J Go Ioe Edd Thesis Arial?

A CRITICAL REALIST EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE CATHOLIC NOTION OF ‘SENSUS FIDEI’ AS KEY TO CRITICAL THINKING IN CONFESSIONAL CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE PHILIPPINES Johnny C. Go A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education UCL Institute of Education University of London June 2015 2 ABSTRACT The research question is: ‘Is critical thinking compatible with confessional Catholic religious education as practiced in the Philippines? If so, in what way can it be taught to students and promoted in the classroom?’ Adopting an epistemological approach to critical thinking, I conducted a survey among 1,068 teachers in our network of fifteen Catholic schools in the Philippines and found that a significant percentage of our teachers—especially those teaching religious education—exhibited a level of epistemic cognition considered incompatible with critical thinking. Drawing from critical realism and the Catholic notion of the believer’s ‘sense of the faith’ (sensus fidei), I proposed that critical thinking be understood not only as (a) the expression of one’s commitment to judgemental rationality to serve as the basis for one’s motivation for critical thinking, but also as (b) the exercise of one’s sensus fidei to guide the actual practice of Catholic religious critical thinking in particular. Based on these two conceptions, corresponding to the disposition and competence components of critical thinking, respectively, I recommend two initial concrete steps to promote the practice of Catholic religious critical thinking in our confessional religious education classrooms in the Philippines: (a) the inclusion of a staff development programme that promotes epistemic self-awareness especially vis-à-vis a Catholic religious epistemology; and (b) the identification of the development and exercise of sensus fidei as an explicit learning objective and its implications on curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. 235 words 3 DECLARATION I hereby declare that, except where explicit attribution is made, the work presented in this thesis is entirely my own. Word count (exclusive of appendices, list of references and bibliography): 50,825 words 4 CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ 2 DECLARATION ........................................................................................................................ 3 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES ...................................................................................... 6 REFLECTIVE STATEMENT ................................................................................................. 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................... 15 FRONTISPIECE ...................................................................................................................... 16 ABBREVIATIONS OF OFTEN-CITED SOURCES ...................................................... 17 CHAPTER ONE: CRITICAL THINKING IN CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION .................................. 19 THE RESEARCH TOPIC AND ITS RATIONALE .................................................................. 20 CRITICAL REALISM AS UNDER-LABOURING PHILOSOPHY ..................................... 22 Critical realism as transcendental and immanent critique ...................................................... 23 Implications for methodology ................................................................................................................. 25 OUTLINE OF THE STUDY ........................................................................................................... 25 CONTRIBUTIONS AND LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY ................................................... 27 THE PHILIPPINE CONTEXT ....................................................................................................... 29 Catholic schools in the Philippines ..................................................................................................... 30 Philippine Catholic religious education ............................................................................................. 31 THE NATURE OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION .......................................................................... 32 Critical openness to the world ............................................................................................................... 33 Lack of a contemporary Catholic philosophy of education .................................................... 34 TENSIONS IN THE MISSION OF CATHOLIC SCHOOLS ................................................. 35 Tension 1: The mission of education and evangelization ....................................................... 35 Tension 2: Religious formation as catechetical instruction and religious education 37 Tension 3: The Catholic school as an academic and ecclesial institution ..................... 46 CHAPTER TWO: AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CRITICAL THINKING ................................................................ 49 TOWARDS A NORMATIVE ACCOUNT OF CRITICAL THINKING ................................ 50 The two-components conception of critical thinking .................................................................. 50 Two misconceptions about critical thinking .................................................................................... 51 The contextual nature of critical thinking ......................................................................................... 56 The normative nature of critical thinking .......................................................................................... 57 AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CRITICAL THINKING ................................. 58 Epistemic cognition ..................................................................................................................................... 59 Epistemic development ............................................................................................................................ 61 EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF TEACHER EPISTEMOLOGIES ............................... 72 Research purpose and questions ....................................................................................................... 73 The research design .................................................................................................................................. 75 Data generation ............................................................................................................................................ 81 Presentation and analysis of data ....................................................................................................... 82 Discussion of findings and implications ........................................................................................... 87 5 CHAPTER THREE: A CRITICAL REALIST ANALYSIS OF CRITICAL THINKING ............................................................. 92 WHAT CRITICAL REALISM DOES AS UNDER-LABOURER ......................................... 93 THE FOUR CORE INSIGHTS OF CRITICAL REALISM .................................................... 93 Insight 1: The anti-modernist/postmodernist assertion of existential intransitivity ..... 94 Insight 2: The anti-positivist notion of depth stratification ....................................................... 98 Insight 3: The anti-reductionist idea of emergent stratification ......................................... 102 Insight 4: The anti-determinist theory of open-systemic causality .................................. 107 THE SHARED CRITIQUES OF CRITICAL REALISM AND CHRISTIANITY ............ 114 CRITICAL THINKING AS THE EXPRESSION OF THE COMMITMENT TO JUDGEMENTAL RATIONALITY ............................................................................................. 117 Insight 5: The anti-relativist commitment to judgemental rationality .............................. 118 Judgemental rationality and critical thinking ............................................................................... 120 Critical realist analysis of critical thinking ..................................................................................... 125 CHAPTER FOUR: CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS CRITICAL THINKING AS THE EXERCISE OF SENSUS FIDEI ............................... 130 THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION, RECEPTION, AND SENSUS FIDEI ................. 131 Revelation and the need for reception ........................................................................................... 132 The Catholic notion of the sensus fidei ......................................................................................... 136 CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS EPISTEMOLOGY AS CRITICAL REALIST ......................... 153 Sensus fidei and the possibility and necessity of judgemental rationality .................. 154 Possible objections to a critical realist Catholic religious epistemology ....................... 164 The sensus fidei and a critical realist Catholic religious epistemology ......................... 166 CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS CRITICAL THINKING AS THE EXERCISE OF SENSUS FIDEI ....................................................................................................................... 168 The sensus fidei of the individual believer ................................................................................... 169 Sensus fidei as a mode of knowing ................................................................................................

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