Introduction
To begin with, I would like to refer the
reader to my
intellectual framework. You will recognise in it influences from
different authors but also, maybe, some original thought, I hope. Most
of the understandings, though, that underpin my intellectual framework
come from corrective phonetics i.e. a concern that makes one realise
that listening in not about hearing. I tried to make my framework as
succinct as possible.
I have attempted to relate the ideas expressed in this framework to
issues in education and research in
various ways. For me, perhaps the most challenging aspect of
this was
to elaborate on its implications to science (e.g. see Ethics and
Science or The
mystery of time). I did this in various (possibly simple)
ways.
What has come through from all this, was the realisation of how
dangerous the framework is, and yet what an enabling potential it
may offer. It is dangerous because it has the potential to undermine a
number of empires that have come to determine what we do, how we think
and how we see the future. It is enabling because it does not exclude
possibilities. Rather, it demands critical (revealing)
understandings. By the
way, the word revealing for critical is interesting
as it already implies
bringing about an epistemic gain, an aspect that Calhoun sought to
bring out in his elaborations on the methodology of inquiry in Critical
Social Theory.
The notion of revealing
understandings in concepts such as communication or culture
The concept of ‘revealing understandings’ works
well with Calhoun's concern regarding the qualities of communication
raised in the article Information Technology and the International
Public Sphere. I would be inclined to suggest a difference, therefore,
between (a) those strategies which seek to manipulate action by
resisting communication and therefore by resisting consideration of
perspectives, and (b) those strategies which seek to inquire into
the sorts of insights that
different perspectives reveal about the motivations that guide actions
and perceptions. Thus while the former proceeds by disguising its
motivations,
it is the latter that proceeds by revealing what it understands. In the
case of popular nationalism, there is no debate, just a message.
The revelatory aspect of communication also sits well with
the concept of culture, understood here as a process of dialogue.
The concept of culture, typically taken to mean ‘social practices’,
has been often relegated to ‘the things we do’. But culture is a
process,
it is not ‘things’. It is a process in the course of which participants
mobilise understandings to affect understandings. This dialogic aspect
of culture suggests that culture is not so much produced and
reproduced.
Rather, it involves a process of making selections, or choices, between
that which is taken to be relevant and that which is not. True, these
selections, or choices, are embedded in people’s histories. However,
they also depend on individuals’ determination to understand this
history
(an aspect that J. R. Saul sees as critical). Far too often, in the
discussions
about culture, this aspect of selection has been missed, and actions
such
as murder, deception or short-sighted propaganda have been justified in
terms of culture, tradition or pragmatics: ‘the things we do’. Here,
the
example of stoning women in Islamic cultures comes to mind.
It is no accident that culture aspires to action which is cultivated or
civilised. Concepts such as cultivated or civilised imply a broad
consideration of potential choices. They do not imply closure, or a
loop with no possibility for escaping. There is nothing in culture
itself
that (b)locks us. It is the choices that we make (or are prevented from
making) that do so. At the same time, it has to be noted that we are
not
born into a specific culture. Rather, we embrace, refuse, or are denied
the possibility of engaging in the process of dialogue between a
diversity
of perceptions, with the aim of enhancing our experiences of reality in
a
manner that would make them more revealing to us . Culture is a product
of
this process, not just its context. In my view, this description of
culture
as a dialogue toward richer and more revealing frameworks (insights) is
not
unlike Calhoun's concept of a processual approach to
understanding
(Calhoun 1995. Critical Social Theory: 91).
The question of how this dialogue could be enhanced is the context of
Calhoun's discussion regarding IT. There would be many ways for
enhancing dialogue. I have attempted to suggest a few. I would like to
share these suggestions with the reader.
Some ideas regarding education and
research
In Calhoun's article, there is a strong
suggestion that increased communication (exchange) between individuals
and groups as a means for increasing understandings and, hopefully, for
enhancing the capacity of individuals to influence their destiny (my
definition of empowerment or freedom). As for the role of IT in
this process, a number of difficulties are mentioned. It would seem
that
many of these difficulties fall under concerns relating to access and
effectiveness.
To me, the issue of access would imply individuals’ capacity to join
communicative contexts (with and without the use of IT). In
the broadest sense, access to me therefore means ‘access to
information’. On the other hand, effectiveness would relate to
individuals’ and groups’ capacity to evaluate their communicative
exchanges against a broad range of contexts. While in a narrow set of
contexts our opinions may count as revealing and insightful, their
actual significance will remain relative to those contexts. It is
therefore crucial for individuals and groups to have a possibility to
compare and contrast the impact of their understandings against those
of others.
It would also seem that while the issue of access can be overcome (e.g.
by integrating IT with other forms of communication and media), the
concern with the effectiveness of our attempts to communicate presents
us with quite a challenge.
As signaled by Calhoun, resolving the problem of the effectiveness will
require practical experiments based on an idealistic vision i.e. on
models of interaction that seek to “improve[s] the quality of opinions,
educate[s] the participants and form[s] a collective understanding of
issues that advance[s] beyond pre-existing definitions of interests or
identities”. Moreover, without such models, it may be that our
use of IT will remain reduced to “websites giv[ing] the impression of
consisting simply of the spontaneous postings of the public”.
While looking for some ideas which would help to address the issues of
access and effectiveness, it became apparent that the central condition
for such models to work is reliant on the participants sharing common
stakes or common interests. These, in turn, would function as the
elements that would bind the community of the participants and
would give them purpose for embracing dialogue as a way toward richer
and (more) revealing insights. Thus, rather than reducing the dialogic
communities to groups with pre-defined interests or identities, I would
propose to develop (quite intentionally) a number of public spaces
where
the participants would choose to meet because the alternative would be
to remain isolated and on the margins of a society which is moving
toward
greater integration and communication. How could this be done? The
solutions
that are included in this paper do not appear difficult to implement
but
these ideas do require closer elaboration.
The suggestions are embedded in my own experiences as a teacher and
researcher. I attempted to link the ideas that I am presenting in here
to the issues of access to information and the effectiveness of
our communicative attempts. My main concern is to relate these two
aspects in ways that help to improve the “quality of opinions” in the
contexts of teaching and research. See Figure 1.
Figure 1: Innovative and collaborative teaching and research
projects
Regarding access :
It would seem important to reflect upon ways which
could enhance cooperation between the citizens in environments such as
Narizoma, or in the research groups. To this end, it may be useful to
establish grants which help to develop appropriate support structures.
The problem of access to information and IT does not only relate to
issues such as hardware but also software. A development of
sophisticated storage and retrieving mechanisms (e.g. advanced
browsers, databases, tools that help to compare and contrast in a
multitude of ways) would seem to be crucial if dialogue is not to be
reduced to conversation alone.
To appreciate the complexity of insights that organise or influence our
perceptions, it will be necessary to conduct studies which would help
develop facilities which improve our searching mechanisms. We have
become accustomed to simple search-engines and the like, but this type
of search is limited. It is limited not only by commercial interests
which determine what can be found and what remains hidden, but also in
the potential to reveal the complexity of the relationships which
organise our beliefs and expectations.
The problem of advanced browsers, databases and the like can be solved
at many levels, global (i.e. management of large amounts
of information) and local (e.g. management of field specific
information). Both types, in their own ways, may facilitate searches
that enrich
the dialogic opportunities between that which is expected and that
which they may help to reveal.
Regarding dissemination of information, complex databases should be
created which would help to disseminate more than the outcomes of
projects and their entire developmental histories. By creating
sophisticated forms, it should be possible for the databases to let
people know what groups exist, and organise new groups. It should be
also possible to
create forms that would help to redirect individuals queries and
concerns
accordingly.
Regarding the effectiveness of
sites of communication: The idea here is to put in touch
people who otherwise would see little reason to communicate with each
other.
Narizoma:
It is a project that is open to participation by
students from all educational institutions interested in creating new
society: the society of Narizoma. Narizoma has a chance to be what our
current reality failed to deliver. Will it succeed? It is
envisaged that in order to encourage informed participation, the issues
that life in Narizoma
generates should form a context for projects which students, together
with the support structures around them (students, teachers and
researchers
from their own and other schools, parents, members of the public who
may
be consulted, literature, browsing tools, etc.) will undertake.
Narizoma
is about making it possible for the participants to experience that
which
reflection and dialogue are able to reveal. It
is a challenge for everyone involved, learners, teachers, researchers,
etc.
Each will confront the beliefs that define for them what
they
are or do.
The aim is to give students the possibility to shape their
destinies in Narizoma in ways that would reflect the way they would
like
Narizoma to be. The participants can observe the effects of their
actions
and ideas in Narizoma. It is possible that the ideas from Narizoma may
be then translated to the real world as we know it. If
possible, the gap between Narizoma, the virtual world, and the real
world
should narrow down as the Narizoma begins to write itself on its
inhabitants.
The
TNN project: The project involved students creating own
broadcasting network which, due to limited facilities, took the form of
a website. The audience consisted of local students, teachers and the
community at large. As it turned out, a number of Thai universities
have also shown interest. The TNN-project is an example of an activity
which may be a part of a bigger context such as Narizoma, or an
activity in itself where students investigate issues, opinions, polls,
and put together their own productions. The preparations for the
“broadcast” were enormous. Although students
worked in groups on individual stories, there were meeting places
organised
for students to exchange points of view regarding every story that was
being produced.
In fact, the project has already finished. Some
information on it is included on URL: http://www.anialian.com/TNN_www.html
Students’ opinions on the project can be found on URL: http://www.anialian.com/Maliwan_students.html
Some viewers' opinions (not all has been translated as yet) are on URL:
http://www.anialian.com/TNN_viewers.html.
For the record, the project was enjoyed, for many reasons, not just by
students but also teachers from Khon Kaen University and the audience
(the data is still being translated). I must say that I was quite
startled with the results. Teachers said that students who
participated
in the project subsequently did better in other subjects as they
learned
to work with information in more interesting ways. The project will
continue in Khon Kaen University in Thailand. Students now want to
participate in it independently of their formal university subjects.
Interestingly other universities have expressed a wish to be shown how
to conduct such a teaching experiment.
Regarding the compulsory and
highly valued collaborative research projects: This
idea is a bit unusual but seeks to increase the contexts of
reference
that shape academic research projects. Typically, academic
research
tends to be largely self-referential and contained within
disciplinary boundaries. That is, they ask questions which
investigate the interests
of the discipline rather than of reality. The outcome is knowledge
about
the discipline while reality becomes lost. The result is that
with
the boundary of the inquiry set prior to the inquiry itself what
follows
are studies that focus on increasingly smaller objects while losing the
perspective of the big picture. But the big picture will not come in
unless the inquiry begins to evaluate the validity of the questions it
asks
in relation to systems of validation other than those which reproduce
self-contained
disciplinary interests and therefore disciplinary illusions.
What is suggested here is an environment whose design seeks to create
support for multireferential inquiries. It derives its legitimation not
only from its outcomes, but also from a multitude of administrative
sources (such as grants, a specially designed Internet site for
publication of the outcomes) which encourage and favour this type of
inquiries.
With enough lobbying, universities and schools should find themselves
isolated unless their staff participates in the activities organised
within
the framework of the compulsory and highly valued collaborative
research
projects. All publications produced in the course of the projects
should
be available free. Also, it would be interesting to try out the
possibility
for the reviewing process of publication to be integrated in the
inquiry
process itself. In Figure 2, each oval stands for examples of fields
of expertise that individuals bring with them into the specific
research
foci that they investigate or help to investigate.
Figure 2: Collaborative research projects: there is no boundary
that would limit the field of investigation. Seperate circles
exemplify
the potential and not the limits of investigations.
As Figure 2 illustrates, it would be desirable if
research groups included a broad range of expertise. This can be
achieved by specific grants distributed on the grounds that a group
would
open a discussion issue which others would be able to join, but which
would also have a specific focus in mind. What costs these grants would
cover, is up to the discussion. However, academics would be encouraged
to
devote time to such groups in order to explore questions that they
pursue at a personal level and to help others in their own
explorations. The legitimation of these groups would come from their
inclusion in a database of projects supported by the Multidisciplinary Research Council (a
possible administrative body).
The Multidisciplinary
Research Council may also be the body that seeks out and
distributes funds to enhance the working of such groups. The
legitimation of these groups could also come from research outcomes.
Projects which are able to reveal their relevance in terms that would
reflect a consideration of grounds other than the old, hackneyed
problems, would be given special recognition and prestige (“brownie
points”). These may be in recognition, in extra grants that are trusted
to result in similar form of inquiry.
In order to distinguish
the work of such groups from the more traditional research projects,
their objective should no be to find answers but to engage infinitely
diverse
forms of perception with the aim of exploring the kinds of
possibilities
(and limitations) that these may generate.
Administratively speaking, the participants in these research
projects should undergo a screening process. They must enter the
discussions
from an approved address. This is very important. It may not be
necessary
to limit the number of participants. However, in order to preserve the
group’s IP rights, it is important that people who participate in the
discussions have a past that is easily traceable. The discussion and
outcomes
of the group’ explorations should be managed by the group. They should
post
the relevant information to the central database which then should also
be a central body for consultation by those who award patents.
The quality and the quantity of the participants should balance itself
by the kinds of issues that the group raises. Also, it would be crucial
for the groups to work by distributing and evaluating shorter or longer
commentaries in ways that must recognise the contributions of others.
The grants that would be awarded by the Multidisciplinary Research
Council
do not have to be awarded only prior to the study. The participants may
ask for additional funding as the explorations develop.
It would involve a comprehensive inquiry to explore points that the
organisation of such groups may involve, and the potential impact that
they
may have on people at large. The point made in here is that what we do
is
limited by our imagination and by our understandings (as also pointed
out
by Calhoun). His article issued a challenge to both.
Conclusion
I have attempted to produce some reflections regarding
the ways of helping to enhance dialogue between various perspectives in
order to create richer and more revealing frameworks for action and
thought. As suggested in Information Technology and the
International Public Sphere, there are many possibilities that IT may
offer in this regard. And yet, it would seem that whatever promises
technology may hide, its potential to bring people together with the
aim of enhancing communication between them has been rather
under-explored. Considering my background
as a researcher in second language teaching, I have proposed a few
humble ideas in which this problem could be remedied, especially in the
context of teaching and research.
The ideas are neither exhausting the issue nor are they fully
elaborated in this short reply. However, their implementation would
require understanding and commitment from the people who decide what
counts as research and knowledge. In the context of teaching, for as
long
as teaching institutions see the possibility of making some room for
experimental
projects as activities which are demanding on both staff and resources
(as well as a waste of time), they will remain, at best, a reality only
in the world of small experiments conducted by Masters or PhD students.
To my knowledge though, most of those research studies in Australia and
the USA, are conducted within fairly traditional frameworks of
concerns. For example, in second language teaching, the objective of
how to help learners is being continuously translated as a possibility
to be achieved only once we know how learners learn language. Thus it
does not matter whether one deals with the “cognitive” camp or with the
“sociocultural”
camp. Both have the same question: How are things? The idea is that
once
we know, then we can apply knowledge. I guess, until this time arrives,
our students will just have to be patient.
The point of this reply and of Information Technology and the
International Public Sphere is that to invigorate thought we need to
invigorate dialogue. But the dialogue cannot be mistaken to be mean
developing new and better definition of the world. Neither the world
nor
the students will ever be what our definitions say that they are.
Dialogue therefore would imply creating conditions which would allow
all participants to engage. Otherwise, the effectiveness of one voice
is traded for the silence
of another.
In the context of teaching thus, the concept of dialogue would imply
conditions which would enable students to explore perspectives,
perceptions and points of view in a way that would help them to compare
and contrast the revealing potential that they may have to the specific
demands that students experience. In this way, the teaching conditions
do not supply questions or answers. Rather, the objective is for
students to explore understandings and for the teaching conditions to
make this possible.
The objectives of research in education should not differ much from
those directing research in other areas. Studies which look for answers
rather than potential insights may be motivated more by practices which
have least to do with research. One source of such motivation are
companies which are more than ready to supply whatever (often myopic)
solutions the studies may propose.
It would seem though that room should be made for studies which explore
the very questions that they ask. As it is often said (also in Calhoun
1995, e.g. pp. 35, 91), by considering the historical contexts of our
question, we can learn to understand what is it that we are actually
looking for.
Thus rather than hurry in order to produce more answers, we may need to
turn our attention to the questions that we ask. By opening up to
possibilities which our assumptions about reality exclude, we do not
waste time. We gain time. The time that we lost while hoping that
technological revolution would solve our educational problems is
already an indication that we have been betting on the wrong horse.
To expect answers to come from technology is to forget that
technological solutions are the product of a technological revolution.
Thanks to technological advances, we may do things faster or slower,
bigger or smaller, but these advances do not change our perceptions of
what we do and who we are. On the other hand, intellectual shifts
change our perspective on these very perceptions. New perspectives
emerge only when old foundational truths are challenged and when new
questions are asked.
But new perspectives are not solutions to problems. They are far more
important. They shift the perspective on the problems themselves by
opening up ways for asking questions that are not only new and
different but which, most of all, are more meaningful to us. The
meaning of these perspectives does not come to us from old and worn out
ideologies such as that of technology being our next savior. Instead,
their meaning
comes to us from the diversity of the perspectives that they help us
consider, consult and connect. Their meaning therefore comes to us
from our ability to include more and hence to understand more.
Intellectual
revolutions are harder to spot since their impact on our lives is less
immediate.
Intellectual breakthroughs require, on our part, the intellectual
capacity to recognise, appreciate and, most of all, work with their
potential and strengths. Intellectual revolutions therefore do not lend
themselves to immediate use as do technological breakthroughs.
Intellectual revolutions require an active engagement on our part to
reflect upon what we do or what we are. But it is hard to think
(Bourdieu talks about thinking as subversion, Bourdieu on Television,
1996). It is easier to buy a faster car or a faster computer
chip.
A faster car, a faster computer chip or the so-called educational
software do not give us only new technology. They also give us the
impression that we are participating in progress. They give us the
illusion that we are right in the midst of it. If we were to learn
anything from the computer technology that has currently grown in
educational institutions to be an issue that is bigger than the problem
of education itself, we can learn from Michael Faraday , one of the
contributors to this change.
Our lesson would be that it is not technology that marks advances in
human civilisation but rather our capacity to formulate questions that
allow us to consider more rather than less. Learning is about pushing
the boundaries. The implication of this statement would be seen as
revolutionary in the current Western systems of education even though
it seemed a straightforward conclusion to Faraday and many before him
including Socrates. Socrates was sentenced to death exactly because
the regime of his contemporary Athens did not welcome a mind that
sought
to explore and question. Reinforcement is a tool that closes questions.
On the other hand, exploration and challenge are the tools of learning.
Dialogue was the form that Socrates was said to use to ensure that his
ideas were never left without challenge.
Copyright Ania Lian (7th May, 2003)
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