1.3. Pragmatism: an epistemology to take pluralism into account
| Site: | European Citizen Science Academy (ECS academy) |
| Course: | Empowerment through co-designed Citizen Science in education |
| Book: | 1.3. Pragmatism: an epistemology to take pluralism into account |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Thursday, 21 November 2024, 1:57 PM |
Description
Pragmatism is a philosophical school developed at the turn of the 20th century in the United States by Charles Sander Peirce, William James, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. Pragmatism acknowledges the fact that humans as well as ecological systems are not static but change over time (Dewey, 1939). As such, our knowledge of the world is never complete nor perfect: it is rather a fallible and perfectible outcome of our experience and practices, related to our actions, at a given moment.
In this perspective, practicing science
through a CS pedagogic project and exchanging their experiences of the world could lead to changes among the participants (students and their teachers). Such an evolution may be analyzed thanks to a pragmatist epistemology.
The objective of this subsection is to introduce a few concepts that you could find relevant to build your own CS pedagogic program. In order to help you to related those theoretical elements to practical projects, you may find at the end of each paragraph an example derived from the hypothetical research projects presented in Exercise 1 (subsection 1.2.C) and a question that relates to your own previous experience. In the next section, we will provide further examples.
1.3.A. Inquiry and reflectivity allow for defining what matters to us
In John Dewey’s (1939) pragmatist perspective, an inquiry is a process of clarification and unification of problematic situations encountered by people.
Inquiry amounts to an intelligent exploration of (i) the ins and outs of a problematic situation, (ii) the desirable ends to solve the problem, and (iii) the available means to achieve it, and their expected consequences. The methods, procedures of experimentation and social elements of the inquiry make it actually close from a scientific investigation. In this perspective, the inquiry is flexible and dynamic, likely to evolve while problematic situations are defined and re-defined.
Inquiries acquire a social dimension when new actors are involved in the process, each bringing their own vision of the world and sharing it with the others through intersubjective exchanges. Social inquiries thus allow for collectively setting a problem, agreeing at its terms, and on defining a solution i.e., an objective, at a given moment, to pursue and the means to use. According to Dewey’s pragmatist epistemology, this actually amounts to define what matters to us or, to put it differently, to form values, that are therefore contingent of the situation within which they occur. This perspective is interesting because it states that values are not fixed, abstract, dematerialized and purely individual features, but rather a dynamic, social, and practical process of taking care of something.
1.3.B. Values' plurality : reflecting on what matters and who for
For pragmatism, values amount to practical ways of taking care of things and emerge from transactions between individuals and their environment. As such, the very first step of value attribution consists, simply and mainly, in giving attention to something, may it be an event, a situation, an object or a person. For some authors, values are therefore « what matters » to people (Renault, 2016) and what they consider to be good (Thompson and McDonald, 2013).
Pragmatism rejects the conception of values as pure emotions or pre-existing qualities of objects, situations, persons… Instead, it considers them as the result of both an immediate appreciation coupled with a reasoned and experience-based judgment, performed in a particular situation and relying on previous personal experiences and exchanges with other people. Valuation is thus a reflective activity that intends to determine what is desirable through exchanges with other perspectives and compared with other situations, events, objects and potential pre-existing experiences.
Thus, far from being overreaching and absolute qualities of objects or fixed and superior moral principles, values are the result of relations, connections and transaction between personal attitudes and extra-personal situational elements.
1.3.C. Values dynamics: reflecting on the effects of Citizen Science
Question:
In project A, citizens are only invited to collect data. The observation protocols actually invite them to pay attention to organisms that they may have ignored so far or simply seen without further thinking about their role in the local ecosystems, about their needs, about the evolution of their populations... Thus, while participants start paying attention to birds and hedgehogs in practical terms (first by counting and identifying them, maybe later by changing the way they manage their garden or by creating hosting areas...), participants may actually start to consider that those organisms matter. In this perspective, the CS process has led to the creation of new values related to biodiversity among the participants. Yet, investigating such effects needs to develop adequate tools used beyond the sole objective and timeline of the biodiversity data sampling protocol. Have you ever intended to monitor the effects of a pedagogic sequence on students and on the way they conceive a topic, a given concept, their relation to the world or to other people, and particularly, on the way they define what is important for them ?