1.3. Pragmatism: an epistemology to take pluralism into account
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.