Lets Talk A discursive approach to training professional

Let's Talk: A discursive approach to training professional community educators John Bamber University of Edinburgh

In a process of enlightenment there can only be participants. Jurgen Habermas

The Individual Thinker

Enlightenment?

Intersecting Paradigms Psychological (Entwistle) Sovereign individual Socio-cultural (Lave and Wenger) Community of practice Critical (Freire) Site of resistance and social justice

Overview Ways of Thinking and Practicing Mc. Cune and Hounsell (2005) TLRP/ESRC Habermas and Community Education Communicative Action Developing Practice Competence Principles for Pedagogy Challenges Approximating the Ideal: WBL 2 Any Takers?

Research and Literature Gorard et al (2006) HEFCE Need to address experience in HE Haggis (2007) ‘activities, patterns of interaction and communication failures' Daniels et al. (2007) ESRC Rule bending in inter-agency work Brockbank and Mc. Gill (2007) Brookfield and Preskill (2007)

Ways of Thinking and Practicing CLD students Community Learning and Development: • empowerment, participation, inclusion… Contested Purpose of CLD: • progressive social and political change Steering Frameworks: SCQF and Ce. Ve BACE Programme Aims - Critical Competence: • understanding, context, justify activity – why and how Situated learning

Dealing with uncertainty Learning for an unknown future cannot be accomplished by the acquisition of either knowledge or skills. There is always an epistemological gap between what is known and the exigencies of the moment as it invites responses, and this is particularly so in a changing world. . . A more positive term, to encapsulate right relationships between persons and the changing world in which they are placed, might be ‘wisdom’. Barnett (2004: 259)

Habermas and Community Education Why Habermas? Democracy and purpose of CE Knowledge Constitutive Interests Knowledge: • objects of experience and a priori categories • constituting ideas – importance of reflection Rationality more than scientific method Discourse as the crucible of reason

Communicative Action Communication involves making three types of validity claims concerning: • the truth of what is said or presupposed • the rightness of the claim • the truthfulness of the speaker.

Validity Claims Validity claims are ‘universal’ in the sense that they are raised with every instance of communicative action. Making claims is a reciprocal act. People co-ordinate actions depending on how they evaluate the statements of other people. Rationality ‘proper’ then is the ability to let action be guided by a common understanding of reality, the consensus established through linguistic dialogue (Eriksen and Weigard, 2004: 4).

A moment of empathy Habermas’s discourse model, by requiring that perspective taking be general and reciprocal, builds the moment of empathy into the procedure of coming to a reasoned agreement: each must put him or herself into the place of everyone else in discussing whether a proposed norm is fair to all. And this must be done publicly; arguments played out in the individual consciousness or in theoretician’s mind are no substitute for real discourse. Mc. Carthy (in Habermas, 2003 a: viii-ix)

The objectifying perspective The distinctive feature of Habermas’s work is that processes of knowing and understanding are grounded, not in philosophically dubious notions of a transcendental ego, but rather in the patterns of ordinary language usage that we share in everyday communicative interaction. Pusey (1987: 23)

Four Types of Action Technical Rules of action, methods, techniques Theoretical Concepts, hypotheses, rationales, philosophies Moral Codes of conduct, principles, values, standards Personal Self-awareness, emotional intelligence, identity

Practice Competence Practice competence can be defined as the capacity to construct knowledge leading to the resolution of particular types of empirical-analytic or moralpractical problems. NB. Provisional status of knowledge

Critical Competence in CLD Dimension Example Technical Community consultation strategy Theoretical Policy interpretation/critique Moral Distinguish personal and professional Personal Self-control; see effect on others Discursive Participate in team activity and goals Communicative Express ideas in speech and writing

Principles for Pedagogy Learning as an act of reciprocity Developing knowledge through redeeming claims Safeguarding participation and protecting rationality: • ideal speech situations Competence as a constructive achievement: • developing normative structures Not the tools – the toolmakers tools…

Key Influences Piaget (constructivist) Vygotsky (social constructivist) Kohlberg (moral development)

Norm guided to norm testing discourse The cognitive structures underlining the capacity of moral judgment are to be explained neither primarily in terms of environmental influences nor in terms of inborn programs and maturation or processes. They are viewed instead as outcomes of the creative reorganisation of an existing cognitive inventory that is inadequate to the task of handling certain persistent problems. Habermas (2003: 125)

Challenges to the Ideal From transmitting to producing knowledge Countering negative theories: • Self, and learning and teaching Privileging collective, collaborative work Power and Positionality Communicative virtues Situating the curriculum

Approximating the Ideal: WBL 2 Organisational Development Case Study Analysis Investigation Strategy Problems and Issues Case Analysis Investigating the Workplace Development Strategies Individual Learning Review Group Creative Change Assessments

Useful Insights? Justification the key to learning: • ideas, actions, behaviours Incorporating co-operative activity Development of practice knowledge Ideal as standard and model Any subject-discipline (Biglan, 1973)?