Learning practice: the ghosts in the education machine
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The document discusses the interplay between language, practice, and learning within educational contexts, incorporating concepts from epistemology, discourse, and power dynamics. It references various philosophers, including Gilbert Ryle and Ludwig Wittgenstein, to explore how language affects identity and subject formation, while addressing the implications of educational psychology. The concluding remarks highlight the persistent presence of unforeseen 'ghosts' or malfunctions in the system, suggesting that these glitches reveal deeper truths in educational practices.
![Dispositional sentences
Ryle (1949) proposed a solution
to the [ghost in the machine] in
his dispositional sentences that he
explained were to be: “at once
narrative, explanatory, and
conditionally predictive, without
being a conjunctive assemblage
of detachable sub-statements,” (p.
135).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/learning-practiceuts-150611023805-lva1-app6891/85/Learning-practice-the-ghosts-in-the-education-machine-8-320.jpg)
![Naming
“only someone who already knows
how to do something with it,” writes
Wittgenstein (1963), “can
significantly ask a name,” (section
31) and later, ‘[W]hen one says,
“He gave a name to his sensation”
one forgets that a great deal of
stage setting in the language is
presupposed if the mere act of
naming is to make sense,’
(Wittgenstein, 1963, section 257).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/learning-practiceuts-150611023805-lva1-app6891/85/Learning-practice-the-ghosts-in-the-education-machine-12-320.jpg)
Learning practice: the ghosts in the education machine
- 1. Learning-practice The ghosts in the educational machine David R. Cole UTS
- 2. What are we doing? Epistemology Pedagogy - identity work? Discourse Philosophy of education Tracking bodies
- 3. Why ghosts? Practice and learning are ‘empty vessels’ This emptiness invites otherness - redundancy - power concerns…
- 4. What are the prime- connectors Practice>language Learning>context “Gothic affect theory”…
- 5. Mapping the journey From the philosophy of mind to educational postructuralism “‘Theory’ in the classroom operates in terms of what Tomkins calls the ‘fear/terror’ couplet of affect. As a shield wielded by the academic, theory serves to protect our bodies and psyches against our fear and the students’ terror induced by the highly theoretical text,” (Probyn, 2004, p. 35).
- 6. Starting points Post dualistic position Empiricist & rationalist How does the body work in practice & learning? Questions about habit, pre- figuration, representation & ‘subjectification’…
- 7. Gilbert Ryle Closing the gap between ontology & epistemology Addressing the conjunction of language & practice Category errors?
- 8. Dispositional sentences Ryle (1949) proposed a solution to the [ghost in the machine] in his dispositional sentences that he explained were to be: “at once narrative, explanatory, and conditionally predictive, without being a conjunctive assemblage of detachable sub-statements,” (p. 135).
- 9. Problems with dispositional sentences Educational psychology (the self) Who is talking? How should one assess dispositions? How are attitudes connected to language? (affect)
- 10. Ludwig Wittgenstein Investigations Questioning of the rational self behind judgement & language No private language
- 11. Language-games Suppose you came as an explorer into an unknown country with a language quite strange to you. In what circumstances would you say that the people there gave orders, understood them, obeyed them, and rebelled against them and so on? The common behaviour of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language (Wittgenstein, 1963, section 206).
- 12. Naming “only someone who already knows how to do something with it,” writes Wittgenstein (1963), “can significantly ask a name,” (section 31) and later, ‘[W]hen one says, “He gave a name to his sensation” one forgets that a great deal of stage setting in the language is presupposed if the mere act of naming is to make sense,’ (Wittgenstein, 1963, section 257).
- 13. Problems with language-games & naming What is lying? How can poetry/aesthetics move us? What are the drives in language>practice? Is the rational ego replaced by the irrational/unconscious? Or to what extent should it be reduced to a surface-effect?
- 14. Learning + practice Position that takes account of power concerns that might take hold and use the conjunction l + p for their own purposes… Argument that explains the ways in which language and context carry meaning and subjective principles Conjunctive synthesis.
- 15. William Labov some of the rules of language, that Labov called “variable rules” generate systematic, endogenous variation (Labov, 1971). For example, in small urban communities, social networks develop that use language as a “badge of identity” (De Landa, 1993, p. 14). These identities circulate around the community and define power relationships, allegiances and structures that maintain and transform the local dialect.
- 16. Language redundancy “the collective assemblage is the redundant complex of the act and the statement that necessarily accomplishes it. But this is still only a nominal definition; it does not even enable us to justify the previous position that redundancy is irreducible to a simple identity or that there is no simple identity between the statement and the act. If we wish to move to a real definition of the collective assemblage, we must ask of what consist these acts immanent to language that are in redundancy with statements or constitute order- words,” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 80).
- 17. Order-words Incorporeal acts Cyborgs Becoming-other… Transveral communication Assemblages and schizo-analysis Holes in space & time…
- 18. Machinic phylum “…the machinic phylum develops as a location of intensity for the order- words; it is “materiality, natural or artificial, and both simultaneously – it is matter in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as a conveyor of singularities and traits of expression. This has obvious consequences: namely, this matter flow can only be followed,” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 409).
- 19. Circulation of order- words Description of ‘best practice’ (teacher talk) Ryle’s dispositional sentences (attitudinal affects) Wittgenstein’s language- games (relational affects) D & G’s machinic phylum (synthetic affects)
- 20. Curriculum-construction Curriculum innovation (working with knowledge) Exploring the affective environments created by knowledge (attitudinal affects) Matching knowledge needs with knowledge production (relational affects) Unpacking the domain of knowledge production (synthetic affects)
- 21. Teacher training Embodiment of pedagogy (holistic learning) Examination of teacher-beliefs (attitudinal affects) Testing of pedagogic strategies with cohorts (relational affects) Reflective practice that is responsive to learning (synthetic affects)
- 22. Concluding remarks A ghost never dies, it remains always to come and to come-back.-- Jacques Derrida (1994), Specters of Marx …ghosts in machines always appear as malfunctions, glitches, interruptions in the normal flow of things. Something unexpected appears seemingly out of nothing and from nowhere. Through a malfunction, a glitch, we get a fleeting glimpse of an alien intelligence at work. Janne Vanhanen (2001) Loving the Ghost in the Machine
- 23. references De Landa, M. (1993). Virtual environments and the emergence of synthetic reason. Retrieved 4/8/08 from: http://www.t10.or.at/delanda/delanda.htm Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. London: The Athlone Press. Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. New York: Routledge. Labov, W. (1971). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Probyn, E. (2004). Teaching Bodies: Affects in the Classroom. Body & Society, Vol. 10(4): 21–43. Ryle, G. (1949). The concept of mind. London: Hutchinson. Vanhanen, J. (2001). Loving the ghost in the machine. CTHEORY, (EJ): http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=312#bio Wittgenstein, L. (1963). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.