Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

PICTURE THIS
Figure 105.1
Dualisms of Cartesian–Newtonian–Baconian epistemology
Dualisms of Cartesian-Newtonian-Baconian Epistemology
Constants
Space & Time
Cause & Effect
Separations
Mind Matter
Knower Known
Educational Psychology on the Move 917
The language of metaphor is often useful in describing paradigmatic change, and ordinarily I
would use a metaphor to describe the difference between a CNB epistemology and a post-CNB
model. None is forthcoming, however. Remembering the pedagogical lessons of my youth, when
words won’t work, I turn to pictures. I sketch several representations of a CNB epistemology
of ed psych, the first (Figure 105.1) showing Sir Isaac Newton’s constant dualisms of space and
time, and cause and effect, and Réné Descartes’ separate dualisms of mind and matter, knower
and known. The constant dualism of space and time represents the assignment of universality
to many of the findings of traditional ed psych; if it’s true here and now, it’s true everywhere
and always. Context doesn’t matter. The results of Piaget’s study of a small group of boys in a
Swiss school, for example, were universalized to apply to all children, everywhere. All learning
is assumed to fit within the hierarchical confines of Bloom’s taxonomy. The Cartesian constant
dualism of cause and effect refers to the attribution of causality, that a particular cause will always
have the same effect. Again, context is not a consideration in this paradigm, nor is interpretation.
This dualism has as its most prominent example the “mind as computer” model. Human minds
are conceptualized as computers that always work in a predictable way; the same input always
results in the same output, without fail (Bruner, 1996). Predictability is an important requirement
of research findings, because predictability makes possible the assignment of universality. Neither
intuition nor imagination is acknowledged because each introduces too great a variable into the