Educational Sciences and Pedagogy
From Dewey’s and James’ pragmatism onward, it is quite common in Italy to replace the word «pedagogy» with the expression «educational sciences» or, in some cases, to use «pedagogy» and «educational sciences» as synonyms.
The latter expression, however, does not have the meaning of science and scientific knowledge that Agazzi’s operational objectualism has explained and defended. On the contrary, we can discern in it a not too hidden group of meanings, referring to three epistemological perspectives that we should briefly mention.
The first perspective is logical positivism. According to this epistemological interpretation, philosophy is nothing other than an expansion of the natural sciences. So, also human nature, and consequently the education of subject-person and the subject-person him/herself, can be known only through an explication of these sciences. The result is the so called naturalism. Also philosophy and pedagogy must be wholly explained through processes of naturalization of their objects, methods and statements.
The second perspective is hermeneutics, which divides the world of certain and reliable knowledge into two: on the one side the neopositivist world occupied by the natural sciences, on the other side the hermeneutic world with the human sciences (or sciences of man, society, history, culture, and consequently of the subject-person of education). From this point of view, the sciences studying the subject-person of education (in the subjective and objective meaning of the genitive), cannot be anything else than human sciences, methodologically based on empathy and the narrative tools of individual reconstruction and understanding, and so completely opposed to natural nomological-deductive sciences. In the end, we are facing a specular subversion of neopositivist proposal.
The third perspective refers to the turn occurred in analytic philosophy inspired by Wittgenstein: philosophy is an investigation of the subject-person’s intentionality and of the relations of his/her intentionality with human actions that are finally observable.
From this third viewpoint, the neopositivist perspective and the hermeneutic one can be considered as complementary, even if different. For many reasons Italian pedagogy has generally neglected the investigation of this third perspective, which on the contrary has had important philosophical developments. By supporting, on an epistemological ground, the first and the second perspectives, it has involuntarily confirmed the exhausted polarization of many pedagogists. In this way, there were, on the one hand, scholars who supported the identification of pedagogy with «educational sciences» studying the subject-person as a «thing» to be explained in a naturalistic way. On the other hand, there were scholars who supported the wrongness of this perspective, because they put attention to a pedagogy considered as one of the most important human sciences, that is suspicious of each nomothetic knowledge and it is aimed only at the understanding, for somebody even ineffable, of the subject person’s uniqueness, with results swinging between lyrics, verbosity and partisan closing arguments. Agazzi’s operational objectualism, however, mixing analytic philosophy and classical metaphysics, allows for the analytic discourse (Agazzi has always declared himself an analytic philosopher), not in order to save the neopositivist approach as separated from the hermeneutic one, but to demonstrate that they both need to reshape the concept of scientific knowledge in a more adequate way (Agazzi explicitly speaks of a “hermeneutic dimension of science”). This point of view is very important in order to distinguish «pedagogy as science» from the other «edu- cational sciences» (natural or human ones, not matter).Therefore, one does not deny that they both want to study the subject-person of education as a subjective and objective genitive, starting from the historical experience of education, already lived by subject-persons, in order to explain and/ or understand it, according to the different points of view.
What really matters is attributing to «pedagogy as science» a specific object, hence a specific discourse, an operational structure and a purpose, which distinguish it from the other «edu- cational sciences». In this sense, if it supposes, for its own constitution, the scientific analysis of education, already experienced by subject-persons, it couldn’t be reduced to that analysis produced by the other educational sciences, for a simple reason: its object is the subject-person who, with his/her specific characteristics of intentionality, logos, freedom/responsibility, identity, “has not acted yet, but is going to act”, “must act”, “will have to act”, “is called to act”. And s/he is called to act on him/herself and on the others, choosing among all the possible actions those which better correspond to two specific aims of pedagogy.The first aim is to value the above mentioned conditions of education, without reducing it either to the single, though important, aspects of «training», «imita- tion», «shaping», «communication», «care», «teaching», «learning», «sociabil- ity», «ecological coevolution», «development» and similar, or to their sum.
The second aim consists not only in considering the educational actions that have already occurred, with their shapes, reasons, intentions, rules, meanings, values, aims in the contexts in which they happened, but also and particularly in introducing those that «must occur», moment after moment, by now, for «those» subject-persons who educate and educate themselves in «that» new and determined social and environmental context, with their history and shapes, and with the reasons, intentions, rules, meanings, values, aims that they not only «want», but also «should» have.
In order to legitimate pedagogy as science of the «subject-persons of the education that has yet to occur and to be acted», it is useful to reconsider, more extensively, three clarifications.
Human experience and educational experience. The first clarification concerns the meaning of the term «human experience» and, in particular, of the expression «educational experience».
Human experience is always “particular”, “individual”, “single”. There is no experience identical with another one, because experience is always successive and it flows away.These characteristics increase when we add the adjective «educational». In this case, the subject-person is introduced not only as a passive being, touched by the river of the world and of others, but as an active being, acting freely and consciously on the river of the world and of others, changing its flow, capacity, temperature in a more or less meaningful way. If «human experience» can be compared to constantly new water that laps the subject-person plunged in it, «edu- cational experience» carrying with itself the features of intentionality, logos, free- dom/responsibility and identity, could double the originality and unpredictability of the flow: the subject-person of education adds to the natural flow, for which human beings are like all animals and plants, another flow that s/he has decided, more or less, by him/herself, through and thanks to the already mentioned characteristics. Therefore, when educational sciences choose only some empirical (natural) features of educational experience in order to simplify its double complexity and to study it better, they risk to reduce educational experience to the human natural one. This is not useless, as every subject-person is a socio-environmental combination and individual empirical embodiment; but this effort, left alone, cuts strongly the richness and the complexity of educational experience.
«Perfect» educational experience. The second clarification concerns the meaning of the term «educational experience» in educational sciences and in pedagogy.
Educational sciences, as we have said, «objectualize» education as «something already happened, as it has happened», according to peculiar empirical characteristics changing on the basis of different points of view and intersubjectively repeatable checking operations, in order to explain or understand its reasons.
This circumstance is valid for sciences studying education as a datum of «nature» (neopositivist approach), for sciences studying it as a datum of «spirit» (hermeneutical approach) and, finally, for sciences studying it on «analytical» and «analytical- objectualistic» basis. In any case, psychology, sociology, anthropology, neurology, physiology, biology, genetics, hygienics, ecology of human development, geography, history, jurisprudence, economy etc., to use Bergson’s words, «crystallize» the experience of education that has occurred; they «ossify» it, because their epistemological framework of explanation and understanding making them reduce it to its past or, to use a Latin expression, to its «perfect». However, in this way, educational sciences obtain more or less formalized explications of the causes of their data, that, once formulated and justified, can also have a predictive function on future educational experience. The initial retrospective perspective becomes a prospective one.In the case of those sciences studying education according to the modern postGalilean scientific paradigm, this perspective leads to the formulation of real general laws able to explain the dynamic and processes of educational experiences that have not occurred yet, but which will occur. The result is possible thanks to the great work of reduction of the complexity of the objects of study, insomuch as educational experience is often identified with some empirical features of human experience. Explanation and prediction of future educational experiences are also possible, thanks to the reduction of the plural and complex classical principle of causality to the principle of deterministic mechanism, that makes the role of efficient causes absolute, and transforms teleological causality into teleonomic causality (Agazzi 2008a, b).
Things are different for sciences studying education, through the other paradigms briefly mentioned above. By «understanding» the irreducible and complex singularity of education made by subject-persons, they mature in the educator a “consciousness”, that gives him sensibility, ability to discriminate, and a critical judgment that are very useful to face, freely and responsibly, the task of acting as subject-person of education and to read in a deeper and more suitable way the new, original education produced and being produced by the future subject-persons.
Also pedagogy, if it wants to be a «science», particularly if it intends to be based on the analytical-objectualistic option, it couldn’t avoid the comparison with these themes. Therefore, it has to start from the past, the perfect, the already happened, in educational experience (retrospective view) and be opened, naturally, to ante-spective, pro-spective, pre-dictive views. Non sunt moltiplicanda entia sine necessitate, however. It is good for pedagogy as science to collect the results and teachings coming from educational sciences. From this point of view, the more pedagogy becomes scientific, the more it considers contributions of educational sciences working not only on the basis of the Galilean hypothetical-deductive epistemological paradigm, but also on other paradigms. Without fundamentalisms and, at the same time, with no fear of seeming opportunist. It has only to use the results of natural or human sciences in their limits and possibilities in order to use them properly. Nothing more nor less than that.
The risk, here, is that of a pedagogy considered as «science of educational sciences». Some evident pretentiousness and excess. After all, could pedagogy realistically claim the power to produce a synopsis, not even a summary, of all the knowledge developed by «educational sciences»? Even if it were possible, what would we do of a pedagogy as science that is nothing more than an encyclopaedia, the fruit of others’ work? Therefore, it is obvious that pedagogy can be creditable as science if it doesn’t pretend to the throne of the unification of «sciences» but if, on the contrary, explicates the point of view from which it interrogates «educa- tional sciences», produced by the critical use and selection of their results.
Pedagogy as science of the im-perfect educational experience. From which point of view does pedagogy become, with full rights, a «science», different from the other «educational sciences»? Briefly, we can summarize it as follows: it consists in using the sound conclusions taken from the educational sciences to face, in a theoretical and methodologically adequate way, the educational «im-perfect», in order to make of it a better «perfect» than the «perfects» that have already been identified.
In particular, pedagogy is called to be prepared to: (a) intervene on the education that «is going to happen», «is happening», «will happen», suffered or chosen in its unique (free) way by subject-persons in their relationships; (b) lead the subject-person to become more and more able, in the present, to use intentionality, logos, freedom/responsibility and identity in front of the happening of human and educational experience, not yet accomplished.
The specific characteristic of pedagogy consists in being oriented to the future, though starting from what exists in the present and what has happened in the past. Its distinctive feature is, in fact, the future that comes towards the present, in order to transform it into a past educationally better than the others established until now.
However, the future of the «single cases», as the Greeks reminded us (and the subject-person of education, is, as we have seen, a «doubled single case») has two main characteristics that is ill-advised to neglect. The first is ontological unavoidability: it happens anyway, nothing can stop it, not even remotely. It can be said that, from this point of view, though indeterminate, it is pre-determined, necessary. There is no young that, consuming the future, doesn’t get old.
The second characteristic is gnoseologic inscrutability or unpredictability: the future cannot be known because it has not happened yet and, therefore, it cannot be experienced and elaborated through our logos. It is possible to explain the past (perfectum), but it is impossible to explain an experience that has not occurred yet (im-perfect). Particularly, if we move from human experience to the educational one. Greek tragedies (like the Theban cycle), mythology, the various more or less millennial eschatologies of many different cultures have taught that extremely well.
Those reasons clarify the continuous effort of people to «tame» (make domestic) the «not yet» in the «already». Two extraordinary strategies have been developed to follow both the education that «is happening and will happen» thanks to already educated subject-persons, and the genealogic growth of subject-persons that are more and more able to educate: (a) technai or arts (technical-artistic-poi- etic rationality); (b) phronesis or practical rationality (Bertagna 2010).
Technical rationality is the most reliable of human strategies to «tame» future events, both on the ontological and the gnoseological level. It seems that the future depends on it, because it is able to realize, actualize some goals, i.e. possible events and things that have yet to happen and exist. Indeed, thanks to technique, people firstly imagine them in their minds, then they check whether there are concrete possibilities of instantiating them, then they achieve this «incarnation» using suitable methods and tools; in the end, they control the quality of the results and, if they consider them unsatisfactory, they repeat the process and improve it gradually.
However, not everything that technically can be realized (i.e., that is possible) should be also carried out (i.e., that is also good); technical rationality, in order to face in a positive educational manner the «not yet», needs the intervention of practical rationality.
Phronesis examines the future possibilities, more or less close to the present, that technical rationality can conceive, and it chooses for concrete realization only those it considers «good and just» for the education of subject-persons in the given contexts (the logic of kairos: just interventions, in the appropriate ways, times and spaces). In this sense, phronesis, choosing between what technical rationality can do and what it should do, directs the good will of subject-persons and obliges them (from the Latin ob-ligo: to tie) to do something good: if before, for several reasons, they have lost or never reached the orientation to do what is good, now, thanks to practical rationality, they become involved in the process of improving «their being» (what they are) and the «being» (what exists) through the «potential being» (what should exist and can be realized, if one decides to do so).
Therefore, pedagogy is surely a theoretical science because, thanks to educational sciences, it: (a) examines past educational experiences (retro-spection); (b) justifies the present educational experiences (spection); (c) finds general explanations that could be valid, until proven otherwise, also for the future and/or for those theories that explain the existing problems, making who knows them ready to face future problems (ante-spection, pre-diction). However, it is above all a practical-poetic science because, on the basis of theoretical knowledge available to solve the current problems of education, it uses technical rationality (techne) and practical rationality (phronesis) to direct its interventions (actions) on what happens, is happening, or will happen to the subject-person in the matter of his/ her «good» education, in the context in which s/he is growing up and in the situation s/he is experiencing. Agazzi has never devoted an explicit treatment to this idea of pedagogy as a practical-poetic science. However this is fully in keeping with his approach to the ethics of science and technology, and with his reflections on the necessary presence of “wisdom” in technology. In particular, he has analyzed on several occasions the relations between technical rationality and practical rationality, to which he devoted a whole chapter of Agazzi (1992a, b). Therefore the characterization outlined here of pedagogy as a science is consistent with his general philosophy of science.