If possible, relate something in the Bredo reading to something you learned elsewhere (e.g., a class, a book, a movie, your experience). If this is completely foreign, then write about something interesting/surprising that you learned while reading Bredo.
Amy Jefferson: While reading Bredo’s article, I was reminded of physicist Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory commenting that, “geology is not a real science.” Maybe the comment spurred from geology being considered less hard than sciences that deal with real world data such as physics, biology or chemistry. The Bredo article was similar to different types of scientists commenting on other fields of scientific study since it described criticisms and challenges of the views from one philosopher to the next, each believing their thoughts or beliefs to be the most accurate.
ReplyDeleteSo I wonder…For a view to exist does there also need to be an opposing view?
Lauren: While reading and processing the Bredo article, I couldn’t help but think about topics that were covered in my Master’s classes. The first was the whole idea of the externalist and how much it related to Urie Broffenbrenner’s ecological model of human development. In summary, it theorizes that humans are closely tied to different levels of their environment and that inherently is closely related to the way that human develops. I think this relates to the way externalist state that the way we construct knowledge is through external forces like one’s environment.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, thinking about whole bodies of knowledge and the way people learn, we can weigh all theories of the way human’s construct knowledge and their need to exist together. In my science methods classes, we learned that the way teachers should go about teaching science is in a holistic sense keeping in mind three facets: the body of science content, scientific inquiry or process skills, and the nature of science as a field. Like Bredo argues we must not isolate theories, all of these science facets need to be given their instructional time. Furthermore, I do see loose ties between the world of science knowledge and constructing knowledge as a whole. Externalist theories ties to the body of content for the fact that the content is passed down from an outside authority as what knowledge should be taught. Internalist theories ties to the nature of science because it discusses the field of science is framed by qualities that lie within science itself. Lastly, dialectical and transactional relations tie to process and inquiry skills because they require the learner to be active participants.
Lastly, I could see how externalists and internalists ways of thinking could be tied to direct instruction and project/problem-based learning. Direct instruction supports a very externalist mindset. The teacher is in complete control of the body of knowledge and how it's represented to the students. Problem/project-based learning relies on the student processing and building the information using internal processes.
Elizabeth Severson-Irby: I read Foucault’s Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason in undergrad and I remember concluding (either agreeing with his conclusion or taking liberties from what he wrote) that it seems the more we define and categorize things the more exclusive and divisive we become. For example, and relating to his book, in the Middle Ages those who by today’s standards would be diagnosed with a mental illness were often respected for their different thinking or were at the very least able to carry on living the way the wanted to. Fast forward to times where we started labeling these differences in processing and thinking and more and more people became institutionalized and shunned from society. For some they were able to get the help the needed, but for a lot of people they were taken from their families to live very solitary lives away from society. Now, we are in a place where we are trying to redefine parameters and change social constructions in order to be more inclusive. The question becomes has labeling helped us to be more inclusive or has it created ways to further divide us. This also leads to questions in research. Can we conduct meaningful research without clearly defined parameters, meaning does labeling allow us to be more specific with research, or would the research be more meaningful if it took situations more in context? It seems pragmatism is attempting to answer the latter part of the question by placing an “emphasis on situational uniqueness” by using general patterns instead of boldly defined principles (p. 25). This seems to be the more holistic way of research because it tries to take into account all aspects of a situation, the participants, and the context. It also allows for more fluidity between situations and across time gaps.
ReplyDeleteMitchell Waters - As I read the Bredo article, I found myself relating the differences between “internalism” (personality psychology) and “externalism” (behavioral psychology) to the works of Alfred Adler. Adler’s work on an organism’s psychic life posited that there is no individual without the context of community. Adler’s work was very experimental or “external” by nature. Adler wrote about the “effects of environmental contingencies on behavior regardless of individual differences.” (p. 6). Adler wrote that man’s compulsion toward community was a prime factor in mankind’s universal inferiority complex. Man does not have free will because mankind’s constant problem-solving activities determine an individual’s course of life. Adler also posits that morality is socially based and that there is no absolute “right” or “wrong.” These ideas, although I am not sure I wholeheartedly agree with Adler’s position, relate closely to Bredo’s writing on External relations.
ReplyDeleteAs I read the Bredo article, I found myself comparing the philosophies classical positivism and parts of logical positivism to the concept of dualistic thinking. During one of my early semesters in the doctoral program, it was a concept we discussed. As a teacher and Counselor Education, one of our primary goals to help students transition from dualistic thinking to higher level thinking. For dualistic thinking, everything is split into two parts (right vs. wrong, left vs. right, polar opposites). If one were to identify a type of thinking at classical and logical positivism were I would place them in dualistic thinking. The foundation of classical positivism is knowledge (thinking) based on what is positively and directly observed. While later in the text this is questioned - I would continue to argue that as future educators we want our research to branch further than classical positivism. This is desired, similar to how dualistic thinking should be decreased. I am unsure as to if the thought is far fetched. But the philosophies and concepts created thoughts and caused me to compare/contrast the two concepts.
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ReplyDeleteAmy Taloma: Surprisingly, reading the Bredo article has actually overlapped a lot with what I have learned in an Adult Development class that I took for my Master’s degree and also with the Adult Learning and Development course I am taking this semester. I had to keep checking the syllabus to make sure I was doing the correct reading for this class. The big overlapping topic is how we acquire knowledge. In my Adult Learning and Development course, we are talking about this exact thing in terms of behavior, cognition, social cognition, and humanism. I saw these same themes in the reading with externalists, internalist, and interactionism. In my last adult development course as a Masters student, my favorite topic that I related deeply to was hermeneutics. To help us learn the hermeneutic circle, our professor passed out these tiny wooden pieces and asked us to theorize what it was. No one in the class knew. Then, he took out a guitar and then asked us what the object was. It was the piece that attaches the string to the instrument at the bottom. My mind completely learns in this way. I need context and to see the whole picture to understand one small part, or my role, which is why I have always retained the hermeneutics circle. Plus, it’s fun to say! I can see how these can also be an orientation for which we conduct research. Your theoretical leaning will play a larger role in how you conduct your own research.
ReplyDeleteThrough exploring the philosophies of education research, I recognized specific aspects of each theory had been taken and used in our contemporary view of research. It is almost impossible to discuss research, especially educational research, without the concepts of soft/ hard and pure/applied surfacing. These dichotomies started with the division of external and internal relations and the debate over the source of knowledge. We can also see the lines being drawn between quantitative and qualitative research. Standardized survey, which we still use today, came about during positivism. We can see techniques from our current idea of quantitative research start to expand. Postpositivism criticizes the idea of proving a scientific law. Their criticism results in the idea we can only falsify statements because things may not act similarly in the future. This reminds me of null hypothesizes. We only reject(falsify) or fail to reject, we do not prove a statement even if our data supports the statement. Pragmatism expressed a similar idea. The test of theories is whether they hold up in the future, we cannot assume they are proven. Bredo quotes Giddens(1985), “there may be no universally valid foundation of knowledge… (b)ut procedurally the cannons of rationality- that is to say the mods of reaching warranted conclusions- are the same everywhere”. This idea from the critical theory philosophy parallels our idea of the scientific method. In our discussion last class we discussed the idea that you may not agree with something but you can take away bits from the bigger picture. You can see that idea when looking at our contemporary idea of research.
ReplyDeleteThis post is by Kori Nicoali
DeleteMartinique Sealy
ReplyDeleteI found the “politicized activities” that Bredo explains to be very interesting. I especially was interested in his description of John Locke forming empiricism. I recall learning about John Locke in developmental psychology and his notion of children being born with a blank slate and empty mind that is then formed by their experience, but I never recognized the importance of these claims in a historical context. John Locke believed that knowledge comes from experience of concrete objects and events. He explains that true knowledge begins with human existence. Since humans do not know any facts prior to this existence, these political wars are inevitable and have been going on since the very first humans, one can assume. Of course education, which shapes the path of future humanity, will be highly politicized because each theory has it’s own agenda depending on the beliefs of the individuals within it.
I also liked reading Kant’s interpretation which aims to infuse both internal and external epistemology explanations. Specifically the quote, “thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind”. Yes, there is something innate about humanity that cannot be ignored, but it is both our individual and collective experiences that truly bring meaning to these sensations. The internal and external knowledges are dependent on one another. There are concepts that the majority of humanity can agree on, such as gravity, life, death, etc., but when a concept is truly unknown individuals will divide and differ in beliefs. This reminds me of the importance of statistics and formulating evidence that aligns with ones own beliefs in order to influence the beliefs of others.
Kristian Robinson -
ReplyDeleteGoing in to this article, I felt shakey (at best) on the different philosophies of educational research. This article was definitely helpful, but the concepts are very abstract for me so bare with me as I try to make sense of them. What helped me stay grounded throughout this reading was attaching the different research philosophies to different counseling theories that I have come across throughout my training. Like Mitchell (above), I strongly tied Adlerian counseling theory to the external relations portion of the reading. The article even mentions B.F. Skinner and behavioral theory/therapy in it's positivism section, which is heavily reliant on operant conditioning and predictable behaviors. As we move into more post-positivism, I imagine this is where Cognitive Behavioral Theory might fall. CBT therapists work through the lens of external relations while not entirely counting out the internal relations that may be causing an individual their strife. On what feels like the opposite side of that spectrum, I ascribe to relational cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory in counseling, which (hopefully I am correct) falls into the (post)modernism category of philosophies. The theories I like to use have a general skepticism for the systems in which my client's are asked to function within and constantly questioning the status-quo as an acceptable norm. I'm hoping that continuing to explore counseling theories through these lenses will better help my grasp these abstract concepts.
Jonathan Staylor: There were many philosophies of educational research that I found fascinating and enlightening. The one that stood out for me was Critical Theory. This theory draws on some of the theoretical principles of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy and Cognitive Therapy where irrational thinking leads to unhealthy negative emotions. Within society, our rational beliefs may be shaped by our experiences. Critical theory allows us to recognize that everyone does not have access to the same resources/advantages and that the result of our rational beliefs could be detrimental to the therapeutic relationship and may even be harmful. The irrational thoughts of the disadvantaged are primarily a result of their experiences. Also, what we determine as disadvantaged may be advantaged to others. Being open to learning about different perspectives allows us to gain insight into our own rational beliefs and challenge them.
ReplyDeleteWaleed Sami:
ReplyDeleteThis week's Bredo readings focused on providing an overview of the Western development of philosophy. Bredo's overview was meant to provide a developmental progression of current educational philosophy. While it is safe to say that the development of Western philosophy should be the underpinning of our educational system (being that we are American), we are necessarily leaving a multicultural perspective lacking. While this would be fine for an insular nation, focused on creating rigid identities around race, ethnicity, and culture, it flies in the face of the proclaimed values of the educational system we are attempting to champion. The current educational system's values is to proclaim multiculturalism. If this is true, then it becomes self-evident that non-Western philosophies on education and how knowledge are gained, should be required study as well. This is mostly a moot point, since I believe most most of the multicultural values that we tend to espouse in the liberal academy functions are a form of political virtue signaling, and doesn't go beyond the superficial. No doubt, Bredo's supporters would argue that I'm approaching this from a critical theory lense. However my intention is not necessarily to critique Bredo's article or even the importance of having an overview on how the Western Cannon impacts our educational system. My goal is to simply highlight the need to go *deeper*, and to work through other forms philosophies of knowledge, if our end goal is truly creating the best versions of educational philosophy inculcation. This is critical if we want to take the multicultural values we wave on our educational flag beyond the superficial, into the intentional. For example, after learning the historical Western Cannon, we should interrogate how other cultures formulated rationality and teaching cultures. Tibetan Buddhists are famous for having their beginning debate practitioners focus on defining and debating the substances of colors, pots, and other mundane objects in order to obtain a prerequisite rational basis for deeper subjects. Their entire philosophy of education is focused on debating definitions (often in exciting and dramatic ways) Al Ghazali and Ibn Rushd's response to Ghazalian knowledge should also be required reading, as Ghazali formulated four different ways for knowledge gain and how to create those within a person well before the Kantian empirical period. I'm not coming from the perspective that marginalized communities need to be engaged in formal philosophy (critical theory). Rather, that different forms of educational philosophy have existed since the time immemorial across the globe. Assimilating them into our cannon will provide us more opportunity to investigate educational philosophy and move our knowledge base forward in crafting deeper theories on how to gain knowledge. If we don't, then we are willfully ignoring "data" out there in the world. And if we are, then how can we call ourselves true researchers?
Erica Ross- I found that reading the philosophies of research had some overlap with my Education Evaluation, Research and Designs course. We've been discussing in that course how each paradigm contributes to the next to overcome limitations that were found with the previous in an evaluation context. I found it interesting reading through the article from the perspective of how the philosophies built on each other based on what others may have viewed as short comings. For example, seeing the movement of thought from positivism, logical positivism, and post positivism. The foundation of all of these philosophies either being based in external relations, internal relations, or interactionism.
ReplyDeleteWhile I know this is regards to research, I tried to also think about these different philosophies from the classroom teacher's perspective. As a previous special education teacher they put a huge emphasis on collecting data and determining how that student responds in classroom environments. It also seems to take a more external relations epistemology. I imagine the external relations epistemology would be that the classroom environment that is affecting the student and their behavior. As a special education teacher, we can provide accommodations to help change that student's classroom environment to impact the student and their success/behavior.
Jia
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I have to say this article is a challenge to me as I do no have adequate knowledge base on philosophy. So I am still trying to understand those abstract concepts in different ways.
While reading Bredo’s article, I tried to relate all these philosophical concepts to my previous teaching experience. To my surprise, some of these concepts are embedded in my teaching practice. For example, the way I comprehend knowledge and select teaching materials are based on empiricism and positivism. However, I also realized that the critical theory which has been emphasized in western academia is weakened in my teaching. The main reason of doing this I think it’s my ignorance on using critical reasoning in life and work. Ultimately, it is the cultural difference between east and west.
Jaime Williams:
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, I had a difficult time getting through this article. These philosophies are not completely foreign to me, as I have read about them in previous courses, but I always struggle to get through philosophical/theoretical readings when there’s little to no application integrated in the text. However, I see a theme in that all of these philosophies build upon each other and account for the perceived inadequacies of the previous philosophy, just like the various evaluation paradigms we are currently discussing in EDUS 661. I also see this trend in my work. I coordinate assessment for a department in Student Affairs here at VCU, and the ultimate goal of assessment is continuous improvement. So, I feel like across the landscape of education- whether we are talking about philosophies and theories or programs, services, and student learning- we’re always striving to be better than we were before.
Outside of work, school, and the like- I was listening to an episode of the “Invisibilia” podcast this morning during my run and while I was getting ready for work. The episode I listened to was from 2017, but recently came as a recommendation from a friend so I decided to check it out. It was about emotions and how there has traditionally been a notion that emotions come out of nowhere and we cannot control how they affect us. However, there is a researcher that has discovered that our brains only process four feelings- pleasantness, unpleasantness, arousal, and calmness, and our emotions are actually constructed from our environment and how we are brought up to believe which emotions are tied to specific things (i.e.: anger, sadness, happiness, etc.). It made me think of philosophies based in externalist assumptions and how the sensory experiences of external things help us generate knowledge. So, even though we’ve moved through and past these particular philosophies in educational research, it’s interesting to me that they are seemingly similar to more recent research findings regarding human emotions.
ReplyDeleteTosha Yingling:
The paragraph split between page 14-15 caught my eye because it reminded me of a lot of feminist genealogy classes I took in grad school, usually focusing on post-humanism and meta narratives. While Bredo is detailing the parameters of rationalism and empiricism and talking about Kant’s rationale for common knowledge, I was reminded of a class I took with Jasbir Puar where she taught us Jakob von Uexkull’s idea of the “umwelt,” the idea that our consciousness only extends as far as our understanding/experience. The idea gave me a kind of weird imagery of animate life walking around in a sort of porous bubble, with each bubble or moment occasionally interacting or mingling with another, or sometimes not all. The idea of multiple realities or selves clutches onto this idea often to point out Western Enlightenment’s creation of the possessive individual, an idea that contrasts with most other cosmologies more collective understandings of individual experience: say, that instead of having our on semi-isolated realities, we are but a cluster of perspectives on a larger semi-objective plane. I wonder how seeing and measuring experience would be different, if at all, if this idea was more fundamental to us.
Robyn Lyn:
ReplyDeleteBredo’s discussion on structuralism relates directly to my academic experience as a non-traditional (mature) student receiving a bachelor’s degree in my 50’s after my children were grown. All of my life, I believed untruths that perpetuate a ‘reality’ I was indoctrinated to believe. I acquiesced and conformed to a structured society dictating norms that are actually not conducive to my own personal interests, let alone the interests of those I love. Society, as Bredo notes on page 17, is structured with identities constructed around dualities: husband or wife, son or daughter, teacher or student, to name a few. Many of these have to do with biological sex, gender, sexual orientation, and gender expression. I was socialized to believe as a woman, I had a specific ‘place’ in society. I should wear specific clothes that I dislike, grow my hair long to appear a certain way (feminine), and be submissive to the men in my life allowing them to control my decisions and experiences. I adhered to this reality for most of my life. Once I returned to college, my ignorance became informed by my schooling.
I remember sitting in my first graduate feminist theory seminar and saying to the shock and horror of every other student, “I don’t think I am a feminist.” I was brought up to believe, my reality was constructed so as to think, that being a feminist was a negative identity for a woman to claim. I don’t know when these thoughts were ingrained into my psyche. I just knew them to be true. Only until I understood what feminism meant, and what it meant to me as a woman in society, did I realize who it benefited from my implicit bias in the hierarchy of society. I didn’t benefit from disbelieving that feminism actually served me personally. I began to question who benefits from my beliefs and how I was assimilated to do what is best for others, even when it was bad for me. I remember having a discussion with my daughter about gender. “We are born either male or female,” I told her. They had already taken courses and knew this to be untrue. When I became educated about intersex, I apologized to them. Since then, they have opened up to me about their personal non-binary, transgender identity. I no longer believe in dualities for most of society’s structures. I question them all now and ask, who decided this label and definition and how did they benefit from society’s embrace of these limiting beliefs? I will always question who had the privilege, the social capital, to determine knowledge and what lens personally did they perceive their knowledge through? Why did society adopt this knowledge as everyone’s reality? Whose agenda does it serve to accept this knowledge as fact and then comply? Who doesn’t benefit if society believes there is more than one reality? Who will lose if we, as a society, resist and dismantle societal structures upholding the hierarchy of power?
Why are we afraid of our own power and control?
Karl Max’s theory of materialism reminded me of the capitalist society we live in. In our society, material wealth connotes success. Our society values money, and objects such as cars and homes more than we value overall humanity. We believe that material possessions either improve or depress our social well-being. We are solely focused on acquiring more wealth as a means to ensure more opportunities and overall happiness. We are also obsessed with shopping and buying unnecessary products. Subsequently, the American Dream itself is materialistic. Moreover, our American society is built upon capitalism and materialism because the wealth of this country starting on the backs of African slaves. The idea of slavery itself, expresses how materialistic this nation is that it would dehumanize an entire race to make a profit. We continue to place material wealth over humanity because greed and materialism out outstrip need. Material wealth divides school systems allowing some to have access to top performing schools while other remain in deplorable schools. Material wealth segregates neighborhoods, allowing some to live in upstanding neighborhoods while others live in barely livable environments. Materialism increases the disproportionality of adequate health care and treatment. Materialism is engrained in the core of this nation.
ReplyDeleteReading the dense theoretical background in Bredo’s article was helpful mostly for the historical context of how education is politicized or even just political. The challenge with theory is not just its disconnect from practice but also its disconnect from time period to time period. Based on the spirit of the times, each of those theories might have seemed ground-breaking as new theories about humans and humanity itself emerged in the course of the cross-sections of disciplines that form education. However, I often wonder, for the earlier theories, if women and other non-white males were in the contemplation of the theorists. Is the generalizability and the durability of any theory pre-1980 possible in light of the fact that the research, in many cases was only conducted with one group.
ReplyDeleteSchools, especially public schools, are the convergence of all social issues and all social ills. Theories have changed as society has changed, as politics have changed, as our beliefs about who can learn have changed (Brown v. Board), as our understandings about how we should teach (traditional/behaviorists, progressive) and even where we should teach (home, charter, public) has expanded. In thinking of our conversation from the previous weeks, education and its sub-domains attempting to ingratiate and legitimize itself in the eyes of the scientific community may not last much longer. Perhaps we are coming to the understanding that, based on the sheer number of theories and permutations of theories, all of which seem plausible in some context, that hard generalizable truths in education we so seek to legitimize ourselves are non-existent and maybe even unnecessary(?) based on the changing political landscape. Perhaps responsiveness is a feature and not a bug in education.
Catina
DeleteAlison Dossick: I felt this article did a good job of comparing hard science to social sciences through all the various isms. The sensory experience leading to knowledge was flawed in those isms-empiricism, rationalism and logical positivism. One's sensory experience can be altered by drugs or experience (PTSD) that would change one's perception of knowledge. Aside from all of the definitions of the isms the "untangling" of education from politics is important but with politics come personal views which each group would want taught or not. Public education cannot be separated from the government that funds it. The funding of the research is also thusly tied regardless of how non-partisan a research project it is.
ReplyDeleteGRAB BAG POST - Robyn Lyn (I am posting this here but if you want all grab bag posts in one spot, let me know):
ReplyDeleteHow does educational research and the specific approaches impact societal norms while upholding the current structural hierarchy of power constructed by those who want to retain control?
Bredo references structuring classifications of individuals within society (p. 17). I believe we must first understand how we are conditioned to believe as a society to then be able to address the issues within the educational system.
At the macro level, classifying individuals creates a hierarchy that ultimately works to uphold those in power while repressing and marginalizing vulnerable populations. This dynamic enables those in control to retain their power over all groups of people by pitting those without power or status against each other. Creating divisions among people without power maintains a perception that some may have status, and a resulting privilege over others, simply for fitting into the norm dictated by those in control. One of the constructs of our society that privileges some and marginalizes others is the construct of gender. Gender isn’t an either/or but a both/and. It is on a continuum.
One of the best explanations of the characteristics of biological sex, gender, gender expression, and sexual orientation is the Genderperson website:
https://www.genderbread.org/
What type of research approach deduced only biological females and males exist? How do binaries uphold and maintain power and control within society and does educational research purposely uphold these classifications? Who benefits? Who is harmed? How is educational research impacted if researchers do not understand, or care to include, variables that challenge the status quo? Do those who practice educational research need to understand through a structural lens and postmodernism approach the dynamics that impact dichotomies our society embraces to gain the full perspective of research outcomes?
If you are unfamiliar, this video is an excellent primer for understanding how biological sex and gender differentiate. Many people are born intersex, and some don’t even know it:
https://youtu.be/QQdOp3COfSs
https://www.intersexionfilm.com/
In educational research, if we don’t understand how long ingrained societal constructs are upheld as norms, are we doing work that serves all people? Would it be biased research? Should we first question where societal constructs originated and by whom before we begin to try to ‘fix’ the educational system that marginalizes many people thereby creating the problems the system maintains it is trying to solve? How does the educational system uphold constructed societal norms that are harmful to vulnerable and marginalized populations, which in turn, harms us all? Is there a “totalizing or foundationalist account” (p. 19) of education, from its history to its past and current issues, when so many voices and stories are erased?
I would suggest the only way we can begin to research problems within the educational system and address them is to acknowledge the feminist postmodern perspective that knowledge without the voices of vulnerable and marginalized populations is “distorted” (p. 19) and there is no way to understand or solve problems within the system through educational research without those marginalized voices and the knowledge they bring to the academe.