Thanks Bob.
I do appreciate that it will take more than a short email to trace those
steps.
I would, however, also like to see some elaboration of 'I arrived there
through logic, informed by 75 years of experience'.
One of the things I understand us to be striving for, by engagement with
this list, is the learning, jointly, of the nexus between practice and
research.
And from our learning here, working at our practice to align what we do with
what we say we value.
One of the steps of that learning, for me, is the challenge to re-think what
I value and why I value that: to what extent are my values formed by
evidence-based research, over against unexamined assumptions, and positions
formed in 'social formation' - by 'tradition' and/or 'authoritative'
knowledge structures and teaching processes?
In my latter years I have come across Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as a tool
for analysing some of our personal differences, and as a tool that I
consider, had I known of that, 40 years ago, I might have been a more
effective teacher, then, and now, as I built on that schema and tested it
more thoroughly in practice, and by my practice.
Why do I value individual difference? Because, individually I was
different, and as a child felt my individuality as a certain level of social
isolation? If so, does perhaps every child feel this, but have different
ways of dealing with it, some of which are counter-productive to fuller
life/living?
(For a recent humorous take on this issue see
The true history of the beer belly gang
Author: Richard Glover
Date: 04/12/2010
Words: 861
Source: SMH
(http://newsstore.smh.com.au/apps/newsSearch.ac?/index.html)
If my natural bent is for logic and justice (which according to
self-reporting via Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, it is) how then do I deal
with suggestions that 'fairness' is understood in different ways in
different social formations ...?
In my more limited interactions with university students preparing to be
teachers, one of the most exciting sessions developed when I offered the
following exercise, in the context of honouring individuality, and engaging
in more reflective work on practice:
EXERCISE ON CONCEPT OF FAIRNESS
(Tripp 1993) Tripp, D. (1993). Critical Incidents in Teaching: Developing
Professional Judgement. London, Routledge.
p.58
.. although ideology is not escapable, it is also very necessary: we could
not do without ideology, because the ideas act as reference points by which
we can make judgements about what to do. It is our ideology that allows us
to decide what, in terms of social justice, is a 'fair' way of sharing
scarce resources. . Apart from 'per capita' allocation (equal amounts to
each person), so called 'fairness' of distribution can be achieved in at
least the following twelve ways:
a. to each person according to their 'needs';
b. to each person according to intrinsic personal differences
(merit/gender/age/ ..);
c. to each person according to extrinsic personal differences
(status);
d. to each person according to what they (say they) will do with it;
e. to each person according to how much of it they've already got (per
cent)
f. to each person according to how much of something else they've
already got (land, money, education); [and so can buy]
g. to each person according to what they have previously had
(tradition);
h. to each person according to what certain other people have
(relativities / inheritance);
i. to each person according to what they demand;
j. to each person according to what they can take (power);
k. to each person according to the judgement or preferences of the
distributor;
l. to just one person alone (lottery/ballot)
Working singly, then in pairs, then in quartets, see if you can
(1) work out instances in general life where this rule generally applies
(2) consider what the advantages of that rule applying in that situation
are, compared to the alternative options of dealing with the allocation of
the scarce resource
(3) are there any other rules of allocation which can be enunciated, and
the situations in which their application has certain advantages?
(4) in what ways do these options of fairness illustrate competing values?
Regards,
Dianne
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Dick" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2011 9:21 AM
Subject: Re: Educational influence and Social Formation
>
>
> Dianne asks what is informing me in nominating the ideal of a system
> of education that I proposed.
>
> Briefly, I imagined a classroom where differences in talents are
> accepted; where people talk openly and without judgment about them.
> It might be described as a system where accidents of birth are not
> socially or materially rewarded -- just accepted as natural.
>
> Dianne, the short answer is that I arrived there through logic,
> informed by 75 years of experience. It would take me more than a
> short email to retrace those steps.
>
> One of my important assumptions is that, more than we imagine, most
> people are what they are. It's unfair to penalise them or reward
> them for it.
>
> When I worked in university classrooms as a lecturer I sought to
> create a system that approached that situation.
>
>
> There's actually much more to it than that. Fortunately, John Rawls
> has provided me with a more succinct answer with his theory of
> justice.
>
> To summarise a lot, Rawls invites us to think about the system of
> justice we would design if we didn't know what role we would be born
> into.
>
> In other words, suppose you didn't know what nation, what social
> class or what material conditions and so on would be your lot. What
> form of justice would you design as "just"?
>
> And, in the context of the present conversation, what would a fair
> classroom look like?
>
> Warm regards -- Bob
>
>
> [ The reference is: Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice.
> Harvard: Harvard University Press.
>
> There are also reprints and later editions. ]
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> +- Bob Dick --------------------------------------------------+
> | bd at uqconnect.net http://uqconnect.net/action_research/ |
> +-------------------------------------------------------------+
|
