• Koestler Beyond Reductionism
• Rorty
• John Berger

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Vygotsky

• Activity precedes learning
• Development as a product of education
• Personal invention / social convention
• Cultural mediation
• Material and symbolic cultural tools

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Similarities in Piaget Vygotsky

• Importance of intersubjectivity in social
  interaction
• Point of departure for social influence child's
  understanding
• Cooperation in cognitive activity

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Piaget versus Vygotsky
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Reader Response

• 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

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Pedagogical Implications

• 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