Privileging Knowledge: Paradigms, Epistemologies and “Ways of Knowing”

1. Privileging Knowledge:Paradigms, Epistemologies and “Ways of Knowing” A Questioning and Troubling of Dominant Discourse and Pedagogies in Schooling Kyle Mitschele Teacher, MS History, Rye Country Day School Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University NYSAIS Diversity Conference, April 2009

2. Questions We’ll Consider: • What does it mean "to know" something?* • Can types of knowledge be more important than others? • If so, what are the implications? What and whose knowledge are we privileging? • What are the moral obligations of understanding?* • Why do we ask students to know and do particular “things” and show that knowledge in particular ways? *Reproduced from Kincheloe, J.L. (2004).Knowledges of teacher education: Developing a critical complex epistemology. Teacher Education Quarterly. Winter 2004.

3. Defining terms

4. Paradigm • Accepted examples of practice from which come traditions of research and practice • Helps define the methods and practices of a discipline - After Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

5. Epistemology • “a theory of knowledge, especially regarding its methods, validity, and scope; • Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion”

6. To begin… • Please think about what you think it means to “know”, and represent your thoughts either: • Through a quick drawing, OR • A “sculpture” of pipe cleaners, OR • Some other non-written/oral form, with what is easily available…?

7. Time to share! • Share out: • Introduce self (selves?) • Quick word on “how you got here” • Explain your quickly-produced masterpiece • If you care to, once everyone has gone, we can briefly talk about what the process of doing this was like.

8. Respond to this statement: Teaching depends on knowledge. Do you agree? Disagree? Do you feel strongly? Or not? Share and explain your response with a neighbor.

9. One “text” on schools, teaching and knowledge: • Watch and reflect on the brief glimpses of “knowledge” at work in Dead Poets Society.

10. Ranking “types/domains of knowledge” • First-hand knowledge • Oral tradition • Folklore • Mythology • Statistics • Scientific conclusions • Interview transcript • Journal/diary writings • Survey results • Questions • Predictions • “how-to”/procedural • Art • Music

11. Questions • What did you base your ranking on? • If your basis for ranking had nothing to do with school, would you rank the items in this list differently if the prompt was specifically along the lines of ranking school knowledge? • What knowledge is most demanded (and rewarded) in your school?

12. If Teaching Depends on Knowledge… • What knowledge are we valuing? • How do we know when something stands up as “knowledge”? • Do we openly recognize the social construction of knowledge? • We must first recognize our own and understand others’ epistemologies, as well as whatever paradigm of pedagogy or discipline we may be bound by.

13. Initial Attempt at Definition of Your “Stance” • Take a moment and write about how you would “define” your epistemological stance. • What knowledge do you tend to value? (Think back to earlier this morning, when you ranked different types of data.) What kinds of comments and work do you value in your classes? • What makes something “true” in your mind? • How do you assess your students? When is an answer “correct”? • Add any other associated thoughts you have on this topic.

14. Pair/Share

15. My Stance & Thesis • Knowledge is socially constructed; as such, a practice of “normalizing” particular knowledge (in both form and content) privileges that knowledge, and makes that privilege invisible • It is that “normalizing” practice – of making the privilege invisible – that makes systems of power/knowledge (Foucault, 1978) reproduce (through technologies such as dominant schooling practices and pedagogies) that privilege in new (and usual) natural ways

16. A couple of alternate lenses • Poststructuralism • One major aspect is unpacking discursive binaries: • Man/woman • Urban/rural • White/Black (e.g.: Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark) • Upper-middle class/working class • Smart/dumb • Critical Race Theory

17. Normalization of the Child • Simple conversations can, through language, construct norms • How a child might “master content” or “skills” • “at grade-level” • “natural” ability • Idea of intelligence • Such language and norms position the child along a continuum of values (often themselves unspoken, unquestioned) Popkewitz, T. S. (1998). Struggling for the soul: The politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. New York: Teachers College Press.

18. Alchemy of School Subjects • A goal of the early twentieth century school: normalize, categorize, rank and sort students to make the constructive and productive citizens of industrial society • Disciplinary knowledge is socially produced • Each discipline has standards for knowledge production/research • “norms of ‘truth’, however, … are produced through alliances with groups external to the discipline • Kuhn (1970): certain rules and discourses govern disciplines, creating the paradigm for that discipline • Major changes require “paradigm shift” (e.g. Copernicus, heliocentrism) Popkewitz, T. S. (1998). Struggling for the soul: The politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. New York: Teachers College Press.

19. Alchemy, cont’d • “[S]chool subjects tend to treat knowledge as uncontested and unambiguous content for children to learn or solve problems with” (27). • “School ‘science,’ ‘math,’ ‘composition,’ or ‘art’ is pedagogical knowledge that conforms to expectations related to the school timetable, conceptions of childhood [and adolescence], and conventions of teaching that transform knowledge and intellectual inquiry into a strategy for [saving the child]” Popkewitz, T. S. (1998). Struggling for the soul: The politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. New York: Teachers College Press.

20. Example of “alchemy” at work:Masculinity in US History texts • “From the perspective of masculinity, history can be viewed as an interpretive account by men for men in the sense that it is both a reflection and product of patriarchy. The social studies curriculum, as represented by United States history textbooks, can be viewed as a cultural terrain where patriarchy is both produced and reproduced through schooling.” - Kuzmic, J. (2000). “Textbooks, Knowledge, and Masculinity.”

21. Example of “alchemy” at work:Eurocentrism in early ed texts • “Again and again Anglo-Americans’ belief in the rightness of their actions is used to justify how Mexican people and Native Americans have been treated historically.” (Martinez, E.,”Distorting Latino History: The California Textbook Controversy” in Levine, et al, Rethinking Schools: An Agenda for Change) • Own experience, teaching roots of slavery in 8th US

22. Critical Race Theory • Initially formed as in the field of legal studies, in order to address problems seen by “minorities” within the field, especially concerning the manner in which law makes social constructs concrete and part of “the code”

23. Critical Race Theory • There is no one proposed or adhered to set of doctrines in CRT, but there are a number of ideas that CRT theorists tend to have in common. Relevant to our discussion in an educational context are:

24. Critical Race Theory: Shared Features • An assumption that racism is not a series of isolated acts, but is endemic in American life, deeply ingrained legally, culturally, and even psychologically; • A challenge to the “traditional claims of… neutrality, objectivity, and color-blindness, and meritocracy as camouflages for the self-interest of dominant groups in American society” • An insistence on subjectivity • The use of stories or first-person accounts

25. Intersections of Dominant Epistemology and CRT • CRT theorists like Delgado suggest that “naming one’s own reality” is important because: • Much of reality is socially constructed • Stories provide members of outgroups a vehicle for psychic self-preservation • The exchange of stories from teller to listener can help overcome ethnocentrism and the dysconscious conviction of viewing the world in one way

26. Intersections, cont’d • The “grand narrative” of history and Western progress, and the infallibility of Renaissance ideals, such as the scientific method, then, are simply the dominant “story” retold as fact. As Delgado notes, “Most oppression does not seem like oppression to the perpetrator.” • “Reality is constructed in ways to maintain privilege.”

27. The Problem of the “Multicultural”Curriculum:Multiculturalism as the “tourist” curriculum • It is argued that “multicultural” paradigms, where surface difference is celebrated (food, culture, dress/costume, etc) or an acceptance of “unity of difference” does not allow for, question, challenge, or push the possibilities for radical change of the current social order.

28. Multiculturalism as tourism, cont’d • Consider: If the “multi” cultures are simply added in (as holidays, special events, “an/other” section of information), their place as “Other” to the dominant (White, male, upper/middle class, heterosexual…) culture is reinforced and re-inscribed

29. Questions for Further Thought and Action • How, then, does our current teaching and methodology help support the dominant paradigm? • Are we simply accepting of “diversity” as long as it fits with a dominant discourse, or can we openly challenge that discourse and our “ways of knowing” to open new possibilities for thought, reflection, action, reaction, evaluation, and assessment in our classrooms?

30. Honoring Varying “Ways of Knowing” • “[T]he lesson teachers can and should take from this body of literature is the idea that children do learn and perceive the world in dissimilar ways. Therefore, meeting the instructional and personal needs of diverse learners demands that teachers create more inclusive classroom cultures that embrace multiple ways of knowing. When children are not forced to ‘enter school having to unlearn or, at least, to modify their own culturally sanctioned interactional and behavioral styles and adopt those styles rewarded in the school context if they wish to achieve academic success,’ they are allowed to apply all of themselves to the educational enterprise, to bring all that they know to learning. - Goodwin, A.L. (2000). “Honoring Ways of Knowing.”

31. One class & a poem • Please read the provided handout, an abridged excerpt from Bridge of Sighs, a novel by Richard Russo. • What strikes you about the passage? • How does it fit with themes from the session? • What, if anything, do you think it suggests for practice?

32. What is knowledge? (Whose knowledge? How shown?) Take a moment and write some final reflections, thoughts, and questions. What can our metaphor for the Hughes poem’s “petals,” as referred to in Bridge of Sighs, or Dead Poets’ “light” be?