Vandra Lee Masemann -- Ways of Knowing: Implications for Comparative Education (Comparative Education Review, vol. 34, no. 4, 1990, pp. 465-473)
Essentially an epistemology piece, with reference to some possible reasons as to why the West values the knowledge forms it does, and why comparative educators must be aware of these. The following several paragraphs are one long quotation.
pp. 469-470: "Jack Goody has traced the evolution of human thinking from mythico-religious forms of so-called preliterate thinkers to logical syllogistic forms with which we are familiar today. This form of thinking is based on the idea that the world can be divided into categories and that all items in it are classifiable. The challenge, then, for science is to gather information about the knowable world and to state conclusions about the relationships between and among objects. The statements are based on syllogistic thinking that has historical basis in the development of Western logic. That thinking is the foundation of all empirical research and quantitative studies forming the knowledge base for Western educators. It is also the knowledge form for computer packages used in analysis of statistical data. The assertion that there is a certain finding of association between teacher education and student performance, allowing for a certain margin of error, is a statement based on such a mode of thought. This kind of knowledge claim forms the basis for all "scientific" statements about education.
"To those educated in Western or Western-derived education systems, such a mode of thinking is simply the best or most highly evolved or even the truest way of knowing the world and the relationship of things within it. It is somewhat less well known, however, that many so-called illiterates and indigenous peoples would disagree fundamentally with this way of knowing the world and would see scientific statements as based on a leap of faith that they could not espouse. Probability theory or multiple regression would seem to them just as implausible as we might see indigenous forms of herbal healing.
"Gay, Cole, Glick, and Sharp have shown that the Kpelle in Liberia reject knowledge forms that do not come out of their lived experience of the world. The Kpelle cannot accept a syllogistic conclusion if they have not observed the relationship between events. They do not see facts as divorced from context. In an intensive study of syllogisms, the researchers tried to get respondents to give "logical" conclusions to syllogistic statements. An example was: "Flumo and Yakpalo always drink cane juice together. Flumo is drinking cane juice. Is Yakpalo drinking cane juice?" The subject responded, "The day Flumo was drinking cane juice, Yakpalo was not there on that day." When the experimenter asked why, the subject replied, "The reason is that Yakpalo went to his farm that day and Flumo remained in town on that day."
"From the Kpelle's perspective it would be very strange for a teacher in a classroom to say "I am going to change my way of doing this because studies show that...such and such is more effective." They would want to see the evidence with their own eyes or have some culturally acceptable rule invoked to legitimate such a statement. This comparison shows, in fact, that, in contrast to the Kpelle, teachers use research as the means of legitimating new ideas.
" It is important to note that forms of thinking take shape in particular social conditions. There are societies, such as the Kpelle, in which people know each other's identities, but neither travel great distances nor deal with much unpredictability. Social context here is even more important than content. In industrialized societies, which practice logical-positivistic modes of thinking, these conditions overall do not apply. People are anonymous, travel great distances, cope with unpredictability, stress content over context, and have difficulty maintaining a sense of self-identity, much less knowing the identities of others. Therefore, scientific research and positivistic forms of inquiry enable people to gather large amounts of information, analyze it, and produce generalizable statements that help them deal with unpredictability and uncertainty. Teachers can thus cite that "studies show..." and school policymakers can base their decisions on the "fragile" claims of economists."
As the post-industrial age blooms, Masemann sees that the ways of knowing that had previously been disparaged by scientistic research (i.e. "pre-literate" and indigenous forms of knowing) are now being more readily accepted, as are other ways of knowing, such as environmental paradigms, feminist paradigms, and peace paradigms. As industrialist, scientistic society is show to be fragmentary and less than perfect, these other ways of knowing earn increased respect. Thus, the classroom opens up, as different approaches to learning and teaching become acceptable.
p. 472: (two paragraphs): "The implications of this paradigm shift for comparative education are many. Studies of comparative education can no longer detail the extent to which industrial, fragmentary forms of knowledge have "taken hold" in non-Western countries. Studies of school effects need a more grounded, realistic methodology to assess general, qualitative impact rather than a fragmentary, quantitative one. Isolated research findings cannot be taken out of context and proposed as "quick fixes" to educational problems. The study of indigenous knowledge forms is necessary.
"At the classroom level, a more holistic approach to learning and teaching would inevitable be associated with a global perspectives approach since the teachers and learners would see themselves as part of a larger whole. The introduction of educational reform itself would not be on a piecemeal, fragmentary basis but as a part of a gradual shift in a particular direction. The gap between theory and practice would narrow or disappear as praxis became an integral part of an overall philosophy."
p. 475: "Since a large proportion of teachers in the world are women, and two-thirds of those who are deemed to be illiterate are women and girls, the issue of emerging paradigms is ultimately linked with the question of gender. Since policymakers and administrators are primarily men, it is even more a question of gender. On the international scene, since wealthy industrialized (donor) countries have primarily white populations, and aid-recipient countries have primarily nonwhite populations, it is also a question of race. Since historically women and nonwhite peoples have been primarily context-dependent thinkers with knowledge forms has been muted or obscured by those in power, it is their knowledge forms that will resume their validity."
