Doctored

Land, R., Rattray, J. & Vivian, P. (2014). Learning in the Liminal Space: A Semiotic Approach to Threshold Concepts. Higher Education 67(2): 199-217.

This is the suggested text for our Pedagogy Reading Group at UAL this month – I loved it for many reasons.

Not only does it do a fantastic job of highlighting the place of partial understanding in the learning process, it was also a relief – after grappling with Bernstein – to return to reading text rich with metaphor. The paper also provides a gentle introduction to semiotics, which has been a hazy dot on the edge of my personal conceptual map for a while.

Pedagogic Content Knowledge (PCK) as described here – a teacher’s conceptual map of the teaching domain – has parallels with Bernstein’s rules of distribution, recontextualisation and evaluation. The PCK sets out how content is organised, adapted, represented and presented, and the paper explains how this system is – or should be – heavily influenced by the ‘threshold’ nature of the concepts at hand.

While the eventual aim of the authors is presumably to facilitate curriculum planning that effectively addresses misconceptions, I felt the paper successfully communicated not only the inevitability of partial, incorrect and absent understandings of concepts, but also their necessity in the learning process. Repetition and digression are required in order to deconstruct and reconstruct understanding, and – as this diagram shows – partial understanding of individual concepts may be required in order to develop a deeper, integrated understanding of a conceptual ‘set’.

Land et al. acknowledge that it can be logistically difficult for learners to re-experience a previous state of understanding, but highlight how valuable this can be for learning. They also stress the necessity for teachers to remember their earlier ways of seeing, rather than forgetting old meanings that are no longer appropriate for their own understanding. I wonder what strategies and techniques the authors had in mind for this? Have they considered reflective blogging/journalling as a way of capturing and revisiting previous liminal states? It’s certainly one of the primary reasons why I do it, and why I have my students doing it too.

I think it is important that teachers explicitly discuss with their students the important role that partial and incorrect understandings play in the learning process. One example that springs immediately to mind is the Project unit I teach, in which I have to introduce practitioner enquiry to a group of teachers who have – for example – wildly varying existing understandings of the concepts of ‘research’ and ‘data’. Over the last few years I have done a lot of thinking about how to help them to reach an appropriate contextual understanding of these concepts in time to do a useful project, while reducing the anxiety they experience as they realise that a significant conceptual shift is required.

My approach has evolved into an example-based one (‘here are some things people have done for this unit before’) that cuts out a lot of the content I previously delivered in case they might need it (about the difference between quantitative and qualitative enquiry, on running focus groups, etc). We then move as soon as possible into getting them to share something they would like to find out about their teaching or their students’ learning, and  giving them steering feedback that addresses any misconceptions, missing signifiers, etc. I can immediately visualise how this approach might look in the form of one of these diagrams, and why it works for our course. The sharing of initial ideas reveals individual participants’ understanding of the key concepts, and the open feedback results in a repetition of the key learning points applied in a range of different contexts.

Last term I was concerned about an unexpected levels of participant anxiety following the briefing and throughout the unit. This paper has really helped to explain what was behind that anxiety. With the new cohort I have tried to reassure them that the best way to meet the learning outcomes is through trial and error; there is no expectation that they execute a brilliant enquiry first time around, and no point in me trying to instruct them how to do that from the start. They just have to give it a go and learn through doing. I haven’t seen much anxiety yet, but this may be because they are still to complete the first unit and have put the Project unit to the back of their minds for now. I think I can go further; explicitly discussing with them the idea of practitioner research as a threshold concept, using one of the diagrams in this paper or adapting it for our specific context.

I would go as far to suggest that an appreciation of the link between threshold concepts and anxiety may be a threshold concept in itself – and an incredibly useful one for some of my students. These diagrams could be used in a therapeutic context in order to assist individual learners to tolerate – even welcome – uncertainty and unfamiliarity. Perhaps the sense of frustration and despair may be eased by pointing out the ’empty signifier’ circle on a diagram. It may well render the issue more tangible, less frightening… and surmountable.

I feel like I am potentially onto something else here in terms of developing my thinking around pedagogy and power, and access to and achievement on our teacher education programme. Anxiety is big massive issue on the course; many participants report feeling like a fish out of water returning to study educational theory & practice while simultaneously teaching (in most cases in the same institution) in a discipline they are comfortably expert in. Some have constructed their careers in order to avoid doing the kinds of things we have them doing on the course. If we can teach them to tolerate and welcome partial understanding and the unfamiliar, then this will surely open doors for them going forwards?

Finally – Land et al. relate changed conceptions of the signified to changed perception of the self. I am reminded here of my EdD interview 18 months ago, where I was asked why I wanted to do the EdD and said, completely honestly, that ‘I simply want to be as clever as I possibly can’. I had a mental image of me post EdD, with all these new connections whizzing around my brain, able to converse confidently with all different kinds of people about all different kinds of stuff.

Many of the teachers I work with speak about wanting their students to become more confident. I have a dissertation supervisee who is looking at how his course prepares students to deal confidently with critical incidents in the workplace, for example. I wonder if it can go too far. I am a little concerned that in the course of my studies I am becoming – at work, at Brookes, on social media – domineering and opinionated. I find it difficult to keep quiet. I forget to listen and ask questions. I am often self-righteous. This isn’t echoed in my personal life, where I am still a nice person. Becoming cleverer is important to me, but I must keep reminding myself not to become an asshole in the process.

Bernstein, B. and Solomon, J. (1999) ‘Pedagogy, Identity and the Construction of a Theory of Symbolic Control’: Basil Bernstein questioned by Joseph Solomon. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20 (2), pp.265-279.

In this conversation Bernstein is describing his proposal for a common language for discussing pedagogic phenomena. He uses ‘pedagogy’ in the broadest of senses, to include any interaction with an aim to influence, for example newspaper articles, TV news reports, films, conversations, etc..

Bernstein sees all pedagogic ‘devices’ as having rules of distribution (access), recontextualisation and evaluation (standards to be attained), which may be autonomous from each other. Rules may conflict with others, particularly those from ‘official’ (formal) and ‘local’ (informal) positions. He uses the metaphor of an ‘arena’ for where and how these conflicts play out.

He speaks about the role of identity  – how we think and act, and what we believe in relation to others, and other groups – and points out that what is said (the message) influences the ‘voice’ as perceived by others.

Overall, Bernstein appears to be talking in a logical way about fairly basic ideas – for example – the limitations of models for explaining the social world, and the need for us to constantly reevaluate those models in light of what we know of reality. However, he is using his own very explicit language that is devoid of the metaphors I and many others will be attuned to. To our ears it is at first mysterious – even impenetrable. It sounds like Bernstein would prefer that we all use his language as a common way of describing social (esp. pedagogic) phenomena. Many people clearly think he’s onto something, and I expect that Bernstein’s theory explains a lot of stuff that continues to be – perhaps needlessly – chewed over. On the other hand, there may be those who feel that such explicitness sucks all the joy and poeticism out of academic discourse. Reading the conversation between Bernstein and Solomon was not an enjoyable experience; it didn’t evoke anything of the real world, or stimulate any emotion in me beyond a kind of amused puzzlement. These days I prefer a less literal form of description. However, I was used to running in traditional, 12mm drop cushioned running shoes with a 150pm cadence, and it is a challenging and not always enjoyable experience transitioning to barefoot running at 180, but I’m under no illusion that the former was better. However I fear linguistics is a little less cut-and-dried than biomechanics.

Unsurprisingly, I found the Wikipedia entry on Bernstein much more penetrable, and recognised Bernstein’s own writing style in the description of ‘elaborate code’. Was he consciously using elaborate code in order to make his work more accessible, or to demonstrate the principle through the medium? I think this is progress – referring to Wikipedia *after* struggling through the primary source 😉

I found the Atherton quote of personal interest: “Everyone uses restricted code communication some of the time. It would be a very peculiar and cold family which did not have its own language.” Haha. I wouldn’t describe my family as cold (although others often describe them as such). Certainly difficult to connect with and feel a part of – but Bernstein’s code theory helps to explain this. I’m now thinking I should just interact with them using the more elaborate code they are comfortable with, and give up hankering after something more familiar (they have told me that they wish I could accept them the way they are!). I took a brief look at Atherton’s pages on the Doceo website and they are brilliant – a dummies’ guide to Bernstein’s code theory, with the examples I so desperately wanted in the first instance. Atherton also comments briefly on Bernstein’s own ‘wilfuly obscurantist’ writing, with a link to this lovely blog post on academic writing in general.

What’s the relevance of all this? I wanted to read Bernstein because I’m reading around the topics of pedagogy and power, access to learning, and cultural capital – and trying to relate it to teacher education in particular. There are several points of relevance in here; one is in considering the various pedagogic devices that influence the teachers I work with in terms of their distribution, recontextualisation and evaluation (including those that originate with me). Another is in considering the restricted code or codes that exist – perhaps overlap – in our interactions on and about the course. I’ve got plenty more to read but will try to link back to these tiny little hooks and see if I have anything else to hang on them.

Something that has struck me so far in this unit is how much the suggested reading has focused not so much on how one learns, but on what should be learned. I agree, we should certainly consider the latter first, rather than taking it as a given. But what these readings have done for me is to highlight how unlikely a consensus would be. It’s not that all the key thinkers are actively disagreeing with each other about what should be taught (although they may like to think they are). It’s more that they’re all talking about it in different ways.

I’d been thinking about something Michael Young said about the development of subject disciplines looking after itself (in universities). He presented a sense subject communities in HE, all thinking along the same lines and working to the same set of rules and procedures. I imagine this isn’t too far from the truth in some disciplines (e.g. veterinary science, business management?). But then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are fundamental conflicts and tensions bubbling away under the surface of even these academic communities about the overarching aims of the discipline, and those of teaching and research. There certainly are in the creative arts; I’ve read many a blog post from my own students this term considering whether intended learning outcomes have any worth at all, for example. The debate about how we actually want students to change as a result of their time at UAL – and the validity of our own intentions – is alive and kicking.

Claxton, G. (2006) Cultivating Creative Mentalities: A Framework for Education. Thinking Skills and Creativity. 1. p57-61.

This short paper of Guy Claxton’s is still situated in compulsory ed, with examples from primary classrooms, but it brings the debate about what should be learned firmly into the creative arts domain. Plenty has been written about whether creativity can be taught or cultivated (I have read Lindstrom and Elkins, among others), and there does seem to be a consensus that it can. Perhaps not surprising given that if it didn’t we’d all be out of a job… Here are a few points of interest from Claxton’s paper:

I was pleasantly surprised by Claxton’s  acknowledgment of the wasteful and potentially destructive qualities of creative activity; and its tendency to challenge and be emotionally demanding. I’ve often felt like my EdD reading and writing takes about five times longer than it could; that so much time is wasted on false starts and inappropriate perfectionism (e.g. spending half an hour trying to understand one page rather than skimming through, tolerating the uncertainty until the final paragraph, which probably explains everything). Yesterday I visited a friend who is struggling with her first essay for her MA, and it broke my heart to see how tormented she was about it; I begged her to just stick to her excellent essay plan and try to enjoy it… how easy it is to give out advice to others that you could do with following yourself!

I didn’t actually see myself as a creative person before reading this paper, but I recognise some of the aspects of the creative mentality Claxton talks about in the context of my writing practice – from the simple inclination to read and write and the pleasure I take in it – to the dispositions of curiosity and resilience. I recall David using the exact same Keats quote on negative capability in a comment on my blog last year when I was doggedly struggling to comprehend Pring on Critical Realism. I’m consciously working on my environment-setting and my attentiveness. These require negotiation with other demands, and experimentation with different environments and strategies. I recognise the different phases of creation (seed – refinement – impasse – inspiration) and the non-linear, protracted or circular ways in which they occur.

The warning against too much hypothesising and ‘showing your working’, and narrowing of focus, made me think about the Project unit that I’m about to start teaching. I often feel when teaching this unit that there is considerable pressure on me to tell the students exactly what it is they should be doing – and how. I want to tell them to relax and answer their questions in a way that makes sense to them. However, having read reports that never attempt to answer the research question, lose their boundaries, and/or pull conclusions from nowhere, my advice is generally based on focusing on the question, keeping a tight hold on scope, and documenting everything. I might need to rethink this, given that I would love the projects to have more creative merit; perhaps some informal interviews with a couple of the Year 2 students would help me to refine the purpose and aims of the unit, and in turn the brief.

It was good to see Csikszentmihalyi mentioned – the ‘flow’ guy. In the past I’ve found it hard to achieve anything like a ‘flow’ state without a looming deadline… I’d love to learn how to summon the deadline mentality earlier in the timeline, and I think looking at writing as a creative activity helps somehow. It’s to do with appreciating the space and time that the activity requires; writing in this way is not a predictable production-line process, it’s an exploration. Anything can happen.

As an aside – I found Claxton’s dismissal of ‘creative teaching’ interesting. It’s a big idea currently in arts education; it even features in our department’s mission statement:

“CLTAD works with the UAL Colleges to enable professionalism and creativity in learning and teaching, enhancing the experiences of our students.”

However, in our specialist context we see this as a question of what art can do for pedagogy – which I think is a deeper issue than being more entertaining or imaginative in our teaching (I am reminded of this article from the Times Higher, frequent user of the non-word ’edutainment’ – http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/412542.article).

Finally – the two case studies Claxton presents, although interesting, seemed a little obvious. The skeptic in me feels that if you start talking a lot to kids about ‘imagination’ in the context of their learning, when some guy comes in the next week and asks them how they learn, the of course they’re going to repeat your words back to him. Perhaps they were using their imaginations more – or maybe they’d just been given the awareness and the vocabulary to report it.

Thinking on it, I would like a creative corner to retreat to sometimes… when Timetabling screws up my room bookings, when the blog server is down… etc etc!

…which sounds very like a Big Bang theory episode, doesn’t it?

I was kind of joking when I tweeted David about our puppy, and whether the books I’d bought on dog training counted as educational theory. But maybe there’s something worth reflecting on here.

Here’s where we’ve got up to after only four weeks – he can sit, shake hands, do a ‘high ten’, lie down and roll over, and jump in and out of a box (those last two are very new – just in the last two days). He can also follow a chopstick – even doing a figure eight around my legs – a good precursor to agility competition exercises. This is pretty good for a twelve week old puppy, especially a cocker spaniel – I guess that’s what happens if you give a puppy to a learning & teaching lecturer who is also a bit of a control freak.

I find the predictability of training Indy quite astounding; the regularity and speed with which he learns and the repetitive patterns of the connections he makes. I like the way it doesn’t matter what his mood or energy levels are; in fact starting a training session is a great way of getting him focused and calm. Obviously this kind of operant conditioning is very different from the kind of learning and teaching I do at UAL. But here’s the thing – it’s SO predictable and quick-win that after five or ten minutes you’re thinking ‘ok, so what now?’ While teaching *new* dogs new tricks is pretty good fun, I still prefer the unpredictable, complex and very human teaching context of the day job.

Looking back at this video reminds me how useful it was to video myself teaching my cats how to use the cat flap; how a fresh perspective on yourself enables you to see what you need to do differently (I am reminded of Stephen Brookfield when he talks of being able to see the back of your own head). I can see from this recording how close Indy is to me, and that I need to introduce a bit more distance in order to increase his staying power in the positions and reduce his dependence on the positive reinforcers.

On Graham’s suggestion I read this piece on Michael Young’s Futures 1, 2 & 3, which I felt presented a much more coherent argument than the first readings we were directed to (maybe trying to defend himself against John White didn’t bring out the best in him). The piece does a much better job of explaining how Young’s standpoint differs from the right-wing, traditionalist, knowledge-based curriculum.

Young presents Future 1 and Future 2 as extremes with which to compare his own happy medium that he calls Future 3.

Future 1 is the traditionalist, knowledge-for-its-own-sake approach. Access to knowledge is its core purpose, but its downfall is that the range of subjects – and their boundaries – are assumed, taken as given. Young claims that Future 1 denies the social and historical basis of the organisation of knowledge. Also that, while the more sophisticated, flexible versions surviving in ‘elite’ (private and grammar) schools are working well for these students, Gove’s vision is ‘trapped in its own elitist past’, with content reproduced from the 19th century. From my admittedly biased position as a massive leftie, I think Young’s argument against Future 1 is strong.

The Future 2 standpoint arose in the post-WW2 era; a time of rapidly changing social and economic demands. Future 2 rejects the ‘givenness’ of knowledge altogether and questions subject boundaries, arguing that – if knowledge is simply what powerful people have – its organisation is arbitrary. Young describes an extreme form of Future 2 is where the curriculum is based solely on learner’s own experiences and interests – supposedly equating to the interests of society.

Young’s dismissal of Future 2 stems from its status as an instrument of politics (i.e. social change) – rather than an instrument for achieving educational goals in a purer sense. This may be the case, but I would also describe Future 1 – particularly Gove’s vision – as an instrument of politics, and also there doesn’t seem to be much agreement on what these ‘pure educational goals’ might be. Is Young suggesting that education can/should be value-free? David Held has (perhaps unintentionally) done the best job I’ve seen of describing what should be taught in his chapter on Critical Theory and Aesthetics, but you wouldn’t describe him as politically neutral.

Young certainly feels that there is a causal relationship between knowledge and power rather than a casual one, but he emphasises how his ‘objectivity of knowledge’ (Future 3) is different from the ‘givenness of knowledge’ of Future 1. He trusts that the academic community will safeguard the continued development of disciplines and subjects in accordance with epistemic rules (i.e. not in an arbitrary manner). This may be the case, but I’d like Young to acknowledge the part political pressure plays in the development of disciplinary knowledge (through research funding, etc). I’d also like him to give an example to illustrate the distinction between ‘the interrelated concepts of a subject’ and ‘everyday concepts’, and I’m certainly not convinced by his argument for teaching segregated subjects, however fluid he acknowledges them to be.

At the moment I am simultaneously wading through Held’s Introduction to Critical Theory (because I loved Chapter 3 so much), and paddling a little faster through Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Progress on the former is slow – thanks to the National Curriculum of 1988, my historical/political knowledge is very sketchy, so everything in the first two chapters is new to me – but one thing that stands out from the beginning is the interdisciplinarity of the Frankfurt School and the individuals within it. Horkheimer believed that reintegrating the disciplines was the only way to pursue the great philosophical questions and to teach about society. This resonates with my own feelings, explaining to me my unease about the segregation of subjects that Young supports. My concern is that, rather than enabling us to grow up capable of thinking in all different ways; this intellectual segregation actually disperses our thinking powers, blinkers us and distracts us from making valuable connections that will reveal the true nature of the world and enable us to liberate ourselves. I’ve only got a third of the way through Freire, but I think he would agree there is nothing revolutionary about teaching segregated subjects; certainly this is not how revolution is facilitated. I find the idea of disciplinarity quite oppressive in itself.

So what of Futures 1, 2 & 3? I would like to know more about Future 2, as it sounds to me that Young is reacting to an extreme version of it. I dipped into John White’s The Curriculum and the Child for my MA, and thought he was pretty convincing, so I’ll dip back into it and see if there is a stronger case in there for a type-2 Future (White may not be Future 2 at all; I’m simply assuming this is the case based on the little spat him and Young had a few months back).

It may be that my own position is none of the above, but a fourth Future – one that promotes the study of great works of science, literature and art, philosophical debate and interdisciplinary enquiry.

At some point I have to concede that my short career in the compulsory sector ended long ago, and decide what relevance all of this has for my role teaching lecturers and technicians at a specialist Arts university. Maybe it simply explains why I am happy here; a place where the vast majority of students – regardless of what their degree is in – do something called Historical and Cultural Studies, a mandate based on the quite reasonable assumption that in order to make meaningful art, you need to know some stuff about – and be interested in – the world and society. It’s also a place where interdisciplinarity is valued highly; we have research centres in areas like Sustainable Fashion (apparently not an oxymoron) and Design Against Crime. One of my favourite artist-professors at UAL – Rob Kesseler – works ‘in the liminal territory between Art and Science… creating images that lie between science and symbolism’. A key theme in recent educational development initiatives at UAL is the connection between creativity and academic practice; not so much what pedagogy can do for art, as what can art do for pedagogy?

I’ll finish off with a couple more Young-isms that ruffled my feathers a bit. When he asks – ‘Which students are likely to take up a craft instead of physics or history?’ – is this a rhetorical question? I have no idea which students he thinks are likely to do this, or what the implication is. I’d suggest that further study choices have a lot to do with family expectations these days. Perhaps this is off Michael Young’s radar, but most UK students remain dependent on their parents throughout University, and those who choose to study a craft tend to be those whose parents support them (ideologically and practically) in doing so.

Also, Young denounces Gove for looking backwards, treating trades and crafts as an unchanging ‘given’, and is clearly keen on change and development and new technologies. Page 5 does, to me, expose Young’s predisposition towards education for gainful employment, and economic and technological development. Economic development isn’t on my wishlist; I think we could all do with going backwards a bit, although I know I’m probably in the minority. At the risk of sounding like a self-righteous hippy, I am in favour of maintaining the tactile, traditional crafts, and I think they hold intrinsic value for many others too.

Young, M. (2011) The Return to Subjects: A sociological perspective on the UK Coalition Government’s approach to the 14-19 curriculum.

Freire, P. (1993) Pedagogy of the oppressed, 2nd edition. Penguin books.

Held, D. (1990) Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas. Polity Press.

I enjoyed revisiting the work of Lev Vygotsky in Saturday’s second T&L session. Vygotsky’s ideas on the relationship between thought and language were the inspiration for my first ever blog post in 2008, and subsequently my first conference proceedings paper, which explored his the two key principles in the context of reflective blogging:

• Thought is not a solely individual activity.
• Thought is related to language.

I mentioned in my Michael Young response – somewhat cheekily – that some people get more conservative as they near the end of their lives. I knew Vygotsky died young, but had never considered the impact of this on his legacy before. At the time of his death his ideas still seemed radical and vibrant, and his followers resolved to keep them alive.

In Saturday’s session we compared Vygotsky’s theories of thought and learning with those of others like Piaget (our brains seek out patterns and construct models of them), Rogers (learning is self-discovered, self-appropriated), and Bruner (‘too often, human learning has been depicted in the paradigm of a lone human organism pitted against nature’).

Vygotsky, like Bruner (the ‘scaffolding guy’), emphasises the social aspect of learning:

• children are particularly interested in the activities of the people they care about
• more experienced others support their learning.

Regarding thought and language, Vygotsky found that from around the age of two, social speech begins to be utilised for egocentric speech, which is not physically internalised until later. Language is therefore shown to be a not simply a tool for communication, but a framework of symbols that facilitate the organisation of concepts.

We considered the tools of language & learning; the technical tools (e.g. pen, keyboard) that bring about changes in other objects, and psychological tools (speech/blog post) – devices for mastering mental process, and a link was made with Sherry Turkle’s work on the effect of technology on the way we use language. I read her book Alone Together last year after watching Shimi Cohen’s video short about it. The book is actually more about her research on the use of sociable robots in the caring industry – which is even more unsettling than the ideas Cohen hones in on.

I’d only vaguely heard of Susan Sontag before – the author of On Photography – from which I found this quote that suggests why certain people feel compelled to take endless pictures on holiday;

The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethic – Germans, Japanese and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures. (p. 10)

I can relate to that but I think I’ll have to take a closer look at Sontag’s work to understand the relevance to thought, language & learning.

We also watched an RSA Animate clip of a Stephen Pinker talk on language as a window into human nature. He spoke about different kinds of human relationships – Dominant, Reciprocal and Communal. You don’t engage in reciprocal behaviour in a communal relationship, therefore you don’t ask your family to contribute financially to Christmas dinner (or do you?!) One of the take-away points was that explicit language is an excellent way of creating mutual knowledge – with explicit language you can’t maintain the fiction; everyone knows what everyone knows.

George Lakoff also got a look-in during this session – his book Metaphors we live by was another one I bought and started in the last couple of years but didn’t get anywhere near finishing. Lakoff writes about metaphor and the impact of how we talk about things on how we think and act around them. For example, we commonly talk about argument as ‘war’ – if we applied a different metaphor, it is likely we would ‘argue’ differently. It would be a good idea to look out this book again – I wonder if I still have it?

The last note I wanted to make about this session was that there was a diagram that piqued my interest about the public space and its impact on thoughts & actions (Vygotsky/Harre). I guess I was thinking it might be a useful basis for discussion with my own students at technical induction and on the Open Practice unit – hopefully we’ll get access to the slides from the session and I can look further into this – and all the connections above.

In advance of today’s workshop we read the following review of Michael Young’s book on the place of knowledge within Education:

• Hartley, D. (2007) An Extended Review of Bringing Knowledge Back in by Michael Young, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28:6

We also looked at a series of papers through which Michael Young converses with Margaret Brown & John White (although Young only addresses his May 3rd response to White – I’m not sure why that is):

• Brown, M., and White, J. (2012) An Unstable Framework – Critical perspectives on The Framework for the National Curriculum, April 5th, 2012
• Young, M, (2012) The Curriculum – ‘An entitlement to powerful knowledge’: A response to John White, May 3rd, 2012
• White, J. (2012) Powerful knowledge: too weak a prop for the traditional curriculum? May 14th 2012

I’ll start with Hartley’s extended review, which was a bit treacley. Classic schoolboy error in the first sentence – using ‘begs the question’ when he means ‘raises the question’. Young’s argument does beg the question at times – but not that question. Hey-ho, I got on with it, googling neo-Durkheimian and other references that assumed a breadth of knowledge and level of understanding only just in reach (I may have torn something stretching for it).

What I did manage to glean from the piece is that Hartley is a Young-sympathiser; he feels – as Young does – that there is such a thing as an objective ideal curriculum. I don’t find that idea problematic (depending on how we define the concept of ‘curriculum’), but it doesn’t necessarily follow that Young’s subject-based curriculum is the ideal. Hartley’s précis of Young’s rationale does little more than dismiss objections to it (from the postmodernists, the relativists and the critical theorists), which is disappointing. Even having read Young’s own response, I found Brown & White’s argument far more convincing. I’ll try to articulate my doubts and questions as follows:

1. I think I may be one of those ‘purist’ critical theorists Hartley is rather scathing about, who value exposure to emancipatory critiques. I wouldn’t say it is all that is required for emancipation, but it’s a good start, surely? Throughout this review – and the 2012 response to John White – I find myself pushing back against Young’s rhetoric and picking holes in it. I feel that he is on the attack – against others, and some of my own core values and beliefs.
2. Some of Young’s statements annoy me – for example ‘it remains an open question as to whether we can envisage a society in which the conservation of knowledge is no longer tied to the conservation of privilege’. I may be projecting, but he sounds a little too content with leaving it open for my liking. Also: ‘it has been painful [for me] to recognize that there are no easy or straightforward parallels between education and politics’. Newsflash…!! Does he think politicians are genuinely in favour of the emancipation and actualization of the masses?
3. The focus on ‘powerful knowledge’ unsettles me. Hartley links it to the Enlightenment – a historical period of scientific advancement spearheaded by people like Isaac Newton, an exceptionally competitive man who – it is claimed – often behaved unethically, damaging the reputations of his peers in order to make himself look better (try http://jqtil.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/isaac-newton-was-jerk.html).
4. Young argues for the maintenance a subject based curriculum because we’ve had one for ages, and people don’t like change. He claims that only a subject-based curriculum enables students to move beyond their own experience. It gets a little ridiculous when he slams White for wanting to base curriculum planning on logic. Is he implying that his own approach is illogical?
5. Assuming that a subject-based curriculum does allow us to develop different ways of thinking, to what extent is it expected that these are maintained as we progress through life? Is the aim long-term empowerment to choose from different ways of thinking? Or is it accepted that, regardless of our education system, people will probably find their way into a groove – a geographer’s perception of the world; a political activist’s; a bricklayer’s; a folk musician’s – and stick with it? What is the risk that we will still pick the way of thinking that we think works for us (short-term) as individuals, rather than a perspective that promotes the holistic wellbeing of our current society and future generations?
6. Again, I may be projecting, but Young’s rationale for basing a curriculum on ‘powerful knowledge’ seems to resonate more with the government’s ‘gainful employment’ agenda than with a desire for people to lead personally fulfilling, healthy and socially conscious lives. A society is more than just a collection of employees. I prefer Arnold and Bernstein’s arguments for theoretical knowledge that enables us to imagine alternative futures. If Young has hit on the objective ideal curriculum, I think he’s missed a trick in arguing the case for it. He hints at the need for us to develop the ability to think differently, or in different ways, but justifies this in terms of disciplinary development per se, rather than personal development in a broader sense. I am left with a sense that Young is genuinely attached to a subject-based curriculum, but can’t or won’t articulate exactly why. Is someone paying this particular piper and calling the tune?
7. Maybe some people just get more conservative as they get older. I’ve seen it happen.

Let’s move away from the compulsory sector and consider what place knowledge has in the postgraduate sector in which I work; maybe take my own studies as an example…?

I am doing the EdD in order to access knowledge through a structure of specific content and activities. I want to engage with the best that has been thought and said in my discipline as I enjoy developing my own opinions and principles as a result of grappling with a range of expert perspectives. I enjoy this for its own sake, and I enjoy the more interesting (interdisciplinary!) conversations the knowledge enables me to have with friends and family. Less intrinsically, in applying this knowledge to my own specific practice I am gaining confidence in my own educational decisions and processes, and this – together with the research skills that I am developing – contributes to career progression. While I would like one day to own something bigger than a one-bedroomed flat, without which I have been told one cannot contemplate having children, the more intrinsic stuff is definitely in the foreground; embarking on a five-year doctorate at the age of 35 is a pretty arse-about-face way of starting a family.

I find this analysis quite interesting; it seems the ‘skill’ element of the course serves my more extrinsic motivations around ‘gainful employment’, while the ‘knowledge’ element speaks to my holistic personal development.  I think this is significant.

In (interim) conclusion; I’m not necessarily against Young’s subject-based curriculum; I believe, like Brown and White, that we cannot logically specify what students ‘need’ before we have agreed on what they need it for; in other words, what are our aims? I reject the assumption that gainful employment is the only aim of education, or even the most important one.

Last year couldn’t have gone much better in terms of what I felt I got out of the EdD, so one thing I’ve learned is to keep doing what I was doing – that is – blogging in response to reading, following a clear study plan.

However, this year it looks like we need to take more individual control over what we read. For RRW2 I just read everything suggested, and trusted an assignment would emerge from the tangled chrysalis like a beautiful butterfly. Miraculously, it did seem to do that, but it’s unlikely to happen a second time… so I’d better start my assignment planning a little earlier.

I think our Teaching and Learning assignment is as follows:

Develop a 5000 word literature review around a question relating to your thesis.

I’m actually still on the fence with regards to my thesis, but let’s pretend I’m not and my thesis is to do with inclusivity and social justice in HE teacher training. Last year I started using what I’ve called a ‘stratified curriculum‘ in order to make pedagogic theory more accessible, with the ultimate aim of promoting a lasting positive attitude towards theory-informed practice.

Given that my thesis might be to argue for or evaluate certain measures to improve the accessibility of HE teacher training, I think my primary question for a literature review would be something like this:

What is social justice in the context of HE teacher education, and how might it impact on the sector and on society?

I could break this up into the following questions:

• What is the meaning of social justice in a general educational context? Where are the points of departure between this and the specific context of HE teacher education?
• Who teaches in HE? What kind of roles do they have? What kinds of educational backgrounds and cultural capital?
• What is the current situation with access to and achievement in teacher education programmes? How does this vary across the sector? How has it changed? How is it changing?
• How is success of teacher education programmes measured? What are the factors influencing their success?

N.B. It might be that a thesis on this topic would be quite controversial. Look at the grumbling that still goes on about the ‘dumbing down’ of HE… and I may very well be proposing we dumb things down for the teachers as well.

So… I now have four themes to read around and will use this as the basis for my own reading list (anyone out there – please feel free to add to it!) At the moment I’m only feeling particularly inspired by (1), probably because it’s a fresh area for me, and I sense there will be plenty of deep philosophical stuff in it (which I like). I can start to fill in with some of the sources I used in my RRW2 assignment, and I will ask David to suggest some more deep thinkers whose work I might relate to the themes and questions.