The Project

Personalised object-centred learning

Handouts 1 & 2

WHAT IT IS…The Project

What is personalised object-centred learning?

• Student-led• Student-owned• Student-assessed (in part)

What are the advantages?

• Motivation• Relevance• Develops self-awareness of skills and

relevance of knowledge• Possibly geared towards future

career/education• Response to contemporary culture

Response to contemporary culture?

• Intellectual capital is no longer about epistemic expertise or possession of ‘facts’

• Intellectual capital is about knowing how to find, organise and communicate interpretations in the proper discourse and at the correct register

• Example: “GPs as flow-chart manipulators”

REQUIREMENTSThe Project

Assessment

Indicative

Formative

Summative

What do I have to produce?

January•A progress report (500 words)•Initial presentation

May•Concluding presentation•Personal development plan (workbook)•Entry for the Book of Change (one webpage)•Project dissertation (8000 words)

Assessment

Indicative

• Progress report• Initial presentation

Formative

Summative

• Project dissertation

HOW IT IS DONE…The Project

You decide

But…

• Mini-project group themes:– Desert– Credit crunch– A song– Representations of youth– The care home– Mobile phones

What I want…

•A Book of Change entry (a “poster”)•A presentation

In groups, I

want you to

produce:

Not just you. My example: bridge

THE PROCESSThe Project

The seven-step path…

Identify an

object

Empirical

research

Identify

philosophical

concepts

Develop

appropriate methodology

Reflect on

learning

process

Agree title and

objectives of dissertation

Produce

dissertation

OBJECTSThe Project

Step 1: identification of an object

• Is my object acceptable?– Scope– Engagement– Value

Handout 3

EMPIRICAL RESEARCHThe Project

Step 2: identify the context, territory or place of the object

• How do I know my object?• How does it appear to me?• How do I understand it?• How can I ‘find out about’ my object?• In which context do I understand my object?

Step 2: my example How do I know my object?

As a crossing over an obstacle How does it appear to me?

As an empowerment, as a way to overcome How do I understand it?

A bridge is a crossing point. It links two places which ‘need’ to be connected

How can I ‘find out about’ my object?I can photograph bridges, I can go to bridges, I can bungee jump, stand

under them, read Billy Goat Gruff, talk to people about bridges, look at art… In which context do I understand my object?

I understand bridges as a communication

Contexts, territories and places

•Cultural•Ethical•Aesthetical•Scientific

The major

discourses:

• There is no one set context, think about your object in many different ways: a ‘hand’ is a cultural object for a wooer, an ethical object for the police, an aesthetic object for the artist, a limb for the doctor.

Empirical research

My example

Notice how these can overlap!

Handout 4

Contrast

•Historical•Cultural•Contextual•Philosophical

Contrasts allow us to interrogat

e our immediate intuitions

My exampleBridge as contrast: Il Ponte Vecchio has shops on it. Is a place to stop on, to linger. It is a thing, rather than an absence…

Questions arise:

Why is there this difference? Is it an historical change in the meaning of bridge? A cultural difference? A geographical one? Why is my immediate intuition not appropriate to this bridge? Is there something particular here we need to know (tax laws and boundaries, for example)?

PHILOSOPHYThe Project

Step 3: identification of appropriate philosophical concepts

• These should arise from identifying the context of your interest and how you understand your object.

My example

I have talked about bridges as ‘communication’, so I need a theory of communication or language: Hegel and the expression of the will (how our ideas are made actual), Heidegger on language as framing…

I have talked about bridges as always a way-to, an absence, this links into the nothingness of Sartre…

I have talked about ‘need’, I can think about Marx and fabricated versus real needs…

Criteria for the application of concepts

‘Fittingness’ (appropriateness) to object

Scope (too vague or too narrow)

Relation to context/territory or place

Thinkers

• The identification of concepts will lead to the identification of appropriate thinkers and texts. Lecture notes from all modules are invaluable within this stage. Thinkers/concepts should ideally be drawn from your stage’s modules.

Handout 5

My example

• ‘Need’ as understood by Marx and the neo-Marxists: real versus functions of ideology (PHi3001)

• ‘Communication’ as characterised by Hegel’s theory of expression and the social will (PHi2003)

• ‘Nothingness’ as an absence, hidden by metaphysics Heidegger and Sartre (PHi3001/2)

Handout 6

METHODOLOGYThe Project

Selection of an appropriate methodology

Two questions:

Is my understanding of

the object ‘true’?

What is the nature

of the ‘truth’ of

my understan

ding?

Examples

Museum curator:

“Let’s put the café at the end of the museum tour.”

CAUSAL EXPLANATION OF HUMAN BEHVIOUR

“Let us arrange the artefacts by chronology rather than geographical location.”

COMMITMENT TO HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT RATHER THAN TAXONOMY

Most normal/usual territory

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Key question

IMMEDIATE REFLECTIVE CRITICALCULTURE/SOCIETY Contrastive

method

(Phi1001, 1002, 1003)

Historical method

(Phi2001, 2002)

Genealogy

(Phi3005, 3006)

How did this happen/come about?

ETHICS Intuitionism/foundationalism

(Phi1001)

Reflective equilibrium

(Phi2003, 2006)

Axiological critique

(Phi3001, 3002, 3005)

Is this right/good?

ART Interpretative methodology

(Phi1002, 1003)

Theories of difference

(Phi2005)

Hermeneutics

(Phi3001, 3002, 3003)

What does it mean?

TECHNOLOGY/SCIENCE Naïve inductivism

(Phi1001)

Hypothetico-deductive method

(Phi2001, 2002, 2003)

Paradigmatic relativism

(Phi3001, 3002)

What caused it to be like this?

Example bridge: as cultural object Stage 1: Il ponte vecchio versus Ironbridge. Historical

contrast: mercantile city versus industrial revolution, man as consumer versus man’s power over nature and so on…(Contrastive method)

Stage 2: how was the bridge understood in its time? How might we understand it differently and why? (Historical method)

Stage 3: show the development of bridge as a link connecting human need becoming a purely cultural object (see the Gateshead bridge) and our thinking is obscured by the original understanding of bridge that has nothing to do with its contemporary reality (reality always precedes thought: commitment to Hegel’s owl and so on…) (Genealogy, archaeology)

Methodological expectations

•describe the method usedStage 1: •describe and justify the methodStage 2: •describe, justify and evaluation of the method used.Stage 3:

HOW IT IS ASSESSEDThe Project

Requirements

You are required to:Present twice, once in January and once in May;Produce a progress report (500 words) in January;Produce an entry for the Book of Change (a

webpage summary);Hand in a personal self-development plan (a

workbook containing notes, questionnaires, data and so on, plus reflections on your work)

An 8000 word project dissertataion

Handout 7

Roles of the various requirements

• But you are to receive a mark for the project dissertation alone. The other requirements are either indicative or formative and you are to assess personally how much you have gained from the learning experience.

Handouts 8, 9 and 10

The dissertation

• Title• Objectives/aims• Structure• Content

What is measured in the assessmentAssessment criterion Intended

knowledge outcome

Skill developed

1 Depth of understanding of philosophical concepts/thinkers

Philosophy Rationality

2 Appropriate use/application of philosophical concepts/thinkers

Philosophy Creativity

3 Appropriate and reflective choice of methodology Rationality, critical reflectivity

4 Rigour of “empirical” research Object-centred knowledge

Rigorousness, independence

5 Evidence/relevance of secondary material (philosophy)

Philosophy Rigorousness

6 Evidence/relevance of secondary material (object-centred/context)

Object-centred knowledge

Flexibility, independence

7 Awareness of personal development and level of personal engagement

Critical reflectivity

8 Structure, organization and style Articulacy