The Nurturing Of A Relational Epistemology

Educational Theory

Volumn 47, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 239-260

  Thayer Bacon, Barbara J ^a  

^a BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84859911233     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1997.00239.x     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
2. I cannot identify the exact source for this term, it occurred to me as I was reading a long list of feminist writers. But three philosophers who helped me see the need for à relational epistemology were: Jean Grimshaw, Philosophy and Feminist Thinking (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986)
3. Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)
4. Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, ). This relational epistemology could also be labeled a pragmatic social feminist epistemology.1989
5. I do not wish to imply, by our choice of authors, that there are not many important contributions being made by others, all of which I have had to only reference, or leave out of this discussion. See, for example, see Robert Ennis, "A Taxonomy of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities," in Teaching Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice, ed Joan Baron and Robert Sternberg (New York: Freeman, 1987)
6. Richard Paul, Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs in a Rapidly Changing World (Sonoma, Calif.: Sonoma State University, 1990)
7. John McPeck, Critical Thinking and Education (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981)
8. Judith Butler, "Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytical Discourse," In Feminism/ Postmodernism, ed. Linda Nicholson (New York: Routledge, 1990)
9. Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson, "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," In Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism; Nancy Harstock, "The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Grounds for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism," in Discovering Reality, ed. Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983)
10. Iris M. Young, "The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference," In Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism.
11. Jane Flax, Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West (Berkeley: University of California Press, The hrackcted word is mine.1990 38.
12. My sources for this social perspective have come from: Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Double-day, 1966)
13. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1916)
14. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist, ed. Charles W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934)
15. Values in a Universe of Chance: Selected Writings of Charles Sanders Pence. (1839-1914), ed. Philip P. Wiener (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1958).
16. Barbara Thayer-Bacon, "Selves in Relation: Reconstructing Community," Paper delivered at the American Educational Research Conference, Atlanta, , ERIC ED. 363551.1993
17. Alvin Goldman, "Argumentation and Social Epistemology," The journal of Philosophy 910, no. 1 (1994), 27-49.
18. Steve Fuller, Social Epistemology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).
19. John Hardwis, "The Role of Trust in Knowledge," The Journal of Philosophy 88, no. 12 (1991), 693-708.
20. John Dewey, Experience and Nature, 2d ed. (New York: Dover, 1958).
21. In the discussion which follows concerning pragmatism and feminism, I wish to point to three key articles which helped me in my understanding: Lisa Heldke, "John Dewey and Evelyn Fox Keller: A Shared Epistemological Tradition," Hypatia 2, no. 3 (Fall 1987): 129-40
22. Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn, "Teasing Feminist Sense from Experience," Hypatia 8, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 124-44
23. Charlene Haddock Seigfried, "Where are all the Pragmatist Feminists?" Hypatia 6, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 1-20.
24. Richard Rorty, "Feminism and Pragmatism," Michigan Quarterly Reviews 30, no. 2 (1991): 231-58
25. Kaufman-Osborn, "Teasing Feminist Sense from Experience," 128.
26. John Dewey, "Experience and Philosophic Method," in, John Dewey: The Later Works. 1925-1953, vol. 1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, ): 386. This quote came to my attention through Kaufman-Osborn, "Teasing Feminist Sense from Experience," 132.1981
27. Seigfried, "Where are all the Pragmatist Feminists?" 16.
28. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980).
29. Teresa de Lauretis, ed. "Feminist Studies/Critical Studies: Issues, Terms, and Context," in Feminist Studies/Critical Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 1-19.
30. This is Seyla lienhabib's phrase, used in Situating the Self: Gender. Community, and Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1992).
31. Alison Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Sussex: Harvester, 1983): 377-382.
32. Jane Flax, "Political Philosophy and the Patriarchal Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Epistemology and Metaphysics," In Harding and Hintikka, Discovering Reality, 248-49.
33. I am not alone in drawing attention to the infant in discussions on epistemology. See: Seyla Bcnhabib, Jane Flax, Nel Noddings, and Sara Ruddick. I will be highlighting some of their major contributions to my thoughts.
34. Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon, "Constructive Thinking: Personal Voice," The Journal of Thought 30 (Spring 1995).
35. Jean Piaget, Judgement and Reasoning in the Child (Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, 1966).
36. Flax, "Political Philosophy and the Patriarchal Unconscious," 250.
37. A recent citation/discussion of Victor can be found in Jane Roland Martin, The Schoolhome: Rethinking Schools for Changing Families (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).
38. Flax, Thinking Fragments, 218.
39. Mary F. Belenky, Blythe M. Clinchy, Nancy R. Goldberger, Jill M. Tarule, Women's Ways of Knowing (New York: Basic Books, HarperCollins Publishers, 1986): 23-34.
40. Flax, "Political Philosophy and the Patriarchal Unconscious," 250.
41. Barbara Thayer-Bacon, "How the Child Reasons" in Philosophical Studies in Education (Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society, 1989), 107-16
42. Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon, "Egoccntrism ia Critical Thinking Theory," Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 7, no. 4 (May 1991): 30-33.
43. My discussion on self development draws heavily from these two articles.
44. Nel Noddings, Curing. Other sources on the notion of caring include Benhabib, Situating the Self;
45. Owen Flanagan and Kathryn Jackson, "Justice, Care, and Gender: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Debate Revisited," Ethics 97, no. 3 (1987): 622-37
46. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)
47. Catherine Keller, From a liroken Web: Separation. Sexism, anil Self (Boston: Beacon Press, ), Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking1986
48. Joan Tronto, "Beyond Gender Difference to a Theory of Care," Signs 12, no. 4 (1987): 644-63.
49. Noddings, Caring, 5.
50. Nel Noddings quoted in Barbara J. Thayer-Bacon, "The Relationship Between Caring and Critical Thinking," Educational Theory 43, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 325.
51. Ruddick, Maternal Thinking.
52. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans, and ed. H.M. Parshley; reprint, New York: Vantage Books, ). (19521989
53. Grimshaw, Philosophy and Feminist Thinking.
54. Nel Noddings, The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1992): 17-18.
55. Jane Flax points out that one of the basic tenets of objects relations theory is that in the first three years of life, the most important task we have is to establish a close relationship with our caregiver(s), so that we can establish a "core identity." Flax, "The Patriarchal Unconscious," 251.
56. Piaget, Judgement and Reasoning in the Child, 205.
57. D.W. Hamlyn, Experience and the Growth of Understanding (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 120.
58. The discussion on Piaget's egocentrism is from Thayer-Bacon, "Egocentrism in Critical Thinking Theory."
59. Sandra Harding, "Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is 'Strong Objectivity'?" in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (New York: Roudedge, 1993): 49-82
60. I use Harding to represent this perspective, but there are others, such as: Harstock, "The Feminist Standpoint." Other sources for Harding's perspective are Sandra Harding, "Is Gender a Variable in Conceptions of Rationality?" in Beyond Domination: New Perspectives on Women and Philosophy, ed. Carol C. Gould (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanhcid, 1984
61. Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), and Sandra Harding, "What is Feminist Theory?" in Knowing Women: Feminism and Knowledge, ed. Helen Crowley and Susan Himmelweit (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, The Open University, 1992): 338-55.
62. Thaycr-Bacon, "Selves in Relation: Reconstructing Community."
63. Harding, "What is Feminist Theory?" 66.
64. Two who have helped me understand this point arc: Bat-Ami Bar On, "Marginality and Epistcmic Privilege," in Alcoff and Potter, Feminist Epistemologics; and Uma Narayan, "The Project of Feminist Epistemology: Perspectives from a Nonwestern Feminist," in Gender/Body/Knowledge, ed. Alison Jagan and Susan Bordo (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1989): 256-69. See also work by Butler, "Gender Trouble, Feminist Theory, and Psychoanalytical Discourse"; Young, "The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference"; Anna Yeatman, "A Feminist Theory of Social Differentiation," in Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism; Lynn H. Nelson, "Epistemological Communities," in Alcoff and Potter, Feminist Epistemologies; and Christine Di Stephano, "Dilemmas of Difference: Feminism, Modernity, and Postmodernism," in Nicholson, Feminism/Postmodernism.
65. Bat-Ami Bar On, "Marginality and Epistemic Privilege," 97.
66. Belenky et al., Women's Ways of Knowing.
67. Flax, "Political Philosophy and Patriarchal Unconscious," 270.
68. Narayan, "The Project of Feminist Epistemology."
69. Benhabib, Situating the Self. I believe Benhabib's enlarged thinking is very similar to Lorraine Code's notion of responsibility, Lorraine Code, Epistemic Responsibility (Hanover Park, N.J.: University Press of New England, for Brown University Press, 1987). Benhabib cites Hannah Arendt, "representative thinking" and traces that back to Kant's conception of reflective judgment. Peter Elbow has written about this idea in terms of "the believing game," in Embracing Contraries: Explorations in Learning and Teaching (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
70. Flax, "Political Philosophy and the Patriarchal Unconscious," 249.
71. Harding, "Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology," 57.
72. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, D.C.: USA Research. 1983
73. Arthur Powell, Eleanor Farrar, and David Cohen, The Shopping Mall High School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985)
74. Mortimer Adler, The Paideia Proposal (New York: Macmillan, 1982).
75. Theodore Sizer, Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984
76. Theodore Sizer, Horace's School: Redesigning the American High School (Eastern: Houghton Mifflin, ) Martin, The Schoolhome. and Noddings, Challenge to Care in Schools.1992