Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Postformalism and a Literacy of Power 941
the instruments typically used in the field—abilities, to the society, no matter how unjust the
system may be.
Here again we see how mechanistic educational psychology and the practice it supports
play an important role in maintaining the power inequities of the status quo. Those children
from marginalized racial or class positions are socialized for passivity and acceptance of their
scientifically pronounced “lack of ability.” Thus, a form of politically passive thinking is cultivated
that views good students and teachers as obedient to mechanisitic educational, psychology-based
ways of seeing. In such a context neither students nor teachers are encouraged to construct new
cognitive abilities when faced with ambiguity. Mechanistic educational psychology has generally
ignored the sociopolitical issues of the day as it pursues its work in “neutral” isolation.
The irony of its claims of hands-off objectivity in relation to the sociopolitical realm is not lost
on critical educators who have tracked the discipline’s profound impact in this domain. These
postformalists jump into the political fray with its overt call to reform mechanistic educational
psychology with a transgressive psychology and pedagogy. Educational psychology is a situated
cultural/political practice—whether it wants to be or not—that addresses the ideology of teaching
and learning. Whenever teaching, learning, and knowledge are conceived, the nature of the
conception affects individuals differently: again, it validates the privileged and invalidates the
marginalized. Postformalists are members of a monkey-wrench gang dedicated to subverting this
power-driven process.
Many mechanistic educational psychologists are so uncomfortable with such a political psychology
that they consider the postformal discourse a defacement of the field, a disruption to its
orderly proceedings. When Shirley Steinberg and I were first involved in developing postformalism
in the early 1990s, several of our colleagues from the mechanistic domain of the field became
very upset when we received positive publicity about our work. During one of my classes, a
colleague from this domain of educational psychology came into my class and literally screamed
that I was “destroying the field” and to stop what I was doing. I told her that we could talk
about our differences later and asked if she would allow me to finish teaching my class. She
refused to stop talking and after several minutes of listening to her angry soliloquy, I finally had
to dismiss my class. I have to admit the incident provided a powerful lesson for my students on
the differences in paradigms within disciplines and the heat such differences could generate.
Cognition viewed as a political activity in this context is marked by a hint of scandal or at least
a lack of middle/upper-middle class “good taste.” Despite such uncomfortable representations,
critical teachers push their political agenda, confronting the dominant discourse with its erasure
of irrationality, emotion, power, paradigms, and morality in the teaching and learning process.
Thus, elitist practices are allowed to remain in place, unchallenged by the very professionals
who such understand how they came to be supported by shifting power blocs in the larger social
order. Postformalists in this context come to play a special role, as they ask hard questions about
cognitive and psychological issues.
� How do some of the most important issues of teaching and learning come to be erased?
� How do political issues play out at the level of consciousness?
� How is the learning process shaped by power?
� What is the relationship between school performance and a student’s or a teacher’s political consciousness
and resulting moral sensibility?
Such questions would encourage research involving the subjective experiences of children
deemed unintelligent and relegated to lower-ability tracks. I frequently visit with students classified
as “slow” or “incapable” by mechanistic educational psychology who can make up creative