The Importance of Maintaining Bridges to the Wisdom Generated in the Relatively Recent Past as we seek a Positive Education Future
The University of Western Australia
My overall argument is that the metaphorical bridge referred to in the theme of the conference needs to be regularly walked both ways, namely not just in a forward direction but also backwards. This is so because insights yielded especially over the last 50 years can be easily forgotten, with the result that education innovations can continue to flounder. Accordingly, as I go on to argue, they need to be placed front and foremost in any future-oriented considerations. For those being prepared as teachers, for practicing teachers, for administrators, and for policy makers, they can provide understandings of the content that is central to one’s work, of one’s location as an educationist within an ever-changing landscape, and of the antecedents to how we arrived at where we are today. This, in turn, can lead to an appreciation that current circumstances need not necessarily be as they are.
My reflections in relation to the position will be centred on four related stances. These are as follows:
- A problem highlighted by the organisers of this conference, namely, ‘the siloing of knowledge’, while it is usually considered in relation to primary and second-level curricula, also can exist in relation to the broad third-level fields of scholarship in which many of us work, namely, that where the focus is on various aspects of education. A consequence is that it can be difficult to adopt a wide perspectives when trying to produce clear blueprints for policy and practice in education on both a micro and macro scale. Useful frameworks generated in the recent past for addressing this matter that, I hold, are forgotten in many quarters, will be recalled to highlight their utility.
- The second position I adopt might best be described as highlighting the importance of at all times maintaining a Gestalt or unified-whole view of education itself. I hold that the maintenance of such a perspective at all times is important as a safeguard against those who seek to push their own decontextualised, simplistic, partial and polarised ways of thinking and working uncoupled from considerations on the overall enterprise. While this is particularly so in the area of curriculum, it is also important in relation to pedagogy.
- The third position I adopt is that as we seek to build bridges and make connections for a positive education future we should not lose sight of the fact that we operate within a diverse range of contexts as we go about pursuing our visions and plans. Unfortunately, the long arm of positivism still operates to marginalise those who emphasise the crucial importance of taking cognisance of his. To impress the seriousness of the situation it is valuable to recall the wisdom generated in the relatively recent past by those who were not so blinkered.
- The fourth position I adopt is that all who subscribe to the three other positions just stated need to be reflective practitioners. In promoting this stance, though, we need to go beyond a currently popular view that what is involved relates solely to drawing upon theoretical and practical knowledge in helping one to consider the adequacy and appropriateness of any prescribed pedagogical practices for the particular contexts in which one works. To put it another way, practitioners to be true professionals need also to engage in reflection more broadly. This can be illustrated by recalling the classic positions generated in the US from the late 1960s and reworked shortly afterwards in Habermassian style to indicate what would be involved in policy makers, administrators and practitioners at all levels reflecting intelligently not just on the means of education but also on issues that involve the relationship of one’s education institution to the social order, as well as on education policy, the curriculum, teaching and learning, leadership, and teacher preparation.
My hope is that on cogitating the four matters just highlighted we may come to see the need for all of us, as educationists to commit to ensuring that we and students at all levels, develop a moral compass to direct our actions towards that which is good, enriching and life-giving to ourselves and others.
