Quality In Teaching

Arguments For A Reflective Profession

Wilfred Carr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781135388515
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Offering a critique of the current educational rhetoric and by providing arguments for reviving the moral and social dimensions of teaching, this book aims to offer teachers and teacher educators the means to advance The Notion Of "Teaching Quality".

Part One

The Philosophical and Social Context of Teaching

Chapter 1

Teaching and the Idea of a Social Practice

Glenn Langford

Any attempt to criticize, change or take part in the social practice of teaching, or to give an account of the relation between educational theory and practice, must rely, if only implicitly, on some conception of what a social practice is. It must also rely on a view of the kind of practice concerned, since there are other kinds of social practice besides teaching — for example, religious, medical and scientific. It must also rely on a view of what makes a social practice the particular practice it is, since practices of the same kind assume different forms at different times and places; for example, teaching practice in a fundamentalist Moslem country is very different from that in the United Kingdom. This chapter is primarily concerned with the first of these questions, that of how best to conceptualize the idea of a social practice as such, since the answer to that question must affect the answers given to the other two.

The traditional empiricist view of a social practice is strongly reductionist. Talk about a social practice is regarded as no more than a shorthand way of talking about interaction between individuals. All men, it is supposed, share a common human nature, man outside society being in himself no different from man in society. Given his nature, how a man acts depends only on the circumstances in which he finds himself. He will behave differently in the presence of other men; but only because, although he himself has remained the same, his circumstances have changed. Order may result from interaction between men; but, if so, only as the unintended consequence of the behaviour of individuals acting independently and without insight into the social consequence of their behaviour. For example, the price at which goods are bought and sold in the market is the unintended consequence of the actions of many buyers and sellers acting independently in their own interest. The social is reduced to the psychological; and a social practice is no more than a logical construction out of the behaviour of the persons who are its practitioners. A practice of teaching, for example, is no more than the sum of the interactions between a loosely defined collection of individual teachers and their pupils, including any unintended consequences of their actions, for example unintended learning.

Although a view of this sort may be adequate for an understanding of the social behaviour of at least some animals, it is inadequate for an understanding of a social practice such as teaching. Persons are not contingently but necessarily social; and neither they nor their behaviour can be understood in abstraction from their social situation. Their relation to that situation is internal, since what they are, as well as how they are situated, is determined by it. Teachers behave as they do, on this view, not only because of their own individual natures and understanding of their particular situations but also because of their understanding of themselves as teachers in a social practice of teaching.

Social practices are themselves carried on only within the broader context provided by a society; and it is persons who provide societies with their members as well as social practices with their practitioners. The relation between a society and its members, and between a social practice and its practitioners, is internal, each depending on the other for being what it is. Although there are differences, and the individual is not in any straightforward sense a mirror of the social, our understanding of the one should inform our understanding of the other. It is necessary, therefore, to look at the concept of a person as well as that of a social practice and to try to understand the relation between them, since each must be understood in terms of the other.

Persons

Although persons cannot be identified with their bodies, they do have bodies; thus they can be identified as persons, and as the particular person they are, through their bodies. By contrast, social practices themselves do not have bodies and so can be identified only indirectly through the behaviour of the persons who are their practitioners.

Persons are also animals, although not merely animals; and the behaviour of animals is directed towards their survival as the kind of animal they are. The behaviour of most animals, however, is the result of evolution rather than reflection. They behave as they do not from knowledge but simply from a disposition to do so in response to the stimuli acting on them. Although their directed behaviour appears orderly to a third party, therefore, the animal itself has no insight into that order or the ends served by its behaviour.

In addition to the biological dimension which they share with other animals, persons possess a psychological dimension. Whereas the behaviour of animals is directed, the behaviour of persons is purposive. Directed and purposive behaviour are similar in allowing goals to be achieved through the changes which they bring about; but they are also importantly different. Whereas directed behaviour is simply a response to a stimulus presented by the environment, purposive behaviour is guided by beliefs and directed by intentions; and beliefs in turn are acquired through perception. Perception itself depends not only on the possession of the necessary sense receptors but also on the possession of an appropriate conceptual scheme.

Two related aspects of a conceptual scheme can be distinguished. First, it provides its possessors with a system of classification, or way of seeing, allowing them to see things and their properties as those things with those properties, and so making it possible for them to form beliefs about what they are and how they change. For example, it allows them to see a black cat as a black cat and, in doing so, to form the belief that the black cat which is now sitting on the armchair might move to the airing cupboard. Second, it provides them with a spatio-temporal point of view from which to see things. In seeing things from that point of view, persons make use of a unitary spatio-temporal framework which takes the person’s own subjective location in space and time as its point of reference. Thus persons locate themselves in space and time relative to the things they are perceptually aware of at that place at that time, and locate other things relative to themselves. Consequently what they see from that point of view changes as they move about and as time passes, allowing them to see, for example, the black cat first as here (that is, where I am now) and later as there (that is, at some distance from where I am now), as I or the black cat move about. It also allows them not only to form internally tensed beliefs about what is now the case but also to acquire memories about what was and expectations about what will be the case earlier or later than now; for example, about where the black cat was or will be, again relative to the person’s own position in time, that is, now. The primary function of such beliefs is to guide behaviour, of which they form an integral part, by providing information about how things are and how they might be changed; and since they relate not only to the present but also to the past and future, they give purposive behaviour an intrinsic temporal dimension which directed behaviour does not have. Persons, then, possess a way of seeing things and a spatio-temporal point of view from which to see them; and cannot but see their lives from that point of view.

Persons also form intentions which give direction to their behaviour, making use of the same system of classification which allows them to form beliefs. Intentions are like beliefs in having a content which is structured by the way of seeing which a conceptual scheme provides. Persons can form intentions, therefore, only insofar as that way of seeing allows them to do so. Intentions differ from beliefs, however, in that whereas the primary function of beliefs is to guide behaviour, that of intentions is to provide it with direction, making it possible for persons to bring about changes which are both foreseen and thought desirable. For example, my belief that the black cat is sitting on the armchair might well lead me to form the intention of removing it so that I can sit on the armchair myself. Since intentions are intentions to bring about changes in the future, they make use of the same spatio-temporal point of view as beliefs and, like beliefs, are internally tensed.

At any one time persons have sets of short-term, transitory beliefs about their own immediate situation which are constantly modified as changes in that situation are monitored through perception. They also have many other beliefs, including beliefs about how things are at other times and places, and general beliefs about the kinds of things there are in the world and the way in which they change. The totality of their beliefs thus provides them with a picture of an orderly world in which change takes place in a predictable way, and which constitutes a more or less stable background for their changing experience and short-term beliefs. They think of their immediate situation as no more than a small part of a world which is extended in space and time beyond their present experience of it. Thus the belief that the black cat is sitting on the armchair is part of a changing web of belief and can be thought of as having a separate, independent existence only with great artificiality.

Similarly at any one time persons have short-term intentions — changes which they would like to bring about in their immediate situation — which themselves change as circumstances change, both through their own action and fortuitously. They may, for example, decide to feed the cat when it is hungry. They also have more general projects which give direction to their behaviour over longer periods and which are themselves organized in a more or less orderly hierarchy. For example, feeding the cat is part of the project of keeping a family pet, which in turn has its place in the pattern of family life. Short-term intentions tend to form part of more general, longer-term purposes which give them significance or point. Persons have a sense, therefore, of both where they have come from and where they are going; and their behaviour on any particular occasion owes its direction as much to that as to their view of what is required by their immediate situation. In being persons, they live lives which have an internal unity over time which depends on the unity of their beliefs and purposes. They are temporally extended in a way in which physical objects, which merely continue to exist for a period of time, are not; they may be said to possess histories, whereas other animals have only life spans and physical objects have only pasts. Insofar as they are the result of their own actions, the succession of events which constitute a person’s history will take place in accordance with the internal unity of their lives, although their lives may be affected by events over which they have no control.

In being aware of the beliefs and purposes which give unity to their lives, persons have a sense of their own identity through time; and the way in which they give shape to their lives through their actions depends very much on their sense of who they are. Their perception of themselves changes as their lives progress, since they see their lives from the constantly changing perspective which a spatio-temporal point of view provides. At any particular time, therefore, they necessarily see their lives from the position in them at which they have arrived at that time, that is, now.

Thus the behaviour of persons is guided by beliefs, both particular and general, and given direction by intentions and purposes. The acquisition of beliefs is made possible by the possession of a way of seeing and a spatio-temporal point of view from which to see things. The formation of intentions and purposes is similarly made possible by the possession of the same way of seeing, now functioning as a way of doing, and by the foresight which a temporal perspective provides. The possession of a conceptual scheme thus allows persons to form systems of beliefs which provide them with a unified picture of an orderly world, and to form hierarchies of purposes which give shape and meaning to their lives.

The system of classification which a conceptual scheme provides allows things to be seen not only as physical objects and animals but also as persons; and the behaviour of persons must be understood as a function of their beliefs and purposes, as described above. Moreover, persons may see themselves and others not simply as persons, but as persons of one kind or another, from whom a certain kind of behaviour is expected or required. For example, they may see themselves as teachers, and others as pupils, in a social practice of teaching; and in doing so not only form beliefs but also set the pattern for their interactive behaviour.

The behaviour of persons who see others as persons is guided, like all behaviour, by their beliefs, including their beliefs about the beliefs and intentions of others. Those beliefs may include beliefs about the other’s beliefs about their own beliefs, beliefs about the other’s beliefs about their beliefs about the other’s beliefs about their own, and so on. For example, suppose Jill thinks that it is raining. Then Jack, seeing both Jill and the rain, may think that Jill thinks that it is raining. He may also think that Jill thinks that he thinks that she thinks that it is raining; and perhaps be aware that she is aware that that is what he thinks. Moreover, what is true of Jack’s thoughts about Jill is likely to be equally true of Jill’s thoughts about Jack. If so, each would be aware of the other’s awareness of their awareness of the other’s awareness of them. They would, therefore, be related to each other by what may be termed reciprocal self-awareness. Descriptions of such relations soon become difficult to follow; nevertheless, persons characteristically operate with beliefs which have this sort of complexity. Since behaviour is guided by beliefs, the behaviour of persons towards each other is affected accordingly. Moreover, a person’s beliefs are likely to include beliefs not only about the beliefs of others but also about their intentions and purposes and, conversely, beliefs about the other’s beliefs about their own intentions and purposes. These further beliefs will not only be used to guide behaviour, but will also modify the intentions which give it direction. A child’s perception of her teacher’s perception of her as clever or stupid, for example, is going to affect her behaviour and progress. Similarly the teacher’s perception of the child’s perception of his perception of her will affect his behaviour towards her, especially if her perception is mistaken; if, for example, he thinks she thinks he thinks she is stupid, whereas in fact he knows that he thinks she is clever. It will be argued in the next section that it is because persons can be related by reciprocal self-awareness that they can become practitioners in social practices.

Social Practices

As stated above, the aim of this chapter is to provide an account of the idea of a social practice as such, since any account of teaching as a social practice must rely, if only implicitly, on such an account. The view taken in the first part was that the relation between a social practice and the persons who are its practitioners is internal, each depending on the other for being what it is. It was considered necessary, therefore, to look at the concept of a person to understand why it is possible for persons to engage in social practices and, conversely, how a social practice reflects the character of its practitioners. Since social practices are carried on only within the broader context provided by a society, the relation between a social practice and the society of which it is a part also needs to be considered.

Whereas persons have bodies, social practices do not. They can be identified only indirectly through the behaviour of their practitioners. The relation of practitioner to social practice is that of part to whole. The idea of a whole in the relevant sense is that of something which possesses a kind of completeness which its parts lack; and the idea of a part is that of something which makes a contribution to the completeness of the whole of which it is a part. Things do not become parts in this sense simply because something is divided according to some external principle. A slice of bread is not a part of a loaf, for example, whereas a carburettor is a part of a car. Parts can be seen as parts only in the light of an understanding of their contribution to the completeness of the whole of which they are a part. Similarly wholes can be seen as wholes only in the light of an understanding of their dependence, for their completeness, on their parts. It follows that the direction of understanding is both from whole to part and from part to whole. It is not possible, for example, to know what a carburettor is without knowing what a car is; nor is it possible to understand what a teacher is without understanding the social practice of teaching to which he or she belongs.

A distinction was made earlier between behaviour which is guided by external stimuli and purposive behaviour which is guided by thought. Directed behaviour can lead to the formation of social groups because animals respond to stimuli provided not only by the environment but also by other members of their own species; and biologists commonly refer to the behaviour which results as social. Just as the behaviour of individual animals is directed towards their own survival, so too interaction between animals may lead to the formation and survival of groups of animals. A good example is that of insects such as ants which live in large, stable groups of apparently altruistic in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Understanding Quality in Teaching
• Part 1: The Philosophical and Social Context of Teaching
• Part 2: Teaching as a Profession
• Part 3: The Professional Development of Teachers
• Notes on Contributors
• Index