Transcript Forgotten Connections

Forgotten Connections: Human
Science Pedagogy in Canadian
Teacher Education
Norm Friesen & Tone Saevi
Oulu, May 25, 2009
Outline
• Forgetting in Education
• What is forgotten?
• Five Questions & ideas, & related cultural
sources
• The Pedagogical Relation
• Pedagogy as Aporetical
• Conclusion: Fostering pedagogical relations in
North American contexts
Teaching about Forgotten
Connections
• Course taught at Thompson
Rivers University in fall, 2007
• Based, in part, on: Mollenhauer,
K. (1983). Vergessene
Zusammenhänge: über Kultur und
Erziehung. Munich: Juventa
• Developed by Stein Wivestad
• Modified by Tone Saevi
Forgotten Connections
Course
• Taught as a part of a 2 year education program at TRU
• Students from arts and sciences
background; in practicum placements
during the course
• Main text only available in German
• Movies, fictional reading, “classic” theoretical
reading
• Course outline and summary of Mollenhauer book
online: http://learningspaces.org/forgotten
Forgotten Connections
• Forgotten Connections has not been
translated into English (although it is available
in Japanese, Spanish and Dutch, for example).
A number of the philosophical and even
fictional texts central to the course have been
out of print, in some cases for over a century
• Pestalozzi, 1911; Wilhelm Meister, 1901
Why Forgotten?
'one cannot understand the history of education
in the United States,' she says, 'unless one
realises that Edward L. Thorndike won and
John Dewey lost'
(Lagemann,
1989; 185)
Lagemann on Dewey/Thorndike
• If Dewey has been revered among some
educators and his thought has had a greater
influence across a range of scholarly domains
--philosophy, sociology, politics, and social
psychology, among them-- Thorndike’s
thought has been more influential in
education. It helped to shape public school
practise as well as scholarship about
education. (Langemann, 1989: 185)
Thorndike & his legacy
• Studying education in terms of learning as a
natural, biological process:
– How do animals learn?
– Observation, natural scientific methods
– Measurement of results or outcomes of different
sequences/training approaches.
• Thorndike “saw education as a technique for
matching individuals to existing social and
economic roles” (Lagemann, 1989: 212)
Mollenhauer on Remembering
• “Pedagogy must work at the task of cultural
and biographical recollection; it must find
through this recollection those principles
which are of lasting value; pedagogy has to
find a suitable language for this task.” (p. 10)
What has been forgotten?
• Illustrated through educational vocabularies in
different languages
• Education: used to be “process of nourishing or
rearing a child/youth” now is “"systematic
instruction, schooling or training”
• Erziehung/Bildung: "breeding" "education" or
"upbringing”/”formation” “erudition”
• Avoidance of "mastery," “management,"
"instinct," "instruction," "reinforcement,"
"condition(ing)," or "disorder."
5 Questions & Keywords
• Why do we want to have children? (Bildung and
Erziehung)
• What way of life do I present to children by living
with them? (Presentation)
• What way of life ought to be systematically
represented to children? (Representation)
• How can I help children to become self-starters and
support their growth? (Developmental Preparedness;
Self-starting)
• Who am I? Who do I want to be, and how do I help
others with their identity problems? (Identity)
Films (fiction and theory text also used)
• Why do we want to have children? (Bildung and
Erziehung) My Life as a Dog
• What way of life do I present to children by living with
them? (Presentation) Kolya
• What way of life ought to be represented to children?
(Representation) To Be and to Have
• How can I help children to become self-starters and
support their growth? (Developmental Preparedness;
Self-starting) Good Will Hunting The Wild Child
• Who am I? Who do I want to be, and how do I help
others with their identity problems? (Identity) Wit
5 Questions & Keywords for
Student Teachers
Why do we want to be with
children?
• Not a question of just professional
involvement
• A question of intergenerational “passing on”
of aspects of our society
• Part of the existential condition of the adult
relationship with the child
• passing on to children that which is good in
our lives; "pedagogical good"
Presenting a way of life to children
• Adults are simply "presenting"
to children their grown-up
"behavioural image"
unsystematically &
unreflectively.
• this continues today through
the way in which we habitually
"present" ourselves in our
most frequent but unintended
and unreflected activities
Current Examples of Presentation
Mannheim, K. (1927) The Problem
of Generations
• "The data transmitted by conscious teaching
are of more limited importance, both
quantitatively and qualitatively. All those
attitudes and ideas which go on functioning
satisfactorily in the new situation and serve as
the basic inventory of group life are
unconsciously and unwittingly handed on and
transmitted: they seep in without either the
teacher or pupil knowing anything about it."
Presentation becomes
Representation
“the groundrules through which reality is
constructed for children are not simply
transformed; instead, a whole new system of
rules emerges. The culture is no longer
presented to the child in its entirety, but only in
part: namely, via [a kind of] pedagogical
rehearsal or practise, as it would be for
someone from a foreign land. This makes certain
institutions necessary [such as] schools…
orphanages… [and] kindergartens….” (p. 50)
Representing a way of life
systematically
• deliberate and systematic
provision of depictions of
culture to children in education
• Occurs in a separate pedagogical
sphere (curriculum)
• Problems of choosing what is
appropriate/inappropriate, how
to represent
Presents planning or “technical”
problems…
The problem of representation that is to be
addressed practically and theoretically has two
sides: On the one hand, there is the question of
the right way of life that is to be represented,
and on the other, there is the question of the
most suitable way of selecting representations
of such a way of life from the 'storehouse' of
pedagogical and strategic possibilities. (p. 69)
Examples of Representation
»
Can’t reduce education
to this, though
Helping children become selfstarters and with their growth?
• children are ready to learn and develop, but
must be helped (developmental preparedness)
• Children are ready to initiate their own projects
and work on their own problems (self-starting);
the child as expressing a “call”
• human development cannot be externally
forced upon the child; the student must be
ready for education in order to be open to
what the teacher has to offer
Bollnow: Pedagogical Atmosphere
• human development cannot be externally
forced on the child; rather, there must be
something present in the child which is
oriented toward development and which asks
for help. This means that it is in the nature of
the child to want to grow. (Bollnow, 1989)
Bollnow: Pedagogical Atmosphere
• In this general atmosphere in which the
bringing up of children occurs, two important
interdependent and reciprocal directions are
discernible. One is the affective or emotional
disposition of the child toward the adult, the
other, the corresponding orientation which
the adult brings toward the child. This
suggests a double-sided perspective from
which to observe the relationship. (Bollnow,
1989)
Identity
• A relationship of the self to itself,
of the self as it is presently
perceived and understood, to the
self that the individual can or will
become
• No answers or fixed identities,
questions and challenges are key
Mollenhauer on van Gogh vs.
Dürer
allow[s] for no identification [of the viewer] with
the self that is represented. What is dominant is
the gesture of self-exclusion... The observing self
directs its gaze at a kind of vanishing point... the
[outward] conventional self is separated from
and placed in opposition to the [inner] self, and
the present is disconnected from what is possible
in the future... [I]n the process of artistic
production... identity as a problem is brought to
clear aesthetic visibility (pp. 164, 167)
Nature of Pedagogy
• Pedagogy is aporetic or paradoxical for
Mollenhauer in that it tries to describe and
strengthen that part of the child which is most
fundamentally open and indefinite and about
which nothing final or definitive can be said.
The Pedagogical Relation
• One basic question, presupposition or preunderstanding that saturates and
interpenetrates all five questions and parts of
Mollenhauer's book --and of the course
developed from it-- is the matter of the
pedagogical relation.
The Pedagogical Relation: Intro
• The pedagogical relation is the only possible
starting point for upbringing and education
(Mollenhauer 1983; Spiecker 1984, van
Manen 1991, 2002a)
• To Nohl (1970) the meaning of pedagogy lies
in the adult's attitude toward the subjective
life of the child
• The pedagogical relationship is a relation sui generis
and “the loving relationship of a mature person with
a 'developing' person, entered into for the sake of
child so that he can discover his own life and form"
(Nohl, as cited in Spiecker, 1984, pp. 203-204).
• The pedagogical relation is asymmetrical (Skjervheim
1996), an existential condition indispensable to the
pedagogical character of this relationship.
Six basic qualities of the pedagogical
relation (list)
• In the pedagogical relation the adult is directed
toward the child
• In the pedagogical relation the adult will the
pedagogical good
• In the pedagogical relation the adult is tactful
• The pedagogical relation influences the direction
of the child's life
• In the pedagogical relation the adult acts
responsibly
• The pedagogical relation comes to an end
The pedagogical relation influences
the direction of the student’s life
• The pedagogical relation has an existential character
and is important to both the adult and the child as life
experience and for identity and self. But because the
child is vulnerable and dependent due to his or her age
and life situation the relation is more important to the
child's development and future than to the adult's.
• "Our relation to a real teacher is to a person in whose
presence we experience a heightened sense of self and
a real growth and the formation of personal identity"
(Nohl 1970 in van Manen 1991,12).
• Another way of putting this is to say with
Hertwig Blankertz (also a student of Nohl's)
that "the whole of pedagogy, upbringing, has
a meaning that resists scientific categories."[1]
This means that in such a relationship, the
child is always recognized as a unique,
irreplaceable person, rather than being seen
in terms of a developmental stage or category,
or a psychological diagnosis.
Pedagogy as Being and Having: A
Student Reflection
• A skill that I recognize in George Lopez is the
ability to keep his students on track without
creating resentment. He sets a high learning
prerogative but is able to have conversations
with his students that create trust and
respect. I have always found this challenging.
When does one listen to a student’s story and
when do they end it before it evolves into a
test of endurance? Children know when an
adult or teacher is truly engaged - most can
read the level of interest.
• I confess I have at times talked with children
hoping that they would finish their story
quickly so that I could return to a task. Rarely
does the child not notice my disinterest, many
will begin to talk louder and more quickly and
others will dismally walk away, leaving me
feeling something terrible. George Lopez
demonstrates a gift for tactfulness and is able
to keep his students on track without
discouraging their desire to explore. (Anna)
Pedagogy as Aporetical
• The child would essentially remain something
more than that which is immediately
accessible to us through understanding and
explanation. Whoever would want to be an
educator, especially in view of a future that
cannot be reliably reckoned, must attempt to
enter into a relationship with this part of
children's lives which can only be intimated.
(p. 89)
Conclusion
• It [pedagogy] is not a subject for scholarly
specialization. Specialized or scientific scholarship
can easily describe triumphs of human development;
but it can only gesture towards its aporetic
character.... [And the] more finely the net of
pedagogical strategies and institutions is woven, the
greater a contribution that is expected from
pedagogy towards social progress, the more difficult
it becomes to express this [aporetic character].
(Mollenhauer, 1983, p. 88)[1]
Conclusion
• In this context, pedagogy is not a question of solving
practical problems and optimizing learning
processes, it is part of the ongoing mystery and
frailty of human existence.
• Upbringing and pedagogy are not a collection of
means or a set of techniques that can be reduced to
processes of optimization and standardization. It
remains a profoundly personal relation, with the
intention of contributing to the child’s life,
experience, and supporting the child's growth in the
direction of humanity and selfhood.
Conclusion
• It [pedagogy] is not a subject for scholarly
specialization. Specialized or scientific scholarship
can easily describe triumphs of human development;
but it can only gesture towards its aporetic
character.... [And the] more finely the net of
pedagogical strategies and institutions is woven, the
greater a contribution that is expected from
pedagogy towards social progress, the more difficult
it becomes to express this [aporetic character].
(Mollenhauer, 1983, p. 88)[1]
• In this context, pedagogy is not a question of solving
practical problems and optimizing learning
processes, it is part of the ongoing mystery and
frailty of human existence.
• Upbringing and pedagogy are not a collection of
means or a set of techniques that can be reduced to
processes of optimization and standardization. It
remains a profoundly personal relation, with the
intention of contributing to the child’s life,
experience, and supporting the child's growth in the
direction of humanity and selfhood.