Pedagogy, Praxis and Purpose in Education

C.M. Mulcahy, D.E. Mulcahy, D.G. Mulcahy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317932895
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Educational Policy

Recent years have shown the growth of federal legislation and programs having a profound impact on educational policy and practice, and a decline in reliance on broadly based educational justifications. Paralleling this development has been the emergence of well-endowed and influential private foundations, and an increase in corporate influence in shaping policy. In this volume the authors consider the discourse, rhetoric, and underlying values that sustain these developments alongside those that underlie more longstanding and competing educational theories and practices.

This volume highlights the importance of recognizing opposing conceptualizations of education—some more educationally productive than others— and their core values, approaches to student learning, strengths and weaknesses, and justification. The authors analyze and critique what Jane Roland Martin has referred to as 'the deep structure of educational thought', and seek improved educational policy and practice with particular reference to curriculum and pedagogy. It features a comparative analysis of competing discourses including autocratic control, limited personal development, and praxis.

1
Introduction

“This book was written in outrage” (Berliner & Biddle, 1995, p. xi). So began David Berliner and Bruce Biddle in the Preface to The Manufactured Crisis 20 years ago. The outrage stemmed from what they perceived as lies and the suppression and distortion of evidence about schooling by government, the business community, the press, and even some educators. Diane Ravitch presents a more recent account of this waywardness in Reign of Error (Ravitch, 2013). One unhappy outcome of this state of affairs is a lack of agreement on what now constitutes a good education and on how to proceed. With a view to articulating their distinguishing features, here we attempt to capture and examine three of the more influential forms of educational discourse surrounding these questions and what this suggests for policy and practice from this point forward.

To be more explicit, we view this work as having three purposes. The first is an exploration of competing educational values regarding the purpose and content of education and their associated pedagogies. The second is an attempt to advance theorizing around the idea of a general (or liberal) education and its implications for purpose, content, and pedagogy. The third purpose is to respond to a number of urgent and interrelated questions of policy and practice. This urgency is demanded by increasingly aberrant governmental and legislative behavior affecting school and society, its sometimes apparent disregard for serving the public good in favor of special interests, and its tendency toward an oligarchic rather than democratic form of governing. Its impact is costly in people’s lives, too, and counterproductive even as regards overall economic well-being.

Three Discourses

Increased interest worldwide in the conduct of schooling has led in recent decades to the passage and implementation of legislation having a profound impact on practice. The Education Reform Act of 1988 in England (HMSO, 1988) and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2001) in the United States are but two conspicuous examples. Paralleling this development has been an increase in corporate interest and involvement notably in the United States in shaping policy and practice and a proliferation of well-endowed and influential private foundations eager to do the shaping. These include The Thomas B. Fordham Institute (formerly known as The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation), The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation along with others. When it comes to educational policy making, governments have also become increasingly responsive to these foundations, which are generally funded by large corporations and very wealthy individuals.

Each of the three forms of discourse that we have chosen to examine reflects a distinctive perspective on the aims or purpose of education, the content of the school curriculum, teaching, and evaluation of learning. We have labeled them respectively the discourse of control, the discourse of knowledge and understanding, and the discourse of praxis. We do not say that these are the only forms of educational discourse or that each form might not be characterized somewhat differently from how we do so.

Two recent books have focused on the damaging impact of privatization associated with the ongoing frenzy surrounding so-called educational reform (Ravitch, 2013; Shapiro, 2013). Control, which is our focus of attention in looking at the first of our three discourses here, is closely related to privatization. Reflecting as it does the rise of influence by governments and strong-minded individuals in education dating back to the nineteenth century, the discourse of control is generally autocratic in tone and intent. It is highly prescriptive regarding the content of the curriculum. In the past its intentions were often portrayed as promoting social order along with economic development. Nowadays it draws its energy and focus very largely from the desire to align schooling and higher education alike with goals that are primarily economic in nature and that are manifest in a commitment to promoting private profit and national competitiveness in the economic, scientific, and technological spheres. For this reason, it departs from perceptions of purpose and content centered on personal growth where the impact of economic considerations is at least muted and where, to a greater or lesser degree, empowerment of the learner is also a goal. While not overtly promoted as such, this may also be the most dominant and politically appealing discourse of our times. It is, moreover, a discourse rooted in and shaped by forces that are less associated with democratic citizenship than with economic and other custodial or colonizing goals (see Hogan, 2010, p. 19). Revealing its identity will require us to relay key aspects of these forces and the figures sustaining them. This will be done in two stages.

First, so as to convey a sense of its origins and sustained impact, we shall identify salient features of the historical evolution of this form of discourse dating back to the beginnings of mass or popular education in the nineteenth century. We shall then turn attention to the events of the past half century or so, beginning with the launching of the Soviet satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. This unexpected event had a powerful influence on educational policy making and it set in motion the first of two excellence in education movements of the second half of the twentieth century in the United States. Second, we shall examine its expression as shaped by the increased involvement of politicians—and in due course the greater involvement of corporate interests—over much of this same time period. We shall pay particular attention to the work of The Fordham Institute and that of Chester Finn, its founding president (and since August 1, 2014, president emeritus) and a well-recognized figure who, while conveying otherwise, displays the tendency to centralize control over matters of curriculum, teaching, and school administration in the hands of supervisory authorities.

The discourse of knowledge and understanding or limited personal development, which we examine next, stands in sharp contrast to the management and command view of education and schooling exhibited by authorities—be they private, local, state, or federal—evident in the discourse of control. While less autocratic in approach, this is a discourse that relies heavily on tradition and often remains prescriptive in its orientation. It has been well expressed in the historical ideal of a liberal or general education, the sometimes progressive or liberal connotations of this ideal notwithstanding. This is perhaps the most intuitive educational discourse and the one most closely aligned with the idea of schooling as an institution intended to pass on the culture from one generation to the next. It lacks the orientation to activism or civic and other forms of practical engagement seen in the discourse of praxis considered later and its associated aspirations to democracy and social transformation. It is for this reason that we also view it as a discourse of limited personal development.

As regards pedagogy, the discourse of knowledge and understanding and its goal of heightened awareness also exhibits a different attitude from that found in the discourse of control. This is evident in its implications for teaching and for the conduct of schooling in general. It is evident too as regards the autonomy of the teacher, the place of standards, assessment, and the culture-sensitive requirements established for curriculum content. It is especially evident in the level of respect it shows towards the learner, which leads us to characterize it as a discourse that is more paternalistic than control driven, even when it is often prescriptive regarding the content of the curriculum. This is so because we view the line between control and paternalism as being determined by the level of respect shown toward the individual learner in decision making around what students might be required to learn and how they are to be generally treated. And on this point there is quite a divergence between the discourse of knowledge and understanding and the discourse of control.

In conducting our examination of the discourse of knowledge and understanding, the focus also shifts from the arenas of state and federal policy making, and that of vested interests, to the classroom and the actual work of those who spend their lives in educating the young. Special attention is given to both the historical expression of this dimension in the context of the theory and practice of general education and to one particular manifestation of the discourse of knowledge and understanding, namely, the Writer’s/Reader’s Workshop. We do not wish to suggest that the Writer’s/Reader’s Workshop is the best or the only way in which this discourse may be expressed nor that it is confined to reading and the language arts. Far from it. But the Workshop does represent an approach that has been explicitly stated, is well regarded, and elaborates on the pedagogical dimensions of the educational process that are of particular interest to us here. A further benefit of concentrating our focus upon the Writer’s/Reader’s Workshop is that it enables us to deal in concrete terms with specifics that may be relied upon to exemplify and critically analyze more general principles associated with the discourse in question. Particular attention will be given to the Workshop approach advocated by three of its most notable proponents. This is found in In the Middle (1998) by Nancie Atwell, The Art of Teaching Writing (1994) by Lucy Calkins, and Seeking Diversity (1992) by Linda Rief, and in subsequent writings by these authors.

Among the beneficial features of the approach in the Writer’s/Reader’s Workshop is the recognition given to the roles of students in the teaching/learning setting, the interactive approaches to teaching that are employed, and the freedoms allowed to students. While all of these features and others are welcomed by us as valuable approaches, they do not exhaust the full potential of the Writer’s/Reader’s Workshop. In practice, the Workshop overlooks possibilities for teaching toward social transformation, critical literacy, and education for social justice in a manner that would be consistent with the discourse of praxis. Our analysis will show, however, that there is potential in the Writer’s/Reader’s Workshop to enable it to move in those directions.

The third discourse we examine, the discourse of praxis, supports the growth of individual autonomy, participation in democratic forms of living, and social transformation for the better. It has a pronounced sense of the importance of pedagogy. While likely the least practiced of the discourses we discuss, ironically, it may come closest to the rhetoric employed across all three discourses in often glamorized efforts to appeal to a wide audience. In short, this discourse represents an extension of the discourse of knowledge and understanding in a way that allows for the expression of each person’s own conception of how personal development may be authentically expressed. It recognizes the contribution of practical knowledge and engagement with particular contexts in creating an environment in which such development flourishes. It incorporates themes pronounced in feminist theory, critical theory, critical pedagogy, and the scholarship on social justice. It also reflects the aspirations of many associated with progressive education, notably the learner-centered emphasis evident in John Dewey and the emphasis on social transformation expressed differently by Dewey, George S. Counts, Paulo Freire, Ira Shor, Henry Giroux, and Joe Kincheloe. Fittingly, it finds concrete expression in programs of service-learning characterized and labeled by Tania Mitchell (2008) as ‘critical service-learning’ as distinct from traditional service-learning. Bearing the hallmarks of Freirean pedagogy, and recognizing the centrality of praxis to the emergence of autonomy, democratic citizenship, and social transformation, here service-learning may be viewed as “service for critical consciousness” (Mitchell, 2008, p. 51, quoting Boyle-Baise, 2007) and “a revolutionary pedagogy because of its potential for social change” (Mitchell, 2008, p. 52). It is in this sense that we refer to service-learning throughout.

Organizational Approach

In structuring our discussion of the forms of educational discourse in the chapters that follow, we have broken down the overall text into four main parts. In each of the first three parts there are two chapters. The first of these chapters in each part is intended to present a more general account of one of these discourses and its chief characteristics. The second chapter in each of these three parts is intended to take particular examples of the discourse in question so as to allow for a more specifically focused analysis. Whereas we recognize that selecting a sample of each discourse for closer analysis has the unavoidable limitation that it is not fully representative of other possible samples, we believe the benefits of engaging in close analysis of specific samples outweigh the limitations. In addition, by focusing upon particular cases we are able to show what the different discourses actually amount to in practice. In the course of analyzing each of the three discourses we select, it becomes evident that the boundaries between them are not watertight, and we recognize instances of this where it is helpful to do so. A notable case in point is the contribution of Ravitch, which we view as expressing positions that range across all three forms of discourse. In the fourth and final part of the book, we draw on the preceding discussions in considering possibilities for the future.

In considering these possibilities the importance of pedagogy cannot be overstated. The term pedagogy suggests a richer and broader idea than teaching method. It recognizes mutual respect and reciprocity in the relationship between student and teacher as necessary ingredients in successful teaching. Others who have emphasized this point have been misunderstood and wrongly criticized as downplaying the importance of the academic disciplines in education. For that reason, we wish to state clearly that while we emphasize the crucial importance of good pedagogy we do not wish to devalue the academic disciplines. What do we mean by this?

We accept that there is much in adult culture to which the young ought to be introduced, just as parents may believe there is much of value that they need to pass on to their children. It is not a good idea for children to jump out of windows, and parents act properly when they convey this to their children. Similarly, it is unwise for adolescents to experiment with lethal drugs, and this rightly needs to be explained to them. Much the same may be said of the invaluable knowledge stored in the academic disciplines: there is enormous value in presenting it to the young. This is not at issue for us. What is at issue is how it is accomplished. And this is where pedagogy has an important bearing on learning.

It is often said of politics that it is the art of the possible. This is equally true of good teaching and good schooling: it is an art of the possible. Key features of this art are well explained by Shor when writing of what he calls the third idiom. The third idiom is a transformational zone in which through dialogue students and teachers come together to create a new culture. To this dialogue the teacher brings the academic culture and the student brings the everyday culture of students. This new culture or idiom is empowering because rather than alienating these cultures from one another it emerges from them both in a manner that is transformative for each. Shor makes clear that there needs to be a balance between the authority of the teacher and the input by students. Dialogue, which requires that teachers acknowledge student voices, and the “process of dialogue” (Shor, 1992, p. 86) is necessary to bring about this balance. Freire, too, recognizes the importance of teachers working in partnership with students. For him, as Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell put it, teachers must view themselves as partnering with students, that is, “see themselves as teacher-student, ready to accept that their students possess knowledge and solutions they can share with the teacher” (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008, p. 24).

We draw attention to this at the outset because a persistent theme in what follows is the challenge of presenting important knowledge, attitudes, and skills to the young in a manner that is productive. For this reason we remain cognizant throughout of the question of how it can be done and the related questions of teacher authority and respect for the student. We do not do so in order to diminish the significance of the disciplines. We do so out of a concern to question whether theories of curriculum and teaching that prize highly academic knowledge are sufficiently sensitive to the pedagogical dimension, that is, to the culture or youthful experience of the young and the respect that needs to be shown toward students if the process of education is to be successful.

Before concluding this introduction, we wish to indicate where we ourselves stand in relation to the different educational discourses we discuss. In general, as may already be evident, we favor the discourse of praxis. Although this is so, as we assess each of the forms of discourse, and even as we consider how the discourse of praxis might be more widely called into play, we aim to employ perspectives of all three discourses in conducting our analysis throughout.

The analysis we present here draws on the individual research interests of the authors and on our shared interests in progressive education and critical pedagogy.

Part I
Autocratic Control and Subjugation

2
Evolving Aspirations from Local Community to Global Village

The Beginnings

The first of the three main forms of educational discourse looked at in this chapter shows clearly the continuing rise of governmental and other centralizing influences in education. Before looking more closely at this general pattern over the past half century or so and the tendency toward control that it expresses, it will be helpful to look at how similar tendencies were evident in nineteenth and early twentieth century approaches to schooling. Commenting on this, Joe Kincheloe observed that “the development of public schooling in the United States cannot be understood” outside the desire to control the population (Kincheloe, 2008, p. 30). Especially noteworthy in this is the divergence of outlook among participants and commentators alike on the plight of the common people, the respect or lack of it toward their cultural experience, and the reluctance or willingness to impose upon them what was considered a superior or more advantageous form of education.

The concept of the school as separate from the home has existed in the United States at least since the appearance of the Massachusetts educational laws of the 1640s. As understood by early European settlers in North America, and as provided for in these laws, a primary role of the school was to teach the child to read, and to read the Bible in particular (see Tyack, 1967, pp. 14–17). This foray into what may be viewed as an early form of public schooling would be the rural model in America for over two hundred years: small, one-room schools, controlled locally and assuming a protestant heritage. As a result of mass immigration, however, by the nineteenth century in many urban centers in the United States the Lancasterian system of schooling was adopted. In an effort to minimize costs, this was an approach to classroom teaching in which, under monitoring, advanced students taught basic skills to others in classrooms that could accommodate as many as two or three hundred students.

In The One Best System, David Tyack (1974) sees the Lancasterian system as perhaps the earliest set of clear reforms or innovations in urban schooling. Although Tyack, like Diane Ravitch, conceives the evolution of urban schooling as a battle between competing educational ideologies, he views it more as a development spurred by the quest to deal with chaotic social conditions resulting from immigration that threw the existing structures of government into disarray. In Boston, he points out, in 1847 alone there was an addition of “more than 37,000 Irish immigrants to its population of 114,000” (Tyack, 1974, p. 30). In its time many considered having schools deal with social conditions of the day to be progressive as it endeavored to address the educatio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• Part I Autocratic Control and Subjugation
• Part II Knowledge and Understanding
• Part III Praxis: Autonomy, Democracy, and Transformation
• Part IV The Vocation to Become More Fully Human
• References
• Index