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p.82
The terms society, community, are thus ambiguous. They have both a eulogistic or normative sense, and a descriptive sense ; a meaning de jure and a meaning de facto.
p.89
Plato could not work out a solution for the porlbme whose terms he clearly saw.
While he affirmed with emphasis that the place of the individual in society should not be determined by birth or wealth or any conventional status, but by his own nature as discovered in the process of education, he had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals. For his they fall by nature into classes, and into a very small number of classes at that. Consequently the testing and sifting function of education only shows to which one of three classes an individual belongs. There being no recognition that each individual constitutes his own class, there could be no recognition of the infinite diversity of active tendencies and combinations of tendencies of which an individual is capable. There were only three types of faculties or powers in the individual’s constitution. Hence education would soon reach a static limit in each class, for only diversity makes change and progress. (pp. 89-90)
pp.92-93
To insist that mind is originally passive and empty was one way of glorifying the possibilities of education. If the mind was a wax tablet to be written upon by objects, there were no limits to the possibility of education by means of the natural environment. And since the natural world of objects is a scene of harmonious “truth,”this education would infallibly produce minds filled with the truth.
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Of the proponents of rhetoric as the central form of discourse, the most articulate in the ancient world was Isocrates, who was opposed but admired by Plato. (p.13).
After Bacon, Descrates, and scientific thining began to dominate the intelletual arts, Giambattista Vico rose to defend the rhetorical-humanistic tradition taht I have just sketched. (p.15)
Bruner’s article life as narrative , he mentioned that the behind philosophy of narrative is constructivism.
Interestingly, Giambattista Vico’s name appeared Kinchelo and Fisher’s book both, which can be considered as the second evidence.
Another interesting point is that he use Richard Mckeon, who is the teacher of Richard Rorty,
as in “For although arguemtn is a calculation and not a story, the plot or myth of a tragedy is its argument. in chapter 8.
check out this web site for knowing Rorty,education, and philosophy
In p.6 of login, Dewey defines the meaning of “inquiry”
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John Dewey (1916) argued decades ago, view knowledge as an entity complete in itself unconnected to other forces (p.7).
John Dewey well understood the relationship between teaching as democratic work and the teacher as researcher. In the Sources of a Science of Education (1929) he argued that one of the most important roles of a teacher was to investigate pedagogical problems through inquiry. Writing of the ‘teacher as investigator,’ Dewey saw teachers as the most important inquirers into the successes and failures of the school – he did not see how viable educational research could be produced in any other way. Not only did Dewey’s teacher investigations lead to knowledge about the school, but they led to good teaching (Dewey, 1929: 46-8). p.38
Constructivism rejects such a dualism and posits an alternative to the Western traditions of realism and rationalism (p.49).
Giambattista Vico p.49 – Constructivism draws upon an anti-Cartesian tradition emerging from the New Science of Giambattista Vico in the early 1700s and extending to the phenomenology, critical theory, and women’s epistemology of the twentieth century.
Advocates of critical action research must walk a tightrope here. While avoiding step-by-step models of the proper methods of educational action research, they must at the same time be sufficiently concrete and specific to provide guidance to teachers who might have no conception of how to begin their lives as practitioner researchers. (p.133)
Phillips represents a host of social science and education researchers who express great discomfort with eclectic qualitative research. If what counts as knowledge, he asks, is always shaped by power, values, and interests and if objectivity is always socially agreed upon, what is left to protect us from relativism? If Individuals can invent their microcosms, how can researchers distinguish truth from fiction? We have gone far enought. In our rejection of positivism we have thrown out the baby with the bathwatehr and in the process, they argue, we have done away with the concept of a mistake. (p.160).
In many ways, the eclecticists argue, positivists are like religious fundamentalists in their belief that there is only one way to heaven. And that one way, my dear friends and true believers, is the straight and narraw path of positivist validation (p.160).
Validation is thus rendered more problematic than many quantitative-empirical researchers would prefer. There is less certainty and more fallibility in survey data-gathering, correlational studies, and control treatment experiments than educational researchers would like to admit. (p.162).
To a critical constructivist teacher researcher, validity means much more than the traditional definitions of internal and external validity usually associated with the concept. Positivism has traditionally defined internal validity as the extent to which a researcher’s observations and measurements are true descriptions of a particular reality; external validity has been defined as the degree to which such descriptions can be accurately compared to other groups. (p.168).
As we cultivate this closeness we make use of our must powerful ways of knowing – our subjectivities and intuitions. We use our images and symbols to help explain the phenomenon we have grown to know so intimately. Our intuition is more than an occasional flash of insight; it is a tool which allows us to see the forest, and trees, and the wood and the simultaneous, multidimensional relationships among them. Research which promotes such insight, which can be used to improve our practice, is of a higher quality than that which holds internal and external validity but tells us little that we didn’t already know or could use in our professional lives. (p.170).
This is where we begin to redefine validation, where we recognize that our assimilations are sometimes constructed not so much by ourselves but by dominant idelogocal and discursive forces within the society. (p.175).
Consciousness itself is a part of this web and a key aspect of critical complex research involves the nature of these connections, their effects and their evolution into systems (P.177).
New forms of researcher reflection are demanded, as issues of validity become entangled with the historical, cultural, and linguistic situatedness of the inquirer and with the nature of the relationship between researcher and researched. (p.178).
In highquality critical democratic teacher reesarch, inquirers must possess knowledge of these issues in order to produce worthy knowledge. The empowerment in question involves not only political and pedagogical dynamics but cognitive aspects as well. (p.178).
Understanding that all knowledge is an interpretation, critical constructivist researchers devote much attention to the interpretive world of hermeneutis. No rethinking of validity can take place outside of a context informed by hermeneutics. (p.179).
Objectivism posits that a fixed, transhistorical, transcultural framwork exists which researchers must use to determine validity. Relativism maintains that all concepts of truth and reality are contingent on a particular cultural or theoretical matrix. Hermeneutics attempts to avoid these bi-polar extremes of epistemology, as it promotes a dialogical notion of knowledge production. The hermeneutic dialogue cannot be objective and universal; it is always shaped by tacit forces making a complicated process even more complex. But this is the hand humans are dealt, and, consequently, we must deal with it. (p.180).
Such dynamics often tie interpretation to the interplay of larger social forces (the general) with the everyday lives of individuals (the particular).
Teahcer’s role : Pedagogical, social, historical, and philosophical.
managerial, and technicial.
As Paulo Freire (1970) argued decades ago, we have to account for social, political, and economic contradictions in our pedagogical efforts to confront and change the world, to become transformative teachers. The complex task of discerning the implications of research for action is part hermeneutics, part self-awareness, part consciousness-raising, and part development of ethical radar. (p.184).
As Phil Carspecken (1996, 1999) contends, these critical dynamics are central to the act of knowledge production. (p.186).
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Part two
Language and reality
For Vygotsky was plainly a genius. Yet it was an elusive form of genius. In contrast to, say, Piaget, there was nothing massive or glacial about the flow of his thought or about its development. Rather, it was like the later Wittgenstein: at times aphoristic, often sketchy, vivid in its illuminations. (p.72).
The usual way to begin such an inquiry is by reference to three traditional aspects of language. The first, the syntactic, rests on the criterion of well-formedness, or conformity to the grammatical rules that are hypothesized to govern the language…
The second aspect that provides criteria for assessing language phenomena is meaning.
which leads directly to the third criterion:the pragmatic one. It is presumed to deal with use. Traditionally, pragmatics was supposed to deal with how people used their language, in contrast to how the language was structured syntactically and what it meant semantically. (p.82).
The brunt of my argument in the opening chapters was that the “reality” of most of us is constituted roughly into two spheres: that of nature and that of human affairs, the former more likely to be structured in the paradigmatic mode of logic and science, the latter in the mode of story and narrative. The latter is centered around the drama of human intentions and their vicissitudes; the first around the equally compelling, equally natural idea of causation. The subjective reality that constitutes an individual’s sense of his world is roughly divided into a natural and a huma one. (p.88).
Where the story of creation is pitted against the theory of evolution (p.88).
So Goodman’s answer lies in drawing a distinction between “worlds” and “versions.” He remarks that a “world is not the version itself; the version may have features – such as being in English or consisting of words – that its world does not” (P.34).
We become increasingly adept at seeing the same set of events from multiple perspectives or stances and at entering the results a, so to speak, alternative possible worlds. (p.109).
We even create bricks-and-mortar realities like jails to deal with people who fail to confirm to the felicity condictions on certain forms of promising. (p.110).
Emotion is not usefully isolated from the knowledge of the situation that arouses it. Cognition is not a form of pure knowing to which emotion is added (whether to perturb its clarity or not). And action is a final common path based on what one knows and feels. Indeed, our actions are frequently dedicated to keeping a state of knowledge from being upset (as in “autistic hostility”) or to the avoidance of situations that are anticipated to be emotion-arousing.
It seems far more useful to recognize at the start that all three terms represent abstractions, abstractions that have a high theoretical cost. The price we pay for such abstractions in the end is to lose sight of their structural interdependence. At whatever level we look, however detailed the analysis, the three are constituents of a unified whole. To isolate each is like studying the planes of a crystal separately, losing sight of the crystal that gives them being (pp.117-118).
The genuine and significant differences between art and science are compatible with their common cognitive function; and the philosophy of science and the philosophy of art are embraced within epistemology conceived as the philosophy of understanding…Since both science and art consist very largely in the processing of symbols, an analysis and classification of types of symbol systems…provides an indispensable theoretical background. (pp.146-147).
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Interview tips.
The key is in zeroing in on someone who intrigues, inspires, fascinates, or perplexes you.
Deciding on who you want to interview may be a matter of answering some of the following questions: who would you like to learn more about? who has been a model of how to live life for your? who do you know that has overcome or learned some important things from his or her particular life experience? who would you like to know better? whose life is a mystery to you? Whose are you most fascinated by? p.27
Let people know exactly what your purpose is, in advance. Be clear about whether the interview is only for your own research purposes, or for them and their families, or for possible publication. (p.28)
Always respect the wishes of the people you are interviewing. Request permission to use the tape recorder and tell what the recording will be used for (P.28)
Do as much background preparation on the person’s life as possible. (p.29).
The more you can let your person know you know exactly what he or she is talking about, the smoother the interview will flow. (p.29).
Be sure you know your equipment and that it is operating properly (p.29).
Everybody probably has their own spot where they feel most comfortable, too. (p.30)
record your own introduction on the tape, something like.
“This is July 1, 1996, and I am interviewing Jane Clark at her home in Cornish, Maine, My name is Robert Atkinson and this is tape 96.7a. This can also serve as a final double check on your equipment before you actually begin the interview. Then, label side A of the tape with the same information, and you are ready to begin. Be sure you do the same thing for side B of the tape and for tape 2, if you use two tapes. (P.30) .
After you’ve explained your approach to the person, you might start out by saying something like, “where would you like to begin the story of your life?”
If you use yes-no questions, you may have to follow them up with reason-why questions..
What you really want to get at is the meaning behind the event. p.31
An interview is like a conversation, but it is not a conversation. An interview should be informal and loose, like a conversation, but in an interview, the other person is the one doing the talking. You are the one doing the listening. Your knowledge and your voice should remain in the background, primarily providing support and encouragement. (p.32).
A good guide is reassuring (p.33).
First, consider the storyteller first
Second, safeguard the storyteller’s rights
Third, make your objectives clear; the aims, purpose, and agenda of the interviewer
The specific questions to ask, those that would get at what you really want to know about the person, are secondary and almost straightforward. The difficult part of the interview itself is a personal, or rather interpersonal, style that invites the person telling the story to do so on a deep, feeling level. (p.40).
More helpful questions are the open-ended descriptive, structural, and contrast questions, which encourage more thoughtful, developed answers. A descriptive question would be one that gives a “grand tour” response, such as, “how would you describe your childhood?” (p.41).
It is important to know before you begin what you ultimately want to find out about the person, but the less structure a life story interview has, the more effective it will be in achieving the goal of getting the person’s own story in the way, form, and style that the individual wants to tell it in. (p.41).
It is more often the case that the fewer questions you ask in a life story interview, the better. (P.42).
Experience is the meaning maker in our lives. However we face life, either directly, sideways, or with our back to it, this is how we are shaped by life. Our experience of the world around us is what change us. (p.45).
It is always better to end a life story interview with a few questions that help us reflect back over the whole of our lives. Taking a look at our lives as a whole will give us a better understanding of what the major themes and influences of our lives have been. (p.51).
Perphas most important, when you have actually completed the life story interview, you will know firsthand what this experience is like, that it really is one of the most powerful person-to-person interactions possible. (p.53).
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Preface
Acrisis in the theory of meaning and rationality.
Without imagination, nothing in the world could be meaningful. Without imagination, we could never make sense of our experience. Without imagination, we could never reason toward knoweldge of reality. (P.IX)
Kant thus claims to solve the skeptical problem of how we can know that our concepts correspond to objective reality as follows: What we can know of the external world is what we have received from it, as filtered through and structure by our consciousness. We cannot know things as they are in themselves but only as they appear for us, subject to the universal structuring activity of human consciousness. (p.xxviii).
As I have noted, there is an overly rigid dichotomy between the conceptual and the bodily. Concepts are products of our understanding, which is formal, spontaneous, and rule-governed; sensations are bodily, given through our sensibility, which is material, passive, and lacking in any active principle of combination or synthesis. (p.xxviii).
