Return-Path: <nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h59C51C17593; Mon, 9 Jun 2003 08:05:01 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 08:05:01 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <20030609.075739.9478.0.sophocles5@juno.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "George E. Demetrion" <sophocles5@juno.com> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-FOBASICS:731] more on research traditions X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Juno 1.49 Status: O Content-Length: 6762 Lines: 116 Colleagues: Part of my current research involves an examination of research traditions that includes an analysis of the text Scientific Research in Education by Richard Shavelson and Lisa Towne (2001). In this they discuss 6 principles of scientific research. Principle 4 is "Provide a Coherent and Explicit Chain of Reasoning." In my current project, I examine the first 4 of the six principles and do so in part by how the principles might be interpreted through three research paradigms as discussed by Donna C. Mertens, in her text, "Research Methods in Education and Psychology." As I have discussed this text in earlier messages, on this list and another, I will by-pass that here. The following is the first half (clearly in draft form) of how this fourth principle might look under what Mertens refers to as the Emancipatory Paradigm. In taking this on, I draw on the school of critical pedagogy, grounded in the work of Paulo Freire and greatly elaborated upon by many others. What follows is the first half of this discussion that sets out the broad frame for an analysis that will include a more detailed description on the coherent and explicit chain of reading that one set of co-authors use in making their case. Perhaps the rest is self-explanatory in what follows. Perhaps the following has some bearing on the broader discussion of research traditions as might be applied to adult literacy studies. George Demetrion sophocles5@juno.com_ __________________________________________________________________ Critical Pedagogy George Demetrion June 9, 2003 Draft Version A coherent and explicit chain of reasoning" (Shavelson and Towne, 2002) is also discernable in the critical pedagogy that underlies Education Still Under Siege (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1993), especially in the fourth chapter, titled "Reproduction and Resistance in Radical Theories of Schooling" (pp. 65-109). The authors' discussion of the evolution of reproduction and resistance theories leading up their "toward a theory of resistance" statement is systematic and intellectually cogent. Based on the criteria laid out by Shavelson and Towne (2002), their discussion is "coherent" and "sharable," though clearly lacking in being "persuasive to the skeptical reader" (p. 4). Indeed, Shavelson and Towne (2002) would likely view suspiciously, the "meta-theory" that grounds critical pedagogy. In their second scientific principle, they highlight a more "modest" "mid-range" theory construction, "that [in] account[ing] for some aspect of the world" (p. 6), is based on a logical and tightly correlated deduction process stemmed from data gleaned through direct observation and supportive methodologies and tentative hypothesis formation. Critical pedagogy does not eschew logic, empirical evidence, or methodological rigor. Its core premise, emerging from Marxist and Neo-Marxist political philosophy, has a basic grounding in demographic patterns of wealth and power distribution that studies in this tradition have illustrated through a variety of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Based as much on the precepts of social philosophy and political analysis, as social science, the function of theory in critical pedagogy serves as a way of re-describing reality by providing an alternative lens on experience than that available in normative educational discourse. Take the modernization thesis as applied to the impact of adult literacy in third-world countries as one of the critical threshold factors leading to national development. In the post-World War II era, such functionalism in its various manifestations both abroad and within the United States especially after the 1975Adult Performance Level (APL) Study, was the primary rational that grounded policy and public perception about the value and purpose of adult literacy education. Paulo Freire's (1970) highly charged political and philosophical polemic, Pedagogy of the Oppressed resulted in a major paradigmatic shift in the way in which adult literacy was perceived. Freire's text was based on a combination of Neo-Marxist social philosophy, the humanistic psychology of Eric Fromm, the European existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and Franz Fanon's anti-colonial tract, Wretched of the Earth. The result is that Pedagogy of the Oppressed opened up a new way of thinking about adult literacy. Rather than policy-oriented, it focused on the condition of the marginalized as the anchoring source in a call for an emancipatory pedagogy and corresponding political praxis. Its antithesis to the vision of functionalism characteristic of both the modernization thesis and the APL Study could not have been sharper. Both visions of adult literacy had demonstrable grounding in the empirical evidence, but the worldview that each encompassed resulted in a substantially different way of perceiving social reality and in the determination of what sets of facts had salience. That social reality is ideologically constructed is a major presupposition of critical pedagogy, a thesis proponents seek to illuminate through intricate analysis of the relationship between ideas, perception, and observed behavior. In their overview chapter, "Reproduction and Resistance in Radical Theories of Schooling," Arownowitz and Giroux, (1993) focus on the specific task of reconciling the relationship between personal agency and social structure. This represents a quest for enhanced space for emancipatory action even in constrained social environments where the distribution of cultural and political power between marginalized social groups and those at the center of institutional authority is anything but equal. The authors' objective in this chapter is to strengthen critical pedagogy. Refined theory construction is drawn upon to resolve what they view as the agency/structure dilemma in the working out of a coherent intellectual framework that is simultaneously critical and emancipatory and congruent with the empirical evidence, including that of 'lived experience." Chapter Four of Education Still Under Siege contains both a logical chain of reasoning and reflects a rigorous coherency based on these premises. For Aronowitz and Giroux, theory construction serves as an important pathway in the establishment of a pedagogy that empowers "citizens who have the knowledge and courage to take seriously the need to make despair unconvincing and hope practical" (p. 46). The purpose of what follows is neither to defend nor critique critical pedagogy, a task I have taken on elsewhere (Demetrion, 2001a). It is intended, rather, to demonstrate something of the logic and chain of reasoning through which Aronowitz and Giroux (1995) construct their argument.
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