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Learning, Participation and After Virtue
What makes a good person?
This is an old and important question. Philosophers and theologians through the years have sought an answer including Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume, Kierkegaard, Newman, Nietzsche and others.
Alasdair MacIntyre provides a useful analysis of the history of thinking on this question and the current state of moral philosophy in his books After Virtue (1984) and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988). MacIntyre argues that a full understanding of moral philosophy today is constrained by failure to appreciate historical context.
He proposes a disquieting scenario to illustrate what he deems the state of affairs today. Imagine, he suggests, through some terrible catastrophe all the scientists in the world were wiped out and with them the thinking and practice they engaged in. Some time later, when people seek to revive science they would only be partly successful; they would have to rely on clues from remnants of documentation, pieces of laboratory apparatus and a scattering of folk ideas. The practice of science would be gone.
Although MacIntyre uses this vista to illustrate how, he believes, we have lost the way (and means) of moral philosophy, he is also making a point about ‘practice’. Human activities directed and sustained toward a particular goals are practices. Thus science and its sub-fields are practices, as are many of the activities we engage in such as medicine, engineering, academic scholarship, the arts and sports etc.. MacIntyre (1981a p30) makes clear his understanding of practice:
By a ‘practice’ I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realised in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.
To me, this conceptualising of practice, internal goods and the extension thereof resonates with work by Davidov, Engeström and other proponents of Activity Theory and Learning as Expansion. It is also consistent with the arguments I make (Casey, 2013) that the ultimate goal, purpose and direction, or telos, of learning is toward participation in practice. MacIntyre argues that ‘internal goods’ are always shared and belong to the practice. Internal goods act for the betterment of practice. I think this is what we mean when we use phrases like ‘in the service of Science’ or for ‘contributions to Agriculture’.
In order to answer the question of what makes a good person you would need to provide a context. A good scientist would be a person who extends the practice of science through participation and the realisation of internal goods particular to science. A good person today (in a general way) participates. Through participation we share in the development of, and are in the service of, societal practices. What is virtuous today differs from what was considered virtuous in the past. Why? Because practices have evolved and extended. Our understanding of issues such as climate change, world hunger, human rights and even ‘how we learn’ are the internal goods of the present time. With that in mind I’ll leave the last word to MacIntyre on his definition of a virtue:
A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods.
MacIntyre (1981a p32)
References
Casey, L. (2013). Learning Beyond Competence to Participation. International Journal of Progressive Education Special issue: Educating for Democracy and the Process of Authority, 9(2), 45-61. Available from http://goo.gl/Pg0T3O
MacIntyre, A. (1981). After Virtue: A study in moral theory (London, Duckworth).
MacIntyre, A. (1981a). The nature of the virtues. Hastings Center Report, 11(2), 27-34.
MacIntyre, A. C. (1988). Whose justice? Which rationality? : Duckworth London.
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MOOCs – Promise and Opportunity
In case you don’t know by now, MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course and they are causing an upheaval in higher education worldwide. We should be careful when describing something as a ‘game changer’ but perhaps this is one instance where it is appropriate and warranted. In essence MOOCs are online courses that are generally free of charge and delivered on a range of topics from prestigious universities and colleges.
MOOCs are made available through various platforms or providers – the big providers are Coursera, EdX, Udacity and ClevrU. A clance through any of these sites will give you a sense of the range and quality of courses on offer.
The numbers taking some of these courses are staggering – class sizes in the tens of thousands are not unusual. However, completion rates are modest enough with an average of about 20% – a good interactive source on completion rates is found here at Katy Jordan’s site.
The big question is why a prestigious institution like Harvard, Stanford University and MIT would want to offer courses free-of-charge and risk destroying a valuable source of future revenue?
The answer may lie in a new emphasis on the provision of quality support, assessment and certification rather than content delivery in itself. This is a welcome shift – away from a view of learning in terms of transfer of knowledge and nurturing skills’ development such as communication, collaboration and problem-solving.
However, it would be a mistake to belive that participation on a MOOC is all about passive watching of video lectures and very little by way of engagement. I am taking a MOOC on Aboriginal Worldviews and Education by Jean-Paul Restoule of the University of Toronto and it is really excellent. The learning tasks are varied and interesting and there are ample fora for discussion and integration. The course acts as a portal to an interesting and alternative perspective on how we see education and culture.
MOOCs are certainly disrupting the business models in higher education and perhaps this is for the better. The idea of opening-up learning opportunities to the widest possible audience seems to me to be a very positive development. Perhaps unexpectedly, the ‘free’ material will build an entire new market for students who would otherwise not have considered taking college courses.
In the end a good shake-up of the sector is long overdue and with the advent of MOOCs we might finally have an opportunity to replace the industrial models of learning and education with something more appropriate for 21st Century living.
