Dewey, Vygotsky, and the Social Administration of the Individual:
Constructivist Pedagogy as Systems of Ideas in Historical Spaces
Thomas S. Popkewitz University of Wisconsin
Abstract
Current constructivists' pedagogies draw on the writings of early 20th
century Russian psychologist Vygotsky and the American
philosopher/psychologist Dewey. This occurs without examining the
historical spaces of the past and present in which that knowledge is
socially constructed. This emptying of history in systems of knowledge is
odd for an intellectual project concerned with cultural-historical
theories. To address this omission, the writings of Dewey and Vygotsky are
examined as part of the turn-of-the-century human sciences. They functioned
to bring the new democratic political rationalities into the governing of
individual conduct. Contemporary pedagogical theories that draw on Dewey
and Vygotsky maintain this function of governing conduct, but with
different narratives and images. The differences are made visible when
comparing the "problem solving individual" in education with the images of
the individual inscribed in social theory, state policies, economics, and
the military. My moving between the past and the present and between
education and other social practices directs attention to the shifting
terrain that relates school knowledge, power, and problems of social
inclusion/exclusion.
Popkewitz summarizes: "Contemporary research captures a populist,
democratic appeal. The reforms are posited as strategies to make schooling
more democratic, more progressive and socially responsive through the
making/remaking of the teacher and the child.." He discussed the
"homologies between pedagogical reforms, social theory, the political
governance of education, the economy, and the military" and claims that
"the contemporary governing patterns are different from those which existed
at the turn of the century when Vygotsky and Dewey wrote.."
But Popkewitz' primary critique of pedagogy seems to be with the
constructivism of math education that has a foundation in the work of
people as Paul Cobb, Les Steffe, and Marty Simon, who can variously be
associated around the radical constructivist and the cultural-historical
theories. Popkewitz refers to dated problems the radical constructivists
had grappled with, such as the conceptions/misconceptions split that
emerged when disciplinary knowledge was considered to be static and to be
internalized by the neophyte, a subsequent split between knowledge and
process. Popkewitz does not acknowledge Cobb's latest article in Mind,
Culture, and Activity -- it may have come out too recently -- in which Cobb
attempts to reconcile his constructivism with a cultural-historical
theories. "When the words community, zones of proximal development, and so
on appear in current reform texts, these words have no meaning outside of
the set of relations in which the words are located."
Popkewitz argues "that educational research needs to pose the concepts of
inclusion and exclusion as mutually constituted. Within the systems of
inclusion are their opposite, as what appears to be a widening of
opportunities simultaneously functions to divide and normalize." Drawing
from Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, he recognizes the 'unequal playing
field" (that I think Jay has termed heteropraxia), and draws a contrast to
the constructivist math-ed vision of a flexible, problem-solving
individual, seen also in the descriptions Popkewitz provides of the modern
worker and soldier. He raises some interesting points about power and
curriculum, but with a limited discernment between categories of theory and
genres and levels of performance as specified within those categories.
"If we recognize that we do live in an unequal playing field... we can
thinkn of constructivism as taking particular, local knowledge (habitus) of
certain groups in the social field and treating that knowledge as the
global principles of reason and problem solving related to school success,
achievement, and capabilities. The apparently universal norms are brought
back into the particular interactions and practices of classrooms as the
norms to judge and differentiate among children. This selectivity is not
intentional but subtly embodied in the distinctions and differentiations to
order and divide the things that are talked about as cognition, problem
solving, and affective development. Educators and researchers refer to
problem solving, community, and zones of proximal development as if they
were universal processes rather than socially constructed norms related to
habitus.... I argued that constructivism remakes the problem of
inclusion/exclusion through its focus on seemingly universal dispositions
and the problem-solving capabilities of the child. But the capabilities are
not universal. They inscribe norms that disqualify certain children at the
level of their being, rather than through their subject positions--group
categories of race, class, or gender."
His summary:
"At this point, I return to the earlier paradox and irony of modernity
which reappears in current educational reforms. The social administration
of freedom was to produce a particular type of disciplined subject who was
free from external policing. The situating of Dewey and Vygotsky in
contemporary reforms points to the reconstitution of that paradox and
irony. The universalizing of reason in constructivism is to produce a
greater range of possibilities for teachers and children. But ideas are not
merely logical principles to insert into discourses of research and reform.
They also produce systems of exclusion as well as inclusion.
My arguments about the pedagogical discourses in which Dewey and Vygotsky
are read are intended to historicize the systems of reasoning through which
the teacher and child are constructed. As education is a central
institution for the production of self-regulating individuals, the
discursive principles inscribed in educational research require critical
analysis and historical interpretation. Further, while the governing
principles in pedagogical discourses are necessarily neither bad nor good,
they cannot be taken unproblematically in a paradigm that argues about the
social construction of knowledge."
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Technology in Education
Lesley College, 31 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]