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13 SES 06 A: Powerful knowledge, Childhood, and Negative Education
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13. Philosophy of Education
Paper Powerful Knowledge and Social Justice: What Is It and Is It Just? Paradigma Ed Foundation, Armenia Presenting Author:Over the last 50-60 years, education theory and research have substantively engaged with the idea of knowledge: what is knowledge, how can it be understood, how important is it and what is its role in education. The 1960s and 1970s brought forward a chief concern of social justice and inequalities in the field of education; a concern which the new sociology of education movement in the 1970s translated into a focus “on the principles of organisation and selection which underlie curricula” (Bell, 1978, p. 13). Within this paradigm, knowledge was viewed as socially constructed as part of a system of control used by those with power. There was nothing inherent in any knowledge taught that made it worthy of being explored in a classroom: rather, any given knowledge belonged to a certain group or culture, and learning it served as an initiation into that group. The evolution of that line of thought led to the idea of the “knowledge of the powerful” that gives dominant groups power over others. In the decades following, certain education theorists began opposing the idea of viewing knowledge in solely social or historical terms. They viewed that as an eradication of any sort of objectivity, leading to an issue of the curriculum being viewed as “entirely the result of power struggles between groups with competing claims for including and legitimizing their knowledge and excluding that of others” (Young, 2008, p. 28). To that end, Young began to argue that there is a need to “bring knowledge back in” (Young, 2008), and differentiated the idea of “powerful knowledge” from that of the “knowledge of the powerful”. Young’s concern remained with that of social inequality but believed that powerful knowledge itself was a tool that could help overcome inequalities and injustices. Young theorized that powerful knowledge is specialized, systematic, and different from the everyday knowledge acquired outside of school (Young, 2014), even if the conditions of its creation are social and historical. Further, he held that powerful knowledge can give students cognitive and imaginative powers that they would not have otherwise. Therefore, he argued that students are entitled to get access to that knowledge and the aim of education should be to give students access to powerful knowledge. However, no epistemic grounds were theorized for the existence of such knowledge. So, this research is structured around two main claims about powerful knowledge: 1) powerful knowledge exists, and 2) all students are entitled to that knowledge. The research is a philosophical engagement with a sociological concept, attempting to answer two main questions:
This research is relevant, as these conversations about knowledge and its role in the curriculum have pervaded both academic and non-academic discourse. For example, in the UK, changes to how knowledge is understood were seen both in academia (e.g. with Michael Young’s publication Bringing Knowledge Back in), and on a governmental level (e.g. with Michael Gove’s heralding of going back-to-basics and change in the National Curriculum in 2013) (Cuthbert and Standish, 2021). In Europe, a shift towards competence-based curricula has been dominant for the last 15-20 years (Leaton Gray et al., 2018), yet the role of knowledge in the curriculum is still a topic of crucial debate (Priestley et al., 2021). As such, a philosophical and epistemological engagement with the idea of powerful knowledge can help clarify the role of knowledge in the curriculum. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used To answer the presented research questions, this study undertakes an epistemological discussion of powerful knowledge. While Young and his colleagues do not present a full epistemic theorization of the concept of powerful knowledge, they argue that it is based on a social realist theory of knowledge. The research digs deeper into this idea by drawing on two main theories to attempt to give an epistemological basis for and philosophical account of powerful knowledge: social epistemology and critical realism. It draws on social epistemology, as that can help answer how it is possible to find objectivity in the sociality of knowledge, and it draws on critical realism, as that is considered the philosophical basis of the social realist sociological framework. The research draws on Andrew Collier’s (1994) interpretation of critical realism and structures its exploration of such a reality around its main three tenets: ontological realism, epistemic fallibilism, and judgmental rationality. To give a holistic understanding of these three tenets and build a theory of knowledge that finds objectivity in the sociality of knowledge from there, the research further draws on two main theories. First, it draws on Searle’s (1995) approach to the construction of social reality, as a basis for understanding reality as socially mediated. Second, it draws on the idea of epistemic systems: a “social system that houses social practices, procedures, institutions, and/or patterns of interpersonal influence that affect the epistemic outcomes of its members” (Goldman, 2011, p. 18). Such an account leads to an epistemological answer to the question of whether powerful knowledge, as such, exists. Based on that answer, the research then moves on to the second question: the educational implications of powerful knowledge regarding social justice. To answer this question, the research draws on Rawls’s understanding of justice as fairness and explores the role of powerful knowledge in this context. To ensure a comprehensive review of this, the research draws on critiques of distributive justice: this allows for a more fundamental understanding of the role of powerful knowledge in the context of social justice as an aim of education. In addition to the inclusion/exclusion of powerful knowledge on a curricular level, this exploration leads the research to question whether there is any particular pedagogy needed to achieve these aims and to teach powerful knowledge. To that end, the research also draws on Dewey’s conception of progressive education. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings The research questions initially were what epistemological basis supports the idea of powerful knowledge, and what implications does the existence of powerful knowledge have for the aims of education. Based on this research, social epistemology and critical realism can support the existence of powerful knowledge to an extent, depending on our understanding of judgmental rationality. If there is a universal rationality to underpin judgments about the processes of knowledge production, then powerful knowledge exists both in knowledge about the material world and the human world. If such universal rationality cannot be held, then we need to judge the processes of knowledge production about the material and the human worlds separately. In that case, this research finds that it is possible to locate powerful knowledge about the material world in the natural sciences. It is also possible to find powerful knowledge about the human world in a given social reality, given an understanding of universal rationality. However, it is not possible to find powerful knowledge about the human world in general, as there are different, incommensurable social realities. The research explores the implications of these findings for the field of education from a social justice perspective, by drawing on the ideas of distributive justice in ideal and non-ideal theory. The research finds that the implications of these findings differ based on ideal and non-ideal theory: in ideal theory, the existence of powerful knowledge directly implies students’ entitlement to it and education’s role in teaching it in schools. In non-ideal theory, the research finds a concern of overcoming existing social inequalities and finds that students’ entitlement to powerful knowledge should be held in tandem with recognition of their cultures and knowledge. This led to a discussion of progressive education as a tool to attain social justice while teaching powerful knowledge. References Boghossian, P. (2011). ‘Epistemic Relativism Defended’, in Goldman, A. I. and Whitcomb, D. (eds) Social Epistemology: Essential Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 38–53. Brighouse, H. (2002). ‘Egalitarian Liberalism and Justice in Education’, The Political Quarterly, 73, pp. 181–190. doi: 10.1111/1467-923X.00455. Brighouse, H. and Unterhalter, E. (2010). ‘Education for primary goods or for capabilities?’, in Brighouse, H. and Robeyns, I. (eds) Measuring Justice: primary goods and capabilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 193–214. Collier, A. (1994). Critical Realism: An Introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy. London and New York: Verso. Dewey, J. (1997). Experience and Education. New York: Touchstone. Goldman, A. I. (2011). ‘A Guide to Social Epistemology’, in Goldman, A. I. and Whitcomb, D. (eds) Social Epistemology: Essential Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 11–37. Kohn, A. (2015). ‘Progressive Education: Why it’s Hard to Beat, But Also Hard to Find’. Bank Street College of Education. Available at: https://educate.bankstreet.edu/progressive/2. Leaton Gray, S., Scott, D., Mehisto, P. (2018). Curriculum Reform in the European Schools: Toward a 21st Century Vision. Palgrave Macmillan. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/e34cead1-4ae8-408d-8ab1-17b52b18fe39/1002085.pdf Moore, R. (2013). ‘Social Realism and the problem of the problem of knowledge in the sociology of education’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(3), pp. 333–353. doi: 10.1080/01425692.2012.714251. Nagel, T. (1973). ‘Rawls on Justice’, The Philosophical Review, 82(2), pp. 220–234. doi: 10.2307/2183770. Priestley, M., Alvunger, D., Philippou, S., Soini, T. (2021). Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice Within and Across Diverse Contexts. Emerald Publishing. Schmitt, F. (1999). ‘Social Epistemology’, in Greco, J. and Sosa, E. (eds) The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers (Blackwell Philosophy Guides, 1), pp. 354–382. Searle, J. R. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. USA: The Free Press. Sehgal Cuthbert, A. and Standish, A. (eds.). (2021). What Should Schools Teach? Disciplines, subjects and the pursuit of truth. 2nd ed. London: UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787358744 Young, M. (2014). ‘Powerful Knowledge as a Curriculum Principle’, in Young, M. and Lambert, D., Knowledge and the Future School: Curriculum and Social Justice. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 65–88. Young, M. F. D. (2008). Bringing Knowledge Back In. London: Routledge. 13. Philosophy of Education
Paper Education and/or equality: Images of childhood in Rancière's work University of Oslo, Norway Presenting Author:Jacques Rancière’s work has been explored and used many times in philosophy of education in the past two decades. Many scholars take The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991) as a point of departure for their educational philosophical thinking, while others also draw on his work on aesthetic and art (most notably on The Emancipated Spectator) and/or on his political philosophical interventions (see Dissensus and On the Shores of Politics) (Biesta, Bingham, 2010; McDonnell, 2022). His idea of radical equality and of acting under the presupposition of equality has been taken as revolutionary and emancipatory by many in the field of educational philosophy. In this paper, I wish to explore the images of childhood in Rancière’s work. In doing so, I question the taken for granted idea that Rancière’s work is concerned with education – as an intergenerational matter with children as important subjects. Indeed, if Rancière’s fundamental commitment to equality requires that anyone could be anyone’s equal, there is nonetheless a tendency for children to appear as outside of those who are traditionally understood as equals. In The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991), emancipatory figures are adults, never children. Even if children are among those who emancipate themselves, they are not represented as emancipating others. In Proletarian Nights (2011), proletarians contrast their identity as workers with theirs and others’ childhood. Education is mainly perceived as an instrument for the realization of utopian movements. In Dissensus (1995), children are only mentioned in relation to Plato’s ideal organization of the city, as those in formation and not as, and for themselves, in the present. In The Philosopher and his Poor (1983), children are also seen through schooling and through the prism of Bourdieu’s determinism. They are mentioned as those who are not yet determined. Some scholars (Biesta, 2011; Snir, 2023) argue that children can be seen as dissensual subjects. I wish to question this claim by examining thoroughly the tensions and ambiguities within Rancière’s work when it comes to the capacity of children (real or desired) to participate in the emergence of political moments. From this examination, I will engage in a critical discussion on the figure of the child as a potential challenge for the Rancièrian idea of equality. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used For this paper, my method consists in a close and systematic reading of Rancière’s selected works. On the one hand, I will examine how childhood is presented in selected texts and explore whether children are seen as equal political subjects. On the other hand, I will look at the potential absence of children in Rancière’s description of the prototypical emancipated subject (proletarians, women, immigrant). From then on, I will engage in a critical discussion on the figure of the child as potential challenge for the Rancièrian idea of equality. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings Exploring images of childhood in Rancière’s work might allow for thinking differently about the potential and the limitations of Rancière’s aesthetic, literary and political interventions for education. Moreover, my expected outcomes are to engage with the complexity of the question about borrowing and using philosophical/historical/aesthetic works in educational philosophy. Are there specific questions that only educational philosophy addresses? What idea of education do educational philosophers operate with? Is the figure of the child – with the challenges it raises – relegated to the background in educational philosophy when the latter uncritically borrows from Rancière’s philosophy? References Biesta, G., & Bingham, C. (2010). Jacques Rancière: education, truth, emancipation. Continuum. Biesta, G. (2011). The ignorant citizen: Mouffe, Rancière, and the subject of democratic education. Studies in Philosophy and education, 30, 141-153. McDonnell, J. (2022). Reading Rancière for education. Palgrave Macmillan. Rancière, J. (1981/2011). La Nuit des Prolétaires. Archives du rêve ouvrier. [Proletarian Nights. Archives of workers’ dream]. Pluriel. Rancière, J. (1983). Le philosophe et ses pauvres [The Philosopher and his Poor]. Fayard. Rancière, J. (1987/2004). Le Maître Ignorant : Cinq leçons sur l’émancipation intellectuelle. [The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation] 10/18. Rancière, J. (1991). The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation. (K. Ross, Trans.). Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1987). Rancière, J. (1995). La Mésentente : Politique et philosophique. [Dissensus : Political and Philosophical]. Galilée. Rancière, J. (2016). The Method of Equality. In K. Genel, J-P., Deranty (red). Recognition or Disagreement: A critical encounter on the politics of freedom, equality and identity. (pp. 133-155) Columbia University Press New York. Snir, I. (2023). The Children Who Have No Part: A Rancièrian Perspective on Child Politics, Critical Horizons. 13. Philosophy of Education
Paper The Power and Affordances of Negative Education University of Galway, Ireland Presenting Author:The aim of this paper is to develop and enrich our understanding of “negative education”, a concept which we coined in a recently published article (XXXX). Negative education refers to the ways in which being deprived of something can itself be educative. This concept emerged out of our experiences of trying to support Teacher Education students during the Covid pandemic when it was not possible to visit and observe students, thus necessitating an alternative approach to supervision involving online conversations between students and tutors. Whilst we originally drew in that article on philosophers such as Heidegger and Levinas to forge the discussion of negative education, one of the aims of this paper is to introduce another new sensibility, found in Ranciere’s The Ignorant Schoolmaster, to explore the value and usefulness of the concept. Before turning to Ranciere it might be helpful to briefly indicate how our earlier study portrays negative education. We describe two dimensions of negative education. The first relates to the ways in which being unable to see students teach and meet with them deepened our appreciation of how classroom teaching is a thoroughly embodied activity, Drawing on Heidegger (1962) and Practice Theory (Reckwitz, 2002), we considered the variety of ways in which the embodied practice of teaching has yet to become ready-to-hand for our students and is still developing as a routinized bodily activity. Students are in the process (hopefully?) of developing the “regular, skilful performance” of teaching. Equipment has often, at this stage, not been absorbed into the teacher’s identity, into their being. On this account, not being able to see one’s students teach seems wholly problematic as one is unable to talk to these areas. However, we came to feel that this form of negative education may be troublingly nostalgic. Absence and deprivation can be maleducative—just as they might enrich or deepen our understanding of something they can also produce an unhealthy fetishization of how things “were” and will be again. As Reckwitz notes: “The conclusion: if practices are the site of the social, then routinized bodily performances are the site of the social and—so to speak—of “social order”. [2002]. Perhaps the deepening understanding helps conserve teaching “as it was” in its visible orderliness (ibid) without considering the ways in which certain embodied practices may have questionable aspects related to the exercise of power. This brings us to the second dimension of negative education. Here, we came to explore the affordances of absence and deprivation. One such affordance was that being unable to see our students teach meant that we had to urge them to describe what happened, leading us to see it, at least to some degree, as they saw it. This engendered trust and the necessary suspension of scepticism regarding the efficacy of what they said. Certain limitations imposed by technology seemed to serve a similar purpose. The difficulties of interrupting students whilst on zoom facilitated a greater exposure to how our students saw things. Moreover, techniques available in situations of close spatial proximity, which may do violence to the other (Levinas, 1961) were denied us. It is impossible in such meetings to look the other in the eye. The resulting shared vulnerability is perhaps one of the factors that made online professional conversations so rich and served to strengthen a sense of greater equality within relationships. (As the piece is a work of philosophy of education, the next section will extend the abstract) Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used Our thinking on the second dimension of negative education and its affordances led us in the direction of Ranciere. The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991) portrays a period in the life of Joseph Jacotot, a French professor who in 1818 was sent into exile and took a post at the University of Leuven. Jacotot’s teaching was much in demand from students who knew no French whilst Jacotot himself knew no Dutch. As a response to this seemingly intractable problem, Jacotot successfully taught his students to speak French using bilingual version of theTélémaque. In regard to the possibilities for equality which can be brought into being as the result of not being able to do something, Jacotot’s story could be read as a radical (or pure?) example of negative education in our second sense, one that results in “pedagogic subjectivation” (Masschelein and Simons 2010). Nuanced discussions of The Ignorant Schoolmaster (see Masschelein and Simons 2010, and Biesta 2017) involve the argument that, due to absence of explication (which partakes in inequality) on the teacher’s part, Jacotot’s situation involves equality between teacher and student at the level of intelligence. In these accounts, there is still an emphasis on the teacher teaching, where teaching is not explicating, but exercising the will to reveal “an intelligence to itself” (Ranciere, 1991, p. 28). As Biesta (2017) notes, less nuanced accounts treat Ranciere’s text as an exemplary instance of constructivist facilitation (see, for example, Pelletier, 2012, Engels-Schwarzpaul, 2015.) The reasons for discussing The Ignorant Schoolmaster in this paper are several. Firstly, we make the simple point that the story of Jacotot is an instance, perhaps a prime instance, of negative education against which to measure all others. However, we wonder if the context from which Jacotot’s teaching emerges is sometimes underplayed. The force of the teacher’s gesture is emphasised, but not the force of circumstance. It is not so much the case that Jacotot “is not explaining something to the students” (Masschelein and Simons, 2010, p.601) – he “cannot” because he cannot speak Dutch. Whilst this point might appear pedantic, it raises the issue of to what degree one can or should plan the sort of experience presented by Jacotot (which in its original form was a response to the limitations of circumstance). Jacotot was not, as we understand it, trying to achieve equality even if this might have been the outcome. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings As Biesta notes, one of the historic problems for educators who seek to emancipate students is that there is: “an assumed inequality between the emancipator and the one being emancipated, an inequality that will only be resolved in the future” (Biesta, 2017, p. 55). However, if one “plans” pedagogic subjectification, with the deliberate extraction of explication, then isn’t one, in a sense, assuming an inequality that needs to be deliberately and actively addressed? Does the intention undermine the goal? We wonder if emancipation, deliberately sought after, is an impossibility. That does not stop one from striving to make educational relationships more equal and learning the lessons from deprivation. It might be worth pointing out that we have no nostalgia for the limitations brought on during covid. However, we will continue with professional conversations as an addition to in-person observations due to the affordances that we could not have foreseen prior to the limitations we experienced. With that in mind, through thinking through the example of Jacotot alongside our own less radical experiences, we have come to wonder whether negative education is necessarily at its most powerful when it arises from circumstances beyond the educator's control. References Biesta, G. (2017). Don’t be fooled by ignorant schoolmasters: On the role of the teacher in emancipatory education. Policy Futures in Education, 15(1), 52-73. Engels-Schwarzpaul A-C (2015) The ignorant supervisor: About common worlds, epistemological modest and distributed knowledge. Educational Philosophy and Theory 47(12): 1250–1264 Heidegger, M. Being and Time; Macquarrie, J., Robinson, E., Eds.; Harper Collins: New York, NY, USA, 1962 Levinas, E. Totality and Infinity; Duquesne: Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 1961. Pelletier C (2012) Review of Charles Bingham and Gert Biesta, Jacques Rancie`re: Education, truth, emancipation, continuum 2010. Studies in Philosophy and Education 31(6): 613–619. Ranciere, J. The Ignorant Schoolmaster; Stanford University Press, Stanford, USA, 1991 Reckwitz, A. Toward a theory of social practices: A development in culturalist theorizing. Eur. J. Soc. Theory 2002, 5, 243–263. Maarten Simons & Jan Masschelein (2010) Governmental, Political and Pedagogic Subjectivation: Foucault with Rancière, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42:5-6, 588-605 | ||