Between Fact And Fiction: Dialogue Within Encounters Of Difference

Educational Theory

Volumn 47, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 181-201

  Conle, Carola ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0000472302     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1997.00181.x     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2d. ed. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 206.
2. Michael Connelly and Jean Clandinin, Teachers as Curriculum Planners: Narratives of Experience (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988) coined the term "personal practical knowledge. "Hans-Georg Gadamer's work on pre-judgments and the intimate connections between language, perception, action, and history is well known and presents certain limitations to shared knowledge. He also pointed to a potential for shared meaning in our ability to use language: "We are continually shaping a common perspective when we speak a common language and so are active participants in the commonality of our experience of the world"
3. Hans-Georg Gadamcr, Reason in the Age Of Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 110. For theoretical writings on the nature and the process of cultural baggage, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1975) and Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971).
4. Carola Conle, "Resonance in Preservice Teacher Inquiry," American Educational Research Journal 33, no. 2(1996): 297-325.
5. Denis Phillips, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Many Faces of Constructivism," Educational Researcher 24, no. 7 (1995): 11. Phillips cites feminist theorists, in particular Sandra Harding, "Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: 'What is Strong Objectivity?,'" in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Linda Alcoff and Eugenia Potter (New York: Routledge, 1993) and Helen Longino, Science as Social Knowledge (Princeton, N.).: Princeton University Press, 1990) to show that within the currently widespread constructivist epistemologies, the co-construction of truths is an important element. The co-construction of knowledge is highlighted from a narrative perspective by Maclntyre, After Virtue, 213, who suggests that we are never more than the co-authors of our own narratives. These perspectives reside comfortably within Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics where open-ended truths are derived through hermeneutic dialogue.
6. Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
7. Bruner, Actual Minds, 96, traces the constructivist view back to Kant and explores Goodman's elaboration of it
8. See also Maclntyre, After Virtue.
9. Peter Elbow, Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching (New York: Oxford University Press, (1986): 72-83.
10. Maclntyre, After Virtue.
11. Bruner, Actual Minds. 96-99, summarizes the history of a constructivist perspective, in which what exists is a product of what is thought. Phillips, The Good, the Bad, summarizes issues arising from a large, complex and diverse constructivist literature in education. He explains that construction may be seen as individual and cognitive as well as sociopolitical in nature. He cites Dewey's characterization of a lack of understanding of the constructivist view: "Difficulties with the problem of knowledge spring from the doctrine that knowledge is a grasp or beholding of reality without anything being done to modify its antecedent state"; John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty (New York: Capricorn, 1960), 196.
12. Philip W. Jackson, Robert Boostrom, and David T. Hanson, The Moral Life of Schools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, Inc., 1993), 270.
13. See Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992).
14. Elbow, Embracing Contraries.
15. See Jürgen Habermas, Vergangenheit als Zukunft [Past as Future] (Munich: Piper, 1993)
16. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York: The Free Press, 1990); and Alasdair Maclntyre, Whose Justice! Which Rationality! (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988)
17. Alasdair Maclntyre, Whose Justice! Which Rationality! (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988)
18. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 164
19. Walter Benjamin, "Der Erzühler, Betrachtungen zum Work Nicolaj Lesskows," in Illuminationen (Frankfort: Ed. Suhrkamp, 1969)
20. English translation by Harry Zohn, "The Storyteller," in Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 83-109.
21. Bruncr, Actual Minds, 26.
22. For a conservative view
23. see Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987)
24. for a more radical view
25. see Paolo Freire, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin and Garvey Publishers, 1985), 162.
26. Maclmyre, After Virtue, 20.
27. Gadamer, Truth and Method.
28. Hans-Geors Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, Band 3 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1987), 357; my translation.
29. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 255.
30. Maclntyre, After Virtue, 13, 17.
31. For examples see Carola Conie, Teresa Eastman, and Vangelia Nitsis, "Narrative Echoing: Resonance and Reflection in Stories of Experience" (Paper delivered at a meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, April 1991); also Carola Conle, Robin Hoffman, Michele Pinet, Loreen Teoli, and Joe Totaro, "To Know What We Know: Stories of Teaching and Learning by Four Preservice Teachers and their Instructor" (Paper delivered at a meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York. April 1996); also Carola Conle, "Learning Culture and Embracing Contraries: Narrative Inquiry through Stories of Acculturation" (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1993).
32. also Carola Conle, Robin Hoffman, Michele Pinet, Loreen Teoli, and Joe Totaro, "To Know What We Know: Stories of Teaching and Learning by Four Preservice Teachers and their Instructor" (Paper delivered at a meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York. April 1996)
33. also Carola Conle, "Learning Culture and Embracing Contraries: Narrative Inquiry through Stories of Acculturation" (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1993).
34. I often give my students a journal I wrote that tells a story about an encounter I had in the subway with a Black man and his child. I follow the story with reflections on implicit racism of the feelings described.
35. Such written dialogues are not unusual in college writing classes (see many contributions in the journal College Composition and Communication) and the debate between Elbow and Bartholomae. Elbow, "Being a Writer vs. Being an Academic: A Conflict in Goals," College Composition and C ommunication 46, no. 1 (1995): 72-83.
36. David Bartholomae, "Responses to Bartholomae and Elbow," College Composition and Communication 46, no. 1 (1993): 84-87 highlights controversial issues in this practice. Exchange of journal writing among all class members and the instructor is unusual in teacher education.
37. highlights controversial issues in this practice. Exchange of journal writing among all class members and the instructor is unusual in teacher education.
38. Pseudonyms are used through out this paper to safeguard privacy. One exception is Dan Blanchard who is preparing a coauthored work with me and other teachers.
39. Narrative thought and action are described by David Carr, Time. Narrative and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) and Bruner, Actual Minds.
40. Conle, Resonance.
41. Nicholas C. Burbules and Suzanne Rice, "Dialogue Across Differences: Continuing the Conversation," in Teaching for Change: Addressing Issues of Difference in the College Classroom, ed. Kathryn Geismar and Guitele Nicoleau (Cambridge: Harvard Educational Review, 1993), 10.
42. I use the term dialogue for both oral and written interchange. Similarly, Elbow sees some of the writing his students do as "dialogie - parts of a conversation or dialogue"
43. Elbow, "Being a Writer," 79.
44. Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, 328-29.
45. John Searlc, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) and Bruner, Actual Minds, 136.
46. Burbules and Rice, "Dialogue across Differences," 20. Janice Mouiton, "A Paradigm of Philosophy: The Adversary Method," in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, ed. Sandra Harding and M.B Hintikka (Dordrecht, Holland: Rreidel, 1984), 149-64.
47. Suzanne Rice, "Teaching and Learning through Story and Dialogue," Educational Theory 43, no. I (1993): 88.
48. Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke, 422. English quotations from Gadamer's untranslated work are my own translations.
49. Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly, "Narrative and Story in Practice and Research," in The Reflective Turn: Case Studies of Reflective Practice, ed. Donald Schon (New York: Teachers College Press, 1991), 275.
50. Richard Prawat, "Misreading Dewey: Reform, Projects, and the Language Game," Educational Researcher 24, no. 7 (1995): 19.
51. This process is illustrated in Conle, Learning Culture.
52. Bruner, Actual Minds. 33.
53. Toulmin, Cosmopolis, and similarly, the European tradition of critical theory, Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest, Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972)
54. hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit, and Jean Grondin, "Hermencutics and Relativism," in Festivals of Interpretation: Essays on Hans-Georg Gadamer's Work, ed. Kathleen Wright (Albany: S.U.N.Y. Press, 1990) have tried to make us aware of our habits of mind.
55. Earlier, Joseph Schwab, "The Practical 4: Something for Curriculum Professors to Do," Curriculum Inquiry 13, no. 3 (1983): 239-65; admonished curriculum theorists to heed "the practical" and "the particular."
56. Toulmin, Cosmopolis. 20.
57. Elbow, Being a Writer. 85;
58. Bartholomae, Responses, 86.
59. Bruner, Actual Minds. 27.
60. Conle et al., Narrative Echoing. and Conic, Resonance.
61. Michael Connelly and Jean Clandinin, Teachers as Curriculum Planners.
62. Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, Towards an integrated Curriculum: A School Resource Guide (Toronto, ON: Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, 1993); and Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, Antirdeism and Ethnocultural Equity in School Boards: Guidelines for Policy Development and Implementation (Toronto, ON: Ontario Ministry of Education and Training, 1993).
63. For example: Ontario Teachers Federation, We the Teachers of Ontario (Toronto, ON: Ontario Teachers Federation, 1992-93) and Ontario Teachers Federation, Beyond the Glitterspeak: Creating Genuine Collaboration in our Schools (Toronto, ON: Ontario Teachers Federation, 1992)
64. Jürgen Habermas, Vergangenheit als Zukunft. 127.