Pedagogical Autonomy: Misinterpreted, Misconstrued, and Mismanaged in Public Schools?
“Epistêmê is the Greek word most often translated as knowledge, while technê is translated as either craft or art. These translations, however, may inappropriately harbor some of our contemporary assumptions about the relation between theory (the domain of ‘knowledge’) and practice (the concern of ‘craft’ or ‘art’) (Richard Parry, December, 2023).
“If you need to cite the current version before the Spring 2024 edition is available, then please use the following format, but note, again, that the Spring 2024 Edition may vary from the current text if further corrections are made):
Parry, Richard, "Episteme and Techne", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), forthcoming URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2024/entries/episteme-techne/>
[Author’s note: For classroom reading teachers interested in studying ways in which the episteme of “reading” continues to expand, scholars in the field document such changes historically in a central location (a Handbook of Research covering the most notable advances in the science). Respected researchers present the episteme in a collaborative, peer refereed manner to inhibit what Heidegger called “destructive reading” of the scientific literature.]
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According to OpenAI Smith4, Aristotle was the first Ancient Greek philosopher to outline the concept of episteme, which refers to the theories and knowledge relied on to do things in the real world during a particular time period. For example, the episteme during the Black Plague in Europe theorized that the death toll had a supernatural origin; appropriate action would be to pray and to isolate the afflicted ones from the spiritually healthy. When Pasteur uncovered Germ theory, the episteme changed. Eventually, medical science understood theories of inoculation and infection.
The word “techne" is derived from the ancient Greek τέχνη and can be translated as "craft," "art," or "skill” similar to Parry’s 2023 definition. Smith4 scanned semantic vectors of mathematized meaning and ultimately predicted its words such that in the episteme of 2023 techne “…refers to the knowledge and practices involved in making things, which can include everything from manual craft and artistry to the systematic knowledge of a skilled profession” (OpenAI, Dec, 2023).
The following discussion seeks to expose the inevitable reduction of professionalism in teaching when the words “theory” and “knowledge” are used synonymously to denote an episteme. Theory and knowledge are reciprocally related, but they are not the same. Moreover, lumping teachers in the same category as engineers, pilots, or carpenters is misleading, which is not to say these occupations cannot be considered professions.
In addition to providing examples of the bot as a barometer of conventional wisdom with all its flaws, including harboring inappropriate assumptions as Parry notes, this discussion will explore the risks for the improvement of teaching and learning when “theory” and “knowledge” are conflated. The knowledge of craftspeople and artists has qualities like teacher knowledge in that both are derived from experience, but teachers need much deeper, more complex, more scientific theories than carpenters.
Board certified teachers learn, interrogate, weave, and test theories in action throughout their career, because they have to in order to do their work. Carpenters learn skills that evolve over time, sharpen their effectiveness, master ineluctable problem scenarios, but a hammer is a hammer in the hands of carpenters everywhere. They have little need to test big ideas and theories. They don’t need to know why. They need to follow best practices and procedures faithfully. Not so for teachers.
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In a profession like teaching “knowledge” must be both theoretical, derived from academic research, and practical, derived from experience; in a craft “knowledge” must be practical, derived from experience with aids like manuals, measuring devices, brushes, specialized tools. Bridging the chasm between theory and practice is tragically oversimplified when teaching is viewed as just another craft.
As Parry affirmed in his recent revision of his essay, the idea the bot expresses about current understanding of the relationship between knowledge and practice is flawed and insufficient. The conventional and received education episteme (knowledge, not theory, motivates action in teaching) and the conventional perspective on techne (teaching proceeds according to received knowledge, not a personal professional teacher’s theory), contains “…inappropriately harbor[ed]…assumptions” that are insidious because they are invisible.
To raise teaching from a semi-profession to a profession, inappropriately harbored assumptions about techne must change as well. The relationship between theory and practice for an automobile mechanic differs categorically from that between theory and practice for a teacher. Society recognizes this distinction by offering legal certification of mastery to, say, issue documents for smog checks and professional credentials to teach children, though both occupations, like virtually every other occupation, require both knowledge of accepted practices and skill in doing them.
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The problem with the concept reported by the bot, looked at with Parry’s light on the matter, is not so much that the bot’s information is a hallucination or a deception, but that it represents all too faithfully expired ideas and unwarranted assumptions we carry in our collective head. Looked at critically and logically through the lens of a scholar with Parry’s expertise in 2023, the idea that the role of epistemology and techne blend together into a mechanical relationship, with the professional teacher following directions and protocols, simply does not characterize scientific understandings of human teaching and learning in this moment.
One faulty assumption is what I’m think of as the twin silos problem. Knowledge produced in universities is stored in the first silo. Pumps transfer this knowledge into silo 2, the collective mind of teachers. We implicitly accept the opposition of science as a quest for pure knowledge with practice as application following the path science has laid out for us. We collectively, and mistakenly, agree that scientific evidence must dictate practice. We nullify Aristotle’s nuanced articulation of a very big idea—the differences between thinking (or not) about the world and acting in the world. The bot repeats the ideas it was trained on. Teachers do not.
“In our era, the paradigm of theory is pure mathematics, that has no obvious application to practical problems of, e.g., engineering,” wrote Parry in his recent revision. The crux of the epistemic shift sits within the word “pure.” In the field of reading, “pure” research has been conducted for decades across epistemes. The oft cited study finding that the elementary school weak decoder obsessed with baseball does better understanding a passage about baseball than does the strong decoder who doesn’t know a catcher from a left fielder is an example of “pure” research. It has implications for practice, but those implications are non-obvious unless the specific goal is to predict which children will better understand baseball through reading.
The bridge from episteme to techne, from theory to practice, in teaching reading is easy if one conceives of practice as a simple unfolding of strategies or implementation of tools proven to be effective by the “pure” science of reading. In a frustrating and self-defeating way, teaching reading is like being a carpenter. Here’s Parry: “At the other end of the spectrum is craft, for example, carpentry, which is so enmeshed in material application that it resists any general explanation but must be learned by practice.”
Autonomy in teaching viewed through the lens of flawed thinking is carpenter autonomy. The role of the architectural theorist and the significance of theoretical understanding, the mathematician and the physicist who grapple with loads and forces and types of matter, is irrelevant to the carpenter framing a house. Just do it the way the boss said to do it. Similarly, the role of the neuroscientist using magnetic resonance imaging to comment on dyslexia is irrelevant to the teacher. Just do it the way the administrator said to do it. Why would a teacher need to understand theories of dyslexia?
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It fascinates me to see the distinctions Parry makes between Aristotle from whom episteme and techne as an argument arose, even though earlier philosophers had considered the dichotomy but rejected is as either frivolous or barren, and the conventional wisdom surrounding practice today revealed by the bot. The bot is proving itself to be highly effective at parroting the conventional wisdom:
-**Key aspects of Aristotle's concept of techne include:
1. **Productive Knowledge**: Techne is concerned with how things are made and involves practical wisdom and the skillful application of knowledge. It is about producing an external object or an effect through method and skill.
2. **Purpose-Driven**: An art or craft under the banner of techne has a specific end goal or purpose (telos). The creation is not random but intended to fulfill a particular function or need.
3. **Systematic Method**: Techne involves a systematic method or set of rules that guide the production process. This method is learned and can be taught, unlike innate qualities such as talent.
OpenAI, Dec 2023
Parry discusses Xenophon’s take on techne, a pre-Aristolean view curiously aligned with impoverished views on teacher autonomy today. According to Parry, Xenophon ventriloquates Socrates in dialogue saying that he cared not to waste his time philosophizing about techne when much more urgent matters needed attention in order to create Western civilization. For Xenophon—
“Knowledge, then, can be accumulated. Since knowledge is divided into various skills, such as managing an estate and generalship, and their subdivisions, the wise man would appear to be someone who acquires as much of this kind of knowledge as possible. If so, he is a person of wide accomplishments, not someone with a theory about the universe” (Parry, Section I).
Should a teacher’s techne include a theory about the universe? Should teacher techne include awareness of their influence on the theory of the universe their learners are creating in their learner techne? To what degree is managing a classroom like managing an estate or an army? Does teacher knowledge accumulate or does it expand? Consider whether the bot’s features of practicing a craft in today’s episteme would affirm or deny the need for a higher quality of knowledge for professional licensure. Here is the bot telling us more conventional wisdom about the craft person’s knowledge needs. Techne is—
4. **Combinatorial**: It combines theoretical knowledge (episteme) with the practical ability to create, thus bridging the gap between knowing and doing.
5. **Material Engagement**: Techne is materially bound; it is always about working with something, whether it be wood for a carpenter, language for a rhetorician, or the body for a physician.
6. **Learned Expertise**: Unlike innate qualities or virtues, techne is an acquired expertise. One becomes an artisan or a technician by learning and practicing the techne, not by natural predisposition alone.
OpenAI, Dec 2023
The combinatorial feature suggests that learning a craft like teaching or flying a jet involves mixing knowledge with ability to do, suggesting that teachers must acquire procedural knowledge and then do the procedure. There is no suggestion that the craft teacher would benefit from a theoretical understanding of the links between the steps and the learning they are predicted to produce. Instead, the craft teacher implements the steps and measures the outcome, showing fidelity to the procedure.
The bot’s material engagement feature of the artist or the crafts person makes no distinction between types of material—wood, language, the human body? Makes no difference. The skilled professional has combined knowledge with behavior and is able to enact the steps to achieve the desired change in the material: the wood becomes a house, the language becomes an essay, the open cut on the body becomes closed with stitches.
According to Parry, the bot’s characterization of skilled practice as the application of knowledge in procedures for the making of material objects through training is dissonant with Plato’s conception of techne. Plato did not fully analyze the issue as did Aristotle, but he touched on it. Given Plato’s concern for ideal forms, it isn’t surprising that Plato requires the artist and crafts person to understand theory, the ideal form represented imperfectly in clay. Note Parry’s use of terms like “more than simply” and “how to do.” The professional knows why to do:
“…[T]he physician knows how to care for the sick (Rep. 342d), to prescribe a regimen (Rep. 407d), to provide for the advantage of the body (Rep. 341e), to make someone healthy (Charm. 174c), to make someone vomit (Laws 933b). However, the episteme associated with craft means more than simply how to do certain activities. The physician knows or recognizes (gignôskein) health by medical knowledge (epistêmê) (Charm. 170c). Since health is the goal of the medical craft, the physician understands the goal of the craft” (Parry, Section 2).
Understanding the goal of teaching provides a basis for testing, adjusting, rejecting, experimenting, discussing, reflecting, collaborating. Being with other professionals to discuss teaching entails more than simply rehashing recipes, assignments, routines, and sharing data about outcomes, though these nuts and bolts are always already part of the context.
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According to Parry, in Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics," "techne" is put in the context of virtue and the human good. Living well itself is a kind of craft. While techne refers to the craft of making, it's linked to the idea of achieving the good life, something that is made from a guiding theory of the good life and from considered action. It takes a professional mindset, a theoretical understanding and an approach to follow, to live a good life. Through this lens, techne is tied to the pursuit of excellence in a domain and the proper function of human beings in society.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Parry, who reserves the right to change his text through Spring, 2024. I wasn’t aware of the distinction Aristotle made between the calculating part and the scientific part of what we in education might call “cognitive virtues” until I began doing research for this essay. Autonomy in professional teaching, I’m thinking, ought to defend practitioners from inappropriate intrusion into these virtues, intrusions which are the logical consequence of external surveillance and the mandate for mindless replication of scripts and recipes.
“Aristotle makes a very clear distinction between the two intellectual virtues, a distinction which is not always observed elsewhere in his work. He begins with the rational soul (to te logon echon) which is divided into the calculating part (to logistikon) and the scientific part (to epistêmonikon). With the calculating part we consider (theôroumen) things which could be otherwise whereas with the scientific part we consider things which could not be otherwise” (Parry Section 4).