Week 6: 'Neutral' or instrumentalist/technocratic paradigm vs Value based/Utopian paradigm Flashcards
Gert Biesta:
- a critique on evidence ‘based practice’/
effectiveness - the acknowledgement of the value based
nature of education - the need to democratize educational research
A big problem is that we fixate the way the professional applies a methodology: ‘’it needs to be applied in a strict way’’. Biesta does not agree with that. Biesta says that you need to apply methods everyday on the spot in a different way. You need to be able to deviate from strict scientific knowledge and apply professional knowledge. If we only base it on what scientist say, then they dictate what professionals do in the field. The professional is then limited in their action.
There are no universal methods, teaching is contextual, this cannot be prescribed beforehand by standard universal methods. He does not say that the scientific knowledge is useless, just do not blindly apply it. It does not include values. Scientific knowledge enhances professional knowledge.
The Evidence ‘Beast’
and the Normativity
of Child-Rearing
A strict focus on effectivity, not on values
a lack of professional reflection and
a lack of professionals’
discretionary power.
What could be the problem with such an efficiency/effectivity approach in education? (Snappet) (Kerssens & de Haan)
- Performance based (based of effectivity) doctrine in Dutch education is taken as the norm for the implementation of technology in education
- Technology has organizational power that affects educational values
- (It is not) just the absence of the values-based rationale, but also about how this imposes a model for professional action
- Tech-companies take advantage of education, they try to cash in and make profit from the educational field from the (educational) programs they produce and sell.
- These platforms use the (already established) instrumentalistic discourse of education. This is not new, but builds on.
Personalized / adaptive
learning as a form of
behaviourism?
Personalized learning is a technocratic paradigm on education:
These technologies represent a sophisticated and highly effective from of Skinnerian operant conditioning
‘This is anti-ethical to the most basic priorities and purposes of education: namely, to cultivate in students a sense of ownership in their own learning, and responsibility for their own behavior and its effect on others’
These technological programs are not based productivity, but behavioristic approaches. Reducing our self to universal laws and principles in learning is reductionistic. These programs are using this behavioristic design, which we already rejected in pedagostic thinking.
The effect is that it makes students less intelligent
‘conscientization’ (Henry Giroux)
“All education is a struggle over what kind of future you want for young people”= a critique on the technocratic paradigm and a critique on:
- Pedagogies of stupidity: Pedagogies that prioritize method, objectivation at the cost of what is important for students/important social issues, the production of agency
- Pedagogies of repression: Pedagogies that can kill imagination, agency
- Pedagogies that silence: Pedagogies that stress neutrality and hide power relations and accountability. Neutrality = > hiding power
Critical Pedagogy = transformation
Paolo Freire: the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1969) / the Pedagogy of Hope (1992)/The Pedagogy of Freedom (1998)
Context: ‘Alphabetization’ of Brazilian farmers, high level of inequality
Against education as ‘Banking’ (passive reception of the knowledge of others)
‘Conscientization’ of oppression
Education = transformation of the society
‘Hope’ next to conscientization as the motor for transformation
Pedagogy of Hope (Freire)
Because we are historical beings, uncompleted beings, that are, so to speak, ‘in development’, and the fact that we are conscious of that we are incomplete, we need education, we need pedagogy (Freire, 2014)
Our powers to imagine/to inform is important in the critical analyses. We are able to design alternatives. This is the pedagogy of hope.
Ruth Levitas
‘My goal is to replace the idea of ‘a utopia’ as something fixed, a form to be fleshed out, with the idea of ‘the utopian’ as an approach toward, a movement beyond set limits into the realm of the not-yet-set.
At the same time, I want to counter the notion of the utopia as unreal with the proposition that the utopian is powerfully real in the sense that hope and desire (and even fantasies) are real, never ‘merely’ fantasy. It is a force that moves and shapes history.
Utopian imagination is a productive force
Example: traveling to the moon was imagined many times before it actually happened,
Concluding on Utopia as method
Utopians can serve to critique the status quo (to show how things can be different), but also guide (our thinking and acting) related to the future development of a better society (if they do not become dogmatic).
Conclusion/key ideas
- Critical Pedagogy: Technocratic/neutral
approaches can make stakeholders ‘stupid’ and
hide important decision making. - Pedagogy of Hope & Utopian imagination is a
productive force we need to work towards ‘positive
alternatives’ for the status quo. - Utopia must become Utopian methodology that
guide our thinking and acting related to the future
development of a better society - Imagination & hope are key for Education &
Pedagogy
Daadwerkelijke uitingsvorm van haat hangt af van de mate waarin de drie componenten een rol spelen: (de Winter)
- Cool hate, walging: als iemand bijvoorbeeld alleen maar de mogelijkheid tot intimiteit met een andere persoon of groep ontkent.
- Boiling hate, zeer sterke afkeer: als daarbij de passiecomponent een rol gaat spelen
- Burning hate: tegenstander daadwerkelijk te willen vernietigen: als aller drie de componenten aanwezig zijn
‘Hate stories’ vaste structuur van 5 stappen (de Winter)
- De gehate doelgroep is vervloekt, bijvoorbeeld doordat ze in een ver verleden God hebben vermoord.
- De doelgroep is van plan om actie tegen de eigen groep te ondernemen
- De doelgroep is merkbaar aanwezig, bijvoorbeeld via immigratie
- De doelgroep bereikt daadwerkelijke successen
Scope of justice (de Winter)
wie behoort er al dan niet tot de gemeenschap die bijvoorbeeld aanspraak kan maken op verdelende rechtvaardigheid (eerlijke delen), procedurele rechtvaardigheid (wettelijke bescherming) en maatschappelijke voorzieningen.
Voor de meeste mensen strekt dit tot mensen uit je ‘moral circle’: de kring van mensen met wie we ons in morele zin verwant voelen.
Ingroup and outgroup
wij/zij
