of inquiry, (Apple, 1972, Popkewitz, 1976) wherein educators seek to abstract certain rules, procedures, standards, and ideas from the social disciplines or from ...
Craft and Community as Metaphors for Social Inquiry Curriculum By Thomas S. Popkewitz I. INTRODUCTION
During the last decade, educators have renewed their interest in developing a social inquiry curriculum. The intent of this type of curriculum is to provide students with disciplined modes of social analysis and tends to focus upon certain logical qualities of inquiry, (Apple, 1972, Popkewitz, 1976) wherein educators seek to abstract certain rules, procedures, standards, and ideas from the social disciplines or from the philosophy of scientific inquiry. The concepts and precise sets of inquiry procedures which emerge become the foundation of the new curriculum materials. The California State Curriculum Guide (1968), for example, divides inquiry into such categories as integration, analysis, and policy. In turn, each of these is subdivided into discrete processes, such as problem formulation, classification, inferrence, comparison, etc. Similarly, the University of Minnesota Social Studies project (1968) assumes that only the logical relationships of social scientific ideas provide the order to curriculum: “The Center has chosen to identify important concepts and generalizations from the various social sciences and has tried to provide for sequential development in the K-12 curriculum.” In each case it is believed that certain predetermined, formal qualities define social inquiry. The intent of this paper is to question the assumptions of these curriculum models by examining inquiry as a social system. It will be argued that to understand adequately the nature of research, attention must be given to its potentially conflicting social dimensions, that is, the qualities of personal craftsmanship and community affiliation expressed in a scientist’s work. The craft-quality of inquiry refers to the personal autonomy and responsibility an individual must exercise to practice research. This autonomy is concerned with assembling knowledge, processes, and practical skills in a meaningful way. However, the individual researcher belongs to a community which maintains certain standards and norms, formal prescriptions which can deprive the individual scientist of control. Understanding the interplay between social order and personal autonomy provides a way of seeking new metaphors for the development of social inquiry curriculums.
11. THECRAFT-QUALITY OF INQUIRY Social inquiry can be thought of as having the same craft-like qualities as other types of work which demand a combination of practical skills and creative thought.’ The practice of inquiry is determined as much by a researcher’s personal skill as by the explicit rules devised by methodologists. In part, the intent and purpose of research guides how techniques are used; of equal importance are the responses required for unanticipated events during research. A researcher must make decisions about how to interweave his various inquiry activities t o produce fruitful directions. The personal control and autonomy of a craftsman brings meaning and imagination to the work of inquiry. The craft nature of inquiry can be partially explored by distinguishing between “knowing how” and “knowing that.” I “know that” there was an American Civil War, bread costs 60c, or there are survey instruments to measure attitudes. This information is often detached from any situation in which l am involved. A very different knowledge, though, is required to practice inquiry. I need to be able to use my Thomas S. Popkewitz is an Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. 1. The notion of disciplined thought as having craft characteristics is explored by a variety of scholars, such as M. Bloch (1953),C. Wright Mills (1959),and J. Bensman and R. Lilienfeld
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information in unfixed situations: One dilemma of social inquiry lies in its purpose of giving order to ambiguities I find. Therefore, my knowledge of what to do must contain an understanding of how to respond to encounters I cannot fully predict. Not only must I “know” how to formulate a problem into an answerable question, but I must also know how to choose correct instruments, how to adapt to the various possibilities that can arise and so on. Intricate familiarity with technical skills and facility in conceptual thought must merge to respond to situational cues. This knowledge cannot be completely described. Michael Polanyi’s work (1964), can be helpful in understanding the tacit structure of knowledge underlying the actions of study. All explicit knowledge, he argues, is based on tacit structure. For instance, we may be focally aware of riding a bicycle, but subsidiarily aware of our body balance, movement of handle-bars, or visual cues which keep us from falling. Each of these subsidiary elements tacitly emerges to contribute to a “gestalt.” We learn to put each of the parts into a pattern of the whole; by attending to the whole and the pattern it forms, we give meaning to events. The difference between subsidiary and focal awareness is helpful in understanding the practice of inquiry. No scientist can read a manual to learn the creative or even the technical aspects of his craft. Inquiry embodies all of one’s “self”-the passions, desires, and conflicts of individual scholars as they confront things, events, and people. This interplay between “self” and world does not proceed by any formal logic, hierarchy, or taxonomy of tasks. It entails a feel for the whole in each dimension of study, a sense of beauty, and the use of intuition. Further, it involves dwelling in the conditions of one’s work, learning through precept and imitation how to work out what one finds. Two dimensions of tacit knowledge that lend a craft quality to inquiry will be discussed here. First is “a feeling for the whole” that guides research. Second is the aesthetic element of inquiry. Each contributes to the formulation of methods and the practice of inquiry. Instrumental to the work of research is “a feel for the whole,” enabling an individual to relate specific parts to each other and to the purposes of study. Although we can predetermine certain schedules or patterns for research, each step involves judgments about how to proceed. These decisions may concern how and when data is collected, when enough data has been collected, or which method of reporting is most appropriate. The ongoing manner in which data is collected and interpreted involves the researcher’s skill in “seeing” how each of the pieces fit together to give meaning to the project. According to the mythology of science, the researcher is a disinterested observer who collects data and derives meaning from “the facts.” This mythology neglects the importance of the scientist’s imaginative constructions made prior to beginning his research project. Durkheim’s idea of anomie, Nisbet (1963) argues, did not come from a preliminary examination of the vital registers of Europe. “The idea, the plot, and the conclusions of Suicide were well in his mind before he examined the registers.” The instruments’and materials used by the social scientist are adapted by the creative insight of the individual to the problem at hand. The methodological reflections of C. Wright Mills (1959) provide some insight into the personal commitment, imagination, and labor involved in the intellectual craftsmanship of inquiry. The development of the study of The Power Elite, Mills states, lay in his earlier experience with Veblen, his participation in seminars on American history, and his technical interest in the problem of stratification. Mills began to read what others have said about elites. He consciously sought out those who were in close contact with the elites and those professionally interested in elites, began to develop a conception of the problem, clarifying his own questions into a testable proposition. In describing the actual practice of study, we also must consider the continual interplay of personal and situational dimensions which begin at the problem’s conception and continue throughout the study.* In solving a problem we commit our2. The relationship between a researcher and the materials of study iS somewhat more
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selves to a process of continually reformulating the problem, appropriate strategies, and interpretations of criteria of adequacy. As with all dialogues, research is modified and evaluated as we participate in the unfolding of the project. This relationship between a researcher and materials is explored by Ravetz (1971): It is impossible to separate all the different phases of the investigation of a problem into discrete and independent units. Even in the production of data, the later stages of work on the problem are present in an embryonic form, as expectations on the character of the data and its refined products, and tentative plans for the later operations. Throughout the course of the investigations of a problem there is a continuous recycling so that the problem itself evolves, or perhaps is destroyed through the interaction of materials which it brings into being. (p. 83)
This critical interplay between a particular theorist’s personal experiences and his social world provides an important way of understanding contemporary social theory. (See Gouldner, 1970) Functionalism, a dominant mode of modern social analysis, reflects the biography of Talcott Parsons and his insulated position at Harvard during the crisis of the 1930s. It is middle class in conception and a conservative response to the upheavals occurring at that time. Similarly, the attempts of social scientists to understand conflict, sexual roles, and racism in our society can be related to their political and cultural milieux. Social theory, then, is not so much a theorist’s determination of the “facts” as it is his effort to make sense of seemingly unresolved experiences and to interpret the meaning of his life. A second dimension of the craft-like quality of inquiry is its art. The work of a scientist is a heuristic act. He draws a portrait with words that transforms our way of thinking, seeing, and appreciating, seeking to give a new clarity and coherence to experience. It is the artistic quality of science that helps to distinguish great social scientific works from those which are mediocre or merely technical. Social theory is a human invention. The order and completeness which theory gives to human experiences is not inherent in those events-its unity is provided by theory coming from the imagination of the individual scholar and his methodological competence. In surveying the field of anthropology, Leslie (1966) observed: We note one thing immediately-the best scientific work is frequently the best literature. That is, it has qualities of both art and science; the desire to see things whole, the respect for the reader’s sensibility, the close attention to empirical reality, and the reasoned argument. (p. 80-81)
In the practice of inquiry, the craftsman’s discipline and artistry cannot be separated. In fact, the major vocabulary of social scientific discourse often is not derived from what we call the scientific method but from the insights given to us by literature and art. (Nisbet, 1963) Weber, for example, likened his concept of rationalization to the poet Schiller’s “disenchantment of the world.” Likewise, Simmel’s artistic vision of the treatment of the stranger, the dyad, and the note of secrecy in his work give life and potency to his descriptions. Durkheim, Simmel, and Weber were not working with finite and ordered problems but reacting to the world around them with deep intuition, profound imagination. This free reflection rather than rigid adherence to procedures is crucial to creation in science. The notion of art and science as different manifestations of the same form of creative consciousness is part of the heritage given to us by the Renaissance and Enlightenment: Michaelangelo and Leonard0 da Vinci were artists and scientists. It complex in social inquiry than the physical sciences. (Schutz, 1973) The physical scientist lives in a symbolic world that he or she does not share with the things he studies. The naming of an atom means nothing to an object. The social scientist, in contrast, lives in the very world he studies. He uses his taken-for-granted world as the foundation of his inquiry. Further, his contacts with the subjects of research affect his field situation. (Phillips, 1972)
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was the union of science and commerce (industry), begun during the industrial revolution, that produced the erroneous impression that science, unlike art, flows from the same methodological channels as business or law. As a result, many believe that problem solving proceeds rigorously and self-consciously from question to hypothesis to verified conclusions. For many, science is analogous to "good management procedures." Yet science is rooted in the unknown and in the capacity to create a synthetic and self-consistent world that gives a convincing representation to reality: It is metaphoric and poetic. (Stein, 1963) To lose sight of science as an art form is to risk reducing science to the formulation of hypotheses to be tested by technicians. There is no scientific method, per se, to describe what scientists actually do. Science is a purposeful and intentional act. Its methods are controlled by perceptions of the facts, prior conceptual thoughts, and the relationships discovered in the field. There are no prescriptions, except in the most general sense, which guarantee the integrity and creativity of science. The procedures peculiar to a study emerge from the actual drama of social research and are not external to it: Our formal reconstructions are helpful only to ascertain the internal validity and reliability of the finding of study after i t is complete. It should be recognized that a major characteristic of modern science is its destruction of "the sense of the whole" and personal control in research. Inquiry is often subdivided into tasks people can be hired to do with little or no training; e.g. the pollster interviewer has little understanding of the problem, research procedures, or their interrelationship. Contrawise, there are methodological experts who have extensive training but whose sole concern is the application of correct procedures. This expert has mastered a procedure (often statistical) to which the problems of study are made to fit. This division of labor is similar to that in many businesses where work is fragmented and only a few control both labor and products. (Braverman, 1974) The question might then be asked, if most contemporary science is mere technique, why focus upon the minority of scientists who are craftsmen? I believe the answer is that the cutting edge of science is advanced by those who practice science as a craft. A seminal work of science reflects its author's ability to "see" the whole in each part of his work and to combine the discipline and the aesthetics of study. The personal and situational elements of science suggest a craftsman-like control over work. An interplay of practical skills, situational factors, and creative thought exists enabling the researcher to order human phenomena for understanding. The complex combination of knowledge, process, and manual dexterity required of a craft points to the difficulties of simplification and rationalization. To break up these skills into behavioral or logical components devoid of personal involvement destroys them, creates new processes unrelated to the essential qualities of inquiry and no longer controlled by the practitioner. The task of inquiry must be understood as a personal, disciplined, yet imaginative endeavor seeking to give sense to the world we live in. 111. COMMUNITIES OF DISCOURSE
The process of inquiry is not simply a matter of personal craftsmanship. A scientist conducts his research within the scientific community, a context which both encourages and controls scientific imagination. Science involves a communal commitment to certain lines of reasoning and premises for certifying knowledge. The members of a discipline have a shared way of "seeing" the world, of working, of testing each other's studies. The discourse entails preferred forms, a sense of appropriateness, of beauty, and of conceptual structures. (King and Brownell, 1966) Further, certain norms guide these interactions, among which are organized skepticism, individual autonomy, and a free and public sharing of knowledge. These norms and common standards are not external to, but develop from, the regular social interaction among peers in a scientific community. (Coser, 1965) The institutional purpose of science, creativity (Storer, 1966), can be viewed from two levels. At a psychological level, creativity may be thought of as a mystical experience. It is the pleasure, much like the satori experience of the Zen Buddhists, of extending one's sense of order in the universe, a transcendence of ordinary cognitive VOLUME 27, NUMBER4
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modes to provide new meaning to the world. At a sociological level the desire to share novelty may have roots in the very nature of creativity. Individuals in science need the affirmation of others that their contribution has an objective existence. Social recognition for discovery is, therefore, an integral part of the process of scientific creativity. Storer argues that while it may seem paradoxical, the procedures, norms, and interactions of the scientific community maintain a form of anarchy which encourages individual creativity. As if living in a large house, individual scientists can do their own “thing” in the privacy of their own rooms, and, every once in a while, join in small or large groups to converse about their ideas, break bread (the “convention” way), and do the required, general household chores. Communal recognition requires that the individual provide ideas to the community, and intense competition (and sometimes in-fighting) exists among individuals to provide the “commodity.” Attempts for rationally designed research through administrative control break down the creativity of the scientific community. (Hagstrom, 1965) Science’s social system is based on a system of exchange of one’s work in return for responses and competent evaluation from others. The system is not utilitarian and one does not receive some stated product. In contrast, a contractual model tends to restrict individual autonomy by giving recognition to specific performances. Hagstrom further argues that innovation can seldom be predicted or obtained from a plan. In reporting his experiences with a contractual research agency, W. Firestone (1975) illuminates some of the problems of applying business-type controls to research. First, the agency’s success is built upon its responsiveness to its client (in Firestone’s case, an agency of the federal government). Although not part of Firestone’s argument, it can be assumed that any substantive criticism of the assumptions or priorities of the agency would be soft-pedalled since future contracts depend on an agreeable relationship. Second, the business “priorities” of the agency require worker control mechanisms uncharacteristic of traditional research. Among these are the assignment of project monitors and the requirement of frequent technical reports before the inquiry is complete. Further, the number of days allotted for each research task is strictly budgeted: 15 days for interviewing, 45 days observing, and so on. As Firestone argues, these bureaucratic requirements make it difficult for the researcher to respond adequately to the existential conditions of the research problem and in fact handicap field study. A major characteristic of scientific communities is their continued evolution. (Toulmin, 1972) The ongoing history of a discipline reflects the interplay of conceptual and methodological development and its relationship to its cultural milieu: the invention of survey techniques extended the data accessible to social scientists; the Vietnam war and civil rights movement challenged the strong social science emphasis on descriptive “value-free’’ research (O’Neill, 1972); the migration to Britain and the United States of European intellectuals brought a unique union of American pragmatism with European Marxism. (Hughes, 1975) In the social sciences differing conceptual and epistemological approaches continually compete. (Popkewitz, 1973) In any one discipline, practitioners may use perspectives of cybernetic, behaviorism or Marxist analysis. For example, political scientists may describe politics as a ”civic culture,” a “pluralistic democracy,” or a “power elite.” Each conceptual lens orients the researcher towards different types of social phenomena and offers different types of explanation of politics. At a more fundamental level, the disagreement about how to view human reactions reflects different beliefs about human nature. Behavioralists, who maintain that social behavior is governed by laws of nature, tend to look to the physical sciences for a scientific model. Phenomenologists tend to view human behavior as a complex dialectic between human intent and social organization. This conflict in the social discipline is embedded in its very nature that reflects cultural conditions and individual visions. The conflict in science and resulting cross-fertilization of ideas, though, are important to the development of imagination and the prevention of stagnation of ideas. (Mulkay, 1969) Stephen Toulmin (1972) argues that to understand science one must focus on the condition on which, and the manner in which, change occurs. The rationality of FALL 1977
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science is a social construct and cannot be demonstrated by the ordering of concepts and beliefs into tiny structures. Rather, science as a form of thought exists in the preparedness of individuals to think up, explore, and criticize new concepts, techniques of representation, and arguments, as well as to tackle the outstanding problems of the field. The implications of Toulmin’s work are that most discussion focuses only on predominant theories and ignores the debate among conflicting perspectives that allows for science’s growth. The diffusion of ideas in science occurs mainly through a network of personal contacts sometimes called “the invisible college.” (Crane, 1975)In each field of study, there is often a small group of highly productive and influential scholars who communicate informally about their work. Papers are communicated prior to formal publication, meetings are held and letters exchanged to transmit ideas, and laboratories maintained for scholars to share. These small, often elite, social circles (32out of 977 members in the field of theoretical high energy physics, for example) tend to set priorities for research, recruit and train new students, and monitor the changing structure of a specific field of knowledge. But such a social circle can also resist new developments that affect the eminent research scientists. The revolutionary ideas of the young NeiIs Bohr were resisted by a prominent scientist of his time. Bohr found it impossible to develop his ideas in that laboratory and was forced to move to a more hospitable scientific environment. The emotional power of belonging to a scientific tradition is illustrated in Kuhn’s (1970)analysis of change in scientific communities. Kuhn suggests that at any one moment a “normal” science exists. Certain conceptual perspectives and tools for solving problems predominate. The problem of research is well established and the task of individual scientists is filling in the puzzle, e.g., to provide a more complete picture of the composition of genes or lasers. (Much educational research can be viewed as a form of puzzle-solving, an attempt to relate variables derived from learning psychology or behavioral sciences.) Kuhn suggests that when normal science is challenged by revolutionary science the resulting anxiety and debate is not always resolved by a test of data. For example, in the 1890s two competing notions of psychology vied for acceptance-the issue of the debate was not empirical data, but what should be considered legitimate psychological research. The dispute, which began “rationally” and “scientifically,” degenerated into personal attacks. In such cases, scientific perspectives are part of the scientist’s consciousness involving both emotion and cognition. A challenge to a disciplinary belief system is a challenge not only to one’s research but to one’s basic premises about the organization of reality. As a result, drastic change in scientific outlook seems to come slowly and with deep conflict within a discipline. To summarize, social inquiry has both communal and individual tendencies. First, an individual interacts with the people and events of the world he studies. The methods of inquiry emerge from the interplay between existential experiences of research and the concepts and techniques of the researcher. This personal involvement calls for an autonomy analogous to that of a craftsman. Second, a researcher responds to, and is involved in, a community of scholars. The social organization of science provides and creates the general standards which guide individual pursuits. The community of science, though, is not static but evolves through the interactions, conflicts, and changing purposes of the men and women who are affiliated with it.
Iv. SOCIAL lNQUlRY AND SCHOOLING What are the implications for curriculum posed by the previous analysis? School is not a scientific community nor are children scientists. The educational problem is somewhat different in that education should enable individuals to become, to some extent, their own authority in dealing with ideas. The analysis of the social nature of inquiry provides some insight of how educators can approach that problem. The metaphor of craft directs attention to the importance of personal responsibility and control in the practice of inquiry. To fragment that behavior in educational contexts is to put those actions under the control of others. However, the craft-quality of inquiry VOLUME 27. NUMBER4
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must be further understood as dependent upon a community which supports the active search of individuals for knowledge. The focus of curriculum should be upon the development of social structures that enable students to learn to be autonomous in inquiry. Before exploring the meaning of community as a curriculum problem, we need to further examine an ethical dimension of this proposal. While social science is one of our most cognitive activities, our analysis revealed that participation also involves commitment and dispositions towards the world. The political dimension of institutionally organized activities which shape individual outlooks often is not recognized in conventional curriculum work. Identifying solely logical qualities of thought legitimates the separation of knowledge from human action, thought, and value. The feel for the whole is distorted, the use of imagination, intuition, and aesthetics denied. Further, the dehumanization of inquiry obscures the ways in which society’s goals are mediated by individuals and reifies values under the guise of objectivity. Educators have an obligation to understand that curriculum entails a social organization which provides emotions and orientations as well as facts to social affairs. A focus upon three intersecting communities is proposed for designing curriculum. First is the community outside of school. It has been argued that the form of social problems and methods emerges from, and must be seen as a part of, one’s interaction with the larger social world. Where children are removed from the adult world the responsibility for defining problems and methods is placed in the hands of others. Second, the practice of inquiry depends on behavior patterns found in classrooms. The social system of a class can either restrain or permit children’s autonomy and responsibility. Third, is the school social structure. Here background assumptions and rules are provided to the work of teachers and students. These assumptions should be consistent with the demands of inquiry. Each of these social mileux is referred to as a community because each involves shared aims, beliefs, and knowledge although different senses of affiliation. By giving attention to the interplay of children’s movement within these three communities, I believe there can be a greater integrity given to social studies curriculum. 1. The Larger Community Outside of School
The substance of sociai study is found in the community outside of school as social problems are defined from the complexity of the larger community life. Methods are deliberate acts of individuals to resolve those problems. The form methods take involves practical and tacit knowledge called into play as one encounters the people, events, and documents of their social situation^.^ To separate any element from the others is to deny the craft-quality of inquiry and make that work mechanical. It seems plausible that for children to understand the dilemmas, adventures, and drama of study, they should have opportunities during their schooling to practice the actions of inquiry in their larger community. This leads to one of the more curious ironies of contemporary schoolingstudents are removed from the very attitudes, conflicts, and life ways in which social issues crystalize. Prepackaged materials, specialized educational languages (learner, affective domain, behavioral objectives) and organizational expectations filter the student’s understanding of community ethos and social problems. Restricting schooling to prepared materials and specified people trained solely as teachers may make students depend upon “others” to define significant social issues. Further, educators should realize that school often cannot provide the total conditions necessary for understanding the tacit, craft-quality of study. Textbook reading about an observation or an interview does not engage the same drama and personal involvement as does actual participation in those activities. What form might such involvement take? One example might be the work of students in Rabun Gap, Georgia, who produced the Fox Fire Book (1972). The project 3. The recognition of the relationship of problems, methods, and social situation is one of the major contributions of John Dewey. (1964, 1966)
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began with students seeking to learn about the area people who plant by the signs of the zodiac and the stages of the moon. After their initial inquiries, students visited people in the community to identify the oral traditions of that part of Appalachia. Superstitions, weather signs, old home remedies, and an interview with a retired sheriff were recorded. Students spent time with local craft people to learn how to build log cabins, split oaks, and make quilts or baskets. The development of the Fox f i r e materials totally involved the students, identifying heretofore unknown dimensions of community life, interacting with community people, and deciding on appropriate ways to communicate their findings. Another example of community studies, though with younger children, is in the descriptions of the John Dewey Laboratory School in Chicago. (Mayhew and Edwards, 1936) It should be acknowledged that student participation in community life, challenges many assumptions and routines. The least of these is the way in which student time is controlled within classrooms and schools. The demands of inquiry do not fit into the regularized time “periods” or subject matter slots of conventional schooling. Fox f i r e was created in an English class! Inquiry may further mean that answers to questions cannot be restricted to materials placed in IMC’s or produced by commercial publishing houses. 2. The Community in the Classroom Engaging students in social inquiry requires self-critical community in classrooms. The discussion of science illustrated the importance of social discourse in shaping and selecting what we believe valid and logical. The social structure of classrooms should be viewed as a framework from which students develop and maintain concepts, standards, and rules for the conduct of inquiry. Class activities should encourage student initiative. Classroom designs should reflect a belief that children can make valid contributions to our understanding of the social world. Students should have opportunities to talk openly about their work and the dilemmas produced from study. A practical model for thinking about children’s autonomy is the open classroom. Within the open classroom learning emerges from the interactions of students with each other, with adults, and with materials. In such a context a teacher’s role is to encourage children to choose problems freely, select methods, and enter into discussion about the validity of their studies. The possibility that disagreement may develop from such interchanges should be viewed positively since conflict can promote creativity and imagination. Skepticism is important to the development of autonomy. Study implies a part of what Nietzche called “the art of mistrust.” But often the purpose of study is to confirm a generalization through textbook “evidence” that supports the conclusions of the authors. The generalizations of social study cannot be treated as fixed and unyielding. Social statements have human origin and a social and cultural location. Instruction should urge children to regard ideas as tentative and teach them to evaluate ideas by testing them against the events of their lives. Where certainty exists in the work of students, it must be viewed as antithetical to a questioning attitude. Consideration of a class environment must also take into account the nonlearning concerns of children. Thelen (1960) argues that social inquiry depends upon the ability of educators to meet the needs of student’s “psyche structure,” that is, their personal anxieties and aspirations. Thelen found that high school students regard their “psyche” needs as a higher priority than the planned learning activities of the school. (Also see Cusick, 1973.) Some of these concerns are sex-role relationships, conformity, uncertainty about values, and reaction to authority. While Thelen found that there is no one kind of psychic need among students, school experiences must enable students to deal with their personal anxieties before the more formal work can be taken seriously. Students should have the opportunity to learn the necessary skill and insight to change their own environment as well as that necessary for arguing information. In a somewhat different analysis, Newmann and Oliver (1 967) suggest classrooms be based upon relationships of intimacy, interdependence, confidence, VOLUME 27, NUMBER4
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and empathy. The search for group identity, though, is not an end in itself but is functionally related to the purpose of orienting children toward inquiry.4 The type of classroom interaction discussed here demands a different notion of teacher-student relationship than current in many schools. Often a teacher is viewed as a “knower” or dispenser of knowledge. He or she has a knowledge “object” (a generalization, a concept, a behavior), and the task of instruction is to dispense that object to children. Success is measured by whether a child accepts that object, modifying his behavior in a desired way (passing a test or exhibiting some specific behavior, e.g., reading ten books a month). In contrast, I am suggesting teachers view learning as an interactive process whose important dimensions do not contain many specific, predetermined end-products. The content and actions of school are useful only as they stimulate students to think analytically and imaginatively about their social situation. To accomplish this the role of the teacher must change to that of an individual actively using ideas and experiences to create new awarenesses and ways of reacting to social conditions. In suggesting classrooms foster a dialogue with ideas, the notion of community of inquiry should not be romanticized. It involves learning routines, being acquainted with the knowledge others have produced, and having commitment. Sometimes this work is tedious and long, such as tabulating responses to a survey or looking for the “right” word to express an idea. Further, it means establishing criteria of excellence and adequacy. What makes these labors worthwhile and ethically warranted is the sense of the whole, the personal involvement, and the control one has in creating a new sense of order to life.
3. Institutional Structure of School A third dimension of curriculum is the institutional structure of school. The ways in which teachers and students talk to each other takes place against a background of assumed patterns of action and thought. (Berger and Luchmann, 1967) To enter school is to confront certain regularized and typified human actions. Categories within the school setting help distinguish classes of people and events. Rules govern how to act towards others as “pupils,” “teachers,” “administrators,” or “parents” in an acceptable manner. I would not ask a principal to sit quietly in a corner of a room nor would I appeal my heavy teaching schedule to students. In addition, each actor in an institution “knows” what constitutes teaching, work, and play and uses this knowledge as a background to his actions and thoughts. To say to the children, “Would you turn to page 98?” or “Use your desk,” appeals to the taken-for-granted world of school in which these simple statements make sense. The task of altering the institutional quality of school, it should be added, may be the most difficult because it challenges vested interests and deeply embedded ideological structures that legitimate those interests. To make inquiry a plausible activity, the character of rules and guidelines provided by institutional structures must be given attention. The “hidden curriculum” work of the past few years has suggested that the general norms, dispositions, and patterns of behavior which dominate school life may define the school curriculum and learning more than any explicit statement of subject matter. Sarason (1971) argues that the failure of the “new” math programs to have any impact upon the quality of learning in schools resulted from reformers’ failure to consider the behavioral regulations that guide conduct in schools. The “new” curriculum was incorporated into existing community structures and established patterns of work. There was no generation of excitement or curiosity as the “new” math was taught like the “old” math. In a somewhat different situation, curriculum developers found that moral education among prison inmates would have no effect until the actual social system of the prison became a more honest and democratic environment. (Rest, 1974) The exploita4. The development of a group identity as an end through forms of sensitivity-training or values clarification should be seen as basically a form of therapy, technical in character and amoral in orientation. (Lockwood, 1975)
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tive inmate culture and the general personal submission required by prison social organization impeded the development of a more complex moral reasoning. A major institutional characteristic of schools which works against inquiry is their bureaucratic orientation. The appeal of bureaucracy is the belief that organizations can be totally rationalized and made more controllable by professionals. In civil service departments such as police and passport offices, the predictability of bureaucratic procedures is a convenience to the client. However, the principles of bureaucracy, applied to educational activities, are antithetical to the pursuit of inquiry. What is meant by bureaucracy in schools? Three beliefs seem to dominate. First is a belief that knowledge can be made totally explicit. Second, that instruction is the technical arrangement of knowledge to give to children. Third, the problem of educators is improvement of the efficiency by which the identified knowledge is reproduced in children. A corollary is the elimination of deviances among children that prevents their mastery of prescribed learnings. Many educators assume an issue-free, valueneutral stance of the expert applying human engineering approaches. These three beliefs underlie certain organization developments in school^.^ 1) General standards are developed to assure reasonable uniformity and to eliminate ambiguities. Days are fragmented into subject matter periods. With the help of devices such as systems analysis, the existing arrangements of content and organization are made more efficient, as for example, by introducing modules that further subdivide course contents and regulate children’s movement through computer programming. Problems are rarely seen as a whole. Ethical issues are those items studied from 9:30-1 O:OO, Monday; sociology of poverty, 11:OO-11:30,Wednesday. Processes of understanding are further broken into smaller units that can be controlled through standardization. Specific, hierarchically organized behavioral objectives are thought to define inquiry, poetry, or human relations. A child’s intellectual achievement is thought to be a measureable object with predetermined components reflected in standardized norms or criterion-referenced tests. (Important to understanding the place of testing in education is it as a multi-billion dollar industry.) 2) With knowledge of predefined objects, the main purpose of school organization is to ensure uniformity through a division of labor and high degree of role and task specialization. The hierarchy of schools is topped by a superintendent who is followed by the principal, learning coordinators, teachers, and finally client-students. The logic of classrooms isolates the “self‘’ into parts to be ministered by different types of experts. A teacher belongs to a team of remedial teachers, guidance counselors, psychologists, etc., that serves some fragment of a student’s social or psychological being. The role of student is often carefully prescribed for others to act upon him. Rules about conduct, about what can be said in school newspapers, and about what constitutes passing to another grade, are defined before a child enters schools. It seems not to matter that dress codes, locker searches, or speech restrictions may violate constitutional rights. Where children are thought to deviate from prescribed rules, therapeutic and clinical perspectives are applied. While the application of bureaucratic perspectives varies from school to school, a general consequence of these orientations is the maintenance of moral and intellectual authority of educational experts. (see Popkewitz and Wehlage, 1975) Fragmentation of knowledge tends to present children with closed systems of ideas controlled by others. The descriptions of Henry (1963) and Jackson (1968), for example, suggest the purpose of school dialogue is often to impress on children a social order and knowledge controlled by professionals. Further, the reliance of school curriculum upon special knowledge drawn from the social and physical disciplines may teach children to accept uncritically professional interpretations of reality. Keddie (1971) found children are taught to use the non-commonsense and esoteric knowledge of the university and to neglect the knowledge which comes from daily life. This university knowledge is also unequally distributed in school to maintain a differentiation among children that reinforces the social system existing outside the school. The 5. Analysis of some of the characteristics of bureaucracy in schools can be found in Popkewitz and Wehlage, 1973. VOLUME
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authoritative way professional knowledge is treated in school may have a legitimating function as that knowledge itself may be oriented towards accepting existing social and political arrangements. (Mills, 1967) The categories of school themselves have been identified as giving ideological justification to existing structures of privilege and status. Edelman (1974) suggests that the clinical and therapeutic languages of the helping professions create categories that seem liberating and altruistic while they hide the arbitrary and speculative nature of diagnosis that converts actions into mechanisms of control. Therapy tends to show students they cannot be responsible for their actions. Further, the diagnostic procedures that use labels like ”learning disability” or “slow learner” should be viewed as constructs of the social organization of schools. (Apple, 1975) These categories maintain a peculiar ethnocentricity. The labels of school deviance are disproportionately allocated to lower economic and social groups. Educators believe (act as if) their own life styles are the proper guidelines by which to judge other people’s activities. The clinical and engineering languages of school make relationships progressively more anonymous and less susceptible to individual control. The fact that these dispositions are hidden under global statements of goals and intent make them psychologically compelling for students. This paper began with an analysis of the craft and communal qualities of Social scientific communities as a way of gaining insight into the problem of schooling. It is suggested that one way to gain student autonomy in inquiry is to give attention to three intersecting communities in which children participate. A difficulty in implementing inquiry curriculum is that its problems and methods cannot be legislated but are formed by people working towards common goals. Students should be encouraged to assume responsibility for maintaining, renewing, and creating alternatives for growing and living in our society. This compels educators to consider the social organization of school beyond the specific requirement of inquiry. The community of school itself must be enlightened so children can participate in a more enlightened way in any community.
REFERENCES Apple, M. “Commonsense Categories and Curriculum Thought.” Schools in Search of Meaning. J. MacDonald and E. Zaret, eds., Washington, D.C.: Association for Supervisionand Curriculum Development, 1975. Apple, M. “Community, Knowledge, and the Structure of the Disciplines.” The Educational forum, XXXVII, November, 1972, pp. 75-82. Bensman, J. and Lilienfeld, R. Craft and Consciousness: Occupational Techniques and the Development of World Images, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1973. Bloch, M. The Historian’s Craft. New York: Vintage Books, 1953. Berger, P. and Luchmann, T. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor, 1967. Braverman, H. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the 20th Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974. California State Board of Education. Social Sciences €ducation framework for California Public Schools. Sacramento, California, 1968. Coser, L. Men and Ideas. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1965. Cusick, P. Inside High School: The Student’s World. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973. Crane, D. Invisible Colleges, Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. Dewey, J. Democracy and Education. New York: The Free Press, 1966. John Dewey on Education: Selected Writings. Edited by R. Archambault. New York: The Modern Library, 1964. Edelman, M. “The Political Language of the Helping Professions.” Politics and Society, 4/3 (1974), pp. 295-310. Firestone, W. “Educational Field Research in a Contract Shop.” The Generator, 5/3 (Spring 1975), American Education Research Association, Division G. Gouldner, A. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Basic Books, 1970. Hagstrom, W. The Scientific Community. New York: Basic Books, 1965. FALL 1977
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Henry, J. Culture Against Man. New York: Vintage Books, 1963. Hughes, S. “The Sea Change.” The Migration of Social Thought, 1930-1965. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. Jackson, P. Life in the Classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968. Keddie, N. “Classroom Knowledge.” Knowledge and Control, New Direction for the Sociology of Education. London: Collier-Macmillan Publishers, 1971. King, A. and Brownell, J. The Curriculum and the Disciplines of Knowledge: A Theory of Curriculum Practice. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966. Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Leslie, C. Now We are Civilized: A Study of the World View of the Zapotec Indians of Milta, Oaxaco. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1960. Lockwood, A. “A Critical View of Values Clarification.” Teachers College Record, Vol. 77, No. 1 (Fall 1975), pp. 35-50. Mayhew, E. and Edwards, A. The Dewey School: The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago. New York: D. Appleton Century Company, 1936. Mills, C. Wright. ”Knowledge, Part IV.” Power, Politics and People. Edited by I. Horowitz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Mills, C. Wright. Sociological Imagination. New York: Grove Press, 1959. Mulkay, M. “Some Aspects of Cultural Growth in the Natural Sciences.” Social Research, XXXVl (Spring 1969), pp. 22-52. Newmann, F. and Oliver, D. “Education and Community.” Harvard Educational Review, 3711 (Winter 1967), pp. 61-106. Nisbet, R. “Sociology as an Art Form.” Sociology on Trial. Edited by M. Stein and A. Vidich. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Phillips, D. Knowledge from What? Theories and Methods in Social Research. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1972. Polanyi, M. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post Critical Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row, 1964. Popkewitz, T. and Wehlage, G. “Accountability: A Critique and Alternative Proposal.” Interchange, 4141 (1973), pp. 48-62. Popkewitz, T. “The Crisis in the Social Disciplines and the Scientific Rationality of Schooling.” Teachers College Record, 7511 (September 1973), pp. 99-115. Popkewitz, T. “Myths of Social Science in Curriculum.” The Educational Forum, 60/3 (March 1976), pp. 317-328. Popkewitz, T. and Wehlage, G. “School Evaluation as a Problem of the Sociology of Knowledge.” Speech given at American Educational Research Association, Washington, D.C., April 1975. Ravetz, J. Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Rest, J. “Developmental Psychology as a Guide to Value Education: A Review of Kohlbergian Programs.” Review of Educational Research, 4412 (Spring 1974), pp. 241-258. Schutz, A. Collected Papers I,The Problem of Social Reality. Edited by M. Natanson. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Sarason, S. The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1971. Stein, M. “The Poetic Metaphors of Sociology.” Sociology on Trial. Edited by M. Stein and A. Vidich. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1963. Storer, N. The Social System of Science. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966. Thelen, H. Education and the Human Quest. New York: Harper, 1966. Toulmin, S. Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972. University of Minnesota. Teachers Guide to the Seventh Grade Course on Man and Society, 1968, unpublished, p. 2. Wigginton, E., Ed. The Fox Fire Book. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972.
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