Bridge building: outcomes and the humanities.

Ian Saunders

“A word is a bridge thrown between myself and

another. If one end of the bridge depends on me, then

the other depends on my addressee. A word is a

territory shared by both addresser and addressee, by the

speaker and his interlocutor”

Voloshinov and Bakhtin, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language

• Habermas: “the paradigm of the knowledge of

objects” replaced by “the paradigm of mutual

understanding between subjects capable of speech and

action”

• Habermas: “the paradigm of the knowledge of

objects” replaced by “the paradigm of mutual

understanding between subjects capable of speech and

action”

• Castells: “the culture of the global network society”

enables “communication between cultures on the basis,

not necessarily of shared values, but of sharing the

value of communication”

“… my discovering my own identity doesn’t mean that

I work it out in isolation, but that I negotiate it through

dialogue, partly overt, partly internal, with others. This

is why the development of an ideal of inwardly

generated identity gives a new importance to

recognition. My own identity crucially depends on my

dialogical relations with others.”

Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition”

• if meaning-making dialogic

• if “truth claims” depend on a dialogic context

• and if personal identity built in dialogic exchange

then:

the tasks most likely to be underwritten by an effort to

construct truth, and strengthened by a sense of personal

engagement, are those worked out in a dialogic setting.

Unpacking the “press kit”

(i) Certification

(ii) Practical outcome: competence in a communication

form

(iii) Theoretical outcome: understanding different

implications of linear and heterogeneous form

(iv) Dialogic setting; leads to…

(v) “Outcomes awareness”: being able to articulate—

tell someone—what has been learnt.

Loss of content/ “dumbing down” concern can be recast by recognising that:

• All knowledge an activity (“doing things with words”): [subject—verb+object]

• Therefore misleading to separate out one aspect (the verbs), leaving “content” behind.

Rather:

• if knowledge always actively produced

• if always within dialogic settings

• then, focus on outcomes can help make that activity and context visible.

Animals to be divided as follows:

(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame,

(d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs,

(h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied,

Animals to be divided as follows:

(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame,

(d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs,

(h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied,

(j) innumerable,

Animals to be divided as follows:

(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame,

(d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs,

(h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied,

(j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair

brush,

Animals to be divided as follows:

(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame,

(d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs,

(h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied,

(j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair

brush, (l) et cetera,

Animals to be divided as follows:

(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame,

(d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs,

(h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied,

(j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair

brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water

pitcher,

Animals to be divided as follows:

(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame,

(d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs,

(h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied,

(j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair

brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water

pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

Borges, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins”

Wittgenstein: “If I tell someone ‘Stand roughly here’…

May not this work perfectly?”

[1] Every course, in every discipline, ought to articulate outcomes, but

(i) No compelling reason that all outcome statements ought to look the same

(ii) The fact that we ought to align curriculum, assessment and outcomes does not mandate a single process-template to do this.

[2] Three cheers for declarative knowledge…

but remembering, all such knowledge based on activity

“Every concrete act of understanding is active, it assimilates what is to be understood into its own conceptual system filled with specific objects and emotional expressions, and is indissolubly merged with the response, with a motivated agreement or disagreement.”

Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination

“King Lear is a typical tragic hero: great but flawed.” Discuss.

“Given the range of texts studied in this course, to what extent, and in what ways, might Lear be typical of the tragic hero?”

“Evaluate an account of the tragic hero studied by comparing it to the account you are able to generate through reading the set plays, and apply that to a reading of Lear.”

“King Lear is a typical tragic hero: great but flawed.” Discuss.

“Given the range of texts studied in this course, to what extent, and in what ways, might Lear be typical of the tragic hero?”

“Evaluate an account of the tragic hero studied by comparing it to the account you are able to generate through reading the set plays, and apply that to a reading of Lear.”

“King Lear is a typical tragic hero: great but flawed.” Discuss.

“Given the range of texts (primary and secondary) studied in this course, to what extent, and in what ways, might Lear be typical of the tragic hero?”

“Evaluate an account of the tragic hero studied by comparing it to the account you are able to generate through reading the set plays, and apply that to a reading of Lear.”

[3] Functional knowledge (applied knowledge, knowing how rather than knowing that) not just the business of the “professions”, but is central to the humanities.

[4] The functional knowledge we most often deal with is interpretative knowledge: understanding from an other’s point of view.

Interpretation—seeing through the eyes of an other (person, theory)—always an action, and always dialogic.

[5] An outcomes approach should champion creativity:

• Through problem-based learning

• More generally, through prompting movement between domains:

within domains “normal science” supplies the scaffolding, between domains, students must construct it themselves.