dissertation proposal by temi rose 2/20/02
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: THE PROBLEM STATEMENT
A National Perspective
Art in Academia: Valuing Aesthetic Cognition
Technology in Education: Ethical Considerations
Art and ritual.
Learning, Change and Democracy
Rationale for this Study
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction: Weaving a Web
Art in Schools: Theory
Justice, Responsibility and Care
Conversational Reality
Motivation and Learning
Adult Education
Action Research: Methodology and Principles
Art in Schools: Practice
Technology in Schools
Conclusion: Seeking an Articulation
CHAPTER III: METHOD
The Site
The Participants
Data Sources
Procedure
Researcher's Role
Data Analysis
APPENDIX I - THE STATE GUIDELINES FOR TECHNOLOGICAL
EDUCATION
APPENDIX II - THE STATE GUIDELINES FOR ART EDUCATION
APPENDIX III – LETTER FROM RESEARCHER TO THE CAMPUS
LEADERSHIP COMMITTEE
APPENDIX IV– FROM THE FINE ARTS ACADEMY COORDINATOR:
E-MAIL INITIATING CONTACT WITH RESEARCH COMMUNITY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACTION RESEARCH: METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPLES
Action research and the ethical system underlying participatory democracy developed
from the theories of social justice described and promoted by enlightenment
scholars as early as the 17th century. Spinoza (1883) can be considered the
first enlightenment scholar although, in the realm of educational discourse
and historical analysis, Kant (1965) is usually credited with the origins of
a philosophy of the ethical society. Spinoza wrote and lived for religious freedom.
The world of 17th century Europe was one filled with religious warfare and violence
for the sake of religious doctrine. Spinoza asserted that god and nature are
one and that all different religions can co-exist. In a sense, this is the first
western European assertion of pluralism. Kant is credited with the origin of
an intellectual, empirical, logical, and epistemologically oriented argument
for the fundamental validity of ethical behavior. The task Kant set himself
was to explain how some people might feel a moral imperative when logic leads
to the unmistakable conclusion that acting exclusively in one’s self-interest
is the way to the good life. Kant’s critique of reason is that it is only
able to come to the conclusion of selfishness. And yet many of us feel the drive
to work cooperatively and for the good of the group; Kant believed that this
was a different sort of logic that did not work the same way as the logic that
leads to what we now call a utilitarian view.
Recalling the discussion concerning Gilligan’s assertion that there are two moral orders, we can see that this concept goes back at least as far as Kant. I would assert that what Gilligan called the justice orientation is what Kant was describing as pure reason. And that what Gilligan called the care orientation is the first articulation of an internally consistent conceptual basis for exploring the dynamic structures of Kant's concept of the moral imperative. Further, the discussion of Ruddick’s assertion that mothering and the ethic of care could be the source for an articulation of values that would further large scale peace efforts, dovetails with the earlier work of enlightenment scholars to define and structure the ethical society.
Intellectuals in twentieth century Europe were faced once again with what seemed to be interminable warfare. Both world wars presented intellectuals with challenges to cherished perspectives. Hannah Arendt, Ernst Cassirer, and Kurt Lewin, three European intellectuals who lived through World War II posed the particular challenges that are relevant to my work. These thinkers were all concerned with explaining the social and psychological damage perpetrated on society through the use of technologies such as gas chambers and atomic bombs. They each contributed work that described, explained or ameliorated the confusion and psychological devastation perpetrated on society through the misuse communications technology: the media manipulation of Nazi and Stalinist propaganda and censorship. All of them wrote on the potentials and pitfalls in the re-organization of social groups through the manipulation of linguistic-based meanings. They each made significant contributions to our understanding of the metaphoric or symbolic nature of meaning and meaning making.
This section on action research will begin by examining ideas of Hannah Arendt, Ernst Cassirer, and Kurt Lewin as they affect action research principles and methodology. The section will conclude with a subsection describing some of the ideas of Oscar Mink and Ronald Lippitt as they apply to group knowledge.
Thinking
The ideas of Hannah Arendt (1954, 1964) were formative in my education as a
young adult. The application of her theories has been foundational in my work
as an educator. I adopted the concept, from On Revolution (1963), that lasting
social change emerges out of practical application and not from inspiration,
guidelines or law. I have experimented with the concept, from The Life of the
Mind: Thinking (1978), that thinking is an act inherently ethical when it is
inherently non-utilitarian.
Arendt’s idea of thought is close to Vygotsky’s conceptualization. Vygotsky (1962) maintained that thinking is conceptual thought capable of handling both analysis and synthesis of, within, or among a variety of concepts. Other activities often thought of as thinking, for instance generalization, and classification, belong to earlier stages of cognition. Arendt’s conception is that thinking is a pure exercise, during which the mind follows its pursuits, without the necessity of solving any practical problem; thereafter, when called upon to solve particular problems, the mind can quickly extrapolate relevant concepts and apply them to the problem at hand. Arendt’s contention was that this type of thinking is inherently ethical and stood in contrast to the "banality of evil" which consisted of a type of rule abiding regardless of the large context in which those rules placed the participant. Arendt coined the term the banality of evil in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1977) to describe the supreme ordinariness of the way the Nazi Eichmann thought about his duties and what he had done. He had been told what to do and he did it. Perfectly simple. Arendt’s contention was that thinking creates complexity, what we might call a relativity, and this complexity makes it impossible to take part in the banality of evil. And, the first point mentioned, takes us back to the ideas of Dewey and Tarrant, that democracy is a lived experience.
Arendt is considered a neo-Kantian. Her approach to political science was an
unreserved approval of plurality and multi-culturalism. For me, she is the most
down to earth philosopher whose appreciation of the relationship between concrete,
daily life and historicity is unsurpassed by any other writer. Arendt positioned
herself firmly against totalitarianism in all its forms. Her thought and theories
support and illuminate attempts at social change to preserve and promote democracy,
and individuality.
The next subsection in this section on action research will describe the theoretical
perspective of another neo-Kantian, Ernst Cassirer and its applicability to
conversational analysis and interpretation.
Symbol Systems
Cassirer (1955a,b,c,d), was also a neo-Kantian. He began his intellectual pursuits
examining the history of science but soon came to believe that symbol systems
underlay all historical understanding. He is credited with originating a philosophy
of symbolic forms. Cassirer was a refugee from Nazi Germany. He taught briefly
at Oxford and then became a Swedish citizen. Cassirer came to the United States
to teach at Yale in 1941. He taught at Columbia and at UCLA before he died in
1945. It was Cassirer’s contention that all meaning is made on a foundation
of symbols. This developed from Kant’s description of the formal organization
of mental constructs. Later research (Lakoff, 1980) has explored the metaphoric
and allegorical nature of meaning making.
The salient point for this study was the active presence in Cassirer’s work of symbolic systems in cognition. Symbol systems underlie operant schema through which the conversations took place. In order to analyze the conversations with a view to organizational change, my attempt was to decipher the fundaments of the symbol system used by the participants. In the midst of the sturm und drang of communicating in groups for organizational change, sorting out where people are coming from can be aided not only by understanding the type of logical schema they, but by attempting to interpret the symbolic bases of their mental representations. Often the symbolic basis of a someone’s orientation is related to, or even determined by, the pedagogy and epistemology that they teach. Often there is an affinity between how people like to organize their minds and the subject area that they choose as their concentration. This is reminiscent of Gardner’s and Hirst's views discussed in the section on art education theory. Symbols are harder to alter than narratives. When participants hold personal narratives that are thwarting their full participation in the change effort, these narratives are fairly accessible to the change agent through conversation (Gersie 1990, 1997). However, if a participant’s schema derive from symbolic representations inimical to the proposed change, it is extremely difficult for the change agent to affect change solely through conversation. This type of reasoning will figure in the data analysis of this study.
The next subsection in the section on action research will discuss the ideas of Kurt Lewin, the founding father of action research.
Social Organization
Kurt Lewin is credited as the founder of action research. Lewin (1935, 1936,
1948, 1951), like Arendt and Cassirer, was a refugee from Nazi Germany who came
to live, work, and teach in the United States. Lewin introduced the idea that
researchers not only have the potential to influence the events that they are
studying, but the moral imperative to do so in those cases when our knowledge
can improve the lives and circumstances of participants. (Nussbaum 1998) Lewin’s
perspective was that individuals experience their situations as filled with
forces acting on them. The aim of an action researcher is to try and understand
the complexity of forces acting on individuals in order to facilitate social
realities beneficial to both the group and the individuals. Lewin did not use
the terms social ecology or systems thinking, but his methodology required a
similar examination of intersecting, overlapping, and inter-relating systems.
With Lewin as its philosophical father, action research has always maintained
a socio-political agenda of increasing social harmony and disabusing authoritarianism.
However, action research does not necessarily share critical pedagogy’s
purposes of teacher empowerment through the illumination of oppression described
in terms of neo-Marxist economics. The critical perspective is that radical
intellectual conversation can free the minds of oppressed people so that they
may come to view their situation as oppression and then take action to ameliorate
the situation.
Although there are aspects to the theoretical stance of critical pedagogy,
particularly in the work of Freire (1973, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1998) and Apple
(1979, 1982), that are illuminating and inspirational, because of its essentially
polarized and politicized methodology, it was not suitable for the kind of action
research I wished to pursue. I did not interpret action research as revolutionary
in an aggressive sense. I interpreted action research as a call to participate
as an engaged individual with a supra-personal agenda of contributing to democratic
process. The approach will be more fully described and explored in the results
chapter.
The emphasis in action research is on process: when an action researcher is
asked to enter an environment, it is for the purpose of social change. However,
an action researcher is not the same as a labor organizer. An action researcher,
working with Lewinian constructs is attempting to clarify and ameliorate social
inequities through the participation in and analysis of social praxis in the
environment.
The last subsection in this overview of action research methodology and principles
provides a brief discussion of groups generating knowledge and change in organizations.
Group Knowledge
Oscar Mink and Ronald Lippitt have contributed greatly to our understanding
of many aspects of organizational development, this section will consider only
one of these, how groups learn.
Mink (1970, 1979, 1993a,b,c, 1994) provided inspiration and guidance for the
coherence of this action research study. Mink’s work in organizational
change, the learning organization, and knowledge management, all reinforce the
concept that personal development works synergistically in groups. Mink’s
concept was that change in organizations relies upon the change agent’s
ability to identify and support individuals in the organization. The support
must simultaneously manifest in the form of an attitude of acceptance toward
individuals as people and in concrete, pragmatic efforts to accomplish group-defined
goals.
Group synergy emerges, according to Mink, when intersecting human systems are
able to support each other within the context of the larger organization. For
individuals to become self-organizing in this manner, they must feel accepted
and they must not be too severely thwarted by circumstances. As far as I know,
it is impossible for human systems to achieve continuous support or for change
agents to completely remove the barriers thwarting emergence. But in my experience,
and in this study, there were many examples of these two factors successfully
supporting technology integration.
Lippitt (1978, 1982) has collaborated with both Mink and Lewin. One of Lippitt’s
most original contributions was in the creation of the T-group model. T-groups
are training groups, small groups of people who come together in an organization
in order to work with the change agents. The T-group members, once they have
been through the process, facilitate change throughout the organization. T-groups
are not simply seminars. Lippitt’s concept of the T-group is of a group
that actively participates in creating the change model. Through conversation
and experience, the T-groups with the guidance of the external consultant, co-create
solutions. According to Lippitt, T-groups act as organizational microcosms.
Once the T-group members have understood the process and made significant meaning
together, the rest of the organization is inevitably changed. There is a notable
similarity between the premise underlying this technique and the systems theory
premise of sensitivity to initial conditions. The small group is the butterfly
whose actions create new initial conditions. The new knowledge generated in
the T-group acts as a strange attractor creating a new focal point around which
organizational patterns emerge. The T-group technique was used successfully
in labor negotiations and is credited with initiating the organizational change
movement. This action research study used a form of T-group methodology. There
was a small group of active participants. These few people worked together to
change their ideas and their practice. Their actions effected change in other
parts of the school.
Summary: Self-organizing Systems
In his article, Action Research and Social Movement: a Challenge for Policy
Research (1993), Stephen Kemmis described action research as a form of social
action creating new social practices by initiating discussion and shared experiences.
According to Kemmis, the aims of action research is to help people to understand
themselves as agents of social change by supporting activities in which they
can experience their agency. The theories discussed in this section have ranged
from historical interpretations of democratic, social action to the symbolic
organization of knowledge. In between were the theories concerning group action
and the way groups can learn and collaborate for the purpose of organizational
and personal learning and self-actualization. All the theories support the idea
that people have within themselves the ability to create new patterns and options.
The historical thrust of the work covered in this section is towards greater
autonomy and a coordination of principles of self-actualization and social responsibility.
The last two sections of this literature review are concerned with the application of art and technology into educational environments. The final section will consider research and theories on the integration of technology in schools. The first section will cover some recent research on the practicalities influencing how art education occurs in schools. next