Newsgroups: bit.listserv.erl-l
Date:         Sun, 8 Nov 1992 21:21:38 CST
From:         "John St. Julien" <CIJOHN@LSUVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Ed. Research: All Played Out

Passing over other interesting questions (like how, just exactly, is ed
research both less ecologically valid and more classroom oriented) I want to
speak to the final point that Gary raises: the question of meaning and its
importance in education. It is worth noting that the epistemology that Shank
rejects-- the tradition we can refer to by recalling Cartesian dualism and
the epistemology of representation-- arose to take care of just the problem
of warranting justified, true belief. That is the problem of meaning as the
tradition understands it.

I believe that Shank is correct in his claim that another method practiced
within this tradition is unlikely to be very helpful but I am not sure that
just calling for a focus on meaning is very helpful by itself. The most likely
result is that folks will simply chase harder after a representationalist
program that will link up representations in the mind and things in the
world more adequately. (i.e. new methods-- and I take the cognitive science
that Shank mentions to be just such a program by and large.)

We need to find a way to stop matching things in the world to things in the
mind. Since we can't 'solve' the problem offered by philosophical
intentionality we should just quit messing with it. This isn't a new response:
Dewey, Mead, Heiddeger, and Wittgenstein all come to similar conclusions.

Our problem isn't establishing the critique; it lies in answering Gary's
question: 'What do we do now?' As educators we cannot respond with
Wittgenstein's quietism; at least not if we want to continue to engage in
education. Wittgenstein seemed interested in establishing truth as a basis
for morality.  Our interests, on the other hand, lie in opening up a path for a
student toward competent action in the world. Everyone, I think, agrees that
we wish we could do a lot better than we are doing in fostering such
competence.

Gary as a Peircian semiotician will, I suspect, have a Peircian response for
us eventually. My own inclination is to start at a different point and ask
where the most productive critiques of representationalism and
intentionality are emerging. Productive, that is, in the sense of leading to an
understanding of competent action with educational implications. My sense
is that we should look to learning rather than knowledge acquisition as the
central issue in education. (I will not here defend the thesis that these are
very different things.) I don't think such a focus on learning is far from
Gary's suggestion that we pursue meaning, but rather is an educational
reframing which focuses on the material processes that produce meaning
instead of on meaning as an endpoint.

Taking the problem in this way I suggest that we take a long hard look at
joining connectionism and practice theory.  Connectionism emerges out of
cognitive science and neurology and questions the very possibility of the
sort of stable representations that the tradition relies on. Practice theory
questions the need for even postulating such representations. Both refuse
the intentionality problem by refusing the Cartesian dichotomy upon which
it is based. Connectionism is centrally concerned with the material process
which underlies the change that we call learning. Practice theory is
concerned with the repetitive, socially organized practices which seem to
actually constitute the material basis for the sort of knowledge upon which
competent action is based. Possibly only education has a good reason for
joining the two. For educators it is not enough to know how students learn.
Nor is it enough to know what form knowledge actually takes. We need to
know how knowledge may be learned. It is in our interests to understand
this link and it is not centrally anyone else's concern. Shank's remark is
correct: "we must lead the way."