RADICAL TEFL

APPENDIX [A]
THE TWO WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING ‘THE GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE’
Discussion of a possible objection to Dewey's Theory of Enquiry
1. The argument in my study explored implications for EFLT teacher research of
Dewey's claim that there are similar, core stages in the way in which a student, a craftsman, a
layman and a scientist grow their knowledge. It might be objected that Dewey is guilty of a
blunder here, as it is widely assumed that different fields grow their knowledge in different
ways – for example, it is said that historian and physicist use different 'ways' to enquire and
grow their knowledge, and that one must be careful not to confuse the two.
An entry point to replying to this objection is to appreciate that there are two approaches to
interpreting the question 'How does knowledge grow?', and that in the context of this
question, the question word 'How?' can be understood in two different senses:
(A) 'How?' in the sense of: By what ('external') stages?; and
(B) 'How?' in the different sense of: By what ('internal'), cognitive, processes or
strategies on the part of the individual enquirer?
This is not a straightforward distinction to appreciate at first sight, but interestingly it is
explored in the International Baccalaureate Diploma course (which I taught for two years in
Poland, 2009-11), in the compulsory 100-hour course 'Theory of Knowledge' [TOK], and
where students are asked to understand the distinction above, in the context of enquiry in their
own school subjects. Students are introduced in TOK to the idea that whilst there is a core
structure to the external stages of the growth of knowledge [Dewey's stages as given in the
Introduction to my study], the psychological, mental/internal strategies and processes by
which different fields enquire (or more precisely, the combination of strategies) are different,
as each field lends itself to different strategies of enquiry.
Generally speaking, the external stages, as in (A) above, are universal [if we follow
Dewey], whilst the mental/internal and psychological-cognitive processes or strategies, as
in (B) above, are normally the following three: observation-linked toempiricism/experience;
reason/reflection; and 'intuition', - or a combination of these.
These psychological strategies (B) seem to be the motor by which enquiry moves through the
three stages in (A) above. (The 'stages', (A) may be called the 'logic of discovery', and the
'strategies' (B) called the 'psychology of discovery'. ) The experimental sciences, for
example, rely considerably on observation, but a rationalist element (or 'reflection') is
important at the validation stage. Mathematics uses a combination of reason and 'intuition',
with the weighting of this combination seeming to depend on the level of difficulty at which
work is being done. History relies, in part, on observations and readings of available sources,
followed by critical reflection on the reliability of those sources– and so on. But all of these
(psychological/cognitive) strategies, or 'ways of knowing' (as they are named in TOK) can
mesh well with Dewey's stages of (a) problematic situation'; followed by (b) an eventual
knowledge claim; followed by (c) some validation attempt; and this hopefully giving a selfcorrecting
process to fresh (but always provisional) knowledge claims. This understanding of
enquiry, or the growth of knowledge, fits well with Popper's insight that although we cannot
make certain claims to knowledge, we can, following this three-stage looping process,
identify mistaken claims to knowledge (Magee 1973).
2. The distinction between these two approaches to understanding 'how' knowledge
grows [(A) and (B) above] can be perhaps shown by analogy, looking at a mountain walk.
Imagine three groups of climbers who walk from youth hostel A to youth hostel B, and
imagine, with a birds-eye view, that they take exactly the same physical route, passing the
same farms and walking through the same valleys. But although, to the birds-eye observer,
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