The Uses of Theory

In his powerful book, The Tact of Teaching, Max Van Manen makes a case for the following:

Recently, educational theorists have argued that every situation in which we are to act pedagogically with children is theory-laden. By virtue of living in a scientifically advanced society our everyday experience is shot through with theoretic elements. Accordingly, we may distinguish among several levels or degrees of systematic reflection, some of which fuse into each other:

· First, there is everyday thinking and acting--partly habituated, partly routinized, partly composed of intuitive, pre-reflective, and semi-reflective rationality. This is the level of common sense thinking and acting in ordinary life.

· Second, we reflect in an incidental and limited way on our practical experiences in everyday life. At this level, we put our experiences into language and give accounts of our actions: We recount incidents, tell stories, formulate rules-of-thumb, practical principles, do’s and don’ts, limited insights.

· Third, we reflect more systematically and in a more sustained way on our experience and others’ experiences with the aim of developing theoretical understandings and critical insights about our everyday actions. At this level we may use existing theories to make further sense of these phenomena.

· Fourth, we reflect on the way we reflect, on the form of our theorizing, in order to come to a more self-reflective grasp of the nature of knowledge, how knowledge functions in action and how it can be applied to our active understanding of our practical action. (1991, p. 100)

Viewed this way, all life is grounded in a pre-reflective, intuitive, embodied doing. We just: open the door, hug our friends, smile at a stranger. We don’t in any sense really theorize or even reflectively direct these activities. In my way of thinking about the world, such actions constitute our most basic being.

Out of this grounding of our being in the everyday social world flows theory. Theory, in Van Manen’s view, originates in our desire to tell stories about what has happened to us. Is is the level of everyday, unreflective discourse. That said, we may “return” to this level to communicate our more sustained theoretical reflections. Oftentimes, a parable can illustrate an insight better than other types of more analytical discourse. Good scholarship can reside in level two.

As a nice example of this type of writing in action, I gave to you the Wendy Poole article, and also this piece by Ruth Padawer in the Sunday NY Times magazine on gender-fluid parenting. Note in particular how this latter article dwells on the experiences of parents of gender-fluid boys, and the ways in which these depictions might help other parents, particularly fathers, become more open to the experiences of their own sons.

 “Using theory” is Van Manen’s third level, and it is the level at which we will mostly operate in our course. We will try to use Foucault and Bakhtin, for example,  to “reflect more systematically and in a more sustained way on our experience and others’ experiences with the aim of developing theoretical understandings and critical insights about our everyday actions.” Note, however, that such theorizing still seeks to maintain vital contact with everyday lived experience--our own and others. In this way, theory opens up imaginative possibilities for us to work towards transcending the limits of our own ways of being, and to open up to what others have to give us.

Finally, on Van Manen’s final level, we enter a realm which I call those of existential truths. These are things that ring true to us in the depths of our being. No one can tell me, for example, that people are inherently wicked, or that some are doomed to hell--as the man outside of Wells Hall was screaming yesterday. I know in my heart that this is not my existential truth; though I know equally it is his. Much of what passes for “objective evaluation” is often, I think, nothing more than the imposition of one particular existential truth in place of potential others. This is the tragedy of theory.

Last night, we watched a brief lecture from classroom teacher and BCTF union activist Joanna Larson. We also, as noted above, read the text from Wendy Poole on the BCTF’s struggles against their provincial government.  Because I view education as a personal journey of growth and development that helps people connect their talents toward larger social aims and purposes, I too oppose neo-liberal practices that standardize teaching and learning in the name of efficiency and accountability. However, I also noted last night that there are things in these texts that I don’t agree with.

As just one example, I find the notion “teacher autonomy” somewhat problematic. The notion that teacher autonomy ensures the autonomy of the learner I do not find to be well supported in either my own life experience or reflection. In fact, I take issue with the whole concept of autonomy, which has its roots in Kantian rationality, as a way of ethical thinking that allows me to universalize my own actions so that they can harmonize with the actions of others. Such a way of thinking about autonomy--as an ethical, rational universal--ignores the ever-changing and fluid nature of the world in which we live. It also ignores deep conflicts that cannot be rationalized away. In short, I find any notion of “autonomy” somewhat suspect, and might think about re-theorizing the issue as one of “love” of or “care” for or “hospitality” towards the other.

However, despite the fact that I might object to the concept of autonomy, that is not to say I would reject the term in everyday discourse and story-telling. As I said last night, theory is as much about our strategy for communicating with others as it is about the legitimacy of our claims. If I think a “discourse of teacher autonomy” might help me resist a neo-liberal discourse more effectively than a “discourse of love” (which is likely to be laughed off by policy-makers), then I really have no choice. Within the realms of  theory, our interventions happen on several fronts--into what experience means, into how experience means, and into why experience means and towards what ends.

As we read this semester, some helpful guiding questions might therefore be the following:

• What experience is the text examining? 
• Which of my own life experience can I connect this to?
• How has this experience usually been framed?
• What counter-discourses and counter-framing is the text using to reframe the meaning of an experience?
• To what personal and social ends?

Thank you all for your participation in the course. I hope this blog becomes a helpful venue for you. And I hope that you will all consider developing your own posts to place here this semester!