Activities for Educators In "Teaching" Students Epistemologies of
Subjectivity
Jerry Gale
Betsy Lindsey
University of Georgia
To begin this paper, and in order to develop its theme, it
may be useful to first consider the title. As you (the reader)
first read the title, what meaning captured the foreground of
your attention? Which words, or combinations of words (e.g.,
"Educator," "Epistemology," "Activities for Educators,"
"`Teaching' Students," "Epistemologies of Subjectivity," etc.) or
other contextual factors (e.g., randomly opening to this page,
someone suggesting you read this chapter, etc.) perturbated
significance for you? The process of considering these questions
is the very heart of the this paper, and workshop, for which this
paper was written. The activity of considering and
deconstructing the title of this paper, is itself an active
development of creating activities for educators in teaching
students epistemologies of subjectivity.
In suggesting that there are certain aspects of the title
that have special meaning to you, we (the authors) are already
implying a particular theory of organization. We are leading you
to consider, from a top-down perspective of teaching, certain
ways of understanding the title. At this point, it is a top-down
orientation as our comments are both report/command statements
guiding you to think in a particular manner, and placing us in
the role of "providing knowledge" and you in the role as "seeking
to understand our knowing".
Typically, a top-down hierarchy of teaching, as derived from
an epistemology of positivism (i.e. an epistemology that equates
knowledge as corresponding to "facts" and "things" in the world),
entails that the teacher has a specific commodity of knowledge
that he/she tries to teach or impart to the student. The goal of
positivist education is to provide convincing (Latin: convincere
means to `defeat thoroughly') arguments for the validity of these
Truths as the educator aims to increase the student's knowledge
reservoir. Critical thinking is developed, but it is based on
arguments of scientific Method which follow a dualistic Cartesian
model that seeks to understand the world through reductionistic
measures.
From an epistemology of subjectivity (i.e., a social
constructionist epistemology that views knowledge as being
created through language and social interaction such that the
distinction between subject/object is challenged), there is a
different level of relationship and purpose from which educators
and students strive to know "the world." Through co-operating
via dialogue, one, or the other is persuaded (Latin: suadere
shares a root with suavis, `sweet') to accept the rhetorical
elements of the other's communications. Truth of knowledge
claims are not presented as corresponding to the world as it
REALLY is, but are based on elements of one's communications and
activities. This does not disclaim the need for various methods
of inquiry, but it does place scientific methodology as within
the class of rhetorical arguments.Meanwhile, back to the act of
you reading this chapter. Typically (in our culture) the act of
reading a book implies a top-down view of knowledge (the authors
have some"thing" to tell the reader). However, through the
action of our de-constructing the possible meanings of the title,
we are hoping to challenge this relationship. We suggest
that there are many possible ways of understanding and creating
significance of these words. While in an oral presentation (i.e.
the workshop) we can interact in a second order cybernetic manner
(i.e. feedback where the observer and participant both recursivly
impact one another), and create a context that lends itself to a
more horizontal relationship, in the written form, this is more
difficult to enact. In this written form, we are therefore
creating a text that is reflexive in nature and refers back to
itself. However, the very point of process we are highlighting
is the relationship between educator and student. That is, both
educator and student, are informing one another. There is no
privileged position of knowing (positivist view) that is
absolutely superior to another's position of knowing. While the
dilemma (and danger) of writing is: 1) the reader cannot interact
with the authors to dialogue about the ideas and; 2) the words of
this paper are frozen in time (with its own identity) and are no
longer the authors' voices (today, whatever day that may be,
either one of us may no longer agree with various points of this
paper), we hope that these ideas do engage you to consider your
ideas of education and communication in a critical and
challenging manner.
To once again consider the title of this paper, the authors'
intentions are to describe various activities (joint endeavors
that lead all participants to cooperatively examine their ways of
knowing) that educators (educators = students) of any discipline
and background can use with students (students= educators) in
helping all involved consider and examine his/her own subjective
epistemology (how we know what we know) as well as consider
content issues of his/her discipline. The authors also want to
stress that due to the brevity of this paper, many of the ideas
presented are given only sketchy descriptions, and therefore, we
encourage you to play with these ideas and create and develop
your interpretations of what you think is important. This
paper is largely developed from a project conducted, by the first
author, through a grant funded by the Lilly Fellow Program out of
the Office of Instructional Development at UGA. A survey was
developed and mailed, internationally, to educators of different
disciplines regarding effective actions in teaching alternative
epistemologies. Based on the responses (75) to the survey, as
well as other experiences of the authors, this paper will examine
issues of: teaching from and teaching about epistemologies of
subjectivity; creating your own activities; evaluation of
"students"; and we will present various activities that you can
play with in learning contexts. Names and disciplines in
parentheses are those people who contributed ideas and responses
to the survey. Teaching From and Teaching About Epistemologies of
Subjectivity We divided responses to the question "What
effective actions do you use in your classes to teach alternative
epistemologies?" into three categories. One type of response
presented traditional ways of teaching students about subjective
epistemologies. This style of presenting provided information
and facts about epistemological issues. For example, presenting
various epistemological premises and having students critically
read a paper and identify theoretical and epistemological
premises of the author(s). A second class of responses
offered activities that were presented from an alternative
epistemological perspective. That is, the educator was operating
from his/her epistemological premises in relationship to the
students. For example, Grayson Wheatley (math educator) in
working with teenagers, presented a group problem solving
activity of posing how many possible combinations existed of
arranging 15 lions in 4 cages so that no two cages would have the
same number of lions. What is important in this activity is that
the teacher does not guide the student(s) towards the right
answer(s), but helps the student(s) examine how the answer(s) are
derived. In this type of activity, the student is not directly
asked to consider, or think about his/her own epistemological
orientation (though the context of teacher/student relationship
may be conducive to promote an alternative subjective
epistemology).
The third class of responses were activities that directly
sought to inform (persuade) students about epistemologies of
subjectivity. For example, Ray Becvar (family therapist and
educator) would have his family therapy students devise a battery
of assessments/tests that when given to a client, would: 1)
identify a different problem than the one that the client
initially presented; 2) provide a more negative
prognosis/description of the client's problem; 3) provide a more
positive or benign prognosis/description of the client's problem.
One of the purposes of this activity was to help students
consider how assessment protocols could be understood from a
number of epistemological perspectives. This activity would
directly challenge the student to examine his/her own
epistemology and actions in relationship to being a therapist,
researcher and educator.
Various Activities. Rosalind Driver (science education)
has conducted research with young children by posing problems and
asking the children to explain their reasoning behind their
answers. For example, imagine a balance beam with two balloons
on either end, both filled with ordinary air, perfectly balanced.
If you puncture the balloon (with no loss of balloon material,
only the air within) on the left side, what happens after the
balance beam regains its equilibrium. Are the two sides still
equally balanced, does the left side drop, or does the right side
drop? While the science of physics has its own rhetorical
explanation to justify one particular answer, what we suggest you
can do with this activity is get the participants to present
their own theories (stories) for their responses. As others give
their explanations, does anyone change her/his thinking? What is
important here is challenging participants to consider how their
thinking develops and influences their understanding (and seeing)
of the world. Another activity is called the mask game.
This involves writing down various descriptions (old person,
drunk, sexy, stupid, popular, etc.) each on a separate piece of
paper and having a person hold that description over her/his
head, without reading it, in a group setting. The other people,
who can read the label would then interact with that first person
based on what the description is. The person holding the label
is to respond back in whatever way feels appropriate. This
person is to note what feelings, thoughts and associations are
elicited based on the actions of others. The implications of how
we act with another helps construct how she/he views her/himself
and the world are then discussed.
A third activity, developed by Michael White (family
therapist and educator), for small groups, is to interview one
person to find "sparkling facts" of the interviewee's
professional career (considering various highlights, crisis and
turning points in his/her life) and the conclusion reached by
that person at these times and how these conclusions influenced
her/his development. Additionally, help the person consider how
these sparkling facts connect to ideas and practices that she/he
incorporates into his/her current profession. This is a
narrative perspective that examines each person's self-story and
challenges them to consider what life story they want to live
(write). A fourth activity, developed by Jill Swenson
(journalism educator) has the participant keep a journal of
her/his involvement with a particular media. For example, the
person can track her/his involvement with tv and radio for an
entire week and note how these two mediums leads her/him to think
and act in particular manners. The person can note what they are
doing prior to, and after the event, who they are with and how it
impacts her/his life. Additionally, various media presentations
can be deconstructed and examined from an alternative
perspective. Creating your own Activities. Summing up the
many descriptions of activities provided by respondents, a number
of suggestions seem to stand out. These are presented in no
particular order.
1. Address your metaphor of teaching. Is your metaphor
(identified role as educator) one of being an expert, a
facilitator, a guide, an entertainer, an architect, a story
teller, etc.? Each one of these metaphors entails a particular
structure of relationship and a particular view of knowledge.
From your particular metaphor of classroom interaction, is
knowledge transmitted, discovered or created? Challenge
(deconstruct) your style of teaching and relate it to the
integrity of your philosophical beliefs. It is useful to do this
with a partner or in a group in order for each person to pose
questions of implication for each metaphor of teaching. 2.
Consider your relationship to the students. Though this may be
addressed by the prior point, it can be fruitful to examine the
hierarchy of your teaching/learning context. Do you adopt a
top-down relationship, a horizontal relationship, or a different
type of classroom culture? Create an environment such that you
and others are co-operative, co-learners with open communication
and no fear of mistakes. Allow learners to have autonomy of
their own learning process.
3. Provide activities that offer multiple solutions. Help
students move away from finding the formula "right answer" to
help them develop a critical style of thinking. Focus on the
process rather than the content and emphasize thinking and
communication rather than memorization (Larry Richards,
engineering management educator and Paul Cobb, science educator).
4. Many respondents suggested having group activities and
focus on the process of each student's thinking. With group
activities, each student then deals with the cultural knowledge
constraints of his/her peers. Allow the students to have a voice
in determining their learning culture. Frank Galuszka (artist
and art educator) develops his syllabi in such a manner that only
members of the classroom community can understand it. Allow for
each learner to be able to reflect upon his/her learning
experiences both historically and in learning context.
5. Be self-reflexive. Monitor your activities as
"educator" as you interact in class. Use as examples what you do
in class, even your mistakes (allow for errors as a learning
process for both student and teacher) that you can then recycle
from a different logical order of understanding. This entails
constant feedback between you, your actions and others'
interactions. For example, if a student (or yourself) presents a
gender stereotypical statement, use that as an opportunity to
examine how gender roles are culturally constructed and how one
can change these views. Allow naturally occurring perturbations
and disturbances become windows of opportunities. 6. Be
able to laugh and be joyful about learning/teaching. Be careful
not to believe too much of what you teach such that you fossilize
the ideas. Find ways to undermine your own position so that you
can argue either view point. This does not imply have no passion
in your positions, but when you wed a view for life, realize it
is your spouse, and not necessarily another's.
7. Ethics and values are still crucial in learning
contexts. However, from an epistemology of subjectivity, each
person is responsible for his/her ethical postures because of
choice, not an arbitrary rule. Challenge others, and yourself to
consider the implications of these ethical positions.
8. Appreciate that learning is personal. Learners build on
knowledge attained from previous experiences (Nancy Davis,
science educator) so that the context of activities can be
directly relevant to the levels of the learners. Rather than
`teach students', `learn students' so that your comments relate
personally (Alexander Lazlo, educator of general systems theory
and social systems sciences). Learners often do best when they
are encouraged to construct meaning for themselves rather than
having methods and views imposed on them (Grayson Wheatley, math
educator). 9. Keep in mind to relate ideas and activities
to the world we all live in. Jon Blichfeldt (organizational/work
psychology) has his students go out in the field prior to
discussing and reading about theory. Stewart Umpleby (management
sciences) assigns his students to develop community projects that
they then must implement. 10. Build on inquiries of
rhetoric (and other forms of inquiry), not necessarily
rationality. Deconstruct your own discipline to understand its
tactics of persuasion. Appreciate the multiple ways of knowing
the world and re-searching within the world. 11. Consider
and discuss gender and cultural (ethnic) issues in terms of how
form and structure are embedded within language and social
interaction for different communities. Examine norms of your
culture, discipline, classroom, as well as individual norms. By
this, we mean examine how any community (institution) has
implicit rules (see Garfinkel, 1967) that lead to a particular
structure of interaction. Evaluation of students. The
final point we want to discuss is the issue of evaluation. From
an epistemology of subjectivity, we often hear the critique that
anything goes and that there are no standards by which to judge
success. This is a problematic issue. There were a wide range of
responses to this question on the survey. Some of the responses
included: give no grades; give everyone an A; have the class
determine grading criteria; grade on competency; give oral
examinations; have rigorous expectations and evaluate each
person's critical thinking and effort; leave academia; etc.
Grayson Wheatley recommends an ongoing negotiation with the class
and rewarding excellence even if some activities are not of such
high quality (not diluting demonstrations of excellence by
averaging with other assessments). Sheila McNamee (speech
communication) has an oral final exam such that the student
brings with him/her a friend (parent, roommate, etc.) to a
meeting with the instructor. At this time, the student needs to
explain various key concepts presented in the course in lay terms
to the friend. This friend needs to be generally ignorant of the
student's discipline. McNamee evaluates the student's
presentation based on the friend's participation in the dialogue
(thus, it needs to be more than simply yes/no responses) and how
well he/she can come to understand the key ideas.
In closing this paper, we want to avoid summarizing (and
reifying) our position. We hope that you have highlighted points
of interest and of heuristic value, and perhaps have added notes
of differences. The points in this paper are presented as ideas
to wrestle with, not learn. While we have strived to make this
paper an egalitarian process with you, we realize we did drift
into a didactic monologue. Therefore, to return to our reflexive
origins, we offer this quote.
The physicist Leo Szilard once announced to his friend Hans
Bethe that he was thinking of keeping a diary: "I don't
intend to publish it; I am merely going to record the facts
for the information of God." "Don't you think God knows the
facts?" Bethe asked. "Yes," said Szilard. "He knows the facts,
but he does not know this version of the facts."
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