Epistemological Curiosity and the Power of the Parlay
Conley (2008), in his article “Rethinking college readiness,” remarked, “Writing may be the single overarching academic skill most closely associated with college success.” However, not any sort of writing such as creative and narrative writing (Beaufort, 2004), will prepare middle and high school students for university demands, for argumentative, informative, and analytical writing is stressed in almost every college-level discipline. Of course, the latter style of writing, especially argumentative writing, is difficult for instructors to teach and support as most of them (and consequently the students as well) see formal writing as a one time performance, not as an ongoing process that begins well before their pen touches the paper or their fingers push on the keys of their keyboard. In fact, for the past few years, I have attempted to facilitate a dynamic and critical classroom by partnering verbal and written discourse. Since the advent of quantitative assessments as the ultimate indicator of academic mastery, the voice, and thus the very identity, of the student has been marginalized, and the written become an inconvenient and inefficient way to assess student mastery. In the following paragraphs, I will give philosophical justifications for the inclusion of discourse in the classroom as a means to inspire great writing. I will also focus on strategies that provoked in-depth discussion from my students, which, in turn, has resulted in a critical understanding of their respective beliefs as well as the nature of knowledge itself. Finally, an approach will be introduced that has assisted my students in the transition from the discussion format to the organizing and formalizing of argumentative essays.
The passage of the No Child Left Behind legislation (and subsequently the Every Student Succeeds Act) was a catalyst for the greatest paradigm shift in academia in the past 25 years. As a consequence, objective assessments, both formative and summative, have become central to the educational experience where bubble-tests (i.e. multiple choice, true/false, etc.) are perceived as the primary indicator of mastery. Thus, subjective responses to materials have been marginalized, for writing and speaking assessments are perceived as too difficult to extrapolate quantitative data, and, in fact, teachers are being warned against giving subjective assessments as “they would be doing their students a disservice,” the basis for such a claim being that state standardized tests as well as college entrance exams are chiefly objective assessments.
For the past few years, a strategy that challenged the precepts of NCLB/ESSA and the dehumanizing practices of objective assessments has presented itself, and, as a result, much success has been enjoyed in regards to depth of thought from the students as well as the production of very insightful and well developed argumentative papers. It is a strategy called “Epistemological Curiosity Time” (more commonly referred to as “ECT”). When this activity is initially introduced to the students, major concepts are defined for their understanding of the activity. First, we define “epistemology,” which is the study of the nature and grounds of knowledge as it attempts to answer 1.)What is knowledge? 2.) How is knowledge acquired? and 3.) How do we know what we know? Second, philosopher Matthew Arnold (1869) takes “curiosity” outside the contexts of childish naivety in to a more mature endeavor by defining it in the following manner: “For as there is a curiosity about intellectual matters which is futile, and merely a disease, so there is certainly a curiosity, — a desire after the things of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are, — which is, in an intelligent being, natural and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to see things as they are implies a balance and regulation of mind which is not often attained without fruitful effort, and which is the very opposite of the blind and diseased impulse of mind which is what we mean to blame when we blame curiosity.”
“Epistemology curiosity” is a concept that was developed by education critic Paulo Freire (1968), who defined it as “Understanding dialogue as a process of learning and knowing establishes a previous requirement that always involves an epistemological curiosity about the very elements of the dialogue. That is to say, dialogue must require an ever-present curiosity about the object of knowledge. Thus, dialogue is never an end in itself but a means to develop a better comprehension about the object of knowledge.”
Essentially, ECT is a time set aside for students to express their respective points of view in an orderly, respectful manner, to realize that there are other people with legitimate opinions, and to take part in the Hegelian Dialectic, and as a consequence, discover the nature of knowledge.
The process of ECT is as follows:
1. Each period has a box for the students to deposit a SPECIFIC TOPIC that interests them. (Let them know that the topics that will be considered are the ones that the you, the instructor, deem serious)
2. Once a week, the instructor will good through the topics with the class, and the class will decide which topic to discuss
3. Open the discussion with a general question based on the topic chosen that will result in a show of hands. Then follow up with a “why” question. For example, it the topic is “Should Abortion be made illegal, the instructor would ask an open-ended such as, “Who is in favor making abortion illegal?” [A smattering of hands] “Of those who are raising their hands, explain why you hold this belief.”
During the ECT, the instructor takes on the role of being the facilitator of the discussion. He/she will not express an opinion and make certain the students adhere to the guidelines, which entail demanding mutual respect, active listening, one person talking at a time, and the student raising his/her hand to talk. As the students take part in the discussion, the instructor uses Rogerian Listening Techniques to clarify and validate the opinions that are expressed. Psychologist Carl Rogers called this practice “empathic listening.” In an empathic position, the listener refrains from passing judgment on the audience’s ideas until he or she has listened attentively to the speaker’s position, tried to follow the speaker’s reasoning, and acknowledged the validity of the speaker’s viewpoint (i.e. “So what I hear you saying is…”). By trying to understand where the speaker is coming from and avoiding loaded or attacking language that might put the speaker on the defensive, the listener shows empathy for the speaker’s viewpoint and opens the door for mutual understanding and respect.
Once the discussion has ended, the critical communication process takes on a different manifestation: critical writing. According to James Moffett (1989), a writer must not only be familiar with the subject about which he is writing, there must be an undertone of passion that propels him beyond what he considers to be safe into deeper levels of understanding. Moreover, as he gains more knowledge, his writing will reflect the new-found complexity of his thinking–what he is conveying will be mirrored and thus enhanced by how he presents his subject. In other words, writing begins within the self, through compositions that recollect, literally or imaginatively, personal experiences, and from there the focus of the writing slowly grows to address issues that are what James Moffett terms “transpersonal,” experiences that take place outside of the self. James Moffett, who advocates using a student’s informal writing, such as journaling and person narratives, as the gateway to formal essay composition. He writes that a way to inspire a student to write competent formal essays is by “parlaying personal writing directly into essay… [The term ‘parlay’] comes from the French ‘to speak,’ but in Anglicized use it means to transform something into something else and that’s exactly what [he is] trying to do here in getting from personal writing to essay writing.” Overall, critical writing is an organic act that originates from within the composer; it is not the culmination of a series of banal skills that are mastered in isolation as is traditionally taught.
After the ECT discussion, the students are then assigned an “ECT Write-up.” On a sheet of paper, they are to write down an opinion that they had heard during the discussion (not their own opinion), note whether they agree or disagree with said opinion, provide a one to two sentence claim why they agree or disagree, cite evidence from a credible outside source (with a in-text citation), and elucidate how the evidence supports the claim. Consequently, this write-up becomes an outline for a future research-based argumentative essay. Now the students will be equipped with a focused argument thanks to the discussion, background knowledge because of the outside research they did in the ECT Write-up process, as well as a the makings of a rough outline, along provided by the completion of the ECT Write-up.