MCLS 6508 Selected Topics in Liberal Studies Lecture 2 Teaching through

1. MCLS 6508 Selected Topics in Liberal Studies Lecture 2 Teaching through Issue Enquiry Approach (IEA)

2. Why Issue Enquiry Approach?

3. The Official Version of Issue Enquiry

4. The Official Version of Issue Enquiry

5. The Official Version of Issue Enquiry Design Flow

6. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • The idea of “Issue” • According to the Oxford English Dictionary, • The noun “issue” means “a point or matter in contention between two parties; …a choice between alternatives; a dilemma”. • The phrasal expression “at issue” means “in controversy; taking opposite sides of a case or contrary views of a matter. • “To join issue” means “to accept or adopt a disputed point as the basis of argument in a controversy; to proceed to argument with a person on a particular point”. • “To make an issue of” means to turn into a subject of contention”.

7. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry • Defining issues-centered education: “Issue-centered education focuses on problematic questions that need to be addressed and answered, at least provisionally. Problematic questions are those on which intelligent, well-informed people may disagree. Such disagreement, in many case, leads to controversy and discussion marked by expression of opposing views. The questions may address problems of the past, present or future. They may involve disagreement over facts, definition, values and beliefs. ….

8. What is At Issue? Understanding the Nature of Issue Inquiry “…….To say that questions are problematic means there are no conclusive, finally ‘right’ answers. But some answers, however tentative or provisionally and subject to change in the future, are clearly better or more valid than other. The purpose of issues-centered education is not just to raise the questions and expose students to them, but to teach students to offer defensible and intellectually well-grounded answers to these questions. …The point of issues-centered education is …to develop well-centered responses based on disciplined inquiry, on thoughtful, in-depth study, and to move beyond relativistic notion of truth.” (Evans, Newmann & Saxe, 1996, P.2)

9. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • C. Wright Mills’ distinction between personal trouble and public issue: In the beginning chapter of the book Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills makes a useful distinction between “trouble” and “issue” • By trouble, Miils refers to problems which “occurs within the characters of the individual and within the range of the immediate relations with others; they have to do with his self and with those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware. Accordingly, the statement and the resolution of troubles properly lie within the individual as a biographical entity and within the scope of his immediate milieu. A trouble is a private matter: values cherished by an individual are felt by him to be threatened.” (1970, p.15)

10. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • C. Wright Mills’ distinction between personal trouble and public issue: • By issues, Mills specifies that “Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life. They have to do with the organization of many such milieux into the institutions of a historical society as a whole, with the way in which various milieux overlap and interpenetrate to form the larger structure of social and historical life. An issue is a public matter: some value cherished by the public is felt threatened.” (1970, p. 15)

11. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • C. Wright Mills’ distinction between personal trouble and public issue: • Apart from its public character, Mills also underlines the contradictory and ambiguous nature of an issue. He states that “often there is a debate about what the values is all about and what it is that really is threatens it. This debate is often without focus if only because it is the very nature of an issue…. An issue, in fact often involves …’contradictions’ or ‘antagonism.’” (1971, p. 15)

12. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement:

13. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: In his book entitled Political Liberalism, John Rawls makes a distinction between reasonable and unreasonable disagreements. The distinction can further our understanding of the nature and features of the idea of issue. • By unreasonable disagreement, it refers to disagreements in public life, which grow out of “prejudice and bias, self and group interest, blindness and willfulness” (Rawls, 1993, p. 58) or of “simple ignorance or …mere undisciplined assertiveness.” (Dearden, 1984, p. 85)

14. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • By reasonable disagreement, John Rawls defines it as “disagreement between reasonable persons.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 55). In understanding the idea of reasonable person, Rawls makes a distinction between rational and reasonable persons within the conception of modern man. • “Persons are reasonable in one basic aspect when, among equals say, they are ready to propose principles and standards as fair terms of cooperation and to abide by them willingly, given the assurance that others will likewise do so. ….The reasonable is an element of the idea of society as a system of fair cooperation and that its fair terms be reasonable for all to accept is part of its idea of reciprocity.” (1993, 49-50)

15. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • “The rational is, however, a distinct idea from the reasonable and applied to a single, unified agent (either an individual or corporate person) with the powers of judgment and deliberation in seeking ends and interests peculiarly its own. The ration applies to how these ends and interests are adopted and affirmed, as well as to how they are given priority. It also applies to the choice of means, in which case it is guided by such familiar principles as: to adopt the most effective means to ends, or to select the most probable alternative, other things equal. (1993, p. 50) More specifically, “what rational agents lack is the particular form of moral sensibility that underlies the desire to engage in fair cooperation. …Rational agents approach being psychopathic when their interests are solely in benefits to themselves.” (1993, p. 51) As in everyday speech, we may characterize rational agents that “their proposal was perfectly rational given their strong bargaining position, but it was nevertheless highly unreasonable.” (1993, 48)

16. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • Accordingly, a reasonable disagreement is not disagreement generated prejudice, bias, ignorance, or even rational calculation of self-interest. They are disagreement between persons “who have an enduring desire to honor fair terms of cooperation and to be fully cooperating members of society.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 55).

17. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • Rawls has specified numbers of sources, from which disagreement among reasonable citizens in constitutional democracy could have derived. More specifically, Rawls suggests, “these sources I refer to as the burden of judgment.” (1993, p. 55) That is, if reasonable citizens have to come to term with (not completely resolve) their disagreements, they are burdened with reasonable judgments on the following sources of reasonable disagreements

18. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • …sources of reasonable disagreements • Availability and reliability of evidences: “The evidence—empirical and scientific—bearing on the case is conflicting and complex, and thus hard to assess and evaluate.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 56) This source of disagreement derives on the ground that the evidences required to settle the dispute are in conflict or unavailable. For example, the effects of GM (genetic-modified) food or cloning (both beneficial and harmful effects), the causes of the damage of the ozone layer, or the effects on the development of children growing up in queer families, etc. are still in dispute among natural and social scientists. And there are not sufficient and reliable evidences to make informed decisions on the issues in point.

19. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • …sources of reasonable disagreements • Relevance and relative weight of evidences: In cases where evidences have been scientifically and empirically proven to be reliable, disputes may still derive on the ground that the evidences in point are irrelevant to the issues in dispute. Furthermore, “even where we agree fully about the kinds of considerations that are relevant, we may disagree about their weight, and so arrive at different judgments.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 56) Parties in dispute may put forth relevant and reliable scientific evidences in support of the stances in controversial issues. As a result, disagreements will derived on the ground that how relative weights should be assigned to different evidences relevant to the issue in dispute.

20. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • …sources of reasonable disagreements • Judgment and interpretation of concepts: People’s concepts, not only moral and political concept but also empirical and factual concepts, are “vague and subject to hard cases; and this indeterminacy means that we must rely on judgment and interpretation (and on judgment about interpretation) within some range (not sharply specifiable).” (1993, p. 56) This is another source where reasonable disagreement may have invoked.

21. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • …sources of reasonable disagreements • Value judgments and preferences: Disagreements may not only involve judgments of factual evidences, but may also be caused by desirable and preferable attributes, which individuals or social groups attached to the issues in point. For example, legalization of same-sex marriage may invoke value controversy between personal liberty of choice and the stability of the institutional orders of a given society. Furthermore, the normative concepts attached to social and political issues are most likely to be indeterminacy in nature and subject to different interpretations. Hence, disagreements between values and their interpretations are another reasonable ground from which controversial issues may derive.

22. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • …sources of reasonable disagreements • Prioritization of values: Even where there are general agreements on the relevance and interpretations of the values involved in an issue, disagreement can still derive from the priorities ascribed to each of the values and preferences involved. • Positional and experiential considerations: “In a modern society with its numerous offices and positions, its various divisions of labor, its many social groups and their ethnic variety, citizens’ total experiences are disparate enough for their judgment to diverge.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 57) As a result, they will constitute reasonable disagreements in modern liberal-democratic society.

23. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • …sources of reasonable disagreements • Normative and perspective considerations: Another source of disagreements among reasonable citizens in liberal-democratic society is differences in comprehensive moral doctrines or overall socio-political perspectives, for examples differences in the socio-political orientations between unionists and employer and business federations; or differences in public-policy stances between liberals and communitarians; etc.

24. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • …sources of reasonable disagreements • Institutional imperatives: “Any system of social institutions is limited in the values it can admit so that some selection must be made from the full range of moral and political values that might be realized. This is because any system of institutions has, as it were, a limited social space.” (Rawls, 1993, p. 57) Public choices are not made in social, economic, political and cultural vacuum; they are bounded by different institutional constraints. However, reasonable citizens may disagree on whether institutional imperatives should be imposed on particular sets of social actions and/or interactions, for examples controversies over restriction of smoking in in-door areas, legalization of same-sex marriages, etc.

25. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • John Rawls’ conception of a reasonable disagreement: • The burdens of judgment and necessities of issue inquiry: In modern liberal-democratic societies, citizens are often confronted by these reasonable disagreements or controversial issues. As a result, they are burdened with these hard decisions and judgments.

26. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • Issues of recognition of diversities under the multiculturalism of the global age • Amy Gutmann indicates in the Introduction of the book she edited Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition that

27. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • Issues of recognition of diversities under the multiculturalism of the global age … • “Public institutions, including government agencies, schools, and liberal art colleges and universities, have come under severe criticism these days for failing to recognize or respect the particular identities of citizens. In the United States, the controversy most often focuses upon the needs of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and women. Other groups could easily be added to the list, and the list would change as we moved round the world. Yet it is hard to find a democratic or democratizing society these days that is not the site of some significant controversyover whether and how its public institutions should better recognize the identities of cultural disadvantaged minorities.” (Gutmann, 1994, P.3)

28. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • Issues of recognition of diversities under the multiculturalism of the global age … • As a result, Gutmann complied papers from three prominent philosophers of our time. In each paper, Charles Taylor, K. Anthony Appiah and Jurgen Habermas reflect respectively on their experiences in the diverse and multicultural contexts of their societies (namely Canada, the US and the unified Germany). And each of them then suggest ways of how to cope with the issue and politics of diversity of multiculturalism. • In light of these discussions, issues can further be elevated beyond the levels of public issue (Mills, 1970) and political liberalism (Rawls, 1993) and be construed at global and multicultural level.

29. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • The nature of issue-inquiry approach to Liberal Studies • In light of C.Wright Mills’ conception of issues and John Rawls’ theory of reasonable disagreement political liberalism, we may define the enquiry object, i.e. a issue with the following attributes • Issues are public in nature. They differ from personal trouble or problem, which involves individuals' personalities and/or milieux. Issues usually involve institutional or systemic deficiencies and their impacts of individuals' livelihoods and well beings. • Issues are disputatious, contradictory or even antagonistic in nature because they usually embedded in some institutional and systemic arrangements, which invoke contradiction or even antagonism among different social groupings in social institutions and systems.

30. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • The nature of issue-inquiry approach to Liberal Studies • Accordingly, issue enquiry may categorize into different aspects of burden of judgment. • Factual andempirical judgment: • Empirical verification • Judgments on the relevance and relative weight of the verified evidences • Judgments on the interpretation of concepts • Value and preference judgment • Judgment on the relevance values and preferences • Judgment on value priority • Normative and perspective considerations

31. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • The nature of issue-inquiry approach to Liberal Studies • … different aspects of burden of judgment. • Institutional judgment • Relevance and legitimacyof positional and experiential considerations • Legitimacy and respectability of normative and cultural consideration • Appropriateness of institutional imperatives

32. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • The nature of issue-inquiry approach to Liberal Studies • … different aspects of burden of judgment. • Comparative judgment • Locating the factual, normative and institutional judgment against the multicultural context of the global age • Evaluating one’s judgments on the issue from the perspective of politics of recognition.

33. What is At Issue? Understanding the Epoch Nature of “Late-Modern” Society • The nature of issue-inquiry approach to Liberal Studies • Decision making: Based on these inquiries and judgments, citizens in late-modern society are expected to be able to make well-informed, rationally justifiable, and reciprocally reasonable decision on the issues in contention. Furthermore, they are also expected to carry out their decision in social and political actions in continuous and persistent manners.

34. Teaching of IEA: • Debate between issue-centered and content-centered curriculum • Since the 1950s, educators of social education in the US (including social studies, social –science education, general education, liberal education, liberal studies, citizenship education, etc.) have been debating on the issue of “selection of content in social studies”. (Oliver, 1957)

35. Teaching of IEA: • Debate between issue-centered and content-centered curriculum • … Against the conventional conception of content-centered or discipline-centered curriculum prevailing in the field of social education in the US schools, Donald W. Oliver led the charge by publishing an article in Harvard Educational Review and underlined that the primary aim of social education should not be to transmit contents of specific disciplines in social sciences, such as geography, economics, cultural sociology, political science, and history (Oliver, 1957, P. 276) but to prepare student to address the nature of citizenship in the liberal-democratic state, and the pluralistic and multi-value society of the US. (P. 284-5).

36. Teaching of IEA: • Debate between issue-centered and content-centered curriculum • … More specifically, Oliver underlined that in such socio-political context, intractable disagreement and conflicts are “inevitable” (P. 285), hence “the central core of the curriculum would be the study of those human affairs fraught with conflict or tension which might threaten the integrity of a free society” (P. 299) and to prepare students to deal with these “inevitable conflict”, which he and his collaborators later termed “public issues” or what some other called “controversial issues.”

37. Teaching of IEA: • Debate between issue-centered and content-centered curriculum • Among the proponents of the issue-centered approach in the field of social education in both the US, three teams of scholars can be identified to be the most representative: • Donald W. Oliver, James P. Shaver and Fred P. Newmann, their works have been recognized under the name of the Harvard Social Studies Project or characterized as Teaching Public Issues in the Higher School (Oliver & Shaver, 1966; see also, Newmann & Oliver, 1970; Shaver, & Strong, 1982)

39. Teaching of IEA: • Debate between issue-centered and content-centered curriculum • Among the proponents of the issue-centered approach …. • Shirley H. Engle, Byron G. Massialas and Benjamin Cox, their works have been characterized as issue-centered, inquiry, decision-making approaches to social studies (Engle, 1960; Engle & Ochoa-Becker, 1988; Ochoa-Becker, 2007; Massialas & Cox, 1966; Evan & Saxe, 1996) • James A. Banks, his works have been characterized as multiculturalism education. (Banks, 2007; Banks & McGee Banks, 2004)

40. Teaching of IEA: • In the UK, a stream of scholars have also advocated that teaching controversial issues should be the core approach in political education and citizenship education. • Bernard Crick and the working party of the Hansard Society first initiated the idea of teaching controversial issue to be the approach to political education in the 1970s. (Crick, 1978; see also Stradling et al., 1984) • Again in 1998, Bernard Crick chaired an advisory group and produced the government document entitled Teaching of Democracy in Schools: Final Report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship (The Advisory Group on Citizenship, 1998). In the report, the controversial-issues approach has gained its retrieval in the Section 10 of the document, captioned “Guidance on the Teaching of Controversial Issues”.

42. Teaching of IEA: • In the UK, …. • Other scholars in the UK have also contributed to the development of the approach in numbers of works, for examples, Wellington, 1986; Oulton et al. 2004; Fiehn, 2005; Oxfam, 2006; and Claire & Holden, 2007.

43. The Comprehensive Framework of Issue-Enquiry-Approach Model • Various teams of scholars have developed different frameworks in teaching of public and controversial issues in school curricula such as political education, citizenship education, social studies, social education, or general education. For example • Jurisprudential or legal-ethical framework (Oliver & Shaver, 1966; Newmann & Oliver, 1970) • Decision making model (Engle & Ochoa, 1988; Ochoa-Becker, 2007) • Social studies inquiry model (Massialas & Cox, 1966; Massialas et al., 1975) • Multicultural approach (Banks, 2007; Banks and McGee Banks, 2004) • Teaching-controversial-issue approach (Stradling et al, 1984; Wellington, 1986; Oulton et al. 2004; Fiehn, 2005; Oxfam, 2006)

44. The Comprehensive Framework of Issue-Enquiry-Approach Model • To synthesize these models, we may categorized the constituents of the Issue-Enquiry-Approach (IEA) • Formulation of public issue and its controversy • Social enquiry • Value enquiry • Institutional enquiry • Comparative-multicultural enquiry • Decision making

45. The Comprehensive Framework of Issue-Enquiry-Approach Model • Formulationof public issue and its controversy • Issue enquiry begins of course with the identification of the issue in point. The issue usually appears in the form of public actions, which articulate points of contention on specific public affairs, such as public policy, actions of public figures and/or social groups, media reports, results of social surveys, etc. • The second step is to enquire into the social backgrounds from which the issue invokes. • The third step of the enquiry is to identify the parties engaging in an issue. In public and social issues, they may involve different political parties, interest groups or stake-holders. However, in a controversial social issue, the engaging parties may be numerous in number and their opinions about the issue may vary diversely. Nevertheless, as in most political issues, these diverse stances will subsequently aggregate or even polarize into two opposite camps.

46. The Comprehensive Framework of Issue-Enquiry-Approach Model • Formulation of public issue and its controversy… • Fourth, the process of political aggregation and alignment among various parties participated in the contention of the public issue should be mapped out. • Finally, statements and arguments put forth by opposite camps engaged in the debate and contest of the controversial issue are to be collected and categorized for sequent enquiries.

47. The Comprehensive Framework of Issue-Enquiry-Approach Model • The factual enquiry: It refers to analyzing the factual evidences which the disagreements and controversies are based and derived. These factual evidences may be categorized into three groups, from which three types of factual enquiries can be identified.

48. The Comprehensive Framework of Issue-Enquiry-Approach Model • The factual enquiry: … • Clarification of definitional and categorical disagreements: • These type of enquiries begin with analyses of the words, rhetoric, statements, and any other forms of representation used by contesting parties in describing and defining the nature and features of the issue in point. • The enquiry then advances to interpretive studies of the meanings, intentions and protentions which the contesting parties bring to bear in their statements and representations, i.e. their texts on the issue. • Finally, the interpretive study can further look into the different depictions of the status quo or even the prospect of “the world of the text” that various contesting parties envisioned.

49. The Comprehensive Framework of Issue-Enquiry-Approach Model • The factual enquiry: … • Validation of the situational meanings involved in the disagreement: • These type of enquiries begins with recording what anthropologists call “deep description” of the meanings that contesting parties invested into the issue. • It would then involve the enquirer to immerge into the situations or even the “lived world” of the contesting parties involved and to have empathetic understanding of the contesting parties. • Finally, the enquiry should advance to the stage of validation. That is to contrast the situational meanings cherished by a particular contesting party with the large socioeconomic and cultural contexts. As a result, the enquiry can bring light to the question whether a specific situational meanings of a particular contesting party is justifiable against the larger meaning contexts which involve all parties concerned.

50. The Comprehensive Framework of Issue-Enquiry-Approach Model • The factual enquiry: … • Verification of the empirical grounds of the contention: • This type of enquiry begins with recording all the empirical evidences, in the form of scientific law, tested propositions, or statistical-probabilistic hypotheses in natural science and social science, put forth by contesting parties engaged in a particular controversial issue. • The enquirers are then expected to verify all these empirical evidences, usually in the form of statements of causes and effects or consequences, and to draw their own conclusion that which contesting parties’ arguments are empirically and scientifically more well-grounded.