Tacit Teaching

This essay reflects upon certain aspects of Wittgenstein's own practices as a teacher. Doing philosophy always took priority for Wittgenstein, whether this was in oral or written form: it was important to show the deep puzzles in our language (and our culture and thinking) as a step toward dissolving them. In this respect, one can teach only as a guide; it is a matter of showing more than saying.
Wittgenstein's approach suggests a model that I will call tacit teaching . Tacit teaching refers to the many forms of informal instruction—some intentional, some unintentional, and some difficult to categorize simply as one or the other—by which skills, capacities, and dispositions are passed along within a domain of practice. Wittgenstein repeatedly uses the language of signposts, of wandering through a city, of being lost and finding one's way, of needing a guide, of learning how to go on by one's self, to refer to the complex web of knowledge and understanding that allows successful autonomous practice in some discipline: most pertinently, in the context of Wittgenstein's own teaching and writing, the discipline of doing philosophy, but with clear reference to teaching and learning in other complex and ill-structured domains as well.     

Language Games in the Ivory Tower: Comparing the Philosophical Investigations with Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game

Wittgenstein explores learning through practice in the Philosophical Investigations by means of an extended analogy with games. However, does this concern with learning also necessarily extend to education, in our institutional understanding of the word? While Wittgenstein's examples of language learning and use are always shared or social, he does not discuss formal educational institutions as such. He does not wish to found a ‘school of thought’, and is suspicious of philosophy acting as a theory that can be applied to other areas of life. While Wittgenstein's focus on developing independent thinking was neither individualistic nor anti‐institutional, it did, however, focus on developing the thinking of his students rather than theorising about how this could be applied on a large scale. An analysis of Hermann Hesse's novel, The Glass Bead Game will help us to pick up where Wittgenstein deliberately left off—thinking about how (or if) one can institutionalise learning methods that encourage thinking for oneself. These differences in the writers’ treatment of education will become evident in the differences between their game analogies. While language‐games combat our ‘craving for generality’ in Philosophical Investigations, the Glass Bead Game represents this craving, and how it manifests itself throughout history in disciplines other than logic and philosophy of language. It also represents the potential for institutions to become insular, exclusive communities.     

Training and Mastery of Techniques in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy: A response to Michael Luntley

Responding to Michael Luntley's article, ‘Learning, Empowerment and Judgement’, the author shows he cannot successfully make the following three moves: (1) dissolve the analytic distinction between learning by training and learning by reasoning, while advocating the latter; (2) diminish the role of training in Wittgenstein's philosophy, nor attribute to him a rationalist model of learning; and (3) turn to empirical research as a way of solving the philosophical problems he addresses through Wittgenstein. Drawing on José Medina's analysis of the fundamental role of training in Wittgenstein's later philosophy, the paper offers a tour of key passages in the Investigations and other works to develop an understanding of what Wittgenstein meant by ‘mastery of techniques’. In opposition to Luntley's liberal‐individual, or his subject as rational agent, the author explores Wittgenstein's non‐foundationalist, forms of life approach to how we act with agreement. More effort must be given to differentiating Wittgenstein's view from that of the analytic school, which Luntley appears to echo despite his criticism of the analytic divide.     

A Pedagogic Reading of Wittgenstein's Life and Later Works

This article establishes a pedagogic reading of Wittgenstein's later work, which explores the significance of teaching and learning themes through close textual analysis and archival work on his Nachlass. I argue for the prevalence and importance of Wittgenstein's references to teaching, learning and training by showing the role these references play in the structure and central points of his later works. The opening passages of the Philosophical Investigations and the Brown Book about how we learn language are a framing device for arguments later in the texts; one to which Wittgenstein repeatedly returns at crucial junctures. Learning is the process that weaves together our practices and their expected outcomes, which in turn shapes and reshapes the norms operative in our shared forms of life. Reading Wittgenstein with sensitivity to pedagogic themes thus undermines interpretations that rely on rule‐following as the explanatory mechanism by which linguistic use generates meaning. Instead, we learn to use language that carries meaning by being taught the patterns, norms and judgements that come with particular uses. I thus argue that these references to learning and teaching are far from incidental and are instead central to understanding major concepts such as rule‐following, experience and judgement.     

Imagining Wittgenstein's Adolescent: The educational significance of expression

This paper highlights the philosophical and educational significance of expression in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. When the role of expression is highlighted, we will be better able to appreciate Stanley Cavell's insistence that: (i) Wittgenstein offers ways of responding to, though not a refutation of, the problem of skepticism concerning other minds, and (ii) Wittgenstein's writing style is an important aspect of his philosophy. The educational implications of this appreciation will be explored with reference to the lives of adolescences.     

Wittgenstein: Spiritual Practices

This essay suggests that Wittgenstein's philosophy can be read as an example of what Hadot and Foucault call spiritual practices, and it uses that reading to cast light on the way certain experiences can change one's life. These experiences could as simple as reading a book or even, as might be the case with Thoreau, living alone by a pond. The essay concentrates on the spiritual practices of the Tractatus, but it uses the Investigations' discussion of noticing a change in aspect to characterise these life‐altering experiences. Wittgenstein sought to transform our vision of the world and to induce a metamorphosis in our being by weaning us from the expectation that philosophy will solve the problem of life and by pointing us in the direction of a pedagogy of things.     

Researcher as Teacher: Lessons Modeled by a Well-Remembered Scholar

While teacher educators may encourage their students to reflect deeply on their teaching, the teachers of teachers rarely seem to examine their own teaching practices. Yet a study of one's own practice can generate profound insights into one's own teaching, can model good teaching to our students, and can serve as the foundation for research about teaching. One teacher–researcher–scholar, Jeff Northfield, developed a powerful set of insights into the value of exploring personal practice while contributing to our general knowledge of teaching. Within the context of the current paradigm wars concerning “best” research in the reform of teaching and teacher education, this paper demonstrates that the work of researchers like Northfield stands as a valuable exemplar of good research of teaching. The paper also explores critical points from Northfield's work that can guide future research into our own teaching.     

A Wittgenstein Approach to the Learning of OO-modeling

The paper uses Ludwig Wittgenstein's theories about the relationship between thought, language, and objects of the world to explore the assumption that OO-thinking resembles natural thinking. The paper imports from research in linguistic philosophy to computer science education research. I show how UML class diagrams (i.e., an artificial context-free language) correspond to the logically perfect languages described in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein disputes his previous theories by showing that natural languages are not constructed by rules of mathematical logic, but are language games where the meaning of a word is constructed through its use in social contexts. Contradicting the claim that OO-thinking is easy to learn because of its similarity to natural thinking, I claim that OO-thinking is difficult to learn because of its differences from natural thinking. The nature of these differences is not currently well known or appreciated. I suggest how explicit attention to the nature and implications of different language games may improve the teaching and learning of OO-modeling as well as programming.     

Training and Abrichtung: Wittgenstein as a tragic philosopher of education

As a landmark philosopher of language and of mind, Ludwig Wittgenstein is also remarkable for having crossed, with apparent ease, the ‘continental divide’ in philosophy. It is consequently not surprising that Wittgenstein’s work, particularly in the Philosophical Investigations, has been taken up by philosophers of education in English. Michael A. Peters, Christopher Winch, Paul Smeyers and Nicholas Burbules, and others have engaged extensively with the implications of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy for education. One challenge they face is Wittgenstein’s use of the word ‘training.’ It appears throughout his discussions of language learning and in his periodic references to education. This is made all the more problematic by realizing that the German term Wittgenstein uses consistently is Abrichtung, which refers to animal dressage or obedience training, which is currently used in sadomasochistic practice, and which also connotes also the breaking of an animal’s will. I argue that this little-recognized fact has broad significance for many important Wittgenstinian insights into education. I conclude by considering how an unflinching recognition of the implications of Wittgenstein’s word choice might cast him as a pessimistic or tragic philosopher of education and upbringing—following German-language traditions—rather than as thinker more compatible with progressive Anglo-American perspectives.     

Betwixt and Between: Working Through the Aesthetic in Philosophy of Education: George F. Kneller Lecture,Conference of the American Educational Studies Association Savannah,Georgia, October 30, 2008

At a time when both philosophy of education and the arts are under threat within education, this article inquires into interdisciplinarity as one way of approaching the disciplines of philosophy of education and aesthetics. The article offers a retrospective autobiographical intellectual history and phenomenology of the author's own learning and scholarship within Higher Education in three main areas—philosophy of literature education, women's studies, and philosophy of music education, areas paralleling the three periods of her academic career. One sub-theme of this narrative about the balancing act of working in literature and music through philosophy of education is the author's ongoing resistance to professionalization or disciplinary academic control—of literature, philosophy, and music—while being a critical student of educational theory and practice in these areas—philosophy, literature and music within philosophy of education—of thus being “betwixt and between.” Two other themes comprising the article's subtext are “praxis” and “embodiment.” The double entendre of the phrase “working through” entails, first, using the arts of literature and music to practise philosophy of education; and secondly, embracing the psychological, ethical, and spiritual introspection that comes with critical engagement of the arts and its discourses. In short, the article aims to reprise some burning philosophical educational questions that have preoccupied its author over the years, questions deemed especially pertinent to the current increasingly diverse membership in the discipline of educational studies.     

Inquiring About Practice: Using web‐based materials to develop teacher inquiry

This paper explores a new pedagogical approach to teaching teachers to assume a learning or inquiry stance in their practice. It is based on an assumption that professional learning is a core capability of good teaching that is responsive to the changing needs of children, schools, and communities. One source of teacher learning is practice—one's own practice and the practice of others. Whereas there is much written about teachers learning from their own practice, there is scant attention in the field currently about learning from the practice of others. What do we mean by learning from the practice of others? Beyond visiting their classrooms, how might teachers access the practice of others so that they can learn from it? How does learning work proceed? This paper grapples with these questions as a frame for discussing one teacher education attempt at preparing teachers to learn from the practice of others. It begins by making a case for learning as a centerpiece of good teaching, and then proceeds to describe one example of how the inquiry practice of experienced teachers was used to teach teacher inquiry to a group of novice teachers in California.     

Wittgenstein and Stage-Setting: Being brought into the space of reasons

Abstract

Wittgenstein constantly invokes teaching, training and learning in his later work. It is therefore interesting to consider what role these notions play for him there. I argue that their use is central to Wittgenstein’s attempt to refute cognitivist assumptions, and to show how normative practices can be understood without the threat of circularity, grounded not in a kind of seeing, but in doing, and the natural reactions of an organism. This can generate a worry that Wittgenstein’s position is quietist and anti-critical: critique, as a challenge to the taken-for-granted grammar of our language game, is technically meaningless. I argue that Wittgenstein does not rule out critique. His own practice demonstrates that critique is possible, but takes place within a language game, and its status as critique is always subject to challenge in the agora of a discourse.     

Rush Rhees on Education

R.S. Peters and Paul Hirst were the most influential figures in philosophy of education in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The claim in this paper is that their rationalist's approach was often misleading and unilluminating. They believed they were preparing children for life beyond school, but to a large extent they failed because they did not take into account the diversity of values and practices of life in general. The paper contains some reflections by Rush Rhees, a student of Wittgenstein, on some of their writings. Rhees had first met Wittgenstein when he attended his classes in 1936. They formed a lifelong friendship, and Rhees subsequently devoted much of his life to the dissemination, interpretation, and criticism of Wittgenstein's work. The reflections discussed here derive primarily from views Rhees expressed in the 1970s.     

维特根斯坦语义整体论与外语词汇教学

文章结合维特根斯坦的语义整体论,从语词的意义这一语言哲学的基本问题的角度,探讨其对外语教学中的词汇教学的启发。在对维特根斯坦后期语义整体论的两个主要概念：即语言游戏说和意义使用说的分析基础上,文章认为整体论对外语词汇教学的启示有两方面：第一,词汇的习得与语词意义的理解有着密切的关系,而词义的理解在于对词汇的使用;第二,词义的理解离不开相应的语境,因此语境知识的补充是提高词汇习得水平的有效方法之一。     

Doing,knowing, caring and feeling: exploring relations between nature-oriented teaching and preschool children's learning

Research has shown that early childhood science education is based on education and care, sometimes stressed as a dichotomy. The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the relations between teachers' teaching and children's learning in preschool practice, both in terms of educative processes and nature-oriented content. The ambition is also to develop and present an analysis method that facilitates these investigations. Outdoor nature experiences of preschool children (aged one to three) were video-recorded, transcribed and analysed. The methodology is based on John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy. Here, epistemological move analysis (oriented towards teachers' guiding processes as moves) and substantive learning quality analysis (oriented towards multi-dimensional learning qualities) are developed and used as analysis tools. The analyses show that the relations between teaching and learning processes and nature content are intertwined and include education and care. The teachers guide towards aesthetical, moral, cognitive and physical qualities in learning by challenging, admonishing, instructional, confirming, generative, reorienting and reconstructing moves. The results contribute to nature-oriented teaching practice and nature-oriented preschool research when discussing and investigating teaching and learning processes and nature content.     

Writing the Self: Wittgenstein,Confession and Pedagogy

In this paper I investigate ‘the confessional’ as an aspect of Wittgenstein's style both as a mode of philosophising and as a mode of ‘writing the self’, tied explicitly to pedagogical practices. There are strong links between Wittgenstein's confessional mode of philosophising and his life—for him philosophy is a way of life —and interesting theoretical connections between confessional practices and pedagogy, usefully explored in the writings of the French philosopher, Michel Foucault. The Investigations provides a basis and springboard for understanding the notion of ‘writing the self’ as a pedagogical practice which encourages a confessional mode compelling us to tell the truth about ourselves and, thus, creating the conditions for ethico‐poetical self‐constitution.     

Hilary Putnam interviewed by Naoko Saito and Paul Standish

The interview, which took place on the eve of the 2012 American presidential election, coincides with the publication of three major works by or about Hilary Putnam. It begins and ends with the topic of science, drawing attention to science's profound importance but also to its contemporary forms of distortion. It explores Putnam's current views on realism, with reference to conceptual relativity and ‘objectivity without objects’. The nature of philosophy and its sometimes‐dishonest relationship to scepticism is considered, especially in relation to the work of Stanley Cavell and Richard Rorty. Putnam acknowledges that he has learned much from Wittgenstein, but he laments Wittgenstein's apparent insensitivity to the value of, and spiritual depth in, Plato. He recognises Rorty's contribution to the revival of pragmatism, but he roundly criticises the version of it advanced by Rorty and by his student, Robert Brandom. It is classical pragmatism's achievement in overcoming the fact‐value dichotomy that Putnam wishes particularly to emphasise. While acknowledging tensions in the work of Dewey, between the sensitive aesthetician and the social reformer, Putnam stresses Dewey's importance, alongside that of Martin Buber, in shaping his own political and religious views. In the course of the discussion further tensions are considered—between pragmatism and American transcendentalism, and between analytic and continental philosophy. The interview closes with reference to politics and to the perilous situation of the humanities today.     

意义在于使用：论公共研究生英语的多媒体课堂教学目标设计

从维特根斯坦的意义在于使用的观点、奥斯汀的言语行为理论、塞尔的意向理论等语言哲学思想得到启示,意义的习得与所处的语境、说话人的意图有很大的关系。将语言哲学的观点融入外语教学中,运用多媒体的优势,以注重课堂教学的质量为中心,探讨设计出符合课堂学习风格的教学目标及方法,旨在提高公共研究生英语的综合语用能力。     

Understanding Teacher Candidate Misconceptions and Concerns about Differentiated Instruction

While teacher education programs are expected to teach effective methods of differentiating instruction, limited research to date has examined the meaning-making processes through which candidates build an understanding of this complex philosophy of teaching and learning. Drawing upon activity theory, this interpretive qualitative study examined how candidates’ understandings of differentiation's conceptual and practical tools—and their concerns about its implementation–changed as they encountered accurate, in-depth information about the model in a course on differentiation. Data sources included interviews, assignments, and observations. Findings suggested candidates entered the course with common misconceptions about differentiation's conceptual tools. Although many candidates originally conceptualized differentiation as a set of practical tools, they later viewed it as a conceptual framework that guides practice. As candidates appropriated practical tools of differentiation, common concerns about implementing differentiation diminished. Implications include questions teacher educators who teach candidates about differentiation should pose to guide their own instruction.