Chapter Summary
2.3 Changing the Compass Direction: The Need of a Powerful Magnet
2.3
Changing the Compass Direction: The Need of a Powerful
of personal working theories. The application of knowledge to practice becomes viewed as an interpretative use of this theory. While the goals of practice excellence remain the same, the emphasis is shifted from the development of normalised core competencies in learners, to an awareness of how feelings, attitudes and goals culled from prior experience serve to shape practical abilities to help, co-operate, and become responsible in professjonal practice. In other words, the debate has shifted from how best to translate theory in the classroom into skilled and insightful practice outside it; to one of how best to develop the inherent knowledge of the learner. The significance of this is that particular practitioner's 'wisdom', 'talent', or 'intuition', which " ... used [to be used] as junk categories, attaching names to phenomena that elude conventional [empirical] strategies of explanation", have now become the focus of research inquiry (Schoen, 1987; p13) As research is discovering, these highly valued phenomena owe more to the interaction of implicit ways of knowing developed prior to training, than upon the knowledge presented during it.
Implicit knowledge is created from people interacting with their environment (Boud and Griffin, 1987; Hunt, 1987). In studies spanning social work, nursing, school administrators and -medicine, researchers have uncovered many kinds of implicit knowing. Significantly, of the six suggested by Baskett in 1983 (cited by Baskett &
Marsick, 1992), only one was formally taught in the social work curriculum. Eraut (1988), lists knowledge of people, situational knowledge, knowledge of educational practice, conceptual knowledge, process knowledge and control knowledge as distinctly different domains of implicit knowing. Researchers are not, however, agreed upon the schema they adopt in describing these largely unconscious processes. For example, Mezirow (1981) makes a distinction between 'instrumental', 'dialogic' and 'self- reflective' ways of adult knowing. Boreham's (1992) study of implicit knowing in medical practice differentiates between 'Unconscious and Nonverbalisable Knowing', 'Conscious but Nonverbalisable Knowing', and 'Unstated Conscious and Verbalisable Knowing'. From research on women's ways of knowing and learning come five different - and developmental - perspectives or descriptions of the relationship between the 'knower and the known' influentially proposed by Belenky et aI., (1986).
Because of the range of descriptive categories researchers have used to capture the essence of frequently unconscious processes, and because of the range of individual
learning contexts described in this research, it becomes important to attempt some synthesis of the underlying themes. This is not done in the interests of categorisation or simplification, but to link the importance of these themes to re-problematising the debate around the professional model of development outlined in 2.1.6.
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The following two sections, therefore, make a somewhat arbitrary distinction between the important themes of context sensitivity, or 'situatedness', and the 'feeling-sense' that derives from reflective discourse. It is hoped that by so doing differences will be highlighted between the implicitly held assumptions and beliefs sub-serving knowledge, discourse and context in professional training; and those governing contemporary educational research.
2.3.2 The Learning from Context
The core aim of professional education is to train a person to react creatively and responsibly, with knowledge, skill and artistry, in constantly shifting dialogic encounters (Houle, 1980; Schoen, 1987). The empirical-analytical paradigm has presumed that the way to fulfill this aim is through applying principles such as (amongst others) intensive theoretical study, closely monitored and evaluated practice.
experiments, a reliance on the impact of concentrated knowledge, and the teaching of professional behaviour (Houle, 1980). There is an assumption that the latter becomes transformed into the former through rigorous application of these principles.
Contemporary educational research has, however, entered the contexts of both educative and professional practice to study how professionals know and act in practical action.
Boreham's (1992; p73) typology of 'Unconscious and Nonverbalizable Knowing', suggests that familiarity of the environment plays a vital role in stimulating the integrative skills necessary in professional practice. In other words, entering particular environments trigger expectations that structure the "explicit mental activity that we experience as conscious, verbal reasoning." This is similar to the process Schoen (1987;
p4) describes as a "form of worldmaking", in that a practitioner selects things for attention in particular contexts, organises them and acts upon them. What is significant from research findings, however, is that individual practitioners will respond to contexts in different ways, dependent upon their personal working theories.
Since professional learning (from a non-empirical perspective) is viewed as a dynamic interaction between the individual and knowledge, progressive training programmes have recognised the need to access - and learn from - the personal working theories of students. Through the process of joint reflection, the understanding of how people construct meaning allows teachers and learners alike communicative access into otherwise private world views. Once public, these worldviews can be discussed in relation to their appropriateness in promoting practice excellence. In addition, teachers and learners can negotiate changes to the context of teaching professional knowledge, by accounting for the preferred learning styles of students and placing these as central to the teaching and learning process (Schoen 1987; Witherell and Noddings, 1991).
Contemporary educational research frequently uses the generation of life-histories as a tool to access the personal working theories of both students and practitioners (Cohen and Manion, 1994; Goodson, 1983; Rowland, 1993, - amongst others). Based within a narrative of the person's life, the reflective process provides insight into the implicit ways people know and interact with the world, allowing previously unarticulated patterns of knowing and understanding to become explicit.
It is possibly in the nature of this articulation that life-history research finds core relevance . to re-problematising the debate around the professional model of development. The threads of the preceding argument have suggested that the ways of thinking legitimated by the empirical-analytical paradigm have resulted in academics retaining the power to maintain professional training in an essentially unchallenged form. The context that supports this power, and that has significantly contributed to it, is that of the academic institution. Yet while insider-professional debate has been focused upon undergraduate training, the undergraduate voice itself has been markedly absent from it.
By overlooking the interpretative world of the student in the current process-product approach to professional development, what has also been overlooked is the centrality of how students make meaning of the training process. This study aims to return the nature of the polemic to the context· of the teaching-learning process by accessing a student's personal ways of knowing in order to allow her voice an explicit articulation.
It does so in order to locate the debate to its essential core: the teaching and learning context. A difficulty, and as the following section explores, is that the only vehicle available for doing so is via the inadequate system of language.
2.3.3 The Learning from Discourse
Section 2.2 discussed the making of meaning through talk, and the collusion between interlocutors that is a necessary part of constructing this meaning. With relation to the meaning-making of professional discourse, 2.1 has pointed out significant biases within the English (and Afrikaans) languages that serve to advantage mother-tongue speakers in training. In addition, 2.2 has suggested that professional discourse actually comprises dual streams of talk, with the gender-influenced academic stream being dominant over the dialogic, therapeutic, discourse of practice. Discourse, therefore, is not neutral, static, or unitary. It is value-laden, heavily influenced by particular interests, and necessarily collusional. At the same time, it is the way we make meaning of the world.
In therapeutic practice, the skilled meaning-making of the context is linked to an equal skill in communication (Boreham, 1992). Communication in this sense is described as a constant self-dialogue in which the practitioner links the environment and client problems to her own life experience in order to grow ever closer to a sense of 'knowing', or certainty, about how best to serve the problems of the individual concerned (Baskett, 1991, cited in Baskett & Marsick, 1992; Schoen, 1983). Equally, and as all human experience differs, professional opinions will vary, and individual therapists will attach greater or lesser emphasis to particular issues. This making of meaning is the therapeutic encounter is, therefore, interpretive and reflective.
Research investigating implicit ways of knowing has necessarily, therefore, been associated with a shift in research methodology that reflects the inter-subjective (dialogic) and interpretative nature of thinking and acting in the world. Located within the hermeneutic paradigm of inquiry, it represents a fmidamental departure from the empirical-analytical tradition. In essence, and by aiming to gain understanding of contextualised social practice through communicative interaction, researchers acknowledge the subjective and value-laden nature of discourse itself. By virtue of this acknowledgement, reality is allowed to be multiply-vocal and contingent on context. In
accepting that meaning is made according to the interests served by the particular voices involved, the creation of knowledge is therefore seen as jointly constructed, essentially collusional, and infused with the interests of the participants in its creation (Anderson, 1996; Guba and Lincoln, 1989; Combleth, 1990).
The claim to 'truth' of life history research, therefore, is that it constitutes one version of it. With regard to its research method, this has become a common criticism (Cohen and Manion, 1994), and will be explored in greater detail in the following Chapter.
What needs to be highlighted here, however, and as has been argued extensively throughout, is that the interaction between knowledge, context and discourse in the debate around the professional model of development equally represents versions of truth. To date, however, and from the single source of insider-professionals, what has been articulated are two, conflicting, versions of curriculum reality: its legitimacy, or otherwise. This study aims to present a third.
It does so from the belief that re-problematisation of the model of professional development can only occur once the multiplicity of voices involved in the teaching and learning process are heard. And however inadequate, the subjective, collusional, interpretative medium of language is the only vehicle to articulate them.
Chapter Summary
This Chapter has attempted to argue for a professional model of development that is fundamentally resistant to change. Because of its historical reliance on the empirical-analytical tradition, and supported by its autonomous status within the autonomous university system of South Africa, professional training has been able to sustain assumptions and beliefs that, it has been suggested, fundamentally disadvantage non-mother tongue English!Afrikaans speaking students. Since there are significant interests to be protected by maintaining these beliefs, strategies and reforms have been implemented which at one and the same time serve to marginalise opposition to the current model, and also serve to distract attention from the inequity inherent within the assumptions themselves. Having said this, however, professional development currently occurs in a socio-political
context that is demanding educative parity. The opportunity exists, therefore, to re-problematise the current model. This Chapter has' suggested a re-location of paradigm from empiricism to that ofhermeneutic inquiry, arguing that such a shift allows communication to become central in debating the justice of the professional model of development. As part of this shift, it additionally allows the subjective and interpretative voice of the non-mother tongue English!Afrikaans student to be heard as a valid contributor to the debate itself.
Chapter Three:
The Magnet
Chapter Three: The Magnet
'... Though scientists have been able to harness the power ofmagnets for years, they have yet to determine what a magnetic field 'is'... '
(www.technicoil.com/magnetism.html)
Chapter Overview
The methodology of this study can be broadly conceptualised as an attempt to return the discourse of therapy into the context of academia by inserting
"human experience, beliefs, doubts, emotions and intentions" into a context governed by issues of "truth, observation, analysis and proof" (Cortazzi, 1993; p132). By so doing, it challenges the assumptions of the scientific tradition upon which professional knowledge transmission and creation occurs. In addition, it highlights the importance of implicit ways of knowledge creation on which therapeutic practice is based.
Having said this, however, and as extensively argued in the previous Chapter, the discourse of empiricism has the greater legitimacy in voicing the debate· around professional development. In presenting the research methodology of this study, therefore, emphasis is placed upon the validity, representativeness and reliability of narrative research techniques as vehicles for expressing one version of 'truth'. As such, 3.1 presents a more detailed motivation for the use of narrative as the research approach, highlighting its appropriateness for introducing the historically silenced voice of a student.
Thereafter, 3.2 locates the research approach within its case-study context by first describing the Department of Speech & Hearing Therapy at the University of Durban-Westville, and then introducing Nolwazi Mpumlwana, the research study participant. 3.3. Describes the methods of data collection, and 3.4 the methods of data analysis. In this concluding section, the reader is prepared for the presentation of the research material in Chapter Four, and for the broad categories of discussion that comprise Chapter Five.