[AAACE-NLA] Artilcle on neo-positivist research in adulteducation

[gdemetrion@msn.com]

Andrea,

I can't get into that right now, though I've attempted to address it in Conflicting Paradigms.  The short of it is I don't believe any system- reform is remotely possible without some enduring social contract undergirding the field and a political culture that absorbs the value system of "public good," identified in various ways by John Dewey and Walter Lippmann in the 1920s and 30s and more recently by political philosophers Benjamin Barber, Jurgen Habermas, Robert Bellah, and politician turned political philosopher Gary Hart.  As long as the strain of radical individualism persists as an underlying cultural value, the field will never come to any meaningful social contract even as various "alliances" will emerge from time to time over specific issues, such as lobbying against budget cuts.  As long as capitalism is defined primarily by the profit motive rather than wealth creation as a sustainable resource for maintaining a democratic republic, an intensely competitive rather than cooperative ethos is likely to remain pervasive for the foreseeable future.

I do believe that piecemeal reform is plausible with modest to marginal effect, but anything broader to that will require some fundamental paradigmatic that goes to core articulated values inherent within the plausibility structures of the American revolutionary ethos at its best, but which exists primarily in our actual political life in the form of rhetoric and even bad faith-what the marxists refer to as false consciousness.

Was there anything in Alisa and Ralf's article that stands out for you?

A distinction I would make is that between neo-positivism and post-positivism, which does offer at least in principle, a third way between positivism and constructivism of establishing a research theoretical-scientific basis.  For one such effort, I offer my own piece, Postpositivist Scientific Philosophy:  Mediating Convergences  http://www.the-rathouse.com/Postpositivism.htm

Not all research or theoretical work is designed to have an immediate or direct impact on practical application (though some may), but to lay out alternative scenarios of seemingly existing reality.  My scholarship takes predominantly an "academic" perspective in which I am focusing on various "canonical" issues.  However, the immediate focal point is often some facet of the field and in that respect may be viewed variously as "existential" or "ethnographic."  I am seeking to speak somewhat allegorically here.  Thus, in certain ethnographic literature there is a move of academics to "go native" so to speak (a term used in cultural anthropology) while maintaining a critical perspective, my focus has been sort of the reverse--that of a  practitioner going academic and speaking with, through, and to scholarship through the critical lens of one grappling with practitioner-based issues.   

I think there's a role for this.  I also think the audience size for such speech is rather small.  So be it.

George Demetrion  

----- Original Message -----
From: Andrea Wilder
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 8:15 AM
To: National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE
Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] Artilcle on neo-positivist research in adulteducation

Hi George,

I've read the article, thanks for posting it.

If you could,  how would you reform the system?

Andrea

On Nov 30, 2007, at 10:12 AM, George Demetrion wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> This TC Record article available this week on line by Aisa Belzer and
> Ralf St Clair may be of interest to some
> http://www.tcrecord.org/PrintContent.asp?ContentID=11915
>
>
> George Demetrion
>
> George Demetrion
> Director of Program Operations
> Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford
> 30 Arbor Street
> Hartford, CT 06106
> (860) 233-3853
> George.Demetrion at lvgh.org
> www.lvgh.org
>
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