outline is community inquiry possible? investigate
TRANSCRIPT
Is Community Inquiry Possible?
Bertram (Chip) BruceGraduate School of Library & Information Science
for the Philosophy of Education Discussion Group
March 5, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
OutlineAsk: What is (community) inquiry?
Investigate perspectives from pragmatism and the progressive era
Create working definitions
Discuss in terms of specific examples of community work
Reflect on the meaning for educational practice, research, and theory
Friday, March 5, 2010
Ask: What is community inquiry?
Can we move the Public out of its eclipse (J. Dewey)?
Can we learn how to talk to strangers (D. Allen)?
Can we be less polarized (health care debate)?
Friday, March 5, 2010
Investigate: Inquiry
Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert the elements of the original situation into a unified whole (Dewey, 1938/1991, p. 108).
Friday, March 5, 2010
Peirce on continuityThe principle of continuity is the idea of fallibilism objectified. For fallibilism is the doctrine that our knowledge is never absolute but always swims, as it were, in a continuum of uncertainty and of indeterminacy. Now the doctrine of continuity is that all things so swim in continua. (Collected Papers 1.171, c. 1897)
Friday, March 5, 2010
Inquiry cycleFriday, March 5, 2010
Gale on ineffebilityA Deweyan inquiry begins with an indeterminate situation and terminates, when successful, with a determinate situation, both of which Dewey holds to be unique and therefore ineffable. This ineffability requirement has the disastrous consequences that Dewey's beloved collective inquiry is impossible and that there are no objective criteria for the success of inquiry. (Gale, 2006)
Friday, March 5, 2010
Community inquiryCan the notion of individual inquiry be extended to community inquiry, in which driving questions, modes of investigation, concrete action, collaboration, and reflection derive from community processes?
If so, how can that be defined and supported in productive, moral ways?
How can we extend inquiry-based learning from a process inquiry to more substantive inquiry, based on connecting formal learning to lived experience in communities?
Friday, March 5, 2010
Dewey on unity & diversity
While Turkey needs unity in its educational system, it must be remembered that there is a great difference between unity and uniformity, and that a mechanical system of uniformity may be harmful to real unity. (Dewey, 1923)
Friday, March 5, 2010
Feinberg on common sense
Critical pragmatism allows that everyday understanding is sometimes inadequate in defining a situation as problematic, expecially in cases where power or experience is unequal. Here common sense may simply accept a situation as a fact of life...[it] encourages a dialogue between refined research and everyday understanding about the systematic silences that often mark subordinate or oppressed status. (Feinberg, 2010)
Friday, March 5, 2010
Addams on spontaneity
It was perhaps her spirit of youth, her elasticity, the spontaneity and tenderness of her heart, which kept her from all those blunders of moral enthusiasm, from those cruel deeds which are often perpetrated in the name of social duty. (Addams, 1929)
Friday, March 5, 2010
Addams on affectionate interpretation
He [Pullman] cultivated the great and noble impulses of the benefactor, until the power of attaining a simple human relationship with his employees, that of frank equality with them, was gone from him. He, too, lost the faculty of affectionate interpretation, and demanded a sign. He and his employes had no mutual interest in a common cause. (Addams, 1896)
Friday, March 5, 2010
Create: Working definitions for community inquiry
Community inquiry is inquiry conducted of, for, and by communities as living social organisms. Community emphasizes support for collaborative activity and for creating knowledge, which is connected to people’s values, history, and lived experiences. Inquiry points to support for open-ended, democratic, participatory engagement.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Experimentalism
Community inquiry is thus a learning process that brings theory and action together in an experimental and critical manner.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Different meanings
Inquiry driven by community problems.
Inquiry into “community”
Inquiry facilitated by community=> community of inquiry
Friday, March 5, 2010 Friday, March 5, 2010
Discuss: ExamplesInformation spaces in the community
Urbana Free Library movie making
Radio spots on poverty & racism
Paseo Boricua anti-alcohol campaign
PACHs-Newbury Library Exhibit
WRFU broadcast shadows
E2Y community asset mapping
Friday, March 5, 2010
Reflect: Community as curriculum
learn about the world in a connected way
Learn how to act responsibly in the world, by first understanding self
Learn how to transform the world, to give back to the community
Friday, March 5, 2010
SourcesAddams, Jane (1896/1912, November 2). A modern Lear. Survey, 29(5), 131-137.
Addams, Jane (1929). Helen Castle Mead. In Helen Castle Mead. Chicago: [privately printed], 17-23:
Bishop, Ann P., Bruce, Bertram C., & Jeong, Sunny (2009, March). Beyond service learning: Toward community schools and reflective community learners. In Loriene Roy, Kelly Jensen, & Alex Hershey Meyers (eds.), Service learning: Linking library education and practice (pp. 16-31). Chicago, IL: ALA Editions.
Bruce, Bertram C. (2008). Learning at the border: How young people use new media for community action and personal growth. In C. Angeli & N. Valanides (eds.), Proceedings of the 6th panhellenic conference with international participation: Information and Communication Technologies in Education (HICTE) (pp. 3-10). Nicosia, Cyprus: Department of Education, University of Cyprus.
Bruce, Bertram C. (2008). From Hull House to Paseo Boricua: The theory and practice of community inquiry. In Bogdan Dicher & Adrian Ludu!an (eds.), Philosophy of pragmatism (II): Salient inquiries (pp. 181-198). Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Editura Funda"iei pentru Studii Europene (European Studies Foundation Publishing House).
Friday, March 5, 2010
Bruce, Bertram C., & Bishop, A. P. (2002, May). Using the web to support inquiry-based literacy development. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 45(8), 706-714.
Bruce, Bertram C., & Bishop, Ann P. (2008). New literacies and community inquiry. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear, & D. Leu, (eds.), The handbook of research in new literacies (pp. 699-742). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Dewey, John (1983). Report and recommendations upon Turkish education. In Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), The Middle Works: Essays on Politics and Society, 1923-1924. Vol. 15 of Collected Works. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press.
Dewey, John (1938/1991). Logic: The theory of inquiry. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), John Dewey: The later works, 1925—1953, Vol. 12 (pp. 1–527). Carbondale, IL: SIU Press. (Originally published in 1938)
Feinberg, Walter (2010). Critical pragmatist and the reconnection of science values in educational research.
Gale, Richard M. (2006). The problem of ineffability in Dewey’s theory of inquiry. Southern Journal of Philosophy.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 volumes, vols. 1-6, eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, vols. 7-8, ed. Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931-1958.
Friday, March 5, 2010