Education for social change and pragmatist theory: five features of educative environments designed for social change

Abstract

This paper establishes the basis for a pragmatist-inspired theory of human action to predominant ideas about knowledge, learning and education. As a necessary prelude to an examination of pragmatist theory’s position on human action and its specific focus on habits and creativity, pragmatism is defined and then related to inquiry. Next, the fields of adult education and social movement learning are explored for their continued resonance with the main educational tenets of pragmatism. Following this, a separate section on habits and creativity is offered to highlight a key relationship for the design of educative environments. Knowledge is addressed in a section that explains it as a carrier of routine and a bridge in the individual-collective nexus. The paper ends with five features of an educative environment designed for social change, each of which is identified in relation to the tenets of pragmatist theory.

Keywords:

• pragmatism
• social change
• educative environments

Notes

1. The use of the term educative environment is designed to go beyond the physical realm of the classroom to include curriculum, instructional design, delivery and context.

2. There is no solid consensus among the early Pragmatists over what to call the state we move into when we become less doubtful. Peirce called it belief. Dewey would later chastise this position, for good reasons that we will not explore here, and called the end state warranted assertability. It is hard to tell if any agreement developed over time as Pragmatism became more diffuse, and was incorporated into a number of fields, since the meaning and scope given to the philosophical tradition changed as it entered new disciplines. For the purposes of this book, the terminological differences do not matter much. We use belief, knowledge and warranted assertability interchangeably as the name of the end state of inquiry.

3. Part of pragmatism’s enduring influence on the social sciences owes to its view of the self. Our personality and identity are the culmination of countless intersecting habits. See Mead 1934 for the most important work in this regard.

4. To extend the point about context and transformative learning, recall Newman’s (2011) assertion that ‘transformative learning’ could probably just be billed as plain old ‘good learning’. Another angle on this is the claim that all good education is transformative (O’Sullivan, 2008; Newman, 2011).

5. Famously, government exists only because at some point in time we decided that a central power was needed to protect us from harm (cf. Rousseau, 1762/1968; Hobbes, 1651/1982).

6. Pragmatism shares some principles with radical behaviourism wherein individuals do not view themselves as passive bystanders within an environment, but rather as agents who understand their position within a complex system of historical context and relationships (Ruiz, 1995 as cited in Roessger, 2012).

7. See also Dudziak (2012), p. 240 on challenging myths.

8. The mechanisms for learning in action are available in the following quote by Jarvis ‘I suggest that human learning is the combination of processes, whereby the whole person—body (genetic, physical and biological) and mind (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, beliefs and senses)—experiences a social situation, the perceived content of which is then transformed cognitively, emotively or practically (or through any combination) and integrated into the person’s individual biography resulting in a changed (or more experienced) person’ (2006, p. 207).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert VanWynsberghe

Robert VanWynsberghe is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. He has a PhD in Sociology. His research expertise is in sustainability and the related areas of social movements and capacity building. His PhD in Sociology is rooted in an abiding interest in human action and social change. His work has been especially influenced by the social movement theories of resource mobilization, new social movement and frame alignment as well as efforts in social psychology to link attitudes, beliefs and context to behaviour change. Most recently, the social philosophies of pragmatism and practice theory are beginning to inform important pedagogical gaps, which he has tried to address in designing socially conscious classrooms. He conducts research on the substantive use of the above ideas in understanding sustainability as a global social movement. This conceptualization assumes meaningful articulations between classroom and community as well as mega-events and citizens. He is convinced that such collaborations will succeed if new thoughts, new situations, new ways of acting and new rewards can coalesce into individual and collective action for a better society.

Andrew C. Herman

Andrew C. Herman is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.