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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
This article calls for an acceptance of a constructive postmodernity and links that epoistemology with the use of collaborative learning techniques. If we and our students live in a postmodern world, then our pedagogy must make sense within that same postmodernity. To ignore these epistemological horizons is to split our intellectual commitments from our teaching. The tone of the work is set by a sketch of the muddled term “postmodern.” Four markers are developed to situate postmodernity's ironic sense of reality and to link it to a suspicion of any universal master narrative. Why should teachers care? Because learning should reflect our picture of knowing. We teach a world in what we do. The pedagogical practices most in line with the postmodern vision involve collaborative learning, which itself represents a departure from the classic vision of knowing. The article ends with a coda on the theologies resonant with these commitments.
1 Postmodernity is a way of thinking that cuts across art, architecture, literature, philosophy, and culture. For that reason it can seem the esoteric property of specialists. But these intelligentsia are only reflecting or celebrating what many feel in more common-sense terms. A wonderful survey of the terrain from sciences to drama and politics is Anderson, Walter Truett, Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Beady-to-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990).Google Scholar An introduction to the philosophical background for students of theology is Grenz, Stanley J., A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996).Google Scholar The shortest worthwhile sketch is the dictionary entry by Downey, Michael, “Postmodernity” in Downey, Michael, ed., The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 746–49.Google Scholar To tour the background with a turn towards issues in religion and science, see Grassie, William, “Postmodernism: What One Needs to Know,” Zygon 32 (03 1997): 83–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A good collection of the important authors is Jencks, Charles, ed., The Post-Modern Reader (London: Academy Editions, 1992).Google Scholar
2 Habermas, Jürgen, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Shapiro, Jeremy J. (Boston: Beacon, 1972).Google Scholar Habermas is not a postmodern but an example of the bridge between late modernity and postmodernity. He fears postmodernity as a poorly disguised antimodernity. He argues instead for a more critical modernity in, e.g., “Modernity versus Postmodernity,” New German Critique 22 (1981): 3–14.Google Scholar A clear discussion of postmodernity (dividing postmodernism into poststructuralism, the new Marxism, neopragmatism, and feminism) which moves toward a critical dialogue with Habermas is McGowan, John, Postmodernism and Its Critics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
3 An excellent discussion of this is Bordo's, Susan “Feminism, Postmodernism, and Gender-Skepticism” in Nicholson, Linda J., ed. and intro., Feminism/Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1990), 133–56, esp. 152–53.Google Scholar I would not want to give the impression that feminists are automatically postmodern. Bordo's work is an excellent example of a serious philosopher attending to postmodernity and feminism. This collection of articles provides an impressive introduction to a range of issues in feminist epistemologies.
4 See, e.g., Tracy, David, “Theology and the Many Faces of Postmodernity,” Theology Today 51 (04 1994): 104–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This is not to deny that needed transformation is radical. Eagleton, Terry puts it simply in “Awakening from Modernity,” Times Literary Supplement 20 (02 1987): 194Google Scholar: “Science and philosophy must jettison their grandiose metaphysical claims and view themselves more modestly as just another set of narratives.”
5 Bordo, , “Feminism, Postmodernism, and Gender Skepticism,” 142.Google Scholar
6 Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).Google Scholar
7 Anderson, , Reality Isn't What It Used to Be, 75.Google Scholar
8 Geertz, Clifford, Local Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1983);Google ScholarBerger, Peter and Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966);Google ScholarNelson Goodman, Of Mind and Other Matters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984);Google Scholar and Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).Google Scholar A nice introductory survey of this terrain is Bruffee, Kenneth, “Social Construction, Language, and the Authority of Knowledge: A Bibliographical Essay,” College English 48 (12 1986): 773–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 82.Google Scholar
10 Ibid., xxiii. A discussion of the demise of metanarratives in social sciences is Seidman, Steven, “Postmodern Social Theory as Narrative with a Moral Intent” in Seidman, Steven and Wagner, David G., eds., Postmodernism and Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 47–81.Google Scholar Jane Flax gives a good sketch of the modern assumptions which are the foil for postmodernity in “Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory” in Nicholson, , ed., Feminism, 39–43.Google Scholar
11 Lyotard, , Postmodern Condition, xxiv.Google Scholar while I agree with this description, I do not agree that it must entail the disintegration of our connectedness. Even the suspicious who attack the modern ego cannot themselves replace it, they cannot proceed without common ground. I doubt there is no role for appeal to human value or emancipation. Part of the problem here is a “linguistic fideism” which finds no possible communication between language-games and so eschews common ground of any sort. With this assertion. Lyotard departs from an accurate description of the postmodern and inserts his own hopes. But this takes us into disputed territory.
Among the directions for an answer to the issue of common ground are the vectors indicated by Lawrence, Fred, “The Fragility of Consciousness Lonergan and the Postmodern Concern for the Other,” Theological Studies 54 (03 1993) 55–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Tracy, David, “On Naming the Present” in The Foundation, ed, On the Threshold of the Third Millennium (London: SCM Press, 1990), 54–85.Google Scholar See also Giroux, Henry A., “Postmodernism and the Discourse of Educational Criticism” in Aronowitz, Stanley and Giroux, Henry A., Postmodern Education Politics, Culture, and Social Criticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 57–86.Google Scholar
12 Lemert, Charles, “General Social Theory, Irony, Postmodernism” in Seidman, and Wagner, , eds., Postmodernism, 41.Google Scholar
13 Umberto Eco provides a wonderful feel for this ironic pattern of working from and yet transcending modernity: “I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, ‘I love you madly,” because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, ‘As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.’ At this point having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her, but he loves her in an age of lost innocence” (“Postscript to The Name of the Rose” in Jencks, , ed., Post-Modern Reader, 73–74).Google Scholar
14 A succinct reminder of these dangers is found in Baum's, Gregory essay “The End of Innocent Critique and the Postmodern Discourse,” The Ecumenist 3 (07–09 1996): 58–63.Google Scholar See also his “Postmodern Discourse and Social Responsibility” in his Essays in Critical Theology (Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1994), 77–95.Google Scholar
15 Fish, Stanley, Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretative Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 338.Google Scholar
16 Oakeshott, Michael, Rationalism in Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1962), 199.Google Scholar Oakeshott's basic idea is developed by Kenneth A. Bruffee in his important essay on which I rely in this section “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind,’“ College English 46 (11 1984): 635–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Bruffe, Kenneth A., Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 131.Google Scholar
18 For a brief history see Bruffee, , “Collaborative Learning,” 636–38.Google Scholar
19 Smith, Barbara Leigh and MacGregor, Jean T., “What Is Collaborative Learning?” in Goodsell, Anne, Maher, Michelle, and Tinto, Vincent, eds., with Smith, Barbara Leigh and MacGregor, Jean, Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education (University Park, PA: National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, 1992), 9–22.Google Scholar Smith and MacGregor direct the Washington Center for the Improvement of Undergraduate Education. The Center is located at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. The book is an excellent collection of key documents on these issues. See also Golub, Jeff and the Committee on Classroom Practices, eds., Focus on Collaborative Learning, Classroom Practices in Teaching English, 1988 (Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1988).Google Scholar
For the pragmatics of creating learning communities, see Gabelnick, Faith, MacGregor, Jean, Matthews, Roberta S., and Smith, Barbara Leigh, Learning Communities: Creating Connections among Students, Faculty, and Disciplines, New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 41 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990).Google Scholar
20 Smith, and MacGregor, , “Collaborative Learning,” 10.Google Scholar
21 Finkel, Donald L. and Monk, G. Stephen, “Teachers and Learning Groups' Dissolution of the Atlas Complex,” in Goodsell, et al., eds., Collaborative Learning, 51.Google Scholar
22 Both the development of collaborative learning and the portfolio movement owe much to the work on writing instruction by Pat Belanoff and Peter Elbow. See Belanoff, Pat and Dickson, Marcia, eds., Portfolios: Process and Product (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1991).Google Scholar A clear discussion of testing versus portfolios in composition instruction and a study of the impact on students can be found in Nelson, Alexis A., Constructing College Composition, Making Writers: Portfolio Assessment and Writer Identity (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1994).Google Scholar
23 Graff, Gerald, Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education (New York: Norton, 1992).Google Scholar
24 For a more extensive discussion, see Downey, John K., “Resisting and Yielding to Small Groups,” The National Teaching and Learning Forum 6/2 (1997): 6–7.Google Scholar
25 A brief but perspicacious review of this key issue is Thiel, John E., Nonfoundationalism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991).Google Scholar For a clear picture of the postmodern theological agenda see Lakeland, Paul, Postmodernity: Christian Identity in a Fragmented Age (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).Google Scholar
26 Metz, Johann Baptist, “Communicating a Dangerious Memory,” Lonergan Workshop 6 (1987): 37–53.Google Scholar For an introductory collection of articles, see Metz, J. B. and Moltmann, Jürgen, Faith and the Future: Essays on Theology, Solidarity, and Modernity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995).Google Scholar
27 Metz, , “Unity and Diversity: Problems and Prospects for Inculturation” in Metz, and Moltmann, , Faith and the Future, 57–65.Google Scholar
28 A variety of theological approaches can be found among the many conversations on postmodern theology: Guarino, Thomas, “Postmodernity and Five Fundamental Theological Issues,” Theological Studies 57 (12 1996): 654–89;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Lawrence, “The Fragility of Consciousness”; Tilley, Terrence W., Postmodern Theologies: The Challenge of Religious Diversity (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995);Google ScholarGriffin, David Ray, Beardslee, William A., and Holland, Joe, Varieties of Postmodern Theology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989);Google ScholarAdam, A. K. M., What Is Postmodern Biblical Criticism? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995);Google Scholar and Balboa, Jaime R., “Gustavo Gutierrez in Poststructuralist Critique: Toward a Postmodern Liberation,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 49 (1995): 127–46.Google Scholar
29 Palmer, Parker J., To Know as We Ate Known (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1983), 29.Google Scholar