Pedagogical split vision

Educational Theory

Volumn 46, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 203-216

  Fritzell, Christer ^a  

^a LUND UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 55349087242     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1996.00203.x     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. John Dewey, Education Today (New York: G.P. Putnam's, 1940), 73.
2. This does not mean, however, that I restrict the concept of pedagogy to something as narrow as, for example, "teaching method" Robert Young, Critical Theory and Classroom Talk (Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 1992), 14.
3. The widespread use of visual or optical metaphors in contexts like this may of course be criticized, but I find it appropriate here.
4. See N.L. Gage, ed., Handbook of Research on Teaching (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), and Robert M.W. Travers, ed., Second Handbook of Research on Teaching (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1973).
5. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1 (London: Heinemann, 1984) and Volume 2 (Cambridge: Polity, 1987).
6. Gert J. J. Biesta, "Education as Practical Intersubjectivity: Towards a Critical-Pragmatic Understanding of Education", Educational Theory 44, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 299-317. This article will be referred to as EPI with page numbers in the text for all subsequent citations.
7. Siebren Miedema, "The Relevance for Pedagogy of Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action", Interchange 2 (1994): 198-99.
8. This issue is discussed by Young in Critical Theory and Classroom Talk, 54-60.
9. Habermas frequently refers to Jean Piaget in seeking support for his own positions in these respects, but in the present context it seems more to the point to refer to sociocultural approaches, as in the tradition of Vygotsky. James V. Wertsch, Voices of the Mind (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).
10. John Shotter, Conversational Realities: Constructing Life through Language (London: Sage, 1993).
11. It is not always clear in such cases if reference is made to principles of structure or content according to the distinction made earlier.
12. Relational and construed vist views of learning include narrow cognitivist as well as broad culturalist positions, see for discussions of various aspects Paul Ramsden, ed., Improving Learning: New Perspectives (London: Kogan Page, 1988)
13. Lauren B. Resnick, John M. Levine, and Stephanie D. Teasley, eds., Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1993).
14. To consider pedagogy as communication can also be understood from the standpoint of communication theory as such. In that field semiotic and other perspectives may in effect approach communication as a form of learning. The process of communication is not seen as a simple transfer of information, but as a complex construction of meaning in which everyone involved will have to play an active part. Thus, to communicate is to engage in a mutual process of "teaching" and "learning, " as it were, since the meaning aimed at by one party has to be reconstructed by the other in a learning process that somehow corresponds to the one already completed by the former if the process is to lead to the desired end - mutual understanding. Fora succinct overview of communication theories, see for example, John Fiske, Introduction to Communication Studies (London: Routledge, 1990).
15. Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society (London: Heinemann, 1979).
16. Again the distinction between structure and content seems important. Thus, unlike Young (Critical Theory and Classroom Talk, 57), I am not convinced that it is necessarily a "prejudicial notion that there is some kind of gap in kind (as distinct from degree) between the child's experience and the various forms of subject matter that make up the course of study, " as was proposed by John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum (1900; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 15.
17. John Dewey, Experience and Nature (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1929), 179.
18. As Biesta observes, to see pedagogy as asymmetrical as a matter of principle precludes seeing such relations as symmetrical in certain empirical situations.
19. For instance, at present there is an obvious risk that certain forms of "constructivism" find popularity in ideological discourse disregarding the fact that no concrete construction of pedagogical form and content ever takes place in a sociohistorical vacuum. New versions of psychologism may thus also find their way into pedagogical contexts, hindering the development of critical and realist conceptions of the potentials of communicative rationality. So it should be observed that the alternatives to communicative rationality are not just forms of strategic rationality; there are also "irrational" forms of pedagogical action that may be quite functional in the system context, for instance as discussed in terms of "invisible pedagogies" by Basil Bernstein, "Class and Pedagogies: Visible and Invisible", Educational Studies 1 (1975): 23-41.
20. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987).
21. Some of these problems of abstraction and reification in the areas of the family and the schools are considered with regard to "juridification" by Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, 368 and elsewhere.
22. Habermas's discussion of the components of the lifeworld may be observed here.