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Pragmatism

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Page 1: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Pragmatism

Page 2: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Action -> -> -> Destiny

Sow an action, reap a habit.

Sow a habit, reap a character.

Sow a character, reap a destiny.

–William James

Page 3: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

(1) Role of Experience

• Primacy of experience

• Participation in (not using) language, history, world

• Situated; contextual; historical

• Linking of fact/value

• Knowledge is constructed

Page 4: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Experience and Learning

• Tree figures –School and Society

Page 5: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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

Page 6: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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 => danger of separating experience & school acquisition

– Dewey, Experience & Education, 1916, p. 9

Page 7: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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...

Page 8: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

(2) Context/Purpose

• Earl Kelley: Car: on road / outside window

• Adelbert Ames; – Rotating trapezoid– Mis-scaled room

• Ihde; Necker cube

Page 9: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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 Pasteur’s death-bed words: “Bernard is right; the pathogen is nothing; the terrain is everything.

–Oliver Sacks, Awakenings, p. 228

Page 10: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Lewis Thomas: Disease Theories

• Evil spirits: witch doctors

• Bad humours: leeches

• Germs: antibiotics

• Off-center: throw pots, health food

Page 11: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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”

Page 12: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

(3) Social Construction

• Social embedding

• Importance of community

• Special meanings

• Recognition of difference

• Shift power relations

Page 13: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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

Page 14: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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

Page 15: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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

Page 16: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Feyerabend

relations change as a consequence of changes in economic and social relations in larger communities

–P. Feyerabend, Against Method

Page 17: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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

Page 18: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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

Page 19: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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

Page 20: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

(4) Construction Process

• Perspectivity (no understanding w/o presupposition)

• Part-whole-part movement

• Dialectic process (no end point to understanding)

• Knowing v. Knowledge

Page 21: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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

Page 22: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Dewey’s 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

Page 23: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Transmission Model of Theory Formation

Constructions DerivedConstriuctions

Phenomena Phenomena

Transmission

Page 24: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Social Construction Model of Theory Formation

Community

Insights of "Experts"

Insights ofLearnersSharing

Attending to Phenomena

Page 25: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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]

Page 26: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Constructivism as a method for inquiry

• Critique of null hypothesis testing

• Generalization as rhetorical step

• Control group is the group you don’t control [J. Zacharias]

• Ecological invalidity as an axiom of cognitive psychology [Cole, Hood, & McDermott]

• Formalization critique

Page 27: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Meaning Making

• EQ 8: Plato v Wittgenstein

• Black History Show

• Fish: community => interpretation => author/reader/text

• Koestler: Beyond Reductionism

• Rorty

• John Berger

Page 28: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Vygotsky

• Activity precedes learning

• Development as a product of education

• Personal invention / social convention

• Cultural mediation

• Material and symbolic cultural “tools”

Page 29: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Similarities in Piaget & Vygotsky

• Importance of intersubjectivity in social interaction

• Point of departure for social influence: child's understanding

• Cooperation in cognitive activity

Page 30: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

Piaget versus VygotskyIssue Piaget Vygotsky

Locus of intersubjectivity Individual work withindependence and equality

Joint problem-solving betweenpartners on each others’ ideas

Model of effective socialinteraction

Cooperation between equals whoattempt to understand each othersviews through reciprocalconsideration of their alternativeviews

Joint problem-solving withguidance by experts

Aspects of cognitive development Logico-mathematical problems Development of skills forinformation and application ofculturally developed tools

Age when social influence oncognitive development begins

Middle childhood Beginning: Individual> Social;Later: Social>Individual

Peers vs. Adults Interactions with adults do notlead to cognitive developmentbecause of unequal powerrelations

Ideal partners unequal in skillsand understanding

Cooperation Provides information forbecoming aware of differingperspectives and findingequilibrium

Use of joint problem-solvingprocess to expand understandingand skills

Cognitive Development Individual Individual appropriation of socialprocesses

Page 31: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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

Page 32: Pragmatism. Action -> -> -> Destiny Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. –William James

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