DOCSLIB.ORG

Full Text in Diva

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Full Text in Diva THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION Series Editor: A.G. Rud EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN EDUCATION AND EMBODIED EXPERIENCE Joacim Andersson, Jim Garrison, and Leif Östman The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education Series Editor A. G. Rud College of Education Washington State University Pullman, WA, USA [email protected] The Palgrave Pivot series on the Cultural and Social Foundations of Education seeks to understand educational practices around the world through the interpretive lenses provided by the disciplines of philosophy, history, sociology, politics, and cultural studies. This series focuses on the following major themes: democracy and social justice, ethics, sustainability education, technology, and the imagination. It publishes the best current thinking on those topics, as well as reconsideration of historical figures and major thinkers in education. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14443 [email protected] Joacim Andersson • Jim Garrison Leif Östman Empirical Philosophical Investigations in Education and Embodied Experience [email protected] Joacim Andersson Jim Garrison School of Health Sciences Learning Sciences & Tech Örebro University Virginia Tech Örebro, Sweden Blacksburg, VA, USA Leif Östman Teacher Education Uppsala University Uppsala, Sweden The Cultural and Social Foundations of Education ISBN 978-3-319-74608-1 ISBN 978-3-319-74609-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74609-8 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935182 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland [email protected] PREFACE The social sciences dominate discourse within the field of education. The field of social sciences dislocates disciplines such as philosophy to the hin- terlands of humanities along with religion, history, literary studies, and the arts. At the center reside the STEM subjects of science, technology, engi- neering, and mathematics, or increasingly STEMH, where the “H” stands for health, not humanities. Similarly, quantitative and qualitative methods dominate educational research, with philosophy sometimes assigned the role of examining the “foundations” of the social sciences or maybe being the source of ethical concerns perhaps with some rare mention of aesthetics. This work brings philosophy to the heartland of empirical educational research. It does so by emphasizing the primacy of social practice in the philosophies of John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein. We will draw on Dewey to emphasize the embodiment of these practices. In doing so, we oppose some of the most deeply entrenched prejudices not only of education and educational research, but also of modernity, including most of modern philosophy. First and foremost, this work challenges the assumption that philosoph- ical concepts and insights cannot directly guide empirical educational research. Further, by developing a philosophically informed research method, we will show why it is nonsense to separate the humanities from the sciences. We also wish to overcome the false fragmentation of culture into the sciences, aesthetics, and ethics. Within the primacy of human practice, including educational practice, these can only serve as useful dis- tinctions that we must not allow to harden into cultural diremptions. v [email protected] vi PREFACE Finally, we seek to rescue philosophy itself from the false turn it took in early modernity when it abandoned the love of wisdom for an exclusive infatuation with epistemology. We believe that if we had a rich theory of embodied learning, we might not need epistemology as traditionally prac- ticed. Education and educational research itself has become so beholding to the modern enchantment with epistemology that it can only look at learning through a disembodied epistemological lens. Chapter 1, “Dewey, Wittgenstein, and the Primacy of Practice,” exam- ines the intersection between the philosophy of John Dewey and the later Wittgenstein by exploring their emphasis on primacy of practice. This chapter accentuates the primacy of practice in comprehending the acquisi- tion of sociolinguistic meaning (e.g., forms of life, language-games, mean- ing as use, etc.), the rejection of private language, antifoundationalism, contextualism, and antirepresentationalism. Taken together, these ideas provide what we call a first-person perspective that renders the products and the processes of learning plainly visible to nuanced methodological observation. Chapter 1 develops this perspective primarily in terms of the later Wittgenstein. W. V. O. Quine (1969), Richard Rorty (1979), and Stephen Toulmin (LW 4: vii–xxii) help establish the similarity between Wittgenstein and Dewey. This chapter provides the philosophical theoreti- cal framework for the method of practical epistemological analysis (PEA) that we introduce in Chap. 3. In Chap. 2, “Distributed Minds and Meanings in a World Without a Within: Embodiment and Creative Expression,” we exposit ideas found in Dewey that were either underdeveloped or unexplored by Wittgenstein. These ideas include the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, creative action, aesthetically expressive meaning, embodiment, embodied mean- ing, and how minds and meaning distribute wherever they occur throughout a world without withins. We introduce William James’s “radical empiricism,” a version of which Dewey explicitly embraces (See MW 3: 158ff.). This chapter also appeals to the work of the sociologist Hans Joas’s (1996) conception of “the body schema” as well as the work of Mark Johnson (2007). Both Joas and Johnson rely heavily on Dewey in developing their own ideas. We will also depend on Chris Shilling’s (2008, 2012) “body pedagogics” along with Dewey and James to better understand the learning of “body techniques” (Mauss 1973). These ideas, along with some aspects of Deweyan transactionalism, provide the philosophical framework for constructing two analytical models. The first, the situated epistemic relations model (SER model) introduced in [email protected] PREFACE vii Chap. 3, is used to identify how learners form SERs during acts of bodily transposition. The second, the situated artistic relations model (SAR model) introduced in Chap. 4, is used to identify how learners form SARs during acts of creative artistic expression. Chapter 3, “A Method and Model for Studying the Learning of Body Techniques: Analyzing Bodily Transposition in Dinghy Sailing,” intro- duces the empirical method of PEA used to study a learner’s coordination of experiences in a specific context. In the work that first introduced PEA, Per-Olof Wickman and Leif Östman (2002a, b) relied primarily on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, although they regularly mentioned Dewey in developing their empirical research method. This method has been widely used in the years since its introduction (see Östman 2010; Andersson 2014; Andersson and Maivorsdotter 2016, among dozens more). Establishing a closer connection between Wittgenstein and Dewey in Chap. 2 allows us to further refine this method. Here, the first-person perspective is presented in terms of Dewey’s transactionalism that is used to provide a primarily transactional understanding of PEA. After presenting the empirical analytical method of PEA, we present the analytical model of SER that allows us to empirically study the acquisition of SERs using SER variables and SER indicators. This model also provides a transactional interpretation. The SER model provides descriptions and explanations regarding learning processes and products from the data col- lected using PEA. If a researcher’s theoretical framework, analytical method, and the analytical model used to create explanations, prediction, control learning, and such are the same, they will tend to just confirm each other. The perfect alignment of theory, method, and model may easily lead to confirmation bias wherein one finds only what they are looking for. That is why we separate the PEA method from the
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Contributions of John Dewey and Louise M
    THE EMERGING PARADIGM OF READER-TEXT TRANSACTION: CONTRIBUTIONS OF JOHN DEWEY AND LOUISE M. ROSENBLATT, WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATORS by Elizabeth H. Roth Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction Jim Garrison, Chair Patricia P. Kelly Jan Nespor Warren P. Self Robert C. Small, Jr. December 4, 1998 Blacksburg, Virginia Key words: philosophy of education, teaching of literature, literary theory, John Dewey, Louise M. Rosenblatt The Emerging Paradigm of Reader-Text Transaction: Contributions of John Dewey and Louise M. Rosenblatt, With Implications for Educators Elizabeth H. Roth (ABSTRACT) This dissertation will trace the emerging paradigm of transaction as a model for the dynamics of the reading process. The paradigm of transaction, implicit in John Dewey's writings as early as 1896 in "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," was originally described in terms of "interaction" between organism and environment. Only in 1949, in the twilight of his career, did Dewey definitively distinguish between "transaction" and "interaction," ascribing a mutually transformative character to the former process. In Knowing and the Known, Dewey and co-author Arthur F. Bentley (1949) proposed adoption of a wholly new "transactional vocabulary" as a precision tool for a new mode of scientific inquiry, whereby inquiry itself was recognized as a species of transaction between inquirer and observed phenomena. Even before the publication of Knowing and the Known, literary theorist Louise M. Rosenblatt had applied an implicitly transactional model of the relationship between organism and environment to the relationship between reader and text.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Epistemology and Online Knowledge Exchange
    Social Epistemology and Online Knowledge Exchange Paul Daniel Matthews A statement submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of DPhil Faculty of Environment and Technology, University of the West of England, Bristol October 2015 Abstract This document summarises the submitted research, which has investigated online knowledge exchange and related it to the philosophical field of social epistemology. The broad aims have been: firstly to investigate what social epistemology theory can offer in the way of guidance and evaluative frameworks for the design of knowledge systems; and secondly, to determine what the empirical study of knowledge exchange platforms can tell us about knowledge as emerging from online practice. The submitted work consists of six papers that are a mixture of review/position papers and reports of empirical investigation. These have been published in information science journals and conference proceedings. However, following the established tradition of information science, the work is positioned as being cross-disciplinary in ambition. After introducing the submitted papers and the inspiration for the research, the main theoretical positions of the research are outlined and justified. These were a naturalised social epistemological position, inspired by Alvin Goldman, but widened to a situated and systems-oriented view. The naturalised view of epistemology allows for consideration of evidence from psychology, and here some key theories in social and cognitive psychology are outlined. Finally, as the subject is human- computer-human interaction, the sociotechnical setting is established. Further, the main platforms of study in the empirical work — social question answering systems — are introduced and described.
    [Show full text]
  • Methodological Transactionalism and the Sociology of Education Daniel A
    Methodological Transactionalism and the Sociology of Education Daniel A. McFarland, David Diehl and Craig Rawlings (Stanford University) Abstract: The development and spread of research methods in sociology can be understood as a story about the increasing sophistication of tools in order to better answer fundamental disciplinary questions. In this chapter we argue that recent developments, related to both increased computing power and data collection ability along with broader cultural shifts emphasizing interdependencies, have positioned Social Network Analysis (SNA) as a powerful tool for empirically studying the dynamic and processual view of schooling that is at the heart of educational theory. More specifically, we explore how SNA can help us both better understand as well as reconceptualize two central topics in the sociology of education: classroom interaction and status attainment. We conclude with a brief discussion about possible future directions network analysis may take in educational research, positing that it will become an increasingly valuable research approach because our ability to collect streaming behavioral and transactional data is growing rapidly. INTRODUCTION In recent years Social Network Analysis (SNA) has become increasingly common in numerous sociological sub-disciplines, the result being a host of innovative research that tackles old and new problems alike. Students of the sociology of knowledge, for example, use networks of journal co-citations as a novel method for tracking the diffusion of new ideas through the academy (e.g., Hargens 2000; Moody 2004). Political sociologists are drawing on SNA to understand the dynamics of collective action (Diani 1995; Tarrow 1994). Organizational sociologists use formal and informal work networks to study organizational learning (Hansen 1999; Rawlings et.al.
    [Show full text]
  • It's Only Wrong If It's Transactional: Moral Perceptions of Obfuscated
    It’s Only Wrong If It’s Transactional: Moral Perceptions of Obfuscated Exchange Forthcoming in American Sociological Review Acknowledgments: The authors gratefully acknowledge the comments and contributions provided by Aleksander Ellis, Alan Fiske, Sarah Harkness, Linda Molm, Martin Reimann, Reihan Salam, three anonymous reviewers, the ASR Editors, and participants of the Innovation and Creativity Workshop at UCLA Anderson School of Management, the 2016 Southern California Symposium on Network Economics and Game Theory at UCLA, the Organizational Behavior Seminar at Stanford GSB, the Duke University Department of Sociology Colloquium, and the 2017 American Sociological Association Regular Session on Economic Sociology. Oliver Schilke The University of Arizona, Eller College of Management Gabriel Rossman UCLA, Department of Sociology Funding: Preparation of this article was supported in part by a Research Small Grant from the Center for Leadership Ethics, Eller College of Management to the first author and a UCLA Senate Faculty Research Grant to the second author. Keywords: obfuscation, economic sociology, bribery, legitimacy, vignette experiments Corresponding Author: Gabriel Rossman, UCLA, Department of Sociology, 264 Haines Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1551, USA Phone: 310-206-8904, Fax: 310-206-9838, E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT A wide class of economic exchanges, such as bribery and compensated adoption, are considered morally disreputable precisely because they are seen as economic exchanges. However, parties to these exchanges can structurally obfuscate them by arranging the transfers so as to obscure that a disreputable exchange is occurring at all. In this paper, we propose that four obfuscation structures—bundling, brokerage, gift exchange, and pawning—will decrease the moral opprobrium of external audiences by (1) masking intentionality, (2) reducing the explicitness of the reciprocal nature, and (3) making the exchange appear to be a type of common practice.
    [Show full text]
  • Explicating Emotions
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by D-Scholarship@Pitt EXPLICATING EMOTIONS by Andrea Scarantino B.S., Economics, Bocconi University, 1994 M.S., Philosophy of the Social Sciences, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1997 Ph.D., Economics, Universita’ Cattolica, 2000 M.A., Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 2005 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of University of Pittsburgh in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2005 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Andrea Scarantino It was defended on July 20, 2005 and approved by Paul Griffiths, ARC Federation Fellow and Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Queensland (Co-Director) Peter Machamer, Professor of Philosophy, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh (Co-Director) Bob Brandom, Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh Ruth Millikan, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut (Outside Reader) ii Copyright © by Andrea Scarantino 2005 iii EXPLICATING EMOTIONS Andrea Scarantino, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2005 In the course of their long intellectual history, emotions have been identified with items as diverse as perceptions of bodily changes (feeling tradition), judgments (cognitivist tradition), behavioral predispositions (behaviorist tradition), biologically based solutions to fundamental life tasks (evolutionary tradition), and culturally specific social artifacts (social constructionist tradition). The first objective of my work is to put some order in the mare magnum of theories of emotions. I taxonomize them into families and explore the historical origin and current credentials of the arguments and intuitions supporting them.
    [Show full text]
  • Contextual Adaptation. Human Functioning As Dynamic Interaction: a Social Work Perspective
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Doctorate in Social Work (DSW) Dissertations School of Social Policy and Practice Spring 5-13-2013 Contextual Adaptation. Human Functioning as Dynamic Interaction: A Social Work Perspective Naomi B F Pollock University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations_sp2 Part of the Social Work Commons Recommended Citation Pollock, Naomi B F, "Contextual Adaptation. Human Functioning as Dynamic Interaction: A Social Work Perspective" (2013). Doctorate in Social Work (DSW) Dissertations. 35. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations_sp2/35 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations_sp2/35 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Contextual Adaptation. Human Functioning as Dynamic Interaction: A Social Work Perspective Abstract Despite the recent development of theories in the social sciences that define human development and functioning in an integrated, nuanced and complex manner, the social work concept of “person-in- environment” remains outdated and limited. This is in part due to the “person” and “environment”--the biological, psychological, and social environments--being defined in distinction from one another. In order to remain current and effective in arguing on behalf of a clear professional voice in the field, social workers must not only engender but also promote a fundamental practice perspective that addresses complexity. A reformulation of “person-in-environment” can help social workers more fully realize the desire to unite under the common professional mandates requiring that both a “person-in-environment” perspective and a full biopsychosocial picture be taken into clinical accounts. To meet this aim I develop the concept of contextual adaptation, a new definition of person-in-envir“ onment” reliant on tenets of nonlinear dynamic systems theory, specifically chaos theory.
    [Show full text]
  • Theoretical Underpinnings of European Union
    IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 20, Issue 1, Ver. III (Jan. 2015), PP 29-33 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. www.iosrjournals.org Theoretical Underpinnings of European Union Maneesha Tripathi*1 1Ph.D. Scholar, Department of Political Science, JamiaMilliaIslamia, New Delhi Abstract: The aftermath of Second World War offered a prospect of utter misery and desolation. Europeans felt hopeless and exhausted. The objective of peace went hand in hand with desire to ensure that Europe was able to get back on its feet economically after 1945. The proponents of European integration advanced theories for integration that involved gradual surrendering of sovereignty to a supranational entity. The ECSC was the first step towards European Union. The post 1945, regionalism emerged out of gradual process of integration from a six member organization to today 27 members European Union; from an inter-governmental organization to a supranational entity.The paper looks at the theoretical framework of European integration. Keywords:European Union, Functionalism, Liberalism, Realism, Regional Integration. I. Introduction The institutional architecture and the multi-level governance make European Union a reference point or a yardstick for regional integration experiments. EU is the only example of regional integration which has endeavoured for political integration along with economic integration where approach has been supranational. It was set up with the aim of ending the frequent wars within Europe. Extreme form of nationalism had devastated the continent. European integration was seen as the remedy to create a no war zone within Europe. This process began with the formation of council of Europe in1949, the European steel and coal community in 1950.
    [Show full text]
  • Hilary Putnam (1926–2016): a Lifetime Quest to Understand the Relationship Between Mind, Language, and Reality
    c 2016 Imprint Academic Mind & Matter Vol. 14(1), pp. 87{95 Hilary Putnam (1926{2016): A Lifetime Quest to Understand the Relationship between Mind, Language, and Reality David Leech Anderson Department of Philosophy Illinois State University, Normal, USA Hilary Putnam was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. His peers have called him \one of the finest minds I've ever encountered" (Noam Chomsky) and \one of the greatest philosophers this nation has ever produced" (Martha Nussbaum). Standard obituaries covering his \life and times" are available in the mass media.1 This essay 1See, e.g., the New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/arts/hilary- putnam-giant-of-modern-philosophy-dies-at-89.html), the Guardian (www. theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/14/hilary-putnam-obituary), or the Huffington 88 Anderson will focus exclusively on the legacy he has left from his published works and from the way he has modeled a philosopher's life. Hilary Putnam was a towering figure in philosophy of language, phi- losophy of mind, and in metaphysics, and special attention will be paid (below) to those contributions. His influence, however, extends well be- yond those boundaries. He has published works in dozens of different research areas, of which the following is only a small sample. Early in his career he contributed (with Martin Davis, Yuri Matiyasevich, and Julia Robinson) to the solution of Hilbert's 10th problem, a major result in mathematics which, together with other related accomplishments, would have warranted an appointment in a mathematics department. While his central focus was not ethics and political philosophy he advanced a sus- tained attack on the fact-value distinction { a central presupposition of logical positivism and a position that he thought continued to influence research in many areas to deleterious effect.
    [Show full text]
  • {FREE} Does the Center Hold? an Introduction to Western Philosophy
    DOES THE CENTER HOLD? AN INTRODUCTION TO WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 6TH EDITION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Donald Palmer | --- | --- | --- | 9780078038372 | --- | --- Does the Center Hold? An Introduction to Western Philosophy 6th edition PDF Book The Nicene definition established the meaning of faith which Christians were to hold and its defenders had recourse less to philosophical or theological speculation than to the Scripture as they understood it. No CD Included. Ideas do not have origin in experience…we approach the world with ideals: truth, beauty, the good; in addition to the value-concepts. In addition, intrigued by the manner in which Christian theology was drawing on nineteeth- and twentieth-century European philosophies, pockets of so-called Buddhist-Christian dialogue began to emerge and fully blossomed in the post-censorship era after This means, especially, that even while a crisis may exist its nature may not be what it is commonly held to be. Jacobi — The universe is a cosmos—a beautiful, well-ordered, perfect whole. Should that arrangement end, each of the pair returns to his or her originally discrete individuality and attendant rights. As for utilitarianism, they admired its consequentialist ethics that used an empirically derived cost-benefit analysis to determine what would bring maximum happiness or pleasure for society as a whole. Paper Cavalier Italia via United States. At the time, Descartes was working on The World , a study he thought would revolutionize the study of physics. Usually ships within 4 to 5 days. Book Deals via United States. My comment: yet it is clear to imagine ways in which synthetic judgments may be universal and necessary: our very formation may be so in attune with the universe that certain facets of our perceptual-cognitive systems may render synthetic contentful judgments that are always true universal and represent the very nature of the universe necessary.
    [Show full text]
  • Perception and Scientific Observation: a Challenge to the Assumption of Objectivity
    University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Winter 1971 PERCEPTION AND SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION: A CHALLENGE TO THE ASSUMPTION OF OBJECTIVITY RAYMOND E. RAINVILLE Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation RAINVILLE, RAYMOND E., "PERCEPTION AND SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION: A CHALLENGE TO THE ASSUMPTION OF OBJECTIVITY" (1971). Doctoral Dissertations. 939. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/939 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RAINVILLE, Raymond E., 1940- PERCEPTION AND SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION: A CHALLENGE TO THE ASSUMPTION OF OBJECTIVITY. University of New Hampshire, Ph.D., 1971 Psychology, general University Microfilms, AXEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan I ___________ _ r_______ ___________________ J THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED PERCEPTION AND SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION: A CHALLENGE TO THE ASSUMPTION OF OBJECTIVITY by RAYMOND E. RAINVILLE A THESIS Submitted to the University of New Hampshire In Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate School Department of Psychology December, 1970 This thesis has been examined and approved. Thesis director, Frederick Jervis, Professor of Psychology RaymoA6 Erickson,Professor of Psychology Eugene Mills, Professor of Psychology Cecil Schneer, Professor of Geology ft oM/jcb Robert Watson, Professor of Psychology / J /ia m Duane Whittier, ‘Associate Professor of Philosophy TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES..................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES...................................
    [Show full text]
  • Dewey's Transactional Constructivism
    Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2002 Dewey’s Transactional Constructivism RAF VANDERSTRAETEN Constructivism is very influential in education. However, its underlying ideas and assumptions have not yet been critically analysed sufficiently. In this paper, I argue that John Dewey’s analyses of the transaction of organism and environment can be read as an account of the construction processes that lie beneath all human activity. Dewey’s work anticipates, if it does not explicitly articulate, much of what is important and interesting about constructivist epistemology and constructivist pedagogy. The paper is devoted to a reconstruction of the formulation of this transactional constructivism, and to an analysis of its consequences for a constructivist understanding of communication and education. INTRODUCTION There is much ado about constructivism in education. Constructivism informs a wide variety of reflection on information processing and cognition, on student learning and classroom teaching methods. Educational researchers, curriculum developers, school administrators and teachers have appropriated the constructivist label in one or other of its various manifestations. Some critical observers have argued that this perspective is invoked to counterbalance the overwhelming dominance in schools of content-oriented, test-driven methods. As such, construc- tivism has ‘attained the status of political correctness’(Phillips, 1997, p. 154). But it can also be argued that questions about how construction actually takes place offer an important starting point for thinking about education and instruction, since the way persons generally construct understandings and misunderstandings may be a good guide for how these processes take place in classrooms and other educational contexts. Until now, the philosophical and epistemological foundations of constructivism have received comparatively little attention.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Bringing the World Back In: Revolutions and Relations Before
    Bringing the World Back In: Revolutions and Relations Before and After the Quantum Event Jairus Victor Grove University of Hawai’i at Manoa [Work in Progres. Please Do Not Cite Without Permission [email protected]] 1 “All matter, indeed, is capable of entertaining thought.” -Thoreau, 1845 “The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.” -James Clerk Maxwell Introduction In 2013 I was invited to attend a symposium at the University of Sydney on quantum theory. The invite was an accident of sorts. Someone else had to withdraw from the event and a seat needed to be filled. I had never been to Australia and James Der Derian was organizing it. I was only a couple of years into my career, and travel and room and board were being covered. What could go wrong? I accepted immediately. Then the panic set in. Everything I knew about quantum theory came from Billy Bob Thorton’s courtroom monologue in the Coen Brother’s The Man Who Wasn’t There. I had been very invested in the ways complexity theory could be folded into the social sciences, but my understanding of psychics began and ended with the phrase ‘Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle’. I had two months to read everything I could before walking into a room of experts, and this is what I did in the intervening weeks. I was happy to find that nearly all of the major contributors to quantum physics had written collections of philosophical essays.
    [Show full text]