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ON-LINE
ISSUES
V.3
N.1, October 1995
Messing
About in the Theory/Practice Parabole
by
Jeanette E. M. Scott
Centre
for the Study of Curriculum and Instruction
University of British Columbia
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- What
image might best express the relationship of theory and practice?
Where will I find theory? Is it over, under, in, throughout, beside,
outside, or inside practice?[1].
Undoubtedly, my choice of image and of preposition(s) will tell a
great deal about my present conceptualization of that contradictory
space between my thinking and my doing.
- As
a student, a teacher and a teacher-educator, I have experienced many
connections and disconnections between the world of theory and the
whirled of practice. I have gone through the denial of any relationship;
I have privileged one over the other and, on still other occasions,
I have experienced the disappearance of the warp of theory within
the weft[2] of practice. Now, having
de/constructed the separation, I find myself in a place where I am
able to enter the spaces between the threads. Here I see a kinetic
juxtapositioning of theory and practice, a continuous movement within
and without, beyond and behind. As I wiggle my way into these generative
spaces which are neither theoretical nor practical, I long to draw
others in to play with me.
Psychologists teach us that the mind is capable of perceiving either
the relief or the background but we cannot perceive both at the
same time. (For example, in looking at the familiar optical illusion
of the two faces and the Grecian urn) we can literally see either
two faces or a grecian [sic ] urn at one time. We cannot
see both simultaneously. Everything we know says that one thing
cannot be two things at the same time. And yet we know that two
things are one thing at one and the very same time. (Kushner, 1990:
12)
- As
technology pushes us forward into virtual reality and a renewal of
interest in spirituality draws us into the dreamtime, an openness
to the mystery of paradox again becomes more common-place. For example,
an increasingly popular art form is the three-dimensional image created
through the use of holography or computer-generated graphics. The
instructions for seeing the hidden images on such products are interesting
in themselves. The viewer is told to relax, to observe the apparent
image without focussing on it and to be patient for eventually, the
other image will appear. In order to discover the balance between
what is apparent and what is hidden, one must place oneself in the
symmetry and allow the imagination to play in the divergence. It is
in this area of contradiction where the images dance and move.
- The
intention of this paper is to play in such a divergence, to dwell
in the sort of place where many voices may be heard, where incongruity
is acceptable and where substantive changes might erupt.
I.
In Search of a Collaborative Nexus
- As
a teacher-educator, I often hear teachers and student-teachers referring
to the university as something other than the "real" world, a place
for philosophizing rather than a place for discussing the genuine
difficulties of teaching. At the same time, there are those in the
university who continue to imagine that if only practitioners would
pay attention to the research literature, their difficulties would
dissolve. It is not easy for those who hold to a neo-Gręco world view
to accept that the greater challenge is in the seeking of the strong
questions rather than in the finding of the right answers.
- The
division which has been constructed between theory and practice is
one which many, in schools and in the academy, imagine to be a natural
separation. It is an assumption which may emerge in the double challenge
of the pre-practicum question: "What do I do on Monday morning?" and
the post-practicum demand: "Stop talking and just let me teach." Or
it may surface in the cynicism of the teacher who, having dealt with
yet another institutionalized change and an equally incomprehensible
rationalization for the change, will respond to the so-called expert
with: "That's all fine theory but I'd like to see you come into my
classroom and teach for a day." The separation between the world of
what is and the world of what might be continues to alienate the one
from the other. It becomes more problematic as teachers imagine themselves
atheoretical and as theorists write themselves into obscurity.
- In
considering the ways in which I can draw my teaching self and my other
selves into the nexus which emerges in the midst of these two solitudes,
I have found it helpful to consider some of the history of this troubled
relationship.
- According
to Pinar and Grumet, who based their essay, "Socratic Cęsura
and the Theory-Practice Relationship" on the work of historian, Nicholas
Lobkowicz, the Western world has held to three significant views of
the nature and the degree of consanguinity between theory and practice.
One is that of "the ancient Greeks (who) regarded theory and practice
as two aspects of a unified or integrated life" ( Pinar, 1988: 94).
For the Greeks, the ideal state of existence was one in which there
was an integrity of the orthe doxa, the world of right thinking,
and the doxa, the disordered world of everyday opinion. This
integrity which came through contemplation was, however, beyond the
reach of the ordinary citizen. Only the philosopher king was able
to enter that state which provided an escape from the polis
to the eidos. The Greeks saw theory as a way of reaching up
from the real world to the ideal world; they had no intention of corrupting
theory by applying it to practical life. In the Gręco-Roman world,
theory was impractical.
- In
complete reversal of classical philosophy is the scientific view which
allows for a domination of the ideal world by the real world. While
post-structuralism has infused much of the discourse within the academy,
the prevailing view in the larger community continues to be a scientific
view which holds that theory does reveal elements of truth but is
not of value unless it can prove itself in practice.
- The
middle way is one which acknowledges a spiritual dimension and which
tolerates an openness to mystery. In the Western world, this view
is based primarily upon a Judeo-Christian understanding of the relationship
between the visible and the invisible worlds. Both Jews and Christians
believe in the rupturing of the real by various incarnations of the
ideal. For example, during the first century of the present era, an
"anarchic figure" (Caputo, 1993: 148), a nobody whose socioeconomic
class placed him in that "dangerous space between peasant and expendable"
(Crossan, 1995: 25) claimed a messianic right to challenge the elitism
which prevailed throughout the Roman world. He demonstrated the transformative
power which is available to those who are willing to dwell in that
place of paradox between the world of kairos and the world
of chronos . In his commensalism with women and other undesirables,
this carpenter's son from Galilee rejected the established privileging
by gender and by social status; in his teaching about love, he advocated
an end to discrimination and oppression. While the initial response
to these radical views was one of open antagonism, the strongest objections
were those that were hidden within dualism. Instead of allowing for
a breaking through the boundaries and an entry into the realm of contradiction
between theory and practice, Christianity was reduced to a shifting
of emphasis from one to the other. Practice (works) took on a position
of greater importance than theory (faith) since, faith without works,
was not seen to be faith. Although the life, death and re/surrection
of Jesus demonstrated that the only way for faithful works to be carried
out was through the mysterious working of the holy within the human,
a majority of so-called believers, continued to view theory as remaining
in a realm out of the reach of practice.
- Rather
than continuing to promote the sort of caedere which presently
cuts off one from the other, Pinar and Grumet, argue for a relationship
which allows for a point and counterpoint of opposition and contradiction.
They suggest, and I concur, that there is a need for both theorists
and practitioners to engage in a cęsura that is both a turning
from what has been and a seeking, through a contemplation of contradiction,
of what might be.
II.
DeLuding OurSelves with Rhizomes and Convolvulus
- The
cursor blinks and I stare blankly at the screen, listening to the
hum of the computer as it waits for me to call the words into somewhere
out of nowhere. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and
gimbel in the wabe... Lewis Carroll's nonsense makes more sense
than my absurd drivel which when printed will slobber its stupid way
across the page.
- It
occurs to me that I am in the academy by pretense. I sit in a room
surrounded by hundreds of books filled with thousands of words written
by people whom I do not know and I try desperately to play their game,
to communicate in words. But the words know me; they know that I don't
like them, that I read them, write them, awkwardly so they remain
hidden in the books. They are other people's words, not mine.
- Reading
and writing are, for me, unnatural ways of coming to an understanding
of the world and of sharing that understanding with others. I find
listening and speaking to be easier than reading and writing but I
am most comfortable expressing my thoughts, my emotions with movement
and sound, using my body as sign.
- And
yet, I re/call, in a paper written only a few weeks ago, describing
my words as sliding "across the page like skiis on a wide open run
in fresh snow."
- What
is it that brings me to contra/dict myself in this way? What has changed
the words from this:
My words slide across the page like skiis on a wide open
run in fresh snow. The sun shines; the shifting of weight is
easy, rhythmic, automatic and all that it will take to make
me a victim of the slippery slope is a loss of concentration,
an edge deflected, a sudden loss of balance. Sometimes
the mountain of words works with you; sometimes it does
not.
(October, 1994)
to this?
I am standing on an unfamiliar mountain, at the top of an
ordinary run but I cannot push off. I know that I can easily
ski out, down and out; that the dangers are no more and
no less than I have faced so many times before but I simply
cannot move. The voice inside tells me that I am not
capable of doing what I know I can do.
(December, 1994)
- Whose
voice am I hearing? Whose words am I repeating? Whose judgement has
immobilized me?
- I
recall Pinar's early writings on currere. "By examining one's
life history, even a fragment of that history, such as one's life
in schools, or one's involvement in an academic discipline, one can
begin to construct an etiology of one's present arrest" (Pinar, 1994:
37). I acknowledge that my present inability to form the words, like
my inability to ski, is a multi- dimensional arrest. I am constrained
by real or imagined institutional demands. [This and this and this
are, after all, the course requirements.] My desire to please, to
reproduce the image of the good student, leads to a psychological
arrest because I tell myself [as I have been told so often in the
past] that I am not capable of fulfilling these requirements. The
intellectual arrest is accompanied then by the emotional, the physical
and the spiritual, so that, until I re/member and name those experiences
which place me under judgement, I am immobilized.
The
past hangs over the present as fog veils a highway.
- I
cannot escape the past. I must, as Pinar says, confront my history
"in order to hope to grasp the present and influence the future" (1994:
57).
- I
recall the experiences of schooling which have allowed me to tell
myself that I am stupid, out of place in the academic world. There
is a temptation to return to the safety of my own teaching but I have
already come to the realization that for my teaching to continue to
be transformed, I must be transformed. Just as I have come to an awareness
of the negative impact of my pedagogy on my students, so I must come
to an understanding of the source of that pedagogy and of the ways
my experiences as student have caused my present arrest.
- I
return to Pinar who writes: "one comes to understand one's case as
one lives it " (1994: 41).
- This
understanding will only emerge as I consciously engage in an acceptance
of the weight of the past. If I hope to move beyond the "denial and
(the) ignorance" (1994: 52), beyond the arrest, to a place which is
both transtemporal and transconceptual, I must explore the temporal
and the conceptual. Only then will I be open to the possibilities
of the present which are rooted in the past and waiting to bloom in
the future.
- So
I push backwards and forwards and onto the slope - carefully, conscious
of the dangers hidden in the opportunities, still seeking a delicate
balance.
What is curriculum?
Where is curriculum?
Who is curriculum?
Q: What does it mean to describe curriculum as a meta-narrative
of a colonial master planted in our midst and reigning in arboreal
splendour?
(Aoki & Shamsher, 1993: 95)
- In
what ways do these metaphors re/interpret curriculum and transform
my conception of trees?
- I
know, even without being reminded by Jacques Derrida, of the power
of the words. I anticipate their doubling, redoubling and double doubling
of meaning and of understanding. I am aware that the signifiers which
I choose to write will transform me as they transform themselves,
as they transform the reader and the ideas in the very act of signifying
those ideas. So the process of answering the question posed takes
a great deal of time; each word must be chosen cautiously. [Each turn,
regardless of the steepness of the slope, the speed of the movement,
completed before the next is initiated.]
- I
must be particularly careful with my choice of metaphors for metaphors
are powerful medicine. It is necessary to have respect for words with
tangled meanings and it is important to realize that the appropriation
of other people's metaphors is dangerous business.
- On
the verge of accepting and using [no, not accepting but still using]
the Deleuzian metaphors of the tree and the rhizome, I am overwhelmed
by a feeling of betrayal. The photograph of the magnificently humble
Carmanah firs [beside the portraits of my children] startles me into
the realization that I was about to accept an anthropomorphic judgement
that denies all that I know and believe about trees. Like my ancestors,
I have a great respect and love for trees. I know what it is like
to talk to trees, to seek their comfort and their protection, to experience
their healing power and to grieve deeply the individual deaths of
these living creatures with whom we are expected to share the earth.
Listening to the sap flowing in the trees is not unlike listening
to the heartbeat. Despite the appearance of invulnerability, I know
that trees are fragile for I have seen how a simple change in the
environment can cause them a great deal of suffering. Humans may impose
a notion of hierarchy, of binary logic, upon a tree but that is not
the way of the tree.
- So
I come to the consideration of the roots of the tree - the rhizomes.
[rhizome - from the Latin rhizoma, a mass of
roots, from the Greek rhizoma, roots of a tree, rhizousthai,
to take root, from rhiza, root.] And
I wonder when and where and who has given a new meaning to this word.
What circumstances have denied the roots and valorized the stem? [rhizome
- underground stems which produce roots and shoots]
- Perhaps
the qualities of convolvulus express Deleuze's intention more clearly.
[convolvulus - bindweed from Latin convolvere, to interweave]
Certainly, if I were looking for a botanical "war machine" (Deleuze
and Parnet, 1987: xi), for a way to subvert authority by becoming
devious, disruptive, deceitful and downright impossible to live with,
I would choose the bindweed and the morning glory over the strawberry
and the woody nightshade, over the cypress and the cedar.
- But,
at this juncture, I confess that I prefer to work in a place that
is in the earth and on the earth and over the earth and of the earth.
I do not want to embrace a pedagogy which pops up unexpectedly, which
brings me into places where I am bound to be destructive. My curriculum
is no longer filled with hidden agenda. It is rooted in the earth;
it offers protection to those around me; it may be a humble jackpine
in comparison with other's majestic Douglas firs but it will do. Together,
my students and I can nurture it, talk to it, hang stars upon it and
eventually, rest in its shade.
- In
a presentation to the JCT Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom
Practice in Banff in October, 1994, Madeleine Grumet spoke of giving
weight to curriculum through engaging in and with the world.
Curriculum
that matters addresses the issues in the world where teachers and
students live and work, the world that they care about and want
to change.
- A
curriculum that matters, like a pedagogy that cares, does not crawl
through spaces where it does not belong; rather, it lives in and grows
out of the earth; it gives back to the earth and to its companion
creatures more than it receives; it listens and responds softly, care/fully.
III.
Playing in the Im/Practical In-Between
- In
an effort to un/tangle some of these issues as they affect my work
as teacher-educator, I allow myself to enter into a series of meditations
...
The
Gate From The Tea House Garden
- A
few months ago, I found a notice posted on a door in one of the many
multi-storied concrete parking lots on the university campus. The
notice informed me that, like the complicated space between theory
and practice, the gate from the tea house in the Nitobe Memorial Garden
was missing. The loss of the gate, which is an essential part of the
tea house, we were told, would hinder the conducting of the tea ceremony.
- It
occured to me that in considering the place of the gate in the tea
ceremony, I might learn more about the place of theory in practice.
- As
I struggle with the socially-constructed divisions, I realize that
the very fact that I am speaking as a teacher-educator generates a
liminal space between my self now and my self a year ago. The contemplative
space with which I am presently blessed may well separate my understanding
of theory and practice from that of my teaching colleagues but I shall
try to keep the memories of my other self in mind while I work through
the lens of my present context.
Meditation
I. The gate as a central part of a mystery
- To
many beginning and experienced teachers, theory remains a mystery.
Because it is so deeply enfolded in practice, it is hard to locate.
It is often mistaken as being distant, incomprehensible, even irrelevant.
Frequently, this perception is fostered by theorists whose attitudes
and language confuse and alienate those who work in schools, outside
the realm of the "arrogant truth" ( Pinar, 1988: 99).
- Yet,
just as between the gate and the tea ceremony, so also there is an
interdependence between theory and practice. The gate (theory) has
no purpose outside of the tea ceremony (practice) and the tea ceremony
(practice) is meaningless without the gate (theory). The theory which
holds a teacher's practice together must be drawn out of the tacit
realm into the explicit before a critical pedagogy will emerge.
Meditation
II. The gate as ritual
- Rituals
are customs which are fixed by traditions. They are solemn and symbolic,
ceremonial and communal. Ritualistic behavior presupposes a connection
between the real world and the ideal world, between the physical and
the emotional dimensions and the spiritual and intellectual dimensions.
In order for rituals to be meaningful to the participants, there must
be an understanding of the beliefs which are implicit in the actions
and there must be a sense of conviction that the ritual serves a communal
purpose.
- To
teach by prescription or to theorize outside the educational community,
may appear to be solemn and traditional, even ritualistic, but such
behavior is empty of meaning and conviction and works against rather
than in support of community.
Meditation
III. The gate as a door: shutting out & shutting in
- The
missing gate may be seen as an integral part of the fence. It will
wall in as easily as it will wall out - people, ideas, relationships.
- There
are a preponderance of fences and closed gates in schools and in the
academy.
Meditation
IV. The gate as a place to swing to and fro
- As
any child may tell you, gates are meant to swing on, to move from
a familiar place to one that is not so familiar. Gates, like theory,
are not intended to simply hang there "alienated from practice in
some timeless unchanging realm" (Pinar, 1988: 99). There needs to
be a constant moving to and fro, from theory to practice, from practice
to theory.
- It
is equally important to understand that a gate will not swing unless
it is connected to the fence by bolts and by hinges. Neither those
who teach nor those who want to teach will be able to move freely
between the world of theory and the world of practice without first
having taken time to reflect on what is at the core of their lives.
Meditation
V. The gate as a place between
- It
is in the place between where we are able to peel back the layers
of our "taken-for- grantedness" (Peterat, 1994), to contemplate and
to question the theory which guides our practice, the practice which
embodies our theory. There we may hear those "unsung tunes" (Grumet,
1988: 11) which are the songs of creation transforming and being transformed
within the created.
- Sitting
on the bank, we might take time to watch the river as it flows both
ways at once.
The river flowed both ways. The current moved from north to south,
but the wind usually came from the south, rippling the bronze-green
water in the opposite direction. This apparently impossible contradiction,
made apparent and possible, still fascinated Morag, even after years
of river-watching.
(from
The Diviners)
- On
the slope of the riverbank, we can dwell in kairos , somehow
protected from the voracious appetite of chronos. In such a
place, we can feel the power that comes after accepting a loss of
control, a willingness to abide with an absence of meaning and a presence
of meaning that is too deep to mine. There we can think about the
kinship between pedagogy and creation.
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End
Notes
- I
acknowledge the influence of Ted Aoki and Carl Leggo here. Aoki has
pressed me to consider the geo of my graphy while Leggo re/directed
my attention from nouns and verbs to prepositions. [back]
- In
the first drafting of this preface, I made a typing error with this
word. I substituted a "p" for the "f". Perhaps it is more appropriate
to write about the "wept of practice." [back]
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References
- Aoki,
T. (1993). In the Midst of Slippery Theme-words: Living as Designers
of Multicultural Curriculum. In T. Aoki & M. Shamsher. The Call
of Teaching. British Columbia Teachers' Federation.
- Caputo,
J. (1993). Against Ethics. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press.
- Crossan,
J. (1995). Jesus. A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco:
Harper Collins.
- Deleuze,
G. and Parnet, C. (1987). Dialogues. Translated by H. Tomlinson
and B. Habberjam. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Grumet,
M. The Unbearable Lightness of Curriculum. A paper presented to the
JCT Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice, Banff,
Alberta, October 8, 1994.
- Grumet,
M. (1988). Bitter Milk:Women in Teaching. Amherst: University
of Massachusetts Press.
- Laurence,
Margaret. (1974). The Diviners. Toronto: McLelland and Stewart.
- Magliola,
R. (1984). Derrida on the Mend. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue
University Press.
- Peterat,
Linda. (1994, March). Meditations on Dissonance. Refrains and Improvisations
within a Collaborative Teaching Education Practicum. Presentation
(with Gale Smith) to the annual meeting of The Western Canadian Association
of Student Teaching. Winnipeg.
- Pinar,
W. & Grumet, M. (1988). Socratic Cęsura and the Theory-Practice
Relationship. In W. Pinar (Ed.). Contemporary Curriculum Discourses.
Scottsdale, Arizona: Gorsuch Scarisbrick.
- Pinar,
W. (1976). The Trial. In W. Pinar, Autobiography, Politics and
Sexuality. (1994). (29 -62). New York : Peter Lang.
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