Download gogical research

The “future experience” in society as evaluation of pedagogical research
FRANCO BLEZZA*
Keywords: pedagogical research, science, methodology, epistemology, society, social professions
Abstract: Evaluating products and processes of pedagogical research cannot be reduced to simple operational algorithm or procedures: the reasons why are intrinsic
to pedagogy itself as a social science, as a commitment and intervention and on the
society and on the person in society, to the peculiar relationship between theory and
praxis through a level which is the mediation level between theory and praxis levels
and connects these two levels mutually. The use of the citations index and of impact
factor would lead to paradoxical results.
An organic relationship between pedagogy and the experience of education actually applied is needed, to ensure the scientific nature of pedagogical research, and to
ensure pedagogy as open and evolving process, and also to provide its assessment.
This evaluation will find in the magazines of his field an important step, because the
products of pedagogical research are presented into written essays, but the auditing
or evaluation of an essay and ideas that it conveys cannot be detected in other writings, but its evaluation can be found in society and effectively in pose and solve social
problems, and the resulting feedback.
Evaluating products and processes of pedagogical research, shortly speaking, essentially means to evaluate the positive consequences on society and on person in the
society. It may involve the deployment of conceptual and operational tools in professional pedagogical practice, whereas pedagogy is also a social profession, and in the
practice of the teaching profession too.
* Faculty
alice.it
182
di Social Sciences – “G. d’Annunzio” University – Chieti Italy - francoblezza@
The future of the pedagogical research and its evaluation
Substance matters with lexical effects
The term “research” in the English language has a Latin etymology as in
some romance languages (in French “recherche”, in Italian “ricerca”, in Rumanian “cercetare”). In a rather late Latin language, “circari” was the verb of
the word “circa”,. “around”. Such a verb was meant to point out the notion of
“going around” of something fixed. The particle “re-” was placed as a prefix
to indicate the commitment, the perseverance, the determination, the will, and
it usually recalls a reiteration of actions and a feedback loop, bringing to the
surface the facts and circumstances, assumptions and considerations, all pivotal components of what is properly defined research.
The situation is different in German (and would require a distinction between “Suche” and its derivatives as Forschung, Nachforschung or Untersuchung), as well as in the Iberian Romance languages (in Castilian and Galician
languages investigaci n, in Catalan investigaci , in Portuguese Investigação),
which refer to the Latin verb “investigare” meaning “to follow the tracks”.
There are however some convergences, which cover the proceedings, and the
orientation towards the object of study.
The theme of this meeting should be properly understood as referring to research in Pedagogy, and not as research for pedagogical purposes: in this alternative hypothesis, it could be stated that all research, and scientific research in
particular, has intrinsic educational, pedagogical and very valuable purposes.
It is closely connected with what is currently called “the epistemological status
of Pedagogy”, acknowledged that Pedagogy can be considered an ‘iヾ k
in some sense, being therefore liable to be regarded epistemologically.
The long-decade debate that took place in Italy about the scientific nature
of Pedagogy is not supposed to veil this complex background, because it is
well known that ‘ jk
is the verb “to be” and the preposition ‘iヾ indicates
“up, over, about” in several meanings. The matter is therefore not the scientific knowledge, that is a
, and it acquires a special meaning, if anything,
very fruitful that our knowledge is not a “-logy”, and it is indeed the only one
to have that particular ending “-agogy”, together with the related terms: Geragogy and Andragogy rarely used in the Italian language. It is not the same as
for the German or Slavic languages. Thus, the problem is not primarily nominalistic, it becomes nominalistic in its remote consequences.
In this proper perspective, as a result of placing nominalistic questions
as remote consequences of essential matters, it acquires an important significance that the first occurrence of the term in the Latin language, paedagogia,
appears in 1495 in France, not in Italy where Humanism had already made a
difficult re-conquest of the knowledge of the classical Greek language by calling Byzantine professors. That ancient Greek language was known by any183
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one in the West after the Middle Ages had imposed unilateral and uncritical
readings of the classics, often written in more recent versions of contemporary languages. In fact, the term does not derive from the Greek language, as
sometimes it is taught, but from the Latin term Pædagogus, meaning the art
of the person who had the task of leading the pupil, both in a material sense or
metaphorically, through the paths aiming to his best education. Such a person
was a slave only in certain very short times, and he was still a slave to honor
(a Greek man in the ancient Rome, for example), to whom someone could
feel affection. We should not forget this, since we are often taught about him
partial and misleading concepts.
The fact that the Latin term Pædagogus were a cast from the Greek word
ヾg hg
, and that this in turn resulted from the terms ヾg - ヾg h and
‘
, is a scanty talk of any value as far as the relations with the directive or
prescriptive level of the subject regard. At least, it might be interesting to note
that ヾg does not mean primarily a child or a late child, and that the opportunities of education in which the classical ヾg hg
led the ヾg were social
occasions having little or nothing to deal with what has been defined as school
in the Modern and Contemporary Age (Blezza 2010, 3-6).
The etymology of the word is not Greek, Greek may instead be considered
the classic historical and cultural roots, dating back to the Sophists as professional practice, and to Socrates and his disciples as doctrine.
It is right and necessary to bring us back to these ancient roots because important conceptual and operational pedagogical tools, with obvious actuality,
are dating back to them.
We can provide exemplification by Protagoras from Abdera (ca. 490 – 420
BC) ヾ k
k
k
π ,
,
jk ; Gorgias from Leontini (ca. 485 - ca. 380
BC) h ijk , i h’ ijk
k , i hi
k ,g ’
jk , i h
g
jk , g ’
h
k
; Aristoteles (384-322 BC) l ji
ijk ’
ヾ
ヾ k
; ‘ k i g role and importance; Socrates
h
; πολιτε α as socialization and active participation in political life;
classical logic and its rules; γνϖθι σεαυτ ν (nosce te ipsum), with the full
awareness of one’s own potential and limits, and βρις condemnation; and
so on.
What has been shown is already an implicit scientific research program
whose value is to bring today’s society and culture dating up the wealth of
ideas and tools that came to us after 2500 years of history.
Here again we see, following the consequences in the terminology, as the
closed dualism between prescriptive and descriptive science, such as that
between nomothetic and idiographic science stated by Windelband Wilhelm
(1848-1915), is a part of those complex nineteenth-century dualisms, within
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The future of the pedagogical research and its evaluation
Philosophy and relevant to its context stricto sensu. John Dewey’s attempt
(part 1916) is in order to overcome the matter. We will discuss it in the next
few lines.
The organic relationship of Pedagogy with the actuality of education and
its related experience
Especially if we want to qualify or emphasize Pedagogy as ‘iヾ jk
,
that his properly mastery, familiarity, domain, we catch a good explanatory
metaphor in its name. This composite subject and research field is not reducible to simple and pure theory, theoretic, or “theoretics” as someone would
say, even if the philosophy of education can be treated as a branch of general
Pedagogy.
Pedagogy, and pedagogical research a fortiori, is inseparable from an organizational and systematic experience with the reality of education under study,
whatever its location is, a location that is still social. Education is always a
social act.
The term chosen rather involves a commitment, taking care and charge,
dealing with education, rather than the educational praxis itself: neither it can
be pure theory, nor can it be pure praxis. Here we find the essence of the
Dewey’s theory against nineteenth-century philosophical dualisms which we
have just mentioned. Such an organic relationship with the educational experience qualifies pedagogical research as such and, on the other hand, it brings
up the need for its evaluation. This need should be considered quite apart from
the latest developments in Italy in the research evaluation at university, which
apply to all knowledge and domains. Rather, the organic relationship with the
experience that follows the ideas, integrated with other considerations such as
the “problem solving” procedure, the need for the “internal” consistency and
historical development, would emphasize the scientific aspect of Pedagogy
stricto sensu. This does not mean that the pedagogy is strictly reducible to
a science, such as chemistry or medicine, even because it is endowed with
some criticism toward the aims of its practice, and the human adequacy of the
relationship methods –aims, which sciences stricto sensu traditionally do not
organically get inside.
It is crucial and ethical, as well known, even for purely pedagogical and
didactic experience, specific experience must be carried out after the assumptions and assertions, and after their insertion in broader contexts and theories,
providing a control of what has been developed, from which its evaluation
follows. This is the specific case of the publication on scientific reviews. This
is one of the most important ideas that come from the convergence between
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The future of the pedagogical research and its evaluation
the epistemology, and the scientific and technical research, in the twentieth
century: but it retains the essence of the concept of “future experience” suggested by the founders of Pragmatism.
This is one of the most important ideas of the past century, at least in this
specific domain. It results in the concept of controllability as a factual demarcation criterion between what is scientific and what is not, but also and no less
important in the characterization of the open and democratic society, in the
continuous and a-teleological cultural evolution, and in the “opening state”
that is a necessary condition to help professionals by using specific pedagogical procedures (Blezza 2011 a, b).
The evaluation of pedagogical research should not be reduced to operationality
The need to evaluate pedagogical research has an analogous framework.
A mistake that should be avoided would be to reduce the evaluation to a
result of a purely operational control process: that those operations are not
necessary conditions to science stricto sensu is a common knowledge among
anyone looking for or acting in science, or in technology. In the fields of human sciences it can be seen even better. Operationalistic epistemology (Percy
W. Bridgman) is clearly of interest, but never claimed to exhaust even the
domain of science stricto sensu.
There is therefore a scientific basis for the prevailing refusal to apply in
pedagogical research certain operational assessment techniques, such as the
impact factor or H-index, the quotation’s index, thus this rejection could be
positively and fully appreciated. This rather refers to the basic question of
what integrates the validity of a pedagogical proposal and its evolving nature
than earlier proposals, in comparison with what may also apply to the natural
sciences or to technological matters.
We have to reflect carefully on the principle that the human, social and
relational entity with its values and its own Lebenssinn (i.e. the person), is
the only essence to whom any idea can be only instrument, and it should be
evaluated as such. Evaluating products and processes of pedagogical research
essentially means to evaluate the positive consequences on society and person
in society. In other words, the utilitarian approach is not in opposition to the
essentialistic one, supposed superior, as it is not even in the technical knowledge, for example.
In Italy the process of research evaluation has gone through the consideration of the reviews and the requirements they must have because an article
can give validity to the ideas it conveys. This phase was probably necessary,
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The future of the pedagogical research and its evaluation
even if the criteria could be debatable; moreover, among the main products
to be considered there are certainly writings in the scientific journals. However, the assessment of these ideas cannot be reduced to the consideration of
other similar writings in the reviews, that would not work in the humanities
and would be susceptible to negative effects. This failure, moreover, can be
evident by the very high impact on publishing and quotations that have paradoxical statements such as those denying the Holocaust or those claiming the
intrinsic superiority of real socialism and the inevitable economic collapse of
the capitalist economy under its own contradictions.
In fact, if we were to count the quotations and impact, we had to conclude
that the most important pedagogists would be counted among Jean Piaget,
Karl R. Popper, Charles P. Snow, Zygmunt Bauman, Hans-Georg Gadamer,
Edmund Husserl, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, and in Italy the
philosophers Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce.
The future of pedagogical research is the way in which we evaluate its
products and its processes. The next stage is rather to consider the impact that
ideas have on the professional practice of pedagogical practitioners who perform at school and in society. The actual equivalent of the “future experience”,
which may provide an assessment in its own terms of a really evolutionary
pedagogical research should be properly investigated in areas such as the ones
pointed out.
A scientific research project consisting in pedagogical products and processes evaluation does improve society and the social human being.
The mediation level and the pedagogical and didactic professional practice
It is possible to catch the rejection of closed dualism theory -praxis, and
of all the other dualisms related to it, such as those we have mentioned above
(for instance prescriptive and descriptive science, nomothetic and idiographic
science), both in Dewey’s teaching, and in the specific requirements of the
pedagogic and didactic professional practice.
Dieter Benner, Systematische Pädagogik theorist, writes: «Die in den
vorausgegangenen Abschnitten vorrgelstelten allgemein-pädagogischen Perspektiven beanspruchen eine dreifache Bedeutung. Sie erheben Anspruch, für
die Verständigung im Handeln und für die Beratung in pädagogischen Entscheidungssituationen hilfreich zu sein; sie beanspruchen ferner, Perspektiven
für eine historische Erforschung der Entstehungsgeschichte neuzeitlicher
Pädagogik und die empirische Erforscung gegenwärtiger Handlungsfelder zu
formulieren, und sie versuchen schliesslich, einen Beitrag zur Verständigung
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The future of the pedagogical research and its evaluation
über die Einheit der Pädagogik in Theorie, Empirie und Praxis zu leisten.
Keine der drei möglichen Bedeutungen kann jedoch ohne die jeweils andere
realisiert werden» (Borrelli, band I, 56).
Sergio De Giacinto, presenting a collective work by outstanding German
pedagogists of the ’70s, wrote about «three modes of relation between event
and doctrine» in Pedagogy, which correspond to «some classified agents behaviors. There are participants who simply take part to the educational event,
to these the doctrine is embodied in what happens as education. Then there
are those who organize educational events, classify them and discuss them in
terms of preferential programs, and those for which the doctrine has reference
to the educational reality in immediate terms. There is finally the third group
of operators, who stand above the agents previously considered, and whose
aim is to achieve the highest rationalization of conceptual categories which
are integral components of the educational events» (De Giacinto, 29). Both
the quotations, relatively long, represent in a subtle way a scientific research
program still struggling to gain acceptance in Italy, thus causing decades of
delay.
It is thus clear a third level of study and action, intermediate to those of
theory and praxis, that makes them mutually communicating and integrates
the level of strictly pedagogical professional practice. On the other hand, we
understand how pedagogy can be reduced neither to a repertoire of rules (theory, prescription, law, value, …) nor to detection of rules and the consequent
actions (praxis, description, behavior, fact, …). The most important part of
pedagogy is expressed in the mediation level, which makes the praxis consistent with the theoretical level, but also allows theory and theoretic assumptions to evolve continuously and to be amended according to positive and
negative feedback that comes from praxis. You can remove this middle level,
but it would mean to suppress pedagogy and to establish a unidirectional flow
from theory to praxis, in other words a Kommandierte Pädagogik if we may
talk of Pädagogik: a set of strong rules emanating from above and can only
be followed as closely and impersonally as possible. If so it is impossible to
think of professional pedagogists, vice versa they will turn into mere executors, even respected, of the prince’s will.
Conversely the cultural evolution of the last decades, with the commitment
and the load that has resulted in education, requires more and increasingly specific pedagogy professionals working in the social, characterized by the exercise on the middle level: a level that we might call “application-oriented”.
For example, those who are practicing as family, cultural, or social mediator or at civil courts, are practicing as pedagogists, even if they may lack some
conceptual tools and sometimes awareness.
Even in teaching, if we considered the teacher as a praxis operator, we
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would probably face a school that works, perhaps far from our today school,
but students would be reduced to the practitioner’s raw materials, being the
teacher just a performer of someone else decisions; a performer honored and
respected, but with a scanty professional value. We should therefore consider
the student (pupil, schoolboy, disciple,...) as a person who exercises praxis on
his own, helped by the responsible and skilled teacher’s aid.
The future development of the pedagogical research is therefore to be found
within this “middle level”, specifically in the professional practice, which is
first of all a social professional one which includes the peculiar case, but not
for this less important, of school professions, viewed as characterized by their
essential pedagogical component.
The research program consequences
This set of reflections allows to identify more fully the broad lines of what
we might call “a scientific research program” (Lakatos 1970, 91-195); it is
clear that the scientific nature is related to the program and it does not undermine the more general question about the scientific nature of pedagogy.
This is to complete the range of higher intellectual professions involved
in social work also with regard to pedagogy, as is the case of psychology,
sociology, economy and trade, social service and so on. In Italy, for example,
the figure of the pedagogist is not recognized either by law or socially as, on
the contrary happens for the social worker or the psychologist, and there is
not always a clear distinction between the various professional figures that
in the German language might be called “Pädagoge” and “Erziehungswissenschaftler”.
Many technical terms for the profession of Pädagoge can be drawn up from
the German language, because it has a much richer vocabulary in this particular regard. It was recalled that the pedagogy as a subject has its roots in the ancient Greece, and as a profession in the Sophists, but recently a basis, similar
to that of psychology as a science, can be found in the nineteenth century in
Central Europe as Sozialpädagogik (Karl Mager, Friedrich A. W. Diesterweg,
Paul Natorp; Blezza 2010, 9-11).
The pedagogist’s professional practice takes place in the middle level, nevertheless participating in both the levels of theory and praxis. Practice is a
form of dialogic let’s talk! and a helpful relationship, which acts consciously
without any therapeutic purpose.
The pedagogist practices a form of aid to one or more interlocutors, only
on request, by promoting the transition from a problematic situation to a strict
and full problem posing, by employing the Einfühlung (not exactly the Empa189
The future of the pedagogical research and its evaluation
thy), comparing advices, opinions, points of view, and enforcing the rules of
the scientific research and discovery methodology, as the logical consistency,
the theoretical controllability with future experience and the resulting asymmetric feedback. The aim is to help the interlocutors seeking their own problem solutions, and also to allow them to submit these to logical and empirical
evidences.
The research program aims to provide the pedagogist with the set of methods, techniques, procedures, specific lexical items, and clinical cases, each
one supposed to be the conditio sine qua non for the existence of a profession.
This process is still ongoing in Italy (Blezza and Rulli, Blezza 2011 a e b,
Crispiani, Crispiani and Giaconi, Trisciuzzi).
The pedagogical research social feedback and its evaluation
The professional pedagogist works on a social ground, even in the specific
field of school conceived as a social institution, and here he finds the evidence
for his specific ideas and theories. But he practices taking into account the
specific pedagogical theories or the theoretical level, making them part of the
feedback coming from the praxical level, allowing therefore empirical control
of theory. This is because a theory on education, a theory of philosophy of
education too, in order to be defined “pedagogical” in a strict sense, requires
an organic relationship with the reality of education and its related experience. Thus theory relies upon such an experience that gives it the feedback to
be falsified, not pretending to achieve the truth, or g i g as in the ancient
Greek tradition.
The same methodological framework also applies to school professions,
where the pedagogical theories have even consequences and applications, and
can also obtain a similar empirical evidence. In this case the matter turns easier because the process is more advanced, through didactic and docimological
tools, closely connected with the operationality which is less feasible in other
areas.
In this respect, also the pedagogical reviews may find a role, and we can
keep the discussion on, about their use in the evaluation of pedagogical research. The most important thing is that you do not identify the auditing or
evaluation of a writing and ideas that it conveys in other writings, rather in
their follow-up effects on society as for their feedback and efficacy in posing
and solving social problems.
Neither the single teacher nor his colleagues represent a response to the
teaching professional practice, neither is the teaching itself nor the teacher’s
working paper a good feedback. The best professional practice responses- it
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is well known - are pupils and their learning processes. From an analogous
methodological perspective the feedback of research lies in the society it appeals to or is by this influenced. In such a scenario the journals may play their
right role only if they are able to equip themselves for this process of note,
sensing the corresponding feedback, acting neither alone, nor isolated in the
wide and diversified landscape of media.
References
Blezza, F, Rulli, G. (a cura di) (1999), I processi di insegnamento-apprendimento nella formazione della persona, Bologna, Professione Pedagogista.
Blezza, F. (2010), La pedagogia sociale – Che cos’è, di che cosa si occupa,
quali strumenti impiega, Napoli, Liguori.
Blezza, F. (2011a), La pedagogia professionale, Napoli, Scriptaweb.
Blezza, F. (2011b), Pedagogia della vita quotidiana, Cosenza, Luigi Pellegrini, Cosenza.
Borrelli, M. (ed.) (1993), Deutsche Gegenwartspädagogik, Band I u. II, Baltmannsweiler, Schneider.
Crispiani, P. (2001), Pedagogia clinica, Bergamo, Junior.
Crispiani, P, Giaconi, C. (2008), Hermes 2008 - Glossario pedagogico professionale, Bergamo, Junior.
De Giacinto, S. (1974), Epistemologia pedagogica contemporanea, Brescia,
La Scuola.
Dewey, J. (1916), Democracy and Education: An introduction to the philosophy of education, New York, The MacMillan co.
Evans, R. I. (1973), Jean Piaget. The man and his ideas, New York, E.P. Dutton & co. Inc.
Lakatos, I. (1079), Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research
Programs, in Lakatos and Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of
Knowledge, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Trisciuzzi, L. (2003), La pedagogia clinica, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
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