RADICAL TEFL

the routes are the same (Dewey's stages), the strategies which the three groups use for getting
from A to B (or combination of strategies) might be different.
One group may rely on maps and compasses. A second group may use a satellite direction
finder, and sometimes a map. A third group may have a professional guide, who knows the
route from memory. So, their routes to 'knowledge' (ie. , to their destination) may have the
same core stages, but the ways in which the stages are navigated are different. In the same
way, the historian and physicist employ different strategies (processes) or combinations of
strategies in their enquiries, but they both respect core stages and ask themselves core
questions, such as: Is my problem clearly defined? Can I trust the evidence on which I base
my judgements? Am I open to re-conceiving my conclusions? Am I self-critical of my progress
to date? etc. The mountain walker, for his own safety, is continually asking himself such
questions, and so is the experienced researcher or enquirer. .
3. Dewey (and William James) were particularly interested in how the individual
(without the support of a community) enquires. If the teacher was, as a condition of her
learning, part of a community, the process becomes a social process, and so rather more
complex. However, although one would perhaps wish that teachers would work together to
learn, in my experience of secondary schools this does not normally happen. During their
breaks secondary teachers often talk about pastoral problems of individual students but, in my
experience of working with teachers in secondary schools, they rarely discuss their teaching
approaches with each other. (See Lortie, Schoolteacher, (1975: 76-77)
4. Also, it is interesting that Dewey (drawing from William James) arguably solved the
problem of validation (warranting) for local and individual knowledge claims - by reducing
the criteria for successful validation. [See sec 3 of the study above; and sec. 3 of my
{2015}]:
l Firstly, he argued that a sufficient criterion for validation was successful action.
l Secondly, validation did not require an explanation of why the action worked: that it
works, in a local context, is sufficient.
5. Teachers may be the kind of enquirer that Dewey was thinking of (and Dewey was
the main educational reformer in the USA in the 1930s). A teacher: largely works alone; she
is trying to help her individual students solve specific problems; she has evidence in the form
of student output to base her judgements on; she knows that students often fail and that she
will need to try again. A reflective, enquiring, teacher is continually moving through the
three stages as in (A) above, in a self-correcting process.
At the same time, a teacher is using at least three psychological or mental strategies
(observation, reflection & intuition): To help her get information and to reflect, the teacher:
l has her students and their work to observe; she
l can use reason to help her self-critically reflect on both that information and
conclusions to draw from it; and
l she can use intuition or a 'feeling' for what is going on to help her make her
judgements, or to amend or disconfirm them.
But for Dewey, the 'logic' or architecture of her enquiries have core elements, whichever
psychological or cognitive strategies or processes are used.
RADICAL TEFL 4, MARCH 2017
Alistair Maclean
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