MCL 6224 Issues in the Development of Liberal Studies Lecture 3 Development of the Pedagogical Approach to Liberal Stud

1. MCL 6224 • Issues in the Development of Liberal Studies • Lecture 3 • Development of the Pedagogical Approach • to Liberal Studies in the HKSAR

3. The Official Version of Issue Enquiry

4. The Official Version of Issue Enquiry

5. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The idea of “Issue” • According to the Oxford English Dictionary, • The noun “issue” means “a point or matter in contention between two parties; …a choice between alternatives; a dilemma”. • The phrasal expression “at issue” means “in controversy; taking opposite sides of a case or contrary views of a matter. • “To join issue” means “to accept or adopt a disputed point as the basis of argument in a controversy; to proceed to argument with a person on a particular point”. • “To make an issue of” means to turn into a subject of contention”.

6. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The conception of issue inquiry • Reasonable disagreement and issue worthy of inquiring • Given that “issue” means matters in contention, dispute, disagreement and controversy, however, as underlined by John Rawls, in political and social daily life not all disagreement or controversial issues are “reasonable” and worthy of inquiring. (Rawls, 1993, p.58)

7. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The conception of issue inquiry • Reasonable disagreement and issue worthy of inquiring • We must make a distinction between reasonable and unreasonable disagreements. • By unreasonable disagreement, it refers to disagreement grows out of “prejudice and bias, self and group interest, blindness and willfulness” (Rawls, 1993, p. 58) or of “simple ignorance or …mere undisciplined assertiveness.” (Dearden, 1984, p. 85) • By reasonable disagreement, according to John Rawls it refers to “disagreement between reasonable persons: that is, between persons who have realized their two moral powers to a degree sufficient to be free and equal citizens in a constitutional regime, and who have an enduring desire to honor fair terms of cooperation and to be fully cooperating members of society.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 55).

8. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The conception of issue inquiry • Sources of reasonable disagreements and controversial issues: According to Rawles and others (Dearden, 1984; Bridges, 1986; McLaughlin, 2003), reasonable disagreements and controversial issues are commonly emerged in liberal-democratic societies from numbers of sources. They can be summarized as follows.

9. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The conception of issue inquiry • Sources of reasonable disagreements • Availability, reliability and sufficiency of evidences: “The evidence—empirical and scientific—bearing on the case is conflicting and complex, and thus hard to assess and evaluate.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 56) This source of controversies refers to disagreement derives on the ground that the factual evidences required for settling the dispute in point are not yet available or are in conflict. For example, the effects of GM (genetic-modified) food or cloning (both beneficial and harmful effects), the causes of the damage of the ozone layer, or the effects on the development of children growing up in queer families, etc. are still in dispute among natural and social scientists. And there are not sufficient and reliable evidences to make informed decisions on the issues in point.

10. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The conception of issue inquiry • Sources of reasonable disagreements • Relevance of evidences: In cases where evidences have been scientifically and empirically proven to be reliable, controversies may still emerge on the ground that the evidences in point are irrelevant to the issues in dispute. • Relative weights of evidences: “Even where we agree fully about the kinds of considerations that are relevant, we may disagree about their weight, and so arrive at different judgments.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 56) Parties in dispute may put forth relevant and reliable scientific evidences in support of the stances in controversial issues. As a result, disagreements will derived on the ground that whether and how relative weights are assigned to different evidences in settling the controversial issues in point.

11. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The conception of issue inquiry • Sources of reasonable disagreements • Valuation and interpretation of issues: Issues do not only involve judgments of factual evidences, but also invoke desirable and preferable attributes, which individuals or social groups attached to the issues in point. For example, legalization of same-sex marriage may invoke value controversy between personal liberty of choice and the stability of the institutional orders of a given society. Furthermore, the normative concepts attached to social and political issues are most likely to be indeterminacy in nature and subject to different interpretations. Hence, disagreements between values and their interpretations are another reasonable ground from which controversial issues are derived.

12. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The conception of issue inquiry • Sources of reasonable disagreements • Prioritization of values: Even where there are general agreements on the relevance and interpretations of the values involved in an issue, disagreement can still derive from the priorities ascribed to each of the preferences involved. • Positional and experiential considerations: “In a modern society with its numerous offices and positions, its various divisions of labor, its many social groups and their ethnic variety, citizens’ total experiences are disparate enough for their judgment to diverge.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 57) As a result, they will constitute reasonable disagreements in modern liberal-democratic society.

13. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The conception of issue inquiry • Sources of reasonable disagreements • Normative and perspective considerations: Another source of disagreements among reasonable citizens in liberal democratic society is differences in comprehensive moral doctrines or overall socio-political perspectives that different social categories and/or fractions adhere. For examples, differences in the socio-political orientations between unionists and employer and business federations; or differences in public-policy stances between liberals and communitarians; etc. • Institutional imperatives: “Any system of social institutions is limited in the values it can admit so that some selection must be made from the full range of moral and political values that might be realized. This is because any system of institutions has, as it were, a limited social space.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 57) Public choices are not made in social, economic, political and cultural vacuum; they are bounded by different institutional constraints.

14. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The conception of issue inquiry • The burdens of judgment and necessities of issue inquiry: In modern liberal-democratic societies, citizens are often confronted by these reasonable disagreements or controversial issues. As a result, they are burdened with these hard decisions and judgments. And John Rawls has characterized these burdens of judgment are the first pre-requisites of citizens in liberal polities.

15. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The nature of issue-inquiry approach to Liberal Studies • In light of the precedent explication on reasonable disagreement in liberal-democratic societies, we may identify the issue to be inquired in the issue-inquiry approach in the teaching of Liberal Studies should be confined to issues, which constitute reasonable disagreement and not those derived from prejudice, ignorance, and blindness.

16. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The nature of issue-inquiry approach to Liberal Studies • Accordingly, the general outcome of issue-inquiry approach is by definition informed, reasoned and reasonable judgments and their entailed decisions. Hence, it is helpful to make the distinction between the terms “issue”, “question” and “problem” in the teaching of Liberal Studies. For a question, one may search for an answer, while for a problem, one may simply demand a solution; but as for an issue, especially a controversial issue or “reasonable disagreement” as John Rawls stipulated, what one would strive for will be judgment and decision.

17. Issue Inquiry Approach in the UK and US • Teaching controversial issues in the UK: • Teaching Controversial Issues as a approach to political education was initated in the 1970s in the UK by Bernard Crick and the working party of the Hansard Society (Crick, 1978; see also Stradling et al., 1984)

18. Issue Inquiry Approach in the UK and US • Teaching controversial issues in the UK: • The approach has gained its retrieval in Section 10 of “Guidance on the Teaching of Controversial Issues” in Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools: The Final Report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship (The Advisory Group on Citizenship, 1998)

20. Issue Inquiry Approach in the UK and US • Teaching controversial issues in the UK: • “A controversial issue is an issue about which there is no one fixed or universally held point of view. Such issues are those which commonly divide society and for which significant groups offer conflicting explanation and solution. There may, for example, be conflicting views on such matters as how a problem has arisen and who is to blame; over how the problem may be resolved; over what principles should guide the decisions that can be taken, and so on.” (The Advisory Group on Citizenship, 1998, P. 56)

21. Issue Inquiry Approach in the UK and US • The Issue-Centered Decision Making Curriculum in Social Studies in the US • Issue inquiry approach has a long tradition in the teaching of Social Studies in the US, for example • Oliver and Shaver’s jurisprudential approach (1966) • James Banks’ decision-making model (1973/1985) • Engle and Ochoa’s citizens’ decision-making approach (1988) • Multicultural education (Banks, 2002, 2007)

22. Issue Inquiry Approach in the UK and US • The Issue-Centered Decision Making Curriculum in Social Studies in the US • Most recently, Ochoa-Becker specifies the “Issue-Centered Decision Making Curriculum as the curriculum for education for democratic citizenship in the US. She underlines that “The overarching purpose of this Issue-Centered Decision Making Curriculum is to improve the quality of decision making by democracy’s citizens as they respond to issues that require resolution. …The decision making process advanced here is applicable to virtually every domain of our lives.” (Ochoa-Becker, 2007, p. 124)

23. Decision-Problem Social inquiry Value inquiry Social Knowledge Value Clarification Products of previous inquiries by social scientists Rational Decision Intelligent social action A social studies curriculum focused on social inquiry, valuing, decision-making, and intelligent social action (Source: Banks, 1985)

24. Decision-Problem What action should we take regarding race relations in our city? Social Inquiry Key Concepts Conflict Culture Discrimination Specialization Power Value Inquiry 1. Recognizing value problems 2. Describing value-relevant behavior 3. Naming values 4. Determining value conflicts 5. Hypothesizing about value sources 6. Naming value alternatives 7. Hypothesizing about consequences 8. Choosing 9 Stating reasons, sources, and consequences of choice Knowledge necessary for naming alternatives and making predictions Value Clarification Making a Decision 1. Identifying Alternatives (Using generalizations related to key concepts to identify alternatives) 2. Predicting Consequences of each alternative (Using generalizations related to key concepts to predict consequences) 3. Ordering Alternatives Which is most consistent with value position identified above? Action

25. Doubt-concern Problem Formulation Theory-Values Formulation of Hypotheses Definition of Terms - Conceptualization Collection of Data Evaluation and Analysis of Data Testing hypotheses: Deriving generalizations and theories Beginning inquiry new A model of social inquiry

26. Value Problem Relevant behavior Conflicting values Possible consequences Related values Alternative values Possible consequences Sources Possible consequences Value preference Sources Reasons Operations of Value Inquiry Model, Graphically Illustrated

27. Policy Issue: Should Vere sentence Billy to hang? Moral-Value Issue Definitional Issue Fact-Explanation Issue Is killing wrong? What does mutiny mean? Would hanging Billy deter mutiny? Newmann’s Approach to the Analysis of Policy Issues

28. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The teaching framework is made up of the following constituents • Issue analysis: It refers to first of all identifying the social backgrounds from which the issue invokes. Second is to identify the parties engaging in an issue. In public and social issues, they may involve different political parties, interest groups or stake-holders. However, in a controversial social issue, the engaging parties may be numerous in number and their opinions about the issue may vary diversely. Nevertheless, as in most political issues, these diverse stances will subsequently aggregate or even polarize into two opposite camps. Thirdly, it is to how the parties involved aggregate and aligned into opposite camps. Finally, it is to collect the statements and arguments each parties put forth.

29. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The factual inquiry: It refers to analyzing the factual statements put forth by parties engaging in a disputing issue. Usually these factual statements fall into one of the following categories • Descriptive, definitional and characterizational statements: They provide factual descriptions of the phenomena relating to the issue under study. Accordingly, they define the status quo of the situation. For examples, the air of HK is highly populated; the ozone layer of the earth has been damaged; global warming exists; Queen Pier is part of Hong Kong’s collective memory; Olympic Games is purely an athletic events; Olympic Games is an international political event, etc. In connection to the analysis of this kind of statements, one may reveal the definitional issue involved in the dispute. For example, one may ask are the parties involved share common definition of the situation or are they simply talking across each other?

30. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The factual inquiry: • Causal statements: They make claims of causal relationship between phenomena relating to the issue in point. For example, polluted air is hazardous to health; damaged ozone layer is hazardous to health; global warming is hazardous to the environment; genetic modified food is hazardous to health; genetic modified food is hazardous to environment; etc. In connection to the analysis of the causal statements invoked in the dispute, one must not accept the causal statements in the face-value and should further interrogate the validity and reliability of the methodology through which the causal statements are substantiated.

31. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The value inquiry: It refers to clarifying and prioritizing the desirable or preferable attributes or standards of worth imputed by engaging parties to the phenomena pertaining to the issue in point. • Concept of value: Values are desirable and preferable attributes a person impute to objects in his environment. • “Conduct, performances, situations, occurrence, states of affairs, production, all these is associated with the ways in which we perceive them, appraise them, judge them, and the way we are inclined towards or away from, attracted to or repelled by, such objects, production, states of affairs, performances, manifestations of conducts. We choose them. We prefer them over other things in the same class of comparison. We want to follow their model or to replicate them. We want to emulate them.” (Aspin, 1999, p.125)

32. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The value inquiry: • Concept of value: Values are desirable and preferable attributes a person impute to objects in his environment. • 價值：「大體上說來，一切具價值之事物，都是人所欲得的，人所尋求的、喜悅的、愛護的、讚美的、或崇敬的。簡言之，即都是人所欲或所好的。一切具負價值或反價值之事物，則都是人所不欲得的，人所不尋求的、厭棄的、憎恨的、貶斥的、鄙視的。簡言之，即都是人所不欲或所惡的」。（唐君毅，2005，頁707）

33. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The value inquiry: • Constituents in the definition of value • The valuator • The valuation • The object under valuation • The result of the valuation • Private pursuit and actualization of the result • Public action of actualization of the result

34. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The value inquiry: • Typology of values: Values can be classified according to many different criteria. The most two common classifications are • Distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic (or instrumental) values: • “An intrinsic value can be defined as something that is valuable for its own sake” (Ellis, p.12) or important in and of itself. • “An extrinsic value is valuable not for its own sake, but because it facilitates getting or accomplishing something that is valuable for its own sake.” (Ellis, p.12) It means the worth or desirability of a thing or person is derived from its instrumentality and efficiency in achieving something more desirable.

35. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The value inquiry: • Typology of values: • Distinction between personal moral and social ethical values （唐君毅，1957/2005） • Personal moral values 個人道德價值refers to the desirable and preferable standards a person imputes to his/her personal actions, conducts and ways of life. • Social ethical values社會倫理價值refers to the desirable and preferable standards a group of human beings impute to their inter-personal relationships. With regards of the various domains of inter-personal relationships, social ethical values can further be categorized as familial-ethical values, economic-ethical values, political-ethical values, aesthetical-ethical values, scholarly-ethical values, professional-ethical values, etc.

37. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The value inquiry: • Bases intrinsic value: Debate between deontologicalist and institutionalist • Deontological theory of valuation can usually be traced back to Kant’s concept of categorical imperative. It is the universal normative rule, which transcends all particular ontological situations, i.e. the deontological principle of ethical conduct. • It is called the categorical imperative because it is “'categorical' in a sense that the principle is not based upon different goals and desires people might happen to have, and ‘imperative’ since it tells people what they ought to do.” (Rogerson, 1991, p. 108) • Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative can simply be stated as that in testing for the morality of actions, “an action is morally permissible if you would be willing to have everyone act as you are proposing to act (if you would be willing to have the ‘maxim’ of your action become a universal law). An action is morally wrong if you are not willing to have everyone act as you are proposing to act.” (Rogerson, 1991, p. 108)

38. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The value inquiry: • Bases intrinsic value: Debate between deontologicalist and institutionalist • The institutional bases of valuation • Alasdair McIntyre, in contrast to Neo-Kantian stance, proposes that the social ground of intrinsic-value valuation “can never be grounded by an appeal to some neo-Kantian ideal of a set of norms presupposed by all speakers in a discussion. Rather, the concept of the better argument must always be ground within social particular tradition of philosophical enquiry.” (Doody, 1991, p. 61) • More specifically, McIntyre contends that it is within a tradition of a craft of inquiry that rationality and ethical principles can find their authority or ground of justification. Hence, “for on McIntyre’s account, moral rules are not embodiments of a pure practical reason whose charge is to issue statements of oughts which necessarily bind ahistorical beings. Rather moral rules which express claims of ought are expressions or statements of …virtues and rules of practices that which were …grounded in a community of practice which understood itself through those practices.” (Doody, 1991, p.68)

39. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The institutional (or jurisprudential) inquiry: Apart from analyzing the factual and value stances adopted by the engaging parties in controversial issues, in issue inquiry, one must analyze the institutional implications of the actions and strategies waged by the engaging parties. That is to put these social actions in the social-ethical and political-legal context and examine whether their actions and strategies have violated the socially and legally endorsed standards. Furthermore, one may even analyze whether the ends justify the means, which violate legal and/or ethical principles.

40. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The comparative-multicultural inquiry: In order to enlarge one’s perception and understanding of the issue under study, one should extent the inquiry beyond the institutional contexts in which one is familiarized with, to avoid culturally ethnocentric version. Accordingly, comparable issues invoked in other spatial and temporal contexts should also be studied.

41. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • Formulations of judgments • Judgment refers to “the mental or intellectual process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing.” (Connolly et al., 2000, p. 1)

42. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • Formulations of judgments • According to the issue-inquiry approach explicated about, judgments can be classified into four kinds. • Comparison among factual judgments of empirical causes or contributing factors. • Comparison among Value judgments of intrinsic, extrinsic, personal and/or social values and set up one value priority list. • Comparison among institutional judgments of legal, political, economical and/or cultural imperatives within a society • Comparison among institutional judgments of legal, political, economical and/or cultural imperatives among societies

43. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The decision making: Having formulated one’s matrix of judgments on factual, value, institutional and comparative bases, one can then try to formulate one’s stance on the disputing issue and make one’s own decision on the issue. One may formulate one’s decision into a priori decomposition of a ‘decision tree, which usually consists of: (Connolly, et al. 2000, p. 4) • “What are my possible courses of action? (Alternatives) • What are the events that might follow form those actions? (Outcomes) • What is the likelihood of each event? • What is the value of each event to me?”

44. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The ideal typical model of decision making: A priori decomposition of decision tree

45. A Teaching Frameworks of Issue Inquiry Approach for Liberal Studies • The ideal typical model of decision making: A priori decomposition of decision tree

46. Controversial Issue Value Bases Factual Bases Institutional Bases Comparative Multicultural Bases Judgment Decision

47. Issue Analysis 1. Studying the background of the issue 2. Identifying the disputing parties involved 3. Analyzing the alignment of parties into opposite camps 4. Identifying the statements and arguments from each camps Factual Inquiry 1. Descriptive & definitional statements analysis 2. Causal statements analysis 3. Weights and priorities assigned to factual evidences Value Inquiry 1. Identify the values attributed by parties in dispute 2. Clarify the conception and interpretation of the values involved. 3. Analyze the foundations of the values 4. Priority analyze the conflicting values Comparative Multicultural Inquiry 1. Identify comparable issues in other societies 2. Identify comparable issue in other points in time 3. Analyze the commonalities and differences among cases Institutional Inquiry 1. Identify the institutions in which the issue invoked 2. Identify the institutional practice or values being endorsed or violated Making a Decision 1. Identifying Alternatives 2. Assessing anticipated effects of each alternative 3. Predicting unanticipated consequences of each alternatives4. Prioritizing alternatives 5. Making choice

48. Sample of Issue-Inquiry Design: 1Publications of Paparazzi Photographs should be Penalized