MDDE613+Unit+1+and+2

= Unit 1 =

Reischmann, J. (2005) There are three main understandings of andragogy: (p. 59)
 * 1) scholarly approach to the learning of adults, viewed as the science of understanding and supporting their lifelong and lifewide education
 * 2) a specific theoretical and practical approach based on a humanistic conception of learners who are self-directed and autonomous, where teachers who work with learners to facilitate their learning are also in a learning mode; this understanding is most common in the United States (andragogy in the tradition of Malcolm Knowles);
 * 3) sometimes it is used in an unclear way, with its meaning changing from:
 * "adult education practice" or
 * "desirable values" or
 * "specific teaching methods," to refer to "reflections" or
 * a specific "academic discipline,"
 * as well as the "opposite of childish pedagogy." (Terms make sense in relation to the object they name. Relating the development of the term to the historical context may explain the differences.)

1833: German, Alexander Kapp, high school teacher, first used the term Andragogick (p. 59-61) 1920: Germany 1950: Germany 1989: USA, Malcolm Knowles
 * Kapp argues that education, self-reflection, and character education are the first values of human life
 * Kapp includes and combines the education of inner, subjective personality (character) and outer, objective competencies; for Kapp, learning happens not only through teachers, but also through self-reflection and life experience, and is about more than teaching adults.
 * andragogik, now used to describe sets of explicit reflections related to the why, whatfor, and how of teaching adults. Andragogy became a sophisticated, theory-oriented concept, used as an antonym to "demagogy" - too difficult to handle, not really shared. The term fell into disuse and was forgotten.
 * A new phenomenon was arising: a scholarly, academic reflection level "above" practical adult education. The scholars came from various disciplines, working in adult education as individuals, not representing university institutes or disciplines. The idea of adult education as a discipline was not yet born.
 * The term Andragogy was suddenly found in publications in Switzerland (Hanselmann), Yugoslavia (Ogrizovic), the Netherlands (ten Have), and Germany (Poggeler). Still the term was known only to insiders, and was sometimes more oriented to practice, sometimes more to theory.
 * Adult education was still an unclear mixture of practice, commitment, ideologies, reflections, theories, mostly local institutions, and some academic involvement of individuals. As the situation was unclear, the term could not be any clearer. But the increasing use of the term signalled that a sharp distinction between "doing" and "reflecting" was developing, one that was perhaps in need of a separate term.
 * the term Andragogy is used in his book.
 * In a short time the term andragogy, now intimately connected to Knowles, received general recognition throughout North America and other English-speaking countries; "within North America, no view of teaching adults is more widely known, or more enthusiastically embraced, than Knowles' description of andragogy" (Pratt & Associates, 1998, p. 13).
 * Knowles' concept of andragogy - "the art and science of helping adults learn . . . is built upon two central, defining attributes:
 * learners as self-directed and autonomous; and
 * role of the teacher as facilitator of learning rather than presenter of content" - emphasizing learner choice more than expert control
 * third attribute added to the attraction of Knowles concept: constructing andragogy as opposed to pedagogy provided an opportunity for educators to be seen as "good teachers" instead of pedantic ( overly concerned with minute details or formalisms, esp. in teaching ) ones. To be offered understandable, humanistic values and beliefs, some specific methods and a good-sounding label strengthened a group that felt inferior to comparable professionals.
 * In and after the 1970s the notions of preschool, Roger's person-centered approach, and Freire's conscientization fit with Knowles' concept of andragogy.
 * Providing a unifying idea and identity, connected with the term andragogy, to the amorphous group of adult educators was certainly the main contribution that Knowles gave to the field of adult education at that time.
 * Knowles strengthened the already existing scholarly access to adult education by publishing, theorizing, researching and educating students who themselves through academic research became scholars, and by explicitly defining andragogy as science.

A first critique argues that Knowles claimed to offer a general concept of adult education, but like all educational theories in history andragogy is but one concept, born into a specific historical context.
 * Issues with Andragogy** (p. 59)
 * One of Knowles' basic assumptions is that becoming adult means becoming self-directed, a view that is often rejected because many adults are not self-directed
 * Another critique is Knowles' conception of pedagogy as a pedantic schoolmasters' practice, not as an academic discipline.
 * This hostility towards pedagogy has had two negative outcomes.
 * On a strategic level, scholars of adult education could make no alliances with their colleagues from pedagogy; on a content level, knowledge developed in pedagogy over 400 years could not be utilized by those in andragogy.
 * Thus, attaching andragogy exclusively to Knowles' specific approach meant that the term was lost to those in pedagogy.

Adult education - deliberately organized activities, including non-formal spontaneous manifestations in our everyday experience (Scott, 1998, p. 53)
 * Informal learning** - learning resulting from daily life activities related to work, family, or leisure. It is often referred to as experiential learning and can to a certain degree be understood as accidental learning. It is not structured in terms of learning objectives, learning time and/or learning support. Typically, it does not lead to certification. Informal learning may be intentional but in most cases, it is non-intentional (or ‘incidental’/random). (link)
 * Formal learning** - consists of learning that occurs within an organized and structured context (formal education, in-company training), and that is designed as learning. It may lead to a formal recognition (diploma, certificate). Formal learning is intentional from the learner’s perspective. (link)
 * Nonformal learning** - organized learning outside the formal learning system and consists of learning embedded in planned activities that are not explicitly designated as learning, but which contain an important learning element. Non-formal learning is intentional from the learner’s point of view. For example: learning by coming together with people with similar interests and exchanging viewpoints, in clubs or in (international) youth organizations, workshops. (link)

Draper, J. (2001)

Reason for using the term andragogy:
 * graduates should have a basic appreciation and understanding of the development of ideas, theory, programs and concepts relating to their chosen field of study and practice. (p. 14)

Education as used here refers to organized or intentional learning.

In the 1700s and into the 1800s, factors influenced the way in which learning was organized and also the content and location The rapid increase in educational programs for adults meant that more planners of these programs were in a position to observe the characteristics of adults as learners, as well as the factors that motivated adults to learn, the values placed on knowledge and the ways adults used knowledge. Nevertheless, in the early beginnings, the teaching done in the majority of these adult programs paralleled the way in which children were generally taught, often using an authoritarian and lecture approach. (p. 15)
 * Industrial Revolution and the mobility of people from rural to urban areas to work in factories and other non-traditional occupations;
 * the increasing technological sophistication of navigation, war and commerce;
 * the number of private societies that were established to educate the masses of society, many of whom were illiterate

In 1814, Pole publishes a book //A History of the Origin and Progress of Adult Schools//. (p. 15) > the phenomenon. 1833, Alexendar Kapp, coined the term andragogy. 1783-1872, Denmark, Folk High Schools, founded by Bishop N.F.S. Grundtvig
 * Pole was among the first persons to note the phenomenon of adult education and its role in society and coined the term adult education to identify
 * During Pole's time elementary education was regarded as an act of charity, and during this time and with varying motives there was a vigorous initiation of charity schools and the provision of inexpensive devotional literature for adults and for children. These and other programs later became the foundation upon which theories of popular education for adults were eventually based.
 * The term was intended to describe the educational theory of the Greek philosopher Plato. Selecting the Greek root of the term andragogy was intended to make a distinction between the teaching of adults, as opposed to pedagogy, the teaching of children.
 * Grundtvig conceived these schools for adults as a reaction against the system of education of children and the irrelevance of education to living a productive life.
 * The "black schools" of Denmark ... resembled the German model which forced people up or out of the system in accordance with their success in emotionless logic and endless memorization channelled all too often through foreign Latinity. Grundtvig thought that this combination would stifle rather than enlighten the human development of any soul. Since the kind of schools envisioned by Grundtvig did not exist, they needed to be created. In the folk high schools, students were encouraged to bloom rather than educated to conform Lectures mostly were discarded because students were there not only to be taught by teachers but to teach their instructors in turn
 * Grundtvig had a rooted aversion to teaching methods which consisted in criticizing and theorizing without reference to concrete experience. (p. 16)
 * The folk high schools, intended primarily to provide peasants with education, spread initially to other Scandinavian countries and then elsewhere. They have greatly influenced the development of a philosophy relating to the education of adults.

Influences of Humanistic Philosophy

= Unit 2 =

The brain and nervous system are "hardwired" to learn about the world, to learn about associations among objects and actions and events. This learning occurs on the basis of two major factors. (Alcock,1996, p. 65)
 * Experiential Learning**

Stimulus Similarity (resemblance) **(Alcock, 1996)** > What we learn about one object or event will automatically be attributed to similar objects or events, unless we have enough experience to permit differentiation between them.
 * If we taste guava for the first time and do not like it, we are unlikely to try other guavas in future.
 * If we are thrown from a horse the first time we try to ride one, we will be cautious about all the horses, at least until we gain enough experience to see differences among them.

> Temporal contiguity occurs when two stimuli are experienced close together in time and, as a result an association may be formed. In Pavlovian conditioning the strength of the association between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (US) is largely affected by temporal contiguity. In operant conditioning, the association between the operant behaviour and the reinforcer/punisher is also largely affected by temporal contiguity. Superstitious behaviour occurs as a result of the temporal contiguity between a behaviour and a reinforcer/punisher that is independent of that behaviour. You utilize aspects of temporal contiguity each time you make a causal judgment.
 * Temporal Contiguity** (link)
 * For example, when your stomach becomes upset, you typically attempt to figure out why. When you are trying to find the cause of your stomach ache, it is more likely that you will place the blame on the Chinese food you ate earlier that afternoon, as opposed to the fast-food you ate the week before. This is because you ate the Chinese food at a time that was closer to the occurrence of your stomach ache.

As a child grows a second form of knowledge acquisition gradually develops. This form Is based on the mental manipulations of ideas and concepts, rather than being tied directly to personal experience. It is usually deliberate instead of automatic, and it can be carried on quite independently of emotion. As the child grows, this form of information processing becomes more and more dominated by language. It is in this intellectual system that nonexperiential information is absorbed—through books, teachers, stories from other people. (Alcock,1996)
 * Intellectual Learning**

Scientific-humanist belief system
 * intellectual learning processes
 * children are taught to value logic and critical thinking to some degree. They are encouraged to question, to analyze.

transcendental belief system
 * more closely, although not exclusively, tied to automatic, experiential, intuitive learning
 * children are taught to turn off analytical skills and to accept ideas on the basis of faith or experience.
 * religion generally teaches children to accept on faith phenomena that would make little sense if viewed from an analytical perspective. Often, guilt feelings are associated with any attempts to examine the religious belief from an intellectual point of view. Even children who have little exposure to organized religion are led by popular culture to believe in various aspects of reality—God and Heaven, for example—that are not easy to reconcile with the prevailing scientific viewpoint.


 * [[image:Modernity,_postmodernism.JPG caption="Modernity,_postmodernism.JPG"]] ||
 * Modernity,_postmodernism.JPG ||

(Fenwick, 2006, page 105-7)
 * many people use the term "late" instead of "post", as post signifies the end and we are not past colonialism we shouldn't be calling it postcolonialism.

> It demanded publicly testable evidence based on experience and reason, the natural capacity' of which is equally available to all,'demolishing all claims of a priori knowledge available only to select few through the grace of god or through their privileged social status. > denied them full recognition of their own worth (Nanda, 2002).
 * Age of Enlightenment**
 * The individual is dominated by tradition (Catholic Church).
 * truth and reason
 * unity (meaning, theory, and self)
 * rationality
 * Kant defines enlightenment as "man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. //Immaturity// is the inability to sue one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is i when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resole and courage to use it without guidance from another.... 'Have courage to use your own understanding!'--that's the motto of enlightenment."
 * "revolt against superstition," as Kant called it--it was a passion for critical reason in the service of demystification of church doctrines, supernatural beliefs, miracles and other such magical-religious practices
 * The new philosophy of knowledge was exemplified above all by Newton's great success, and given a philosophical expression by John Locke's empiricism.
 * Diderot,"The purpose, is not only to supply a certain body of knowledge, but also to bring about a change in the mode of thinking"
 * demolishing all claims of a priori knowledge: //Logic// relating to or involving deductive reasoning from a general principle to the expected facts or effects; //Logic// known to be true independently of or in advance of experience of the subject matter; requiring no evidence for its validation or support; Made before or without examination; not supported by factual study.
 * At its core, the Enlightenment was an attempt to popularize and institutionalize modest procedural principles of knowledge that insisted on breaking apart all existing claims of cause and effect derived from earlier metaphysical systems and rationalist schemes, and to test them against observation and experiment. (Nanda, 2002)
 * If there was a dogma of Enlightenment, it was that there were to be no dogmas, no a priori truths and no privileged Sources of Affirmation. All dogmas could be queried by private citizens, who have the right to come together in the public sphere, as equals, to pursue truth through open critical debate. (Nanda, 2002)
 * It is a mistake, commonplace in Marxist writings, and unfortunately in Marx's own writings,' to reduce the Enlightenment's view of rights and negative freedoms to an expression of purely material, class interests of the bourgeoisie. This is a serious misunderstanding of the Enlightenment, both because it fails to do justice to the actual concerns that motivated the rising middle classes of the 18th century Western Europe, especially France, and because such a narrow materialist reading does not allow one to look for homologues (having a related or similar position, structure, etc.) of the European Enlightenment in non-European societies (Nanda, 2002).
 * A purely economic motivation does not explain the hard-fought battle in the cultural realm against the dogmas of the age (Nanda, 2002).
 * The Enlightenment's call for reason at the service of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" is best understood as a call to arms in a //struggle for recogniti//on of equal dignity of all, regardless of origins and station in life. (Nanda, 2002).
 * The Enlightenment counterpoised the idea of honor in the andel: regime with that of dignity: whereas for some to have honor, it was necessary that not everyone has it, the underlying principle of dignity is that everyone shares in it by the virtue of being human (Taylor,1992). (Nanda, 2002).
 * The rising bourgeoisie were motivated not by a desire to revolutionize the economic basis of society but to dismantle those social ideologies and attitudes that
 * bourgeois revolutions were struggles waged between relatively well-off minorities — "a revolt of the privileged," with hardly anyone contemplating the full enfranchisement of the urban and peasant masses. (Nanda, 2002).
 * the refusal to accept anything without demonstration and reason, was simultaneously a refusal to bow to the authority of those who have hitherto claimed a unique possession of truth. (Nanda, 2002).


 * Modernism**
 * “Modernism is that moment when man invented himself; when he no longer saw himself as a reflection of God or Nature” (Cooper and Burrell, 1988: 94).
 * The enlightenment–humanist rejection of tradition and authority in favour of reason and natural science. This is founded upon the assumption of the autonomous individual as the sole source of meaning and truth. Progress and novelty are valorized within a linear conception of history—a history of a "real" world that becomes increasingly real or objectified. One could view this as a Protestant mode of consciousness.
 * Industrialization of production (technologies)
 * Positivist faith in objective knowledge of phenomena
 * Demographic upheaval/ Massive urban migration
 * Growth of consumer capitalism
 * Rise of multinational corporations
 * “Instrumental” rationality and bureaucracy
 * Powerful mass media systems
 * Growth of nation-states
 * Fluctuating world economy


 * Postmodernism**
 * A rejection of the sovereign autonomous individual with an emphasis upon anarchic collective, anonymous experience. Collage, diversity, the mystically unrepresentable, Dionysian passion are the foci of attention. Most importantly we see the dissolution of distinctions, the merging of subject and object, self and other. (link)Disintegration of colonial system historically ruled by imperial nation-states
 * Decline of industrial capitalism and rise of transnational, info-age economy
 * Rise of global electronic and print media systems, collapsing traditional time and space
 * Rise of new creative, artistic practices that reject modernism’s linearity, coherence, realism, and internal consciousness.
 * Suspicion and rejection of “foundational” narratives of Western culture that traditionally have authorized the dominant institutions.
 * Erosion of traditional identities premised on stability and essence

Deductive reasoning works from the more general to the more specific. Sometimes this is informally called a "top-down" approach. We might begin with thinking up a //theory// about our topic of interest. We then narrow that down into more specific //hypotheses// that we can test. We narrow down even further when we collect //observations// to address the hypotheses. This ultimately leads us to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data -- a //confirmation// (or not) of our original theories.
 * Deductive Reasoning** (link)



Inductive reasoning works the other way, moving from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. Informally, we sometimes call this a "bottom up" approach. In inductive reasoning, we begin with specific observations and measures, begin to detect patterns and regularities, formulate some tentative hypotheses that we can explore, and finally end up developing some general conclusions or theories.
 * Inductive Reasoning** (link)




 * Instrumental reason** refers to the kind of logic which calculates the most economical applications of particular means to a given end: maximum efficiency is the measure of success. In such a view, there is little room for moral considerations. Like individualism, instrumental reason is not, in and of itself, negative. It is rather when decision-making and planning are dominated by ideas of efficiency, or cost-benefit analysis, with no other considerations taken into account, that instrumentalism becomes a negative. ([|link])

The tendency to believe that those who belong to a specific culture exhibit morals, ideas, or traits universally, e.g. whites are greedy. Negative characteristics are also applicable. A person born into a culture is born with its designated characteristics. Further, a person is judged to have certain characteristics based on which culture (race) he/she appears to belong to. This notion has been largely discredited, but subtle forms still exist. (link)
 * Cultural Essentialism**

A school of thought that believes that humans are born with some natural, unchanging characteristics. A reduction of people to their essential parts. For example, males are more aggressive than females. (Note: essentialism does not always take the form of a binary.) Opposite of **social constructionism**. (link)
 * Essentialism**

A school of thought that believes that the way people think, act, and believe is constructed, often through processes of socialization. These constructions are fluid, some more than others. For example, males have been socialized to be more aggressive than females because of existing ideas of how a “real man” should behave. (Note: social constructionism is not always constructed in a binary.) Opposite of **essentialism**. (link)
 * Social Constructionsim**

This is a term introduced by the Palestinian cultural critic Edward Said in his book //Orientalism// published in 1978. He refers to the historical and ideological process whereby false images of and myths about the Eastern or “oriental” world have been constructed in various western discourses. They usually involve a denigrating fiction ( the deceptive inscrutability, superstitious practices, and loose sex of the Arab, for instance). Systematic stereotyping of the orient facilitates the colonization of vast areas of the globe by the Europeans. (link)
 * Orientalism**


 * Relativism **
 * Any theory holding that truth or moral or aesthetic value, etc., is not universal or absolute but may differ between individuals or cultures.
 * Any theory maintaining that criteria of judgment vary with individuals and their environments; relationism. ////


 * Egalitarian**
 * Favouring social equality; "a classless society"
 * Affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people.(link)

**Nesbit, T. Leach, L. and Foley, G. (2004). Teaching adults.**
Great teachers
 * think strategically
 * act with commitment
 * But these teachers have more than skill
 * have a deep understanding of themselves and their students, and of the organizational contexts in which they work.
 * they 'think on their feet',
 * take a long-term view of their work
 * their work is underpinned by a passionate commitment to particular values

**Research on Teaching**
Presents several studies and theories that we have found especially useful in thinking about teaching. For adult educators there are a number of problems with teaching research,
 * Most of it examines the teaching of children and youth in classrooms, and so does not reflect either the diversity of student ages and backgrounds or the rich array of social contexts and classroom settings that are found in adult education.
 * Teaching is such a complex activity that it is difficult to devise reliable and valid ways of researching it.
 * There is so much research on teaching that it is difficult for the practitioner to get access to it, or to know what is useful or valid. It is easy to be blinded by the ordinariness and familiarity of classrooms and classroom behaviour.
 * Most teaching research has, until lately, been structured around quite narrow notions of 'teacher effectiveness'.
 * Research tends to focus on one aspect of teaching, and rarely establishes links between various phenomena and different levels of analysis.

>**Teacher Effectiveness**
 * The assumption is that differences in teacher skills (e.g. clarity of presentation, structuring of lessons, verbal fluency) and qualities (e.g. enthusiasm, warmth, confidence) will affect student learning. Thus, researchers have attempted to identify which teacher behaviours generate better student learning so that others can be systematically trained in these behaviours.
 * However, teacher effectiveness research has ambiguous results.
 * Comprehensive surveys of teaching and educational opportunity concluded that research on teacher effectiveness showed only that 'most teaching behaviour is unrelated to learner outcomes'. Leading teaching researchers have argued that 'most studies of teaching effects provide little evidence that the effect in question was produced by teaching and not some other causative factor'.
 * Yet teachers and students know that there //is// a relationship between the way teachers teach and what students learn.
 * Pratt (1981) an effective presenter of knowledge (measured by student satisfaction, and increase in student knowledge and understanding) was one who was precise and clear in her/his presentations, and alive and moving.
 * Teacher effectiveness research thus suggests that **thorough preparation** and **careful structuring of sessions** helps precision and clarity in presentation and that the **more time spent with each student**, the more **lively and engaging teachers** are, the more effective teaching will be.
 * However, the effectiveness paradigm omits so much: it says nothing about the content of teaching, about how teachers and students make sense of their work, or about the ways teaching and learning are affected by social and cultural factors.



> **Teaching Functions** because they involve the practitioner in trying to directly influence the individual or group. || Prescribe || Advise, judge, criticize, evaluate, direct, demand, demonstrate || indirect || Be cathartic || Release tension in ||
 * 9 teacher roles: convener, facilitator, advocate (of missing perspectives), adversary (of oppressive behaviour), lecturer, recorder, mediator, clearing house, librarian
 * Heron (1989, 1993) argues that there are only six 'authentic interventions' that a teacher can make. For Heron, a skilled practitioner is one who can move from one intervention to another as required.
 * ~ Styles ||~ Category ||~ Descriptions ||
 * **Authoritative**
 * || Inform || Be didactic, instruct/inform, interpret ||
 * || Confront || Challenge, feedback, question directly, expose ||
 * **Facilitative**
 * || Catalyse || Elicit information, encourage ||
 * || Support || Approve, confirm, validate ||
 * Teachers' beliefs and values**
 * Pratt believes that teachers come to their practice with a set of values, a perspective, a set of interrelated beliefs and intentions which give meaning and justification for our actions.
 * Pratt has identified how rarely teachers examine their own values, and has developed a 'Teaching Perspectives Inventory' (TPI).
 * Pratt and his colleagues have used these data to identify five distinct teaching perspectives:
 * transmission, which focuses on delivering content;
 * apprenticeship, which models ways of working and being;
 * developmental, which cultivates ways of thinking;
 * nurturing, which facilitates personal agency; and
 * social reform, which seeks to create a better society.
 * For Pratt, understanding your perspective on teaching helps you become a more effective teacher.


 * Social dynamics of classrooms and schools**
 * Teachers do not work in a vacuum but in specific locations and social contexts
 * Studies argue that education reproduces existing social, economic and cultural relationships.
 * But Bowles and Gintis (1976) maintained that the authoritarian, teacher-dominated approach to education also produces something else: obedient and passive workers who expect to be disciplined from without.
 * Even more student-centred approaches to teaching can domesticate students, by getting them to internalize norms like the importance of working without supervision, behaving predictably, knowing what is expected without having to be told, and so forth
 * These studies, although they have been criticised for being overdeterministic (Sarup 1978), suggest that educational institutions socialise students in ways of thinking and acting that help maintain capitalism, patriarchy and other oppressive social arrangements.


 * Contexts of Teaching**
 * One area of research: Frame Factor Theory: which consists of the constraining and directing conditions, which are inherent in the teaching process. These constraining and directing aspects are external, that is, outside the control of teachers and students. The theory recognizes distinctions between frame concept and curriculum and also between these concepts and formal obligations of teachers. In frame factor theory's terminology, the frame system is intrinsically connected to the administrative apparatus of education and this constrains the teaching system. Curriculum, which is also known as the goal system governs the teaching system, while the formal rule system otherwise known as the judicial apparatus, regulates the system of teaching. (link)
 * any society and the educational system it promotes are inextricably linked, cultural, political, economic and social structures influence educational processes. They do not directly determine classroom behaviours and interactions but act more as causal influences through mediating frame factors. Examples of frames on teaching include
 * where it is located and its particular physical setting, the curriculum or required content and the textbooks used, and
 * a number of institutional influences such as the size of the class or the time available for teaching. (Nesbit et al., 2004, p 80)

**Beyond Practicalities: Conceptual Influences**
Examines insights into teaching drawn from some broader psychological and social theories.

**Cognitive Conceptual Approaches**
 * Learners are active: they do not passively absorb information but process or construct it in their own ways. Teachers therefore need to know more about how students think and learn. Research must attend carefully not only to teaching but to learning as well.
 * Psychological or radical constructivists build on Piaget's ideas to argue that we develop our knowledge and understanding largely as individuals. Further, they argue that learning is an internal, cognitive process.
 * Social constructivists draw on the work of Vygotsky and maintain that learning is more than what takes place within our minds. They argue that learning is fundamentally a social process: we learn through our interactions with others. Social constructivists hold that culture and context affect the ways in which we interpret our worlds and therefore the knowledge we construct.
 * William Perry showed that they moved through nine 'epistemological positions', or 'ways of knowing'. He found that students
 * moved from seeing knowledge as something that is handed down to them by authorities
 * to seeing knowledge as relative (everyone has the right to their own opinion),
 * to seeing that knowledge is constructed by people in particular social contexts, in accordance with particular values
 * Ausubel and others have examined the relationship between
 * learning context (the way knowledge is presented to learners) and learning strategy (the way learners learn).
 * They distinguish between 'reception learning', in which learners absorb what they are taught, and 'discovery learning, in which learners are able to inductively build up their own understanding
 * Either of these types of learning can be meaningful or rote. Meaningful learning occurs when learners are able to relate new knowledge to their existing cognitive frameworks. When learners cannot do this they must learn by rote.
 * understanding the ways learners think enables educators to help students develop learning strategies, ways of understanding and acting on their learning.
 * adult educators can encourage students to understand that they can develop their own ways of grasping and using knowledge

**Humanistic Psychology**
 * Context with which is sprang from: The dilemma for the humanistic educator was to devise alternative ways of working within an education system characterized by
 * a prescribed curriculum,
 * similar assignments for all students,
 * lecturing as the only mode of instruction,
 * standards by which all students are externally evaluated, and
 * instructor chosen grades as the measure of learning', all of which precluded meaningful learning
 * individuals, while free to choose which course of action they will take, are also responsible for their actions
 * Carl Rogers' notions of 'meaningful learning' and 'facilitation' turned conventional wisdom about teaching and learning on its head, and encouraged a shift from direct teaching to teaching learners how to learn.
 * He distinguished between meaningless, oppressive and alienating learning, which, he maintained, constituted the bulk of the formal education curriculum, and 'significant, meaningful, experiential learning', which was self-initiated and involved the whole person
 * replacing oppressive institutionalized education with voluntary learning networks, practical ideas for more creative and participatory classroom teaching

**Critical Pedagogy** >>> deposit knowledge in the learner's head, the midwives draw it out.They >>> assist the students in giving birth to their own ideas, in making their >>> own tacit knowledge explicit and elaborating it. They support their >>> students' thinking, but they do not do the students' thinking for them or >>> expect the students to think as they do.
 * Critical pedagogy developed out of the 'social dynamics' writing, but rejects the //determinism// of that work.
 * determinism: the philosophical doctrine that all events including human actions and choices are fully determined by preceding events and states of affairs, and so that freedom of choice is illusory
 * Critical pedagogy also finds fault with both the teacher effectiveness and humanistic approaches to teaching because of their failure to tackle social and ethical issues.
 * The main theoretical tenets of critical pedagogy, and their implications for the practice of teaching, can be summarized as follows:
 * concerned with the ways in which 'meaning is produced, mediated, legitimated and challenged' (McLaren 1988) in formal and informal educational settings.
 * places teaching and learning firmly in their social context. Particular attention is paid to the interaction of teaching and class, gender and race.
 * focuses on relations of domination, on the ways in which, in capitalist society, culture, ideology and power intersect and control people in such sites as the workplace (through the hierarchical management of work), the marketplace (through consumerism, facilitated by advertising) and educational institutions (through teaching methods, overt and hidden curricula, teacher ideologies etc.).
 * seeks to help students see through and challenge dominant (or 'hegemonic') meanings and practices. It also seeks to identify, celebrate, critique and build on popular and subordinate cultures, and a common democratic culture.
 * This inductive and democratic pedagogy works from students' experience, but moves beyond it to expose the dynamics of everyday social reality, and to offer learners choices for action.
 * dialogical mode of teaching. The teacher reflects the students' experiences back to them in ways that enable them to analyze and discuss them critically, and then to consider ways in which they might change their lives.
 * The critical teacher both supports and challenges her/his students. The teacher, as Belenky et al. (1986: 217-18) point out, can be seen as a midwife:
 * Midwife teachers are the opposite of banker teachers. While the bankers


 * Feminist Pegagogies**
 * emerged in the 1960s and has been concerned with 'enlarging the concept of politics to include the personal, the cultural and the ideological'
 * From the 1960s onwards in many countries women's studies courses were established in adult and higher education, often developing from informal consciousness-raising efforts in women's groups. After these courses were established, important pedagogical issues had to be confronted.
 * Primary among these was the relationship of teacher and student. Women wanted to move away from the dominant hierarchical-pedagogical relationship that involved teachers in transmitting their knowledge to students and then assessing whether the students had absorbed the teaching. Feminist educators challenged hierarchical teacher-student relationships and experimented with alternative practices such as joint essays and presentations, team teaching, autobiographical writing and collective marking
 * Feminist educators sought to build 'safe spaces' in which women students could analysis their experiences and find their 'authentic voices'.
 * How can one reconcile a desire to work in women-centred, cooperative and nurturing ways in male-dominated, hierarchical, rationalizing, certifying institutions?
 * How does one work in classrooms with differences among women by class, race, sexuality, ability and age?

**What Teachers Do**
Considers the implications of such research by examining more closely particular principles and methods of teaching adults.
 * Adult teaching and learning principles**
 * six principles, of many, (voluntary participation, mutual respect, collaborative spirit, action and reflection, critical reflection, and self-direction), while greatly influenced by the concepts of humanistic and cognitive psychology, move beyond them and demonstrate an awareness of the importance of social context, and human agency, in adult education.


 * Self-directed Learning**


 * The idea of learning being facilitated rather than taught has been linked to the notion that adults should and do direct their own learning rather than having it directed by teachers (the bulk of adult learning is informal and self-directed)
 * How can teachers devise ways of giving students greater control over their learning?
 * Studies of self-directed learning in adult education and training (see Foley 1992) show that essential to its success are:
 * teachers' ability to understand learning and teaching from the learners' perspective;
 * teachers providing clear procedures and support to enable learners to move from teacher-directed to self-directed learning;
 * teachers and students developing honest interpersonal relationships, allowing all issues to be discussed and acted on;
 * development of a 'learning-teaching dialectic', enabling learners to direct their learning while at the same time being challenged and extended, rather than indulged, by their teachers;
 * teachers having a deep understanding of the structure, culture and dynamics of the organizations in which they work
 * Critical reflection, conversely, has as its aim the identifying and challenging of people's assumptions to foster radical social change, in democratic and sometimes revolutionary directions. Brookfield encourages people to:
 * analyze the assumptions underlying their 'traditional beliefs, values, behaviours and social structures';
 * be aware that these assumptions are 'historically and culturally specific';
 * explore 'alternatives to the current ways of thinking and living'; and • be sceptical of claims to universality.


 * Critical Reflection (p. 87/88)**
 * The notion of reflection is often linked to the idea of practitioners as action researchers who plan, act, observe and reflect on their practice and plan, act, observe and reflect again, in a continuing spiral.
 * reflection and the associated concepts of 'action learning' and 'action science' as they are used in human resource development and professional development. It's emphasis, generally referred to as 'reflection on action', tries to work out how people make meaning in situations and devise strategies for acting on them. It is concerned with effectiveness and 'manageable change' within existing institutions.
 * reflection as it is used in critical pedagogy is concerned with radical institutional or social change. It is often coupled with 'problem-based' learning
 * Critical reflection, conversely, has as its aim the identifying and challenging of people's assumptions to foster radical social change, in democratic and sometimes revolutionary directions. Brookfield encourages people to:
 * analyze the assumptions underlying their 'traditional beliefs, values, behaviours and social structures';
 * be aware that these assumptions are 'historically and culturally specific';
 * explore 'alternatives to the current ways of thinking and living'; and • be sceptical of claims to universality.

> will be alternately defencive and aggressive'. Brookfield argues that meaningful and productive discussion is more likely to take place if the following four conditions prevail: >> spend some time agreeing upon a set of procedural rules concerning the manner in which equity of participation is to be realized.') These procedural rules will in turn be based on ethical principles identified as essential to the functioning of discussion groups
 * Discussion Methods**
 * This humanistic-based tradition in adult education has, however, been criticized for its lack of interest in the content of education and its consequent naiveté about the social and ethical outcomes of education.
 * An examination of the discussion group tradition in adult education helps us to see that in teaching and learning both content and process are important.
 * Brookfield points out that for many adult educators, discussion is seen as the 'education method par excellence'. Two features are generally seen to be central to the concept of discussion in adult education:
 * 'purposeful conversation . . . about a topic of mutual interest', and
 * a notion of equal participation, a roughly equal sharing of conversational time.
 * The goals of discussion are both cognitive and affective:
 * the development of participants' analytical capacities,
 * their enhanced appreciation of the complexities of issues,
 * their increased identification with subject matter, and
 * their higher tolerance of opposing viewpoints
 * Brookfield emphasizes that, particularly in our competitive and individualistic culture, the attainment of these goals is problematic. Discussion groups can often become 'an arena of psychodynamic struggle', in which 'students
 * the discussion topic is stimulating;
 * the group leader is well versed in both group dynamics and the topic under discussion;
 * group members possess reasonably developed reasoning and communication skills; and
 * group members have devised and agreed on 'an appropriate moral culture' for group discussion, (the group must
 * reasonableness (openness to others' arguments and perspectives),
 * peaceableness and orderliness,
 * truthfulness,
 * freedom,
 * equality, and
 * respect for persons.

Considers several teaching contexts and sites.
 * Sites of Teaching**


 * Higher Education**
 * Adult education research has shown that adults learn best when they are actively engaged in learning experiences and when the curriculum builds on their life experiences and interests. Despite this, dominant approaches to teaching in higher education have favoured traditional lectures and other didactic methods.
 * one study sought to identify exactly what existing institutional practices were most effective for adult learners in North American colleges and universities. The study suggested that universities
 * create a learner centred environment
 * teaching/learning should involve learners in collaborative learning experiences centred around their lives and work, including helping them to identify and meet their own learning goals.
 * the teaching/learning process be redesigned to be personalised, active, collaborative, experiential, and to build on the theories, philosophies and best practices of adult learning
 * This radical departure for most higher education institutions offers significant hope to critical adult educators. It assumes that adult learners themselves can create knowledge and that, as activists and intellectuals, they will be eager to connect their new understandings with the skills and knowledge necessary to change their lives and work.


 * Social Movements**
 * Popular education emerged from 19th and 20th century peoples' struggles and mass movements. Its methods are those of critical pedagogy,
 * with an emphasis on working from the learner's experience,
 * locating that experience in a broader social context and
 * devising collective strategies for change
 * This sort of education develops genuine dialogue, in which each party listens to, and learns from, the other.
 * If we are to avoid the worse aspects of invasion our aim must be to begin where people are and discover with them where it is worth going. This involves educators struggling with learners to build a relationship that is based on a notion of solidarity rather than on 'helping'.
 * For an adult educator to work with learners 'in solidarity' means
 * to support and provide resources for learners,
 * to challenge and extend them, but never to patronize or try to control them.
 * It means educators using their power to create educational situations in which learners can exercise power
 * This is the most useful meaning of the much abused and co-opted notion of 'empowerment'. Despite popular misconceptions, empowerment is neither something that educators can do to or for learners, nor is it an abandonment of power by the educator.
 * Instead of making pronouncements about what they can do, they have learned to ask 'What can we do, with you?'.

Accounts of the work of educators like Horton and Head, the recollections and polemics of the radical educators of the 1960s and 70s, and of teachers like Paulo Freire, Maxine Greene, A.S. Neil, Parker Palmer and Sylvia Ashton-Warner, confirm that great teachers are those who bring honesty, compassion, humour and passion to their work.

Parker Palmer (1998) argues that we can only teach who we are, that we need to identify 'the teacher within' and then to teach with authenticity and integrity from that identity.

===Pratt, D. (2005). Teaching. In L. English, (Ed.) International Encyclopedia of Adult Education (pp.610-615). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.===

(Created the TPI.)


 * Different regions of the world use different terms to refer to the concept of teaching. As a result, there is a rather wide "cultural geography" of related terms, all of which refer to teaching, including: andragogy, facilitation, instruction, pedagogy, and training. (Indoctrination is sometimes included in such a list, but is excluded here.)
 * Moving from andragogy towards training there is a falling off of the centrality of a philosophy of teaching that is based upon learners' prior experience, their immediate needs and the assumption of an egalitarian relationship between teacher and learner. Yet, within every term, from andragogy to training, teaching is assumed to be more than just a technical matter.
 * Teaching requires knowledge of learners, content, curriculum, pedagogy (or andragogy), society and a special form of content knowledge that distinguishes between subject matter experts and teachers of that subject, called "pedagogical content knowledge" (Shulman, 1987). However, it also requires knowledge of self and of the moral aspects of teaching

The three aspects of teaching are: technical tools; personal styles; and philosophical belief.


 * Technical Tools: The Technical Aspect of Teaching**
 * Couldn't have said it better myself: **//Tools are simply the means to particular educational ends; they are "what teachers use until the real teacher arrives"//** (Palmer, 1998 p. 5). (the courage to teach)


 * Personal Styles: The Personal Aspect of Teaching**
 * The personal aspect of teaching addresses fundamental questions such as:
 * "Who is the self that teaches?" and
 * "What does it mean to be authentic as a teacher?"
 * "What is the nature of "self" to which one must be true if one is to be authentic as a teacher?"
 * Exploring authenticity and the self-as-teacher is an important part of the journey towards understanding what Parker Palmer (1998) means when he says, "We teach who we are" (p. 4).
 * Patricia Cranton (2001)
 * writes of authenticity in teaching as the expression of the genuine self in relation to a specific community.
 * She suggests that teachers get to know themselves as teachers by coming to know their own preferences within the social context of their work.
 * She sees teaching, in this sense, as "authentic" when those involved are speaking genuinely and honestly rather than with intent to manipulate or deceive.
 * Stephen Brookfield (1990)
 * suggests that authenticity in teaching means, among other things, owning up to the fact that we do not have all the answers and that we can and will make mistakes.
 * Peter Jarvis (1992)
 * suggests that authenticity in teaching arises out of a genuine intention to foster dialogue and mutual learning between teachers and learners
 * Dirkx and Gilley (2004)
 * write more broadly of the inner work of adult educators, in classrooms and in the workplace, as they struggle to develop congruence between their work and their authentic self.
 * The common theme among these authors Is tha**t authenticity in teaching can only arise out of an understanding of how we wish to be in relation with others**.

Note to Self: Find the authors mentioned above.


 * Reflection on action (not critical reflection): Teachers often look back upon a teaching episode reviewing the events and in the process constructing a narrative of what happened, why they think that happened, and what they will do about it. They may or may not tell anyone else their narrative, but it forms the basis for further exploration of their self-as-teacher. And because the subject of this narrative is their emerging self-as-teacher, much of their reflection is indirectly, if not directly, focused on their identity as teacher rather than on technique. Indeed, this is why a single negative episode can be so troubling; the object of reflection is the self, not the technique.

Teaching styles witnessed in earlier years remain as vague mythical models and borrowed personal scripts that don't always fit the emerging self that is trying to stand on its own and proclaim "This is MY teaching style." That declaration needs yet another aspect of firm footing before its claim can be made with commitment and confidence.


 * Philosophical Beliefs: The Philosophical Aspect**
 * Teaching is more than an intellectual act; it is also a moral and philosophical undertaking.
 * It is moral because it is guided by a sense of what is right, good, or just.
 * It is philosophical because it requires a critical examination of the underlying beliefs and values that guide teaching towards particular purposes; asking why those ends are justified and by what means they might be reasonably and appropriately accomplished.
 * With a chorus of inspiration, these authors show how learning and teaching can (and must) have regard for the moral, as well as the intellectual character of teaching and of the self as teacher
 * FIND THIS CHAPTER : Tom Nesbit's chapter (1998) is singled out because it does something that few books or chapters do: it reveals the moral workings of teaching in a most unlikely arena - the teaching of math. Nesbit provides an exceptional example of how one can seek social change through teaching math. (Nesbit, T. (1998). The social reform perspective: Seeking a better society. In D.D. Pratt & Associates, Five perspectives on teaching in adult and higher education (pp. 173-199). Malabar, FL: Krieger.)

In the interactions of all three aspects (technical, personal style, philosophical beliefs), that we are more likely to gain insight into the often erratic and emotionally charged experience of teaching.
 * Seeking Harmony**

Much of the literature on teaching adults addresses one and sometimes two of the aspects so far discussed. Rarely does it address all three. As a result, exchange of knowledge about teaching can be problematic
 * Emphasizing the technical aspect of teaching, for example, can be problematic for several reasons: First, it separates the tools from the person using them, animating the tools and thus suggesting the tools have the power to facilitate learning.
 * Second, the same tool can be used by different teachers or at different times with markedly different results. **A teaching tool is like a musical instrument awaiting the musical score and magical hands of the teacher to bring it to life.**
 * Third, without a genuine connection to the self and the moral and philosophical aspect of teaching, it can be difficult to justify one's approach to teaching.

In all instances, teaching is about the self, but always about the self in relation to a body of knowledge, a set of learners, and particular moral and intellectual ends that are justified.


 * In the beginning, tools are very important because they help structure the work of teaching amidst complexity and uncertainty. However, at this stage the tools are the master and the self is the servant. As teachers mature, the relationship shifts and tools become servant and the self becomes master. Then, as the self finds root in commitment, it moves towards even greater authenticity and harmony with a greater understanding of the values and beliefs that form an underlying philosophy of teaching. **

The goal is to develop harmony between the three aspects of teaching. Harmony means that each aspect is defined in relation to the other two, and the collective is greater than the sum of its parts. When teachers become truly effective, they have found a comfortable blend of competence and conscience, and they have moved from technical knowledge to craft knowledge in how they use their self in concert with the tools of teaching. Craft knowledge means the tools are no longer separate from the actor; they have been adapted, not adopted, and become integrated with the self in the role of teacher, and in service of the beliefs that guide teaching.

(this is my favourite reading for unit 2)

= =

Sork, T. and Newman, M. (2004). Program development in adult education and training. In G. Foley (Ed.), Dimensions of adult learning: Adult education and training in a global era (pp. 96-117). Crows Nest NSW: Allen and Unwin.===

Players > the learning. Part of the educator's skill will be to operate creatively within those constraints. Policy may be set, and so may the educational > program's broad objectives.The format may in part also be prescribed, in that it must relate to an occupation that has been analysed in terms of competencies. However, the educator may have more control over the design and delivery of sections of the program, and in the encounter with the participants there will inevitably be adjustments and renegotiation of the curriculum relating to the individual and collective needs of those participants.
 * Program Development**
 * In most formal contexts, however, there will be three distinct players—the learner, the teacher or trainer, and an organization controlling, requiring or providing the program.
 * In each of these cases the educator responsible for delivering the educational program will be constrained in the way she or he can design

The Context > The contexts are many, and most are interrelated. They are political, economic, social, organizational, aesthetic, moral, spiritual and historical. > In some cases, the context severely limits the choices available to the educator, while in other cases the context presents a rich variety of > possibilities. It is important to understand that the context is dynamic, can be acted on by the educator, and is a key factor in the development > of programs.
 * Program development takes place within a context, and so the educator must take notice of, adjust to, react to, or make use of that context.
 * More recently, context has been regarded as a combination of material conditions and socially constructed understandings. Some of these understandings and conditions may be difficult to change, but others will be malleable in the hands of a skillful educator.


 * PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT MODELS**

These major four influences are all to be seen in the first, and in many ways most influential, program development model we want to examine.
 * the liberal tradition's emphasis on knowledge and the subject,
 * the Taylorist or behaviouralist emphasis on performance and outcome,
 * Dewey's focus on the learner as a person, and
 * Lindeman's emphasis on society and community

outline a four-stage model for planning an educational program:
 * Conventional models**
 * 1) 1 Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, 1949 Ralph Tyler
 * 1) deciding on educational purposes;
 * 2) selecting learning experiences to achieve those purposes;
 * 3) organising the learning experiences for effective instruction; and
 * 4) evaluating the effectiveness of the learning experiences.

Tyler proposes that the source of educational objectives should be
 * the learners themselves,
 * contemporary life outside the school,
 * the institution's and educator's philosophies,
 * and subject-matter specialists.

From the outset Tyler is arguing that we should take account of people, society and the intellectual climate, as well as the experts in the subject, in deciding on our educational purposes and setting course objectives.

Tyler makes the point that it is the **experience** the learner goes through that counts.
 * The trainer may provide information, instruction and exercises and in effect create a complex environment for the participants, but it is in the participants' interaction with that environment that learning takes place.
 * Tyler states categorically that it is what the learners do that they learn, not what the teacher does.
 * From this principle flow a number of others
 * that the participants must be given an opportunity to practise the kind of behaviour implied by the objective,
 * that the practice should be satisfying,
 * and that it be appropriate to the participants' present 'attainments' and 'predispositions'.

Behaviourist
 * operant conditioning (which argues that all behavior is the result of the application of consequences)

Cognitive Psychologist
 * discovering knowledge or constructing meaning is central to learning

Technical Paradigm (Plumb & Welton, 2001, p. 718-9) (BE TRUE)
 * "Cult of efficiency" and the favoured methods in competency-based learning
 * human subject is perceived as a solitary and self-interested
 * the primary value guiding the subject's actions is efficient control of an objectified reality
 * knowledge is deemed valuable if it accurately depict world relations so that the subject can effectively assert his or her control over material objects or processes
 * the physical sciences are the prototype institution for the technical paradigm
 * educators feel the pressure to efficiently transfer knowledge and skills to their students
 * all things seem subject to "economic" evaluative criteria (productivity, efficiency, cost-effectiveness)
 * Positive: enables adult educators to understand and to act in ways that make them more effective at what they do; helps them become more efficient at assessing needs and stimulating adult learning; enables them to control the learning process better to achieve specified ends; leaves them capable of providing a clear account of their activities and of justifying outcomes.
 * Negative: restrictive; tight focus on efficient control can cause adult educators to overlook crucial moral and ethical questions;
 * Adult educators with the technical paradigm view the adult learning process as a technical problem to be solved. They ask the question "How can I best achieve a desired outcome?" The question they often fail to ask, though, is "What ought to be the desired outcome?"

Humanistic Paradigm **(BE RIGHT)**
 * SLOGAN: “Being All That We Can Be”, from the U.S. Army advertising campaign.
 * Humanist- a doctrine, attitude, or way of life centred on human interests or values; especially: a philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual's dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason. (link)
 * The Basics: (1) Adults should be empowered to take personal responsibility for their own learning. (2) Instructional activities should be based on learners' perceived needs.
 * Humanistic paradigm is most visible within two strong tendencies in modern adult education practice: the valuing of the unfolding of the person's capacities through the life cycle, and the autonomy of the adult learner. (Plumb & Welton, 2001, p. 719)
 * Primary purpose of humanism could be described as the development of self-actualized, autonomous people.
 * learning is student-centred and personalize
 * individuals have the potential for personal growth, development and the goal is to develop self-actualized people in a cooperative, supportive environment
 * people act with intentionality and value
 * humility, honesty, fidelity, propriety, dignity and fairness versus accountable, objective, realistic and efficient
 * concerned with the development of the whole person, especially as an individual grows and develops over the lifespan, with emphasis on the emotional and affective dimensions of the learner
 * the study of the self, motivation, and goals are areas of particular interest
 * Adults have unique life experiences and thus are unique and education must address the unique abilities and needs of the individual adult
 * Humanism tends to conceal the fact that the pedagogical relationship is a power relationship (Scott, 1998, p.306)
 * the individual is viewed as being-in-society who is committed to community and group (Plumb & Welton, 2001, p. 719)
 * the primary value that guides an individual's actions is the achieving of mutual understanding and intersubjective agreement. (Plumb & Welton, 2001, p. 719)
 * knowledge is deemed valuable if it accurately depict social norms so that the subject can live harmoniously and respectfully with others (Plumb & Welton, 2001, p. 719)
 * "what is," rather than "what ought to be" (technical paradigm) (Plumb & Welton, 2001, p. 719)
 * humanities (philosophy, history, art and literature, which teach us lessons about how we live together) constitute the prototype institution for the humanist paradigm (Plumb & Welton, 2001, p. 719)
 * Adult education's long-standing concern for moral and ethical questions reveals its great indebtedness to the humanist paradigm.
 * role of the learner: highly motivated and self-directed; learners assume full responsibility for learning; learning that is driven by the learner, as opposed to learning mandated from some outside authority
 * role of the educator: is that of a facilitator/guides, organizers of learning, and helpers; help learners decide their own learning paths and rely heavily on communication and collaboration tools; believes in the innate potential of the individual and sees education as a vehicle by which that potential can be realized, relinquishes power
 * Humanistic "theories" of learning tend to be highly value-driven and hence more like prescriptions (about what ought to happen) rather than descriptions (of what does happen).
 * They emphasize the "natural desire" of everyone to learn. Whether this natural desire is to learn whatever it is you are teaching, however, is not clear.
 * The school is particularly associated with: Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow (psychologists), John Holt (child education), Malcolm Knowles (adult education and proponent of andragogy), Kolb (he emphasizes experiential learning, one could also include Kolb among the humanists as well as the cognitive theorists)
 * While the tenor of humanistic theory is generally wishy-washy liberal, its approach also underlies the more committed stance of “transformative learning” (Mezirow) and “conscientization” (Freire). (link)

Physiological Needs Safety Needs Needs of Love, Affection and Belongingness Needs for Esteem Needs for Self-Actualization
 * Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs**
 * These are biological needs. They consist of needs for oxygen, food, water, and a relatively constant body temperature. They are the strongest needs because if a person were deprived of all needs, the physiological ones would come first in the person's search for satisfaction.
 * When all physiological needs are satisfied and are no longer controlling thoughts and behaviors, the needs for security can become active. Adults have little awareness of their security needs except in times of emergency or periods of disorganization in the social structure. Children often display the signs of insecurity and the need to be safe.
 * When the needs for safety and for physiological well-being are satisfied, the next class of needs for love, affection and belongingness can emerge. Maslow states that people seek to overcome feelings of loneliness and alienation. This involves both giving and receiving love, affection and the sense of belonging.
 * When the first three classes of needs are satisfied, the needs for esteem can become dominant. These involve needs for both self-esteem and for the esteem a person gets from others. Humans have a need for a stable, firmly based, high level of self-respect, and respect from others. When these needs are satisfied, the person feels self-confident and valuable as a person in the world. When these needs are frustrated, the person feels inferior, weak, helpless and worthless.
 * When all of the foregoing needs are satisfied, then and only then are the needs for self-actualization activated. Maslow describes self-actualization as a person's need to be and do that which the person was "born to do." "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write." These needs make themselves felt in signs of restlessness. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking something, in short, restless. If a person is hungry, unsafe, not loved or accepted, or lacking self-esteem, it is very easy to know what the person is restless about. It is not always clear what a person wants when there is a need for self-actualization.


 * Critical Paradigm** (Plumb & Welton, 2001, p. 720-21) **(BE JUST)**
 * Perspectives on adult education informed by critical theory for an emancipatory practice of lifelong education are motivated by a sense of connectedness to international events.
 * This is not included in the definition of andragogy. (Scott, 1998, p. 108)
 * Human knowledge is subject to the distorting influence of power; power can distort our efforts to understand both what is and what ought to be
 * Critical paradigm is interested in minimizing the distorting influences of power
 * Individuals are viewed as communicative agents who should be free to participate as an equal in society
 * Primary goal that guides an individual's actions is to free communication with others from the distorting influences of social power
 * For knowledge to be deemed valuable, it must be achieved through communication unhindered by coercion (be just)
 * Critical social science (for example, critical sociology and some forms of psychoanalysis) is the prototype institution for the critical paradigm
 * Adult education endeavoured to foster the capacity of adults to see through the distorting ideologies of traditional and industrial society in order that they could assume responsibility for determining their own fates
 * Most visible in the tendencies of modern adult education to spawn critical thinking and reflection
 * adult education practices are evaluated according to their ability to overcome oppressive social relationships; critical awareness and transformative action are seen as most desirable

Social-critical philosophy for education: how education can be used to transform society and to make people away of the injustices, so that society can change for the better instead of keeping the status quo. (Paulo Freire)


 * Decisionism**
 * A political, ethical, and jurisprudential ( a body or system of laws ) doctrine which states that moral or legal precepts are the product of decisions made by political or legal bodies. According to decisionism, it is not the content of the decision, but rather the fact that it is a decision made by the proper authority, or by using a correct method, which determines its validity. Later in life, when Carl Schmitt (notable proponent in the German law) used decisionism as a way of justifying Nazi policy, when he was quoted as saying "Der Führer has made the law, der Führer protects the law". In moral philosophy, the discourse ethics of, among others, Jürgen Habermas is a recent expression of moral decisionism. Here, it is held that a normative statement is valid if and only if it has freely been granted approval by the concerned parties, and not because of the semantic content of the statement. (link)

Welton, M. (2005). Out of the margins, pp. 7-21; The discourse of the learning society in the twentieth century, pp. 22-43; Citizenship in the age of information, pp. 150-179; and The lifeworld curriculum: pathologies and possibilities, pp. 180-209. In M. Welton, Designing the just learning society: A critical inquiry. Leicester: NIACE.


 * Chapter Eight: The lifeworld curriculum: pathologies and possibilities**

The system is impelled along its learning trajectory geared to instrumental-rational efficiency; whereas, social integration, in contrast, is symbolically structured.

Social evolution manifests itself along two axes of human learning:
 * one, an instrumental logic of learning how to find efficient (or successful) ways of producing and administering one's existence;
 * the other, increased potential for reflexive action in a rationalised lifeworld bound together through communicative processes. Increased reflexivity means that with the advent of modernity traditions are constantly questioned and revised. In all of his work, Habermas argues that the lifeworld is the source of human activity, connectedness and meaningfulness.

'It is raining' refers to an objective world, 'I have a headache' to the subjective world and 'Abortion is morally wrong' to the normative world.

Habermas's ambitious (and often controversial) theory of communicative action assumes that post-traditional persons learn to adopt different attitudes toward corresponding worlds.

In some traditional cultures, for example, a statement such as `It is raining' is inextricably tied to the 'gods are blessing us.' For the experiencing subject, then, the lifeworld is 'constituted by interpretative patterns organized in language and handed down in cultural traditions'
 * 'It is raining' refers to an objective world,
 * 'I have a headache' to the subjective world and
 * 'Abortion is morally wrong' to the normative world.

Modernity not only uncouples the system from the lifeworld. It also produces separate institutional spheres (like formal schools for children and youth that originate only in the early nineteenth century) to
 * perform the work of making meaning (cultural reproduction),
 * stabilizing personal identities and solidarity (social reproduction) and
 * fostering individual skillfulness (socialization)

The lifeworld provides actors with narratives and vocabularies to orient their actions in and with the world and others. Actors make sense of their everyday world by drawing upon taken-for-granted funds of myths, sagas, sacred scripts, sentiments, common sense and science.

This stock of knowledge supplies interpretations as we come to an understanding about the objective world of natural things and processes, other people close to us and far away, and our inner selves. It also provides participants with norms to regulate their membership in social groups.

The lifeworld pedagogical processes produce the competences that enable actors to speak and act with confidence, resilience, verve and imagination, placing them in a position to take part in processes of reaching understanding and thereby asserting their own identities.

Perhaps each of these views captures a dimension of the ever elusive self.
 * The unitary view names the constancy of the 'I' even as time and circumstances change.
 * The relational self is sociologically credible. `I' am utterly dependent on the air surrounding me and the intricate web of relationships extending to the far reaches of the globe for my nurture, shelter, food and spiritual sustenance. (inter-subjective self)
 * The post-structural sense of the self captures the often distressing daily experience of conflicting passions, changing moods, uncalled for thoughts whistling through the mind, constantly shifting contexts and relationships


 * Post-structural practices** generally operate on some basic assumptions:
 * Post-structuralists hold that the concept of "self" as a separate, singular, and coherent entity is a fictional construct. Instead, an individual comprises tensions between conflicting knowledge claims (e.g. gender, race, class, profession, etc.). Therefore, to properly study a text a reader must understand how the work is related to his or her own personal concept of self. This self-perception plays a critical role in one's interpretation of meaning. While different thinkers' views on the self (or the subject) vary, it is often said to be constituted by discourse(s).
 * The author's intended meaning, such as it is (for the author's identity as a stable "self" with a single, discernible "intent" is also a fictional construct), is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives. Post-structuralism rejects the idea of a literary text having a single purpose, a single meaning, or one singular existence. Instead, every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose, meaning, and existence for a given text. To step outside of literary theory, this position is generalizable to any situation where a subject perceives a sign. Meaning (or the signified, in Saussure's scheme, which is as heavily presumed upon in post-structuralism as in structuralism) is constructed by an individual from a signifier. This is why the signified is said to 'slide' under the signifier, and explains the talk about the "primacy of the signifier."
 * A post-structuralist critic must be able to use a variety of perspectives to create a multifaceted interpretation of a text, even if these interpretations conflict with one another. It is particularly important to analyze how the meanings of a text shift in relation to certain variables, usually involving the identity of the reader.

> was an intellectual movement in France in the 1950s and 1960s that studied the underlying structures in cultural products (such as texts) and used analytical concepts from linguistics, psychology, anthropology and other fields to interpret those structures. It emphasized the logical and scientific nature of its results.
 * Structuralism**

>offers a study of how knowledge is produced and a critique of structuralist premises. It argues that because history and culture condition the study of underlying structures it is subject to biases and misinterpretations. To understand an object (e.g. one of the many meanings of a text), a post-structuralist approach argues, it is necessary //to study both the object itself and the systems of knowledge that produced the object.//
 * Post-structuralism**

>Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices and to impose those choices on the world. It is normally contrasted to natural forces, which are causes involving only unthinking deterministic processes. In this respect, agency is subtly distinct from the concept of free will, the philosophical doctrine that our choices are not the product of causal chains, but are significantly free or undetermined. Human agency entails the uncontroversial, weaker claim that humans do in fact make decisions and enact them on the world.
 * Human agency** (link)

> Structure and agency forms an enduring core debate in sociology. Essentially the same as in the Marxist conception, "agency" refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices, whereas "structure" refers to those factors (such as social class, but also religion, gender, ethnicity, subculture, etc.) which seem to limit or influence the opportunities that individuals have.


 * Moral agency** is a person's capacity for making moral judgments and taking actions that comport (to be in agreement) with morality. (link)


 * The Extra Reading written by the prof about Habermas**

Idealism vs. materialism **([|link])** Modes of explanation in social science, How is reality known? How do people analyze the causes of social events and phenomena? What do they focus on in their discussions and how do they define major concepts? What sort of forces do they cite as more "fundamental" than others?

Suppose: A causes B


 * For an idealist (1), A is an ideal factor.
 * mental
 * spiritual || Idealists emphasize "ideal" factors. Reality is basically made up of spirt. Spiritual forces or people's states of mind are the most important factors to look at to understand society.

(idealism is the belief that reality is to be found in the contents of our own minds.) ||  ||


 * For a materialist (2), A is a material factor.
 * physical
 * environmental
 * economic
 * concrete
 * historical || Physical, environmental, economic, or concrete historical conditions are the most important factors to look at to understand society according to the materialist. ||  ||

Synthesis of 1 and 2 with emphasis on 2 + the philosophy of internal relations || //The Materialist Conception of History//: "The production of the material means of subsistence and the economic development of a people forms the basis for the social and political institutions created as well as for the legal conceptions and ideology that arises.(Engels) ||  ||
 * Dialectical materialism (Marxism)

Many philosophies of social science try to avoid determinism or reductionism. These approaches are often called dogmatic or fundamentalist. > Determinism: A causes B and it could not be otherwise. > Reductionism: B can be completely explained by reference to A (with no left overs).

Idealism and realism are philosophical theories propounded by the two Greek philosophers [|Plato] and [|Aristotle], respectively. In a layman's language, idealism is a theory that professes that reality exists only in ideas. It also states that ideally, everything and everyone should be perfect and flawless. Realism, on the other hand, has a more practical approach of looking at things. Realism states that things and people should be accepted as they are, that is, with all their defects and weaknesses. Now that we know the basic philosophy behind the two theories, let's start a deliberate on "Idealism vs Realism" on various counts.


 * Difference between Idealism and Realism ([|link])**
 * Realists are basically conservative people who follow the conventions of the society and thus, are more secure socially. Idealists, on the other hand, are nonconformists who are most likely to revolt against the set norms.
 * Idealism is a theory of the futurists. While, realism is the theory, of the people who live in the present.
 * Idealists aim for perfection. They set high goals for themselves and others. They believe that humans have vast potential, which should be harnessed properly to achieve excellence. Realists, on the other hand, settle for mediocrity. Realists only aim for achievable targets. That is why, to expect something extraordinary from them is out of question.
 * Idealism is very impractical in today's world. Idealists are basically dreamers, who only look for a paragon and that too in the future. Since they are out of touch with reality, they are most liable to fail. Realists, on the other hand, are more grounded in reality and are better prepared to deal with the world around them.

> There are five basic philosophies of education namely idealism, realism, perennialism, experimentalism and existentialism. Idealism is based on the view that students should be taught wisdom through the study of literature, history, philosophy, and religion. The focus is on making the students intellectually sound and moralistically right, so that they can serve the society in a better way. The teaching methods used are lectures, discussions and dialogs, that is, all the methods which stimulate the mind. Moral lessons are taught by giving examples of people from history. In short, the focus is on education of the mind through intuition and introspection.
 * Idealism vs Realism in Education**

> Realism, on the other hand, is based on the view that students should learn about the world and the universe by studying science and mathematics. The focus is on making the students understand that reality is in the physical world, that is, what we see around us. Realism emphasizes on providing factual information to the students and teaching them the laws of the nature. The teacher presents the subject very systematically to the students. There is a standard curriculum, which is taught to all the students. Moral lessons are taught in the form of certain rules, which all the students have to follow. Focus is on education through experimentation and critical, scientific thinking.

> A combination of realism and idealism and all the other philosophies is a prerequisite for teaching children effectively. Take the example of American schooling, which borrows something or the other from each of the above mentioned philosophies


 * False Consciousness** – a Marxist theory that believes people are not consciously aware of oppression and other detrimental affairs. The inability for a person to fully comprehend a situation for what it truly is. ([|link])

> Lifeworld relies on the use of language, and more specifically, discourse. In order to understand fully the components of lifeworld, Habermas says we need to ask ourselves what tasks or functions require language as this medium. Habermas identified three functions: > 1) We need language in order to arrive at mutual understanding of an issue. While doing this, the stock of cultural knowledge is both passed on and renewed. > 2) Understanding-oriented communication coordinates action and contributes to social integration and the establishment of relations of solidarity; and > 3) Language is the medium through which socialization takes place and is therefore instrumental in the formation of personal identity. > These three functions of language help to maintain the three structural components of lifeworld (1987, p. 137).
 * Lifeworld**
 * aka world of everyday life - the total sphere of experiences of an individual which is circumscribed by the objects, persons, and events encountered in the pursuit of the pragmatic objectives of living. It is a "world" in which a person is "wide-awake" and which asserts itself as the "paramount reality" of his life" -->
 * lifeworld incorporates community-forming processes that actively and passively shape it into a social world. (Scott, 1998, p. 55)
 * think of social constructing your own reality.
 * Lifeworld is a culturally transmitted and linguistically organized stock of interpretive patterns that sustains collective identity and is to be understood as a “totality of what is taken for granted” (Habermas, 1987, p. 132). System is the ordering of society including its economic and material functions. Society cannot exist as lifeworld alone; it must also have material reproduction to carry out and order the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services (Baxter, p. 52). Habermas’ system is concerned with material reproduction, such as the economy, corporations and administrative systems, as opposed to the lifeworld which is concerned with social reproduction. ([|link])
 * Lifeworld, the collective identity of an organization, is maintained and reproduced by discourse, namely, communicative action.
 * The lifeworld is not a private world; it is intersubjective. The fundamental structure of its reality is shared by the members (1987, p. 131).
 * Lifeworld is built upon and maintained by language. Through the background of lifeworld, our life together as a society is created and reproduced through a network of communicative action. ([|link])


 * Intersubjectivity**
 * Term used in philosophy, psychology and sociology to describe a condition somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity, one in which a phenomenon is personally experienced (subjectively) but by more than one subject. (link)
 * How people jointly construct their social lives through interactions with others and their rules for doing so. (link)


 * Communicative Action**
 * In other words, communicative action is the process by which the members of community further reinforce their collective identify and undertake actions consistent with that identity. This goes beyond notions of a ‘corporate culture’ and includes common ways of understanding and meaning-making, common goals and purposes and non-coercive dialogue which aims to understand the other.
 * The concept of communicative action refers to at least two subjects who are capable of speech and action, and who establish, by verbal or non-verbal means, an interpersonal relationship (Eriksen and Wiegard, p. 36). Their aim is mutual understanding in order that they may be able to coordinate their actions. This is done in a linguistic process where each has the opportunity to present their respective interpretations of the situation to ascertain that they understand things in the same way (Habermas, 1984, p. 86). These interpretations will be presented as criticisable utterances which other participants may accept or reject as valid. Other participants can try to influence one another’s interpretations by presenting new criticisable utterances, always with a goal of arriving at a definition of an issue or situation which is shared by everyone and which is defensible. ([|link])

An actor is aiming for success in achieving some end, as opposed to communicative action, in which the actor’s aim is to build mutual understanding.
 * Strategic Communicatio**n **([|link])**

Two types of strategic action: Strategic action does not contribute to lifeworld, which is dependent on the relationships built through rational communicative action.
 * 1) open, where all participants are proceeding strategically and all are aware of this, and
 * 2) concealed, where at least one participant falsely believes all sides are acting communicatively (Baxter, 1987, p. 40).

> Participants pursue their individual goals under the condition that they can harmonize their plans of action on the basis of common situation definitions (1984, p. 286). There is, then, an interdependent and synergistic relationship between lifeworld and communicative rationality; lifeworld is dependent on communicative rationality which is oriented towards common understanding, and in turn, lifeworld provides the shared horizon which fosters communicative rationality.
 * Communicative Rationality ([|link])**

> Is concerned with material reproduction, such as the economy, corporations and administrative systems, as opposed to the lifeworld which is concerned with social reproduction. While the components of lifeworld are maintained by discourse, namely, communicative action, system is maintained by strategic action and guided by money and power (Habermas, 1987, p. 154).
 * Habermas’ System** ([|link])

> Habermas sees in modern society a tendency for lifeworld to be shunted aside by system. Purposive rationality, as opposed to communicative rationality, has extended beyond its natural borders. “Through this one-sideness, the project of enlightenment has entered into a self-destructive course, in which the spread of a life form based on instrumental and success-oriented reason is about to destroy its own social and normative basis” (Eriksen and Wiegard, p. 101). Habermas calls this the colonisation of the lifeworld by system.
 * Colonization of the lifeworld by system**

Scenerio: Women laying tiles in her garage. (link)
 * How she is laying the tiles may or may not be rational. She may do it in such a manner that she tiles herself into a corner and can get out or in such a manner that she can get out.
 * The "how" or the "way" is Communicative Rationality.
 * Now, if someone through a grenade into the garage and she continued to tile the garage, her action is not rational. How she lays the cement is still rational, but evaluating the action itself, one can see that it is not rational to continue tiling and this is Purposive Rationality.
 * There is a difference between evaluating the //way// in which a thing is done and evaluating the //action itself//.

> This colonization overtakes value-rational acts and replaces them with instrumental rationality: the person is now an object or resource to be used, and his or her acts are means toward a goal rather than laden with meaning and purpose in and of themselves. Rather than being concerned with the "means" of acts, this colonization is only concerned with the end, the telos of the act. (link)

> Habermas' theory about the colonization the life-world by the economic system points to the problem of the marketplace colonizing the academy, basic information, and news, entertainment, and government. Why do the corporations control the media, television, and radio, and have the right to brainwash people to become consumers? All the fragments of the former life-world are repackaged as market items. Techné subverts phronesis. The “means” subvert the ends. (Definition of phronesis: wisdom in determining ends and the means of attaining them. Phronein in Greek means to think.) Habermas’ praxis “recovers” the inherited life-world and rationally “perfects” it. Does a university turn out products? Is a university the same as a business, a company? Have students become products who have to sell themselves? Have things become ends in themselves, and human beings become disposable? Or rather the “totaling market” requires endless consumption. (link)

> Habermas means that concepts, values and modes of thought associated with the market have intruded into daily life to such an extent that individuals become increasingly unable to think–or act–outside the hegemonic system. Everything gets (re)packaged in market terms–that is, everything is (eventually) assigned a price. This impoverishes our world and our relationships, as if we eliminated words, images and gestures from our communication, and replaced them instead with number systems like binary or hex. More “efficient” and “precise”? Possibly. But can those qualities really be traded off against the powers of allusion, metaphor, and symbolism? (link)

in which entities can be measured on their own terms, and cherished for their own sake
 * value-rationality**

in which entities are measured by their exchange value
 * instrumental rationality**

The increasing dominance of instrumental rationality is linked to the process of modernity, and it not only “flattens” the world by reducing everything to its value vis-a-vis something else (usually money), but it reduces our own autonomy as humans. The life-world, by and large, characterized by value-rationality, begins to be eclipsed and absorbed in instrumental rationality, making persons become means to political and economic ends not in their interest, nor under their control. (link)

Some people have no real “autonomy” or “control” in the market system. According to Habermas, and to Kant, when you live in a world turned upside-down, where instead of socio-economic structures serving human needs, humans become subordinated to the systems, you have no means to mount an effective challenge. (link)

Habermas divides the political sphere into the
 * socially integrated public sphere, where our political opinions are created, and the
 * administrative system sphere, where the decisions are made (bureaucratic and power structures which ‘run’ our modern society and which are influenced by political parties and special interest groups) The basis for interaction in this sphere is not communicative action, but steering media (Eriksen and Wiegard, p. 8).

When lifeworld is colonized, the public sphere loses its rigour and its role in society, and we experience a loss of freedom. Individuals in society move from being citizens to being taxpayers and consumers. Colonization, therefore, has significant affects on the public and therefore the political sphere ([|link]) What characterizes modern society is that action within comprehensive areas, such as the marketplace and political-administrative systems, are relieved from the demands of justification which are otherwise implicit in the validity claims raised in communicative action. Instead, relatively autonomous systems of action have been developed and are coordinated through success-oriented behaviour typically expressed through profit and utility maximizing actions (Eriksen and Weigard, p. 86). ([|link]) (Like the women that keeps tiling the garage floor even when the grenade is thrown into the garage.)

Warning: Habermas says that society will inevitably disintegrate if we do not make room for actions oriented to reaching understanding, and operate with a lifeworld which is communicatively integrated and which establishes the necessary foundation on which system is built (Eriksen and Weigard, p. 86).([|link])

System is instrumental and functions through the steering media of money and power, attached to empirically motivated ties. Habermas calls the transfer of action from communicative to steering media the “technicizing of the lifeworld” (1987, p. 183). Even public administration has interchanges similar to the economy, with ‘citizens’ becoming ‘clients’, a clear correspondence to an economic, consumer-oriented model (Sitton, p. 77). The public sphere, lodged in the lifeworld, loses its ability to steer the administrative system, and instead, becomes steered by it. We move from being citizens to consumers. This erodes the public sphere. Habermas argued that the uncoupling of lifeworld and system alone did not cause this phenomena; colonization is the cause. ([|link])