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Pragmatism, Pedagogy, and Community Service Learning

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Pragmatism, Pedagogy, and Community Service Learning Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning Spring 2016, pp.5-15 Pragmatism, Pedagogy, and Community Service Learning Scot D. Yoder Michigan State University In this paper I explore Goodwin Liu’s proposal to ground the pedagogy of service-learning in the epistemol - ogy of pragmatism from the perspective of a reflective practitioner. I review Liu’s epistemology and his claim that from within it three features common to service-learning – community, diversity, and engagement – become pedagogical virtues. I then describe an international community service learning program and use it to illustrate the role that these virtues might play. I then argue that Liu’s proposal needs to be amended in two ways: he needs to use his pragmatism to rethink the connection between epistemology and pedagogy, and he needs to acknowledge the normative implications of his approach by aligning pragmatism with crit - ical approaches to community service learning. In “Knowledge, Foundations, and Discourse: virtues might manifest themselves in practice. In the Philosophical Support for Service-Learning,” final two sections I critique Liu’s framework in light Goodwin Liu (1995) proposes that we ground the of both philosophical reflection and my experience pedagogy of service-learning in the epistemology of with the international community service learning pragmatism. His article is largely theoretical, howev - program. The goal is to better understand both the er, developing pragmatism as an alternative to the tra - benefits and limitations of adopting pragmatism as a ditional representational model of epistemology and pedagogical framework for community service learn - only briefly exploring the implications for communi - ing. While I am sympathetic to his proposal to adopt ty service learning. Noting this limitation, he claims pragmatism, I argue that his proposal needs to be that he had “gone only halfway starting from one amended in at least two respects. In the third section end” (p. 16), and invites others with more practical I argue that Liu needs to use his pragmatism to recon - experience to assess the relevance of his alternative ceptualize the relationship between epistemology epistemology. In this paper I accept Liu’s invitation, and pedagogy. More specifically, because he presents exploring his proposal from the standpoint of a pragmatism as an alternative epistemology and reflective practitioner, a philosopher, and pragmatist makes pedagogy dependent upon epistemology, he who has developed and taught international commu - unnecessarily limits the way in which community, nity service learning programs. Over the past decade diversity, and engagement might be realized as peda - I have led or co-led eight educational programs in gogical virtues. In the fourth section I argue that Liu Costa Rica ranging from 1-week alternative spring needs to more fully develop the normative implica - break experiences to 8-week study abroad programs tions of pragmatism and explicitly align his pragmat - involving intensive language instruction and immer - ic epistemology with a “critical” approach to com - sion, ethics coursework, and community service munity service learning (Mitchell, 2008) that entails learning. 1 These programs have provided a signifi - a social justice goal. cant base of practical experience with which to explore the implications of Liu’s pragmatic frame - Theory: Liu’s Pragmatic Epistemology work for community service learning. and the Pedagogy of Community Because I view this as an exercise in reflective Service Learning practice, I will tack back and forth between theory and practice. In the first section I review Liu’s episte - A number of other authors in this and other journals mological framework of pragmatism and its implica - have noted the connections between pragmatism and tions for the pedagogy of community service learn - community service learning (Crabtree, 2008; Deans, ing, paying particular attention to his proposal that 1999; Esquith, 2000; Green, 2000; Hatcher, 1997; we adopt community, engagement, and diversity as Hatcher & Erasmus, 2008; Lisman, 2000; Saltmarsh, pedagogical virtues. In the second section I describe 1996; Tucker, 1999), and others have argued that the a study abroad program that incorporates community increased attention being given to values, service, service learning, using it to illustrate how these community, and citizenship in American liberal edu - 5 Yoder cation is evidence of the influence of a shift toward foundation, but revisable standards based on shared pragmatism in higher education (Kimball & Orrill, norms internal to the conversation itself. Third, 1995). What makes Liu’s work unique is the combi - because knowledge is the product of a conversation nation of two important claims: (a) that pedagogy with internal standards, knowledge itself is always must depend on epistemology, and (b) that we need a contextual and provisional. Finally, when knowledge paradigm shift in the epistemological frame of refer - is understood as the product of conversation, the goals ence away from the representationalism that currently of inquiry themselves change. As an epistemological undergirds higher education toward pragmatism. framework, Liu claims, “pragmatism shifts our epis - Liu argues that traditional academia operates with - temological aspiration from finding objective truth to in a representational epistemological framework sustaining a meaningful conversation” (p. 12). 2 inherited from Western post-Enlightenment philoso - According to Liu, adopting the epistemological phy, but largely traceable back to René Descartes. framework of pragmatism has important pedagogical This framework is based on the twin pillars of foun - implications for teaching and learning. In particular, dationalism and dualism. Foundationalism is seen in three features associated with service learning – the various attempts to find and articulate “the epis - community, diversity, and engagement – become temological bedrock from which we can make a pedagogical virtues. Though he does not explain pre - claim to knowledge with absolute certitude” (p. 6). cisely what he means by pedagogical virtues, it is The aspiration is to construct a system of certain clear in this context that Liu is referring to desirable knowledge from these foundations using established attributes of educational programs or institutions rules of inference to justify new claims to knowledge. rather than attributes or excellences of individual Dualism is seen in the separation of the knower from teachers. In other words, his pedagogical virtues are the objects of knowledge. Liu traces this back to institutional, rather than individual virtues. In this he Descartes’ separation of mind and body, which priv - seems to be referring to community, diversity, and ileges the mind – the “I” that thinks or knows – over engagement as virtues in much the same way Rawls the body – the external world that is to be known. (1971) referred to justice as “the first virtue of social This dualism generates the problem of skepticism. institutions” (Rawls, 1971, p. 3). 3 Within this representational framework the problem Community becomes an important virtue because of knowledge becomes the problem of knowing it serves as a bulwark against a free-fall toward rela - whether our inner representations accurately repre - tivism that is often imagined to be the inevitable result sent, mirror, or correspond to objects in the external of abandoning the certitude of foundationalism. world. “How,” Liu asks, “is knowledge of the outer, Relativism is constrained because conversation does external world possible when our only certain knowl - not happen alone but in community. “Individuals in edge is of our inner ideas and sensations?” (p. 6). isolation are not entitled to legitimize knowledge; that In contrast, the epistemological framework of prag - function is reserved for communities in which truth matism rejects representationalism and its pillars of claims are continually tested and contested in the con - foundationalism and dualism. Drawing on the work of text of discourse” (p. 14, emphasis in the original). pragmatists Richard Rorty and Cornell West, Liu Referencing a personal correspondence with argues that ideas are not representations of reality, but Benjamin Barber, Liu uses the metaphor of a valley to tools for coping with it. “[P]ragmatism,” he writes, suggest how the virtue of community addresses the “centers our epistemic concerns not on how well slippery slope of relativism. Rather than thinking of knowledge claims can circumvent skepticism but on the slope as a mountain with absolutism at the top and how well they ‘work’ in particular contexts for partic - rampant relativism at the bottom, the metaphor ular people with particular purposes” (p. 12). Within encourages us to see the slope as the sides of a valley. this framework the problem of knowledge becomes Epistemologically the valley represents not so much not one of accurately representing reality , but of justi - the bottom of the slope, but the middle ground fying claims to know something in a particular context. between the surrounding peaks of absolutism and rel - Understanding the problem of knowledge as one of ativism. “Philosophically, we locate this middle by justification rather than representation has several understanding knowledge in the context of conversa - implications. First, it means that knowledge is under - tion, and pedagogically, we find it by putting teaching stood as a product of discourse.
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