Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: January 30, 2003
Latest Update: January 30, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Pedagogy and Equality of Access to Jobs and Knowledge

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, January 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay is based on Susan and jeanne talk about teaching. Please read that file. The following discussion questions are based on that file and related comments.

The concept of transactions. One of the underlying concepts that Susan and I are discussing is that of a transaction, that is, an exchange that occurs between at least two people, where they come to an illocutionary understanding about a given idea or topic. On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, I met with the students from Sociology of Reality for the first time. We didn't meet in a group, or at any specific time. They simply dropped by my office as they could. This meant that I usually had between 3 and 5 students. With the site available to be on my desk computer, and with such small numbers I was able to explain the reorganization of the site, and explain the priniciples on which our Sociology of Reality class would work.

First of all, the site is available to provide you with choice, so that you can study the issues that interest you in the context of our shared lived experience. It's our actual lived experience that I'm calling "reality." So "reality" is a little different for each of us, but the issues of peace and social justice override all those individual realities, and we need to examine the conceptual links between the theory we study and our lived experiences.

On Wednesday, I did most of the talking, fast, trying to cover the changes to the site and the concept of grading by transactions. Each of the students who participated in this induction to our Spring course received an A for the transaction. That's what I mean by a transaction. I'm grading the interaction or transaction itself, regardless of who's talking. We are learning. Frankly I often learn as much from these intense transactions as you do. Later today I'll put up my first records of learning sheet. Those of you who didn't get a chance to share with us on Wednesday, come next Thursday, when Pat and I will be here from 12 to 7. (Don't forget I'm often late. I'll try not to be.)

There is no way I can tell any of you how many A transactions will add up to an A in the course. Nor should I be able to. That's up to your imagination and work. If you understood how to get an A on an essay, you still wouldn't know precisely what or how much you had to include in that essay to get an A. In our case, we do not have a preconceived idea of what your knowledge production should be. That's a piece of what you need to tell us. Look at the writing examples. Notice how different they are in style and length and depth. I will continue to provide you with samples. That's called transparency.

Transparency means that instead of my pronouncing judgment on your work with no clue as to why, I try to be as specific as I can about what the differences are for me in grading. And I give you access to that. Thus, you can get real and specific answers to how you should edit a piece of work that I thought rated a C. My grades don't come from magic. I have set details in mind I look for. Coherence, so I can understand what you're trying to say. Some indication of why the topic appeals to you. Conceptual linking of the topic to concepts and theories we have studied and which have been identified for you.

Now at the end of the day Wednesday, I had asked all those students to send me an e-mail detailing what we had done in the transaction, so that we would both remember, not that I gave them an A, but what we had actually talked about. That goes into my learning records. And you can imagine that I would like to see the words tranasaction and transparency in those e-mails. That means that I can then count on using those terms with an assurance that my students understand.

Why does all this matter? Because when you have finished school, if you are like those who have preceded you in the last decades, you will complain that we should have taught you more writing. I don't believe that means you would like more tests or more term papers. In fact, I don't believe those give you adequate practice in writing. We hope that this process will. By writing brief messages to remind us of an oral transaction, you get practice in writing brief messages. And practice is what makes writing comfortable for us. By choosing topics to discuss orally or write in e-mails, you are getting practice in writing longer messages, but messages of your choice where you have the best opportunity to show off what you actually know. I think those may be good measures of your future comfort with writing in the real world, where no one I know ever asked me to write a term paper. As a matter of fact, if you try to write a term paper in the real world, most people, including your supervisor, won't read it. Clue?

Discussion Questions

1. In Susan and jeanne talk about teaching jeanne talks about the importance of the environment created in the process of teaching. Describe that environment.

   Consider how jeanne thinks we should treat each other. Consider whether jeanne implies that we should all come to a consensus and agree on something. Consider the emotional impact of some social issue discussions.

2. How do you feel about the environment that jeanne and Susan are trying to create?

   Is there anything scary about it? Consider this in terms of back stage and front stage (Erving Goffman's Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Do our classrooms feel more like back stage or front stage?

   If we invite you into our backstage, how could that be scary?

   Consider that most people interact in front stage with strangers. When students and teachers first meet they are strangers. In the front stage we all know what the norms are. Backstage is private, and the norms are not clear. How do you generally feel when you aren't sure what the norms are?

3. If you can imagine the backstage as scary, what about the front stage, the public space, in which norms are often bureaucratically set?

   Consider here that bureaucratic norms create structural order and make large institutions run smoothly. But since we all have different lived experiences, some of us, sometimes, don't fit. Consider the harm in telling night students that the finanancial aid office is only open from 9 t0 5 when they work from 8:30 to 5:30. How do you feel about the college president who said, "Well, if there jobs interfere with school atendance, let them change jobs."?

   Consider that tests are designed to choose material from what you should have learned at random. What happens if you forgot that piece, but you really studied and know the material? Does that have to do with lived experience?

4. Refer to Conceptually Linking Political Philosophy and Law. How do "right" and "wrong" fit into this transaction in an environment of trusted and respected learning?

   Consider that we do not ask you to "agree" with others, but to make a good faith attempt to understand the position that others are taking. Does that take into account the differences in our lived experiences? Does such an illocutionary process help us to move beyond attempts to dominate or control others' thinking?

5. How does our sharing our conversations on teaching with you serve to create "transparency?"

   Consider that If I simply return a paper to you, with a grade, and no specific instructions on how you could make that grade better, then I have judged your learning achievement basically without your input. Whereas, if I tell you what I am looking for, and if we talk about that enough that we both come at least to understand the basis for my grading, then you can tell before you turn your grade in what grade you will probably get, and you can engage in a reasoned argument with me if I disappoint you.

6. Why do you suppose it takes considerable dialog to make the environmental system we're trying for work?

   Consider that the approach is very different from the traditional approach. Consider that the language we use in school and in academia is jargon, full of rules, and that we are trying to get deeper into learning, where the prejudices of the bureaucratic system can be dropped.

7. How does "trust" play a role in all this?

   Refer to Mac's comments on pedagogy:

8. Do Mac's comments show "trust?" Do jeanne's and Susan's comments show "trust?" Do you think we need to "trust" to make this pedagogical system work?