Pedagogies of Uncertainty: Thoughts on Dialogic Education

Here is an outline of the most recent presentation I gave.  It should be fairly cohesive, but is obviously missing elaboration and explanation. However, it contains the current research that I have done for my Fulbright Project. 
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What fundamental problems do I see in educating students to become critical, responsible, and active members of the global/multicultural polis?

What is the current empirical research on moral and political psychology? 

How can dialogue and debate help educators face these new challenges?

Is democratic, dialogic and transformative learning possible in super-diverse, diverse, and even non-diverse classrooms (outside of classrooms)?

What are the different modalities, theories, and examples of dialogic education?

Of course, I am in the middle of this process. I am uncertain about the realities of how students can talk and reason with each other; but, it is this uncertainty that creates a space of possibilities. 

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Imagine a dispute between a scientist and a creationist over these two principles:

1. Inference to the best explanation on the basis of the fossil and physical record is the only method for knowing about the distant past.

2. Consultation of the Holy Book is the best method for knowing about the distant past.

(Do you think this clash can be resolved?) (From Lynch).

According to Michael Lynch, “epistemic principles gives us our standards of rationality.” (p. 57). In other words, in order to resolve differences of opinions (even about scientific evidence), there must be a decision about values (who someone or a community values as how to decide what paradigm to use in order to see the world). If those fundamental epistemic principles are not prima facie compatible, how do you resolve this in a multicultural society? Moreover, using traditional, segregated units of study may not work - as Lynch skeptically notes:

"This darker thought is that changing people’s minds—or changing our own minds—if the change concerns a very fundamental principle, can never be a rational process. Manipulation, conversion, power is all there really is. There is no such thing as rational persuasion when it comes to first principles." (Lynch 2016).

First:  What is changing within our societies especially as it has an impact on our educational spaces/ systems: 

Modernized Societies are moving toward:  Super- Diversity: the absence of any majority within a cultural/social space. 

Along with the "Immigration/ Refugee Crisis" this creates new challenges:

Haidt (2016) worries that incoming immigration challenges to a more normalized (or homogenous culture) can be a “normalization threat” especially in liberal/cosmopolitan countries that preach tolerance.

His analysis actually turns the argument: multicultural education does not foster more toleration through interaction; instead, it pushes an “authoritarian button” psychologically in people who fear a fundamental moral threat to their way of life.

Destabilization of Rationality of values in relation to target rationality (Weber) not only multiplicity and variability of frameworks for construction of meaning, but also diminishing of this frameworks for meaning by objective rationality and functionality (protocols and administration) (Cf. Martha Nussbaum) 

Information Coordination Problem:

The internet, social media, and virtual media are increasing the polarization and decline of verification and trust in sources (Lynch, 2016). About two-thirds of American adults are getting “at least some of their news on social media” with two-in-ten doing so often, according to a Pew Research Center survey. About 67% of American adults somewhat rely on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat for news, the survey showed, compared with 62% in 2016. (REUTERS September 8, 2017)

A great example of this ICP:  Borges Library of Babel:
https://libraryofbabel.info
There is no “source” outside of the library; no “god’s eye view”.
Who fact-checks the fact-checkers?

In other words - "truth" or verification has always been a philosophical and sociological problem, but today's informational climate has really destabilized the ability to even agree upon standards of rationality - let alone what is truth.  So...

Is this the fundamental issue of a functioning democracy? Let's think about what it even means to worry about a "functioning democracy"...

Idealization of Democracy: informed populace deliberates about the common good and carefully selects leaders who carry out their preference. Right? 
John Mueller: Democracy is really about the “freedom to complain” (Pinker, 2018, p.205; see Karl Popper). 
Then a Democracy, is fundamentally about a functioning space of discourse (reasons), freedom of expression, dialogue and deliberation. 

“Better education today makes a country more democratic and peaceful tomorrow...more education makes citizens trust their fellow citizens” Education, in fact, can "liberalize" a population, and can account for the generational effect where you become more conservative with age. 
(Pinker, p. 235). 

Flynn Effect: increase of IQ over time (people are getting smarter): not the general intelligence, most affected by inheritance, but the subsets of intelligence are rising at differing degrees. The analytic mindset has risen the most - teachers are helping in the aspects of “understanding” and reasoning. A countries average IQ could predict its GDP growth. (Pinker, 240 - 246).

So why is there more polarization and what many worry as a rise in Nationalism and a distrust in globalized forms of Knowledge, like Science (e.g. belief in Climate Change?).

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz - Used Google Meta-data to measure rise of prejudice by mapping searches for racists and sexists terms and jokes. It is declining except for older, rural, white, uneducated men.

Lack of Education was the best predictor for those who voted for Trump - demographic maps also aligned with Stephens-Davidowitz’s findings (339).

But: Most consistent predictor of Trump support was pessimism (Pinker, 340).

Research in examples of Expressive Rationality: Identity protective cognition, “blue lies”, e.g. Belief in evolution without understanding evolution - why would that matter - we trust experts?

Professing belief is an affirmation of loyalty to a political group; so what predicts the denial of climate change is not scientific literacy but political ideology (Shtulman, Pinker, 2018).

Role of motivated reasoning: forms of confirmation bias, political bias, and moral intuition, bias bias. (See Kahan, Peters, 2013) “The most depressing discovery about the brain ever.” =

Political bias makes us stupid...

So: 

Epistemological standards of common sense:  

Improve those features of accurate predictors or forecasters; those with “Big Ideas” or rigid ideological frameworks did the worst; 

the best had features of : “openness to experience” “need for cognition” “Integrative complexity” “anti-implusive” Humble about particular beliefs, in short, active open-mindedness” ; belief in wisdom of the crowds (peer-review); belief in chance and contingency:  (Tetlock & Gardner 2015; Baron 1993; Pinker 2018).

How to improve standards of reasoning: 
Affective Tipping point ( within a space of reasons): Rational “peer pressure”
Debiasing strategies
Creation of good rules of discourse
Disassociate reasoning from identities (Debate); adversarial collaboration; true decision making groups; depoliticized public discourse. (Pinker 2018)
Other kind of diversity that really matters: ideological (Haidt, et al.)
Importance of Philosophical “Thinness”: no layers of philosophical argumentation that rest on deep metaphysical or (maybe epistemological ) convictions. (Pinker, 418, Berlin 2013) (ex. How the Universal Declaration of Rights were created - all lists were very similar and no one discussed or debated the moral, ideological, or religious base for these rights). 
Engage in Dialogue!!

So in the Classroom:  We need dialogue:  

Dialogue Requires Diversity: A plurality of social perspectives:
1. Diversity protects liberty and prevents the “majority view” - or the tyranny of the majority; individuals must justify appeals to a larger sense of justice.
2. Diversity contributes to wider social knowledge (and critiques dominate norms and beliefs.
3. Diversity contributes to individual “enlightenment” - opens the possibilities of what your life could be like - it opens your experiences to the possible. (Parker, 2003)

Epistemic Privilege: Members (insiders) have an unparalleled vantage point from
which to understand and articulate the experience of oppression.
Epistemic or Methodological Humility: Those is dialogue are uncertain (in some way) about the completeness of their knowledge; therefore, one can learn from the other (those without being uncritical).

Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Freire, P (1970)

1. Anti-“banking” system of education.  So “student-centered,” “transformative,” and “dialogic”
2. Teachers and students must engage in dialogue and communication to transform knowledge and reality for the true liberation of students.  “Only through communication can life hold meaning” (50). 
3. “Populist manifestations perhaps best exemplify this type of behavior by the oppressed, who, by identifying with charismatic leaders, come to feel that they themselves are active and effective” (51).
4. “Dialogue cannot exist without humility…Faith in people is an a priori requirement for dialogue; the “dialogical [person]” believes in others…true dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking…(63-65). 
5. Content/curriculum of the dialogue must be created through the needs and baseline of the students to create contract “contradictions” or problems that requires Action. This contradictions, limits, are the “themes” of the long term program. 
6. Paradigm:  Existentialist philosophy of Sarte and Jaspers, and of course, Marx.

 Karl Jaspers’ limit situations  - There are limits to the current rational thinking of one’s finite position (perspective); It is the task of psychological intervention, Jaspers thus argued, to guide human existence beyond the restricted antinomies around which it stabilizes itself, and to allow it decisively to confront the more authentic possibilities, of subjective and objective life, which it effaces through its normal rational dispositions and attitudes.” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/jaspers/)

Pedagogy of Discomfort: Boler and Zembylas 2003

Megan Boler (1999) introduced the pedagogy of discomfort in her book Feeling Power: Education and Emotions. During the Persian Gulf War, students “coped” by disengaging with media coverage, thus denying the war and not talking about it, which Boler attributed to feelings of powerlessness and numbness. Boler revealed that without informed options for alternatives, numbness may be the inadvertent effect of cultural illiteracy with respect to translating emotions into knowledge and action. 

Witnessing, by contrast, is a dynamic process requiring one to move across self-imposed and societal barriers, explore both sides of the binary, and embrace their contradictions. In this way, judgement is suspended as any one side of the binary is not necessarily viewed as “better” than the other. Thus, by being able to “bear witness” to ambiguities, contradictions, and internal struggles associated with social injustices, and by articulating the causes of and possible alternatives for them, one might achieve action empathy. Boler’s pedagogy of discomfort calls not only for inquiry, but also for action— action that is catalysed as a result of learning to bear witness. (Bheekie, et al, 2015). 

Transformative Learning: 

Transformative learning is defined as learning that develops frames of reference in order for an individual to become more inclusive, open, and emotionally able to change, and that involves awareness of situations and willingness to develop new or revised courses of action (Mezirow, 1997). Kegan (1980) used a constructive-developmental approach to differentiate between informative and transformative learning. He posited that informative learning brings changes in what we know about or add to an existing frame of reference, whereas transformative learning changes how we know or reconstruct the frame of reference (Kegan, 2009). 

Simulations, Dialogue, Debiasing, Debate: 

“BaFa Fa” 
Implicit Association Test

Elements regarding TOK Curriculum about the ways of knowing

Using Formal Debate for "reversibility" 
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The Power of Uncertainty: 

Samin Amin has captured this sentiment in his comment: “Neither modernity nor democracy has reached the end of its potential development. That is why I prefer the term ‘democratization,’ which stresses the dynamic aspect of a still-unfinished process, to the term ‘democracy,’ which reinforces the illusion that we can give a definitive formula for it.” (June 2001).

“The condition for pedagogy becoming an ethical experience inheres in an affective dimension of the teacher-student relationship that cannot be translated into a stable object of discursive knowledge” Sam Sellar (2009).

This search for uncertainty works against our “cruel” (see Berlant 2011) desires to find silver linings, which can obstruct political action by transforming the unacceptable into the ostensibly inevitable and immutable. Instead, it seeks to refigure uncertainty as potentiality, as the virtual scaffolding with which we imagine and materialize alternative and more egalitarian institutions of learning and flourishing. Harp-Rushing, Kyle. "Teaching Uncertainty: An Introduction." Teaching Tools, Cultural Anthropology website, February 28, 2017.

Through the process of dialogue and democratic methods, teachers and students can engage in an active and transformative learning experience that breaks the cycle of apathy, determinism, fatalism, discrimination, and otherness. Learning outcomes are never certain.

Boler, M. (Ed.). (1999). Feeling power. Emotions and education. New York. Routledge.

Duarte, J.L., Crawford, J.T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L. and Tetlock, P.E. (2015) ‘Political diversity will improve social psychological science’, Behavioral and
Brain Sciences, 38. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X14000430.
Freire, Paulo (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Random House; Penguin.
Lynch, Michael (2016). The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data. New York: Liverlight Publishing.
Lynch, Michael (2016) After the Spade Turns: Disagreement, First Principles and Epistemic Constractariansim. International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 6 (2016) 248-259.
Lynch, M.P. Arrogance, Truth, and Public Discourse (Epistemic arrogance): (Lynch, forthcoming, 2018)
Kymlicka, Will (2002) Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Parker, W.C. (2003). Teaching democracy: Unity and diversity in public life. New York: Teachers College Press.
Pinker, Steven (2018), Enlightenment Now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress. Random House; Penguin. Sellar (2009) The responsible uncertainty of pedagogy, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 30:3, 347-360.