Practical Judgment

We cannot, of course, provide a comprehensive review of the recent scholarship grappling with practical judgment. We hope to point to a few key authors, mention one or two of their important ideas, cite an example of their work and some of the scholarship that they have inspired. Here we emphasize a hermeneutical approach to practical judgment while realizing other approaches (e.g., critical theory, feminism, poststructural, postmodern) make important contributions to challenging accepted views of judgment. We focus on Arendt, Gadamer, Habermas, and Nussbaum, as well as their educational interpreters. All of them are part of “the linguistic turn” in modern scholarship, that is, the movement from traditional views of knowledge to the interpretation of human experience in language. Perhaps the best introduction to their collective work is Bernstein’s (1983) Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis. Certainly the best collective educational interpretation of their thought is in Dunne’s (1997) Back to the Rough Ground: Practical Judgement and the Lure of Technique.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is concerned with reconceiving judgment as linking what she understands by action (praxis) and thought (theory) without subordinating the former to the latter. In some ways she develops two separate views of judgment—practical and theoretical—with new roles for dialogue and imagination in connecting these two perspectives. One of the major figures in political philosophy of the 20th century, her most important work on judgment is found in The Human Condition (1958), The Life of the Mind (1978) and Responsibility and Judgment (2003). Arendt hugely influenced one of the most prominent educational scholars of the last fifty years, Maxine Greene (e.g., 1978) and continues to inspire research on educational judgment (e.g., Gordon (2001), Coulter & Wiens (2002)).

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) is one of the figures most responsible for the linguistic turn in modern thought. In Truth and Method (1996), he helps move hermeneutics from a branch of literary theory to a scholarly tradition for the interpretation of human action in general: he contends that the ways that humans understand experience, interpret it, and act on it are linked. Fundamental to understanding and judgment is the praxis of dialogue including the “hermeneutic circle” in which whole and part, ends and means, the particular and the general are linked. One of the best educational interpreters of Gadamer is David Jardine who, for example, reminds us that “in language are embedded our understanding of ourselves, the world, and others; in language are embedded social, political, economic and cultural tides that sway and pull us and push us beyond our understanding” (1998, 66).

Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) builds on Arendt and Gadamer (among others) to develop a conception of democratic legitimacy based on the presuppositions of dialogue. He argues, for instance, that under conditions of modernity modern poiesis overwhelms and “colonizes” praxis (1996); he aims to foster forms of dialogue in which people create power in civil society that forms a check or “democratic dam” against the bureaucratic imperatives that too often guide administrative action (including in schools). Habermas is especially interested in developing legitimate norms for making various kinds of judgment, as well as procedures for evaluating how well those norms are respected in practice (Habermas, 1993). Perhaps his best educational interpreter is Robert Young (e.g., 1990, 1992).

Martha Nussbaum (b. 1947) is perhaps the most influential of a new generation of scholars who, armed with modern insights including those developed by Arendt, Gadamer, and Habermas, have returned to reinterpret the works of some of the major figures of Western thought. In The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (2001), for example, she contends that modern efforts to organize, predict, and control contingent human experience begins in ancient Greek philosophy. Both our modern problems and the possible remedies for those problems might be found in revisiting old conversations about practical judgment and the fact “that we do not achieve purity or simplicity without a loss in richness and fullness of life” (421). Her work has informed approaches to teacher education in Canada (e.g. Phelan, 2005) and approaches to teaching that emphasize moral discernment (Phelan, 2001).

Finally, we should point out that we are not alone in decrying the limited view of good teaching and scholarship that often characterizes efforts to create teaching standards. In the U.S., McKnight (2004) identifies inconsistencies in the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education’s efforts to identify the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed by beginning teachers. In the U.K., Carr (2000, 267) argues that

“real professional judgment on the part of teachers…may depend upon substantial educational immersion in the complexities of moral, cultural, political, and even theological inquiry of a kind which seems in rather less than good odour in many influential political and professional quarters in the present day.”

References

Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Arendt, H. (1978). The Life of the mind: One volume edition. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Arendt, H. (2003). Responsibility and judgment (J. Kohn, Ed.). New York: Schoken Books.

British Columbia College of Teachers (2004).  Standards for the Education, Competence and Conduct of Teachers. Vancouver, BC: BCCT.

Bernstein, R.J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science hermeneutics and praxis. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Carr, D. (2000). Education, profession and culture: Some conceptual questions. British Journal of Educational Studies, 48 (3), 248-268.

Coulter, D. & Wiens, J. R. (2002). Educational judgment: Linking the actor and the spectator. Educational Researcher, 31 (4), 15-25.

Dunne, J. (1997). Back to the rough ground: Practical Judgment and the lure of technique. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1996). Truth and method (J. Weinsheimer & D.G. Marshall, Trans.). New York: Continuum. (Original work published 1960).

Gordon, M (Ed.) (2001). Hannah Arendt and education: Renewing our common world. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Greene, M. (1978). Landscapes of learning. New York: Teachers College Press.

Habermas, J. (1993). Justification and application (C.P. Cronin, Trans). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Habermas, J. (1996). Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy (W. Rehg, Trans). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Original work published 1992).

Jardine, D. (1998). To dwell with a boundless heart: Essays in curriculum theory, hermeneutics and the ecological imagination. New York: Peter Lang.

McKnight, D. (2004). An inquiry of NCATE's move into virtue ethics by way of dispositions (Is this what Aristotle meant?). Educational Studies, 35 (3), 212-230.

Nussbaum, M. (2001). The fragility of goodness: Luck and ethics in Greek tragedy and philosophy. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press.

Phelan, A. (2001). The death of a child and the birth of practical wisdom. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 20 (1), 41-55.

Phelan, A. (2005). On Discernment: The wisdom of practice and the practice of wisdom in teacher education. In G. Hoban (Ed.), The missing links in teacher education design: Developing a multi-linked conceptual framework (pp. 57-73). Dordrecht: Springer.

Young, R. (1990). A critical theory of education: Habermas and our children's future. New York: Teachers College Press.

Young, R. (1992). Critical theory and classroom talk. Philadelphia, PA: Multilingual Matters.