ON-LINE ISSUES

V.3 N.1, October 1995

Messing About in the Theory/Practice Parabole

by Jeanette E. M. Scott

Centre for the Study of Curriculum and Instruction
University of British Columbia

1. What image might best express the relationship of theory and practice? Where will I find theory? Is it over, under, in, throughout, beside, outside, or inside practice?[1]. Undoubtedly, my choice of image and of preposition(s) will tell a great deal about my present conceptualization of that contradictory space between my thinking and my doing.

2. As a student, a teacher and a teacher-educator, I have experienced many connections and disconnections between the world of theory and the whirled of practice. I have gone through the denial of any relationship; I have privileged one over the other and, on still other occasions, I have experienced the disappearance of the warp of theory within the weft[2] of practice. Now, having de/constructed the separation, I find myself in a place where I am able to enter the spaces between the threads. Here I see a kinetic juxtapositioning of theory and practice, a continuous movement within and without, beyond and behind. As I wiggle my way into these generative spaces which are neither theoretical nor practical, I long to draw others in to play with me.

   Psychologists teach us that the mind is capable of perceiving either the relief or the background but we cannot perceive both at the same time. (For example, in looking at the familiar optical illusion of the two faces and the Grecian urn) we can literally see either two faces or a grecian [sic ] urn at one time. We cannot see both simultaneously. Everything we know says that one thing cannot be two things at the same time. And yet we know that two things are one thing at one and the very same time. (Kushner, 1990: 12)

3. As technology pushes us forward into virtual reality and a renewal of interest in spirituality draws us into the dreamtime, an openness to the mystery of paradox again becomes more common-place. For example, an increasingly popular art form is the three-dimensional image created through the use of holography or computer-generated graphics. The instructions for seeing the hidden images on such products are interesting in themselves. The viewer is told to relax, to observe the apparent image without focussing on it and to be patient for eventually, the other image will appear. In order to discover the balance between what is apparent and what is hidden, one must place oneself in the symmetry and allow the imagination to play in the divergence. It is in this area of contradiction where the images dance and move.

4. The intention of this paper is to play in such a divergence, to dwell in the sort of place where many voices may be heard, where incongruity is acceptable and where substantive changes might erupt.

   I. In Search of a Collaborative Nexus

5. As a teacher-educator, I often hear teachers and student-teachers referring to the university as something other than the "real" world, a place for philosophizing rather than a place for discussing the genuine difficulties of teaching. At the same time, there are those in the university who continue to imagine that if only practitioners would pay attention to the research literature, their difficulties would dissolve. It is not easy for those who hold to a neo-Græco world view to accept that the greater challenge is in the seeking of the strong questions rather than in the finding of the right answers.

6. The division which has been constructed between theory and practice is one which many, in schools and in the academy, imagine to be a natural separation. It is an assumption which may emerge in the double challenge of the pre-practicum question: "What do I do on Monday morning?" and the post-practicum demand: "Stop talking and just let me teach." Or it may surface in the cynicism of the teacher who, having dealt with yet another institutionalized change and an equally incomprehensible rationalization for the change, will respond to the so-called expert with: "That's all fine theory but I'd like to see you come into my classroom and teach for a day." The separation between the world of what is and the world of what might be continues to alienate the one from the other. It becomes more problematic as teachers imagine themselves atheoretical and as theorists write themselves into obscurity.

7. In considering the ways in which I can draw my teaching self and my other selves into the nexus which emerges in the midst of these two solitudes, I have found it helpful to consider some of the history of this troubled relationship.

8. According to Pinar and Grumet, who based their essay, "Socratic Cæsura and the Theory-Practice Relationship" on the work of historian, Nicholas Lobkowicz, the Western world has held to three significant views of the nature and the degree of consanguinity between theory and practice. One is that of "the ancient Greeks (who) regarded theory and practice as two aspects of a unified or integrated life" ( Pinar, 1988: 94). For the Greeks, the ideal state of existence was one in which there was an integrity of the orthe doxa, the world of right thinking, and the doxa, the disordered world of everyday opinion. This integrity which came through contemplation was, however, beyond the reach of the ordinary citizen. Only the philosopher king was able to enter that state which provided an escape from the polis to the eidos. The Greeks saw theory as a way of reaching up from the real world to the ideal world; they had no intention of corrupting theory by applying it to practical life. In the Græco-Roman world, theory was impractical.

9. In complete reversal of classical philosophy is the scientific view which allows for a domination of the ideal world by the real world. While post-structuralism has infused much of the discourse within the academy, the prevailing view in the larger community continues to be a scientific view which holds that theory does reveal elements of truth but is not of value unless it can prove itself in practice.

10. The middle way is one which acknowledges a spiritual dimension and which tolerates an openness to mystery. In the Western world, this view is based primarily upon a Judeo-Christian understanding of the relationship between the visible and the invisible worlds. Both Jews and Christians believe in the rupturing of the real by various incarnations of the ideal. For example, during the first century of the present era, an "anarchic figure" (Caputo, 1993: 148), a nobody whose socioeconomic class placed him in that "dangerous space between peasant and expendable" (Crossan, 1995: 25) claimed a messianic right to challenge the elitism which prevailed throughout the Roman world. He demonstrated the transformative power which is available to those who are willing to dwell in that place of paradox between the world of kairos and the world of chronos . In his commensalism with women and other undesirables, this carpenter's son from Galilee rejected the established privileging by gender and by social status; in his teaching about love, he advocated an end to discrimination and oppression. While the initial response to these radical views was one of open antagonism, the strongest objections were those that were hidden within dualism. Instead of allowing for a breaking through the boundaries and an entry into the realm of contradiction between theory and practice, Christianity was reduced to a shifting of emphasis from one to the other. Practice (works) took on a position of greater importance than theory (faith) since, faith without works, was not seen to be faith. Although the life, death and re/surrection of Jesus demonstrated that the only way for faithful works to be carried out was through the mysterious working of the holy within the human, a majority of so-called believers, continued to view theory as remaining in a realm out of the reach of practice.

11. Rather than continuing to promote the sort of caedere which presently cuts off one from the other, Pinar and Grumet, argue for a relationship which allows for a point and counterpoint of opposition and contradiction. They suggest, and I concur, that there is a need for both theorists and practitioners to engage in a cæsura that is both a turning from what has been and a seeking, through a contemplation of contradiction, of what might be.

    II. DeLuding OurSelves with Rhizomes and Convolvulus

12. The cursor blinks and I stare blankly at the screen, listening to the hum of the computer as it waits for me to call the words into somewhere out of nowhere. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimbel in the wabe... Lewis Carroll's nonsense makes more sense than my absurd drivel which when printed will slobber its stupid way across the page.

13. It occurs to me that I am in the academy by pretense. I sit in a room surrounded by hundreds of books filled with thousands of words written by people whom I do not know and I try desperately to play their game, to communicate in words. But the words know me; they know that I don't like them, that I read them, write them, awkwardly so they remain hidden in the books. They are other people's words, not mine.

14. Reading and writing are, for me, unnatural ways of coming to an understanding of the world and of sharing that understanding with others. I find listening and speaking to be easier than reading and writing but I am most comfortable expressing my thoughts, my emotions with movement and sound, using my body as sign.

15. And yet, I re/call, in a paper written only a few weeks ago, describing my words as sliding "across the page like skiis on a wide open run in fresh snow."

16. What is it that brings me to contra/dict myself in this way? What has changed the words from this:

    
    
         My words slide across the page like skiis on a wide open
    
         run in fresh snow.  The sun shines; the shifting of weight is
    
         easy,  rhythmic,  automatic and all that it will take to make
    
         me a victim of the slippery slope is a loss of concentration,
    
         an edge deflected,  a sudden loss of balance.  Sometimes
    
         the mountain  of words works with you;  sometimes it does
    
         not.
    
    
    
                                                 (October, 1994)
    
    

    to this?

    
    
         I am standing on an unfamiliar mountain,  at the top of an
    
         ordinary run but I cannot push off.  I know that I can easily
    
         ski out,  down and out;  that the dangers are no more and
    
         no less than I have faced so many times before but I simply
    
         cannot move.  The voice inside tells me that I am not
    
         capable of doing what I know I can do.
    
    
    
                                                 (December, 1994)
    
    

17. Whose voice am I hearing? Whose words am I repeating? Whose judgement has immobilized me?

18. I recall Pinar's early writings on currere. "By examining one's life history, even a fragment of that history, such as one's life in schools, or one's involvement in an academic discipline, one can begin to construct an etiology of one's present arrest" (Pinar, 1994: 37). I acknowledge that my present inability to form the words, like my inability to ski, is a multi- dimensional arrest. I am constrained by real or imagined institutional demands. [This and this and this are, after all, the course requirements.] My desire to please, to reproduce the image of the good student, leads to a psychological arrest because I tell myself [as I have been told so often in the past] that I am not capable of fulfilling these requirements. The intellectual arrest is accompanied then by the emotional, the physical and the spiritual, so that, until I re/member and name those experiences which place me under judgement, I am immobilized.
    The past hangs over the present as fog veils a highway.

19. I cannot escape the past. I must, as Pinar says, confront my history "in order to hope to grasp the present and influence the future" (1994: 57).

20. I recall the experiences of schooling which have allowed me to tell myself that I am stupid, out of place in the academic world. There is a temptation to return to the safety of my own teaching but I have already come to the realization that for my teaching to continue to be transformed, I must be transformed. Just as I have come to an awareness of the negative impact of my pedagogy on my students, so I must come to an understanding of the source of that pedagogy and of the ways my experiences as student have caused my present arrest.

21. I return to Pinar who writes: "one comes to understand one's case as one lives it " (1994: 41).

22. This understanding will only emerge as I consciously engage in an acceptance of the weight of the past. If I hope to move beyond the "denial and (the) ignorance" (1994: 52), beyond the arrest, to a place which is both transtemporal and transconceptual, I must explore the temporal and the conceptual. Only then will I be open to the possibilities of the present which are rooted in the past and waiting to bloom in the future.

23. So I push backwards and forwards and onto the slope - carefully, conscious of the dangers hidden in the opportunities, still seeking a delicate balance.

    What is curriculum?
    Where is curriculum?
    Who is curriculum?
    
    
    Q: What does it mean to describe curriculum as a meta-narrative of a colonial master planted in our midst and reigning in arboreal splendour?
    (Aoki & Shamsher, 1993: 95)

24. In what ways do these metaphors re/interpret curriculum and transform my conception of trees?

25. I know, even without being reminded by Jacques Derrida, of the power of the words. I anticipate their doubling, redoubling and double doubling of meaning and of understanding. I am aware that the signifiers which I choose to write will transform me as they transform themselves, as they transform the reader and the ideas in the very act of signifying those ideas. So the process of answering the question posed takes a great deal of time; each word must be chosen cautiously. [Each turn, regardless of the steepness of the slope, the speed of the movement, completed before the next is initiated.]

26. I must be particularly careful with my choice of metaphors for metaphors are powerful medicine. It is necessary to have respect for words with tangled meanings and it is important to realize that the appropriation of other people's metaphors is dangerous business.

27. On the verge of accepting and using [no, not accepting but still using] the Deleuzian metaphors of the tree and the rhizome, I am overwhelmed by a feeling of betrayal. The photograph of the magnificently humble Carmanah firs [beside the portraits of my children] startles me into the realization that I was about to accept an anthropomorphic judgement that denies all that I know and believe about trees. Like my ancestors, I have a great respect and love for trees. I know what it is like to talk to trees, to seek their comfort and their protection, to experience their healing power and to grieve deeply the individual deaths of these living creatures with whom we are expected to share the earth. Listening to the sap flowing in the trees is not unlike listening to the heartbeat. Despite the appearance of invulnerability, I know that trees are fragile for I have seen how a simple change in the environment can cause them a great deal of suffering. Humans may impose a notion of hierarchy, of binary logic, upon a tree but that is not the way of the tree.

28. So I come to the consideration of the roots of the tree - the rhizomes. [rhizome - from the Latin rhizoma, a mass of roots, from the Greek rhizoma, roots of a tree, rhizousthai, to take root, from rhiza, root.] And I wonder when and where and who has given a new meaning to this word. What circumstances have denied the roots and valorized the stem? [rhizome - underground stems which produce roots and shoots]

29. Perhaps the qualities of convolvulus express Deleuze's intention more clearly. [convolvulus - bindweed from Latin convolvere, to interweave] Certainly, if I were looking for a botanical "war machine" (Deleuze and Parnet, 1987: xi), for a way to subvert authority by becoming devious, disruptive, deceitful and downright impossible to live with, I would choose the bindweed and the morning glory over the strawberry and the woody nightshade, over the cypress and the cedar.

30. But, at this juncture, I confess that I prefer to work in a place that is in the earth and on the earth and over the earth and of the earth. I do not want to embrace a pedagogy which pops up unexpectedly, which brings me into places where I am bound to be destructive. My curriculum is no longer filled with hidden agenda. It is rooted in the earth; it offers protection to those around me; it may be a humble jackpine in comparison with other's majestic Douglas firs but it will do. Together, my students and I can nurture it, talk to it, hang stars upon it and eventually, rest in its shade.

31. In a presentation to the JCT Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice in Banff in October, 1994, Madeleine Grumet spoke of giving weight to curriculum through engaging in and with the world.

    Curriculum that matters addresses the issues in the world where teachers and students live and work, the world that they care about and want to change.

32. A curriculum that matters, like a pedagogy that cares, does not crawl through spaces where it does not belong; rather, it lives in and grows out of the earth; it gives back to the earth and to its companion creatures more than it receives; it listens and responds softly, care/fully.

    III. Playing in the Im/Practical In-Between

33. In an effort to un/tangle some of these issues as they affect my work as teacher-educator, I allow myself to enter into a series of meditations ...
    The Gate From The Tea House Garden

34. A few months ago, I found a notice posted on a door in one of the many multi-storied concrete parking lots on the university campus. The notice informed me that, like the complicated space between theory and practice, the gate from the tea house in the Nitobe Memorial Garden was missing. The loss of the gate, which is an essential part of the tea house, we were told, would hinder the conducting of the tea ceremony.

35. It occured to me that in considering the place of the gate in the tea ceremony, I might learn more about the place of theory in practice.

36. As I struggle with the socially-constructed divisions, I realize that the very fact that I am speaking as a teacher-educator generates a liminal space between my self now and my self a year ago. The contemplative space with which I am presently blessed may well separate my understanding of theory and practice from that of my teaching colleagues but I shall try to keep the memories of my other self in mind while I work through the lens of my present context.

    Meditation I. The gate as a central part of a mystery

37. To many beginning and experienced teachers, theory remains a mystery. Because it is so deeply enfolded in practice, it is hard to locate. It is often mistaken as being distant, incomprehensible, even irrelevant. Frequently, this perception is fostered by theorists whose attitudes and language confuse and alienate those who work in schools, outside the realm of the "arrogant truth" ( Pinar, 1988: 99).

38. Yet, just as between the gate and the tea ceremony, so also there is an interdependence between theory and practice. The gate (theory) has no purpose outside of the tea ceremony (practice) and the tea ceremony (practice) is meaningless without the gate (theory). The theory which holds a teacher's practice together must be drawn out of the tacit realm into the explicit before a critical pedagogy will emerge.

    Meditation II. The gate as ritual

39. Rituals are customs which are fixed by traditions. They are solemn and symbolic, ceremonial and communal. Ritualistic behavior presupposes a connection between the real world and the ideal world, between the physical and the emotional dimensions and the spiritual and intellectual dimensions. In order for rituals to be meaningful to the participants, there must be an understanding of the beliefs which are implicit in the actions and there must be a sense of conviction that the ritual serves a communal purpose.

40. To teach by prescription or to theorize outside the educational community, may appear to be solemn and traditional, even ritualistic, but such behavior is empty of meaning and conviction and works against rather than in support of community.

    Meditation III. The gate as a door: shutting out & shutting in

41. The missing gate may be seen as an integral part of the fence. It will wall in as easily as it will wall out - people, ideas, relationships.

42. There are a preponderance of fences and closed gates in schools and in the academy.

    Meditation IV. The gate as a place to swing to and fro

43. As any child may tell you, gates are meant to swing on, to move from a familiar place to one that is not so familiar. Gates, like theory, are not intended to simply hang there "alienated from practice in some timeless unchanging realm" (Pinar, 1988: 99). There needs to be a constant moving to and fro, from theory to practice, from practice to theory.

44. It is equally important to understand that a gate will not swing unless it is connected to the fence by bolts and by hinges. Neither those who teach nor those who want to teach will be able to move freely between the world of theory and the world of practice without first having taken time to reflect on what is at the core of their lives.

    Meditation V. The gate as a place between

45. It is in the place between where we are able to peel back the layers of our "taken-for- grantedness" (Peterat, 1994), to contemplate and to question the theory which guides our practice, the practice which embodies our theory. There we may hear those "unsung tunes" (Grumet, 1988: 11) which are the songs of creation transforming and being transformed within the created.

46. Sitting on the bank, we might take time to watch the river as it flows both ways at once.

    The river flowed both ways. The current moved from north to south, but the wind usually came from the south, rippling the bronze-green water in the opposite direction. This apparently impossible contradiction, made apparent and possible, still fascinated Morag, even after years of river-watching.
    (from The Diviners)

47. On the slope of the riverbank, we can dwell in kairos , somehow protected from the voracious appetite of chronos. In such a place, we can feel the power that comes after accepting a loss of control, a willingness to abide with an absence of meaning and a presence of meaning that is too deep to mine. There we can think about the kinship between pedagogy and creation.

End Notes

1. I acknowledge the influence of Ted Aoki and Carl Leggo here. Aoki has pressed me to consider the geo of my graphy while Leggo re/directed my attention from nouns and verbs to prepositions. [back]

2. In the first drafting of this preface, I made a typing error with this word. I substituted a "p" for the "f". Perhaps it is more appropriate to write about the "wept of practice." [back]

References

• Aoki, T. (1993). In the Midst of Slippery Theme-words: Living as Designers of Multicultural Curriculum. In T. Aoki & M. Shamsher. The Call of Teaching. British Columbia Teachers' Federation.

• Caputo, J. (1993). Against Ethics. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

• Crossan, J. (1995). Jesus. A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

• Deleuze, G. and Parnet, C. (1987). Dialogues. Translated by H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam. New York: Columbia University Press.

• Grumet, M. The Unbearable Lightness of Curriculum. A paper presented to the JCT Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice, Banff, Alberta, October 8, 1994.

• Grumet, M. (1988). Bitter Milk:Women in Teaching. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

• Laurence, Margaret. (1974). The Diviners. Toronto: McLelland and Stewart.

• Magliola, R. (1984). Derrida on the Mend. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press.

• Peterat, Linda. (1994, March). Meditations on Dissonance. Refrains and Improvisations within a Collaborative Teaching Education Practicum. Presentation (with Gale Smith) to the annual meeting of The Western Canadian Association of Student Teaching. Winnipeg.

• Pinar, W. & Grumet, M. (1988). Socratic Cæsura and the Theory-Practice Relationship. In W. Pinar (Ed.). Contemporary Curriculum Discourses. Scottsdale, Arizona: Gorsuch Scarisbrick.

• Pinar, W. (1976). The Trial. In W. Pinar, Autobiography, Politics and Sexuality. (1994). (29 -62). New York : Peter Lang.