Constructivism, standards, and the classroom community of inquity

Educational Theory

Volumn 52, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 397-408

  Gregory, Maughn Rollins ^a  

^a MONTCLAIR STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61549131784     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2002.00397.x     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. I have articulated this dual purpose more thoroughly in Maughn Gregory: "The Status of Rational Norms: A Pragmatist Perspective," Analytic Teaching 21, no. 1 (November 2000): 43-51.
2. Peter Seixas, "The Community of Inquiry as a Basis for Knowledge and Learning: The Case of History," American Educational Research Journal 30, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 305-24.
3. This article will be cited as CI in the text for all subsequent references.
4. J.T. Koppelberg, "Objectivity and Historicism: A Century of American Historical Writing," American Historical Review 94, no. 4 (1989): 1018.
5. In Seixas's words, "it resides in the nature of the authority of the scholarly community that, although outsiders may challenge it, there is no appeal beyond it: whatever grounds there are for correctness and incorrectness, truth, or error, and plausibility or fallibility are to be found within the discourse of the scholarly community of inquiry, itself" (CI, 312).
6. Koppelberg, "Objectivity and Historicism," explains, for instance, that "Hypotheses...are verified provisionally... the results are always tentative but not worthless," 1018.
7. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1947), chaps. 7, 11, and 25.
8. Recall Paulo Freire's famous description of teachcrs-as-students in dialogue with students-as-teachers, collaborating in constructing knowledge that is expected to transform inherited norms of meaning, particularly those imposed by the oppressors. See Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum), especially chap. 2.1993.
9. Seixas conveys the concern of history-educators that students' versions of history are typically informed by assumptions reinforced by family and cultural communities that do not themselves engage in any kind of critical inquiry. Such educators see the purpose of education in history as correcting and guiding students' construction of beliefs about history.
10. Another common contention against progressive education is that it burdens students with the psychological tension between trusting knowledge and taking a critical stance toward it. But insofar as that psychological tension results from a well-grounded epistemological ambivalence or fallibilism, it is taken by constructivists as a good thing and the kind of sophistication that prepares students for entry into the disciplines.
11. Knowledge and standards regarding these kinds of issues constitute the expertise of educators, as Seixas also notes, (CI, 316-17).
12. Kieran Egan argues, for instance, that "education...requires us to learn to use as fully as possible the cognitive tools that we have inherited from our evolutionary and cultural history" Kieran Egan "Conceptions of Development in Education," 7998 Philosophy of Education Yearbook at. Last accessed 9 January 2003.
13. Dewey argues, for instance, that "there is the necessity that these immature members [of a social group)...be initiated into the interests, purposes, information, skill, and practices of the mature members: otherwise the group will cease its characteristic life"; Dewey, Democracy and Education, 3.
14. Atul Gawande, "Under Suspicion: The Fugitive Science of Criminal Justice,"New Yorker (January 8, 2001): 50-53.
15. Seixas writes that the "teachers' subject knowledge...entails a bridge between communities, extending outward toward [discipline experts] in one direction and to students in another" (Cl, 316).
16. Joyce Appleby et al., "The Future of History," In Pragmatism: A Reader, ed. Louis Menand (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 458.
17. For another example of this kind of original research, see "On the Path" (Burlington, Vermont: Vanguard Video), in which a fourth-grade class spent a year researching the town's bike path through several disciplines, and ended up publishing a booklet recognized by experts as an important contribution to local history.1996.
18. Law students, for example, are required to learn "how to think like a lawyer," or how to apply statutory and case law to descriptions of facts. This form of judgment involves as much interpretation and creativity as rational argument, and the students' judgment is evaluated by law professors who must he members of the bar themselves, and who use the standards of the bar to perform that evaluation. But by their second or third year of law school, it is expected that many students will be qualified to publish their judgments in law journals, as their entree into the community of legal scholars.
19. Different scholarly communities have established different procedures to cope with intellectual stalemate. Many disciplines have procedures for the "dis-creditation" of members or factions promoting beliefs or practices that violate norms. Many also have conventions for issuing majority opinions accompanied by dissenting opinions. What constitutes heresy in a discipline is not just a matter of how many experts disagree, but how much flexibility the norms of the discipline allow.
20. Seixas goes so far as to say that "Teachers' critiques and suggestions for improvement on students' essays...is really the same kind of activity as the academics' peer review of manuscripts....The only difference is that the teachers review students' work, whereas the scholars review one another's" (CI, 317). But this ignores the distinction that is the main point of his essay: As members of expert communities, teachers hold knowledge that is privileged in some sense over the knowledge that students have or may construct without expert guidance. Because I sanction the teacher's instrumental use of external correction, I disagree with Seixas's conclusion that the differences between teachers and experts are primarily in the communities they address - experts addressing other experts and teachers addressing students (Cl, 317).
21. Of course, this reason does not jusitfy other uses made of summative evaluations, such as competitive honors and access toeducational resources such as gifted and telented programs, AP courses, and college education.
22. In this essay I have not addressed the important issue of how particular discipline-based standards become educational objectives, which I take to be primarily a political issue. To say, as I have here, that it is important to educate children toward discipline-based standards, is not to say which disciplines should be represented in the curriculum. Very briefly, my own view is that such decisions should be the outcome of local political dialogue among educators, experts from various disciplines, citizen groups, parents, and students themselves.
23. I recommend the community of inquiry approach developed in the Philosophy for Children program of Matthew Lipman et. al.; see Last accessed 9 January 2003.