Provocation: Economics and disciplinarity

1. Provocation: Economics and disciplinarity Peter Freebody School of Education The University of Queensland Adelaide August 4, 2005

2. A view from Economics • “Complementarity (synergy) of investment reinforces self-productivity … this empirically established complementarity also suggests that early investments must be followed up by later investments to be effective” (Heckman, 2005: 3-4)

3. Heckman’s “7 lessons” from the human capital research on skills formation (2005) • Abilities and environments both matter • Abilities are multiple • Cognitive and non-cognitive differences between socio-economic groups appear at an early age • Families and schools can compensate for these differences • Different abilities are amenable to change at different ages • The later the intervention, the less effective • Discontinued supports dissipate early gains

4. Abilities and environments both matter • “A large number of empirical studies document that cognitive ability affects both the likelihood of acquiring advanced training and higher education, but also the economic return to those activities” (2005: 1) For us…? • Literacy is the arch “skill that beget skills”, a set of capabilities that shape and enrich the development of cognitive skills and understandings

5. 2. Abilities are multiple • “Current policies regarding education and job training are based in fundamental misconceptions about the way socially useful skills embodied in persons are produced. … they exclude the critical importance of social skills, social adaptability and motivation … caus(ing) a serious bias in the evaluation of many human capital interventions” (2001: 2)

6. 2. Abilities are multiple For us …? • Literacy has many components, some of them relating to growing social understandings and skills. • Demonstrations of “necessity” are demonstrations of neither “sufficiency” nor “sustainability” (Paris, 2005/in press)

7. 3-6: Early intervention and developmental amenability to change • “The best evidence supports the policy prescription: Invest in the very young and improve basic learnings and socialization skills” (Heckman, 2001: 4) …for us? • High impact parent and preschool programs.

8. 7. Discontinued supports dissipate early gains • “Complementarity (synergy) of investment reinforces self-productivity … this empirically established complementarity also suggests that early investments must be followed up by later investments to be effective” (Heckman, 2005: 3-4)

9. 7. Discontinued supports dissipate early gains … for us? • A fundamental fact of literacy in and for school is the significant change in demands over time – textual, cognitive and social demands • That is, how to manage, use and produce mono- and multi-modal texts, texts that reflect the increasing distinctiveness of each of the disciplines of school knowledge

10. Research on teaching: Why do we have comparatively little to show? • Maybe because: • from research we have “unbearably generic recommendations” for teachers and teacher educators (Shulman 1990)

11. “unbearably generic”? • The usual interpretation: • ‘take account of student diversity’ • An additional interpretation: • ‘take account of the diversity of knowledge forms and processes’

12. Disciplinarity • “broadly discipline-based education” as the touchstone of modernity • resources for cutting beneath the surfaces of perceived experience • resources for transcending commonsense and dogma – the cultural touchstones of the tribe

13. Disciplinarity-the tension between making knowledge and acting on knowedge • knowledge production needs “secure principles of determination” • action in the world needs some “degree of unconditioned agency”

14. A tension that embodies the “dual mandate” of disciplinarity • It is the tension that defines (not just characterises) “those orchestrated modes of discourse that we call intellectual or academic disciplines” • carrying a “a sense of practical regimen into an economy of conceptual enterprise” (Anderson & Valente 2002: 4ff)

15. The argument • The psychological colonisation of “knowledge”, at least since Bloom and Tyler • but “knowledge” and “learning” are not definable only in terms of generic, non-observable psychological / cognitive processes (e.g. higher-order thinking, evaluation, etc). • As the “matter of the project” changes (Dewey), these processes become qualitatively different from one discipline to another

16. Literate Futures(Luke Freebody & Land) • Secondaries?? • Isolationism • The log-jamming of good practice • The 70s

17. References Anderson, A. & Valente, J. (2002).Disciplinarity at the fin de siecle. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Heckman, J.J. (2001). Invest in the very young. Working Paper, Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, at www.HarrisSchool.uchicago.edu Heckman, J.J. (2005). Lessons from the technology of skills formation. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper #1142, Feb, 2005. Luke, A., Freebody, P. & Land, R. (2000).Literate futures: Review of literacy education. Brisbane, Queensland: Education Queensland. Shulman, L.S. (1996). Just in case: Reflections on learning from experience. In J.A. Colbert, P. Desberg & K. Trimble (Eds.) The Case for Education: Contemporary Approaches for Using Case Methods. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.