[NLA] Philosophical Naivete--Evidence and the Personal

[Catherine B. King]

To Andres and Tom:

A brief note about  (1) the objectivity or subjectivity of adult
learning (2) pity-parades, legitimate evidence and its
gathering (3) research methods and advocacy, and (4) the
efficacy of put-up-or-shut-up arguments where the questions
are all wrong and all the power is in the hands of the speaker
via the stasis-seeking underpinnings of DOE.

Tom remarks: "I don't recall seeing any evidence
demonstrating that his (Freire's) program was more
effective than programs others had developed."   (1) It's not
a competition of numbers or products, or if it is, we--both
researchers and policy-makers, as well as teachers--are
viewing it wrongly; and (2) if you rule out-of-court some
questions, data and evidence, as a one-method method
would infer, you won't see any evidence demonstrating,
etc., etc.

First, even it you don't understand that evaluative knowledge
has an objective component, we cannot deny that it has
great historical import about how we live our lives and create
our histories.  (1) We act in our lives; (2) act is informed by
prior knowledge and valuations; and (3) act is a real (and
objective) part of ongoing history--not the least of which is
objectively collective and the concern of us all.

So please let's not continue to relegate a full education (what is
still called a liberal, as in liberating) education to a notion of
being "merely subjective" and therefore reduced to an
entrapped psychology with no connection to objective reality.
That's the worst absurdity going in education today, and
buying into that argument cuts any talk of the power of
education off at its knees.

Education as merely subjective also contributes to the idea
that somehow the use of some methods, as well as the
avoidance of the personal (in education!!), allows some
scientists to "cleanse" ourselves of our own personal or
subjective starting points in a way that need not draw open
critique of our assumptions, our questions, our horizons our
positions and the analyses and evaluations of the data under
review in our research.

Those scientists who claim the personal is uncritical are the
first, it seems, to be uncritical about their own presuppositions.
There is no scientist who does not emerge from a subjectivity
to approach objective knowledge through our questions about
anything.

. . . unless some of us are really gods; but this is not possible,
nor is it desireable.  This uncritical bias of philosophical naivete
still infects much of social science, but is breaking down in
some quarters and is evident in the bold (for now) questions
addressed in the EFF documents, and in the works of
Mezirow, Freire, et al.  When it does, we will begin to
approach more adequately the nuances that are inherent
in education in complex cultures.

Second, Tom's call for evidence is a good one.  However, the
problem is the question:  "What is taken for authentic evidence?"

With human concerns, i.e., adult education, the data is human.
Aside from the scientists' humanity coming under critique, what
is objective in education is essentially meta-personal.   In
educational research, there is no advantage, and a great
distortion is inferred, in identifying results and evidence with
non-personal development, or personal development as
somehow **only** subjective and not objectively real or really
important.

I agree with Tom that pity-parades are rightly distinct from
research evidence, and that they are inappropriate and
short-sighted funding methods; but non-personal research
development and results in human beings?--is not the
alternative, nor is it possible, nor desirable.

Also, the either-or argument about either (1) a one-and-only
objective method or (2) the "subjective" pity-personal does
not represent the argument or the nuances in education
and research methods that are at stake here.

Third, in the interest of adult education advocacy, if we need
to educate some of our human scientists about the
legitimacy of variable research methods, it will be even more
difficult to educate our politicians and policy makers who still
assume the same kind of natural-data-science underpinnings
about many human scientist's one-and-only "legitimate"
approach to educational research.   The use of multiple
research methods enables us to more adequately identify
and evaluate the objective nuances (evidence) of dynamic
human persons rather than static non-conscious data.    Their
results must be both developed and read with a different eye
than is being used at present.

As George so clearly points up in his recent quotations,
that "different eye" seems to be understood in power circles
as "faddish," arbitrary and unsubstantiated rather than
legitimate from the get go.   The evidence for a false
consciousness is a view that dismisses approaching
the nuance and difficulty that emerge from the data itself
as arbitrary and trendy because researchers don't want
to deal with human development as dialogal, self-
reflective, political, ethical and creative.   It's not easy,
after all, like counting sheep might be.

When this view is held by social and political power, it
tends to bend its tone-deaf policy around its own "research-
supported" and well-heeled ignorance rather than to the
reality of the data, thereby becoming false consciousness
and, in this case,  falsely entrenched as "educational policy"
that aims at bending the data to that same ignorance.  The
data in this case are human beings and their/our lives.

Fourth, we seem to still be arguing from the position that
(1) adults are not political constitutents and have no political
voice, even in their advocates, some of who people this
forum (2) democracies don't need to continually educate
their adults as an essential part of being a democracy, and
(3) the evidence for the needs of adult education rests
in having already created a productive factory and in
jumping through numbers hoops rather than in an eye
to qualitative living of individuals in a community, or in
researchers' and policy-makers' prior understanding of
the formative relationship between (a) political and
educational institutions on the one hand, and (b) education
and total horizonal development on the other that
continuing education affords people and cultures
in a complex world.

With the above understanding in place, the question will
change from Whether we need adult education, to How
best to offer it in a maturing democracy.  Tom's "put-up-or-
shut-up" argument about program implementation from
methods developed from Mezirow's work, et al, as
polite as it may come off, only show how a limited and
one-method focus keeps the hidden curriculum hidden--
and it will remain hidden from a one-method view
harboring uninspected philosophical foundations.

The hidden curriculum is rich, it already goes forward
in any but the most dessicated of educational
environments, every teacher is aware of it at some
level, and it is essential to strengthening individuals
and the democratic process that claims to have
"we the people" as its centerpiece.

For anyone who is serious about program development
with the larger view in mind, I suggest you read Freire's
"Pedagogy of the Oppressed," Albert Memmi's "The
Colonizer and the Colonized," and/or any of Mezirow's
work on "Transformation Theory."  I am sure there are
others.

Regards,

Catherine King

-----Original Message-----
From: Andres Muro <AndresM.RGCAMPUS.EPCCRG at epcc.edu>
To: nla at lists.literacytent.org <nla at lists.literacytent.org>;
adaliner at prodigy.net <adaliner at prodigy.net>
Cc: tsticht at aznet.net <tsticht at aznet.net>
Date: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 2:34 PM
Subject: Re: [NLA] No need for evidence, just get personal


Tom writes:

"Of the people in
> his list, I am only familiar with Paulo Freire's work to actually
> develop and deliver a literacy program. I don't recall seeing any
> evidence demonstrating that his program was more effective than programs"

Evidence that literacy programs are effective is hard to produce beyond
passing a standardized test or immediately getting a job or transitioning to
college as a direct, reported result of attending a program.

Some have argued that literacy has an impact in quality of life. This is
even harder to measure since there is no easy way to measure quality of
life. Moreover, this is very subjective. An improvement in quality of life
may mean that a person gets a better job or that a grandmother writes a
birthday card to her grandchildren for the first time.

With Freire, it gets even trickier. The purpose of Freirian Pedagogy is to
conscientisize communities. In very simple terms conscientization is the
ability of being able to understand the structural nature of economic forces
that shape society (base/superstructure). In other words, the purpose is for
the learners to understand the economic forces that shape their conditions
and to use literacy to bring about structural change. I am not sure how to
measure this either.

With Dewey the purpose of education is to develop through a constructivist
process that occurs through experimentation in our environment and cultural
context through a communicative process. Again, how do we measure this?

Therefore, determining if a literacy program is effective or not is
virtually impossible beyond some mechanistic aspects. Our problem has been
that since we have been ask to measure efficiency form a mechanistic,
reductionist eye, we have made every efforts to reduce complex, contextual,
subjective and culturally based concepts such as quality of life,
conscientization,  constructivism; and the pedagogies associated with these
concepts to measurable, objective evaluation instruments. I don't think that
this can be done, nor that we should stop doing what we are doing.

Andres



>>> adaliner at prodigy.net 04/01/02 09:59PM >>>
Paulo Freire's work is a standard worthy of striving for. He crosses the
traditional barriers of cultural orientation with ease and humor without
sacrificing depth of understanding or compassion.
a r
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Sticht" <tsticht at aznet.net>
To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Cc: <tsticht at aznet.net>
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2002 10:24 AM
Subject: [NLA] No need for evidence, just get personal


> Some thoughts upon reading comments about the OERI and reduced
> enrollments to improve quality of AELS services.
> Tom Sticht
>
> Regarding David Rosen's, John Coming's, and George Demetrion's comments
> regarding changes at OERI. Perhaps NCAL and NCSALL could put together a
> report that presents evidence showing that their research has improved
> services for adult learners somewhere in some way. The evidence should
> be of a nature that the R & D centers think the policy makers
> considering changing OERI would find convincing. George might
> demonstrate how those people he listed ( Dewey, Mezirow et al) showed
> that they could design, develop, and implement an adult education
> program teaching literacy or other important subject matter, that was
> more effective in some ways than an existing program. Of the people in
> his list, I am only familiar with Paulo Freire's work to actually
> develop and deliver a literacy program. I don't recall seeing any
> evidence demonstrating that his program was more effective than programs
> others had developed. Perhaps such evidence exists but I am unaware of
> it.
>
> Regarding Bob Bickerton's comments about reducing numbers served and
> thereby improving quality of instruction for those fewer served,   I
> think it would be important to know why the AELS lost over a million
> enrollments in two years and whether this had any thing to do with
> showing some improvements in programs in the AELS.  Having lost  large
> numbers of enrollments, and then showing that adults peristed longer in
> programs, does not actually demonstrate improvement in the quality of
> instruction. It could be that sample bias was introduced and that those
> adults who would have left early were not enrolled and those adults who
> would have stayed longer actually did enroll. This would increase
> average hours of instruction but not because those enrolled were staying
> longer than they would have but because those who would have left early
> and lowered the hours of instruction were not enrolled. I don't know if
> this is the case, of course, because to my knowledge no one has yet put
> out a report showing why so many adult enrollments were lost from the
> AELS, nor am I knowledgeable about any reports from Massachusetts
> demonstrating the efficacy of the use of the "reduced enrollments to
> improve quality of service" strategy.
>
> Overall, it seems that if we are to make a good case for continued
> support of research in adult education and literacy development, we need
> to put forth some pretty convincing evidence that past research has made
> some payoffs in improved services for adults.
>
> But I am likely wrong about the importance of trying to show that our R
> & D has been effective in some ways. Probably there only has to be some
> political contacts made to congress people in the states where research
> centers are now located and then have these congress people go in and
> fight for "their" R & D centers. Don't bother them with data, just get
> personal! I've seen it work many times before.
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NLA mailing list: NLA at lists.literacytent.org
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LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
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