dossier

Universidad Alberto Hurtado Education Faculty English Pedagogy

Integrated English III

Unit 1:Critical Thinking

Stage 1. Desired results

Established goals:

To become aware of what the concept of critical thinking means. To recognize the key nature of critical thinking and the expected attitude of critical

thinkers. To value the contribution of critical thinkers in a community. To demonstrate attitudes which clearly convey the idea of critical thinking.

Understandings

Students will understand that…

critical thinking involves three stages: observe/problematize/propose.

critical thinking is an everlasting journey.

self-awareness is crucial to become a critical thinker.

Essential questions

● What is the importance of understanding what critical thinking means?

● What is the contribution of critical thinkers to a given community?

● How could I become a critical thinker? ● Why is the application of critical thinking relevant to the learning process? ● Can critical thinking be taught?

Knowledge Students will manage the following concepts…

Critical thinking: knowledge, skills and attitudes; facts and opinions; beliefs, assumptions and facts; discussion and arguments; assessment and proofs; accurate judgments; reasoning; critical thinking skills and strategies.

Skills

Students are expected to develop the following skills: a.- Differentiate between complaining, criticizing and thinking critically. b. Identify ideas and concepts involved in a critical thinking attitude. c. Compile and organize information to successfully reach to conclusions on how to solve problems. d. Transform and apply knowledge to meet the requirements of analysis, and or reaching a conclusion. e. Differentiate facts from opinions. f. Take a critical stand to problems and difficulties. g. Provide accurate judgements. h. Appreciate the contribution of critical thinkers. i. Spot the difference between a critical thinking and a cynical attitude towards the



information provided in written and oral texts. j. Compare and contrast the different authors’ points of views on the topic of critical thinking. k. Paraphrase the main ideas and points of view in written texts and talks orally and in writing. l. Make an interpretation and give your opinion about a given topic presented in the journals read and talks listened orally. ll. Write a critical report.

Stage 2 – Assessment evidence Performance task

Write a report on a critical analysis of Chilean TV programs.

Other evidence

Writings and homework uploaded to wordpress. Participation in class: listening and speaking disposition. Fulfillment with class preparation tasks: readings, video viewing and others.

Wordpress journal Blog tasks if requested

Stage 3- Learning Plan

Learning Experiences Extensive and intensive reading at home, intensive and guided reading in class, watch short videos at home and in class, listen (without viewing) in class), watch different programs on National TV Channels at home and keep a

record of the observations. Individual and collaborative writing (essays, paragraphs, reports) at home

and in class, class discussion and sharing, pair and small group sharing, interviewing

people in the streets. word maps and concept maps awareness and drilling language structures and phonetic strands in context.

Language structuring : Tense notions: unfinished, future and progression; modals

1. 1. Direct and indirect questions. 2. Present perfect: just, up to now, already, yet and

always, for and since 3.Present perfect progressive.

Phonological/Phonetical components: Weak forms, statements, connected speech features. Awareness of features

1. Falling intonation for Wh-questions. 2. Rising intonation in yes – no questions.



4.Past perfect simple and progressive. 5.Will / Going to. 6.Present progressive: “future arrangements”. 7.Future progressive and future perfect. 8.Requests, orders, offers, permissions: can, could,

will, would. 9Ability: can, can’t, could, couldn’t, be able to. 11.Obligation and compulsion: must, have to,

should, ought to. 12.Possibility and certainty: may, might, could,

must, must have, can’t have. 13.Collocations based on unit topic. 14.Linking 3 (Adding - Comparison) Syntactic analysis: The Phrase (VP) (Biber, D.

2002, chapter 5).

3. Weak forms for modals, auxiliaries. 4. Statements. (Chapter 2.5) 5. /D, d, T/ 6. /b, v/ 7. Connected speech: assimilation, elision. 8. Transcription reading – phonetics symbols

Unit bibliography

March 12-13 Weissberg, R. (2013) Critically Thinking about Critical Thinking. New York, USA: Springer Science + Business Media.

March 16 - 20 Moon, J. (N.D) (2005)What is the elusive activity of Critical Thinking - We seek it here. England: ESCalate. McCaffre, K; Saide, A. (2014) Why is critical thinking so hard to teach? New York, USA: Sceptic Magazine, V.19 Nº 2. Cuypers, S.; Haji, I. (2006) Education for critical thinking: Can it be non-indoctrinative? Calgary, Canada: Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 6, Nº38. Silva, L. and Rodrígues, H. (2011) Critical Thinking: its relevance in education in a shifting society. Minho, Portugal: Revista de Psicología, Vol. 29 (1).

March 23 - 27 Toy, B. and Ok, A. (2012) Incorporating Critical thinking in a pedagogical content. Ankara, Turkey: European Journal of Teacher Education; Vol 35, Nº 1. Atkinson, S. and Urban, J. (2013) Reflective Practice: a non-negotiable requirement for an effective educator. London, UK: BPP University College. Wang, Q., woo, H. and Zhao, J. (2009) Investigating Critical thinking and knowledge construction in an interactive learning environment. Guangzhou, China: Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, Vol 17, Nº1. Rezaee, M. , Farahian, M. and Morad, A. (2012) Critical Thinking in Higher education. Teheran, Iran: Broad Research in Artificial intelligence, Vol 3, Nº 2. Nicholas, M., Comer, J. and Recker, D and Hathcode, D. (2013)Developing and Implementing a Multidisciplinary approach to assess CT. Sydney, Australia: Wiley Periodicals Inc., Vol 25, Nº 4

March 30 - Apr 2 Pinkney, J. and Shaughnessy, M. (2013) Teaching Critical thinking: a modern mandate. New Mexico, Mexico. International Journal of Academic Research, Vol 5, Nº3. Masduqi, H. (2011) Critical thinking skills and meaning in language teaching. New South Wales, Australia:TEFLN Journal, Vol 22, Nº 2. Mihaila-Lica, G. (2012) Consideration on developing critical thinking skills in students of English. Sibiu, Romania: Revista Academiei Tereste, Nº 2 (66) Hsiao, W. , Chen, M. and Hu, H. (2013) Assessing online discussions: Adoption of critical thinking as a grading criterion. Alaska, USA: The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and society, Vol. 9



TASK 1

UNIT 1: Critical Thinking

In this unit you will have to: Write a critical Analysis on Chilean TV programs.

1. General outline

In groups of 4 students you will decide on a National Channel and TV Program. Choose among the following Programs: News Report, Talk Show, Soap Opera. Each group will have to choose a different channel or program. Each member of the group will have to watch the program for at least 3 weeks and collect objective data (eg: The News Report Channel X at Y is called Z. It starts at .. and finishes at…. The presenters names are… The types of news and the sequence of them is …)

Then in your group you will share the data and make an interpretation of the beliefs, values and/or assumptions implicit in the program. Be sure to provide accurate judgement (concrete evidence /facts) to support your opinion.

Finally will have to make a proposal on how to improve the given program backing your proposal with solid arguments

Then you will write a report including the following sections: Objective description (3 - 5 pages) Analysis and Interpretation (2 - 4 pages) Proposal ( 1 - 1,5 pages)

Include at least two literary sources (from the ones read in class or others) in the Analysis and Interpretation Section and two others in the Proposal Section. Use Times New Roman 12 and 1,5 space

a) task objectives

1. Organize information. 2. Differentiate between facts and opinions: Find and judge components of

subjectivity based on beliefs or ideologies, and oppose them to concrete facts.

3. Take a critical stand on an observed reality and provide arguments to support opinions.

4. Propose documented and concrete actions, alternatives to improve a reality.

b) Dates

Submit a hard copy on Thursday, April 2nd at the beginning of the class (no later

than 10 minutes after the time of the class) Upload a copy to your Wordpress the latest midnight on the same date.

e) Assessment

This task is a 10% of your Final grade. Find the rubric attached at the end of the document: Note that two extra

categories have been added to the Official Writing Rubric.

c) Considerations

If for any reason your have problems conforming a group with the number of students required (4), you should approach your homeroom teacher to request an exception. The teacher will discuss it with the rest of the team and get back to you. Wait for the answer of your teacher before starting your work.

You will receive a grade for your work, so the grade will be the same for every member in the group.

If you fail to submit your work on the date and time assigned, you will receive the minimum grade.

Do not forget that Plagiarism is a serious offence which will be severely sanctioned. The first time work will be given a 1.0. If a second time occurs, course suspension and program expulsion may take place (Reglamento académico Título VI, Art.21)

IEL Writing Rubric Second Year

Student’s Name: __________________________________________Section:___________________ Mark:_________ Date: __/____/___

Total score:

Categories 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

COHERENCE and TASK ACHIEVEMENT: Concepts and relationships expressed should be relevant to each other and in relation to the purpose, thus enabling plausible inferences about underlying meaning.

Some sentences are coherent but the overall idea is not always clear to the reader.

Most simple sentences are coherent so the overall idea is clear to the reader. Format and register seldom comply with the purpose.

Can express simple ideas with sentences organised logically when dealing with familiar topics. Format and register usually comply with the purpose.

Can express ideas clearly most of the time, with sentences organised logically when dealing with familiar topics. Format and register comply with the purpose.

COHESION: The linkage between elements of a discourse.

Can write simple isolated phrases and sentences.

Can write simple isolated phrases and sentences linked with one or two connectors like “and” and “but”.

Can write a series of simple phrases and sentences linked with some simple connectors like “and", “but” and “so” and one or two random complex connecting element.

Can often use a variety of frequent discourse markers effectively.

VOCABULARY and SPELLING: The correct spelling and choice of lexicon and register (formal-informal) and its collocations according to the context.

Uses one or two connectors but is repetitive. Elementary and repetitive content words used. Spelling mistakes are regularly made.

Use of appropriate content words is inconsistent even when dealing with familiar topics. Common words are spelled correctly most of the time.

Can usually use appropriate content words when dealing with familiar topics. Common words are spelled correctly.

Can use appropriate content words thoroughly when dealing with familiar topics. Spelling is frequently correct.

LANGUAGE STRUCTURING: The use of structures of the language in context.

Basic language structures and functional words are seldom used correctly: phrase word order, sentence structure, and simple tenses.

Basic language structures and functional words are sometimes used correctly: phrase word order, sentence structure, and simple tenses.

Basic language structures and functional words are used fluently most of the time; phrase word order, sentence structure, and simple tenses are frequently used correctly.

Basic language structures and functional words are used fluently; phrase word order, sentence structure, and simple tenses are always used correctly.

Extra categories adapted from: file:///C:/Users/UAH/Desktop/CriticalThinking.pdf (last accessed March, 2015)

PUNCTUATION and CAPITALIZATION

Basic punctuation and capitalization are seldom used correctly

Correct use of basic punctuation and capitalization is inconsistent.

Correct use of basic punctuation and capitalization is frequent.

Basic punctuation and capitalization are always used correctly.

INFLUENCE OF CONTEXT

AND ASSUMPTIONS

Shows some

awareness of present

beliefs/ideologies

behind context but

there is no judgement

or position.

Sometimes labels

assertions as

assumptions.

Shows awareness of present

beliefs/Ideologies behind context

and take a clear position.

Able to see the difference among

assertions, assumptions and

facts.

Shows awareness of several

beliefs/ideologies behind context and

question them when presenting a

position. Able to analyze and

evaluate others' assumptions and

assertions opposing them to facts.

Shows awareness of significant

beliefs/ideologies behind context and

evidences a systematical analysis

present in his/her Discourse.

Thoroughly and carefully analyzes

and evaluate own and others'

assumptions and assertions getting

significant conclusions when

comparing to facts.

CRITICAL STAND Specific position

(perspective,

thesis/hypothesis) is

stated, but is

simplistic and

obvious.

Specific position (perspective,

thesis/hypothesis) acknowledges

different sides of an issue

Specific position (perspective, thesis,

hypothesis) takes into account the

complexities of an issue. Others'

points of view are acknowledged

within own position.

Specific position (perspective,

thesis/hypothesis) is imaginative,

taking into account the complexities of

an issue. Limits of position are

acknowledged. Others’ point of view

are synthesized within position

(perspective, thesis, hypothesis)

ARTICLE

Critically Thinking about Critical Thinking

Robert Weissberg

Published online: 30 July 2013# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

“Critical thinking” has mesmerized academics across the political spectrum;

even high school students are now being called upon to “think critically.”

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s widely praised Academically Adrift favorably

cites the term some eighty-seven times while excoriating contemporary higher

education.1 In “The Evidence of Things Unnoticed: An Interpretive Preface to

the National Association of Scholars’ ReportWhat Does Bowdoin Teach? How

a Contemporary Liberal Arts College Shapes Students,” Peter Wood criticizes

Bowdoin for replacing critical thinking with a grab bag of trendy notions such as

“social justice” and “sustainability.”2 It is no exaggeration to say that “critical

thinking” has quickly evolved into a scholarly industry.3 As of April 11, 2013,

Amazon.com lists some 48,559 titles on critical thinking. To be sure, scholars

can battle over whether the Left or Right “owns” critical thinking,4 but everyone

Acad. Quest. (2013) 26:317–328DOI 10.1007/s12129-013-9375-2

1Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2011).2Peter Wood, “The Evidence of Things Unnoticed: An Interpretive Preface to the National Association ofScholars’ Report What Does Bowdoin Teach? How a Contemporary Liberal Arts College ShapesStudents” (New York: National Association of Scholars, 2013), http://www.nas.org/images/documents/What_Does_Bowdoin_Teach.pdf.3See, for example, Albert Keith Whitaker, “Critical Thinking in the Ivory Tower,” Academic Questions16, no. 1 (Winter 2002–03): 50–58. Also see, “Critical Thinking,” Wikipedia, accessed April 11, 2013,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking.4For a sampling of these battles, see PeterWood, “The Curriculum of Forgetting,”Chronicle of Higher Education,Innovations (blog), November 21, 2011, http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-curriculum-of-forgetting/30914; “AILACT Responds to Peter Wood,” Rail (blog), May 3, 2012, http://railct.com/2012/05/03/ailact-responds-to-peter-wood/; and Peter Wood, “Leaf-Taking,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Innovations (blog),December 4, 2011, http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/leaf-taking/31017.

Robert Weissberg is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820; [email protected]. He is the author of many books, most recentlyThe Limits of Civic Activism: Cautionary Tales on the Use of Politics (2004), Pernicious Tolerance: HowTeaching to “Accept Differences” Undermines Civil Society (2008), and Bad Students, Not Bad Schools(2010), all published by Transaction.

http://www.nas.org/images/documents/What_Does_Bowdoin_Teach.pdf

http://www.nas.org/images/documents/What_Does_Bowdoin_Teach.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-curriculum-of-forgetting/30914

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-curriculum-of-forgetting/30914

http://railct.com/2012/05/03/ailact-responds-to-peter-wood/

http://railct.com/2012/05/03/ailact-responds-to-peter-wood/

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/leaf-taking/31017

agrees that like apple pie and motherhood, critical thinking is an unquestionable

“good” and universities—even high schools—need to do more to foster this

skill.

Unfortunately, calls for students to “think critically” almost always

sidestep the prodigious problem of transforming a high-sounding idea into

something that can be usefully interjected into lessons, let alone calibrated to

show progress (or failure). Yes, we all agree that critical thinking is an

honored element of Western thought, even traceable to Socrates, but it hardly

follows that most people, including a majority of college students, can master

this skill. Indeed, acquiring it may be impossible or largely cost-ineffective.

Worse, given all the documented deficiencies of today’s college students, the

critical thinking crusade may entail unrecognized opportunity costs to the

neglect of more valuable lessons.

Skepticism acknowledged, let me offer a brief tour of the obstacles

awaiting those who want to do more than admonish fellow professors to

teach “critical thinking.”

Defining and Measuring

Definitions of critical thinking abound, but all share certain traits, notably

an ability to use reason to move beyond the acquisition of facts to uncover

deep meaning. For illustrative purposes, here’s a detailed (but quite typical)

definition offered by a website devoted to explicating the term:

It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought

implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue;

assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to

conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from alternative

viewpoints; and frame of reference. Critical thinking—in being

responsive to variable subject matter, issues, and purposes—is

incorporated in a family of interwoven modes of thinking, among

them: scientific thinking, mathematical thinking, historical thinking,

anthropological thinking, economic thinking, moral thinking, and

philosophical thinking.

Critical thinking can be seen as having two components: 1) a set of

information and belief generating and processing skills, and 2) the habit,

based on intellectual commitment, of using those skills to guide behavior.

It is thus to be contrasted with: 1) the mere acquisition and retention of

318 Weissberg

information alone, because it involves a particular way in which

information is sought and treated; 2) the mere possession of a set of

skills, because it involves the continual use of them; and 3) the mere use of

those skills (“as an exercise”) without acceptance of their results.5

Quite a mouthful of verbiage, but to put some meat on these abstract

bones, let me recall my own effort to impart these skills when I taught

graduate seminars on American electoral politics. One weekly topic was the

perennial effort to limit money in elections. I began by highlighting past

failed campaign finance reforms, stressing the obstacles of enforcing laws

that made it a crime for those who wrote the laws (Congress) to receive

certain donations. Then I discussed First Amendment guarantees of free

speech where monetary contributions were defined as “speech.” I pointed out

how money was only one of multiple campaign-related resources (including,

for example, celebrity status, possessing an eminent name, or access to

ample volunteer labor), so limiting cash donations hardly leveled the playing

field. Lectures further explained how the complexity of campaign finance

laws might prove troublesome (including criminal penalties) for cash-poor

candidates unable to hire skilled staff to ensure compliance. Then on to how

restricting contributions meant that candidates must now target many more

(small) donors than in the past and this, in turn, makes fund-raising far more

time-consuming while requiring professional assistance. The impetus for

endless pandering was also mentioned, along with how contribution limits

helped incumbents and therefore perpetuated the status quo. I continued with

how exemptions for spending one’s own fortune would encourage rich

people to seek office, since they would be immune to laws restricting

donations. This hardly ended it and I went on for at least two hours

connecting dozens of nonobvious but politically important “dots.”

This snippet illustrates my personal effort to teach by example. And I

followed the same “connect-the-nonobvious-dots” approach in an additional

thirteen lectures, all the while encouraging students to attempt what I was

demonstrating.

5Michael Scriven and Richard Paul, “Critical Thinking as Defined by the National Council forExcellence in Critical Thinking,” statement presented at the Eighth Annual International Conferenceon Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA, August1988, available under the title, “Defining Critical Thinking,” at The Critical Thinking Community,http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766.

Critically Thinking about Critical Thinking 319

http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766

My experience was not a happy one. Boredom and confusion seemed

common. I invited students to figure out the implications of a particular law

or policy, but with little success. Students were also encouraged to discuss

possible trade-offs between, say, free speech and limiting donations, while I

put critical thinking questions on the take-home essay examinations. Despite

my efforts, when all was said and done, I conceded defeat—only a handful

apparently benefited. Yes, most probably enjoyed the exercise and learned

something new, but when prodded to perform similar analyses on topics not

yet covered in class, the results, including exams, were dismal.

Now, I confess that my pedagogical techniques may have been deficient,

but my sad experience raises the issue of assessing success in thousands of

very different schools and varied majors. And what about instructors who

themselves lack this skill or just disdain it?

How, then, are educators to teach critical thinking? Can we boil down

these long, often kitchen sink-style definitions into tests that can be

administered to students of different abilities and interests? That definitions

are generally similar but differ in key details only exacerbates this

measurement quandary.

Not surprisingly, admonitions to teach critical thinking far exceed

well-crafted, demonstrably valid tests calibrating it. Perhaps it is assumed that

critical thinking is so obvious that it hardly requires scientific measurement. But

there is some good news. Arum and Roksa describe such an instrument that they

and others use—the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA)—and for better or

worse, this one instrument must suffice for our analysis.6 According to its

proponents, the CLA is designed to tap general skills, not specific knowledge.

That is, unlike other SAT-like tests the CLA does not consist of multiple

clear-cut questions that can be scored objectively that are independent of

one another. Instead, what is assessed is a student’s ability to integrate

complex material holistically to reach a reasoned conclusion.

Specifically, students are given three complicated case studies, fictitious

but realistic. Factual background material is included in the test. Students are

given ninety minutes to write these essays. The data reported by Arum and

Roksa derive from a sample of 2,322 students from similar backgrounds at

four-year institutions on twenty-four campuses. The test is given to freshmen

and repeated when those same students become sophomores. Considerable

6Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift, chap. 1 and 2, and the Methodological Appendix explicated themeasurement strategy in detail.

320 Weissberg

effort is made to sort out possible confounding factors like race/ethnicity,

SAT scores, familiarity with English, and high school curriculum. The

student sample was drawn from highly selective, selective, and less selective

schools.

In one required essay students are asked to advise a firm named DynaTech

about purchasing a new airplane, although one of them had recently crashed.

The various pros and cons are offered and students must sort out the

conflicting evidence and arguments. Another case study asks students to

compose a memo regarding reducing crime, and again, various pieces of

conflicting information are provided.

All three student essays are evaluated according to a detailed scoring

manual: how facts are applied, quality and clarity of arguments, reliability of

supplied evidence, ability to synthesize complex information, and soundness

of the recommendations. All and all, Arum and Roksa stress, these tasks are

“real-world” related and differ from conventional course examinations, for

which students learn specific material to be regurgitated during testing. Arum

and Roksa also provide statistical evidence that the CLA is reliable and valid.

To simplify matters, we’ll take their word that the CLA satisfies the technical

requirement of a “good measure,” though compared to other standardized

tests the CLA is still in its infancy.

Does the University Really Need Instruction in Critical Thinking?

What might motivate a professor to add critical thinking to a syllabus,

especially since professors are already pressured to embrace lots of other

“good ideas” such as multiculturalism and diversity in course offerings?

Going one step further, while covering, say, the contribution of women to the

American Revolution is relatively straightforward, how are the habits of

critical thinking to be taught? Translating any typically complicated

definition into something tangible is no simple matter. Should enlightened

administrators hire self-designated experts on critical thinking to coach

befuddled professors? Might schools implore college textbook publishers to

include critical thinking exercises in introductory texts? What about

resistance from teachers who already feel overburdened by administrative

dictates regarding the insertion of multiculturalism, sustainability, social

justice, and similar ideologically infused material that may have little to do

with substantive course content?


Underlying these practical issues are more serious academic freedom

issues. College professors are not K–12 teachers whose lesson plans are

determined by administrators or state legislators with scarcely any room for

deviation. A huge gap exists between acknowledging the importance of

critical thinking versus requiring it across the board regardless of discipline

or the professor’s teaching agenda. Speaking personally and as a critical

thinking fan, I would resist any administrator dictating my lectures, just as I

would refuse to follow gratuitous orders to insert the alleged benefits of

diversity into coursework. And I suspect many academics share my view

regarding professional independence.

Compounding the situation is the fuzzy, often vacuous nature of critical

thinking. A professor might insist, “Yes I teach it,” while an outside

observer unfamiliar with the subject matter might disagree. And how much

class time should professors devote to critical thinking? Twenty minutes on

day one and that’s that? Might critical thinking, like multiculturalism,

infuse everything? Moreover, with so many varying definitions of “critical

thinking” out there, who will impose one out of dozens as the gold

standard? And how do we deal with the ideologically driven teacher who

twists teaching critical thinking into a weapon to attack pet hates? After all,

critical thinking requires being “critical.” Clearly, this is a bureaucratic

mess that may require endless acrimonious meetings before anything of

practical use emerges.

All of this brings us to one easily avoided, overriding question: Why? It is

not cynical to argue that fans of teaching critical thinking see it as something

akin to how the cultural Left views diversity—a virtue so imperative to a

“healthy” society that it is a compelling state interest to impose it on hapless

students regardless of their perspectives? Now for the bad news: justifica-

tions are moral in character—an “ought” lacking scientific basis. To

appreciate this nonempirical justification, here’s what Arum and Roksa offer:

In a rapidly changing economy and society, there is widespread

agreement that these individual capacities are the foundation for

effective democratic citizenship and economic productivity. “With all

the controversy over the college curriculum,” Derek Bok has

commented, “it is impressive to find faculty members agreeing almost

unanimously that teaching students to think critically is the principal aim

of undergraduate education.” Institutional mission statements also echo

this widespread commitment to developing students’ critical thinking.

322 Weissberg

They typically include a pledge, for example, that schools will work to

challenge students to “think critically and intuitively,” and to ensure that

graduates will become adept at “critical, analytical, and logical

thinking.” These mission statements align with the idea that educational

institutions serve to enhance students’ human capital—knowledge,

skills, and capacities that will be rewarded in the labor market.7

This hardly ends their catalog of benefits, but this snippet should suffice.

Alas, the entire justification rests on appeal to authority, namely other

academics who, like Arum and Roksa, lack empirical evidence—or to be a

bit kinder, evidence that is not cited or remains to be discovered. When did

imparting a knack for critical thinking become “the principal aim of

undergraduate education”? I entered college in 1959 and only recently

encountered this imperative. Did Derek Bok survey a random sample of

professors about spending class time on teaching critical thinking? One

can only be reminded of all the diversity champions who insist that its

self-evident virtues make scientific documentation superfluous.

A little thought suggests that American democracy and our economy

hardly rests on critical thinking. First, and speaking as one who has written

about democracy for decades, I fail to see any connection between an ability

to think critically and the survival of American democratic institutions.

Reasonably honest elections, majority rule and minority rights, the rule of

law, due process, and all the rest that defines our democratic political order

hardly requires millions of citizens who think critically. Scholars have long

supplied compendiums of democratic citizenship, but I have never seen

“critical thinking” on the list. If it deserves inclusion, the justification for it

must be provided, not merely asserted.

Nor, for that matter, can I see a purely logical link between critical

thinking and democracy. If anything, the voting literature abounds with data

demonstrating that the majority of voters do not choose candidates by

thinking critically. Visceral voting choices or reliance on partisan affiliation

are far more common. If a widespread ability to think critically is vital to

democratic governance, we are doomed and democracy’s two-century

survival in the U.S. must be judged a mystery.

Ditto for any self-evident link between critical thinking and prosperity.

Yes, a plausible case can be made that some high-level jobs might

7Ibid., 2.


occasionally require critical thinking, but I can think of no reason why most

positions require this ability. I’d guess that less than a quarter of jobs demand

critical thinking, and even then this trait may be far subordinated to reliability,

tenacity, a penchant for cooperative behavior, and solid communication skills,

among many other attributes with a clear vocational benefit. Again, this is truth

by assertion and not a very convincing one at that.

It is equally plausible that our economy requires only a small number of

critical thinkers who are surrounded by armies lacking this skill but more

adept at other tasks. Apple and Microsoft hardly need five thousand or more

critical thinkers to flourish—and remember that Bill Gates dropped out of

Harvard, so where did he acquire his knack for critical thinking? A better

case can be made that American universities would help the economy more

by inculcating a knack for painful drudgery and persistence, the famous ratio

of 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. Even Steve Jobs confessed

to being a grind.

Moreover, if, as is claimed, critical thinking is central to the Americaneconomy, where are the critical thinking tests to screen thousands of jobapplicants? Well, to be fair, firms are not exactly ignoring this ability. Rather,organizations that demand critical thinking have better, far cheaper, and moreaccessible proxies to assess this skill. Goldman Sachs and the like hardly need aninety-minute exam about whether to buy crash-prone airplanes. Instead theyinterview graduates from elite schools knowing full well that these applicantspossess the intellectual skills necessary to pass tough courses.

In fact, if critical thinking is as valuable economically as is claimed, the

best test of this proposition would be a five-year follow-up on those who

have mastered that skill versus those who did not, while holding constant the

prestige of the degree, major, and similar factors relevant to career success.

Technically, this is predictive validity and essential to trying to convince

undergraduates to sharpen their thinking skills. Alas, we know nothing about

this outcome, but yet again, it is happily assumed.

All this adds up to a weak case for the CLA, since its value, whether for

promoting democracy or helping students land a job, is highly speculative.

This iffy usefulness is especially relevant as universities seek to trim budgets.

Imagine a school defending its plan to test two thousand students a year on

the CLA and paying to train dozens of newly hired employees to evaluate

and score the essays? I suspect that the only motivation might be if some

journalism school ranking service (e.g., U.S. News & World Report) suddenly

included CLA scores in their ratings. But even then, with so many other

324 Weissberg

off-the-shelf indicators available, why would a school spend a small fortune

for yet another, particularly since it is pointless unless hundreds of other

schools likewise provide CLA data to facilitate comparisons?

Can Critical Thinking Be Taught?

Let’s for the moment assume that teaching critical thinking becomes the

latest educational trend. Would American education benefit?

Obviously, answers must be speculative, but I’d guess that the benefits would

be minimal, while a Pandora’s box of political consequences would be opened.

Let’s start with the information necessary to think critically. Recall that the CLA

test provided copious information to help students devise policy recommendations.

Yes, everything providedwas realistic, but what is not realistic is having ample and

freely supplied information at one’s fingertips. More realistic would be to give

students a few days to collect their own data, a task that would undoubtedly

increase the range of test scores. Better students would find more information

while slackers would be satisfied with far less. This is, of course, exactly what

occurs with paper assignments.

Their lack of basic knowledge was apparent to me when I encouraged

students to think critically about U.S. elections. Judging by their puzzled

looks, it soon became apparent that many students lacked even the most

rudimentary political knowledge, things like how primary elections work.8

Many were even clueless about recent presidential elections. These facts

had to be inserted into class discussion, so what began as an exercise in

critical thinking quickly regressed into a time-consuming tutorial on

American politics.

Paucity of elementary factual information among students acknowledged,

what is a professor to do when attempting to teach critical thinking to the

poorly informed? Require students to take remedial classes in what should

have been learned in high school? Assign basic background readings at the

beginning of the semester? Unfortunately, these solutions optimistically

assume that students are motivated to catch up while simultaneously

8The lack of factual information among college students is well-known to professors, though seldompublicly acknowledged. Unfortunately, few academics have the stomach to delve into this embarrassingissue. For an excellent analysis of this aversion to “boring” facts, see Michael J. Booker, “A Roof withoutWalls: Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Misdirection of American Education,” Academic Questions20, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 347–55. Booker makes the key point that when students do not know facts, theysurvive the course by embracing the instructor’s opinions.


mastering the more advanced substantive material. The only solution that I

can imagine is to limit the teaching of critical thinking to more advanced

classes (akin to high school AP classes), but this elitist approach is hardly

what fans of critical thinking demand. Most enthusiasts see critical thinking

as a trait teachable to all students.

What this lack of knowledge suggests is that a capacity for critical

thinking may be closely related to cognitive ability in general. After all,

absorbing copious amounts of information quickly, organizing it, dealing

with abstractions, and then drawing out implications is the common element

in both IQ and critical thinking. Arum and Roksa’s own data suggest this link

between high intelligence and skill at thinking critically: nearly half of all

students did not add to their critical thinking capacity over the first two years

of college, students at elite schools out-performed those a few notches below,

and students from racial and ethnic groups that generally lag academically

also lagged in acquiring this skill.9

To be politically incorrect, if a capacity for critical thinking mirrors IQ

(and I think it does) then efforts to foster this skill will fail just as every past

intervention to increase IQ has come up short. Worse, from the perspective of

critical thinking fans, previous interventions to boost IQ had the advantage of

beginning very early (e.g., Head Start), while efforts to develop critical

thinking target college-age students, and even then, for at most a few hours

per week. Thus understood, teaching critical thinking is redundant for the

smart and pointless for the less talented, although, conceivably, a few

middling students might pick up a thing or two.

If the past is any guide to the future, the current infatuation with critical

thinking will follow a familiar though unwelcome trajectory. That is,

egalitarians who peruse critical thinking test scores will, guaranteed, discover

“troubling” gaps in this talent. Yet more task forces will be appointed,

expensive recommendations will emerge, critical thinking coaches will be hired

and thousands of hours and lots of money will be spent for zero progress. And

rest assured, campus egalitarians will pour over these CLA essays to expunge

hidden racial bias from the test and scoring method. I can already see ambitious

but underemployed bureaucrats waiting for their gaps-in-critical thinking ship to

arrive so as to organize a three-day conference.

9Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift, 122.

326 Weissberg

Conclusions

What does this pursuit tell us about the modern academy? Two lessons are

clear. First, it yet again exposes the academy’s vulnerability to questionable

fads, a willingness to spend lavishly despite shaky evidence of value (a

parallel is the infatuation with diversity et al.). This is not to say that critical

thinking champions are fashion-minded opportunists—although I suspect a

few are of the catch-the-fad and advance-one’s-career variety.

Actually, getting in on the ground floor of a trend long before its demonstrated

failure is just about de rigueur in education. Today’s bureaucratically infused

campus culture invites it—why struggle with thorny research problems or spend

hours trying to teach writing when embracing fashionable nonsense is a far

superior career option? Imagine the consequences if the latest educational

panacea were a drug required to pass FDA-like scrutiny before being

implemented while advocates were liable for damages if the scheme turned

sour. The campus newspaper would overflow with ads like: “Did you pay

thousands of dollars on a course that stressed ‘critical thinking’ only to discover

that you learned nothing of intellectual or vocational value? Call Gonif and

Gonif and join our class action lawsuit and recover lost tuition plus punitive

damages. We have already won millions for students like you.”

The second point is an irony: Champions of critical thinking have

failed to apply their own medicine. Didn’t they stop to consider the net

value of this instruction given its easily foreseen tangible and intellectual

costs? How much time is to be wasted on this project that could have

been spent on substantive learning? What about yet more bureaucratic

expansion when administrative overhead increasingly devours the

university’s core mission? And what does a resource-eating critical

thinking test add when this talent can already be assessed from a verbal

SAT score that closely mirrors IQ? Might attempting to teach critical

thinking be pointless for mediocre students? How can one possibly

assert the link between critical ability and democracy when we have zero

data on this nexus? Worse, why do champions of critical thinking ignore

the absence of data on any alleged beneficial impact? Why the disdain

for science? And on and on. Obviously, we need critical thinking for

those who advocate critical thinking.

Let me end by reiterating my own commitment to critical thinking. I am

not opposed to it; rather I view it as appropriate to only the brightest, most


motivated students, less a skill that can be successfully taught to millions of

mediocre students (including high school students who struggle with basic

literacy). Moreover, even with topnotch students I’m not sure that critical

thinking is the highest priority. Speaking personally, I would subordinate it to

other skills, namely the ability to write and speak well and to apply the

scientific method, familiarity with history and literature, and a Calvinist work

ethic. Let’s not assume that just because a particular skill is valuable—and

critical thinking certainly is—it should be pushed at the expense of other

intellectual skills. This, I might add, is a conclusion that comes with a little

critical thinking.

328 Weissberg

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D I S C U S S I O N S I N E D U C A T I O N S E R I E S

Dr Jenny Moon

University of Bournemouth/Independent [email protected]

Tel: 01395 276569

a new perspective on the elusiveactivity of critical thinking: a theoretical and practical approach

We seek it here…

Introduction to this publication

This paper is in two parts:

Part One questions what is meant by critical thinking, referring to the literature in

some detail to build towards a descriptive statement.

A particularly helpful aspect of Dr Moon’s writing is the link made between critical

thinking and the development of the conceptions of knowledge (epistemological

beliefs) which have not been explored fully elsewhere.

Part Two focuses on the practical side of the issue for staff and students in HE,

finishing with some photocopiable activity pages.

ESCalate and Dr Moon are both keen to receive comments and feedback on this

publication via [email protected]

Dr Julie Anderson, ESCalate

ContentsPart One 4

What is the elusiveactivity of critical thinking?

Critical thinking – 5the beginning of the search

A first look at the literature 5of critical thinking

Bringing new ideas to critical thinking: 8epistemological development

The development of epistemological 10beliefs – a conclusion for the purposesof pedagogy and critical thinking

A final position on critical thinking 12

Widening the view: 12critical thinking and its place

Critical thinking and writing 13

Critical thinking and progression 13of student learning

General principles for support of 15development in epistemologicalbeliefs and the improvement ofcritical thinking

Techniques for encouraging 19the progression in epistemological beliefsand the improvement of critical thinking

Exercise on the stages of understandingof knowledge 26

SHORTCUT TO ACTIVITIES

If you wish to go straight to the activity sheets

please turn to page 26.

These are FREE photocopiable sheets as long as

you acknowledge the source as

Dr Jenny Moon, (2005) Critical Thinking.

Bristol: ESCalate ISBN 1-904190-85-5

�

Part Two 14

The practical side ofcritical thinking

References and Bibliography 30

Appendix 1 - Towards a final statement on the nature of critical thinking 32

Appendix 2 - Critical thinking and other academic activities – reflection and argument 34

Appendix 3 - Learning, thinking and writing – a first look 36

Appendix 4 - Progression in critical thinking and its representation in writing inundergraduate education 38

‘Critical thinking’ is like a number of words in higher education that sound ‘good’and sit comfortably in, for example, the vocabulary of the Institutional missionstatement. In mission statements vagueness may not matter, but when studentsare told ‘through the use of critical thinking’ they should analyse something, amore precise definition does matter. How can they develop something if they donot know what it is? (Meyers, 1986; Barnett, 1997) It is important, therefore, thatwe can form a clear view of critical thinking that provides a fruitful basis forpedagogical purposes(*) that can be understood by both teachers as well asstudents.

This guide aims to help us create such a view – and translate it to useful activitiesto develop critical thinking.

4


Part OneWhat is the elusive activity of critical thinking?

Why the confusion about critical thinking?

*we use the term pedagogy as a generic term for teaching / learning processes - not those specifically associated with childhood learning

Critical thinking – thebeginning of the search

There is not an agreed definition of critical thinking.

There are some different views of and approaches to

critical thinking. Ultimately we seek a common view.

This view will need to accord reasonably with ideas in

the literature, be coherent in itself and relate to

common conceptions of learning. In particular it will

need to have a practical basis that can be translated

into use in the classroom.

We start with a few simple ideas. Critical thinking is

clearly akin to processes of learning but the emphasis

in ‘thinking’ is on the re-processing of material that

has been learnt. The way in which the term ‘critical

thinking’ is used implies that the subject matter being

considered is complex and understanding is involved.

For this reason, critical thinking would seem to be

associated with the taking of a deep approach to

learning and not to the taking of a surface approach.

The idea of critical thinking ‘about something …’

seems to imply that there is a rationale for the

process, and an outcome – or a judgement. There is

also an idea that evidence is assessed or evaluated in

the process – and that the process itself is subject to

evaluation.

The 'critical' element in the idea of critical thinking

causes most of the problems in definition because it

suggests that critical thinking is more than simply the

process of thinking. Many students who come across

the word 'critical' would reasonably associate it with

the everyday sense of making a negative comment

about something. It is usual to tell them that this is

not the meaning - but then to stall at telling them

clearly what it is!

A first look at the literatureof critical thinking

The lack of one clear definition of critical thinking is

reflected in the literature.

Some approaches to critical thinking promote the

teaching of logic (see articles in Mitchell and

Andrews (2000), in particular, Sweet and Swanson).

This is an approach that takes a technical view of the

process of critical thinking as a cognitive ability that

can be increased by knowledge of the rules of logic,

and practice of them. There may be benefit from the

learning of logic as a process, but it seems that, ‘logic

is a good way of teaching logic’ de Bono (1982), and

Meyers (1986) cites evidence to suggest that such

learning does not relate directly to critical thinking

abilities. However, the ideas of an approach like logic

are retained in the notion that critical thinking is a

sustained and systematic process of examination.

Other approaches to critical thinking are less rule-

bound than formal logic. A common approach is to

identify the component processes, skills and

abilities in critical thinking in order to make the idea

seem more comprehensible and to relate it more

directly to practice. For example, in a study skills book

for geography students, Kneale (2003) suggests that

critical thinking is ‘working through for oneself, afresh,

a problem’ (p3). She identifies some processes that

might be involved as ‘critically evaluating’, making

judgements, awareness of bias, ‘commenting in a

thoughtful way’. As in much literature that is meant to

clarify, it is questionable as to whether student

readers would understand these components of

critical thinking any more than the concept of critical

thinking itself.

5

A N E W P E R S P E C T I V E O N T H E E L U S I V E A C T I V I T Y O F C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Footnote : By a deep approach, we imply that the learner actively relates new material of learning to current knowledge, endeavours to

understand it and will query and challenge ideas. (Marton, Hounsell and Entwistle, (1997).

Using a similar approach, Marshall and Rowland

(1998) talk of the ‘fundamental elements’ of critical

thinking as … ‘the presentation of arguments to

persuade… debate and negotiating

positions…reflection…it is a communicative

activity…(it) has as its outcome making a decision

and acting on what you have come to think and

believe’ and it ‘involves emotion as well as reason and

rationality’ (p34)’.

A much more comprehensive example of the

component processes approach to critical thinking is

described by Paul and Elder (2004) in a booklet for

staff and students called ‘The Miniature Guide to

Critical Thinking’. The definition of critical thinking in

this booklet is ‘a process by which the thinker

improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully

taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking

and imposing intellectual standards upon them’ (p1).

This seems to be a promising definition - but the

booklet expands into a range of other conceptions

such as ‘universal intellectual standards’ (p7), which

are - clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth,

breadth and logic, and ‘structures’. By the end of the

booklet it is difficult to see how all of these factors

are interrelated. The miniature booklet approach

seems attractive as a means of supporting students,

but might be too complex for its size. It certainly

stresses the use of a systematic approach, with

expectation of a judgement as an outcome, with

evaluation as an ongoing process, and with the sense

that there are standards to meet in making the

judgement.

Another approach to critical thinking that might seem

to simplify it is the sequence approach in which a

series of stages are given for the reader / writer to

follow in order to arrive at a conclusion of some sort.

Cottrell (1999) provides an example. She starts by

saying that critical thinking 'means weighing up the

arguments for and against' (p188). She then describes

a series of stages of critical thinking in reading, which

also may be new vocabulary to the student (see

above - eg ‘critically evaluate’ etc). The stages - or

‘steps’ - are as follows: ‘identify the line of reasoning’,

‘critically evaluate the line of reasoning’, ‘question

surface appearances’, ‘identify evidence in the text’

‘evaluate the evidence’ ‘identify the writer’s

conclusions’ and ‘evaluate whether the evidence

supports the conclusions’. These are good thinking

activities, though the stages listed do not seem to

lead the reader towards what she might expect to

find from the initial definition - a ‘weighed up’

argument that is either ‘for’ or ‘against’. It does not

seem unusual for the processes to add up to a

different end point than is initially implied – such as

finding the ‘correct’ solution to a specific problem –

which we would not normally call critical thinking.

A group of important writers on critical thinking

describe critical thinking in relation to

pedagogical issues and in so doing, adopt a less

structured approach to its identity. Their work is

particularly helpful since their concern was not to

capture a tight definition but to facilitate the

development of critical thinking in the classroom.

One could say that their definitions emerge through

the ways in which critical thinking is facilitated (usually

by teachers). They mainly wrote at a time when

critical thinking was widely taught in American

College education, though an early proponent of this

view was Dewey (1933). Brookfield’s (1987) work

seems to typify the ‘pedagogical approach’ to critical

thinking. He says that, ‘phrases such as critical

thinking…...are exhortatory, heady and conveniently

vague’ (p11) and that ‘trying to force people to

analyze critically the assumptions under which they

have been thinking and living is likely to serve no

function other than intimidating them to the point

where resistance builds up against this process’(p11).

6


He advocates processes of 'trying to awaken,

prompt, nurture and encourage this process' (p11).

Meyers (1986) also focuses on how to enable

learners to think critically, though his focus was young

college students (Brookfield was concerned with

adults). Like Brookfield, Meyers suggests that critical

thinking should be fostered through engagement of

students’ interest and motivation in a facilitatory

environment.

Another approach to critical thinking is evident in

Barnett’s work (e.g. 1997). Barnett considers critical

thinking as an element of the taking of a critical stance

– an acquired disposition towards all

knowledge and action. This is a approach that

includes emotional as well as cognitive and whole

person functioning. Barnett suggests that learners

progress in their process of critical thinking in specific

areas to the development of the ‘critical being’ who

has a critical viewpoint on the world, and who is

willing to act on that view.

SummaryFrom the discussion so far:

� There is a sense that we think critically in order to

reach an outcome and that outcome is usually a

decision, or a judgement.

� Ideas that are the subject matter of critical

thinking are complex.

� The process of critical thinking involves relatively

systematic consideration of ideas that we might

call ‘evidence’. This might be called a process of

evaluation of the evidence.

� There are associated notions of clarity and

precision of the thinking process, and in the

manner in which the case is represented. This

does not exclude some aspects of broader

exploratory thinking as well.

� There is some sense that there are standards for

critical thinking - that the thinker makes an

evaluation of the quality of her judgement that

may take into account the wider context of the

critical thinking event.

� Emotional factors may be relevant to the process

of making a judgement.

� There is an implication in some of the approaches

surveyed above that critical thinking is not just a

set of abilities, but a quality of a person’s

relationship with the world that is nurtured and

encouraged rather than taught as a ‘one off’.

So far it seems that:

Critical thinking is a capacity to work with

complex ideas whereby a person can make

effective provision of evidence to justify a

reasonable judgement. The evidence, and

therefore the judgement, will pay appropriate

attention to context.

These ideas suggest that critical thinking is about

making a judgement based on appropriate and well

considered evidence that takes account of the

context in which the judgement is made. There are

also a number of associated ideas that arise out of

this statement. These are:

- the meaning of ‘a judgement’

- the meaning of ‘effective’

- clarity and precision playing a part in

critical thinking

- the involvement of creativity

- the involvement of emotion

- the metacognitive process of monitoring the

making of a judgement.

These ideas are considered more fully in

Appendix 1.

7


Bringing new ideas to criticalthinking: epistemologicaldevelopment

We now deviate from this line of reasoning in order

to take account of an issue that is neglected in most

of the approaches described above. Those

approaches apply the same ideas of critical thinking to

the higher education student at any stage of her

development and do not seem to consider

progression to be an issue either in a student’s ability

to think critically or in pedagogy. Barnett (1997) is an

exception to this in implying that we should think of

critical thinking as a process of development towards

‘critical being’. We carry forward this exploration of

critical thinking by considering a body of work on

developmental epistemology, which describes the

developing manner in which students conceive of the

nature of knowledge. We will show that

epistemology and the work on critical thinking are

closely related and that epistemological issues need

to be integrated into a definition of critical thinking

and its pedagogy. In broadening our approach to

critical thinking in this way, we add two elements to

our thinking:

� The influence of the student’s conception of

knowledge in her ability to think critically and

� The implication from this that the capacity for

critical thinking should be seen as a

developmental process.

The term ‘epistemology’ is used here to relate to the

learner’s view of the nature of knowledge – we talk

of a learner’s ‘conception of knowledge’ or ‘stage of

epistemological belief’ synonymously.

Epistemological development has been the subject of

a number of studies over the last half century that

indicate that there is a developmental sequence in

learners’ conceptualisation of the nature of

knowledge and that this influences the manner in

which learners function - particularly affecting their

capacity for critical thinking. Four substantial studies

broadly concurred about the nature of the

continuum that they documented among relevant

experimental samples. They differed in the

terminology that they used, in the populations that

they studied, in their focus on gender and in the

number of stages in the continuum that they

identified. The studies were those of Perry (1970),

Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule (1986), King

and Kitchener (1994) and Baxter Magolda (1992,

1994, 1996). With the exception of King and

Kitchener, a research method of semi-structured

interviewing was used. King and Kitchener asked

subjects to work with ill-structured problems and

then discussed with them their experience of the

process. These projects are explored in more detail

in Hettich, 1997; Moon, 2004.

Baxter MagoldaIn order to illustrate the concept of epistemological

development, we focus here on the work of Baxter

Magolda (1992). Baxter Magolda worked with college

students of both genders, identifying four ‘domains’

(stages) in her scheme. ‘Absolute knowing’ is the least

developed stage in her scheme. Here knowledge is

seen as certain or absolute and formal learning is a

matter of seeking and absorbing the knowledge of

those who know – experts, who might be teachers

(Baxter Magolda, 2001). This state of thinking is

described as a ‘dualist’ position – with the notion of

knowledge being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ (Perry, 1970).

Baxter Magolda describes a second stage as

‘transitional knowing’, in which there are doubts

about the certainty of knowledge – a sense that there

is both partial certainty and partial uncertainty as well

as absolute knowledge. The third domain is

8


‘independent knowing’ - when learners recognise the

uncertainty of knowledge, and cope with this by

taking the position that everyone has a right to her

own opinions or beliefs. This seems to be an

embryonic form of the most sophisticated domain,

that of ‘contextual knowing’, in which knowledge is

seen as constructed, and is understood in relation to

the effective deployment of evidence that best fits a

given context. Teachers are, at this stage, seen as

facilitators and partners in the process of the

development of knowledge. This is a ‘relativist’

position (Perry, 1970). The stages described by

Baxter Magolda are illustrated by quotations from her

subjects in Part Two.

It is important to note that very few of Baxter

Magolda’s subjects were actually in the domain of

contextual knowing at the stage of first degree

graduation, so our interest in this paper primarily

concerns the shift from absolute thinking towards

contextual thinking. Baxter Magolda found that two

influences seemed to facilitate learners’ progression

into this latter stage after graduation – either the

challenging experience of postgraduate education, or

confrontation with the need to make significant

independent decisions in work or other situations

(1994, 1996). Later (1999 and 2001), she confirmed

and expanded the latter findings – and we return to

the practical implications of this for critical thinking

below.

Baxter Magolda – Key conclusionsBaxter Magolda did not suggest that her subjects

progressed steadily from domain to domain. She

acknowledged that they shifted somewhat

haphazardly between the domains and sometimes

worked with different conceptions on different topics

at the same time. While there is remarkable similarity

in the four studies in the actual continuum from

dualistic to relativistic thinking, the identity of the

stages has lead to further discussion and some work

that could seem to complicate the picture. Briefly we

review some of this further work and then pull

together the material on epistemological beliefs in

order to relate it to critical thinking.

Further StudiesWe start with another look at the significance of the

stages in the continuum. Kember (2001) studied the

learning of ‘novice’ and ‘expert’ part-time students in

Hong Kong. He simplified the model of development

of epistemological beliefs and conceived of two sets

of beliefs at two poles of a continuum, which

included factors of the student’s view of knowledge,

the nature of the teacher-learner relationship and

responsibility for learning. These descriptions relate

closely to the absolute and contextual knowing stages

of Baxter Magolda (1992). Kember did not consider

it necessary to identify as specific stages the

intermediate progression between these two

‘orientations’, maintaining an open mind as to

whether there were distinct intermediate ‘stages’. He

observed that students could hold a range of beliefs

that related to both poles at the same time. His

conclusion, however, is significant –

‘what comes through strongly from this study

is the importance (for students) of making the

transition from one broad orientation to the

other’ during their higher education.

Other studies queried whether there was one quality

represented in the continuum of development of

epistemological beliefs, or more than one (eg

Schommer 1990, 1993, 1994). It is useful that this

question has been raised, but the evidence seems

uncertain at present (Hofter and Pintrich, 1997).

9


Other investigations have looked at whether

epistemogical belief is affected by the nature of

disciplines studied. There seems to be evidence to

indicate that there are differences in the structures of

disciplines that affect the progression and that learners

are more and less challenged by different aspects of

disciplines and their conceptual structures -

Schommer and Walker, (1995); Lonka and Lindblom-

Ylanne, (1996); Palmer and Marra, (2004). An

alternative interpretation is that it is not the actual

structure of the discipline that varies in its challenge,

but the manner in which it is traditionally taught.

There is a tendency to regard early parts of the study

of medicine, for example, as primarily the inculcation

of facts.

Ryan’s work (1984) also contributes to the

understanding of epistemological beliefs. Ryan (1984),

based his work on Perry’s findings and demonstrated

that the epistemological beliefs of students at a

number of stages of their college education related to

different standards in their comprehension of a text

and to different levels of academic performance. He

suggests that ‘…..one’s epistemological beliefs …..form

the psychological context within which (the learner)

develops standards’ for evaluating the knowledge that

has been extracted from a text. In other words, the

reader’s satisfaction with the quality of knowledge

gained from reading a text is related to the stage of

her epistemological beliefs. In the context of this

paper, we might assume that the same ‘standard’

relates also to the reader’s thinking and then reading

of her own writing. It is interesting to note that Ryan

also found that the individual’s quality of

epistemological belief predicted course grades ‘even

after the effects of academic aptitude or the amount

of college experience (had) been eliminated’ (Ryan,

1984).

Ryan’s statement about the relationship between

epistemological belief and course grade is echoed by,

and directly related to critical thinking by Meyers

(1986). He says that ‘the real value of Perry’s work

(on epistemological beliefs) is the insight it offers into

the reasons why most students do not think critically’

(p97). Kember (2001) went one step further than

Meyers, saying that ‘critical and creative thinking is only

possible if relativism is recognised’. We return later to

this important point that students need to be able

to recognise relativism in order fully to

engage with critical thinking.

The development ofepistemological beliefs – aconclusion for the purposesof pedagogy and criticalthinking

There seems to be evidence to indicate that higher

education is a process during which a student’s

conception of knowledge is expected to undergo a

considerable shift along a continuum that we can

broadly describe. If we work solely as researchers, we

can afford to wait for the detail of this continuum to

be elicited. However, if there is a concern for

pedagogy - for example, for a means of understanding

critical thinking, - we need to conceive of a framework

that can enable us to understand better the manner in

which students see knowledge.

From the review of the literature here and for the

pedagogical purposes of this paper, this writer

tentatively puts forward a simple model rather like

that of Kember or like the two extremes of the Baxter

Magolda scheme.

10


In this model students generally progress

from absolutist to contextual conceptions,

but they do this by shifting forwards and

sometimes backwards in different areas of

this progression as they encounter different

challenges to their learning.

There seems to be some suggestion that when

learners first encounter complex ideas, they may

regress and treat the ideas in a more factual -

absolutist manner at first (Baxter Magolda, 1999).

Furthermore, it seems most helpful for pedagogy to

consider that there is a central line of progression in

developing epistemological beliefs and further

implications of that progression. By ‘implications’, we

mean that, for example, as view of knowledge

changes there will be a need for the learner to

reinterpret her view of the world and her relationship

to the world. There are implications also for the

manner in which she sees her role as a learner who

becomes more autonomous and therefore more in

charge of her own development of knowledge and

her role in relation to her teachers. As a consequence

of this there will be a shift of her view of

teachers from expert holders of knowledge,

to partners in the construction of knowledge.

Baxter Magolda subsequently explored the later

development of part of the sample of students that

she followed through college and has been able to

indicate some of the factors that contribute to further

development. She found that the nature of

postgraduate education drew students towards

contextual conceptions of knowledge (Baxter

Magolda, 1996), as did situations in professional life

that confronted these young adults. The particular

kinds of situation were those that… ‘held participants

responsible for making their own decisions, required

direct experience in making decisions and involved

interactions with peers or co-workers to explore and

evaluate opinions’ (Baxter Magolda, 1994).

Baxter Magolda suggested that the

involvement of college work with ‘real-life’

situations such as work in student affairs

(student unions, etc.) and placements could

furnish these kinds of experience very

helpfully (see below), thereby enabling students to

progress in the development of their epistemological

beliefs. We might take from this the implication that

we ignore the potential for epistemological

development of activities that are outside formal

education at a cost.

Another aspect of the later work of Baxter Magolda,

still of relevance to critical thinking, broadened the

picture. She looked at how epistemological

development interacted with interpersonal and intra

personal development (self in relation to others and

the development of personal identity). She used the

conception of development towards ‘self-authorship’

(1999, 2001). This links back to Barnett’s notion of

the critical being (1997), and usefully it acknowledges

the social nature of knowing and knowledge, and the

issues of risk-taking that are involved in critical

thinking. Again we return to these ideas in due

course.

11


A final position oncritical thinking

The following statements will be used to guide the

description of practical and pedagogical issues in the

second section of this booklet.

Critical thinking is a capacity to work with complex

ideas whereby a person can make effective provision

of evidence to justify a reasonable judgement. The

evidence, and therefore the judgement, will pay

appropriate attention to the context of the

judgement.

The fully developed capacity to think critically relies

on an understanding of knowledge as constructed

and related to its context (relativistic) and it is not

possible if knowledge is viewed only in an absolute

manner (ie knowledge as a series of facts).

The meaning of a ‘judgement’ may relate to a

judgement of one thing against another/others (like a

decision) or the judgement of the merit of one thing

(sometimes in relation to a purpose or set of criteria).

The idea of effective judgement implies effectiveness

in the thinking and in the quality of the representation

of the thinking in writing, speech, etc.

Correspondingly, both the thinking and its

representation need to display clarity and precision.

Emotion is recognised to play a part in critical thinking

as it does in all cognitive processing. The thinker

should monitor the various influences of emotion,

articulating this where possible and appropriate.

The critical thinker will be able to take a critical stance

towards her actual process of critical thinking

(metacognition).

Widening the view: criticalthinking and its place

Opportunities for critical thinking occur all the time.

We go back to Barnett’s idea that higher education

should be about the development of the critical being

– the person who thinks critically as part of her way

of life, and who is willing to act on her

understandings. In their educational context, students

make judgements all the time – in the process of

revision of a piece of writing; in a decision how to

tackle an experiment; in the organisation of time in

relation to tasks to be done; in decisions as to what

to revise; in the judgement as to what are the

important points in a text and so on. They take

evidence into account in making those judgements.

Critical thinking in higher education is not only to be

engaged when the essay title asks for it – but needs

to become a matter of course alongside the

development of students’ conceptions of knowledge.

It is this writer’s view that the frequent allusion to

critical thinking in higher education is actually a

reference to epistemological development and not

just to the cognitive process. It is a means of

representing the need to shift learners from absolute

conceptions of knowledge towards contextual

knowing.

For a discussion of critical thinking and other

academic activities – see Appendix 2.

12


Critical thinking and writing

The most obvious link between critical thinking and

writing is in the use of writing to represent the process of

thinking. Some people can better express what is in their

minds than others because, for example, they have

better capacity with language. The capacity to write

clearly and precisely is particularly associated with critical

thinking, both in the sequencing and layout of evidence,

but also in the broader summing up of the case.

The links between critical thinking and writing go

beyond the process of getting the content of the

critical mind onto paper. The production of a paper

‘version’ of our thoughts provides a chance for review.

It is a chance to engage in metacognition about our

own critical thinking as we judge whether the material

on paper says what we need it to say – and we duly

revise it – or not. Once thinking is represented on

paper, it can also be seen by others, who can also

comment and make judgements about it – as in the

process of peer review of academic papers or the

assessment of student work.

An aspect of peer review is the consideration of the

reference list. Initially we can see referencing as an

acknowledgement of sources, but it has also much to

do with the breadth of consideration and the quality of

the evidence consulted – in other words, the critical

thinking processes. Referencing also supplies

information that helps a reader further to evaluate

sources if she so wishes. In the assessment tasks that

are set in order to evaluate student knowledge and

ability to think critically, the listing of references has

other purposes. Firstly it demonstrates to the assessor

the breadth and quality of sources of evidence to

which the student has referred in making judgements

and secondly the discipline of writing references is a

form of training for the student in the proper

communication of academic knowledge.

Critical thinking in its written form also relates to

writing in a further way that is not often overtly

considered. This is when writing most clearly interacts

with thinking and learning – when ideas are explored,

‘toyed-with’, tried out as notes in a note-book. The

scribble of the idea on the back of the envelope,

concept maps and other graphic depictions, layouts of

ideas, lists and plans all come into this group. This is an

under-exploited form of writing that has much to do

with critical thinking in the processes of higher

education. See Appendix 3 for some further details on

this topic

Critical thinking andprogression of studentlearning The discussion so far indicates that the ability to think

critically needs to be considered in relation to the

progression of learning and thinking of learners. We

have said that it is logically not possible to get an

absolutely absolute thinker to engage in proper critical

thinking and that learners’ capacity to think critically will

grow in relation to their epistemological development.

A consequence of this is that we cannot expect first

year students properly to understand what to do if we

ask for critical thinking, though there are activities that

can help them to shift towards this ability. As they

progress, so the fostering activities can progress, always

just moving beyond what is ‘easy’ for the majority, and

recognising that some will need more support. On this

basis, the activity that supports critical thinking will

differ as the student progresses. The progression needs

to be considered carefully and may be aided by the use

of a questionnaire (eg Baxter Magolda, 2001) as a

means of obtaining a picture of how the students

conceive of knowledge. The information can then be

used as a guide for the development of curriculum

activities. In appendix 4 we make some suggestions as

to what we can expect from students at different

stages of their undergraduate studies and

correspondingly for the ways of working with the

students on the development of critical thinking.

The writer invites comment and suggestions for

amendment.

13


14


Part TwoThe practical side of critical thinking

Critical thinking, writing and pedagogy – the developmentof a strategy

We now have a descriptive statement about critical thinking that can guide us inplanning educational experiences for students in higher education.

We consider the practical implementation:

� As a set of principles to govern the pedagogy of critical thinking andepistemological development;

� As practical exercises and activities;

� Through the manner in which we view writing in higher education – we propose a new form of writing that can particularly support thedevelopment of critical thinking.

15


General principles forsupport of development inepistemological beliefs andthe improvement of criticalthinking

One person cannot make another think

critically: The nature of thinking of an individual is

totally under the control of that individual. As Meyers

(1986) clearly indicates, we facilitate or foster critical

thinking through the tasks set, the habits formed by

learners, the careful provision of feedback and

explanation and the understanding of the teacher and

the classroom atmosphere.

It is worth recognising that there are several

major strategies for encouraging critical

thinking in programmes. Lipman (1991)

advocates facilitation of critical thinking through the

teaching of philosophy to all students. Brookfield

(1987) suggests that critical thinking can be

introduced as a topic apart from the disciplines

studied by the learners, and Meyers (1986) suggests

that critical thinking needs to be integrated into

disciplinary teaching.

Lipman’s view is exemplified in the pattern of the

International Baccalaureate (IB) in which there is

study of ‘Theory of Knowledge’ alongside other

disciplines. Theory of knowledge seems to be an

important support to the learning of IB students, and

appears to be very helpful in confronting higher

education learning. We would therefore argue that

there should be provision of this kind for all students

in higher education.

Along the lines of Brookfield’s ideas, non-discipline

related work with critical thinking is probably justified

in another way. Carey and Smith (1999) talking about

younger students, suggest that there may often be a

discrepancy between the stage of ‘common-sense’

epistemology and the stage that drives thinking on

scientific work at school or college. If this is the case,

then it may be possible to work at more

sophisticated levels of thinking when the topic is

related to every-day life.

Clearly, however, Meyers must be right in suggesting

that discipline staff need to work with overt and well-

understood concepts of critical thinking in their

subject classes.

Our view is that none of the three approaches is

wrong. The support of critical thinking development

in a student needs to be the responsibility of all staff

who work with students because all need to have the

same expectations of the student. A general principle

that emerges from the epistemological literature is

that the functioning of learners is drawn

towards contextual knowing by just

challenging them beyond their ‘comfort

zone of knowing’ throughout their studies, (King

and Kitchener, 1994). This accords with Vygotsky’s

conception of teaching in the zone of proximal

development (1978). The draft descriptors in

Appendix 6 that attempt to describe pedagogical

elements in the progression can help to guide this

process.

Staff knowledge and development has a crucial role in

fostering critical thinking. If critical thinking is closely

associated with the student’s progression along the

continuum of development of conceptions of

knowledge, then staff, who facilitate the learning of

students, should be well aware of the continuum and

use it to guide their teaching of and interactions with

students, including assessment.

16


Meyers demonstrates in his book (1986) that a

fruitful manner in which to enhance critical thinking, is

to work with teachers, helping them to clarify the

idea in their own disciplines and contexts. Through a

dialogue method in a series of seminars, Meyers

suggests how such developments can be initiated. In

one of the sessions, teachers are asked to visualise

their disciplinary framework for critical thinking (1986

– p19). It is the view of this writer that working with

staff and developing their own conceptions of critical

thinking in relation to their disciplines is the one of

the most effective strategies for the development of

critical thinking among students.

It is useful here to note the results of some Australian

research. Brownlee (2001) looked at the

epistemological stages of student teachers and found,

not surprisingly, that they were not always fully

developed in their understanding of knowledge, ie to

contextual knowing. We have to recognise that it is

common for UK students to be taught by

postgraduate students who are at much the same

stage. We do need to ensure that teachers have a

sufficiently developed conception of knowledge

before they are in contact with students.

Another important factor in the fostering of critical

thinking is the need to recognise the significance of

the atmosphere of a class. Learning to think

critically and express that thinking is often risky for a

student. Students can feel daunted by academia and

the cult of the expert and challenged by the notion

that absolutist conceptions are no longer appropriate.

Kember puts this graphically in relation to the

students in his study: students who commence higher

education with (absolutist) beliefs can find the

process difficult and even ‘traumatic’ – and that

change does not take place over-night (Kember,

2001).

Recognition of the potentially difficult situation,

Meyers says, is key to much of the success of

facilitating critical thinking. He says that:

‘Students must be led gently into the

active roles of discussing, dialoguing and

problem solving. They will watch carefully

to see how respectfully teachers field

comments and will quickly pick up non-

verbal cues that show how open teachers

really are to student questions and

contributions’ (p67)

Where Brookfield (1991) talks about the nurturing

of student interest and curiosity, about the use of

metaphor and analogy, Meyers talks of the

presentation of paradoxes to ‘set students’ minds

to pondering…(so that) …disequilibrium…will

challenge their old ways of thinking and prepare…’

them for change (Meyers p44).

So we are suggesting that the classroom should feel

as if it is a place where risk-taking is tolerated. It is a

place for the exploration of ideas, rather than the

simple transmission of knowledge, it is a place in

which there is time in which to tease out problems

rather than jump to a solution in an absolutist

manner. It is worth noting that there are often

difficulties in implementing this philosophy in higher

education at the current time. Higher student

numbers, the priorities of research, the tick-boxing of

modern administration and quality assurance, and

sometimes the naïve introduction of some

technologies, can work against the provision of an

atmosphere in the classroom in which good critical

thinking is fostered.

17


Crucial to the generation of a nurturing atmosphere

in a classroom is to ensure that teachers model

critical thinking in the manner in which they teach

(Meyers, 1986), (Topping, Crowell and Kobayashi,

1989). There is interactive teaching and there is

presentation. Most lectures are ‘presentation’. Even

the vocabulary gives it away - the material is

‘delivered’ to the students. The tendency to use pre-

prepared material – overhead projector slides and

PowerPoint encourages the presentation of fully-

formed ideas and takes us further from the chalk and

talk methods in which teaching was seen clearly as a

thinking process instead of the ‘thought out product’

(Moon, 2001).

The teacher needs to recognise and to work with the

different capacities of students to think critically –

which may well be related to their current

conceptions of knowledge. At any one time, some

able students will require to be challenged to enable

them to maintain their interest and some will need

help because they cannot cope and both of these

activities have to be ongoing in a teaching situation. It

is difficult!

Another aspect of classroom work that can help the

development of critical thinking is the deliberate

encouragement of interaction between

students. Critical thinking is a social activity because

the agreement that knowledge is acceptable is a

social process. An ‘agreement’ ‘holds’ within a social

and cultural context or community of practice at that

particular time. A more practical reason why

interaction is important in the process of critical

thinking relates to the need to understand that there

can be different perspectives, different views of the

same idea. The exposure to the different

perspectives that occur even within a class of

students can facilitate the shift from absolutist

thinking. Some of the techniques in the next section

are based on this principle.

A further principle is that we should overtly

encourage students to engage in thinking. The

increasing use and acceptance of reflective learning, of

learning journals and self-appraisal in the form of

personal development planning (PDP) could seem to

be leading in this direction. However, sometimes in

these tasks we seem really to be valuing a box that has

been filled, a task that has been done without paying

attention to any real depth of the thinking.

Although critical thinking is very much in the language

of education, it remains a word that has multiple and

unclear meanings. Once definitions have been agreed,

thinking activity words such as ‘think critically on…’

‘reflect’, ‘ponder on’, ‘judge’, needs to be given space

and time, talked about, brought into the lecture and

the tutorial in practical ways. This idea is expanded in

the section of activities below.

We could see the recommendation for provision

of examples of critical thinking as a technique –

but it is upgraded to a principle because it seems so

important across so much teaching in higher

education. Many students, in particular those from

non-traditional backgrounds, do not know what is

expected of them in their studies (Moon, 2005).

They ask for examples but it is common for higher

education teachers to resist the use of examples

because students might copy them or think that there

is only one way of doing a task. Providing students

with examples of the quality or standard of work that

they should be doing in the present, and of work that

they will be doing at the next level, provides them

with a picture of what is expected. The process of

using examples is aided more if students are shown

poor work as well, in which critical thinking has failed

to occur. The examples need to be accompanied by

a commentary or annotated with respect, in this case,

to the critical thinking (and not the content).

18


Assessment and critical thinking: we have said

that in many current situations in higher education it

can be difficult to facilitate critical thinking through

supportive classrooms. Student numbers are too

great and teachers tend to be anonymous – or at a

distance. We have to consider ways of encouraging

critical thinking that do not rely on the immediate

presence of a helpful teacher. An important or the

most important ‘driver’ to learning is assessment. We

need to show students the importance of critical

thinking overtly in the manner in which we assess

their work - because what we assess is seen by

students as a marker of what it is that is important for

them to achieve. We can show the role of critical

thinking in assessment by talking about it and by

making it very evident in the criteria for assessment

tasks.

The fostering of epistemological

development of a group of students requires

careful management. If we are to take the

epistemological development of students into greater

account, there are implications for the management

of student learning and their autonomy. One of

Perry’s books beautifully illustrates this point in its title

(1970). It is called ‘Different Worlds in the Same

Classroom’: some students shift rapidly towards

contextual knowing, while others are stalled at the

absolute stage of knowing in the same group. There is

rightly opposition to the notion that students should

be ‘spoonfed’ and not challenged (Furedi, 2005). We

have said that to challenge students’ learning is the

manner in which to help them to progress, on the

other hand, we need to recognise that some students

will still be needing greater support in order to shift

from their absolute position (Moon, 2005). Both

support or ‘spoonfeeding’ and challenge may be

correct strategies for a mixed group of students – and

methods of managing this situation will need to be

found – preferably without sending the non-

progressing absolutists to anything remotely like a

remedial service.

In order to facilitate critical thinking we need to take

writing more seriously: as we have already said,

writing is central to the development and use of

critical thinking in higher education.

19


Techniques for encouragingthe progression inepistemological beliefs andthe improvement of criticalthinking

We consider some techniques under the following

headings:

� Teaching of philosophy or theory of

knowledge

� Talking about epistemology and the process

of critical thinking

� Critical thinking about ‘real life’ issues

� Placements and out-of-class activities

� Use of reflection to enhance critical thinking

� The deliberate provision of ‘thinking time’

� Encouraging critical thinking through the

processes of assessment

� Oral critical thinking

� Writing and critical thinking

We have stressed that the teaching of critical thinking

is not ‘one off’, but a matter of constant revisiting, all

the time taking note of the students’ developing

conceptions of knowledge.

N.B. Many of the exercises shown can be used at any

stage with appropriate adaptation of the material, but

some are more suitable for the initial stages of

development of critical thinking, and some are

designed for later use. Notes are made to this effect

on the exercises.

Teaching of philosophy ortheory of knowledge

� Philosophy used to be a usual first year subject in

higher education. It has been edged out, but it is

surprising how many academics would still wish it to

be in place. International Baccalaureate (equivalent to

‘A’ level) students study ‘Theory of Knowledge’

(TOK) in order to help them to understand the

structure of disciplines, and the differences between

them. Although they may find it hard to start with,

they are better equipped for any further study and

appreciate that. It seems reasonable to assume that

well taught TOK helps them along the continuum

from absolutist conceptions of knowledge towards

contextual conceptions. Such study would seem

particularly to support students who are covering

several disciplines, where no one teacher has the

experience to help them across their range of study.

It also provides an excellent basis for the

development of the lifelong learner. TOK may be

best used twice in the course of an undergraduate

programme – once early on and then later in a more

reflective and metacognitive mode – as a review of

the nature of learning.

Talking about epistemology and theprocess of critical thinking

� We need to talk with students about what critical

thinking involves and what we mean by evidence and

judgement. It has been noted above that sometimes

critical thinking relates to the evaluative judgement of

a single concept and sometimes it relates to a

judgement that compares several concepts.

The process of describing critical thinking needs to be

well illustrated by considered examples. The subject

matter may be from the students’ discipline or it may

be an every-day example – probably preferably both.

20


The teaching and explanation need very much to

relate to the stage of conception of knowledge of the

students – and because of this, the subject matter

needs to be revisited several times during a student’s

progress through higher education and considered in

an appropriate manner.

� It would be useful to show learners at entry to

university how their conceptions of knowledge are

likely to change in the period of their education.

There could be a logical contradiction in this in the

sense that if they can understand the kind of thinking

that they will be doing, they could be argued to be

able to do it now. However, as we have said, there is

evidence that learners are not totally based at one

stage, but, for different areas of knowledge, may be at

different stages. On this basis, it is worth doing some

work with them on the conceptions of knowledge.

An exercise that the writer has used extensively with

teaching staff has been adapted for use with learners.

The process involves the preparation of some

quotations from subjects (students) who were

interviewed in Baxter Magolda’s (1992) study. There

are quotations from students at each of the four

stages. Participants in the exercise are given a

description of the stages that were identified by

Baxter Magolda, and asked to group the quotations

appropriately. They are asked to think about what

their own students say to them. The ‘student’ version

consists of fictitious ‘quotations’ that are more clearly

and overtly related to the four stages (Moon, 2005a).

This exercise is a way of opening up a discussion

about critical thinking. Although presented here for

students, it is important that their teachers have the

same understanding – maybe also having done the

exercise.

Critical thinking about ‘real life’ issues

� There are several justifications for talking about

critical thinking in terms of real life. Firstly, it is

important for students to realise that critical thinking

is an every-day activity, not confined to the academy.

Secondly, however, students’ conceptions of

knowledge may be more advanced in relation to ‘real

life’ issues than in academic issues. ‘Real life’ issues

arise out of the everyday situations of students’ lives,

personal experiences in which judgement has been

made / has to be made and ‘real life’ issues in the

discipline as in research dilemmas or ethical issues.

From the arguments in the first section of this paper,

it would seem useful to ensure that critical thinking in

the everyday life is brought into the academic

situation early on as a means of support for critical

thinking.

Placements and out-of-class activities

� Baxter Magolda identified the qualities of

experience that supported development towards

self-authorship, and identified situations in which

these might occur for students at college or in their

early post-college years. These ideas have been linked

with the observation that students who go out on

work placements within a higher education

programme tend to achieve higher classes of degree

(Lucas, 2005). Clearly this cannot be generalised for

all work placements – some are dreary, routine and

the student has little responsibility. However, it is

possible in a placement to enable the student to have

more opportunities to make real judgements and

decisions, to meet conflicting views, and to lead

others, and these situations seem to enhance these

aspects of development.

21


� It would seem useful to employ some of the

ideas in the section above as criteria for the design of

good quality work placements or out-of-class

activities. However, there are ways of providing these

experiences within the higher education curriculum.

Many institutions provide students with the

opportunity to gain credit for work experience –

sometimes basing this on the work that students are

doing to support themselves financially (Watton,

Collings and Moon, 2002). There are other examples

in which, for example, local employers provide

students with real projects that are incorporated in

their programmes of study – and which demand the

making of professional judgements. This is probably

an activity suitable for more advanced students.

� The value of work placements and of the

experiences that we have mentioned above, are

enhanced when students are asked to engage in

reflection, sometimes in a learning journal for

example (see below).

The use of reflection to enhancecritical thinking

� We said above that deep reflection is similar to

critical thinking but tends to be more often associated

with thinking about the self and personal activities

and critical thinking tends to be more associated with

the need to arrive at a conclusion or judgement.

More superficial reflection is probably less closely

related to critical thinking. The introduction of

reflective activities into the curriculum will usually

support the development of critical thinking so long

as the reflection is sufficiently deep (Moon, 2004).

� In relation to the link between deep reflection

and critical thinking, there is a series of activities

designed to deepen reflection in Moon (2004 - eg

The Park). These are based on a generic framework

for reflective writing (Moon, ibid). These exercises

can be used to deepen critical thinking – possibly at

more advanced stages in undergraduate work.

� Learning journals are containers for reflective

work (Moon, 1999). They take many different forms

and may be designed directly to underpin critical

thinking activities. They may, for example, be the

‘thinking place’ for research projects, or the place in

which there is critical thinking about (appraisal of) the

quality of personal (perhaps also professional)

activities. There is an issue of risk for the student

working on a learning journal where the journal is to

be seen by another or marked. A useful strategy to

avoid this situation can be to ask students who have

kept a journal to write an account of their learning,

with quotations from the journal – a form of

secondary reflection. It is this that is marked.

� Personal Development Planning (PDP) is a

reflective process in which most UK students are

now engaged. PDP mainly involves self appraisal – a

critical thinking process about personal experiences,

progress, decisions etc within a higher education

programme. There can be a danger of the appraisal

being a strategic tutor-pleasing account, or a box-

filling exercise – neither of which have much to do

with real critical thinking. If there are questions, they

should be challenging to the student either in the

range or novelty of information to be taken into

account, or in the depth of consideration required. It

is worth explaining to students the link between

critical thinking and PDP, recognising that critical

thinking is a broader concept.

� Metacognition is a form of reflection in which a

process of cognitive work, itself, is reviewed. The

focus is not on the content of the work, but on the

cognitive processes – and as such, this is an activity

that is a part of good quality critical thinking.

Metacognition is encouraged when students are

asked to discuss the manner in which they have

tackled a task. They might be asked to discuss their

processes of writing essays or conducting a project.

While the term does not imply evaluation or a notion

of ‘what I would have done better or differently’, it is

22


useful to incorporate this idea. It is probably an area

of activity that should be brought further to the fore

in later undergraduate education.

� The process of secondary reflection involves a

critical review of initial reflection in order to deepen

and perhaps broaden the outcome. Secondary

reflection may be used with any of the other

reflective activities that are described above. It tends

to improve the learning achieved in the initial

reflection.

The deliberate provision of thinking time

� It often seems that while higher education is

meant to be about the promotion of thinking, the

manner in which pedagogy is conducted provides

little time for thought. Lecturers start speaking and

continue to speak until the end of the lecture and

students need to move on to the next class. If we

believe in the encouragement of critical thinking, we

should build time for it into academic work. (The use

of reflective activities can be construed as one means

of providing thinking time).

� A helpful means of acknowledging thinking time is

to develop a terminology for it – ‘stop and think’,

‘thinktime’. These terms might imply the stopping of a

seminar or lecture in order that students can think

about a particular point, or write notes down on it or

make critical comments (see ‘quickthink’ below).

� The idea of providing thinking time relates back to

the teacher also. She should take time to listen

reflectively to students. This means that she does not

just give a direct answer to a student’s question (as an

expert) but, where appropriate, engages in dialogue

with the student.

� ‘Wait time’ is a concept developed by Tobin

(1987). Tobin found that where lecturers used a

speech style that involves brief pauses (eg asking

rhetorical questions, building in reflective pauses,

making pauses between topics etc) students learned

better. It seemed that their brains had time to

process information and to think. This seems to be

one of the most meaningful findings in educational

research – and yet we so rarely deliberately take note

of it.

Encouraging critical thinking throughthe processes of assessment

� There are many activities in higher education that

represent forms of critical thinking and judgement in

practice. The quality assurance processes, and peer

review of academic work are two, and so is the

process of assessment of student work. A general

principle is that we need to encourage students to

become more used to looking at each other’s work

and we need to ensure that they understand the

difference between being critical in a negative

manner, and constructive.

� Attitudes towards assessment in higher education

often reflect somewhat absolutist values –

assessment is a mysterious judgement that is made by

an expert who somehow ‘knows’ the mark to

attribute. If the assessment criteria are introduced,

and, even better presented as contestable, then

assessment can be better viewed as a judgement that

is subject to critical thinking. This is doubly true if

students are themselves involved in the development

of assessment criteria.

� If students are to be engaged in the development

of assessment criteria, a decision needs to be made

as to which kind of criteria are to be developed –

threshold criteria, or those associated with marking -

grading criteria (Moon, 2002). Students are asked to

produce a sample of the material that will be

assessed, or are given a sample to read (if it is

written). In groups, they generate some assessment

criteria that they consider to be appropriate. One

method is take one criterion from each group in turn

until all of the criteria are ‘used up’. The list of criteria

is then reconsidered, and a suitable number are

23


selected for use (Moon, 2002 after Brown and Dove,

1991). In this activity, the element of critical thinking is

the selection of appropriate evidence for making the

judgement.

� Peer assessment, which may or may not involve

the learner-generated assessment criteria – is related

to critical thinking because it provides practice in

making the judgement on the basis of evidence. It

involves students in marking the work of their peers

on the basis of the given criteria. Students learn much

about standards of work expected, ways of writing

(and otherwise representing their work) through this

process.

� In the process of self-assessment, students assess

their own work against a set of criteria. They thereby

learn metacognitive skills (see above), they learn to

make judgements, and usually they learn how to do

their work better the next time.

Oral critical thinking

� We have said that critical thinking has social

dimensions. It is valuable to encourage the oral

expression of ideas for several reasons. Firstly, self

expression is an important self development skill,

Baxter Magolda (2001) associates it with self-

authoring (see earlier). Secondly, from the point of

view of critical thinking, the exposure to the views of

others helps learners to recognise the need to take

multiple perspectives into account in the process of

thinking. Any form of group discussion can be helpful

in the process of critical thinking, but there can easily

be ‘drift’ in the discussion of a group. The requirement

for a decision, or judgement to be made or conclusion

reached in a limited time, and the identification of

someone as a ‘chair’ can keep the process moving.

Several groups set up in competition to reach a well

evidenced judgement in a certain time can raise the

tempo and maintain focus effectively as well.

� Debate is designed to enact critical thinking –

with evidence given, evaluated and judged. Tutorial

groups can be good situations for debate. One

problem is that in traditional debate situations, not

everyone is involved. One way of ensuring some

involvement of everyone is to give learners the

subject matter of the debate and ask everyone to

prepare a case either for or against. The choice of

who is to be the actual proposer and seconder is

only made at the beginning of the session itself. In

that way, everyone is prepared, and can therefore

contribute.

� The writer uses the term ‘quickthink’ for short

exercises wherein learners are asked to think about a

particular issue in groups of three, for three or four

minutes. The subject matter is likely to be the

definition of a contentious term or a difficult idea.

One of the learners in each group writes notes.

Responses from some or all of the groups may be

requested, though the outcome may be less

important than the process of discussion and sharing

of perspectives.

� Meyers (1986) suggests that a pattern is adopted

in which each class is introduced by the posing of a

controversial or difficult question. At the end of the

class there could be a five-minute discussion of the

issue.

� A system that involves the pairing of ‘critical

friends’ can generate critical thinking and associated

metacognition. A critical friend is a person who

considers and is constructively critical of the work of

another. The roles would usually be reciprocal. A

critical friend system can be associated with a single

task or the work of a whole year or module. There

may be some learning associated with the role so

that the critique follows specific lines. It might be

linked, for example to work described in ‘Talk about

epistemology…’.

24


Writing tasks and critical thinking

Because writing plays a particularly important part in

critical thinking, we have structured this section

slightly differently. The exercises address:

- the skills of writing that are associated with

critical thinking;

- critical thinking as represented in writing;

- epistemological development.

The subject matter for writing exercises of the types

described below could either be within or outside of

the discipline studied. It could be drawn from politics

or current affairs, a common philosophical debate or

it could be in an everyday application of the discipline

studied. Most of the subject matter for these

exercises will involve issues that might be called ‘ill-

structured’ – where there is no obvious right or

wrong response.

The first five exercises are particularly useful for students

in the early stages of critical thinking

� Summarising and the ability to write a

conclusion: a learner is presented with a piece of

writing that represents critical thinking about a

particular (given) topic. The purpose and or audience

may also be specified. The learner is asked briefly to

evaluate the evidence and write a conclusion. This

exercise is for the purpose of enhancing the

understanding of critical thinking, and student’s ability

to conclude a piece of writing.

� Summarising the evidence: a learner is

presented with a piece of writing that represents

critical thinking as before. Here the emphasis is put

on production of a good summary of the evidence.

� Taking different disciplinary perspectives:

a topic is given. Learners have to make notes of the

different views of the topic from different

perspectives. The topic may or may not be fictitious.

For example, it is proposed that a new road should

be built to by-pass a village – some details about the

situation are given. Notes are made on the

viewpoints that might be associated with the various

parties affected.

� Making a judgement: learners are asked to

make a judgement about something unfamiliar– for

example, a piece of art work, a piece of aesthetic

writing, sculpture, a film. When they have made the

judgement, they are asked to identify the criteria on

which they made the judgement, and to compare

them with those used by other students. The focus is

not on the content of what they have written, but on

the criteria used and how they contribute to making

a judgement.

� Making a judgement, starting from

another perspective: perhaps as a follow-on from

the previous exercise, learners are asked to make a

judgement about something (work of art, poem etc)

for a given purpose and the judgement is made from

the viewpoint of another / others – eg much older,

much younger in age or with a different cultural

background, or educational background. The focus

of this exercise is on the ways in which other

perspectives need to be taken into account in a

judgement.

The next set of exercises can be useful for students in

the middle or towards the end of their undergraduate

studies.

� Share thought processes on a particular

(contentious) issue or matter for judgement

in the form of concept maps, and write about

the different views indicated, trying to resolve them.

� A fictitious debate: a group of students

construct notes towards a debate or write a piece that

has the structure of a debate on a given topic. They

will need to consider the nature of the characters who

propose and oppose the motion and note the points

that they make with evidence that they give. This

exercise could be done by an e-mail group.

25


� Practice of peer review skills: a simplified or

fictitious version of a research paper is given to

students to read in a ‘mock’ peer review situation.

Learners are asked to make a judgement of the paper

(eg as suitable for publication). They are asked to

consider assumptions made, to consider the quality

of the evidence for the findings, to identify gaps in the

research evidence, etc. and to provide justifications

for their decisions.

� Mark an essay based on critical thinking:

learners are given a prepared essay (made up, or by

agreement with the writer) that has required critical

thinking. They are asked to mark it for the quality of

the critical thinking. They compare their marks and

identify the criteria on which they based their

marking. It is useful to use good and poor essays so

that there can be direct learning from the good ones

and the recognition of problems in reasoning in poor

essays.

The next set of exercises can be helpful at any stage in

undergraduate education, though the complexity of the

subject matter will vary.

� Short answer tasks: learners are asked to

respond to critical thinking tasks – eg to respond to

statements in 300 / 400 words, forcing them to be

precise and succinct in their writing and reasoning.

� An exercise to demonstrate that people

understand things differently: a lecture / talk is

given on a topic that is reasonably complex and

probably on a topic within the discipline. Learners

take notes at the time and afterwards are asked to

compare their notes.

� An exercise in which there is emphasis on

the identification of the main points and

important evidence: as above, learners are asked

to listen to a lecture / talk in which evidence is given

for a particular stand. Learners are asked to

summarise the subject matter of the talk / lecture,

focusing on the main points made in support of the

argument, and the nature of the supporting evidence.

This could be used in the first stages of

undergraduate education.

� Looking critically at one’s own work -

drafting and redrafting: this is an exercise on

clear writing. It is also a means of showing learners

that their perspectives change over time and as they

learn more. A set of learners’ writing (eg essays) is

kept - or copies are made. A while (eg 3 months or

longer) after this first writing, the material is given

back and learners are asked to edit the material,

clarifying the points made and identifying what they

would change.

� Practice in metacognition: learners are

asked to go back over a piece of work that has

involved judgement and to write a reflective

commentary on their process of going about the task

– the research and the writing. They are asked to

consider areas of the process that they would change

another time.

� ‘Compare and contrast’ tasks: these could

be done in columns, notes or text depending on the

exact emphasis of the exercise. Learners can be

subject to a restriction on numbers of words.

� Learners write a discussion between two

theorists (could be fictitious or real) about a

topic in their discipline. They are asked to think

about the position that each would take, and the kind

of evidence that they would bring into the discussion.

The aim of this exercise might be to demonstrate

how two experts can apparently disagree about the

same subject matter.

Finally, the following exercise is on the stages of

understanding of knowledge based on Baxter

Magolda (1992).

26

D I S C U S S I O N S I N E D U C A T I O N S E R I E S - C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G

Exercise on the stages of understanding ofknowledge – based on Baxter Magolda (1992)

This is based on Baxter Magolda, M (1992) Knowing and Reasoning in College,San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. The exercise that I use with staff utilises actualquotations from the subjects involved in Baxter Magolda’s study. For work withstaff or students (eg in the final year of undergraduate provision), I have writtenfictitious statements that illustrate more clearly the stages of thinking that BaxterMagolda described. Most undergraduate students will not have fully reached thestage of contextual thinking, but it is probably still useful to give them the exerciseand then to describe the stages of thinking. It is best if participants work in groupsof around 6. The material required for the exercise is as follows:

A – description of all of the stages of understanding of knowledge (onefor each participant)

B and C – Materials (B) and (C) are both based on the same text. B – To make (B) material, photocopy the material below, enlarging it -

and cut up the quotations so each quotation is on a single strip ofpaper (or better – on card). Discard the headings and introduction.You need one set of cards for each group.

C – the handout for (C) is as it is printed below (B and C) – and one foreach participant is required. This is, in effect, the ‘solution’ to begiven after the cards have been ordered.

Each participant is given the information (A) first. Each group is then given thematerial in (B) in card form and the group is asked to classify it under the fourstages. They will need at least 10 or 15 minutes for this. When they have finished(or time is up), the handout (C) is given, which shows the ‘correct’ solution. Theywill need around 10 or 15 minutes to compare their work with the ‘solution’,then to relate the actual quotations to the stages in handout (A).

© Dr Jenny Moon. Published by ESCalate September 2005

Stage of Absolute Knowing

In this stage knowledge is seen as certain or absolute.

It is the least developed stage in Baxter Magolda’s

scheme. Learners believe that absolute answers exist

in all areas of knowledge. When there is uncertainty

it is because there is not access to the ‘right’ answers.

Such learners may recognise that opinions can differ

between experts but this is differences of detail,

opinion or misinformation. Formal learning is seen as

a matter of absorption of the knowledge of the

experts (eg teachers). Learning methods are seen as

concerning, absorbing and remembering.

Assessment is simply checking what the learner has

‘acquired’.

Transitional stage

There is partial certainty and partial uncertainty.

Baxter Magolda describes the transitional knowing

stage as one in which there are doubts about the

certainty of knowledge – learners accept that there is

some uncertainty. Authorities may differ in view

because there is uncertainty. Learners see

themselves as needing to understand rather than just

acquire knowledge so that they may make

judgements as to how best to apply it. Teachers are

seen as facilitating the understanding and the

application of knowledge and assessment concerns

these qualities, and not just acquisition.

Independent knowing

Learning is uncertain – everyone has her own beliefs.

Independent knowers recognise the uncertainty of

knowledge, and feel that everyone has her own

opinion or beliefs. This would seem to be an

embryonic form of the more sophisticated stage of

contextual knowing. The learning processes are

changed by this new view because now learners can

expect to have an opinion and can begin to think

through issues and to express themselves in a valid

manner. They also regard their peers as having useful

contributions to make. They will expect teachers to

support the development of independent views,

providing a context for exploration. However ‘in the

excitement over independent thinking, the idea of

judging some perspectives as better or worse is

overlooked’ (Baxter Magolda, 1992 - p55).

Contextual knowing

Knowledge is constructed and any judgement must

be made on the basis of the evidence in that context.

This stage is one in which knowledge is understood

to be constructed, but the way in which knowledge is

constructed is understood in relation to the

consideration of the quality of knowledge claims in

the given context. Opinions must now be supported

by evidence. The view of the teacher is of a partner

in the development of appropriate knowledge.

27


Material AThe stages of thinking described by Baxter Magolda (1992)


28


Absolute

� Julia: I like clear lectures where the lecturer does

not mess around giving us lots of different theories for

everything – but just tells us what we need to know

and we can get on and learn it.

� Emma: I am not sure why we have such a long

reading list for this subject. I mean why does

someone not just write a textbook on the subject and

then we could learn from the textbook. Lectures

sometimes confuse me, the way they wander around

the subject.

� Samuel: In our tutorial, it came out that there

are differences of opinion about how much different

mammals plan their actions ahead. I suppose it is just

that people have not done the research yet. There

does not seem much point in disagreeing about it

when the work has not yet been done.

� Mohammed: I do not understand why we have

to do this referencing game. It all seems such a chore.

I mean it disturbs my writing and I can’t flow.

Knowledge is knowledge isn’t it. Facts are facts. Why

does anyone have to own a fact and have their name

put beside it?

Transitional

� Janine: I have been a bit confused by the way

that the two lecturers I have had in this subject have

dealt with the battle of Samargo. They seem to have

different attitudes to it. One said that it came about

because of political reasons and the other said that it

resulted from an uprising of the poor. I don’t know

how to handle these different attitudes when I have an

examination coming up and I feel I’d better know the

right answer. Or is it that I have to understand it and

that is what matters?

� Charlie: Learning in sociology seems hard. I had

got good at writing clear lecture notes either from the

lecture or from the web. This teacher won’t give us

notes. She won’t even give us straight lectures. We

all thought it was a game at first but now we have had

a semester of it, I guess I have come to quite enjoy the

thinking that I am forced to do and I can discuss the

ideas better because I have had to think.

� Isaac: I thought I came to college to stuff my

head with what is known. Now I feel confused

because there are lots of things that are not certain. I

have to think about what I do with those ideas.

� Christina: I like subjects where I know where I

am like Physics. In English there are different ways of

thinking about things. Physics theory is Physics theory

and that is what you learn. In English it is OK to have

different views. You have to understand how the

views work.

Material B and CFictitious quotations from ‘students’ at different stages ofunderstanding of knowledge


Independent

� Ella: I used to think that everything was so

certain – like there was a right answer for everything

and what was not right was wrong. Now I have

become more aware of people arguing over issues,

debating. I suppose it is a matter of coming to your

own conclusions and sticking to those.

� Kay: I do statistics. It seems at first that statistics

is statistics – a kind of truth - but now I see that you

can make statistics back up any argument. I suppose

it is a matter of deciding what line you are taking and

then making the statistics work for you.

� Dale: It is good in seminars now. I see that my

mates sometimes have made different senses of the

lectures on politics than me. It’s not that one of us is

right and the rest not right – but that we have to get

good at justifying the way we see it.

� Michael: I was asked to critically analyse some

theories about delinquency last semester. I wasn’t

sure exactly what was meant by that. I thought it was

probably about discussing each of them and arguing

my case for the one I thought to be right.

Contextual

� Elke: I like having to work in groups now in

social work. It is amazing that we have all developed

such different perspectives since we have come back

from placement. We are much better at listening to

each other now. I know that I am all the time trying

to understand how each of us justifies our views and

listening to others helps me to put together my own

thoughts.

� Krishna: The tutor I have got now would have

driven me mad last year. He just sits there and says

‘OK, what do you think about this theory of coastal

erosion?’. He goes quiet and we talk. Then he will

make the odd remark that usually sets us off again. I

jot down some notes so that I take everything into

consideration when I have to write it all up.

� Franchesca: I understand better why we have

to put down references. The quality of the reference

and the way I have used it provides the evidence for

the viewpoint that I take and enables others to check

the evidence I have used. I used to think referencing

was just about showing that I was not plagiarising.

� Darren: When I was reading this chapter, I was

thinking ‘how does this fit’ and ‘ why does the author

seem so sure about this?’ and I was relating it all to

my views and I think my views might have changed

now.

29


Material B and CFictitious quotations from ‘students’ at different stages ofunderstanding of knowledge


30


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32


We can now leave behind epistemological

development and return to a few loose ends in the

descriptive statement about critical thinking.

These were:

� the meaning of ‘a judgement’

� the meaning of ‘effective’

� clarity and precision

� the involvement of creativity

� the involvement of emotion

� the metacognitive process of monitoring the

making of a judgement.

We now look at these issues in greater detail and

begin to lay the basis for the practical pedagogical

section of this paper. We start by taking a closer look

at the notion of ‘a judgement’ in the context of

critical thinking. There are at least two meanings of

‘judgement’. Firstly a judgement can be like a decision

to be made. In this case it is of one thing against

another or several others in order to identify one for

a particular reason. Alternatively the judgement may

be about the quality of something for a purpose or

for its merit (eg an idea or a work of art etc). In this

case the critical thinking involves clarification,

exploration of ideas and evaluation. Judgement

against external criteria is likely to be involved in both

of the meanings of ‘judgement’. Different disciplines

are likely to use the notion of judgement in critical

thinking in different ways.

The ‘effective provision of evidence’ has two

linked meanings. In the first place, it means the

gathering of evidence that is appropriate to the

context of the subject matter, the situation and

audience for the critical thinking, ie the effectiveness

of the evidence. The second meaning of ‘effective

provision of evidence’ concerns the manner in which

the evidence is represented (eg in writing). It goes

back to the ideas of thinking and the representation

of thinking. Evidence can be described in more and

less effective ways in relation to the making of a

judgement – in written representation there are

choices to be made about sequencing, weighting of

the argument and so on. In this case we talk of the

effectiveness of the provision of the evidence.

Clarity and precision are similarly qualities of

critical thinking that apply both to the quality of

thinking itself and separately, to the manner in which

the critical thinking is represented. Critical thinking is

often a process first of recognising jargon, woolly

reasoning and vagueness, and then of reconsidering it

to the point where issues are clearer and more

precise. In terms of the written representation of

critical thinking, clarity and precision are qualities of

the writing – it needs to present ideas to the reader

as clearly as possible in order that the reader may

best comprehend the thinking of the writer.

Appendix 1Towards a final statement on the nature ofcritical thinking

33


Creativity is involved in critical thinking in the

gathering of appropriate evidence. The abilities to

gather unusual lines of evidence from ‘far corners’ of

knowledge, and to see unusual links between ideas

can be extremely helpful in producing effective

evidence on which to base a judgement. Critical

thinking is therefore a creative process.

The involvement of emotion in critical thinking is

not subject matter to be dealt with in one paragraph.

Damasio (2000) argues that emotion is involved in all

aspects of every cognitive function and is central to

consciousness. Taking this line, Moon (2004) analysed

the role of emotion in reflection and learning and

suggested that there are a number of different

relationships involved. Emotion can be the subject

matter of learning, can inhibit or facilitate learning, can

change the nature of a learning process and can arise

as a result of learning. It would seem that we could

replace the term ‘learning’ by ‘critical thinking’ or any

word for cognitive processing. In the quality of the

thinking process and in the process of its

representation, what is important is an awareness of

the subject of the role of emotion and how it

contributes to or affects the thinking or writing

processes. One of the difficulties of dealing with

emotion is that its function is not always easy to

express in language (Damasio, 2000).

The consciousness of the role of emotion in the

thinking or representation of critical thinking is

encompassed by the notion of metacognition in

which the thinker / writer monitors the way in which

she is engaging in the thought or writing processes.

She might, for example, be aware that she is feeling

negative today and that this could bias her choice of

evidence in making a judgement. Metacognition is

important therefore, in the evaluation of a judgement.

34


There is one more matter to consider and that is the

place of the new description of critical thinking

alongside other academic activities such as reflective

learning and argument. The writer has explored

reflection (reflective learning) and reflective writing in

detail elsewhere (Moon 1999, 2004). Reflective

learning is seen there as a form of cognitive

processing of complex issues when the material

under consideration is largely already known. The

relationship between reflective learning and writing is

similar to that between critical thinking and its written

form. It is of particular relevance to critical thinking

that the quality of reflective writing is seen as a

continuum from descriptive writing in which ideas are

displayed but not subjected to further processing,

through three more stages of ‘deepening’. In the

deepest level of reflective writing, there is conscious

taking of multiple perspectives, the engagement with

relevant prior experience, metacognition and the

taking of the broader context of the issues into

account. There is an awareness of relevant emotional

issues and the manner in which they can relate to and

influence thinking (Moon, 2004). Deep reflective

thinking / writing has qualities that are close to those

of proper critical thinking. We cannot therefore say

that critical thinking and reflective learning are

completely separate activities - however there are

shades of difference in connotation. There is a sense

of critical thinking being more purpose -driven

towards the reaching of a judgement, and more

focused on the identification and evaluation of

evidence. In this connection there is a connotation of

precision about critical thinking that is not generally

associated with reflection. While identification and

evaluation of evidence may be involved in reflective

learning, the latter may be more concerned with the

exploration of ideas, which may be about the seeking

of potential evidence. Also reflection is often (but

does not need to be) associated with the functioning

of the self. Metacognition is common to both

reflection and critical thinking. In particular, it seems

that the development of effective reflection and

effective critical thinking are both contingent on the

progression of the learner away from an absolutist

position and towards contextual knowing.

As with reflection, there is a broad literature on

argument in the higher education context. Like critical

thinking, the nature of ‘argument’ is unclear or has

local meanings in different contexts (see Mitchell and

Andrew, 2000). In many ways it might exactly fit the

statements about critical thinking, being dependent

on a reasonably sophisticated set of epistemological

beliefs (Jackson, 1997; Sweet and Swanson, 2000),

the appropriate management of evidence, and the

qualities of representation (Andrews, 1997).

Appendix 2Critical thinking and other academic activities –reflection and argument

35


Sometimes, as with critical thinking, there are more

formal aspects of argument - eg use of the language

of logic (Mitchell, 1997). As with reflection, we are in

the position of looking at connotations. There is a

sense that one argues for a specific purpose – in

order to reach a point. While the statement about

critical thinking above emphasises the ‘good’

processing of evidence rather than the final making of

a judgement, the connotation of argument might be

the effective reaching of the goal, the justification or

the judgement is made, there is an emphasis on the

‘winning’ of one point over another.

In terms of connotation, therefore, we would say that

effective reflection may entail critical thinking and that

both may be a part of the process of argument.

However, they are all cognitive processes that, in

reality, are not likely to be represented as separate

processes within our heads - in their neurology. We

should therefore take care in the presentation of

these terms to students who might well be

concerned about their lack of understanding of what

they reasonably take to be three distinct terms.

36


In this section, we step aside from the direct

consideration of critical thinking to establish some

links between learning, thinking and writing as a basis

for our further considerations (Mitchell, 2002), and

introduce some new vocabulary about teaching and

learning. We use an example. A level one chemistry

student, Joanne, has to learn about a chemical

process used in industry. She might learn from a

book, lecture or from a website or elsewhere. The

material as presented in any of these situations is the

material of teaching - the product of the teacher's

teaching. What Joanne perceives of it is then her

material of learning and this is not the same as the

material of teaching (Moon, 2004). For example,

when Joanne is in the lecture, she drifts into thinking

about what she will be doing tonight. She misses

hearing detail of one stage of the chemical process.

What she perceives as her material of learning is now

a distortion of the material of teaching. In the process

of learning, we relate new external experience (ie

material of learning) to what we know already (our

internal experience - (Marton and Booth, 1997). In a

second example of the distortion between teaching

and learning for Joanne: Joanne’s teacher makes some

assumptions about the prior experiences of the class

- that the students are familiar with particular terms.

Joanne is not familiar with one term and guesses its

meaning incorrectly. As a result of her prior

experience being different from those assumed,

another distortion arises in her understanding of the

chemical process. Joanne’s misunderstanding remains

in her head; no-one can realise that she has

misunderstood the chemical process until she

represents her learning in some way. She might talk

about it or discuss it in a tutorial, or she might write

about it in an essay or examination. The principle

here is that what we have thought or learnt is only

evident once it is represented, and writing is a

particularly significant form of the representation of

learning in higher education (whether on screen or

on paper). At a basic level we would see thinking as a

process in which ideas that have been learnt are

manipulated, clarified or reprocessed for a purpose. It

is similar to reflection (see later). The outcomes of

thinking are represented in many different ways

including speech – but writing is particularly significant

in the higher education process (Moon, 2004).

The relationship between writing and thinking does

not stop here. When we represent the outcome of

learning or thinking, we have a chance to review it,

evaluate it and recognise that it needs clarification.

Writing is probably the easiest method in current

higher education to represent learning because a

record is produced. Speech, unless recorded, is

transient. When we think about what we will write in

order to make the representation that best fits the

purpose for the writing, we organise what we have

learnt (Moon, 1999). When we revise or redraft

something because there are better ways of

Appendix 3Learning, thinking and writing – a first look

37


representing the ideas, we reorganise it - in other

words, via writing, we reformulate our internal

experience, which, in turn, will be the basis for further

learning or thinking processes. Joanne might discover

the errors in her conception of the chemical

processes as she writes up her notes, or when she

reads back the material and feels that there is

something amiss.

To make the next point about the relationship

between writing and thinking, we return to general

principles. The nature of the new learning that we

can achieve from the process of representing our

thinking or learning differs according to the form of

the representation (Eisner, 1991) - we learn different

things from representing the same learning differently.

Writing about something is likely to yield different

learning than drawing it, talking about it and so on.

There are many different modes of writing (reflective,

concept map, formal essay, narrative, poetry etc) and

it seems reasonable to assume that we learn

differently about the same subject matter from the

different modes of writing. Joanne might discover her

misconceptions through a concept map of the

process about which she has written when she has

not recognised it from her lecture notes.

These paragraphs link with the basic idea of

assessment. When we assess student work, we do

not directly assess learning or thinking, but we assess

the respresentation of the learning or thinking. In

effect, we test the learner on both her

learning/thinking and the effectiveness of the

representation. One of the other reasons for giving

‘assessment tasks’ to students is to create a possibility

of a number of kinds of feedback on the pedagogical

situation. At last Joanne might find out that she has

misconceived the chemical process because in an

essay, she gets poor marks and appropriate feedback

from her teacher.

To summarise, links between thinking and writing are

evident in the following processes:

- thinking is involved when we see what we have

written and revise it to make better meaning;

- when we are stimulated to think in the process

of writing (meaningful writing, not copying);

- when we are stimulated to think differently

when we represent the same material in

different forms of writing;

- and in putting our thinking into written words,

we can give ourselves feedback and get

feedback on it from others.

This represents a tentative set of descriptors for the

progressively increasing capacity of students for

critical thinking and its representation in writing. It is

based on the literature of this paper, and particularly

on work on the developing conceptions of

knowledge. In terms of that work, the progression

covers the transition from absolutist thinking towards,

but not as far as, contextual thinking (a stage that

would normally be fully reached after the first

degree). The progression is a continuum and it is not

assumed that students will shift along it in an even

manner. Their capacity for critical thinking and its

representation in writing will interact with the

complexity of the material with which they are

dealing.

38


Appendix 4Progression in critical thinking and itsrepresentation in writing in undergraduateeducation – a tentative guide for the purposesof pedagogy

39


Position in terms of conception

of knowledge / epistemological

beliefs

Students at the beginning of

undergraduate education are

likely to be at the beginning of

the shift from absolutist

/dualistic thinking

Students are often somewhat daunted

by the ‘expert culture’ of higher

education and this may knock back

their confidence in self- expression

(voice) and in their understanding of

knowledge. They are beginning to

understand that knowledge is not an

accumulation of facts but are bemused

by uncertainty and the idea of theory

unless these concepts are explained

regularly. They start by seeing teachers

as experts who will pass them the

knowledge that they need

The nature of teaching at this stage tends to be somewhat fact-

driven. It is helpful for future development of critical thinking if

students are set tasks to solve alone or in groups (in some form of

problem-based learning). The general principle is that students

should be just beyond their ‘comfort zone’ in terms of thinking.

General tasks – learners should:

- be given plenty of examples of what is expected of them in

critical thinking (in all of the situations below)

- should be helped to become aware that knowledge is not

made up of ‘facts’, that uncertainty exists and that judgements

need to be made

- be explosed to the idea of critical thinking as fundamental to

their progress in HE (Higher Education), the concepts of

evidence, evaluation, conclusions or judgements. This should

be illustrated in everyday material

- be given tasks in which they deal with making judgements in

everyday situations to illustrate critical thinking

Pedagogical implications

40




beliefs

- be explosed to the idea that teachers / experts are also

learners, and can ‘get it wrong’

- see experts in their discipline in the process of disagreeing,

and there should be discussion of both content and the idea of

the disagreement of experts

- be involved in discussion about the idea of ‘a theory’, and the

idea that several theories can legitimately be held about the

same thing (illustration from own discipline – but done simply)

- be exposed to uncertainty (eg as illustrated in everyday life and

in the research fields of their discipline

- be engaged in tasks in which they have to seek for evidence to

justify a claim in everyday life

- students need to be given some tasks in which they make their

own judgements and have a chance to express their own

voices about an issue – probably an everyday example

- be introduced to the idea of developing conceptions of

knowledge in a manner well illustrated by everyday issues in

thinking

- exposed to general discussions about how knowledge is

‘produced’ – publication, media distortion, expert agreement,

common usage, etc.

Writing tasks – should be used in which there is practice:

- In being precise and clear

- In being able to draw a conclusion from the provision of

written evidence

- In being able to summarise the main points of an argument –

such as introduction of the issue, the evidence, the reasoning

about evidence and the conclusion and/or judgement made

- In referencing. Students need to understand referencing as an

acknowledgement of other people’s work

General statement -

These ideas need to be brought together coherently in a discussion

of critical thinking and not introduced and then left as isolated ideas


41




beliefs

During the middle period of an

undergraduate programme,

learners need to be supported in

shifting towards a stage of

contextual / relativistic thinking

This is a time when there can be

considerable differences in a classroom

with some learners still at an absolutist

stage and others who have moved

beyond it

Teaching may still be fact-driven, and yet we need students to be

beginning to realise that teachers have a viewpoint on issues and may

not agree with each other. When alternative theories are introduced

there is a tendency to present them as ‘something that you need to

know’ (ie as a ‘super-fact’) rather than as a real uncertainty. This is a

kind of absolutist teaching of contextual ideas


- be given examples within their discipline of good quality critical

thinking and attempted critical thinking where there is

inadequate reasoning, or assumptions are made, etc

- be shown how assumptions in research in their discipline have

led to distorted judgements / conclusions

- be explosed to situations in their discipline where experts

clearly disagree

- be shown how knowledge has been constructed within their

discipline (eg by following the history of one line of research

thinking…)

- be given case studies / sample ideas from real issues in their

discipline where, with guidance, they assess evidence and make

a judgement

- be exposed to teaching /tutorial situations in which issues of

real uncertainty in their discipline are discussed

- be required to make judgements that have direct significance

for themselves or others (eg this could be in a work placement

or work experience)


42




beliefs

The further shift: this is the final

stage of undergraduate

education

Few students will be consistently

recognising and working with a

contextual view of knowledge, but the

challenges in their learning should be of

this nature This is a time when learners

tend to think that knowledge is about

reaching and holding an opinion –

without taking the context, fully into

account

- experience responsibility for significant actions – in or out of

class

- be introduced to the manner in which knowledge is produced

and agreed in their discipline

- be involved in well-illustrated discussion about how knowledge

has come to be produced in their discipline (including notion of

peer review) – and sources of distortion

Writing tasks – where learners:

- improve their clarity and precision in writing

- draw conclusions effectively

- demonstrate critical thinking in written form, using

straightforward material from their discipline (probably with

given or guided seeking of evidence)

- demonstrate critical thinking in writing about an everyday issue

in which they express their own voice, and are encouraged to

be creative in seeking their own evidence

- use referencing more as a matter of course

The discussion of the nature of critical thinking needs to be

continued in an explicit manner


43




beliefs

The teaching of final year undergraduate students can be much more

‘research-based’, dealing with uncertain situations, and areas of

disagreement in the discipline. They should be working within the

main body of knowledge of their discipline, and exposed to ‘the

cutting edge’, but not expected to work at that level


- display competent critical thinking in the relatively familiar areas

of their discipline (ie not ‘cutting edge’)

- the opinions that they form in written or spoken work should

be subjected to challenge by peers or teachers

- they should be able to recognise and challenge assumptions

- their general attitude towards the discipline should be one of

questioning

- they should be expected to argue a case in their discipline

- be exposed to situations in which they make judgements for

which they have to take responsibility. This may be in a

placement or work experience situation

Writing tasks – learners should:

- be able to judge the competence of their own writing and that

of others (peers)

- demonstrate critical thinking in a literature review, skills of

evaluation and the making of discipline-related judgements, the

writing of a conclusion to their own work

- understand referencing as a matter not only of properly

acknowledging sources, but also as a means of judging the quality

of a piece of work (how many and which references are used,

how have they been used, etc.)

General statement: The discussion of the nature of knowledge

should be revisited. By showing learners how their views of knowledge

have changed over their undergraduate education, it is possible to make

ideas around the notion of the contextual knowing stage explicit, and to

help learners to make sense of their ‘learning journey’


ARTICLE

Why is Critical Thinking so Hard to Teach?BY KEVIN MCCAFFREE AND ANONDAH SAIDE

Critical thinking has long been recognized as the vehicle by which individuals make informed decisions. Yet, shockingly little understanding exists of how critical thinking strategies are best diffused to the public. In the U.S. there are several regional grassroots organizations such as the Center for Applied Rationality1 that exist to encourage the development of critical thinking skills. Strategies are numerous and varied, ranging from straightforward group discussions of cognitive biases to thought experiments designed to improve objectivity and to develop the ability to see things from another’s perspective. In addition to such organizations that target individuals, groups and corporations, many colleges and universities offer classes that teach critical thinking strategies.

The Skeptics Society’s own Skeptical Studies Curriculum Resource Center, informally known as Skepticism 101,2 provides hundreds of resources from professors across the country actively teaching their own critical thinking courses. The skeptical and secular community feel the high percentage of the general public who believe pseudoscientific claims is worrisome, and education is seen as the means by which believers can be reasoned out of their misconceptions. Indeed, with survey data showing that between 67 and 73 percent of adults in the U.S. subscribe to at least one paranormal belief,3'4 this topic needs empirical clarification.

Education and Paranormal BeliefUnfortunately, the empirical relation between educational attainment in general, and belief in the paranormal (e.g., in ghosts, astrology, telepathy) is a murky one. The results of research on whether education (as measured by number of years of formal education received) decreases belief have been mixed. Sociologist Erich Goode5 has shown that educational attainment doesn’t necessarily reduce

belief in supra-empirical ideas, but rather it appears to moderate it. Educated people tend to simply believe different (demonstrably false) things than less educated people. For example, in a study by Tom Rice, college educated individuals were more likely to believe in psychic healing and deja vu, while those with only a high school education were more likely to believe in traditional religion and astrology.6 The Baylor Religion Survey found that individuals with less than a high school diploma were more likely to have consulted a psychic, while college graduates were more likely to claim an out-of-body experience.3 This suggests that rather than decreasing belief, education influences the nature of the beliefs a person holds (e.g., belief in homeopathy v. astrology).

Critical Thinking and Paranormal BeliefGiven that educational attainment in general is not a prophylactic against holding supernatural or paranormal ideas, researchers have zeroed in on critical thinking training. However, research on critical thinking indicates that current training strategies in general do not necessarily decrease belief in the supernatural. An Austrian study that utilized both the Cornell Critical Thinking Test and Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal found no significant relation between these measures and belief in the paranormal.7 On the other hand, there is some evidence showing that individuals with an analytical cognitive style subscribe to distinctly less conventional views of God (e.g., deistic, pantheistic).8 Other research has shown that individuals usually endorse supernatural beliefs simply because of a perceived consensus among others that these beliefs are, in fact, justified.9,10 Thus, individuals may not necessarily—or at least consistently—engage their critical faculties in the assessment of supernatural beliefs; they may

54 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE volume 19 number 4 2014

evaluate only the probability of their truth given the beliefs of others in their environment, and choose to believe (or not) on that basis.

This paper provides some evidence in support of the view that critical thinking may be as social as it is psychological. For the most part teaching critical thinking has focused on imparting specific cognitive skills to an individual thinker. What many critical thinking seminars and college courses overlook is the role of “fitting in”—critical thought may be as much about avoiding judgment and punishment from others as it is about the deployment of some “toolbox” of thinking strategies.

Despite the commonly held view that being aware of our cognitive biases is useful in combating faulty thinking, we argue that critical thinking is not strictly a cognitive issue. Too much focus on the psychological aspects that influence critical thinking may obscure the role played by a strong need to be social and to fit in. We present a meta-analysis that combines the results of multiple peer-reviewed studies published over the last several decades that evaluate the success of teaching critical thinking strategies in the classroom.In addition, we discuss some reasons for their limited impact.

Data and MethodsThe purpose of this research is to consider the effectiveness of college courses in reducing belief in the paranormal and supernatural. These courses all had one or more of the following primary objectives: (1) to teach what science is, (2) to teach how to distinguish science from pseudoscience, and/or (3) how to think critically about new information. Our search criteria included peer-reviewed empirical studies that: (x) measured belief in the paranormal pre- and post-course content, (2) took place at a university or college within the United States, and (3) in most cases, also measured critical thinking pre- and postcourse content. One caveat to this last criterion is that although the critical thinking tests used were not the same across studies (e.g., Cornell Critical Thinking Test v. Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal) they were all administered for the same purpose (i.e., to measure critical thinking) and have been independently statistically validated by other empirical work.

Each of the courses utilized in these studies took a slightly different approach and placed a different degree of emphasis on various paranormal phenomena. For example, course titles included: “Parapsychology,” “Science & Pseudoscience,” “Paranormal Phenomena,” “Paranormal Statistics,” “Research Methods in

Revised Paranormal Belief Scale12

Please put a number next to each item to indicate how much you agree or disagree with that item. Use the numbers as indicated below. There are no right or wrong answers. This is a sample of your own beliefs and attitudes. Thank you.

l=Strongly Disagree

2=Moderately Disagree

3=Slightly Disagree

4=Uncertain

5=Slightly Agree

6=Moderately Agree

7=Strongly Agree

1. The soul continues to exist though the body may die.2. Some individuals are able to levitate (lift)

objects through mental forces.3. Black magic really exists.4. Black cats can bring bad luck.

5. Your mind or soul can leave your body and travel (astral projection).

6. The abominable snowman of Tibet exists.7. Astrology is a way to accurately predict the future.8. There is a devil.

9. Psychokinesis, the movement of objects through psychic powers, does exist.

10. Witches do exist.

11. If you break a mirror, you will have bad luck.12. During altered states, such as sleep or trances,

the spirit can leave the body.13. The Loch Ness monster of Scotland exists.14. The horoscope accurately tells a person’s future.15. I believe in God

16. A person’s thoughts can influence the movement of a physical object.

17. Through the use of formulas and incantations, it is possible to cast spells on persons.

18. The number “ 13 ” is unlucky.19. Reincarnation does occur.20. There is life on other planets.21. Some psychics can accurately predict the future.22. There is a heaven and a hell.23. Mind reading is not possible24. There are actual cases of witchcraft.25. It is possible to communicate with the dead.26. Some people have an unexplained ability to

predict the future.Note: Item 23 is reversed for scoring.

volume 19 number 4 2 01 4 WWW.SKEPTIC.COM 55

Psychology,” and “Psychology of Critical Thinking.” Researchers from each study gave students a survey to measure their belief in the paranormal (e.g., using the Paranormal Belief Scale) before and after exposure to the course content. Although research exists on the relation between critical thinking and religious belief,11 we were more interested in how successful college level courses specifically designed to increase critical thinking were in decreasing belief in the paranormal (though “traditional religious beliefs” is one of seven subcategories measured in the Paranormal Belief Scale [PBS]12 that many researchers use).

We were able to collect statistics for only eight courses13 that measured the magnitude and direction of the change in paranormal belief. No other studies matched the search criteria listed above. Of the courses that did match, most had been taken by psychology undergraduates, and the studies contained significance tests to determine if paranormal belief scores changed in a statistically significant way after students were exposed to the course content. Basically they asked the question “Did the students’ general belief in paranormal phenomena decline?” In five out of those eight studies, critical thinking was also measured both pre- and postcourse.14 The significance tests in these studies answered the additional question: “Did the students’ critical thinking scores increase?” We were most interested to see if belief in the paranormal decreased along with an increase in critical thinking ability. With the few studies that met our criteria we conducted meta-analytic procedures that converted the significance tests to correlations between the pre- and post-scores. This allowed us to combine and contrast the studies as well as ascertain the strength of the relation between the pre- and post-change in scores.

R esultsThe first set of analyses explored whether or not these courses decreased students’ paranormal belief. The second set examined whether or not critical thinking scores increased.

First, the average effect size associated with a change in level of belief in paranormal phenomena pre- and post-course content was r=.67 which is very high, and statistically significant. The students’ purported belief in the paranormal declined significantly and substantially from the time they started the course to the time it ended. The reduction in paranormal belief was so significant that over 200 studies showing no such relationship would need to

exist in order for these results to be statistically questionable.15 Therefore, it appears that these courses decrease purported belief, at least in the short term.

On the other hand, the average effect size associated with a change in critical thinking, as opposed to paranormal belief pre- and post-course content was r=.o8. This tiny correlation wasn’t statistically significant—that is, this effect may well have shown up by mere chance. Taken together, we find that although students’ paranormal beliefs decline by the end of a course, their actual ability to think critically exhibits no corresponding increase. This suggests that they did not abandon paranormal beliefs because they became better critical thinkers.

It also suggests there may be other variables lurking here: tribal identity and social inclusion.

The S ocia l D im ension of C ritica l Th inkingThere are several reasons why students may report decreased levels of paranormal belief despite little or no increase in critical thinking. First, a caveat. It is possible that these students have actually employed their new critical thinking “toolkits” in the service of reducing paranormal beliefs, and that, for whatever reason, this increase simply wasn’t picked up in post-testing. However, this is highly unlikely to have occurred consistently across five studies. What more likely occurred is what we suggested above—a reduction in paranormal belief without any parallel increase in critical thinking ability.

Socia l M ech an ism sWhy did paranormal beliefs decrease across these studies without an increase in critical thinking? We suggest three social mechanisms. First, the content of these courses might have raised more cognitive dissonance for some individuals than typical course content in psychology and philosophy. Calling upon students in an introductory course to question their “sacred” views on karma, astrology, spiritual healing and the like is probably more emotionally complicated than learning about Freud or Socrates. As a result, students may disengage from the course (consciously or not) and experience something akin to apathy. They may report a decrease in paranormal belief simply because they know this is what the course was designed to do. And they want to avoid the discomfort created by the introduction of conflicting new material—they just don’t want to think about it.While it seems desirable that they reported that

56 SKEPTIC MAGAZINE volume 19 number 4 2014

their belief in the paranormal has declined that may be entirely motivated by apathy, due to a mildly uncomfortable social environment (in this case, the course and the classroom).

A second social mechanism might be fear of group exclusion. A classroom (or critical thinking “workshop”) is intrinsically hierarchical. In these instances, a leader (e.g., professor or organizer) disseminates knowledge about how to think to a group of students, who are expected to understand the information and internalize it as true. In this kind of social environment, hierarchies are rigid—there is a teacher and there are learners. In such a setting, self-reported beliefs may not be reliable if they simply reflect fear of reprisal or punishment for disagreeing with the views of the teacher and class. Fear of punishment or of ostracism may motivate students to report lower levels of paranormal belief at the end of the class. They may also be motivated by a powerful need for social inclusion, acceptance, and rewards—to “fit in” with a class that, it is assumed, tacitly endorses the professors’ views as the correct ones. Unlike the socially-induced apathy described above, fear of social exclusion may actually be sufficient to change the beliefs of students. Fear of reprisal or punishment may be enough to motivate genuine belief change. But such a belief change would be emotionally motivated, without the need for developing a critical thinking “toolbox.”

The third social mechanism is related to the second. In social environments with a rigid hierarchy (such as classrooms or workshops), students

might report reduced beliefs in the paranormal simply due to an appeal to the authority of the hierarchy. That is, students might report lower levels of paranormal belief because they believe authority figures in general (i.g., professors) tend to be correct, whether or not the student understands the reasons for this (i.e., the professor’s supposed superior level of critical thinking). The appeal to authority is also a social environment mechanism because the professor is almost always the sole authority in the environment. If classrooms had two professors instead of one, and each had a different opinion about the validity of paranormal beliefs students might have responded differently. Again, it isn’t necessary that students learn to think critically in order to jettison supernatural beliefs. They could simply be responding to a generalized trust of authority figures.

If any one of the above mechanisms is operating in these classrooms or workshops, student belief in the paranormal will likely return to its original level as soon as they are removed from: (1) an environment that makes them apathetic, (2) an environment that ties critical thinking to social inclusion, or (3) an environment that contains an authority figure who promotes critical thinking about paranormal beliefs. Thus observed decreases in paranormal belief among students who take courses aimed at increasing critical thinking may be real in the short term, but not in the long term. Further study is required to understand how best to teach critical thinking that more permanently reduces belief in the paranormal and supernatural. B

REFERENCES

1. http ://ra tiona lity .org /2. h ttp ://skeptic.com /skeptic ism -

101/3. Bader, Christopher, F. Carson

Mencken, and Joseph 0. Baker, 2009. Paranormal America. New York, NY: New York University Press.

4. Moore, David W. 2005. “Three in Four Americans Believe in Paranormal: Little Changes from Similar Results in 20 01 .” Gallup News Service.

5. Goode, Erich. 2011. The Paranormal: Who Believes, Why They Believe and Why it Matters. NY: Prometheus Books.

6. Rice, Tom W. 2003. “ Believe It or Not: Religious and Other Paranormal Beliefs in the United States.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42(1).

7. http://homepage.univie.ac.at /andreas.hergovich/php/Critical _thinking.pdf

8. See, for example, Pennycook, Gordon, James Allan Cheyne, Paul Seli, Derek J. Koehler, and Jonathan A. Fugelsang. 2012. "Analytic Cognitive Style Predicts Religious and Paranormal Belief.” Cognition 123, no. 3: 335-346.

9. Shtulman, 2013. “ Epistemic Similarities Between Students’ Scientific and Supernatural Belie fs.” Journal o f Educational Psychology 105(1).

10. Gilovich, Thomas. 1991. How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility o f Reason in Everyday Life. New York: Free Press.

11. For example, see work by Gordon Pennycook.

12. http://www.provingparanormal ,com/A%20Revised%20Para normal%20Belief%20Scale.pdf

13. Based on the following studies (for a full reference list email authors): (1) Benziger, 1984, (2) Burke, Sears, Kraus, & Roberts- Cady, 2014, (3) Manza, Hilperts, Hindley, Marco, Santana, & Hawk, 2010, (4) McLean, & Miller,2010, (5) Morier, & Keeports, 1994, and (6) Stark, 2012.

14. Two of the studies did not measure critical thinking in addition to paranormal beliefs and a third study was an outlier.

15. A "fail-safe N” was calculated to determine how many subsequent studies with a finding of no effect must exist. Our fail-safe N equaled approximately 242.

v o lu m e 1 9 n u m b e r 4 2 0 1 4 W W W . S K E P T I C . C O M 57

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Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 38, No. 6, 2006

© 2006 The AuthorsJournal compilation © 2006 Philosophy of Education Society of AustralasiaPublished by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKEPATEducational Philosophy and Theory0013-1857© 2006 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia874Original Article

Education for Critical ThinkingStefaan E. Cuypers & Ishtiyaque Haji

Education for Critical Thinking: Can it be non-indoctrinative?

S

E

.

C

&

I

H

Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium & Department of Philosophy, University of Calgary, Canada

Abstract

An ideal of education is to ensure that our children develop into autonomous critical thinkers.The ‘indoctrination objection’, however, calls into question whether education, aimed atcultivating autonomous critical thinkers, is possible. The core of the concern is that sincethe young child lacks even modest capacities for assessing reasons, the constituent componentsof critical thinking have to be indoctrinated if there is to be any hope of the child’s attainingthe ideal. Our primary objective is to defuse this objection. We argue, first, that even ifthe indoctrination objection can be dealt with at the level of beliefs by an account thatdistinguishes between beliefs instilled in the child at the non-rational stage that areindoctrinative and those that are non-indoctrinative, there can be non-autonomous ‘protocritical thinkers’ who lack autonomy with respect to the requisite motivational components.We then ask what must be added to the account to ensure that proto critical thinkers developinto autonomous ones. We suggest that motivational elements, even if instilled at a stage atwhich the child has insufficiently developed cognitive capacities, can be ‘truly the child’sown’ only relationally: the autonomous motivational elements are ones with respect to whichthe future child is self-governing.

Keywords: critical thinking, indoctrination, rationality, autonomy, authenticity,responsibility, Harvey Siegel

1. Introduction

We agree with Harvey Siegel and others that an ideal of education is to ensure thatour children develop into critical thinkers: they should be able to assess beliefs,desires, actions, and other connative and cognitive elements in their psychologicalrepertoire on the basis of appropriate evaluative standards, be disposed to suchevaluation, and be motivated by good reasons in belief-formation and action.

1

Weconcur, as well, with the ideal that our children blossom into autonomous criticalthinkers.

2

Pertinent to this ideal, a salient dimension of being self-governing is thatthe child mature into an agent who is autonomous with respect to the motivationalconstituents, such as the desire to evaluate reasons, of being a critical thinker.

The so-dubbed ‘indoctrination objection’, however, calls into question whethereducation, aimed at cultivating autonomous critical thinkers, is possible. The core of

724

Stefaan E. Cuypers & Ishtiyaque Haji

© 2006 The AuthorsJournal compilation © 2006 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia

the concern is that since the young child lacks even modest capacities for assessingreasons, the constituent components of critical thinking have to be indoctrinated ifthere is to be any hope of the child’s attaining the ideal. Echoing Siegel’s words,if education for critical thinking is necessarily indoctrinative, ‘the ideal becomessignificantly tarnished’.

3

Our chief objective in this paper is to defuse this objection. We argue, first, forthe view that even if the indoctrination objection can be dealt with at the level ofbeliefs by an account that distinguishes between beliefs instilled in the child at thenon-rational stage that are indoctrinative and those that are non-indoctrinative,there may well be non-autonomous ‘proto critical thinkers’ who lack autonomywith respect to the requisite motivational components. We then ask what must beadded to the account to ensure that proto critical thinkers develop into auto-nomous ones. We suggest that motivational elements, even if instilled at a stage at whichthe child has insufficiently developed cognitive capacities, can be ‘truly the child’s own’or autonomous only relationally: the autonomous motivational elements are oneswith respect to which the future child is self-governing.

2. The Basic Issues

Our point of departure is Harvey Siegel’s reasons conception of critical thinkingthat views critical thinking as fully coextensive with rationality.

4

Because bothcritical thinking and rationality concentrate on the relevance of reasons in believing(or judging) and in acting, critical thinking is rationality’s ‘educational cognate’.The reasons conception comprises two related, but conceptually distinct, dimen-sions: the cognitive

reason assessment

dimension and the motivational

critical spirit

dimension. Respectively, the two are characterized in this way:

(1) the ability to reason well, i.e. to construct and evaluate the variousreasons which have been or can be offered in support or criticism ofcandidate beliefs, judgments, and actions; and (2) the disposition orinclination to be guided by reasons so evaluated, i.e. actually to believe,judge, and act in accordance with the results of such reasoned evaluations.

5

Elaborating, Siegel proposes that a critical thinker has the ability to assess reasonson the basis of epistemic (and logical) criteria. Reasons

appropriately move

a criticalthinker in thought and action. To be appropriately moved by reasons is, first, toappreciate and accept the importance and evidential force of reasons for beliefs andactions. To determine the relevance and warranting strength of reasons, a criticalthinker, moreover, needs to recognize and commit himself to epistemic principlesor standards conceived of as universal and objective. Such standards supposedlyguarantee the consistency, impartiality, and non-arbitrariness of reasons. Criticalthinking, then, involves the acknowledgment of the binding power of universal andobjective evaluative principles in light of which reasons are to be assessed.

6

Siegel submits that an agent aspiring to be a critical thinker may have the abilityto evaluate reasons but may not systematically exercise this ability. Accordingly, tobe appropriately moved by reasons is, second, to be

disposed

to seek good reasons

Education for Critical Thinking

725


in support or criticism of candidate beliefs and to question the epistemic credentialsof these reasons. Third, to be duly moved by reasons, a person must habitually andactually engage in reason assessment. Good reasons in belief-formation and actionmust motivate and guide the critical thinker. So in addition to possessing skills ofreason assessment, a critical thinker must have a complex of dispositions, attitudes,habits of mind, and character traits, what Siegel calls a ‘critical spirit’. On Siegel’sview, possessing the reason assessment ability and having the critical spirit dis-position are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for being a critical thinker.

Siegel emphasizes that critical thinking is an

identity-constitutive

ideal. The devel-opment of critical thinking not only involves inculcating certain reasoning abilitiesbut also inculcating a motivational complex that makes up a certain

character

. Thecharacter traits to be fostered are those constitutive of the critical spirit component.Since having these character traits comprises a model of being a certain kind of

person

, the fostering of critical thinking is committed to nothing less than thedevelopment of a human being with a particular identity. The fundamental aim ofeducation for critical thinking is, therefore, not only to tutor youngsters to thinkcritically but also, and more comprehensively, to

be

critical thinkers. To take criticalthinking as a constitutive ideal is to opt for a pervasive educational program ofcharacter-formation and identity-constitution.

Autonomy, in roughly the sense of being self-governing, just like being a criticallythinking individual, is frequently thought of as an identity-constitutive ideal: edu-cators should strive to ensure that our children develop into autonomous agents.Indeed, Siegel, proposes that there is a sense in which critical thinking and autonomyconstitute complementary educational ideals. Critical thinking is, correspondingly,not only closely associated with rationality but also with autonomy.

7

Siegel writes:

The ideal [of cultivating reason] calls for the fostering of certain skillsand abilities,

and

for the fostering of a certain sort of character. It is thusa general ideal of a certain sort of person whom it is the task of educationto help create. This aspect of the educational ideal of rationality aligns itwith the complementary ideal of

autonomy

, since a rational person willalso be an autonomous one, capable of judging for herself the justifiednessof candidate beliefs and the legitimacy of candidate values.

8

Elaborating, the rational conception of autonomy Robert Dearden and RichardPeters endorse, sheds some light on the alleged complementarity of the ideal ofbeing a self-governing agent with the ideal of being a critical thinker. Dearden claims:

the development of autonomy as an educational aim … is the developmentof a kind of person whose thought and action in important areas of hislife are to be explained by reference to his own choices, decisions,reflections, deliberations—in short, his own activity of mind.

9

On this classical conception, an autonomous person makes his own choices andsubjects them to rational assessment and criticism. Peters ventures that this con-ception harbors three essential dimensions: choice, authenticity, and rationality.Being a chooser in a situation of practical reason implies having open options and not

726



being restricted by physical or mental impediments. Although being a mentallyhealthy chooser is a standard that might be expected of anyone, it is not aneducational ideal. ‘In education’, Peters highlights, ‘we are usually concerned withmore than just preserving the capacity for choice; we are also concerned with theideal of personal autonomy, which is a development of some of the potentialitiesinherent in the notion of man as a chooser’.

10

Stanley Benn remarks, ‘To be achooser is not enough for autonomy, for a competent chooser may still be a slaveto convention, choosing by standards he has accepted quite uncritically from hismilieu’.

11

For this reason, autonomy requires fulfillment of two other conditions.In addition to being a chooser, a person must adopt a code of conduct as

his own

and also subject it to critical reflection in light of

rational

principles. Autonomouschoice has to be ‘authentic’ as well as rationally informed. Because autonomy onthe Dearden-Peters view is so intimately connected with rational reflection, assess-ment, and criticism, this rationalist conception of autonomy seemingly dovetailswith Siegel’s reasons conception of critical thinking.

A full account of autonomy would explain what it is to be autonomous not onlyin the execution of action, and thus with respect to an action’s motivationalsprings, but also in the formation of beliefs,

12

in the causal history of feelings andemotions,

13

and in the acquisition, evaluation, and revision of values and deliberativeprinciples.

14

For our concerns, we focus on autonomy with respect to the motiva-tional constituents of critical thinking—the critical spirit dimension.

15

Concerningthis issue, Siegel’s response to the pressing question, ‘how can a rational moralcode of conduct be acquired by non-rational means?’ or, analogously, ‘how canmoral autonomy be created heteronomously?’ is instructive. Siegel appeals to Peters’notion of

habit

:

Does the development of proper habits allow us to escape the paradox,and inculcate a commitment to rationality without indoctrinatingchildren into that commitment? It does, if it be granted that habits canthemselves become criticizable. If we develop in a child the habit ofsearching for reasons which justify a potential belief before adopting thebelief, that habit not only enhances her rationality; it also admits ofrational evaluation itself, for the child can (and we hope will) questionthe reasons which recommend that habit as a worthy one, and assess theforce of those reasons herself. The development of rational habits, then,does not require either indoctrination or the forsaking of rationality.

16

Siegel counsels that the properly educated child cultivate the habit of rationalevaluation and that, when the child has the ability to do so, she critically scrutinizethe reasons that recommend the habit as worthy. Nothing in principle, Siegelsubmits, prevents the child from being autonomous with respect to such habits. Tobe in the habit of rationally evaluating principles, beliefs, the reasons for thesethings, and so forth is, among other things, to be

motivated

to evaluate these things.So it appears that Siegel sees no real concern with the autonomy of the agentrelative to the motivational constituents of critical thinking. Further, the passagesuggests that Siegel would accept the following constraint.


727


The Critical Thinking Constraint

: If an agent is not autonomous withrespect to the motivational elements constitutive of being a criticalthinker (such as the desire to acquire or assess beliefs on the basis ofevidence), the agent fails to live up to the ideal of being a critical thinker.

We argue that if this constraint is not accepted, then it is possible to be a protocritical thinker who is a slave to reason. Such an agent may acquire and possessbeliefs, desires, evaluative principles, etc. on the basis of good reasons, may bedisposed to do so, and may act on these critically acquired elements of intentionalaction but will not be autonomous with respect to the relevant cluster of motiva-tional elements, such as the desire to subject beliefs to rational scrutiny. A protocritically thinking agent fails to exemplify an

ideal

of education. It should be oneof education’s primary aims to strive to ensure that our children develop not merelyinto (non-autonomous) proto critical thinkers but into

self-governing

critical thinkersor critical thinkers proper.

3. The Indoctrination Objection and a Reply

The indoctrination objection, and Siegel’s response to the objection, to which wenow turn, help to bring into sharp relief the distinction between proto criticalthinkers who are non-autonomous in the relevant way and critical thinkers who arepertinently self-governing.

The literature contains different views on what must be going on with regard to

X

,

Y

and

p

when

X

’s getting

Y

to believe

that p

is rightly thought of as

X

’sindoctrinating

Y

into that belief.

17

Siegel proposes that the common denominatorof the principal contenders is the fact that the belief is inculcated

independently ofthe evidence for the belief

so that the believer (

Y

) holds the belief in a non-evidentialstyle. Accordingly, if

Y

holds the belief

that p

without having evidence for it, andif the belief

that p

is not responsive to evidence against it, then the belief

that p

isindoctrinated, whatever might be the intention of

X

, the method of belief-inculcationused by

X

, or the content of

p

. In accordance with his reasons conception of criticalthinking, Siegel offers a non-evidential-style-of-belief conception of indoctrination—or, what he calls, the ‘upshot’ account of indoctrination.

18

A believer who has anevidential style of belief is, in this respect, just like a critical thinker who assessesevidence or reasons for his beliefs. Conversely, if a belief is held non-evidentially,it is not open to rational evaluation and critical assessment. In sum, Siegel proposesthat indoctrination is belief-inculcation that fosters a non-evidential or non-criticalstyle of belief.

Given this analysis of indoctrination, the indoctrination objection is straight-forwardly grasped and seems

prima facie

incontrovertible. In early infancy, the childlacks the cognitive capacities for rationally assessing beliefs, reasons, principles,values, and so forth. In the process of turning the child into a critical thinker,various beliefs, such as the belief

that holding beliefs reasons corroborate is preferableto holding beliefs not rationally sustainable

, must be instilled in the child. But theinstilled beliefs cannot be supported by the child’s critical evaluation of the reasons

728



for these beliefs because the child lacks the concept of reason and he lacks thecapacity for critically assessing reasons. The transition from the pre-critical thinkingstage of infancy to the stage at which the child has the relevant evaluative capacitiesis, thus, unavoidably indoctrinative.

Siegel’s response to this objection distinguishes indoctrination from properlyeducational belief-inculcation to show that indoctrination in child education is not,after all, inevitable. Siegel admits that in the early stage of infancy, beliefs areinculcated

sans

rational justification on the part of the child. However, at this stagebelief-inculcation can proceed along two importantly different pathways. Along thefirst, beliefs are inculcated in such a way that the child is subsequently neverencouraged to seek supporting evidence for them and his reason assessment capac-ity is permanently suppressed. Along the second, beliefs are inculcated ‘with theview that this lack [of justifying reasons] is temporary, and with an eye to impartingto [the child] at the earliest possible time a belief in the importance of groundingbeliefs with reasons and to develop in her the dispositions to challenge, question,and demand reasons and justification for potential beliefs’.

19

In this second way,because belief-inculcation aims at enhancing the child’s rationality and aims for thefuture ‘redemption by reasons’ of beliefs held

sans

rational justification wheninstilled, such inculcation qualifies as properly educational belief-inculcation. Thislatter mode of belief-inculcation is directed toward development of an evidentialstyle of belief in the child. Since the implantation at an early stage of infancy ofpertinent beliefs, deliberative principles, and so on helps to develop in the infantan evidential style of belief, such implantation qualifies as properly educationaldespite the fact that the young child’s capacity for rationally evaluating beliefs isnot operative at the time. By contrast, the former mode is the mode of indoctrina-tive belief-inculcation. Indoctrination is a process of belief-inculcation that perma-nently blocks the victim’s capacity to think for himself and enduringly prevents himfrom critically assessing the evidence for the inculcated beliefs. This non-evidentialstyle of believing precludes redeemability by reasons of the indoctrinated beliefs.Siegel concludes that ‘[t]he indoctrination objection fails to challenge successfullythe educational ideal of critical thinking’.

20

4. Proto Critical Thinkers and Rationality

But now consider these cases. In each, the principal agent satisfies Siegel’s requirementsfor being a critical thinker but is not autonomous with respect to various motivationalelements constitutive of the critical spirit dimension of critical thinking. In the first,Ratio develops into a proto critical thinker, in part, by adoption of an evidential styleof belief. Morally questionable means, though, are used to instill the beliefs. Forexample, the belief that reasons are important, and that acting on the basis of reasonsis to be preferred to acting impulsively or without considering the consequences of one’sactions, are ‘beaten into’ young Ratio, or inculcated via ‘shock therapy’, or implantedby ‘exploiting the fear of God’s eternal damnation’. Desires to acquire beliefs on thebasis of warranting evidence, desires not to act precipitously, and other pertinentdesires (refer to these as ‘critical desires’) are also instilled in these ways.


729


In one respect, the inculcation is highly successful: Ratio is transformed into aproto critical thinker who possesses apposite rational habits. But one might balk atthe immoral techniques used to accomplish Ratio’s transformation. A strong con-cern is that, because these techniques are morally suspect, they intuitively seem tocompromise proper education into beliefs. Siegel, though, insists that the methodof belief (or desire) inculcation is irrelevant to the distinction between belief (anddesire) instilment at the infancy stage that is indoctrinative and belief (and desire)instilment at this stage that is properly educational:

To focus on

how

the transformation is accomplished, however, is to focuson the wrong concern. The important question is not ‘How is thetransformation accomplished?’—admittedly, it is accomplished by non-rational means in that the child is not rationally persuaded to becomerational—but rather ‘Does the transformation, however accomplished,enhance the child’s rationality and foster an evidential style of belief?

21

There is good reason to believe that Ratio is not autonomous with respect to the

acquisition

of the critical desires. This compromises his autonomy and lends credibilityto the view that, at most, he is a proto critical thinker. For, appealing to John Christman’sinsights on the autonomy of acquiring or developing motivational elements or attitudes,Ratio would have resisted acquiring the critical desires in the fashion in which theywere acquired, had he attended to their process of acquisition under conditionsinvolving minimal rationality, no self-deception, and circumstances that do notinhibit self-reflection, at a time when Ratio acquired the capacity to do these things.

22

Further, actions that causally issue from the critical desires (typically, along withother antecedents of action) are, presumably, actions for which Ratio will

not

bemorally responsible when Ratio is a morally responsible agent. This is because thesedesires undermine responsibility for actions Ratio will later perform by preventingsatisfaction of necessary conditions of responsibility such as the condition of actingfreely. Given the mode of instilment of the critical desires, Ratio subsequently findsthat he cannot refrain from doing what he perceives to be rationally mandatory.

In the second case, Ratio does not acquire the critical desires via means that aremorally objectionable. In addition, he satisfies the historical constraints Christmanrecommends on the acquisition of desires. Still, Ratio is not autonomous withrespect to the possession (i.e. maintenance) of many of the critical desires. Ratiojudges that his quest for evidentially supported beliefs excludes him from accept-ance into his religious community. Further, he correctly judges that he would behappier—his life would go better for him—if the community were to accept him,and that he would be welcomed only if he were to give up his persistent questioningabout the rational credentials of the pertinent religious values, principles, or dic-tates. Ratio concludes that he should shed his desire to search for evidence forthese things. If, despite his judging that he would be better off without this desire,he is incapable, during a span of time, of shedding the desire, then he is not, duringthat span of time, autonomous with respect to its possession.23 Since he lacksautonomy regarding the continued possession of the critical desire, his autonomyis, once again, compromised. Again, he is, at best, a proto critical thinker.

730 Stefaan E. Cuypers & Ishtiyaque Haji


In the third case, relevantly just like the second, if Ratio’s desire to search forevidence is uncontrollably powerful, then Ratio would not be autonomous relativeto the desire’s influence on his behavior as a critical thinker.24 Ratio would not, forinstance, be capable of exerting even indirect control to prevent the relevant desiresfrom moving him to action. It is in this sort of case that reason would enslave theagent. In one respect, the agent would be an individual who is an exemplar of anagent who has developed an evidential style of belief. He would have the requisitebeliefs, motivational states, and rational habits. But the agent would be deficientin that he would be non-autonomous relative to the influence of core desires.

Agents such as Ratio in the second and third cases are not the sorts of agent intowhich we would want our children to develop; we would not want them to become‘prisoners of critical thinking’. We should aim for a community of autonomouscritical thinkers and not mere proto critical thinkers. We submit that the secondand third cases provide substantial motivation for the Critical Thinking Constraint.

Siegel’s response to the worry that, his dissolution of the indoctrination objectionpresupposes that rationality and critical thinking are the ultimate values of a worthwhilelife, suggests a challenge to the second and third cases.25 It may be rejoined that thesecases assume that one can have good reason to reject the ideal of reason; Ratiojudges that it is best for him to refrain from subjecting various religious values anddictates to rational scrutiny. Similarly, we can imagine an agent who judges that itis best for her to give up an evidential style of belief acquisition and possessionaltogether. Siegel responds, though, that this assumption of renouncing reason isfalse. This is because rationality is, in an important sense, self-justifying.26 Siegel writes:

The challenger is arguing, in effect, that there is good reason to reject theideal of reason. Any such argument against reason, if successful, will itself bean instance of the successful application of reason. That is, the reasonedrejection of the ideal is itself an instance of being guided by it. In this sense,the ideal appears to be safe from successful challenge: any successful challengewill have to rely upon it; any challenge which does not cannot succeed.27

One may, thus, conclude that the second and third cases rest on a presumptionthat is false; hence, the cases cannot be used to motivate the ideal of autonomouscritical thinking.

However, we do not agree that the assumption of renouncing reason, on oneconstrual of this assumption, is false because reason is ‘self-certifying’. We shoulddistinguish between reason and the ideal of being a critical thinker—roughly, theideal of being a person with an evidential style of belief acquisition and possession.The pertinent question that a Ratio-like agent ponders is the following. Which sortof life should he strive for, a life in which beliefs are acquired and held evidentiallyor a life in which they are not? Suppose the agent at issue—Ratio in our instance—reasons to the second option. (How else, after all, could this question be non-arbitrarilysettled?) This does not, in any way, sustain the view that the ideal of being a criticalthinker is self-justifying. Ratio’s choice, on the basis of reasons, shows only thatreason recommends abandoning the ideal of being a critical thinker. In the secondand third cases, it is this ideal that is in question.

Education for Critical Thinking 731


It is perhaps worth noting that there is no incoherence in the idea that there isa significant sense in which reason itself is not self-certifying. David Gauthierdistinguishes between two different conceptions of rationality, straightforward max-imization and constrained maximization. The former is, roughly, the view that anaction is rational for an agent if none of its alternatives has a higher expected utilityfor its agent than it has. Constrained maximization is not as easily formulated.Significantly, though, it differs from straightforward maximization in that, in suit-ably specified Prisoner’s Dilemma contexts, it enjoins that agents opt for interest-constraining yet beneficial outcomes that are beyond the reach of straightforwardmaximizers. Gauthier argues that it is coherent for a straightforward maximizer tochoose between conceptions of rationality, and that, if rational in the sense of beinga straightforward maximizer, such a maximizer would abandon this conception ofrationality in favor of constrained maximization.28 Whether Gauthier’s intriguingargument is, indeed, successful is not in question.29 What merits emphasis is theintelligibility of the idea that one conception of reason may rationally be abandonedfor an alternative. This, in turn, lends plausibility to the view that an ideal ofcritical thinking may be rationally abandoned for an alternative life-style, and thatsuch a rational choice does not, in any obvious fashion, sustain the contention thatreason is self-certifying.

To tie some ends together, we applaud Siegel’s insight that perhaps significantheadway can be made to meet the indoctrination objection, at least at the level ofbeliefs, by noting that various non-rational ways of instilling beliefs in infants con-tribute toward development of an evidential style of belief acquisition and possession;beliefs instilled in these ways serve to enhance later rationality. But even if thechild, with this training, later acquires the habit of rational evaluation, the resultingadolescent, as the second and third cases involving Ratio confirm, may not beautonomous with respect to the motivational constituents of being a critical thinker.Developing and possessing the habit of rational evaluation, then, will not guaranteeautonomy of the requisite motivational components. Ensuring that the agent isautonomous relative to these motivational elements requires treatment differentfrom that recommended by Siegel’s appeal to habit. We now outline this treatment.

5. Autonomy, Authentic Education, and Responsibility

We start with the suggestion that one’s desires are autonomous simpliciter or sansadjective only if these desires are ‘truly one’s own’ or ‘authentic’, as opposed to being‘foreign’ or ‘alien’.

As the distinction between authentic and foreign pro-attitudes appeals to judg-ments of moral responsibility, we should say a few introductory words about suchjudgments. Judgments of moral responsibility have (fundamentally) to do with themoral praise- and blameworthiness of persons; they constitute one type of agent-evaluation. Such judgments are, thus, not to be conflated with morally deonticjudgments (judgments about moral right, wrong, and obligation). Nor are they tobe mistaken for aretaic judgments (judgments primarily about moral virtue andvice). There is disagreement over what judgments of responsibility are judgments



of. We mention two prominent views. The first is that to be morally responsible justis to be the appropriate object of what Peter Strawson has called the ‘reactiveattitudes’, such as gratitude, resentment, indignation, and the like. The reactiveattitudes are ‘natural human reactions to the good or ill will or indifference ofothers towards us as displayed in their attitudes and actions’;30 and they express‘the demand for the manifestation of a reasonable degree of good will or regard,on the part of others, not simply towards oneself, but towards all those on whosebehalf moral indignation may be felt’.31 On the second view, to be morally respon-sible is to be such that one’s moral standing or record as a person is affected bysome episode in, or aspect of, one’s life. On this second view, when a person ispraiseworthy, her moral standing has been enhanced in virtue of some episode inher life; when blameworthy, her moral standing has been diminished.32 Nothing inwhat follows hinges on adopting one or the other of these perspectives.

Varieties of manipulation that undermine agency or moral responsibility bringout the pertinent contrast between pro-attitudes that are authentic and those thatare alien. We give two illustrations. The first concerns ‘global manipulation’. Glo-bally manipulated agents are agents who, unaware of being finagled with, fall victimto manipulation that results in significant alteration of their psychological make-up.The ‘implanted’ pro-attitudes are practically unsheddable. Alfred Mele explains therelevant sense of ‘unsheddable’: a pro-attitude is practically unsheddable for aperson at a time if, given her psychological constitution at that time, ridding herselfof that attitude is not a ‘psychologically genuine option’ under any but extra-ordinary circumstances.33 We submit that the subject of such manipulation is notmorally responsible for (at least) the first few actions that issue from the unshed-dable, intuitively ‘alien’, engineered in springs of action. B. F. Skinner’s fictionalcharacter, Frazier, the founder of Walden Two, advances a second, suggestive case ofresponsibility-subversive manipulation when he says that in his community personscan do whatever they want or choose, but they have been conditioned in a wayconcealed from them since childhood to want and choose only what they can haveor do.34 Whatever sort of control the denizens of this utopian world exercise overconduct, it appears that they are not morally responsible for their behavior, again,because it is the causal output of desires, beliefs, values, and the like that are, insome manner, foreign to them. This second case is somewhat controversial(depending on how its details are construed). In one respect, the case may belikened to the case of children: to see that children develop into autonomous moralagents, we ‘implant’ various pro-attitudes into them. If the case is understood alongthese lines, then (as the ensuing development of our views implies) members ofWalden Two may well be responsible for some of their conduct. Understood in adifferent fashion, though, their springs of action turn out to be foreign in, roughly,the way in which the springs of action of globally manipulated agents are foreign.Other well-known examples of responsibility-undermining mechanisms in themanipulative induction of pro-attitudes include clandestine hypnosis, subliminaladvertising, and covert electronic brain stimulation.

Our view is that there is nothing like authenticity per se; motivational elements,such as desires, are not authentic in their own right. Rather, we defend a relational



view of authenticity according to which motivational springs of action are authenticor inauthentic only relative to whether later behavior that issues from them isbehavior for which the agent exercises a variety of control.

At a stage in its development when the child has not yet acquired the capacityto assess reasons, roughly, a child is autonomous with respect to the acquisition ofa desire—even an instilled one at that—if its acquisition does not subvert moralresponsibility for actions that causally issue from this desire (again, typically inconjunction with other antecedents of action). We provide this gloss of the senseof ‘issues from’. A causal theory of action (which we endorse) assumes that actionscausally arise from desires, or desire/belief pairs, or a cluster of psychologicalelements. On this theory, when an action issues from a certain desire (as opposedto another), this desire (as opposed to the other, typically together with otheractional elements) is causally implicated in the production of the action. We pre-suppose whatever account of ‘issues from’ which causal theories of action presup-pose. At a stage in its life when a child has grown into a competent reasoner, webelieve that developmental autonomy requires satisfaction of certain historical con-ditions of the sort Christman advances.35 Regarding autonomously possessing desires,we propose that an agent is autonomous relative to the possession of a desirethroughout a period of time only if that agent is capable of shedding that desireduring that time as a result of exercising the sort of control responsibility requires.As for autonomy concerning the influence of a desire, if an agent is autonomousrelative to the influence of a desire, it is, in some sense, within the agent’s powernot to act on that desire; the agent has control (of some kind) over the action (oractions) that causally issues from the desire.36 Our yardstick of the type of controlthe agent must exercise to be of the right sort in performing the pertinent actionis whether this control is the control moral responsibility requires.

We turn to the task of developing a relational account of the authenticity ofmotivational springs of action. The account is best appreciated against the back-ground of the problem of authenticity in the philosophy of education. As educationis a process of molding or influencing, it necessarily involves interferences; it requiresinstilling in the child, among other things, salient action-producing elements suchas desires, deliberative principles, and values. But if such elements are implanted—their acquisition totally bypassing the child’s capacities of reflective control becausethese capacities are absent or latent at this early stage—then is the child not alsoa victim of a kind of subversive manipulation much as globally manipulated agentsare? The deep concern to which several theorists in the philosophy of education—especially proponents of child-centered education37—call attention is that, as therequisite, pertinent educational interferences seem no different in kind than thosethat undermine authenticity, these interferences are incompatible with authenticity.Hence, the conclusion of this problem of authenticity is that an authentic educationis a will-o’-the-wisp.

Appreciating the link between authenticity of actional springs and responsibilitypaves the way to responding to this objection. However different in other respects,diverse views concerning the aims of education rest on a presupposition that hasreceived insufficient attention: children must be raised to develop into free agents



who are capable of shouldering moral responsibility for their behavior. Even com-munitarians, many of whom regard liberalistic education as inimical to a valued wayof life, do not—indeed cannot—deny that a pivotal goal of education is to turnchildren into morally responsible agents. A distinguishing mark of moral persons, asopposed to mere members of the species homo sapiens, is that persons are responsibleagents. So, whatever the other goals of education, such as securing the well-being ofchildren, and ensuring that children develop into critical thinkers and autonomousagents,38 fully-fledged personhood seems indisputable as a primary goal of education.

Elaborating, part of what it is to be a moral agent is to be a competent participantin the array of practices constitutive of moral responsibility. Among other things,to become a moral agent, the child must see herself as an appropriate candidate ofthe morally reactive attitudes such as gratitude and resentment and must be sucha candidate.39 It is received wisdom that, whereas certain forms of training or upbringingare conducive to attaining this goal, various forms of paternalism or manipulationare detrimental to its realization. We suggest that paternalism or manipulationthreaten attainment of this goal, when they do, primarily in virtue of the fact thatthey threaten achievement of the desideratum that the child will be an appositecandidate of things like moral praise and blame. Manipulation or paternalism ofthe relevant sort thwart the fundamental goal of education because the severelyafflicted child may not be a moral person as opposed to a mere human being;objectionable manipulation or paternalism foils the complex, intentional process—what is fundamental to authentic education—of transforming a child from beingsimply a member of homo sapiens into a moral agent. We may, indeed, regard suchmanipulation or paternalism as mere training as opposed to authentic education.

Authentic education is a molding process that is conducive to the attainment ofa primary educational aim of transforming children into morally responsible agents.If this aim is not realized owing to manipulation or paternalism, attainment of thisaim is frustrated as a result of the inauthenticity of the educational process. To besure, this goal cannot be attained unless various motivational and cognitive elements—salient action-producing factors—are implanted in the child. However, such neces-sary interferences in the educational process are acceptable precisely insofar as theyare required for the development of youngsters into morally responsible agents. Theimplanted elements, required to ensure later responsibility for actions that issuefrom them, are authentic in our relational conceptualization of authenticity. We shallsay that these elements are authentic relative to later responsibility (or responsibility-relativeauthentic). Thus, our view on authentic education is forward-looking: although per-tinent motivational elements instilled in the child during the educational processare not authentic per se, they can be authentic-with-an-eye-toward-future-moral-responsibility,not so much despite the necessary interferences on the part of the educators asowing to such interferences. Before advancing a criterion to distinguish betweenauthenticity relative to later responsibility and inauthenticity in education, weneed, as a preliminary, to introduce a conceptual framework in which the conceptof moral responsibility is located.

If a key goal of education is to ensure that children develop into morally respon-sible agents, fundamental conceptual tasks theoreticians of education confront are



to clarify the concept of moral responsibility and defend conditions under whichone is morally responsible. Concerning the latter, responsibility has epistemic,freedom or control, autonomy or authenticity, and agency requirements.40 For purposesof this paper, we concentrate on agency and authenticity requirements. Beginningwith the former, to be morally responsible, one must, in our preferred terminology,be a normative agent. Normative agents have the capacity to perform intentionaldeliberative actions. To perform such actions, the agent must possess some psycho-logical basis for evaluative reasoning, an ‘evaluative scheme’, as we say. Such ascheme has these constituents: (a) Normative standards the agent believes (thoughnot necessarily consciously) ought to be invoked in an assessment of reasons foraction or in an appraisal of beliefs about how the agent should go about makingchoices. To be a fitting candidate for moral responsibility, the normative standardsmust include a set of moral principles or norms; the agent must be minimallymorally competent. (b) The agent’s long-term ends or goals he deems worthwhileor valuable. (c) Deliberative principles the agent utilizes to arrive at practicaljudgments about what to do or how to act. (d) Lastly, motivation both to act onthe normative standards specified in (a) and to pursue one’s goals of the sortdescribed in (b) at least partly on the basis of engaging the deliberative principlesoutlined in (c). So an agent’s evaluative scheme comprises cognitive ((a) and (c))as well as motivational ((b) and (d)) elements. In Siegel’s terminology, these cog-nitive elements belong to the reason assessment component of critical thinking,while the motivational elements relate to the critical spirit component.

We propose that it is a sufficient condition of an individual’s being a normativeagent at a certain time, if that individual has at that time (i) an evaluative schemewith the requisite moral elements—the agent is minimally morally competent; (ii)deliberative skills and capacities—the agent has the capacity, for example, to applythe normative standards that are elements of its evaluative scheme to assessingreasons; and (iii) executive capacities—the agent is able to act on at least some ofits intentions, decisions, or choices.

Against this conceptual preliminary, we can now reformulate the problem ofauthenticity and our forward-looking solution. To be responsible for one’s actionsrequires not only that the actions causally issue from one’s evaluative scheme butthat they derive from one’s authentic evaluative scheme. The motivational and otherelements of such a scheme must be authentic in the sense of being ‘truly the agent’sown’ and not alien or foreign to their bearer. An answer to the problem of authen-ticity involves distinguishing authentic evaluative schemes from inauthentic ones—differentiating between instilments of salient action-producing elements, such aspro-attitudes and beliefs, that are authentic and instilments of such elements thatare inauthentic. To set up a criterion to differentiate between these two ways ofinterfering in the educational process, it is important to distinguish, as we impli-citly did when we addressed the indoctrination objection, between two stages in achild’s development: the stage prior to which the child has acquired an initialevaluative scheme—the pre-initial scheme stage—and the stage after initial schemeacquisition—the post-initial scheme stage. For our concerns, the pre-initial schemestage is fundamental and discussion is confined to it. Is there a reasonable sense



in which a child’s motivational and cognitive elements, constitutive of the initialscheme it will acquire, are authentic?

Regarding the child’s initial evaluative scheme, we argue for the view that itsconstituent elements can be relationally authentic in the manner previously speci-fied: they can be authentic relative to ensuring moral responsibility. So the problem ofauthenticity is solved, first, by invoking the view that authenticity per se of an initialscheme’s constituents is a myth—we can succeed in turning children into normativeagents only if appropriate desires, beliefs, values, etc. are implanted precisely becauseimplanting such elements is critical for the child’s development into a normativeagent; and, second, by proposing that things such as offensive manipulation andextreme paternalism, unlike authentic ways of instilling salient action-producingelements, make use of ways that undermine responsibility-relative authenticity. Wefirst examine motivational constituents and then cognitive ones. To facilitate thediscussion, it is profitable to distinguish between what action-producing motiva-tional element is instilled and its mode of instilment, that is, between ‘object’ and‘method’ of educational interference.

Our inspiration is Joel Feinberg’s remark that the extent of a child’s role in theshaping of his own self is a process of continuous growth begun at birth. He continues:

Always the self that contributes to the making of the newer self is theproduct both of outside influences and an earlier self that was not quiteas fully formed. That earlier self, in turn, was the product both of outsideinfluences and a still earlier self that was still less fully formed and fixed,and so on, all the way back to infancy. At every subsequent stage theimmature child plays a greater role in the creation of his own life, until atthe arbitrarily fixed point of full maturity, he is at last fully in charge ofhimself. ... Perhaps we are all self-made in the way just described, exceptthose who have been severely manipulated, indoctrinated, or coercedthroughout childhood. But the self we have created in this way for ourselveswill not be an authentic self unless the habit of critical self-revision wasimplanted in us early by parents, educators, or peers, and strengthened by ourown constant exercise of it.41

In this insightful passage, Feinberg suggests that authenticity requires both a cer-tain sort of maturation—one free of things like manipulation or coercion—anddeliberate interferences in the processes that shape the child. He proposes, forinstance, that ‘the habit of critical self-revision’ must be implanted in us early if weare to acquire autonomy. On Feinberg’s view, some deliberate interference in shap-ing the child is perfectly compatible with, and is indeed required for, authenticity.

Keeping in mind this view of Feinberg and our proposal that instilling pro-attitudinal (and cognitive) elements that subvert responsibility for subsequentrelevant behavior undermines authenticity of such elements, ponder these examples.We said that to be morally responsible for an action, an agent must be minimallymorally competent. Such a requirement implies that she must have elementarymoral concepts, such as those of wrong or obligation, and she must be able toappraise morally (even if imperfectly), decisions, actions, consequences of action,



etc. in light of the moral norms that are partly constitutive of her evaluativescheme. A minimally morally competent agent has a grasp of the notions of guilt,resentment, praise-, and blameworthiness or related reactive attitudes or feelings andhas at least a rudimentary appreciation of when such attitudes or feelings are appro-priate. Suppose a child, Youngster, is trained in such a fashion that he simply lacksknowledge of the relevant moral concepts so that he is not even minimally morallycompetent. Then failing to instill the appropriate moral concepts is responsibility-subversive. Or consider instilling in Youngster a pro-attitude or disposition, theinfluence of which on his behavior he simply cannot thwart. Instilling such apro-attitude—for example, an ‘irresistible’ desire—would presumably undermineresponsibility for later conduct arising from that pro-attitude by undermining thesort of control moral responsibility requires. Or suppose Youngster is instilled witha powerful disposition always to act impulsively. Here, again, we would not wantto hold Youngster morally responsible for much of his later impulsive behavior. Or,finally, consider an interference that prevents Youngster from engaging in criticalself-reflection. This may subvert moral responsibility for some of Youngster’s laterbehavior by significantly narrowing, on occasions of choice, the range of Youngster’soptions, a range he could, in all likelihood, have considered had he acquired the‘authentic’ habit to engage in critical self-reflection.

Some interferences, then, where ‘interference’ is a general term for things likesuppression of innate propensities, or implantation of certain dispositions or habits,or deliberate lack of instilment of various pro-attitudes, are incompatible with theagent’s being morally responsible for his subsequent behavior which issues frominstilled elements; such interferences subvert later moral responsibility while othersdo not. We propose that the subversive ones are responsibility-wise inauthentic.Specifically, imagine that S is an agent—a young child—who does not yet have aninitial scheme. S’s having pro-attitude p is responsibility-wise inauthentic if S’shaving p, as a result of instilment, subverts S’s being morally responsible for S’sbehavior that stems from p; the having of p precludes S from being morally respon-sible for behavior stemming from p. (The notion of stemming from requires furtherexplication other than the preliminary stab that this notion of stemming from is thesame as that causal theories of action presuppose. Needless to say, such furtheranalysis shall not be undertaken here).

We have, so far, limited discussion to responsibility-relevant authenticity of theobjects of instilment such as habits, dispositions, or pro-attitudes in general. Whatabout the methods of instilling such things; are some responsibility-wise authenticand others not? We can approach this issue in the following manner. Assume thatto ensure prevention of subverting moral responsibility for later behavior, it isnecessary to instill in the child the disposition to be moral. Could different modesof instilling this disposition affect responsibility-relevant authenticity of this verydisposition itself? Apparently, differing modes could do so. Suppose, for example,that given the mode of instilling the moral disposition in Youngster—perhaps thedisposition was beaten into Youngster, or instilled via shock therapy—Youngstersubsequently finds that he cannot refrain from doing what he perceives to bemorally right. On occasions of choice, he is stricken with inward terror even at the



faintest thought of not doing what he deems moral. Intuitively, Youngster wouldnot be morally responsible for much of his later behavior because the mode ofinstilling the moral disposition subverts responsibility-grounding control. (Thisis also why we judge that, intuitively, Ratio, in the first case, is not morally re-sponsible for later behavior that causally issues from critical desires instilled byimmoral techniques.) Modes of instilling pro-attitudes (habits, dispositions, etc.) areresponsibility-wise not ‘truly one’s own’ (they are responsibility-wise inauthentic)if they subvert responsibility for later behavior.

In addition to pro-attitudes, a person’s evaluative scheme comprises cognitiveconstituents—beliefs about (a) normative standards for evaluating reasons for action,and beliefs about (c) deliberative principles regarded as appropriate for arriving atpractical judgments about what to do or how to act in particular circumstances.Again, with the young child whose evaluative scheme is in embryo, it may well be thecase that certain beliefs will have to be willfully instilled to ensure responsibility-relative authenticity; perhaps, as Feinberg suggests, one will have to instill in thechild the belief that critical self-evaluation is important; without this belief, moralresponsibility for later behavior may well be threatened in the manner previouslyindicated. Further, the child’s having of such a belief, it would seem, would bemorally permissible and perhaps even morally required. Instilling beliefs of thissort, in consequence, via modes that do not subvert later responsibility, would notthreaten responsibility-relative authenticity. Various sorts of belief, though, wouldundermine or seriously imperil moral responsibility for later conduct. The followingsorts, for example, seem to be responsibility-wise authenticity subversive: beliefsformed as a result of deception (and self-deception), beliefs formed on the basis ofcoercive persuasion, and deliberately implanted beliefs formed on the basis ofprocesses that bypass ordinary mechanisms of belief formation—such as subtleconditioning or subliminal influencing—in cases in which the agent did not consentto the implantation. The agent, presumably, would not be morally responsible foractions performed in the light of such beliefs.

To help in formulating a general criterion about initial scheme responsibility-relative authenticity, we introduce some terminology. We have suggested that thehaving of some pro-attitudes (desires, dispositions, habits, values, etc.) and beliefsis incompatible with moral responsibility for later behavior which issues from them;the having of them precludes satisfaction of necessary conditions other than agencyones, such as epistemic or control conditions, required for moral responsibility.Such incompatible pro-attitudes and beliefs are authenticity destructive. We have alsosuggested that, possibly, having some pro-attitudes and beliefs are required toensure responsibility for later behavior—the having of them ensures that necessaryconditions other than agency ones of moral responsibility can (later) be satisfiedby the agent or her behavior that stems from them. Such required pro-attitudesand beliefs are authenticity demanding. Lastly, we have suggested that some modesor methods of instilling pro-attitudes and beliefs are irreconcilable with moralresponsibility for later behavior; again, such methods of instilment subvert laterresponsibility by thwarting satisfaction of necessary conditions of responsibilityapart from agency ones. These irreconcilable methods are authenticity subversive.



We now advance the following criterion for the responsibility-relative authenticityof initial evaluative schemes.

Criterion of Authenticity: A child’s initial evaluative scheme is responsibility-wise authentic if its pro-attitudinal and cognitive constituents (i) includeall those, if any, that are authenticity demanding; (ii) do not include anythat are authenticity destructive; and (iii) have been instilled by methodsthat are not authenticity subversive.

The crux of this criterion is that the child’s initial evaluative scheme is not thechild’s own if it is not an authentic initial scheme: its pro-attitudinal or cognitiveelements subvert, to a substantial degree, moral responsibility for later behaviorthat issues from these elements. We are confident that the condition of not beinginstilled by modes that are authenticity subversive and the condition of not beingauthenticity destructive are also necessary conditions of a child’s having an authenticevaluative scheme.

All the ingredients for a solution to the problem of authenticity are now in place.To ensure that the child matures into a normative agent, certain pro-attitudes(desires, dispositions, habits, values, etc.) and beliefs must be instilled in the child.But neither these instilled elements nor their mode of instilment need subvert thechild’s being morally responsible, at the age when it can be so responsible, forbehavior that causally issues from these instilled elements. Instilling pertinentdesires or beliefs is authentic if their acquisition does not subvert, in a characteristicway, moral responsibility for later behavior that (at least partly) issues from theseelements. The characteristic way is this: The acquisition of these elements subvertsmoral responsibility by compromising necessary requirements of responsibility,such as epistemic or control ones, with the exception of agency requirements.These elements are, then, in the terminology introduced, relationally authentic. Butsome instilled elements or their modes of instilment undercut moral responsibilityfor later behavior by undermining fulfillment of necessary conditions of responsibilityother than the agency condition. Offensive manipulation, extreme paternalism,hideously depraving conditions, or experiences traumatic to the child may have thiseffect. If they do (and empirical evidence is required to confirm whether they do),then in these sorts of case, the instilled elements are (relationally) inauthentic—they are not ‘truly the child’s own’.

6. Conclusion: Autonomous Critical Thinkers

Briefly, let’s now revert to conditions pertaining to autonomously acquiring a desire,autonomously possessing a desire during a period of time, and being autonomousrelative to the influence of a desire. Developmental autonomy can be dealt with ina manner our account of authentic springs of action suggests. At the pre-initialscheme stage, acquiring a desire is autonomous if its acquisition does not subvertmoral responsibility for later behavior that (at least partly) issues from it. At thepost-initial scheme stage, developmental autonomy requires the fulfillment of certainhistory-sensitive conditions. Regarding autonomously possessing a desire, suppose



a religious leader implants in Youngster (call Youngster at this age ‘Infant Youngster’)an irresistible desire to act in conformity with his dictates. Suppose later, elderYoungster (‘Elder Youngster’) reflects on this desire but is unable to exercise thesort of control responsibility requires to rid himself of this desire. We submit thatboth Infant Youngster and Elder Youngster are not autonomous relative to thepossession of the desire during the pertinent spans of time. Concerning autonomywith respect to the influence of this desire, as the desire is irresistible InfantYoungster will not later be able to exercise ‘responsibility-grounding control’ inperforming actions that issue from this desire. Infant Youngster (like Elder Young-ster) is not autonomous relative to the influence of this desire.

We have proposed that a primary aim (the primary aim?) of education is tosafeguard the transition of our children into autonomous critical thinkers. Assumethat Youngster’s upbringing has equipped him with an evidential style of beliefacquisition and possession and that he has acquired the motivational constituentsthat Siegel recommends are essential for being a critical thinker. Even if Youngsterhas cultivated rational habits—he has the habit to assess beliefs, values, judgments,and the like on the basis of good reasons—he may not be autonomous relative tothese motivational constituents. Youngster may well be a proto critical thinker whois reason’s slave. Complying with the Critical Thinking Constraint, we have proposeda forward-looking account of being autonomous in relation to the constituents ofthe critical spirit dimension. Add to Youngster’s psychological profile that he isautonomous relative to the acquisition, possession, and influence of these motiva-tional constituents. Youngster is then a critical thinker par excellence.

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to the Research Fund of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium for its grant(F/02/072), which made possible our working together on this paper. We also thank twoanonymous EPAT referees for commenting on the penultimate version.

Notes

1. See, for example, Bailin & Siegel, 2003; and Siegel, 1988, 1997, and 2003.2. See, for instance, Dearden, 1972; Peters, 1963, 1973; and Cuypers, 2004.3. Siegel, 1988, p. 78.4. Siegel, 1988, pp. 32–42; 1997, pp. 2–4.5. Siegel, 2003, p. 305.6. Critical thinking theorists distinguish between two sorts of principle of reason

assessment: general or subject-neutral principles and context-bound or subject-specificones. There is an important debate between proponents of a ‘generalist’ view and thoseof a ‘specifist’ view regarding whether reason assessment skills apply across a broadrange of contexts and circumstances: to what extent are assessment criteria generalizable?(Bailin & Siegel, 2003, pp. 183–186) Here, we simply note that Siegel adopts thegeneralist view.

7. Siegel, 1988, p. 54. Siegel acknowledges, in Siegel, 2005, pp. 542–43, that his exact viewis that autonomy is a necessary but not sufficient condition of critical thinking. It is not asufficient condition of critical thinking because the reasoned appraisals of candidate



beliefs by autonomous persons might be of poor quality, and thus fail to satisfy the‘epistemic quality’ demands of the reason assessment component. For our concerns, itsuffices that Siegel holds that autonomy is a necessary condition of critical thinking—both the reason assessment and critical spirit dimension require autonomy.

8. Siegel, 2003, p. 307.9. Dearden, 1972, p. 70.

10. Peters, 1973, p. 17.11. Benn, 1976, p. 123.12. Mele, 1995, pp. 86–101.13. Mele, 1995, pp. 102–11.14. Mele, 1995, pp. 112–27.15. Some of the more important pro-attitudes and dispositions required for critical thinking

include ‘respect for reasons and truth (commitment to having justified beliefs, values andactions); ... an inquiring attitude (inclination to assess the support for judgements one isasked to accept); open-mindedness ... fair-mindedness ... independent-mindedness (possessionof the intellectual honesty and courage necessary for seeking out relevant evidence andbasing one’s beliefs and actions on it, despite pressures or temptations to do otherwise,and the personal strength to stand up for one’s firmly grounded beliefs); ...’. (Bailinet al., 1999, pp. 294–295)

16. Siegel, 1988, pp. 86–87. For Peters’ articulation of the ‘paradox of moral education’and his response to it, see Peters, 1963.

17. Snook, 1972; Spiecker & Straughan, 1991. Views of indoctrination appeal to either X ’sintention, or X ’s method, or p’s content, or a selection of these factors, as necessaryand/or sufficient conditions. Siegel (1991, p. 30) summarizes the three principalanalyses thus: ‘One view of indoctrination has it that the case is one of indoctrinationif X’s aim or intention is of a certain sort: namely, that X intends to or aims at gettingY to believe that p, independently of the epistemic status of or evidence for p. A secondview holds that indoctrination is a matter of method, so that our putative case ofindoctrination is a genuine one if X’s method of getting Y to believe that p is of a certainsort: namely, one which tends to impart to Y a belief that p, independently of theevidence for p, and without Y’s questioning p; a method, that is, which suppresses ordiscourages Y’s critical consideration of the case for p. A third view regardsindoctrination as a matter of content, so that our case is a case of indoctrination if p isfalse or unjustified, independently of X’s intentions and methods’.

18. Siegel, 1988, p. 165, n. 8; 1991, p. 31.19. Siegel, 1988, pp. 82–83.20. Siegel, 1988, p. 90.21. Siegel, 1988, p. 87.22. Christman, 1991.23. This case is modelled after the one Mele advances in Mele, 1993, p. 275.24. Development of the notions of being autonomous relative to the acquisition of a pro-

attitude, relative to the possession of a pro-attitude, and relative to the influence of apro-attitude can be found in Mele, 1993, pp. 275–277, and Mele, 1995, pp. 138–139.

25. Siegel, 1988, p. 167, n. 24.26. Ever since Relativism Refuted (1987), this appeal to rationality’s self-justification is

central to Siegel’s work on the theory of rationality and the foundations of criticalthinking as an educational ideal; for instances of this basic transcendental argument, seeSiegel, 1988, pp. 74–76, 132; 1997, pp. 81–87; 1998, pp. 30–31.

27. Siegel, 2003, p. 316.28. Gauthier, 1986.29. See, for example, Haji, 1989 and the various articles in Vallentyne, 1991.30. Strawson, 1962, p. 67.31. Strawson, 1962, p. 71.



32. See, for example, Feinberg, 1970; Glover, 1970; Morris, 1976; and Zimmerman, 1988.33. Mele, 1995, p. 172. On global manipulation, see, for instance, Fischer and Ravizza,

1998; Kane, 1996; Locke, 1975; Mele, 1995; and Cuypers & Haji, 2004.34. Skinner, 1948.35. For critical discussion of Christman’s view, see Mele, 1993 and Haji, 1998, pp. 90–94.36. We remain neutral on whether the causation in question is deterministic or non-

deterministic.37. See, for example, Darling, 1994.38. See, for instance, the several essays in Marples, 1999.39. See Strawson, 1962.40. An agent S cannot be morally responsible for a particular action A unless (i) S believes

that S is doing wrong (or right) in performing A, (ii) A is under S’s volitional control,(iii) A stems from authentic motivational springs, and (iv) S is an agent of a certainsort—an appropriate candidate of the morally reactive attitudes. For further details, see,for example, Haji, 1998.

41. Feinberg, 1986, pp. 34–35; italics, in the last sentence, are added.

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Revista de Psicología Vol. 29 (1), 2011 (ISSN 0254-9247)

Critical thinking: Its relevance for education in a shifting society

Leandro da Silva Almeida1 and Amanda Helena Rodrigues Franco2 University of Minho, Portugal

The amount of information and variety of situations tackled on a daily basis call for new cognitive functions, namely combining knowledge, experience and intellectual abilities. Critical thinking is valued as a higher-order type of reasoning and a skill transversal to the educational organisms. We introduce some definitions suggested in the literature, and describe the cognitive functions responsible for critical thinking used in learning and prob-lem solving situations. We then present the most used assessment procedures, illustrating with instruments as well as programs and curricular planning implemented in the classroom to teach and develop critical thinking. Finally, we highlight the importance of further inves-tigation, in order to reach a convergence of theoretical and practical elements needed to define critical thinking.Keywords: Critical thinking, intelligence, reasoning, transversal skills, adult cognition.

Pensamiento crítico: su relevancia para la educación en una sociedad cambianteEl volumen de información y la multiplicidad de situaciones a enfrentar diariamente exi-gen nuevas funciones cognitivas, particularmente combinando conocimiento, experiencia y habilidades intelectuales. El pensamiento crítico es valorado como una forma superior de razonamiento y una competencia transversal a los sistemas educativos. Se presentan algunas definiciones presentes en la literatura, describiendo las funciones cognitivas responsables por el pensamiento crítico en las situaciones de aprendizaje y de resolución de problemas. Se exponen los procedimientos más empleados en su evaluación, ilustrando con algunas prue-bas y con algunos programas y planificación curricular implementados para la enseñanza y el desenvolvimiento en la clase. Finalmente, se señala la importancia de continuar haciendo estudios que busquen la convergencia de elementos teóricos y prácticos asociados a la defi-nición de pensamiento crítico.Palabras clave: pensamiento crítico, inteligencia, razonamiento, competencias transversales, cognición en la edad adulta.

Understood by some as an innate aptitude, considered by others as a learned set of problem solving skills, the topic intelligence does not enjoy of the consensus of the researchers (Almeida, 1994; Almeida, Guisande & Ferreira, 2009). In an attempt to define and operationalize this construct in opposition to the psychometric tradition, Sternberg (2003) presents the concept of developing expertise, suggesting that intelligence refers to a developing potential, which results from the interaction between genetic factors and life contexts. Such interaction provides individual differences in cognitive abilities and in the performance of daily situations.

The psychometric approach has been pointed out as being exces-sively focused in the immutable and analytical aspects of intelligence, regardless of its changeable nature or the impact of people’s experience. This classic perspective has devoted little attention to the mechanisms inherent to the improvement of each individual’s cognitive and resolu-tive efficiency in face of learning, practice or mere experience (Sternberg, 1999, 2003). This criticism suggests that there are cognitive abilities or even forms of intelligence that are of useful to individuals, both in their daily lives and in their line of work, that don’t seem to have been valued by traditional instruments of intelligence assessment and that are also undervalued by the education system (Almeida et al., 2009; Gardner, 1983; Sternberg, 1985). We believe that one of these cognitive abilities claiming a deeper analysis is critical thinking.

1 PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Porto. Full teacher at University of Minho, teaches classes of cognition and learning, methodology of investigation, and method-ology of construction and validation of assessment instruments. Supervises Master and PhD programs. President of the Institute of Education. Author of several research projects in the field of intelligence. Contact: Institute of Education, University of Minho, Campus Gualtar, 4709 Braga, Portugal; [email protected]

2 Master in Educational Psychology from the University of Minho. Research grant holder working at the Investigation Center of the Institute of Education of the same university. Does research in the field of intelligence. Contact: Universidade do Minho, Instituto de Educação, Campus Gualtar, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal; [email protected]

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Revista de Psicología, Vol. 29 (1), 2011, pp. 175-195 (ISSN 0254-9247)

Critical thinking in today’s information society

In a social era characterized by a large amount of information, eas-ily accessible and with which people see themselves confronted by at every moment, it is crucial to know how to apprehend the information that is essential and submit it to an appropriate treatment, whether it is to accept it as reliable and worthy of being processed, or whether it is to classify it as fallacious and disposable (Halpern, 1999). In this sense, and given the everlasting and swift social transformations, criti-cal thinking stands out as a fundamental cognitive resource (Halpern, 1998; Ku, 2009; Phan, 2010). It might even constitute itself as the decisive element to successfully accomplish, succeed or be successful when performing the multiplicity of tasks and situations we tackle on a daily basis (Bailin, Case, Coombs & Daniels, 1999a, 1999b; Halpern, 1998; Phan, 2010).

Critical thinking is perceived as a cognitive capacity that allows one to convey meaning to disperse ideas, capacitating people to mean-ingful dialogue with others (Brady, 2008) and to experience satisfying feelings, both in their personal and social lives (Saiz & Rivas, 2010). This mechanism permits a better adjustment to the surrounding envi-ronment (Rivas & Saiz, 2010), becoming of great use in school and work contexts, for in both cases there is required a capacity to give a quick and efficient response to the more varied challenges (Carroll, 2005; Pithers & Soden, 2000). As a matter of fact, research in this area associates a higher degree of critical thinking to superior levels of control and proactivity in school education and daily life experience (Carroll, 2005; Kuhn, 1999). Specifically in the school context, criti-cal thinking skills allow students to organize their learning, and also to supervise and evaluate their school tasks, which positively affects their academic performance (Paul, 2005; Phan, 2010). All these aspects illustrate the extreme relevance and the enduring topicality of critical thinking, whether it is in the most diverse daily situations or as a line of study that is important to deepen and better comprehend (Bailin et al., 1999a).

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Critical thinking: Its relevance for education in a shifting society / Almeida y Franco

Defining critical thinking

But what can really be understood as critical thinking? In real-ity, there are different definitions, although resulting from proximal assumptions and maintaining some similarity amongst them (Allen, Rubenfeld & Scheffer, 2004; Halpern, 1999, 2006; Yanchar, Slife & Warne, 2008). The conceptual diversity comes from the fact that criti-cal thinking is studied in different scientific subjects and applied in multiple contexts (Philley, 2005). In this sense, this area has benefited from the interest of researchers in the fields of Education, Psychology or Philosophy (Phan, 2010; Yanchar et al., 2008).

Seeking some level of convergence from the different definitions available in the literature, critical thinking can be defined as a more complex and significantly demanding logic form of higher-order rea-soning (Brady, 2008; Philley, 2005). In terms of its operationalization, critical thinking presumes a repertoire of faculties: articulation of ideas; meaning elicitation; consideration of divergent arguments and search of evidence to evaluate the legitimacy of each one; formulation of hypothesis; justification of personal arguments and beliefs; decision making; problem solving; monitoring and evaluation of personal cog-nitions and actions (Facione, 2010; Halpern, 1998, 1999, 2006). To sum it up, and accordingly to Halpern (1998), subjacent to critical thinking seem to be elemental capacities of idea/argument decomposi-tion and synthesis, but also the capacity to evaluate the performance and products resulting from personal action, during and after the pro-cess. We can synthesize the dimensions that constitute critical thinking or the aspects that are implied in its definition by suggesting that this is a multifaceted cognitive construct, with an inductive, deductive and creative nature, comprising an heterogeneous set of skills and necessar-ily implying the motivation to use them (Bailin et al., 1999a; Facione, 2010; Halpern, 2006; Philley, 2005).

Guided by a goal to be achieved (the cognitive finality or direc-tion), critical thinking translates the employment of cognitive aptitudes and the use of one’s knowledge base to critically analyze facts or beliefs,

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in order to produce rational knowledge that can direct behavior (Car-roll, 2005) and sustain daily decision making and problem solving (Saiz & Rivas, 2010). This way, it implies a flexible and reflexive atti-tude, including the analysis, evaluation and correction of one’s activity and progress towards the established goal, as well as the motivation to pursue that desired goal (Halpern, 1998). Therefore, its relevance to school learning situations is clear: on the one hand, critical thinking is a resource that allows the student to adopt an analytical and evalu-ative attitude towards his/her performance, perfecting the quality of the learning process; on the other hand, the learning process allows the gradual improvement of the skills characteristic of critical thinking (Paul, 2005; Phan, 2010).

The authors suggest that, more than the potential itself, the decisive element here is truly a proactive and motivated attitude. If the motivational component—which cultivates the application of theoretical and practical components—is absent, a strong knowledge about critical thinking skills and the mastery in their use will prove to be insufficient (Facione, 2010; Halpern, 1999). Critical thinking entails the translation of cognitive skills into behavior (Saiz & Rivas, 2010; Sternberg, 1997), which will not happen if deprived of motiva-tion (Facione, 2010). The motivational factor—emphasized by some authors as being the essential feature for the development of skill and success in school (e. g. Halpern, 1999; Sternberg, 1999)—might help to understand the reason why some students’ execution quality isn’t compatible with their cognitive potential, assessed, for instance, with intelligence assessment tests. This explains why some students, despite having potential, do not perform particularly well, and also why others less promising but more motivated perform better (Facione, 2010).

At last, critical thinking stands additionally on some level of cre-ativity, which is accountable for the appetence to anticipate possible results, and also to produce and implement particular alternatives of action in each situation (Bailin et al., 1999b; Facione, 2010). The deliberation of arguments that are divergent of one’s own or the analy-sis of an argument accordingly to multiple perspectives are visible in

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the person who reveals critical thinking (Carroll, 2005), as well as the acceptance of new ideas, and an inquisitive and interested search for accurate knowledge regarding the situation at hand (Bailin et al., 1999a; Paul, 2005).

From the analysis of these three essential aspects of critical think-ing emerges the possibility of it being the characterization of a fifth stage of cognitive development. It is important to bear in mind that in his theory of cognitive development, Piaget (2008) claimed the exis-tence of four stages in which such development occurred, from birth to late adolescence (sensorimotor, preoperatory, concrete operations and formal operations). The literature gives evidence of a post-Piaget group of theoreticians trying to update the author’s approach; they suggest the establishment of a subsequent stage of intelligence development, which is very much associated to the individual’s epistemic status and to the knowledge role in the structuring of intelligence and its manifes-tation beyond adolescence and throughout adulthood (Feldman, 2004; King & Kitchener, 1994; Marchand, 2002).

In such a stage, it is assumed that knowledge isn’t factual, but rather circumstantial and relative, strongly marked or dependent of the individual’s idiosyncrasies and the specificities of the surrounding environment. This way, thought as the potential of being continually developed, which derives from the possibility of integrating discon-nected types of knowledge that are susceptible of being reformulated in personal schemes of reality representation. Such openness to experience and capacity to tolerate ambiguity is a consequence of a more flexible and divergent form of thinking, capable of operating with contradic-tion and not edified on laws of pure logic (Bruine de Bruin, Fischhoff & Parker, 2007; Marchand, 2002). In face of this, an equivalence of this type of thinking with the one we have been referring to as critical thinking is pondered, since both relate to a superior reasoning that pre-sumes an inquisitive attitude fit for generating possible and adequate solutions to the processing of rather complex information and problem solving.

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In conclusion, critical thinking appears to be a higher-order type of reasoning employing cognitive skills and directed by a motivational component in problem solving. Being a contextual type of think-ing, it acts on a knowledge base (which also includes the individual’s knowledge concerning his/her own skills), recurrently accessed and restructured, which implies supervision of the self in benefit of pursu-ing the goal previously defined (Bailin et al., 1999b; Halpern, 2006; Pithers & Soden, 2000). Accordingly to Bruine de Bruin et al. (2007), these critical thinking characteristics combine a group of critical skills, namely inference and application of relations, pondering and evalua-tion of alternatives, or self-regulation and metacognition. This allows us to anticipate a great variability amongst subjects, for each person adopts, in each situation and for the obtaining of a desired result, a line of action that is somehow distinctive. Recalling the old saying Rather be smart than intelligent, it is possible to unravel the popular wisdom it encloses: we can realize that being smart is another way of perceiving intelligence. In other words, it describes the person’s critical use of his/her resources or cognitive skills in order to achieve a desired aim.

Assessing critical thinking

Alongside the definition of critical thinking it is necessary to con-template the assessment as well (Ku, 2009; Rivas & Saiz, 2010). And such as the definition of critical thinking is imbued with disagreement, its assessment equally lacks convergence (Brookfield, 1997). On the one hand, there is a myriad of instruments to assess this construct, frequently indicted of lacking validity (Allen et al., 2004); on the other hand, there seem to be few adequate instruments to assess critical thinking in all its extent (Ennis, 1993), in particular in what refers to its development (Ku, 2009). For instance, Colucciello (1999) identifies the absence of assessment instruments that are capable of simultane-ously comprising the cognitive and motivational components of critical thinking.

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Despite the difficulties inherent to its measurement, critical think-ing assessment is feasible (Rivas & Saiz, 2010). Ku (2009) presents the following critical thinking assessment instruments as the most well-known: Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (Watson & Glaser, 1980); Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test (Ennis & Weir, 1985); Cornell Critical Thinking Test (Ennis, Millman & Tomko, 1985); California Critical Thinking Skills Test (Facione, 1990); and, Halp-ern Critical Thinking Assessment Using Everyday Situations (Halpern, 2007). Referring to the latter, it seems to fill a gap in the available criti-cal thinking assessment instruments scenario (Ku, 2009; Rivas & Saiz, 2010). In fact, it grasps both cognitive and motivational components, thus offering a comprehensive multidimensional view of the construct. To do so, it makes use of open-answer and multiple-choice questions, concerning daily problematic situations with which the subjects can easily relate to (Ku, 2009).

If we take a step back to the definition of critical thinking and recall its dimensions, authors generally presume that there are three main aspects composing this construct: knowledge base, motivation and cog-nitive operations. Regarding the latter facet, usually referred to as critical thinking skills, which are associated to the strategies applied in order to attain a goal set a priori, some difficulties are produced when wanting to try to identify which and how many are these skills. Nevertheless, we find Halpern’s (1998) suggestion more adequate, as it includes verbal reasoning, argument analysis, hypothesis testing, probability consid-eration, and decision making and problem solving. In the same way, Facione (2010) resorts to cognitive functions in order to put critical thinking skills into practice, considering such skills to be interpretation, analysis and evaluation, inference production, explanation and self-regulation; this enables us to assume the need for particular assessment exercises that are prone to capture the specificities of these functions.

One of the setbacks of assessing critical thinking appears to be the outcome of the nature of the construct itself: being this a complex type of reasoning characteristic of higher-order thinking, it becomes intricate to carry out a precise measurement resorting to assessment instruments

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composed of items or situations that are necessarily delimited (Brady, 2008). Likewise, it is noticeable that some authors neglect the effort of contextualizing their research at a theoretical level, often resulting in a quest for critical thinking assessment deprived of proper theoretical framing, that doesn’t enable the comprehension and explanation of the construct under analysis (Yanchar et al., 2008). It is important that the attempts to assess critical thinking derive from previous conceptualiza-tions and their clarification (Brookfield, 1997; Yanchar et al., 2008).

A criticism that is usually pointed at conventional intelligence assessment tests insinuates that these instruments disregard the role of the context to the quality of the subject’s performance (Almeida, 1994; Sternberg, 1999). As a matter of fact, nowadays only a small number of authors defend the possibility of assessing the essence of intelligence without considering it, in part, as a product of the subject’s learning experiences and their cultural contexts of life (Almeida, 1994). Daily life contexts have a meaningful impact on cognitive functioning, mak-ing it necessary to secure that the power of such circumstances is taken into consideration when assessing intelligence. In fact, people don’t live in an aseptic environment, invulnerable to its stimuli. From here derives the need to weigh the contextual variable when defining and assessing critical thinking (Sternberg, 2003; Yanchar et al., 2008).

In regard to the critical thinking assessment instrument’s format, open-answer questions are described as being prone to a more efficient evaluation, when compared to the multiple-choice ones (Ennis, 1993). The latter are useful to assess the cognitive dimension of the construct, but do not properly regard the motivational dimension; additionally, they restrain the expression of critical thinking, making it impossible to foresee how the subject will react in face of daily life challenges (Ku, 2009). By using open-answer questions, it is possible to identify which critical thinking skills are the most used, conferring better visibility to the student’s reasoning (Rivas & Saiz, 2010). Nonetheless, there can be anticipated one difficulty here: assessing answers that were obtained with a more open format can be expected to be more time consuming and ambiguous.

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In conclusion, it can be inferred that a clear definition of what really is the structure of critical thinking is vital, and that the elaboration of valid and comprehensive assessment instruments is indispensable. However, besides its definition and assessment, it is necessary to addi-tionally consider intervention on critical thinking and its skills or basic components. In fact, assessment gains particular social relevance if serv-ing as a foundation or support to the efforts of intervention (Rivas & Saiz, 2010). This way, it matters to think over school settings, more spe-cifically the guidelines that dictate the education system and teachers’ practice, in order to examine how they stand about this topic inherent to cognition, learning processes and problem solving.

Developing critical thinking

The true mission of education is commonly described as being the promotion of thinking skills, critical natured thinking skills to be more precise (Almeida, 1996; Barnes, 2005; Noddings, 2008; van Gelder, 2005). This issue is particularly significant in higher education, con-sidering that it is by means of a university education that students get equipped to enter the labor market, acquiring and perfecting resources with which they can face future challenges (Barnes, 2005). This process occurs by using what they have learned along their university education years and from the knowledge they have acquired and that is demanded in their line of work (Halpern, 1998; Ku, 2009).

Despite the importance conveyed by the education system about developing critical thinking skills, effective efforts to put such skills into practice and to promote their training hasn’t been noticeable so far (Noddings, 2008). More complex thinking skills aren’t covered by con-ventional teaching and assessment formats, which are still too focused on data transmission, memorization of factual information and subse-quent evocation of knowledge in evaluation situations (Brady, 2008; Paul, 2005; Pithers & Soden, 2000). To a certain extent, this may be produced by some unawareness usually revealed by teachers about what

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critical thinking is in fact and how it can be integrated in their teaching and evaluating methods (Paul, 2005). Such a conventional approach, in which teaching and learning processes are centered on analytical skills and critical thinking is omitted, should be corrected (Barnes, 2005), for it doesn’t provide true opportunities for the students’ cogni-tive development (van Gelder, 2005). According to a few authors, there should be an intentional effort to go beyond the curriculum and to implement changes in each teacher’s pedagogic method and in the edu-cation system itself, in aim to fully grasp critical thinking skills (Kuhn, 1999; Paul, 2005).

In dependence of the criticism made to traditional education meth-ods and their excessive emphasis in data transmission, another one rises, upon which students are perceived as a passive receptacle of the knowl-edge offered by teachers (Barnes, 2005; Brady, 2008). By tradition, teachers are conceived as experts who must transmit their knowledge to students, whereas students are rewarded for memorizing information merely for testing situations, and not for elaborating their own ideas and developing a reasoning that is both open-minded and critical. As a consequence, students aren’t very active learners: they resort to a more memory-based approach, rather than a comprehensive one, to acquire curricular contents, they employ little effort to elaborate ideas on their own, and they don’t develop the skills needed to autonomously solve their daily problems (Barnes, 2005; Brady, 2008; Facione, 2010).

Ideally, the education system should permit each student’s expan-sion in a number of curricular and cognitive areas, which is feasible by means of teaching the various thinking skills. These are susceptible of improvement, with the possibility of being learned, internalized and independently applied by students in multiple circumstances, assisting them to think more efficiently when dealing with distinct real-life situ-ations (Halpern, 1998, 1999, 2006; Noddings, 2008). This is possible because this type of reasoning supports the development of analytical, critical and decision making skills, which are useful on a daily and transversal basis, and increase learning and problem solving quality (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2007).

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In this context, the teacher’s role is to guide students, allowing them an active and regulated part in their way to developing critical think-ing (Barnes, 2005; Paul, 2005). Such a process encloses the theoretical, practical and motivational components of critical thinking: the intro-duction to the implied concepts and understanding, which provide for the enrichment of one’s knowledge base; the familiarity, perfecting and expansion of a set of skills needed to reflexive thinking; the strengthen-ing of the disposition to put knowledge and skills into use (Bailin et al., 1999a; Brady, 2008). This way, critical thinking must be valued by education systems, in order to make propitious an environment in the class-room that allows and stimulates the adoption of a reflexive atti-tude towards the quality of one’s thinking (Colucciello, 1999).

In sum, we can accept that critically thinking isn’t an innate and intuitive ability, spontaneously sprouted (Saiz & Rivas, 2010). On the contrary, it emerges from the learning-teaching process, being gradu-ally and deliberately acquired, and assuming a previous and symbiotic mastery of a set of basic skills, such as reading comprehension, argu-ment analysis and production, or still, search for evidence to stand for a particular point of view (Facione, 2010; van Gelder, 2005). In concern to the binomial nature versus nurture, critical thinking definitely seems to belong to the scope of the second (Brookfield, 1997), considering that it relies on explicit, continued and persistent teaching (Bailin et al., 1999b; Ennis, 1993; van Gelder, 2005). The perfecting of critical thinking requires time, for it is dependent of cognitive development (Kuhn, 1999) and takes place with the appropriation of resources that allow the subject to give a more reflexive and efficient answer to circum-stances (Phan, 2010). Furthermore, the relational interaction that takes place in school settings seems to boost the quality of critical thinking; in the relationship with teacher and peers, the student grasps by mod-eling and receives feedback about his/her activity (Brookfield, 1997).

In this sense, the teacher should be aware of the students’ beliefs regarding their skills, analyze how their thinking takes form, and sup-port them to unravel and correct their thinking inaccuracies (van Gelder, 2005). As a matter of fact, in aim of a deeper understanding of

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a particular dimension of psychological functioning, it is equally impor-tant to analyze both functional and deviant areas. In other words, while trying to ascertain which skills are needed to become more efficient in task accomplishment, it is additionally necessary to discover if any cognitive errors are being made and preventing the fulfillment of one’s full potential. In reality, it seems plausible to conclude that the subject might even be equipped with the cognitive aptitudes necessary for an efficient performance but something is stopping him/her from appro-priately directing his/her attitude and behavior in order to be successful in the execution of personal and professional daily activity. Therefore, by acquiring knowledge about this kind of obstacle, the subject is given the chance to overcome it (Efklides & Sideridis, 2009).

In an initial phase, this type of thinking requires the subject to learn the theory underlying critical thinking and its specific concepts, which will endure the construction of a metacognitive knowledge base to guide one’s activity (Brady, 2008; Carroll, 2005). Data about what and which are critical thinking skills is acquired—namely, comprehen-sion, argument analysis, hypothesis testing, probability consideration, decision making and problem solving—, besides data about how and where they should be used (Halpern, 1998; Kuhn, 1999). In fact, critical thinking is, to some point, distinctive of the surrounding environment, considering that knowledge and skill are employed with deliberation and according to the specificities of contextual circumstances (Bailin et al., 1999a; Brookfield, 1997).

Besides comprising a conceptual understanding in order to emerge, critical thinking needs to be consolidated through training in the class-room and reinforced with examples of possible everyday situations in which such skills can be applied (Ennis, 1993; van Gelder, 2005). The real world must be given as a reference, as well as the decision making that occurs in face of challenges raised on a daily basis (Allen et al., 2004; Rivas & Saiz, 2010). Doing so, it is being made explicit how this type of thinking and resources can become useful and how they should be applied (Saiz & Rivas, 2010).

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The possibility of multiple uses of the acquired critical thinking skills is presented as relevant in the literature (Ennis, 1993; Kuhn, 1999; Rivas & Saiz, 2010). If education is exclusively focused on memoriza-tion, the prospect of knowledge being transversal and the possibility of transferring critical thinking skills from one area to others where they can be found useful is reduced, particularly in everyday situations where decision making and problem solving are in order (Noddings, 2008; Pithers & Soden, 2000; van Gelder, 2005). Underlying the capacity of transference is the facility to distance oneself from a super-ficial apprehension of the task at hand, searching instead for its basic structure and applying the previously developed skills (Halpern, 1998, 1999). In short, what seems to be in cause here is the reuse of knowl-edge. In a society where environmental issues are a hot topic and are included in the speech of worldwide great leaders, cultivating a green attitude—characterized by idea recycling and knowledge reuse—seems to be the great goal to be achieved.

Regardless of the assumptions exposed earlier, there is no particu-lar tested model that can be presented as being effective in teaching critical thinking skills (Allen et al., 2004). There has been some debate over whether critical thinking skills have a general nature, or instead, are specific to a subject or field of knowledge (Brookfield, 1997; Kuhn, 1999). On the one hand is presented the hypothesis of curricular infu-sion, where education is multidisciplinary and focused on teaching both contents of the program and critical thinking skills; on the other hand is the alternative of developing critical thinking in a specific sub-ject, degree course or intervention program, specially designed to its promotion (Allen et al., 2004; Bailin et al., 1999b; Halpern, 1999). Some authors consider the first as the (most) effective format, since the use of critical thinking is sensible to contextual variables; this way, link-ing different information of the same content, or from distinct areas of knowledge, is facilitated, making it easier to transfer such information to multiple contexts (Bailin et al., 1999b; Kuhn, 1999; Pithers & Soden, 2000).

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In regard to teaching strategies, some seem to be more appropriate than others to make critical thinking development viable: direct teach-ing; modeling; collaborative and/or tutorial learning; presentation of challenges to stimulate the expression of critical thinking; emphasis on a curious and inquisitive attitude towards the surrounding environ-ment; feedback regarding the student’s performance along the entire process (Bailin et al., 1999a; Brookfield, 1997; Colucciello, 1999; Noddings, 2008).

Final considerations

The production of knowledge occurs inexorably and at a vertigi-nous pace, making the ability to discriminate from the available mass of data the information that is relevant, reliable and reusable one of the key-skills to possess (Halpern, 1998). Simultaneously, it is essen-tial to instigate a conscious citizenship, with which each person reveals values that benefit him/her at a personal level and, more important, the community he/she belongs to (Barnes, 2005; Noddings, 2008). The path that makes the development of such an attitude and ability possible seems to be the one of critical thinking, understood as the capacity to make good decisions, i.e., decisions that are grounded and logical (Paul, 2005). In fact, to have and efficiently apply analytical and decision making skills may have a positive impact in people’s qual-ity of life (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2007). In this sense, the capacity to think critically is an essential resource for a society one hopes to be a democratic one, made of citizens capable of thinking for themselves and unreceptive to hastily accepting any argument as valid (Brookfield, 1997; Facione, 2010).

The educational system of a number of countries, as well as the scientific production in the area, theoretically characterize critical thinking as a valuable resource and its teaching as one of the missions of today’s schooling. Nevertheless, the approaches to this topic are still surrounded by too much abstraction, resulting in the maintenance of a

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vague concept that is put into practice only partially and through sig-nificant limitations or difficulties. Likewise, there is a diversity of skills that are suggested as characterizing critical thinking and the attached cognitive behaviors, which often result from the divergence of points of view (Bailin et al., 1999b). There is lacking an in-depth study of this area: Transformations to the definition and operationalization of this construct are in need (Phan, 2010; Yanchar et al., 2008), as well as additional efforts to elaborate assessment instruments that are valid and sufficiently comprehensive (Ennis, 1993). Moreover, it is vital to build models that relate critical thinking and learning (styles) (Colucciello, 1999), not only the one occurring in school settings, but also the one brought up in the labor market and other situations of everyday life (Phan, 2010).

Other topics are also insufficiently explored. One of them con-cerns the ideal moment to start the teaching-learning process of critical thinking skills. Although it is considered that such skills can be pre-cociously widened (Bailin et al., 1999b), still remains to know which developmental stage or school level is the most appropriate to do so, where a reasonable degree of education would correspond to maximum learning. For instance, Ennis (1993) states that critical thinking skills should be taught since childhood; Halpern (1999), on the other hand, asserts that these skills can be taught precociously, but more intention-ally during higher education.

Another aspect that would benefit of research concerns the promo-tion of critical thinking skills in the family context, more specifically the parents’ role. Accepting the premise that these skills can (and must) be developed via direct education from the teacher and a proactive atti-tude towards learning by the student, we can deduct that the parents must also have a role in this equation. Remains to ascertain if merely as mediators who help with homework and hence support the skills that are expected to be developed through the completion of such activities, or as an active part in the process of developing such skills, stimulating them deliberately and according to the attainment of specific goals.

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Even if until now we have observed the impossibility of a concep-tualization that is broadly accepted by those who focus on the concept of critical thinking, it is essential to give continuity to research and to make efforts towards the development of knowledge in this area. There is lacking an attempt to build an approach both wider and grounded in valid assessment efforts, which is able to contain the diversity of perspectives and characteristics that the myriad of authors associate to critical thinking, as to make dialogue amongst researchers and between these and the education system possible. Such an articulation would be prolific: for the area’s advance, for a better quality of the teaching-learning process, for a better adaptation and dynamism in the labor market, but most of all for a life in society characterized by critical reflection and dialogue.

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Incorporating critical thinking in the pedagogical content of ateacher education programme: does it make a difference?

Banu Yücel Toya* and Ahmet Okb

aFaculty of Commerce and Tourism Education, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey; bFaculty ofEducation, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

Recent educational policies, national reports, and voluminous literature stressthat critical thinking (CT) is an essential skill in any stage of schooling for pro-ducing critical thinkers and ensuring better learning. The importance of teachingCT has been raised in teacher education programmes because students are sup-posed to teach this skill in schools in the future. This study therefore assessesthe effects of a CT-based pedagogical course on student teachers’ contentknowledge and CT disposition. A pre-test–post-test experimental study was car-ried out in a vocational pre-service teacher education programme in Turkey.Although the students who were exposed to CT-based instruction showed betterprogress in both academic achievement and CT disposition than in traditionalinstruction, this result was not statistically significant according to the MixedFactorial ANOVA and ANCOVA results.

Keywords: critical thinking; critical thinking-based instruction; critical thinkingdisposition; academic achievement; teacher education

Theoretical background

Critical thinking (CT)-based instruction, i.e. structuring a course by means of activi-ties and strategies fostering CT, has been lauded for improving both CT skills andeffective learning. It is acknowledged that meaningful learning can be attained byinvolving thinking skills in all school-level subjects (Zohar and Dori 2003) becausethis approach allows students to use their skills in a meaningful context and helpsthem to learn the subject matter in depth and to apply it in out-of-school settings(Johnson 2000; Beyer 1988). Indeed, improving student thinking is important notonly for mastering given subject matter but also for coping with the challengingdemands of today’s world issues (Burden 1998; Halpern 1999; McTighe and Schol-lenberger 1991). For this reason, teaching thinking skills has been the subject ofresearch, articles, and books for years (e.g. Beyer 1988; Costa 1991; Eggen andKauchak 2001; McGregor 2007; Moseley et al. 2005; Paul et al. 1989).

Although there are various thinking skills and strategies that can be used to struc-ture the teaching and learning process of any subject matter, course, or programme,CT is especially prominent because it is a comprehensive and sophisticated higher-order thinking skill. Unfortunately, on account of being complex and broad, CT is

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

European Journal of Teacher EducationVol. 35, No. 1, February 2012, 39–56

ISSN 0261-9768 print/ISSN 1469-5928 online� 2012 Association for Teacher Education in Europehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2011.634902http://www.tandfonline.com

sometimes considered to be synonymous with thinking skills. In this sense, Beyer(1988) specifies the differences of CT from major thinking strategies (problem-solving, decision-making, and conceptualising) and micro-thinking skills (e.g. recall-ing, translating, interpreting). CT is different from major thinking strategies becauseit is less complex and does not consist of a sequence of operations and subordinateprocedures but CT can be used at various points in each of the above mentionedmajor thinking strategies. Moreover, CT is more complex than micro-thinking skills.Therefore, Beyer (1995) places CT somewhere between major thinking strategiesand micro-thinking skills. Another feature peculiar to CT is the necessity of a num-ber of dispositions and attitudes that constitute alertness, willingness, and a desirefor CT. Beyond all these, CT is evaluative in nature. Thus, Beyer (1995) simplydefines CT as making reasoned judgements and sees CT as applying criteria to judgethe quality of something. Indeed, there is no clear consensus on the definition of CTbut it is widely accepted that the roots of the conception of CT are grounded in thework of John Dewey (1933) on reflective thinking. Dewey, who is generally seen asthe pioneer of the CT tradition, calls CT ‘reflective thinking’ (Fisher 2001) anddefines it as ‘. . .active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposedform of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclu-sions to which it tends’ (Dewey 1933, 9). In other words, Dewey considers CT to bean active, persistent, and careful thinking process in which one actively thinks aboutthings, raises questions, finds the relevant information, considers the grounds orreasons for one’s own belief and its logical consequences, scrutinises evidence,works out the implications of various hypotheses, compares results with each otherand with known facts instead of accepting beliefs unhesitatingly and jumping to aconclusion or taking a decision without thinking about it (Dewey 1933; Fisher2001). Later, in 1990, a group of experts in the Delphi Research Project arrived at adefinition of CT which stated that it was ‘. . . purposeful, self-regulatory judgmentwhich results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as theexplanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contex-tual considerations upon which that judgment is based’ (Facione 1990, 3). Recently,Paul and Elder (2006, xxiv) have given a brief definition of CT, which the presentstudy is based upon, as ‘thinking explicitly aimed at well-founded judgment, utilis-ing the appropriate evaluative standards in an attempt to determine the true worth,merit, or value of something’. They consider CT to be self-directed, self-disciplined,self-monitored, and self-corrective purposeful thinking in any subject area or topicso that the thinker systematically displays intellectual habits such as intellectualperseverance, intellectual humility, intellectual empathy, intellectual courage,intellectual autonomy, intellectual integrity, faith in reason, and fair-mindedness, andcontinually analyses, assesses, and reconstructs his or her thinking to improve itsquality. In light of the abovementioned conceptions of CT, the characteristics of astrong critical thinker can be enumerated as asking clearly and precisely formulatedquestions and problems, gathering and assessing relevant information, coming towell-reasoned conclusions and solutions by testing them against relevant criteria andstandards, thinking open-mindedly of alternative perspectives by recognising andassessing their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences, and communi-cating effectively in finding solutions to problems (Paul and Elder 2006).

As to why CT has been positioned in the teaching and learning process, in theeducation system students are overwhelmed by information but this is useless foreffective learning as the given information cannot be absorbed fully. Although there

40 B. Yücel Toy and A. Ok

are education systems which assume that acquisition of knowledge consisting ofinformation, concepts, principles, and skills within a subject means recalling orrepeating what teachers or textbooks say, this knowledge is nothing more than a setof words in students’ minds with no meaning, significance, or use. To go beyondthis superficial memorisation to deep learning, Paul et al. (1989) explain that stu-dents have belief systems and in order to learn they need actively to reshape thesesystems. In other words, to be able to understand new ideas, concepts, or principles,they should make their present beliefs explicit, struggle through the problems a newidea creates in their mind, and build a new mental structure or system of beliefs byslowly reshaping the old system into a new and better body of thought. In this con-text, incorporating CT into instructional practice provides a learning environment inwhich students are encouraged to apply CT skills in a given subject matter as ameans of restructuring their thoughts to integrate new facts, skills, and principleswithin that subject matter by learning to think by thinking, learning to learn bylearning, learning to judge by judging and by assessing their thinking, learning, andjudging (Paul et al. 1989). CT-based instruction gives CT tasks to students to usethe power of their minds to clarify, judge, and reason. For instance, in a class, ifstudents are asked to assess the reliability of sources and biases in informationgiven in various textbooks, they make critical judgements, gain a deep critical per-spective on the given information and their interest in the topic is enhanced, but ifthey are directed to read only their textbook to get the facts, they do not use CTskills and gain knowledge without deep understanding (Swartz, Fischer, and Parks1998). Therefore, Semerci (2003) stresses that CT allows for better learning of sub-ject matter, transferring it to new situations, and developing evaluation skills. Asstated by Hughes and Lavery (2004), a person should be able to use the informationin his/her head to recognise and assess its implications and consequences, and thiscan be achieved via CT. Furthermore, in order to cope with the demands of life andthe expectations of a changing society, CT is seen as a major skill that should begained at any stage of schooling.

In integrating CT into course content, Paul et al. (1989) propose remodellinglesson plans by incorporating questions and activities that encourage criticalthought. They give a list of CT strategies, each of which emphasises an aspect ofCT by taking the affective domain of mental processes into consideration (Appen-dix 1). They also explain ways to encourage the use of these strategies in a course.Their list is composed of 35 strategies that a critical thinker possesses and has beenused widely in research (e.g. Aybek 2006; Özdemir 2005; Reed and Kromrey 2001;Şahinel 2001). These strategies are divided into two groups of mental structures: (1)affective strategies constituting traits of mind, and (2) cognitive strategies includingproficient micro-skills and refined macro-skills. Both domains are important andcomplementary to each other. Moreover, affective strategies are the basis of intellec-tual traits of mind that the best, strongest, and most fair-minded thinkers possessbecause the unmotivated or those who have no inclination toward critical thinkingcan neither learn how to think critically nor think critically; thus, people’s affectivedomain should be emphasised as much as their cognitive one in CT-based instruc-tion (Paul and Elder 2006).

In addition to these strategies, in CT-based instruction, teachers should maintaina learning environment in which students are encouraged to explore their ownminds and to realise the power of their own minds and the efficacy of their ownthinking. To this end, teachers should:

European Journal of Teacher Education 41

help students to break big questions or tasks into smaller, more manageable parts; cre-ate meaningful contexts in which learning is valued by students; help students to clar-ify their thoughts by rephrasing or asking questions; pose thought-provokingquestions; help to keep discussion focused; encourage students to explain things toeach other; help students to find what they need to know by suggesting and showingstudents how to use resources; and ensure that students do justice to each view, thatno views are ignored, or unfairly dismissed. (Paul et al. 1989, 23)

All these discussions regarding the importance of teaching CT at any educationallevel and teachers’ roles in this mission lead to the recognition that CT is muchmore important in teacher education because student teachers are supposed to teachor implement this skill in their classes in the future and it is not possible to do thiswithout learning what to teach and how to teach it. In other words, shaping thethinking and teaching practices of future teachers and aiding them to discover thepotential of their own minds are important if they are to have good CT and prob-lem-solving skills because only if they possess these skills will they be able to edu-cate a generation of critical thinkers and problem-solvers (Paul, Elder and Bartell1997). Therefore, CT should be integrated into all aspects of teacher education pro-grammes so as to foster the CT skills of student teachers. However, teaching think-ing skills or integrating thinking skills into subject matter have not beenencountered widely in teacher education and this deficiency requires detailed study.Actually, there have been a huge number of studies on CT-based instruction butthey are generally about the determination of students’ CT level (e.g. Lampert2007; McBride, Xiang and Wittenburg 2002; White and Hargrove 1996) or itsimpact on course achievement or the development of CT skills or dispositions (e.g.Burbach, Matkin and Fritz 2004; Harrigan and Vincenti 2004; Reed and Kromrey2001; Solon 2007; Tsui 2002; Williams, Oliver and Stockdale 2004). Research thatincorporates CT in the pedagogical content of teacher education would thereforehelp to fill the gap in the literature.

To this end, in this study, the CT strategies of Paul et al. (1989) were integratedinto a compulsory undergraduate pedagogical course in order to improve the course.The main purpose was to evaluate the effect of the course’s enrichment with CT-based instruction on learning and disposition toward CT and to compare results withthose of traditional instruction that has been and continues to be applied in thecourse. Therefore, the present study was guided by the following main researchquestions:

� Is there a significant difference between CT-based instruction and traditionalinstruction in terms of students’ academic achievement?

� Is there a significant difference between CT-based instruction and traditionalinstruction in terms of students’ disposition toward CT?

Method

Study context

This study was carried out in a vocational pre-service teacher education programmeat a public university in Turkey. The duration of the vocational teacher educationprogrammes in Turkey is four years and students are required to pass teachereducation courses, vocational subject courses, and common courses (e.g. electives,


history) during the programme. In this study, the Development and Learning course,also known as educational psychology or human development in teacher educationprogrammes around the world, was redesigned to accommodate CT-based instruc-tion. This three-hour course taught in the second year aims at equipping studentteachers with skills, knowledge, and attitudes in the context of child developmentand learning.

Before implementation of the redesigned course, all students registered for it inthe autumn semester of the 2006–07 academic year were divided into four groups:two treatment and two control groups and a pre–post quasi-experimental design testwas applied. The researcher was the instructor of the course for all groups.

Procedure

In the control groups, the existing instructional methods used by the instructor forthree years were applied and henceforth, this instruction in the control groups willbe expressed as traditional instruction. Although lecturing was the basic teachingmethod, the questioning technique was also used from time to time. A follow-uptest was given at the end of each session. Moreover, in the last eight weeks, the stu-dents were asked to perform group drama about learning theories in order to dem-onstrate how learning theories appear in social and educational contexts.

In the experimental group, the course was designed and implemented accordingto the CT-based instruction. Before designing the course, a needs assessment studywas carried out in the 2005–06 academic year with 321 sophomore, junior, andsenior students who had already taken this course, 28 graduates, the vice-chair ofthe department, an instructor of teacher education courses, and a professor experi-enced in teacher education. The purpose of this need analysis was to ascertain needsand preferences in relation to the course. A needs assessment questionnaire wasapplied to students and graduates and interviews were conducted with the vice-chairof the department, the instructor, and the professor. They were asked about stu-dents’ accomplishment in attaining course objectives, the importance and necessityof course content, the effectiveness of teaching-learning activities/strategies forlearning and thinking skills and their frequency of usage in the course, the effec-tiveness of assessment techniques and their preferences about activities/strategiesand the assessment techniques that should be used in this course for effective learn-ing. In brief, the results of individual interviews revealed the need for teachingpractice to put theory into practice and thought-provoking learning environments.Data gathered from the questionnaires for undergraduates and graduates elicited thatthey had problems in attaining the course objectives although they generally consid-ered these objectives important to attain. The findings also highlighted that thisproblem might have been arisen from inadequacy and the ineffectiveness of theteaching-learning process of the course because according to the responses, theactivities specified as effective for learning and improving thinking skills had beennever, rarely, or only occasionally implemented on the course. For effective instruc-tion, the students and graduates preferred active learning activities (i.e., drama, dis-cussion, case studies, group work), thinking skill based activities, more interactionand participation in the classroom. Briefly, the results addressed the instructionalproblems and preferences. It was supposed that CT-based instruction would remedythese problems because it is considered important for effective instruction, teachereducation and even for contemporary life. Thus, the course was redesigned in


accordance with CT-based instruction by taking the abovementioned needs assess-ment results and CT literature into consideration.

The Inductive Model of Eggen and Kauchak (2001) for teaching thinking skillswas applied. The 35 CT strategies defined by Paul et al. (1989) were integrated intothe course content (Appendix 1). For each course topic, objectives and CT strategieswere determined, as shown in Table 1. Each topic was taught through tasks, activi-ties, and questions encouraging the determined CT skills that were a means leadingto the intended objectives. Before tasks and activities, the application of the deter-mined CT skills was introduced briefly by the instructor. The instruction model fol-lowed for 14 weeks had five phases:

(1) Lesson introduction. Students were notified about the objectives and CTstrategies, which would be applied in the lesson, and a brief overview of thetopic was presented. Then, tasks that they were expected to master throughgiven examples such as case studies, role playing, and articles were givenand what they were supposed to do was explained. How the CT strategieswould be applied was demonstrated by the instructor.

(2) The open-ended phase. By taking the CT strategies of Paul et al. (1989) intoaccount and using Socratic questioning, students were asked to analyse andevaluate cases, to solve the problems given in the examples, to clarify andanalyse the meanings of concepts, to compare and contrast situations, to notesimilarities and differences, to identify students’ and teachers’ behavioursrelated to development stages and related to learning approaches/theories,etc.

(3) The convergent phase. Students were stimulated to find definitions of theconcepts, principles or characteristics of development and learning theories,and the differences, similarities, strengths and weaknesses of the theories,without wandering from the topic.

Table 1. An example of the instructional objectives and the CT strategies for Kohlberg’stheory of moral development topic.

Instructional objectivesThe students will be able to

know moral development processes according to Kohlberg’s theoryunderstand Kohlberg’s theory of moral developmentfollow students’ moral development processunderstand individual differences among students in terms of moral developmenthelp students’ moral developmentprepare educational environment towards improving students’ moral development level

Critical thinking strategiesS-11 Comparing analogous situations: transferring insights to new contextsS-12 Developing one’s perspective: creating or exploring beliefs, arguments, or theoriesS-20 Analysing or evaluating actions or policiesS.24 Practicing Socratic discussion: clarifying and questioning beliefs, theories, or

perspectiveS-28 Comparing and contrasting ideals with actual practiceS-29 Noting significant similarities and differencesS-32 Making plausible inferences, predictions, or interpretationsS-35 Exploring implications and consequences


(4) Closure. In this phase, definitions, principles, characteristics, differences,similarities, strengths and weaknesses were stated briefly, the relationshipsamong them were formed and their implications in the learning environmentwere discussed by students in the light of the preceding phases.

(5) The application phase. Finally, in order to apply what was learned, severalassignments were given to students. Some were completed in the classthrough group work, some were done at home.

Within this model, a variety of active learning strategies stimulating the involve-ment of students in the active use of CT skills were included, such as questioning,case studies, thinking skill activities (e.g. comparing, decision-making, problem-solving), puzzles, poster presentation, role playing, graphic organisers, article cri-tique, and projects (Andersen 2002; McDade 1995; Paul et al. 1989; Potts 1994).Students were supposed to be actively involved in their own learning and to intel-lectually interact, with each other and the instructor, through thinking skills activi-ties; they were required to research, read, analyse, and discuss cases, issues, orevents. In Table 2, an example lesson for the Kohlberg’s theory of moral develop-ment topic is briefly explained in order to clarify how a topic was taught both inthe control and treatment groups.

Participants

All students in the treatment and control groups (N=174) were involved in thestudy. An achievement test was developed and administered to all students as a pre-test at the beginning of the semester, as a post-test at the end of the semester, andas a retention test six weeks after the end of the semester. The numbers of the stu-dents who participated in the pre-test, post-test, and retention test were 156, 174,and 135, respectively. The number of participants changed according to their avail-ability at the testing time. The CCTDI-T was also administered to the students aspre-test and post-test. In total, 146 students participated in the pre-test and 166 stu-dents in the post-test.

Data collection instruments

Achievement test

The achievement test included 40 multiple-choice questions measuring knowledgeof the content of the course. The test was reviewed by four instructors from thefield of educational sciences who were teaching/had taught the Development andLearning course. Then, for piloting purposes, the test was administered to 171junior students who had already taken the course. The test was revised based on theitem analyses carried out by means of Iteman software. The reliability of the finaltest, Kuder Richardson (KR)-20, was found to be 0.64, which is an acceptable inter-val according to Linn and Gronlund (2005).

California critical thinking disposition inventory (CCDTI)

The CCTDI was utilised in order to determine the impact of CT-based instructionon the students’ disposition toward CT. This inventory was developed from theresults of the Delphi Report in which CT and disposition toward CT were


Table 2. A brief lesson example in the treatment and control groups for the Kohlberg’stheory of moral development topic.

A lesson example in treatment groups

Lesson introduction: The students were informed about the instructional objectives andCT strategies regarding the topic. Information about what they would do in the lesson wasgiven. Then, the instructor gave brief information about Kohlberg and his study.

The open-ended phase. A case study, which was a story of a student in an exam, wasread. In the story, there was a student who had to work all night before exam day andthus could not prepare properly for the exam. During the examination, the mosthardworking student in the class was seated in front of him and he could see her paper.After reading this story, 5 volunteer students were asked to do improvisation of the story.After their role play, the discussion question ‘Should he cheat or not? Why?’ was asked tothe class and let them to think about this question. The instructor explained how to applythe S-20, S-24, S-32 CT strategies⁄ while discussing this question and requested studentsto use these strategies. Then another case was explained (Heinz’s story by Kohlberg) andthe question ‘Should he steal the medicine for the sake of his wife’s life? Why or whynot?’ was asked. The responses were discussed (S-20, S-24, S-32). Regarding Kohlberg’stheory of moral development, the following questions were also asked to encourage‘developing one’s perspective: creating or exploring beliefs, arguments, or theories (S-12)’strategy: What are the differences among the responses; what are the moral beliefs andvalues behind these responses; how can we classify these beliefs? etc.

The convergent phase. Students were stimulated to find the characteristics and differencesof moral development in the stages of Kohlberg’s theory through the discussions andquestions in the previous phase (S-12, S-29). Then, two cases and possible moralresponses were given and grouped according to moral development stages together withstudents in the class (S-11).

Closure. In this phase, the characteristics, differences, strengths and weaknesses ofKohlberg’s theory were stated briefly. The students were asked to criticise the theory interms of ideal and actual practice (S-28). Then, the students were asked to discuss theeducational implications of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development to stimulate the‘exploring implications and consequences (S-35)’ strategy.

The application phase. Finally, in order to apply what was learned, students were dividedinto groups and two case studies (What should Dilara do? and What should Can do?)were given to the groups. The groups were asked to select one of the cases and analyse itin terms of moral development and fill out the graphic organiser for decision making thatwas given by the instructor. In this graphic organiser, students were asked to makepossible decisions, to evaluate alternatives and implications, and to explain the reasonslying behind their responses. The purpose was to encourage ‘comparing analogoussituations: transferring insights to new contexts (S-11)’, ‘analysing or evaluating actions orpolicies (S-20)’ and ‘exploring implications and consequences (S-35)’ strategies.

A lesson example in control groups

The students were informed about the instructional objectives regarding moraldevelopment, and then Kohlberg and his study were explained. Heinz’s case waspresented. The question ‘what would you do if you were Heinz and why?’ was asked tostudents. After that, the moral development stages were introduced by the instructor. Theinstructor explained different cases and gave examples for each stage. By asking thestudents for the characteristics of each stage, the instructor summarised the topic. At theend of the lesson, a follow-up test was given. After they completed the test, the answerswere given and students were asked to check their own responses. The instructorcompleted the lesson by explaining the points that were misunderstood or were notunderstood at all.

Note. ⁄ Each of the CT strategies that were implemented during the lesson was elucidated by theinstructor prior to the given tasks.


conceptualised by a group of CT experts (Facione et al. 1995). The original CCTDIincludes 75 items loaded on seven constructs: inquisitiveness, open-mindedness,systematicity, analyticity, truth-seeking, CT self-confidence, and maturity.

Kökdemir (2003) carried out an adaptation study to transform this inventory intoa Turkish version. In this version, 51 items were kept in the scale and open-minded-ness and maturity were loaded on one construct. The reliability of the whole scalewas found to be 0.88. Reliability coefficients of each subscale ranged from 0.61 to0.78. This adapted version of the inventory, called CCTDI-T, was used in thisstudy.

Data analysis

To determine the mean differences between and within the groups in terms of thestudents’ progress from the achievement pre-test to the post-test, from the achieve-ment post-test to the retention test, and from the CCTDI-T pre-test to the post-test,mixed factorial ANOVA and mixed factorial ANCOVA were applied because theseanalyses test mean differences between groups and within repeated measures con-currently (Field 2005). In the analysis of the achievement tests, the cumulativegrade point average (CGPA) variable was treated as a covariate in order to adjustthe score means with the aim of revealing what it would be if these groups hadbeen equal in terms of CGPA, so a mixed factorial ANCOVA was run. In theseanalyses, type of instruction (CT-based vs traditional) was the independent variableand the achievement test and CCTDI-T scores were dependent variables. For allquantitative data analyses, SPSS 15.0 was used.

Results

Academic achievement of the students

In the study, a 2 (groups: treatment and control) X 3 (testing time: pre-test, post-test, and retention test) mixed factorial ANCOVA was used to test the effect of thetype of instruction on the students’ academic achievement when controlling CGPA.Group status (treatment vs control) was a between-subjects factor and the time ofthe repeated achievement tests (pre-test, pos-test and retention test) was a within-subjects repeated factor. The descriptive statistics in relation to the test scores thatentered the analysis are presented in Table 3.

Table 3. Means and standard deviations of the achievement pre-test, post-test, and retentiontest scores.

Time Groups M SD N

Pre-test Treatment 13.04 3.29 55Control 13.86 2.83 65Total 13.48 3.07 120

Post-test Treatment 21.49 4.39 55Control 22.28 4.79 65Total 21.92 4.61 120

Retention test Treatment 17.64 3.85 55Control 17.52 4.41 65Total 17.57 4.14 120


The results showed that the mean of all students’ test scores in the study signifi-cantly differed according to the testing time, F(1.85, 216.86) = 7.93, p < 0.05(Table 4). The effect size of 0.06 was at medium level. This result did not changeeven when the students’ CGPA scores were controlled, F(1.85, 216.86) = 20.51, p <0.05, partial g2= 0.15. The contrast test results showed, however, that there was onlya significant difference between pre-test and post-test mean scores (F[1, 117] = 24.18,p< 0.05, partial g2 = 0.17), but not between post-test and retention test mean scoreswhen CGPA was controlled. These results showed that whichever instruction the stu-dents were exposed to, their mean achievement level significantly increased from pre-test to post-test, but the loss of knowledge from post-test to retention test was not sig-nificant when the effect of CGPA on the test scores was taken into account.

Concerning group differences, firstly it was tested whether there was a significantdifference between traditional instruction and CT-based instruction in terms of thestudents’ mean achievement score in all tests after controlling their CGPA. Accordingto the mixed factorial ANCOVA results, the average performance of the students inthe treatment group in all tests was not significantly different from that of the studentsin the control group, after controlling the effect of CGPA scores (Table 4). Next, inorder to ascertain the significance of group differences at each test, the interactioneffect between time and groups was tested because the presence of this effect wouldindicate the impact of CT-based instruction on the students’ scores in each test incomparison with traditional instruction. The results showed that there was no signifi-cant interaction effect. This result implied that the students in both groups performedsimilarly in each test. In short, CT-based instruction did not cause significant differ-ence to the students’ achievement and retention compared with traditional instructioneven though the students in the treatment groups showed more progress from pre-testto post-test and had higher mean score on retention test as shown in Figure 1.

Critical thinking dispositions of the students

In order to test whether the course instruction improved the CT dispositions of thestudents, a 2 (groups: treatment and control) X 2 (testing time: pre-test andpost-test) mixed factorial ANOVA was used. The descriptive statistics regarding theCCTDI-T scores that entered the analysis are presented in Table 5.

Table 4. Mixed factorial ANCOVA results for the main and interaction effects of time,groups and CGPA on the students’ achievement.

Source df F p Partial g2

Within-subjects effectsTime 1.85a 7.93 .00 .06Time X CGPA 1.85a 20.51 .00 .15Time X groups 1.85a 2.09 .13 .02Error 216.86 a

Between-subjects effectsCGPA 1 75.61 .00 .39Groups 1 .02 .89 .00Error 117

Notes. a According to the test of sphericity, the assumption of sphericity was violated (Mauchly’s W =.92, df = 2, p = .01). Therefore, Greenhouse and Geisser corrections for F-ratio were used.


The results showed that for the students in both groups there was a significantdifference from pre-test (Mestimated marginal = 227.12) to post-test (Mestimated marginal =231.12), F(1, 137) = 6.53, p < 0.05 (Table 6). This signified that the tendency ofall students to use CT skills significantly increased, on average, within a term butwith a small effect size (partial g2= 0.05). Notwithstanding this result, the pre-testand post-test mean scores (lower than 240) in both groups showed that the CT dis-position of the students was, on average, still low in accordance with the criteriagiven by Kökdemir (2003): an adapted CCTDI-T score of less than 240 means lowdisposition and a score higher than 300 means high disposition.

The results also revealed that the mean of the CCTDI-T pre-test and post-testscores did not significantly differ between groups (Table 6). In other words, therewas no significant difference in the effect of CT-based instruction on the CT dispo-sition of the students compared with traditional instruction. It can be inferred from

Time (Testing time)Retention TestPosttestPretest

Est

imat

ed M

argi

nal M

eans

22

20

18

16

14

12

17,17

21,93

13,8

18,06

21,91

13,11

control

treatment

Groups

Figure 1. Estimated marginal mean scores in the achievement pre-test, post-test, andretention test.

Table 5. Means and standard deviations of the CCTDI-T pre-test and post-test scores.

M SD N

Pre-test Treatment 225.13 20.25 78Control 229.12 18.44 61Total 226.88 19.51 139

Post-test Treatment 230.05 19.08 78Control 232.20 21.31 61Total 231.00 20.04 139


this result that the students in both groups, on average, showed a similar tendencyto use CT skills.

Finally, the significance of progress from pre-test to post-test was comparedbetween groups. As can be seen from Figure 2, despite being smaller, progress frompre-test to post-test was higher for the treatment groups when compared with thatfor the control groups, but this did not cause any significant difference betweengroups. For this reason, it can be stated that CT-based instruction did not result inany remarkable change in the students’ disposition from pre-test to post-test in com-parison with traditional instruction.

Time

PosttestPretest

Est

imat

ed M

argi

nal M

eans

234,00

232,00

230,00

228,00

226,00

224,00

232,20

229,12

230,05

225,13

control

treatment

Groups

Figure 2. Estimated marginal mean scores in the CCTDI-T pre-test and post-test.

Table 6. Mixed factorial ANOVA results for the main and interaction effects of time andgroups on the CT disposition of the students.

Source df F p Partial g2

Within-subjects effectsTime 1 6.53 .01 .05Time X groups 1 .35 .56 .00Error 137Between-subjects effectsGroups 1 1.05 .31 .01Error 137


Discussion

The main purpose of this study was to explore whether CT-based instruction wouldnot only stimulate CT but also provide effective learning better than traditionalinstruction. It was anticipated that as a result of being involved in active learningand activities provoking critical thinking, interacting with peers and the instructor atan intellectual level, students would gain content knowledge in a more meaningfulway and their disposition to think critically would increase.

And yet, in relation to the students’ subject knowledge in terms of learningand retention, tests revealed that CT-based instruction affected neither contentacquisition nor retention differently from traditional instruction. The underlyingreason for the similar performance of the groups might be the use of activitiesenhancing learning in both groups, as observed in Reed and Kromrey’s (2001)study in which explicit teaching of Paul’s CT model in a US history courseresulted in no difference between treatment and control groups in terms of con-tent knowledge. They considered that this result derived from the use of activitiesfacilitating learning in both groups. This view is worth taking into account in thecurrent study as well. Although a variety of active learning strategies cultivatingCT skills were used in the treatment groups, drama and follow-up tests that aredeemed as effective tools for learning and retention were used in the controlgroups. It is claimed that drama is of value in understanding and retainingknowledge, placing learning in meaningful contexts, engaging in realistic prob-lems, and developing thinking skills and metacognition (Andersen 2002; Henry2000). Regarding weekly follow-up tests, Myers and Myers (2007) found that theacademic achievement of undergraduate students taking bi-weekly exams washigher than that of the students taking hour-long mid-term exams. Huba andFreed (2000) allege that the use of frequent tests allows communication betweenteacher and students so that students can gain feedback about their performanceand adjust their study habits accordingly. In short, the impact of drama and fol-low-up tests on the enhancement of learning might have overshadowed theimpact of CT-based instruction on content acquisition.

On the one hand, CT-based instruction is advocated for enhancing subjectlearning in addition to promoting CT skills; on the other hand, whether or notteaching CT skills in the course content limits the time required for gaining con-tent knowledge has been argued and investigated (Adey 1991; Reed and Kromrey2001; Solon 2007). It is stated that as tasks or activities regarding thinking skillstake time, less time is left for covering course content in treatment groups.Therefore, performing similarly in the achievement test in spite of having lesstime for content is interpreted as evidence showing that incorporating thinkingskills into subject matter does not hinder content learning. From this perspectiveit can be concluded that CT-based instruction in the Development and Learningcourse did not cause any sacrifice in terms of content learning in comparisonwith traditional instruction.

In a review study by Lohman (1986) about the negative or mathemathaniceffects of interventions for teaching thinking skills, he draws attention to the ques-tion of whether previously acquired cognitive strategies assist or interfere withattempts to acquire new ways of thinking and learning. Concerning the currentstudy, although the students were actively involved in the given tasks, they may nothave adapted to CT-based instruction well and they may have continued to use their


previous learning styles. Thus, they could have performed similarly to those in thecontrol groups. Whereas, if the instruction had been executed for longer than asemester, the students might have adapted to the instruction as a result of morepractice and its impact on learning might have been observed because it is statedthat with continuous practice for a longer period of time and with hard study,students will show higher achievement and goals will be met (Kirkwood 2000;Lohman 1986).

This study also aimed to stimulate the students’ CT disposition in the treatmentgroups because if students are not inclined to use CT skills, teaching these skillswill be pointless (Halpern 1999). The CCTDI-T results showed that the students’disposition toward CT in both groups increased significantly over a semester, butthe progress in the treatment groups was not different from the control groups asregards the mean scores in the pre-test and post-test. Similarly, Reed and Kromrey(2001) did not find any difference in the CCTDI scores between treatment and con-trol groups as a result of explicit teaching of CT. Nevertheless, they did not observesignificant progress between the CCTDI pre- and post-test mean scores of the stu-dents in the treatment group, either. CT skill is a complex skill that cannot begained quickly so it entails time, effort, and practice (Van Gelder 2005). For thisreason, one academic semester would not have been adequate for the students toattain CT skills and dispositions so as to create a significant difference between thetwo groups.

Despite the improvement of the students’ CT disposition in both groups frompre-test to post-test, it should be noted that the CCTDI-T mean score of the studentswas still low (less than 240) according to the criteria given by Kökdemir (2003).Low disposition among the students might stem from the profile of students in thefaculty. From the situated-cognition perspective that defines thinking skills as socialpractices exercised and shared within a community, a person’s disposition is shapedby his/her beliefs and the values of which he/she is convinced in a community; thusthe characteristics of culture and context, such as sensitivity toward thinking criti-cally and the power of social practice on the development and application of CT,have been stressed (Kuhn 1999; Pithers and Soden 2000). Accordingly, if CT hasnot been encouraged in the communities where students live, expecting significantdevelopment in students’ thinking skills may not be reasonable. This perspective,however, entails further research regarding students who enter universities with anunderdeveloped ability to think critically.

In conclusion, this study showed that the integration of CT skills into a peda-gogical course did not render student teachers’ content knowledge and CT dispo-sitions different from those acquired in traditional instruction. However, it mayoffer several implications for practice and research. Firstly, it is accepted thatimprovements in a CT-based learning environment require more time and prac-tice. Therefore, CT-based instruction should not be specific to any one course,but should be incorporated in other teacher education courses and subject coursesas a way of learning not opposed to, but as well as, other student-centredinstructional methods and as a way of promoting higher order cognitive processesin classrooms. Opportunities for practising thinking skills should be given in avariety of educational settings continuously, consistently, and for a longer periodof time. Additionally, if teaching CT can be extended in terms of time andcourses, and if thinking skills can be presented in a hierarchical way from basicto higher-order skills, students may become more familiar with CT skills and


become used to applying these skills effectively in learning over the course oftime. In this way, the actual impact of endeavours to enhance the learning anddevelopment of CT and CT disposition can be observed. Next, the low level ofCT disposition among the students in the study might derive from a previouseducational life that did not support thinking. This result shows that not onlyeducational policies but also actual practices should reflect belief in the impor-tance of developing learners’ CT at all levels of schooling, because only in thisway can the CT levels of students entering higher education institutions beraised. Lastly, the results demonstrated that drama and weekly follow-up tests inthe traditional classroom were effective means for content acquisition and there-fore their use as teaching and learning tools in any course can also be recom-mended. In terms of the implications for research, further research might focuson the time or place effects of the CT-based instruction implemented over alonger period of time and in different educational settings, disciplines, subjects orcourses on learning and CT skills, because in this study this instruction wasimplemented only in a course in a vocational teacher education faculty. More-over, whether previously acquired cognitive strategies assist or interfere withusing newly taught skills in learning might be investigated. Another issue that isopen to question for further research might be the impact of culture or previouseducational life on the development of CT skills and dispositions. In this study,CGPA was used as a covariate in order to provide equivalence between groupsin terms of academic achievement. In future studies, demographic and culturalcharacteristics and learning styles/strategies can be controlled as well. Finally, thefirst author was the instructor of the course in both treatment and control groupsin this study. The purpose was to eliminate the potential impact of instructors’different teaching styles. However, one might wonder whether being taught bythe same instructor was the cause of the lack of significant differences betweenthe treatment and control groups in this study. For this reason, in a further studyCT-based instruction might be implemented in similar groups for the same courseby different instructors, and instructor effects might be compared.

AcknowledgementsThis paper is a part of the first author’s dissertation submitted to the Graduate School ofSocial Sciences of Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey, in partial fulfilmentof the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department ofEducational Sciences and carried out under the second author’s supervisor. She wishes tothank her advisor Associate Professor Dr Ahmet Ok and her committee members: AssociateProfessor Dr Gary M. Grossman from Arizona State University, Professor Dr Ali Yıldırım,Professor Dr Soner Yıldırım, and Assistant Professor Dr Yes�im C�apa Aydın from METU fortheir contributions.

Notes on contributorsBanu Yücel Toy is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Commerce and TourismEducation in Gazi University, Turkey. Her research focuses on teacher education, curriculumevaluation, and critical thinking. She is also interested in research methodology.

Ahmet Ok is an associate professor at the Department of Educational Sciences in MiddleEast Technical University, Turkey. He is specialised in teacher education, teacher quality,quality standards and accreditation, curriculum evaluation and environmental education. Hisrecent projects focus on environmental education and learning environment quality.


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Appendix 1

Strategy list: 35 dimensions of critical thought

Affective StrategiesS.1. Thinking independentlyS.2. Developing insight into egocentricity or sociocentricityS.3. Exercising fair-mindednessS.4. Exploring thoughts underlying feelings and feelings underlying thoughtsS.5. Developing intellectual humility and suspending judgmentS.6. Developing intellectual courageS.7. Developing intellectual good faith or integrityS.8. Developing intellectual perseveranceS.9. Developing confidence in reason

Cognitive strategies-Macro AbilitiesS.10. Refining generalizations and avoid oversimplificationsS.11. Comparing analogous situations: transferring insights to new contextsS.12. Developing one’s perspective: creating or exploring beliefs, arguments, or theoriesS.13.Clarifying issues, conclusions, or beliefsS.14. Clarifying and analysing the meanings of words or phrasesS.15. Developing criteria for evaluation: clarifying values and standardsS.16. Evaluating the credibility of sources of informationS.17. Questioning deeply: raising and pursuing root or significant questionsS.18. Analysing or evaluating arguments, interpretations, beliefs, or theoriesS.19. Generating or assessing solutionsS.20. Analysing or evaluating actions or policiesS.21. Reading critically: clarifying or critiquing textsS.22. Listening critically: the art of silent dialogueS.23. Making interdisciplinary connectionsS.24. Practicing Socratic discussion: clarifying and questioning beliefs, theories, orperspectives

S.25. Reasoning dialogically: comparing perspectives, interpretations, or theoriesS.26. Reasoning dialectically: evaluating perspectives, interpretations, or theories

Cognitive strategies-Micro AbilitiesS.27. Comparing and contrasting ideals with actual practiceS.28. Thinking precisely about thinking: use critical vocabularyS.29. Noting significant similarities and differencesS.30. Examining and evaluating assumptionsS.31. Distinguishing relevant from irrelevant factsS.32. Making plausible inferences, predictions, or interpretationsS.33. Evaluating evidence and alleged factsS.34. Recognising contradictionsS.35. Exploring implications and consequences

Source: Paul et al. (1989, 56)


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A BPP Learning and Teaching Working Paper

PUBLISHER – BPP UNIVERSITY COLLEGEPLACE OF PUBLICATION – LONDON

© BPP 2013ISBN – 9781 4453 5456 9

Reflective Practice: a non‐negotiable requirement for an effective educator

Simon Paul Atkinson BPP University College

John Irving BPP University College

This paper identifies the very personal characteristics of reflective practice and the importance of emotion in that process. It explores the nature of reflection served by solitary deliberation and engagement in communities of practice and identifies the individual attributes of reflection as defined by Schön and Brookfield (Brookfield, 1995; Schön, 1986). Finally, this paper provides a review of several reflective models and suggests that personal transformation and reflective practice must form the basis for effective teaching.

It is impossible to become, and continue to be, an effective teacher without a personal commitment to reflective practice. The very notion of reflection is a contested one; reflection has become a desirable commodity and a necessary skill; for others it is a symbol of profundity. But whilst reflection has been given many different meanings, using these meanings has spawned multiple interpretations. Should we be cautious in addressing the question of reflection and cognisant of the things we don't know or is the ability to reflect innate? Can teachers support students to reflect or does it just need time? Indeed, how do we know when reflection occurs? How do we guide reflection, focus it, harness it and reuse it? Do people reflect about things in the same way? Is reflection culturally dependent?

In this paper we will not attempt to answer all of these questions, instead seeking to address perhaps a more modest goal of offering a limited contextual definition of reflection in the context of professional practice and suggesting how faculty can benefit from engagement with it. We do so in the hope that readers will, however, seek to answer the very relevant and pressing questions above for themselves within the sphere of their own practice.

In the closing years of the nineteenth century, John Dewey advocated that the learner should be actively involved in identifying problems, contemplating solutions, acting upon them and analysing the process. For Dewey, the reflection on the solution process meant being actively involved in problem solving, learning was about solving the problem or returning to the reflective process with a view to solving the problem (Dewey, 1896). This foundational definition of reflection is still useful today; novice and experienced faculty alike are engaged in a constant process of problem‐solving, with that problem solving revolving around their own practice. This is not to suggest that each

individual's practice is ‘a problem’, but rather that the process of enhancement is inherently one of identifying an aspect of practice warranting improvement and the articulation of that aspect of practice as a problem to be solved. The reflective practitioner can be expected to see their practice in terms of this process and to do so in a transparent, self‐evident and self‐aware way.

The reflective process, an act of self‐deliberation in order to make sense of practice, involves the use of previous experience and contextual awareness. This means both the development of the mechanism for recording or remembering experience, of valuing it as accumulation of ‘reflective assets’ and developing the affective skills to match and marry this repertoire to the contemporary situation.

This deliberative stage of the reflective process need not be solitary. Whilst Donald Schon’s influential work has focused primarily on the individual, he indicates also the potential value of the expert view (Schon, 1986). Reflection can be seen as a foundational skill‐enabling faculty to articulate personal philosophy of teaching which can be used as the basis for one's own development and an understanding of others belief systems (colleagues and students). Reflection can also serve as a benchmark to measure and observe others' professional practices, as a fixed point around which an individual can relate to the ethical understanding of teaching. The intricacies of these deliberative stages are also addressed in Brookfield's four critical lenses, described below (Brookfield, 1995).

It is perhaps because the concept of ‘reflection’ remains contested that the United Kingdom Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) does not make overt reference to ‘reflection’. Instead its Professional Values espouse the use of ‘evidence‐informed approaches’ and it describes the need to acknowledge the broad contexts in which professional practice occurs. Its areas of activity describe the need to ‘develop’ and engage in multifaceted continuing professional development. Its core knowledge includes awareness of ‘appropriate methods’, and methods for ‘evaluating effectiveness’ as well as the term ‘awareness’. The word reflection does not appear anywhere in the UKPSF (Higher Education Academy, 2011).

However nuanced our concept of reflection is, there is no doubt that the objective of the reflective practitioner is to be able to objectively view, to evaluate and to act on one’s own practice based on previous experience and deliberative actions. Our contention is that in order to be an effective practitioner, one must be a reflective practitioner.

A PERSONAL LANDSCAPE FOR REFLECTION: EMOTIONS AND CONTEXT

Much of the literature on reflection suggests that the individual is somehow neutral, autonomous and already self‐aware. Consequently, reflection might be seen as a generic skill applicable to many different contexts. However, individuals do not operate outside of a discernible context and the socially mediated and socially situated nature of all human activity suggests that awareness of context is essential to an awareness of self.

The difference between being able to perform a reflective act, as simple as recalling an event and suggesting how future action may differ, and engaging or enacting in reflection as a process, is worthy of attention. Emotions play a vital part in the development of faculty, their awareness of self and their ability to translate the purpose of learning to the context of learning. Faculty bring into their classrooms not only the emotional state of any given day but also a repertoire of emotion

derived from both their own formal educational history, however distant, and their emotional relationships to students, past and present. Understanding the relationship between personal emotions, their relationship to belief systems, assumptions and attitudes, and the professional and cultural context in which teaching is taking place is often taken for granted, when in fact it is both complex and critical.

Quality assurance systems often pay little heed to the affective dimensions of teaching and yet most practitioners in their personal reflections find it difficult to disentangle ‘the head from the heart’. Simply because the emotional state is not measured in any evaluation of a learning experience by students does not make an understanding of it any less important. Indeed, the emotional state is not an uncommon feature in peer observation of teaching, although often described in restrained emotional terms as befits our cultural limitations, but nonetheless addressing issues such as confidence, empathy, engagement and using terms such as friendly, supportive and caring, all of which are descriptions of emotional states.

Whereas teaching might be perceived by many educational managers as the development and deployment of skills, most faculty regard teaching as a personal, emotional act and frequently cite issues of care, relationships, and even concepts of social justice. In education for the professions there is a broader emotional context in which faculty perceive themselves as responsible for nurturing entire generations of future professionals. There is frequently a tension between a managerial definition of teaching quality focused around standards and instructional technique and an emotional definition of teaching dominated by concepts of nurturing and care.

A professional is able to overcome this false dichotomy and to bring together the personal affective condition and the contextual limitations which might be imposed. Becoming a reflective practitioner is not entirely about an awareness of one's personal emotional state in the classroom but rather an awareness of reflection, deliberation and action within a cultural and institutional context. Carol Rodgers outlines Dewey’s notion of reflection as ‘a complex, rigorous, intellectual and emotional enterprise’ in which open‐mindedness, personal responsibility and wholeheartedness should be present (Rodgers, 2002, p. 844). Schön also advocates an openness to emotions such as ‘surprise, puzzlement, or confusion’ (Schön, 1986, p. 86).

The relationships between students and teachers are clearly critical both for the professional well‐being of the teacher and the learning efficacy of the classroom. Positive relationships between students and teachers often centre on teachers’ notions of feeling comfortable, of being ‘a friend’ and of being personally available. Managing those emotional relationships can become difficult when students bring faculty into personal situations in which they become emotionally engaged but over which they have no control (Lev, Kolassa & Bakken, 2010).

Peter Kugel identified two distinct phases in a novice teacher’s development as an effective practitioner, from an emphasis on teaching to an emphasis on learning (Kugel, 1993). The emphasis on learning itself sub‐divides into three stages, from a focus on self, to a focus on subject and finally a focus on the student. Only once the practitioner has achieved this focus on the students can they move into the second phase with an emphasis on learning. Here too, Kugel suggests a three‐step progression with the student as receptive to the teacher, the student as an active participant in their learning and finally the students as an independent learner.

Moving ‘beyond’ oneself, beyond the focus on teaching, can be a significant challenge. An affective concern for many teachers is their perception that the teaching that they are required to support is less than meaningful. Teachers’ belief about the meaningful nature of teaching has a profound effect on their practice; teachers who find note‐taking dull may make every effort to avoid it in their practice to the detriment of those students who find this a useful form of learning support. Conversely, a teacher may replicate their own teaching experience to the detriment of those with alternative learning preferences (Riding, 2005).

Another important affective dimension is the desire on the part of many teachers to make a personal impact. The individual may have both admirable intent and profound conviction, but an awareness of the motivation for wishing to make a personal impact is often absent. Yet the desire to affect others, to impact on others’ lives in profound ways, is not one to be taken lightly. Many teachers set very high expectations of themselves and are intolerant of colleagues who appear to do less than them.

There is also an interesting relationship between professional self‐awareness and confidence. The practitioner able to draw on a repertoire of experience and act accordingly has a confidence that many novices do not, not because their technical skills are necessarily greater but because they have self‐assurance in their ability to respond to the unforeseen.

REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONERS AND COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

There are a number of terms used to describe collegial support in the context of the University, from the term ‘collegiality’ to the popular concept of communities of practice and the notion of ‘intellectual neighbours’. Developing professional contexts that blend the educational and the external professional values and culture is particularly difficult.

Situated learning emphasizes the relationship between the social context of learning and the subjectivity of learning itself (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Situatedness has become synonymous with notions of authenticity, however we may choose to question this relationship. Situatedness suggests that any activity, such as reflection, exists within a social context and makes use of socially mediated tools and practices that exist within that context. Personal reflection is no less personal for being situated within the professional context. By definition, professional reflection is that which takes place within a defined professional context. It is, therefore, the nature of this professional context that requires some attention. At its most basic it might be seen as one’s place of work, one’s immediate colleagues and this year’s assigned cohorts.

It is also useful, we believe, to consider other definitions of the broader social context that might inform our own personal appreciation of the breadth and depth of the professional context in which we reflect. Etienne Wenger describes the communities of practice in which the professional self develops (Wenger, 1999), Bruno Latour explores the concept of the actor‐network, in which the individual practitioner is an integrated but not wholly autonomous actor (Latour, 2005) and Yrjö Engeström proposes complex inter‐related activity systems in which there is a constant dialogue between myriad parties (Engestrom, Miettinen, & Punamaki, 1999). More recently, and with reference increasingly to the digital environment, James Paul Gee discusses situated learning evolving within new complex digital landscapes in the context of affinity groups (Gee, 2008). Whichever interpretation of the collective social structure one chooses as most suitable to one’s

own understanding, a common theme emerges of individuals coming together in some shared, conscious or unconscious, co‐construction of context.

In the context of professional education, in which as educators we retain a close affiliation, sometimes a parallel identity, to our professional communities, perhaps the most useful definition of this collective social culture is the concept of the discourse community. As a concept, this allows for a discourse to cross the boundaries between a profession in its educational form and a profession in its practice (Ovens & Tinning, 2009). A discourse community does not only define the relative roles and relationships of individuals but also the ideas and theories that provide shared meaning to actions. Discourse community in this sense might bridge different communities of practice. A lawyer who also identifies themselves as an educator effectively ‘speaks two community languages’, and the ability to transition between these different languages is a skill not to be underestimated.

The nature of the individual and their reflection, and discourse community and its collective reflections, are distinct and complementary. The individual might best understand his or her own process with reference to a shared community perspective. Whilst this risks a perpetuation of existing inequalities and prejudices within any given discourse community, it also provides the individual with the most evident of situated experience. Discourse community that is open to challenge and reflection might also benefit from the dissension inherent in counter‐reflections. The issue of conformity is also pertinent for those new to reflection, and those seeking to enter into a discourse community, as there is always the risk that individuals enact reflection in order to suit the social context in which they are situated, to distort their reflection in order to belong.

It is possible that the affective dimension defines the boundary between training and teaching. Communicating emotionally decontextualized information could be said to characterise many aspects of training. Teaching is recognisably different, combining not only the development of knowledge but also the cultivation of the individual. Where training may be seen to impart, teaching seeks to transform.

BROOKFIELD’S FOUR CRITICAL LENSES AND THE REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONER

Stephen Brookfield argues that excellent teachers are those who continue to refine a very personal ‘authentic voice’, suggesting that this instils both value and dignity in teaching practice. A continuous process of self‐critical reflection produces a confidence that is the foundation to inspirational teaching and the basis for sustained achievement of teaching goals. As a consequence, Brookfield believes, students themselves become critically reflective (Brookfield, 1990).

Brookfield’s four critical lenses provide multiple, distinctly different, vantage points from which to review practice. The autobiographical, student view, collegial (peer) perspective, and the scholarship of teaching and learning, present four distinct but complementary perspectives. The autobiographical lens, typified by the creation of the personal teaching philosophy and maintenance of the teaching log, provides the basis for much of the reflective process advocated by Brookfield. Exploring previous experiences as a learner and relating that to the experience of being a teacher ensures that faculty ‘become aware of the paradigmatic assumptions and instinctive reasonings that frame how we work’ (Brookfield, 1995, p. 30).

It is important to go beyond self‐reflection and to draw on different perspectives that inform, strengthen and provide validity for a more holistic reflection on the teaching process. Student

evaluations of their learning experience, particularly those garnered during the course of the module rather than as end of module reviews, provide an invaluable insight into the effectiveness of the learning being offered. Student evaluation also occurs through every encounter in the form of natural feedback and responsiveness to learning opportunities and the attentive teacher draws on this unconscious evaluation to inform their practice. For Brookfield, it is this student perspective that reveals ‘those actions and assumptions that either confirm or challenge existing power relationships in the classroom’ (1995, p. 30). In a professional education context, the negotiation of these power relationships is often critical to the effectiveness of learning and students’ comfort and sense of safety in the learning environment is an important characteristic.

Many teachers will engage with these two lenses, the autobiographical and the student, as part of self‐aware practice. They may also engage with the third, the collegial lens, in the form of formalised peer review of teaching. However, the formality of such processes risks undermining their true value, as it is through dialogue with peers that one is able to highlight hidden assumptions about one’s own practice. Identifying shared assumptions, and misassumptions, is an important part of this peer perspective, as Brookfield suggests it is through observing others that teachers might realise ‘idiosyncrasy failings are shared by many others who work in situations like ours’ (1995, p. 36). In addition to peer observation, the routine processes of course review, team marking, programme evaluation and other opportunities for training and development, all offer valuable insights into one’s own practice.

For many practitioners, it is the fourth lens that appears the least accessible. Scholarly literature on higher education can seem alien to the discipline and institutional context of many practitioners. This is particularly true to those in professional education where the stress may be on professional identities outside education, their ‘first language’ community. However, Brookfield suggests that teachers who undertake scholarly research, presentation and publication develop an advanced vocabulary that describes, and comes to support, their teaching practice in such a way that it provides an important context for this critical fourth perspective.

DONALD SCHON AND THE REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONER

Donald Schön has made a significant impact on the debate about both the process of reflective practice and its impact on organisations and learning cultures. Much of his early work, from the 1970s onwards, was concerned with organisational learning and focused around collective notions of practice and response. His later work introduced concepts such as double loop learning and the notion of differentiation between reflection‐on‐action, taken retrospectively, and reflection‐in‐action as something reflecting mastery of self‐aware practice.

Donald Schön has provided significant insights into the development of notions of the learning society. As society has changed to allow for increasing proportions of free time and there have been rapid changes in how occupations were fulfilled, it is perhaps unsurprising that society perceives specialists and generalists, and the learning evolution of both, in new ways.

The loss of the stable state means that our society and all of its institutions are in continuous processes of transformation. We cannot expect new stable states that will endure for our own lifetimes. We must learn to understand, guide, influence and manage these transformations. We must make the capacity for undertaking them integral to ourselves and to our institutions. We must, in other words, become adept at learning. We must become able not only to transform our institutions, in response to changing situations and requirements; we must invent and develop institutions which are ‘learning systems’, that is to say, systems capable of bringing about their own continuing transformation. The task which the loss of the stable state makes imperative, for the person, for our institutions, for our society as a whole, is to learn about learning. What is the nature of the process by which organizations, institutions and societies transform themselves? What are the characteristics of effective learning systems? What are the forms and limits of knowledge that can operate within processes of social learning? What demands are made on a person who engages in this kind of learning?

(Schön, 1973, pp. 28–29)

Schön’s relevance is, therefore, not only to the individual process of reflection but also that taking place to counter the ‘dynamic conservatism’ of institutions, including the professions. There is a delicate balance between the preservation of identity and values, shared by the members of the profession, and the need for constant renewal. The way in which organisations and institutions ‘learn’ in part defines their ability to transform and evolve, to remain contemporary. Schön identifies innovation as one example of how a learning organisation differs from the classical model, citing the change from the classical concept of innovation as a product or technique to its perception as a functional system. He identifies how fixed patterns of leadership move in learning organisations towards shifting centres of leadership. The transformation is one in which institutions previously defined by the scope of the resource and energy at their centre evolve resources and energy limited only by the technology that supports infrastructure (Schön, 1973, p. 168).

This evolving stress on networks and infrastructure foreshadows the network theory work of Manuel Castells in 1980s’ sociology (Castells, 1996) and twenty years later the Connectivism learning theories of George Siemen (Siemens & Conole, 2011). This stress on networks has impacted on the way in which individuals see themselves, on the interrelationships between teacher and student. Learning is redefined as being not solely an individual pursuit or even an individual within a social collective, but a very public and social experience. It is the social system itself that is capable of learning through a process of constant identity renewal.

In collaboration with Chris Argyris, Schön explored the individual’s role in organisational learning by redefining the process of professional effectiveness. They suggested that individuals possessed mental maps of how to respond, plan, implement and review their actions in any given situation. Rather than act upon espoused theory, individuals in fact reacted according to predetermined notions of effective behaviour. These frames of reference, as Mezirow would later describe them (Mezirow, 2000, p. 16), are difficult to change and Argyris and Schön sought to illustrate just how difficult by dissecting these durable espoused theories.

Their notion of the difference between single loop learning, where goals and strategies are taken for granted, where the emphasis is merely on the incremental enhancement of established technique,

and double loop learning where the frame of reference and the learning systems that underlie those techniques are questioned, is a simple but powerful idea. Rather than having to go through a full cycle of planning, acting and reflecting as described in the reflective processes of Dewey and Kolb (Dewey, 1997; Kolb, 1984), the notion of double loop learning suggested that reflecting critically at any time on theory in action, or pre‐existing frames of mind, would bring enhancements.

Donald Schön extended this idea of abstract reflection by differentiating between reflection‐on‐action and reflection‐in‐action. Reflection‐in‐action, referred to in the vernacular as ‘thinking on your feet’, may seem self‐evident and yet for Schön the way in which new understandings are created in the moment is significant.

The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour. He carries out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation. (Schön, 2009, p. 68)

One must be aware of one’s own espoused theories in order to be able to engage with them in the moment, to draw on our repertoire of previous experience in comparable moments, in order to act, to reflect, in that very same moment. Criticisms of this differentiation between reflection‐on‐action and reflection‐in‐action centre on the notion of time, whether in fact there is time in the moment to truly reflect. Practitioners, however, are able to describe the process of thinking on their feet and often are able to articulate the reasons why they made particular decisions in response to an unanticipated event. The notion of reflection in action can be criticised for underestimating the adaptability of a repertoire of experience. The ability to deploy a variation on a previous experience certainly involves intellectual processes but this may not constitute what Schön calls reflection‐in‐action.

Despite the inadequacies of the research base to Schön’s model of reflection, there is clearly a difference between the way individuals relate to an event after it has occurred and how they respond during the event itself. This difference between the on‐action and in‐action is surely worthy of deeper consideration. Professional practice requires not simply that individuals have the ability to be able to perform in the moment in a versatile and appropriate way, but also that they are able to articulate for others that process.

MODELS OF REFLECTION

Recent work by Del Carlo and colleagues has explored the relationship between qualitative research methods in education and teachers’ reflective practices (Carlo, Hinkhouse, & Isbell, 2010). This work provides a useful summary of several of the different models of reflection that exist in the literature and which might be used to guide the reflective practitioner.

Technical reflection is largely behavioural, focused on skills acquisition measured against predetermined notions of best practice. Reflections on observation carried out superficially tend to focus on this technical performance and, whilst it is certainly useful to be aware of external definitions of best practice against which one might position oneself, technical reflection risks being limited to others’ perception of quality rather than one’s own.

Reflection‐in‐action and reflection‐on‐action are, as we have seen, terms introduced by Donald Schön and seek to move the practitioner beyond a reflection on technical performance and open up both issues of context and consequence. Reflection‐on‐action, best carried out immediately following a teaching engagement, most frequently involves a diary or journal reflection on a specific lesson or class with a view to identifying key points against a personal set of reflective criteria. Reflection‐in‐action follows the same reflective process but occurs during rather than after the teaching episode. Whilst the former allows for future actions to be modified, the latter ensures that modifications are made in the moment. Whilst there is still an acknowledgement of externally validated notions of technical excellence, the emphasis is on personal values, personal experience, and contextualised knowledge. Every individual’s experience as a teacher differs and so the measure of reflection is internal rather than external.

Drawing in part on the tradition of activity theory and actor network theory, personalistic reflection is concerned with the direct relationship between teachers’ actions and student response, and students’ actions and teacher response. This requires teachers to have a significant understanding of their own epistemological beliefs, where they believe knowledge is made, resides, and under what circumstances it has authority, as well as an appreciation of the alternative perspectives that may be held by their students. Such reflection requires an examination of self‐identity and an appreciation, and empathy, for the realities of students’ identities, which is often problematic in mass education. An increasing appreciation of the diversity of the student body at a time of increasing student mobility and globalisation of higher education certainly provides teachers with an opportunity to reflect on their own beliefs in the light of different, alternative, conceptions of learning and self‐awareness.

Educational literature also posits the notion of critical reflection as being relevant to the practitioner. Much of the focus for critical reflection is on the political and social dimensional deriving much of its substance from political philosophy. It extends personalistic reflection by reaching beyond the personal and immediate social milieu, and encompassing broader concepts such as social class, gender and ethnicity with the review to establishing socially just educational practices.

In both personalistic reflection and critical reflection, there is a stress on reaching beyond self and to leverage empathy as a powerful reflective instrument. However, whilst useful and effective in educational research, this process has less immediate impact on individual practitioners. A more useful and broader concept of reflection perhaps typified by Brookfield, is the notion of deliberative reflection in which numerous sources of information, from different expert viewpoints, are used by the teacher to enhance their practice. As well as the teacher’s own values and beliefs, the student voice, the collegial voice and scholarship are all heard. Whilst the immediate ‘solution’ may be less easily discernible amongst these multiple voices, the richness of the reflection develops a sustainable and adaptable repository of experience (See Table 1).

Table 1 – Models of reflection

Type Content of reflection Criteria for quality reflection

Technical General teaching behaviours based on research on teaching – ‘good practice’

Matching one’s own performance to external notions of ‘good practice’

In‐ and on‐action

One’s own personal teaching performance Decisions based on one’s own unique immediate situation

Deliberative Range of teaching concerns including self, syllabus, teachings strategies, students evaluation and response and peers, and organization of the classroom

Consideration of competing viewpoints and research findings

Personalistic One’s own personal growth and relationships with students

Listening to and trusting one’s own inner voice and the voices of others

Critical Social, moral and political dimensions of Learning Contexts

Judging the goals and purposes of Learning in light of ethical criteria such as social justice and equality of opportunity

(Valli, 1997, p.75)

CONCLUSION

BPP University College has designed its Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Education around four 15‐credit modules aligned to this model of professional reflection; each module in turn stressing one of Brookfield’s four critical lenses. Whilst several developmental instruments return throughout the modules, most notably peer observation of teaching as observer and observee, there is a development from a foundational module focused heavily on self‐reflection and context (autobiographical lens), to a module focused on assessment and feedback with reference to the broader political and institutional context (peer lens), a module emphasising the student learning experience from the student’s perspective (student lens) and a final module focused on practice and evidence‐based scholarship (scholarship lens). This embodiment of theory in course design is intended to provide a transparent and intellectually coherent approach to which future course modifications can refer.

It is also intended to support practitioners from one professional discourse (those familiar with one professional language) to access another. It is our institution’s stated goal to challenge and disrupt the status quo in education and the principles of critical reflection are, therefore, relevant to our reflective processes. We should be thinking about social justice, equality of opportunity and our role in different power dynamics. To have any hope of doing so we must move beyond the ‘technical reflection’ typified by end of module satisfaction surveys, become effective reflectors on‐action and in‐action and become deliberative reflectors. To be an effective educator in a complex of different professional contexts, in the ‘multi‐discourse’ of an international higher education sector, we must be effective reflective practitioners.

We would go further and say, in our considered view, that reflective practice is a non‐negotiable requirement for any effective educator.

REFERENCES

Brookfield, S. (1990). The skillful teacher: on technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass Publishers.

Brookfield, S. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass.

Carlo, D. D., Hinkhouse, H., & Isbell, L. (2010). Developing a Reflective Practitioner Through the Connection Between Educational Research and Reflective Practices. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 19(1), 58–68.

Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Dewey, J. (1896). The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology. Psychological Review, 3, 357–370.

Dewey, J. (1997). How we think. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications.

Engestrom, Y., Miettinen, R., & Punamaki, R.‐L. (1999). Perspectives on Activity Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gee, J. P. (2008). Social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. Routledge.

Higher Education Academy. (2011). The UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in higher education. York.

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice‐Hall.

Kugel, P. (1993). How Professors Develop as Teachers. Studies in Higher Education, 18(3), 315–328.

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor‐Network‐Theory. Oxford University Press, USA.

Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.

Lev, E. L., Kolassa, J., & Bakken, L. L. (2010). Faculty mentors’ and students’ perceptions of students’ research self‐efficacy. Nurse Education Today, 30(2), 169–174.

Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning as transformation : critical perspectives on a theory in progress. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass.

Ovens, A., & Tinning, R. (2009). Reflection as situated practice: A memory‐work study of lived experience in teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(8), 1125–1131.

Riding, R. (2005). Individual Differences and Educational Performance. Educational Psychology, 25(6), 659–672.

Rodgers, C. (2002). Defining Reflection: Another Look at John Dewey and Reflective Thinking. Teachers College Record, 104(4), 842–866.

Schön, D. A. (1973). Beyond the Stable State: Public and Private Learning in a Changing Society. W. W. Norton & Co.

Schön, D. A. (1986). Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions (1st ed.). Jossey‐Bass.

Schön, D. A. (2009). The reflective practitioner : how professionals think in action. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Siemens, G., & Conole, G. (2011). Connectivism: Design and Delivery of Social Networked Learning. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 12(3), i–iv.

Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice : learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press.

AUTHORS

Simon Paul Atkinson

Simon is the Associate Dean of Learning & Teaching at BPP University College. Simon has over 18 years experience in United Kingdom and New Zealand educational development and educational technology roles at the London School of Economics, Massey University New Zealand, the University of Hull, the Institute for Educational Technology (Open University) and Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand. Simon has delivered international keynotes and invited workshops on learning design, including his own SOLE model and toolkit, on the use of video in teaching through the Dial‐e Project and on the use of educational taxonomies. He is on the international editorial board of the Open University’s Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME).

John Irving

John has worked for BPP for 14 years after spending 15 years practising as a solicitor at associate and partner level. John is currently working for the Learning and Development Team. He has taught across a wide range of disciplines and subjects in the University and was Head of Training and Development for the Legal Practice Course (‘LPC’) from 2002 – 2011. He designed and delivered a comprehensive training and development programme for all LPC tutors during this period including an innovative internal induction training programme for tutors. This programme has also been successfully adapted and delivered annually by John since 2010 to train tutors at the Law School of Tanzania. John is a qualified coach and mentor with extensive coaching experience in business, education and sport in Britain, Europe and Africa. He has coached and mentored managers, students, tutors and teams. John is also a member of the Association for Coaching, the European Mentoring and Coaching Council and the Institute of Leadership and Management.

Investigating critical thinking and knowledge construction in an

interactive learning environment

Qiyun Wanga*, Huay Lit Wooa and Jianhua Zhaob

aLearning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group, National Institute of Education,Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; bSchool of Information Technology in Education,South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China

(Received 22 August 2007; final version received 5 September 2007)

Critical thinking and knowledge construction have become essential competenciesfor people in the new information age. In this study, we designed an interactivelearning environment involving three forms of interaction: individual reflections,group collaboration and, class discussions. The purpose of this study was toinvestigate the extent to which the three forms of interaction promoted students’critical thinking and knowledge construction. Seventeen students at NationalInstitute of Education of Singapore participated in this study. Their reflectionsand discussions were analyzed by following a content analysis approach. Resultsshowed that writing reflections had potential to promote critical thinking but, notall students thought critically. Knowledge construction in groups and in classdiscussions happened at lower levels. This paper presents the conceptualframework, design specifications and evaluation results of the ILE. Implicationsof the results are discussed.

Keywords: constructivist; critical thinking; interactivity; knowledge construction;weblog

Introduction

Critical thinking and collaborative knowledge construction have become essentialcompetencies for people in the new information age and the global economy society(Mason, 2007). The rapid growth of information and communication technology(ICT) has made an increasing amount of information available. People must havecritical thinking skills so that they can analyze and compare information, constructarguments, respect diverse perspectives and, view phenomena from different points(cf. MacKnight, 2000). Also, solving highly complex real life problems requires avariety of knowledge. It is, hence, hardly possible for a single person to solve acomplicated problem. People must learn how to work together so that they can solvethe problems and construct meaningful knowledge.

ICT has the potential to engage students in a range of activities that contribute tocritical thinking development and collaborative knowledge construction. TheMinistry of Education (MOE), in Singapore, initiated the Masterplan as a blueprint

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Interactive Learning Environments

Vol. 17, No. 1, March 2009, 95–104

ISSN 1049-4820 print/ISSN 1744-5191 online

� 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/10494820701706320

http://www.informaworld.com

for ICT integration in education. One of its key objectives has been to help studentsdevelop critical thinking skills and meaningful knowledge with the use of ICT(Ministry of Education, 1997). In this study, a web-based interactive learningenvironment (ILE) was designed to help students in the National Institute ofEducation (NIE) to achieve this objective. This paper describes the conceptualframework, design specifications and, evaluation results of the ILE. Implications ofthe results and issues involved in the study are discussed.

Conceptual framework

The ILE was designed based on interactivity and constructivist learning theories,aimed at promoting students’ critical thinking and knowledge construction. Thissection will elaborate on the conceptual framework on which this study was based.

Interactivity and constructivism

Interactivity is a major construct and striking characteristic of web-based learningenvironments (Chou, 2003; Vrasidas, 2000). It is often defined as sustained, two-waycommunication between students and students or, between students and theinstructor, with the purpose of task completion or social relationship building(Gilbert & Moore, 1998; Liaw & Huang, 2000). An interactive web-based learningenvironment often involves four types of interaction: learner-content, learner-learner, learner-instructor and, learner-interface (Chou, 2003; Hillman, Willis, &Gunawardena, 1994). Learner-content interaction is a process in which learnersmake sense of course materials. It is a basic type of interaction as content is crucial inall forms (such as web-based or face-to-face) of education (Wang, 2007). Learner-learner interaction and learner-instructor interaction are the communicationbetween learners and peers and between learners and the instructor for informationsharing, negotiation and knowledge construction. Although learner-learner interac-tion and learner-instructor interaction may happen in different ways due to theimbalanced power and knowledge level between students and teachers, they are oftencalled social or interpersonal interaction (Liaw & Huang, 2000; Moallem, 2003).Learner-interface interaction refers to how learners use the computer programinterface to communicate with the course content or people (Lohr, 2000).

These types of interaction are important for an effective learning environment.Learner-content interaction, learner-learner interaction, and learner-instructorinteraction are more related to pedagogical design, whereas learner-interfaceinteraction focuses more on human-computer interface design. Pedagogical designis undoubtedly critical for an effective learning environment. Interface design,however, provides fundamental support for a usable computer-based learningenvironment as all other types of interaction are implemented through theinteraction with the interface.

Learner-content, learner-learner, and learner-instructor interaction match wellthe beliefs of cognitive and social constructivists. The basic belief of constructivism isthat knowledge is actively constructed by learners, who are active knowledgeconstructors rather than passive information receivers (Jonassen, 1991). Never-theless, cognitive constructivism and social constructivism hold minor distinctions(cf. Hirumi, 2002; Liaw, 2004). Cognitive constructivists believe students constructknowledge individually based on their prior experience and newly acquired

96 Q. Wang et al.

information. Learner-content interaction (for instance, in a way of individualreflections), therefore, plays a vital role in a cognitive constructivist learningenvironment. Socio-constructivists argue knowledge is collaboratively constructed ina social context mediated by discourse. Learning is fostered through interactiveprocesses of discussion, negotiation and sharing with others (cf. Cobb, 1994).Learner-learner interaction and learner-instructor interaction are, hence, essentialfor a social constructivist learning environment. To obtain an optimal learningcondition, an ILE preferably involves both individual interaction with content andsocial interaction with people.

Critical thinking and knowledge construction

As a pervasive academic term, critical thinking is ‘seldom clearly or comprehensivelydefined’ (Petress, 2004, p. 461). Many definitions of critical thinking can be found inliterature. For example, Ennis (1987) defined critical thinking as reasonable andreflective thinking skills that focused on deciding what to believe or do. He furtherclaimed that the skills associated with critical thinking could be learned independentlyof specific subjects and, could be transferred from one domain to another. Morerecently, Scriven and Paul (2003) claimed that critical thinking was an intellectuallydisciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing,synthesizing and evaluating information. These definitions imply that criticalthinking basically involves: (i) a set of skills, such as analyzing, arguing, synthesizing,evaluating and applying; and (ii) the use of these skills to guide behaviors.

Knowledge construction, based on cognitive constructivism, is a personal processof accommodating information into the existing cognitive structure. On the otherhand, it is also a social process of information sharing, negotiating, revising andagreement achieving based on social constructivism. In this paper, the latter issometimes called knowledge co-construction.

Critical thinking and knowledge construction are closely related to each other.Critical thinking plays an important role in the process of knowledge constructionand, knowledge construction mostly occurs as a result of critical thinking (Dirks,1998).

The use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) tools such as discussionforums or weblogs provides a convenient means for learners to interact with others.Much research indicates web-based learning has the potential to promote studentscritical thinking and knowledge co-construction, as the delayed feature ofasynchronous online discussions allows more time for them to reflect on variousperspectives and, make more critical and constructive contributions. In a study ofcontent analysis of online messages, Newman, Webb, and Cochrane (1995) foundthat online students were more likely to make important statements and link ideastogether. Marra, Moore, and Klimczak (2004) also found evidence of student criticalthinking in generating new ideas, clarifying information, linking ideas andjustification in another similar study.

Design of the ILE

Course description

The ILE was designed to support the students who were taking the elective course of‘Instructional multimedia design’ in NIE. It was a two-credit module for the second

Interactive Learning Environments 97

year students, who were pursuing Diplomas in Education. The course ran once aweek and lasted for 12 weeks. It consisted of nine face-to-face and three, purelyonline sessions. All face-to-face sessions were conducted in a computer lab. Duringeach lesson, the tutor explained key concepts and demonstrated on certain featuresof the multimedia authoring tool: Multimedia Builder. Next, the students had hands-on activities on the authoring tool. After each lesson, the students wrote onlinereflections as a follow-up activity. For the online sessions, the students did not cometo the computer lab for tutorials. Instead, they studied the lesson materialsindependently and participated compulsorily in the online discussions.

Seventeen students who enrolled in this elective course participated in this study.Their average age was about 22. All the students had either GCE (GeneralCertificate of Education), ‘A’ level or polytechnic qualification. They would beteaching at primary schools after graduation.

Interaction design

E-blogger (http://www.blogger.com) was chosen as a platform for hosting the ILE.Three forms of interaction were integrated into the ILE as shown in Figure 1. Thefirst form of interaction was at the individual level. The students interacted with thecourse content and wrote weekly reflections on what they learned. Figure 2 displaysa screenshot of a student’s online reflection. All reflections were graded andaccounted for 10% of their final marks.

The second form of interaction was at the group level, on which the studentsinteracted with peers. Students shared, negotiated and discussed their final projectsin groups of two. This small group collaboration was graded and carried 5% of theirmarks.

The third form of interaction occurred at the class level, targeted at fosteringwhole class interaction. The ILE involved three online discussions. The firstdiscussion was to debate whether media could influence learning. The second was tocriticize the final project proposals. Every group was required to post the finalproject proposal to the discussion forum. Each student ought to criticize at least twoproposals of other groups. The third discussion was designed to collect feedback on

Figure 1. The interactive design model for the ILE.

98 Q. Wang et al.

http://www.blogger.com

the course design and delivery. Each online discussion contained 10% of their finalmarks.

Evaluation of the ILE

This study aimed to answer the following questions:

To what extent were the individual reflections conducive to students critical thinking?

To what extent were the small group collaboration and the whole class onlinediscussions helpful for students knowledge co-construction?

The students’ reflections were coded by following the critical thinking modelproposed by Newman et al. (1995). This model lists a number of positive andnegative indicators of critical thinking in categories of relevance (R), importance (I),novelty of information (N), use of outside of knowledge (O), ambiguities (A), linkingof ideas (L), justification (J), assessment (A) and practical utility (P).

All weekly reflections of a student were complied into a Word document. Theunit of analysis was a single sentence. An applicable code was inserted at the end ofeach meaningful sentence. For example, the following passage shows coding resultsof an excerpt from a student’s reflection. A L þ code was applied to the firstsentence because it was a decision made based on the course materials; a J þ codewas applied to the second sentence since it was to further justify why the idea wasgreat; a P þ code was associated to the last sentence as it referred to practical utilityof the idea in the final project.

Figure 2. A student’s weekly reflection.


The coding procedure was as follows. We (two of the authors) coded, individually,the reflections of student S1. After completing the coding, we met and discussed therationale for each code applied and, reached a consensus on all codes used and theirrationales applied. We continued to code the reflections of the remaining studentsand conducted an inter-rater reliability check at the end. For each sentence, wecompared whether the same code was used. If not, we further exchanged rationalesfor using the codes and made an agreement on which or what codes were moreappropriate by reviewing the code definitions. We managed to make an agreementon most codes in question after discussions. In few cases where we could notconvince each other, the original codes were remained.

The same procedure was applied to the knowledge co-construction codingprocess as well, by following the Interaction Analysis Model (IAM) model(Gunawardena, Lowe, & Abderson, 1997). This model describes five successivephases of knowledge construction: (i) sharing, comparing, contributing ofinformation; (ii) discovery and explanation of dissonance or inconsistency amongparticipants; (iii) negotiation of meaning or knowledge co-construction; (iv) testingand modification; and (v) phrasing of agreement and allocations of newlyconstructed knowledge. The unit of analysis was a complete message, as originallyused by Gunawardena et al. (1997).

Results

Table 1 shows the numbers of positive and negative critical thinking indicators foundin the students’ individual reflections.

The result shows that about one-third of the students (for example S1, S3, S6, S7and S8) did think critically in the process of reflection writing. A considerably highnumber of positive codes were found and, the ratio of positive to negative indicatorswas as high as 6:1. However, the results also revealed that approximately half of thestudents (for example S2, S4, S10, S11, S12, S15, S16 and S17) did not think criticallyat all. Few positive indicators were involved in their reflections and, the ratio ofpositive to negative indicators was about 2:3 only. In particular, some students suchas S2 and S4 did not involve any positive indictors at all. In all reflections, they justsimply listed down the points learned from the lessons in a bullet format withoutfurther elaboration. The rest (for example S5, S9, S13 and S14) had moderatenumbers of positive and negative critical thinking indicators, which indicated thatthese students applied certain critical thinking skills but, did not keep thinkingcritically. The ratio of positive to negative indicators was about 3:1.

Figure 3 shows the final rating results of the online discussions and groupcollaboration. In the first online discussion, the students commonly believed thatmedia influenced learning. For this they held coherent opinions, interaction andmeaning negotiation were largely scarce. In total, 17 original messages and sevenresponses were posted. All original messages were at Phase I of the IAM model, forthese messages just explained why media influenced learning. Six responses were

Today’s lesson we have learnt how to insert a flash file to a program, which is great (Lþ). NowI can include a flash file in the project that my partner and I have planned for (Jþ). I wasthinking of putting an advertisement for dental care or the Colgate advertisement that I canfind on the website to my project, or maybe a movie file on bacteria and cavity. This isdefinitely good (Pþ).

100 Q. Wang et al.

Phase II. They showed disagreement with some ideas in the original messages. Oneresponse was Phase III for the student negotiated the comment to her originalmessage.

In the second online discussion, all groups posted their proposals and 30responses in total were given to the proposals. Further analysis showed that 27responses were Phase II, as these responses were to clarify certain issues in theproposals. The remaining three responses were Phase III, which were replies postedby the proposal authors to the received comments. In the third discussion, the tutorposted three open-ended questions and received 37 replies. All the replies were PhaseI and no further responses were given to the comments.

Table 1. Critical thinking indicators found in individual reflections.

Rater1 Rater2 Final

Student þ 7 þ 7 þ 7

S1 13 1 13 0 16 1S3 24 2 19 0 15 2S6 14 7 14 0 14 6S7 23 5 13 0 21 4S8 17 2 20 0 20 1

86 14 (6:1)

S5 11 1 9 1 8 2S9 7 6 7 6 6 3S13 9 1 9 1 9 1S14 12 8 12 2 9 4

32 10 (3:1)

S2 0 11 2 7 0 10S4 0 8 0 5 0 8S10 2 1 2 0 3 0S11 4 1 4 1 4 0S12 1 0 1 0 2 0S15 3 2 3 2 3 2S16 2 3 3 3 3 3S17 6 7 3 5 3 5

18 28 (2:3)

Total 148 66 134 33 136 52

Figure 3. Number of posts in the online discussions and group collaboration.


In addition, 23 meaningful messages were posted to the small groupcollaboration spaces, of which the majority (n ¼ 20) was at Phase I and few(n ¼ 3) messages belonged to Phase II or above. Nevertheless, further analysis of themessages brought some additional findings. One was that the students used thegroup collaboration spaces in different ways. Some groups used it to discuss andnegotiate ideas on the final projects and, the posts were similar to email messages.For instance, a member in a group wrote: ‘Hey Joyce . . . What do you think if weadd a nest metaphor or a chicken coop? We could make the interface moreinteractive . . .’. Her partner replied in the following post: ‘Hi Zu, I think that is agood idea. We can explore it further in the coming face-to-face session . . .’. Some ofthe other groups used the group collaboration spaces as a bulletin board to reporttheir project progress. They published information together. For instance, one groupwrote ‘Both Sze Hua and I are starting to work on the project, though we seem to bebehind time . . . Anyway, Sze Hua has started to work on the worksheets, the controland functions . . .’.

Discussion

The results of this study confirmed that writing online reflections had the potential topromote students critical thinking. However, the way of writing reflections onlineseemed to be a challenge. Many students have the habit of writing diaries, where theycan express freely their ideas or secrets. Usually, nobody is allowed to access itwithout permission. When the students in this course were asked to write publicreflections online as an assignment, however, they did not know how to proceed.They knew the tutor would give marks based on the reflections and other peoplemight read the reflections as well. This external intervention prevented them fromputting real thoughts into reflections (cf. Rowen, 2005).

This study revealed that knowledge co-construction only happened at the lowerphases of the IAM model. This result implied that the nature of discussion topicsgreatly influenced the depth of online discussions and knowledge construction. Adiscussion topic suitable for a group of people may not be suitable for anotherbecause of the differences in their background, interest or knowledge. For example,‘media influence learning’ is a quite controversial topic for academics. However,the students enrolled in this course took it for granted and, hence, no in-depthdiscussions happened. This study supports the notion that topics selected for onlinediscussions should be meaningful and relevant to participants, rather than toothers like the instructor. Also, the topics should be challenging and controversialenough to trigger different opinions (Hung, Tan, & Chen, 2005).

The results of this study also showed that online collaboration was redundant forsmall groups of students who often met. Little meaningful information was posted tothe small group collaboration spaces. Two reasons might contribute to this result.First, the group size (of two students) was small. Online collaboration would hardlycontinue if a member was inactive. Involving a larger number of participants, such asthree to five, might be better for group collaboration (cf. Moallem, 2003). Second,the group members met each other constantly in other classes during the courseperiod. To a certain extent, getting them to share and negotiate information onlineagain became unnecessary.

In addition, we experienced some difficulties when we were applying the criticalthinking model in this study. Although the codes in this model are ‘explicitly defined

102 Q. Wang et al.

and there is little ambiguity between codes’ (Marra et al., 2004, p. 35), it wasoften hard to judge which code should be applied to a sentence during the codingprocess (cf. Chi, 1997). We had to refer back to the code definitions so as to makea final decision. This coding process was tedious and time consuming. Thisexperience supports the notion that more computer support tools should bedeveloped to help people conveniently analyze discourse (Dringus & Ellis, 2005).Also, picking out indicators of uncritical thinking was generally harder (cf. Newmanet al., 1995). In conclusion, this study revealed that the three forms of interaction(individual reflections, group collaboration and whole class discussions) had thepotential to promote students critical thinking. However, not all students keptthinking critically when they were writing individual reflections. Group collabora-tion and class discussions contributed to students social knowledge construction.Nevertheless, the majority of postings in this study were at the lower levels only ofthe IAM model. How to promote their online discussions to upper levels needs to befurther studied.

Notes on contributors

Qiyun Wang is an assistant professor in the Academic Group of Learning Science andTechnologies (LST) at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang TechnologicalUniversity, Singapore. His research interests include online learning, interactive learningenvironments, constructivist learning and web 2.0 for teaching and learning.

Huay Lit Woo is a lecturer with the same group. His research focuses on online learning,pedagogical agent, and multimedia design.

Jianhua Zhao is a professor at School of Information Technology in Education, South ChinaNormal University in Guangzhou, China. He is the director of the Centre for the Studies ofLearning Science and Technology. His research interests include CSCL, e-learning forprofessional development, research methods, and cross-cultural communication.

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Critical Thinking in Higher Education: Unfulfilled Expectations

Mehrdad Rezaee Department of English Language, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

[email protected]

Majid Farahian

Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran [email protected]

Ali Morad Ahmadi

Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah, Iran [email protected]

Abstract Success in adult life and effective functioning in education depends among other things on

critical thinking. The present study consisted of two parts. First, critical thinking (CT) skill of a group of 68 students majoring in education in Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah Branch was evaluated. The participants, divided into two experimental and control groups, received California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) which is a 34 item Multiple-Choice test. The students in the control group were freshmen and the experimental group, junior students. To the researchers’ dismay, junior education students did not perform significantly better than did the freshman students. Using a qualitative method of research, another study was conducted to see whether the university instructors in the education department who had the responsibility of teaching different courses to the same students were aware of the principles of CT. A semi-structured interview was conducted and eight volunteering faculty members in the department of education took part in the interview. Result revealed that, although these instructors highly valued CT and were aware of its tenets, there were some constraints which did provide a situation to let the students practice CT in their classrooms, and much had to be done to help instructors implement CT in their classrooms.

Key words: critical thinking, instructors’ belief, top down educational system, inductive reasoning

1. Introduction With everyday advancement and progress in different areas of technology in the world

today, especially in the area of communication and information technology, one may assume that students must be merely trained to be able to cope with this progress in technology; however, success in adult life depends on, among other things, the capacity for (CT); purposeful and goal-directed cognitive skills or strategies that increase the likelihood of a desired outcome (Halpern, 2002). Put another way, human beings, especially students must be trained CT skills to be able to think critically for their future career (Badri and Fathi Azar, 2006). As Hongladarom (2002) holds, “It is widely recognized nowadays that CT has become a necessary ingredient in all levels of education. Educators and educational policy makers agree that one of the desirable goals of education is that students are able to think critically” (P. 1). There are some other scholars (e.g., Yeh, 2002) who put more emphasis on CT skills and suggest that success in school greatly depends on CT skills. Accordingly, extensive bodies of literature focus on CT (e.g., Browne & Keeley, 2001; Ennis, 1987; Resnick, 1987) and applications of CT in education (e.g., Henderson, 2001; O’Tuel & Bullard, 1993; Pogrow, 1990, 1994; Raths, Wasserman, Jonas, & Rothstein, 1986; and Torff, 2003). Last but not least, Paul and Nosich (1991) believe that developing CT skills in educational settings engenders intellectual empowerment. Students use their minds as thinking instruments. In fact, they change into more effective readers, writers, speakers, and listeners. These skills and abilities are also highly transferable to work place.

As to what CT is and what its role can be in education, Bauerlein (2011) notes,

M. Rezaee, M. Farahian, A. M. Ahmadi - Critical Thinking in Higher Education: Unfulfilled Expectations

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Instruction in CT is to be designed to achieve an understanding of the relationship of language to logic, which should lead to the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to reach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief. . . including an understanding of the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought (p. 2).

However, if CT is not practiced at schools, students may not have the opportunity to learn the skills from any other source. This means that they will lose the chance to get the necessary skills for their future life and career. In that case, they will not be well-prepared or even prepared enough for what is waiting for them in the future. Weil (2009) believes, “It is dangerous to neglect CT. An inability to assess information critically, especially in an Internet age of massive information and misinformation, leads to an inability to participate honestly and realistically in a democracy.” (p. 2). Too, in another part of her paper, she very briefly states, “… an absence of CT in educational settings will lead to a lack of academic rigor.” (Weil, 2009, p. 3).

Duron, et al., (2006) argued that despite the fact that thinking as a natural process is taken for granted, but “when left to itself, it can often be biased, distorted, partial, uninformed and potentially prejudiced; excellence in thought must be cultivated” (p. 160). In the same vein, Black (2005) states that students’ thinking skills can be improved if they are instructed to do so. However, it seems that instructors’ assumptions regarding the importance and practicality of CT are critical in this regard.

For the past fifteen years, the concept of instructors’ belief has come into favor in education. Based on Yin (2006), there are a number of sources which influence instructors’ traits and greatly affect the development of their personalities. The first source comes from instructors’ personal experience and understandings as an individual. Every individual develops his own understanding and interpretation of the world after birth. A second source of instructors’ beliefs is the experience each one has obtained from his own experience when he was a student. Instructors, as human beings, seldom forget the school days and the kind of education they had in schools. Sometimes these are so vivid that can be a model for an instructor’s instruction. A third origin of instructors’ beliefs is their formal knowledge acquired through training whether in in-service sessions or in instructor education centers. The fourth source of beliefs is instructors’ contexts of work. The context in which instructors practice, has a great influence on their philosophy of teaching and instructional approaches. There is a great pressure in schools on naïve instructors to conform to the practice of more experienced ones.

Lauer (2005) notes that instructors who conceive their roles as disseminators of knowledge may have different ideas about CT and the way it should be incorporated into classroom activities than those who play the role of mediators and perceive teaching as enabling students to think for themselves and identify their own duties as imparting necessary skills and strategies to students. Whenever an instructor has the role of the mediator, based on Williams and Burden (1997), interaction happens between the learner and him/her and the learner becomes an active participant of the learning process. On the contrary, when an instructor perceives his/her role as disseminator of information, there is less attention to students’ input and feedback. In such a situation the instructor is solely in control of the teaching situation.

What is CT

In traditional teaching classes, instructors often use didactic instruction in their teaching process. In this kind of instruction, information and facts are transmitted to students, the whole class is teacher-centered, and students are assumed to be passive participants (Qing, et al., 2010). As the sole authority, the instructor is entrusted with the responsibility of taking care of everything. With the minimum amount of interaction, students passively receive the lectures copy down. In this kind of instruction, students know nothing. Instructors think, while students are taught. Instructors talk, while students listen. Students have to comply with whatever instructors choose. As Duron, et al., (2006) notes, “Passive thinkers suffer from a limited and ego-centric view of the world; they answer

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questions with yes or no and view their perspective as the only sensible one and their facts as the only ones relevant” (p. 160).

Such a view of education is regarded detrimental to students’ learning since the role of learner is regarded to be passive. What has assumed to liberate students from the passive state, in the current views of education (Erkilic, 2008) is thought to be CT (Lang, n.d.).

There is no consensus regarding the exact definition of the term ‘CT’. It is often linked with creative thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making as well as inductive and deductive reasoning. However, Howe (2004) believes that terms such as creative thinking, problem-solving and decision-making refer to the circumstances in which CT may occur. Conversely, some educational philosophers argue that CT is inductive, encompassing, divergent, and creative thinking skill. Others recognize it as primarily deductive, convergent, and logical in nature. Halpern (2002) defines CT as:

Cognitive skills and strategies that increase the likelihood of a desired outcome…thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal-directed; the kind of thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions. (p. 4).

Duron, et al., (2006) identify CT as a scientific endeavor:

CT is, very simply stated, the ability to analyze and evaluate information. Critical thinkers raise vital questions and problems, formulate them clearly, gather and assess relevant information, use abstract ideas, think open-mindedly, and communicate effectively with others. (p. 160).

Based on the literature, a person who thinks critically, asks appropriate questions. In order to answer the question, he gathers relevant information, reasons logically from this information, and comes to conclusions which are reliable. Such a discipline of thinking not only enables students to be successful at school but also improves their thinking skills and thus better prepares them for after-school life.

Birjandi & Bagherkazemi (2010) hold that a critical thinker has the following features: • has a strong intention to recognize the importance of good thinking; • identifies problems and focuses on relevant topics and issues; • distinguishes between valid and invalid inferences; • suspends judgments and decisions in the absence of sufficient evidence; • understands the difference between logical reasoning and rationalizing; • is aware of the fact that one’s understanding is limited and that there are degrees of

belief; • differentiates between facts, opinions and assumptions; • watches out for authoritarian influences and specious arguments; • anticipates the consequences of alternative actions. (p. 137).

CT cannot be learned by direct teaching (Howe, 2004). However, as Howe (2004) notes, it can be incorporated into all different subject areas. Since as he maintains, “CT often requires imagining possible consequences, generating original approaches, or identifying alternative perspectives” (p. 508). Any form of human activity may involve CT. Moreover, in different cultures, people may have different conceptions of CT, though there may exist commonalities among them regarding what CT is. It seems that while there are different definitions for CT in the world, one of the purposes of education in all modern systems of education is preparing students for after-school life.

Instructors’ perception of learning has a great influence on their behaviors in the classrooms (Choy & Cheah, 2009). Instructors who are not aware of the effectiveness of CT, as well as those who cannot implement it in their classrooms may have to comply with the traditional perspectives of education and have passive students who are not active participants in the classrooms. Browne


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and Freeman (2000) hold that CT comes in different forms; however, those classrooms which encourage CT have some distinguishing features as follows:

a) Frequent questions: One of the students’ activities which most likely develops CT is a classroom in which frequent questions are asked and answered. Of course by questions Browne and Freeman (2000) do not surely mean the questions which are solely related to fact questions and therefore are part of low critical activity (Torff, 2005). According to Browne and Freeman (2000) “CT can be usefully conceptualized as … knowing how to seek answers to questions and enjoying the process of asking them at appropriate times” (p. 303). b) Developmental tension: Sometimes a little uneasiness and tension may foster learning. Thinking sometimes is accompanied with uncertainties and doubt. Such an uncertainty may encourage students to seek solutions and find appropriate ways out of the dilemma. The authors emphasize that “the process of value change depends on learners’ awareness of contradictions, tension and confusion in their current belief system” (Browne and Freeman, 2000, p. 305). c) Fascination with the contingency of conclusions Students have to learn to be open to different opinions and critically appraise the possible truth in them. Classrooms which develop CT encourage commitment, but also give the insight to students to frequently re-examine those commitments to their own ideas as they encounter new logic, evidence, and different accounts. d) Active learning: Most lecturers, especially those at universities, tend to be transmitters of body of facts or knowledge to the audience who passively are supposed to acquire those facts. However, those who favor CT have different approach and try to develop active learning in students by letting them have active participation. Too, they provide a situation in which students are affectively involved in the discussions.

CT is an important life skill for people today (Mimbs, 2005). Instructors need to model CT skills to their students and explicitly teach them to think critically. Instructors can be transformed in their teaching and students can be transformed in their learning through continued and consistent use and application of CT skills.

Since instructors are decision-makers in classrooms, and they are mainly responsible for students’ learning, exploring certain issues regarding their beliefs about CT seems to be necessary. Instructors in different contexts in Iran have valued didactic system of education and have been expected to do so. Research regarding instructors’ beliefs, especially university instructors, about CT is scarce. The impetus for this study was that one of the present researchers had a long contact with some of the PhD students of this study who in numerous informal contacts with the researcher showed to be knowledgeable in their field of study; however, based on the informal interview of the researcher with the head of department, these two instructors’ teaching was lecture-based and they gave little opportunity to students to participate in classroom discussion, seek answer to the question and even worse, they were given no chance to critically appraise what they study. A cursory look at the final exams, given by these two instructors revealed the fact that nearly all items were directed toward assessing students’ shallow learning.

1. Is there any significant difference between CT skills of Freshman and Junior education students? 2. What are university instructors’ perceptions of CT? 3. What constrains, if any, impedes instructors from implementing CT in their classrooms?

2. Method The design of the research was both qualitative and quantitative since both a test and an

interview were employed.

2.1. Participants



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To do the present study, 8 completely and well-educated university instructors (5 PhD holders and 3 PhD students) with a high command of CT skills were selected. All of the instructors were either holding PhD or they were studying for their PhD in Education. They were, to the researcher’s knowledge, very studious and knowledgeable in their related fields and in informal meetings held in the department (the researcher’s department and those of the instructors’ were in the same place) they showed to know enough about the philosophy of education and current views on education. From among these 8 instructors’ classes which had been taught for three consecutive semesters, some 36 subjects were randomly selected. Then 32 students in the department (freshmen) who were new to the university were selected randomly to form a control group.

2.2 Instruments

In this study, the authors used a 34 item multiple-choice test together with a an interview. The first one was California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) Facione & Facione

(1992). The test contains 34 multi-choice questions with a correct answer in the five CT cognitive skills domain. The reliability and validity of the test were reported to be reasonable. In fact, the test coefficient for reliability was .62. Factor Analysis indicated that CCTST has been formed from 5 factors (elements), namely: Analysis, Evaluation, Inference, Inductive and Deductive Reasoning (Khallli & Hossein Zadeh, 2003).

The second instrument was a semi structured interview based on Choy and Cheah’s (2009) questionnaire. The modified questions were as follows:

1. From your perspective, what is CT? 2. Do you think that CT happens in your classroom when you are teaching your students? If

so, how do you know? 3. How do you think you could bring about CT among students? Specifically, what are some

things you do or could do to get your students to think critically? 4. What are the problems faced by students when you are trying to teach them CT? If so

identify them. 5. Do you think you need to give all the information to your students in order for them to

learn your subject? Why and why not? 6. Do you think you would be able to implement CT into your lessons if you were required to

do so? Why and why not?

2.3. Procedures

The 34 item Multiple-Choice test was given to all of the subjects (both control group subjects who were new to the university and the experimental group subjects who have had at least three consecutive classes with the same instructor).

An interview was also held in which eight participants were required to answer a total of 6 questions. All the instructors who voluntarily took part in the study had taught some courses in the Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah branch. They accepted to answer the questions at the university and felt free to add any comments and express their ideas freely.

3. Results To see if there was any difference between the experimental and control groups regarding

their responses to the 34 item multiple-choice test (CCTST), the authors used an independent samples t-test. The results show that there was no specific difference between the mean and standard deviation of the experimental and control groups. (See Table 1).


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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of Exp. & Control Groups for Multiple-Choice Test

MCTestGroup N Mean Std. Deviation

Std. Error Mean

Experimental 36 8.39 2.309 .385 MCTest

Control 32 8.00 2.794 .494

As Table 1 shows, the mean and standard deviation of the experimental groups are 8.39 and

2.309, while the mean and standard deviation of the control group are 8.00 and 2.794. It can be seen that there is no specific difference between the two groups regarding their mean and standard deviation. Too, the researchers used an independent samples t-test to see if the difference between the two groups was meaningful. (See Table 2)

Table 2. Independent Samples t-test for Experimental & Control Groups in Multiple-Choice Test Levenes’s Test

for Equality of Variances

t-test for Equality of Means

95% Confidence Interval of Difference

F

Sig.

t

df

Sig (2-tailed)

Mean Difference

Std. Error Difference

Lower

upper

.413 .523 .628 66 .532 .389 .619 -.847 1.625

Equal Variances assumed Equal Variances Not Assumed

.621 60.356 .537 .389 .626 -.863 1.641

According to Table 2, the amount of observed t with 66 degree of freedom and 95% confidence interval of difference is .628, which is not meaningful at all. This means that there is no meaningful difference between the experimental and control groups regarding their answers to the Multiple-Choice test of CT. In other words, those students who were in the aforementioned classes for three consecutive semesters were not better than the freshmen who were new to the university in answering the MC test of CT. But, what can be the reason for this. To answer this question, we went to our second instrument, i.e., the interview. In fact, the interview was a modified form of Choy and Cheah’s (2009) questionnaire. As mentioned above, the interview consisted of six questions. Below are the responses given by the instructors to the six questions.

Instructors’ perception of CT

All instructors gave comprehensive definitions of CT. Six out of eight participants wrote that CT is the ability to ask appropriate questions about different phenomena and find answer to the questions. They noted that to find answers to the questions one has to look for relevant information and interpret the information in light of inductive and deductive reasoning. The others, who had nearly the same opinion, held that in order to be a critical thinker one has to distinguish facts from opinions. What was the distinguishing characteristic of a critical thinker to his opinion was the power of ration as they believed. One of the participants remarked that CT has to do with higher order thinking and problem solving activities.

Does CT happen in the instructors’ classroom when they are teaching their students? If so,

how do they know?

Seven respondents explicitly and implicitly indicated that they did not have CT in real sense in their own classrooms. However, as they explained whenever they ask students to look at facts from a new perspective, a sort of CT happens in the classroom. Six of the instructors were more critical of their own teaching and explained that since their teaching was predominantly lecture-based and they did not give students enough opportunity to freely express themselves and above all, since there was little democracy in the classroom, no CT occurred in the course they taught.



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How do instructors think they could bring about CT among students? Specifically what are

some of the things they did or could do to get their students to think critically?

All the participants answered that asking students to do research or project works is the best activity to encourage learners think critically and go through the stages of CT. They also emphasized posing questions to the students and asking them to find answers to the questions. Three of the participants wrote that providing a suitable environment improves the situation to have CT in the classrooms; however, they did not mention how such an environment should be established. One of the instructors answered this question by saying that establishing democracy in the classroom is very crucial for having critical thinkers. He wrote that “whenever the instructor is the sole speaker who does not allow students to express themselves, have their voice in the course, and takes the floor for the time he is in class, there is no likelihood of developing CT”. Another participant believed that students should be problem solvers, asked to seek the solution via books, internet and different sources available.

What are the problems faced by students when an instructor is trying to teach CT?

Five participants expressed that they felt a pressure to cover the content in a short time; therefore, they had to lecture in order to cover more content in a shorter time.

Two of the instructors wrote that most of their students lacked the skills of judgment and enquiry and that they had accustomed to being given the most straightforward answers by the authorities. One of these two added that if they were left to themselves, they had no ability to decide how to study on their own.

One of the respondents answered that from the first days of schooling, his students “were not taught how to think”, and they had been only “asked to cram materials in their heads for the exam”. Therefore, as he believed “they resist higher order thinking.”

Do the instructors think they need to give all the information to their students in order to

learn the subject? Why and why not?

All the participants unanimously agreed that there is no need to provide their students with all the facts and information. All identified the CT as a process of enquiry in which students have to seek the answers to the questions posed by themselves or others.

Do the instructors think they would be able to implement CT in their lessons if they were

required to do so? Why and why not?

Six out of eight participants argued that with the current state of affairs they were not able to implement CT in their classrooms. They believed that unless from the first days of schooling students are taught to think critically and solve problems, they would not to think critically. Moreover, they knew the system of education responsible for such a problem. They asserted that the curriculum is top down, assessment is based on memorization of materials, and pre-service instructor education universities do not seriously involve instructors in such a process.

Two other respondents agreed that it would be possible to incorporate CT in different degrees in their courses. As they believed such a shift toward CT may be slow and difficult but possible. They argued that such a shift could begin with instructor education centers and teaching materials. They insisted that workshops, seminars, pre-service and in-service courses for instructors can make instructors aware of the importance and process of CT.

4. Discussion and conclusion CT is of great importance in education, and it should be taught to students in all educational

settings (Black, 2005; Yeh, 2002); however, the findings of this study showed that while junior students of education were expected to be familiar with the skills of CT, it was not so at all. Thus, to find the reason, the study intended to investigate instructors’ familiarity and view regarding the


71

issue. To this aim, an interview with six questions was held with the eight instructors with the following results.

As to the first question of the interview which asked the definition of CT, it seemed that all the participants were familiar with the term. However, what is not clear is whether they were familiar with the components of CT as well as its characteristics. Furthermore, further research is needed to see if the instructors are aware of how to implement practically CT in their usual courses. Despite lack of such information for the researcher, from the answers provided by the instructors and use of terms such as low CT activities, appraisal, and scientific inquiry by the instructors, it could be understood that they were aware of the related literature.

It is evident from the answers that nearly none of the instructors believed that CT happens in their classrooms. It is not surprising that though all the participants in the study were familiar with the concept in the field, they themselves may have been subjected to the same top down educational system in which students were well informed about the theories; however, had no power to implement what they had learned in the new contexts. Based on the responses, it was clear that the instructors were compelled to cover the content. To do so, they felt that they did not have enough time to teach what they taught to be the features of CT. Although in Iranian universities instructors are somehow free to choose the books and specify the content based on the guidelines prescribed by Ministry of Science and Technology, they have to cover some pre-specified goals and objectives of the courses especially for courses which are prerequisite for other university courses.

As the instructors reported, one of the barriers which was hard to tackle was that from the first days of schooling students in Iran have learned to be passive listeners whose freedom to have voice in the classrooms is very limited. Therefore, they lacked eagerness and were reluctant to spend extra mental effort required by high level thinking. Such a way of thinking in a class as a mini-society may be due to the cultural norms in the country. Davidson (1998) points out that that CT must be clearly defined and adapted culture-wise. If CT is not valued in the society, it may be likely to meet with opposition in schools and universities. Such an attitude even has molded instructors’ expectations who would like to have everything under their control and not to overload students who prefer to be given the most straightforward information. Moreover, students in all years of schooling may already have experienced a pedagogy that rewards note taking and good recall of facts (Peirce, 1998). The consequence of such an education, as Peirce (1998) notes, is having students be more interested in the right answer than the way the answer is obtained.

It seems that instructors view CT as an activity which needs more time than the conventional methods of teaching. Perhaps, students need enough time to think about and explore the answers to the questions, raise their own questions, discover information, and construct their own models since CT as other approaches to constructivism, as Marlowe and Page (1998) note, “is about thinking and the thinking process rather than about the quantity of information a student can memorize and recite” (p. 11).

Wang (2009) notes that CT “is an ability that allows students to freely express their own ideas”. As one of the instructors mentioned, students rarely have freedom to express themselves. Of course creating a condition in which students are able to have their say and participate in the process of decision-making may help them get more involved in deep learning.

To change such a situation and implement CT, as the instructors mentioned, are not easy. As van Gelder (2004) points out, while “…it can seem quite basic, it [CT] is actually a complicated process, and most people are just not very good at it (p. 2). It needs unanimous endeavor from the side of those responsible for developing curriculum, instructor education centers to give enough practical insights to the instructors, and workshops to maintain such an attempt.

CT effectively helps students to perform well both at educational settings and in after school life. It contributes to better decision making in the social and interpersonal contexts; therefore, attempts should be made to resolve the problems and constraints encountered by instructors to teach critically.

Further research with a sample of more instructors is needed to see if the instructors’ beliefs are compatible with that of students. Instructors who took part in the study may not have



72

implemented CT only because they may have had wrong assumptions about their students’ beliefs. They even my not have been aware of the techniques to implement CT.

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level test of critical thinking skills. Insight assessment, Millbrae, CA: California Academic Press.

[13] Halpern, D. (2002). Thought and knowledge (4th ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. [14] Henderson, J. (2001). Reflective teaching: Professional artistry through inquiry (3rd ed.).

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[21] Mimbs, C. A. (2005). Teaching from the critical thinking, problem based curricular approach: Strategies, challenges, and recommendations. Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences

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[35] Williams, M., & Burden, R. L. (1997). Psychology for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Assessment�Update� •� July–August�2013� •� Volume�25,�Number�4� •� ©�2013�Wiley�Periodicals,�Inc.� •� doi:10.1002/au 7

IntroductionInstitutions of higher education have

widely embraced critical thinking (CT) as essential to student success. CT is a core concept of the general education (GE) program within undergraduate education. A fundamental assumption that underlies the implementation of CT in GE is that it is discipline-general. As discipline-gen-eral, CT is comprised of a battery of skills that “can be applied to all disciplines and subject-matter indiscriminately” (Davies 2006, 1). Consequently, Davies (2006) has argued, “general skills of CT can help us assess reasoning independent of the vagaries of the linguistic discourse we express arguments in” (1).

The pervasiveness of this model in assessment is evident when considering that the instruments recommended by the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA), the VALUE CT rubric, and com-mercial instruments all conceptualize CT as discipline-general. Questions about the generality of CT arise from evidence indicating that the distribution of test-takers’ majors influences value-added scores when using discipline-general in-struments such as the Collegiate Learning Assessment (Banta and Pike 2007).

An increasing body of research im-plies that disciplinary epistemology (Jones 2007; Moore 2011) and campus culture (Tsui 2000) inform faculty views of CT. Further, Nicholas and Raider-Roth (2011) found that faculty favored

a discipline-specific approach when as-sessing CT in the classroom. While it is good practice to make assessment a fac-ulty-owned and -driven campus activity, it is also a challenge to cultivate faculty buy-in for assessment. This problem oc-curs in part because institutional forms of assessment may not have the validity that faculty seek. Hawthorne and Kelsch (2012) found that faculty were attracted

to assessment activities that were schol-arly, authentic, contextualized, and perti-nent to their needs. This article outlines the approach used by Oklahoma State University (OSU) in developing and im-plementing a model for assessing CT in GE that is faculty-driven and reflective of approaches used in the classroom.

Current Assessment Practices in the GE Program

The General Education program at OSU is governed by two committees: the General Education Advisory Council (GEAC) and the Committee for the As-sessment of General Education (CAGE). GEAC oversees the curriculum, and CAGE leads the assessment of GE out-comes. As a participant in the VSA, the

university has adopted the Proficiency Profile test and reports outcomes using College Portrait®.

As part of an annual assessment of the GE program, samples of student work are collected from various undergraduate courses across the campus. Over the sum-mer, a multidisciplinary panel of faculty become paid raters who score each paper in small groups of two to three members.

Sampled student work serves as the basis for constructing institutional portfolios aimed at assessing intended outcomes of the GE program (e.g., CT, written com-munication, diversity).

At OSU, CT has generally been scored using a discipline-general rubric (http:// tinyurl.com/osu-ctrubric). With this rubric, scores are provided for specific aspects of CT, such as problem identification and use of supporting evidence, as well a holistic score reflecting an overall judgment about the level of critical thinking demonstrated in the student paper. Though the scoring process has changed through the years, panel members typically rate each paper individually and are then asked to reach consensus about discrepant scores within their assigned group.

Developing and Implementing a Multidisciplinary Approach to Assess CT in General EducationMark C. Nicholas, Jonathan C. Comer, Doren Recker, John D. Hathcoat

Sampled�student�work�serves�as�the�basis�for�constructing�institutional�

portfolios�aimed�at�assessing�intended�outcomes�of�the�GE�program�

(e.g.,�CT,�written�communication,�diversity).

http://tinyurl.com/osu-ctrubric

http://tinyurl.com/osu-ctrubric

8� Assessment�Update� •� July–August�2013� •� Volume�25,�Number�4� •� ©�2013�Wiley�Periodicals,�Inc.� •� doi:10.1002/au

Self-Examination of Current Assessment Approach

An examination of recent evidence has led to specific concerns about the current approach for assessing CT as an outcome of the GE program. Nicholas and Raider-Roth (2011), who conducted interviews and focus-group sessions with 17 faculty in the humanities and natural and social sciences, found that these faculty implic-itly assessed CT within disciplinary con-texts. Faculty took a faceted approach to teaching and assessing CT in an academic course, focusing on components of CT applicable to specific disciplinary content and contexts. Further, the facets of CT on which faculty focused differed according to discipline-specific epistemic criteria. For instance, faculty in the natural sciences focused on rationalistic elements of CT, while those in the humanities focused more

on aporetic, dispositional elements of CT. Faculty reported a wide variety of strate-gies to assess CT, but unanimously rejected standardized tests as a valid method.

The findings of this study were pre-sented at a faculty workshop, which generated a discussion about the compat-ibility of our existing institutional assess-ment practices and those used by faculty in the classroom. CAGE reviewed the above findings and identified the follow-ing challenges with our current approach:• While the university assesses CT, there

are no courses designated as specifi-cally focusing on CT in GE. There is an implicit assumption that faculty fo-cus on the development of CT through pedagogy and curriculum.

• A discipline-general rubric is used to uniformly assess CT in disciplinary as-signments.

• We principally assign holistic scores, whereas faculty take a more faceted ap-proach by focusing on specific assign-ment characteristics.

• CT assessment is confounded with as-sessment of written communication, but this did not figure in our analysis.

• Raters need a better understanding of assignment prompts when assessing student work.

• Disciplinary expertise of faculty-raters may influence assigned scores.Given such issues, a mismatch between

faculty and institutional approaches to CT assessment seemed apparent. It was therefore important to address these con-cerns to better align assessment practices with classroom activities and discipline-specific expectations.

A Multipronged ResponseCAGE developed a multipronged ap-

proach to address the above challenges. This approach entailed a focus on faculty development and revisiting the CT rubric.

A Focus on Faculty DevelopmentIn 2008, the (then) university provost,

in conjunction with the assessment di-rector, initiated a series of workshops to address three critical outcomes regarding GE at OSU: writing, critical thinking, and diversity. A series of three workshops over the course of an academic year, held in parallel for each outcome, brought faculty of all experience levels together to discuss, strategize, teach, assess, and develop peer networks in their efforts to improve student learning in the respective outcomes.

In keeping with our disciplinary ap-proach to CT, workshop participants were placed in three groups: humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Through various pedagogical and struc-tural approaches, the workshop leaders “coached” attendees in the nuances and intricacies of making CT an explicit out-come in their courses. Participants in the workshop were encouraged to submit student work that emerged from assign-

ments developed as part of the workshop for GE assessment.

As previously indicated, CT lacks a consistent focus within the GE curricu-lum. As a result, CT has proven difficult to define, assess, and/or improve. Thus, the provost’s workshop series has been useful in raising broader awareness about such issues and acts to promote specific approaches to both teaching and assess-ing CT. This undertaking also reinforces the importance of CT assessment across the campus.

Revisiting the CT RubricAn outcome of such an explicit focus

on CT stemming from the workshop se-ries was growing concern and confusion about how to apply the existing CT rubric in a meaningful way. In response, CAGE set up a multidisciplinary faculty sub-committee to evaluate our CT rubric us-ing disciplinary lenses. The subcommit-tee concluded that the rubric did not need to be changed, but instead the criteria on the rubric needed to be interpreted using disciplinary perspectives. This outcome was aligned with previous findings sug-gesting that discipline-specific epistemic considerations should inform scoring practices.

Members on the multidisciplinary rubric evaluation committee developed short scenarios containing examples of possible assignments from their disci-plinary areas. Discussion focused on how such assignments might be viewed through dimensions of the current CT rubric. From this discussion it became evident that the use of CT in the humani-ties, for instance, may be quite different from uses in other disciplines. An assign-ment asking a student to critically as-sess whether the major characters acted “freely” in Homer’s The Iliad, for ex-ample, does not expect the student to do any statistical analyses or experiments, or even necessarily to search the relevant literature. Instead, the student may be asked to reflect on the literary work and to evaluate actions portrayed within the framework of his or her own subjective

CT�lacks�a�consistent�focus�within�the�GE�curriculum.�As�a�result,�CT�has�

proven�difficult�to�define,�assess,�and/or�improve.

Assessment�Update� •� July–August�2013� •� Volume�25,�Number�4� •� ©�2013�Wiley�Periodicals,�Inc.� •� doi:10.1002/au 9

understanding of what it means to act “freely.” Performances on this task may still vary in terms of CT, but such a task recognizes the influence of individual values, which is generally avoided in the physical sciences. Scores may therefore be equivalent across disciplines, though indications of various levels of CT di-verge across disciplinary standards. Simi-lar disciplinary differences were raised as the 2012 CT institutional portfolio was developed.

Assessing CT Using the Revised Approach

In summer 2012, OSU faculty un-dertook exercises to assess CT as a GE outcome. This provided a good opportu-nity to implement our revised assessment approach. Faculty across the university submitted student work, which was then sorted into disciplinary categories reflect-ing the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. Instead of asking faculty members to score student papers outside their discipline, they worked in groups with student papers that reflected their disciplinary expertise.

Prior to scoring student artifacts, rat-ers participated in a norming session. During these sessions, faculty members across disciplines were provided with opportunities to discuss differences in in-terpreting the rubric. Experienced raters from the humanities reported that in pre-vious years they frequently had to “recal-ibrate” specific dimensions of the scoring rubric. For example, the dimension “Stu-dent Provides Evidence and Supporting Information” was interpreted as having a distinct meaning within each discipline. Some initially took this to mean “with or without any additional support,” while others took it as involving some sort of additional evidence. As soon as this came out in discussion, there was quick agree-ment that unsupported opinion is useless for the purposes of CT.

Further, the nature and content of discussions among faculty in related disciplines was markedly contextual. Disciplinary facilitators reported that

this year was rather different from past years. For instance, a noted effect of having faculty members score papers sampled from their respective disci-plines was that raters could more readily interpret the rubric dimensions through a discipline-specific lens. Such processes

provided greater assurance that raters were not scoring papers that were out-side their expertise (e.g., having a phi-losopher score an engineering paper for CT). Faculty raters also indicated that when scoring papers across disciplines, as was done in previous years, they of-ten had to “switch gears” throughout the scoring process. Nesting faculty raters within cognate disciplinary groupings minimized such problems. Finally, fac-ulty members indicated that these prac-tices eased the process of reaching con-sensus about discrepant scores.

Evaluating Our ApproachOur approach is aligned with Moore’s

(2011, 273) reflection that “this kind of wisdom from the disciplines leads one to think that the future of CT in our in-stitutions lies not in any efforts to skate around difference but, instead, to em-brace it.” We believe that the multidisci-plinary approach we adopted has several advantages:• Aligns faculty approaches and institu-

tional approaches.• Incorporates methods and epistemic

considerations unique to different dis-ciplines.

• Broadens the scope of CT as assessed through general education.

• Provides a viable, nonstandardized in-dicator of the critical thinking capabili-ties beyond “value-added” institutional measures reported in the VSA.Over the past few months, we have

analyzed the results of students’ CT in

GE. Some preliminary results suggest that critical thinking and written commu-nication are empirically distinguishable, though they are intricately connected. For example, we have estimated that about 25 percent of the variance in CT consensus scores is attributed writing. The extent

to which one should be concerned about this estimate, however, may depend on the kind of interpretation one wishes to make. If we wish to assess the extent to which students are able to illustrate CT through writing, then this evidence may be trivial. However, the extent to which such scores refer to aspects of CT beyond writing is questionable. Consequently, it is essential to continue to explore meth-ods for diversifying the type of assign-ments used to assess CT. Such evidence also implies that we may need additional observations to represent the breadth of CT learning approaches taught across the GE curriculum.

SummaryThe approach we outline is relevant

in establishing a faculty-driven, alter-native assessment practice for CT as-sessment at an institutional level while remaining cognizant of disciplinary dis-tinctions in both the conceptualization and indicators of CT. If a goal of GE is to provide students the widest spectrum of disciplinary exposure, the value of CT in GE may lie not in its generality but instead within the multidisciplinar-ity of CT. Hence, expanding the scope of CT assessment to reflect disciplinary idiosyncrasies as opposed to generalities has proven more valuable in our own as-sessment experiences than value-added approaches using discipline-general measures. ■

If�a�goal�of�GE�is�to�provide�students�the�widest�spectrum�of�disciplinary�

exposure,�the�value�of�CT�in�GE�may�lie�not�in�its�generality�but�instead�

within�the�multidisciplinarity�of�CT.

(continued on page 12)

12� Assessment�Update� •� July–August�2013� •� Volume�25,�Number�4� •� ©�2013�Wiley�Periodicals,�Inc.� •� doi:10.1002/au

ReferencesBanta, T. W., and Pike, G. R. 2007.

“Revisiting the Blind Alley of Value Added.” Assessment Update 19(1): 1–2, 14–15.

Davies, W. M. 2006. “In Defence of Generalisation: Moore on the Critical Thinking Debate.” Higher Education Re-search & Development 25: 179–193.

Hawthorne, J., and Kelsch, A. 2012. “Closing the Loop: How an Assessment Project Paved the Way for GE Reform.” Assessment Update 24(4): 1–2.

Jones, A. 2007. “Multiplicities of Manna from Heaven? Critical Thinking and the Disciplinary Context.” Austra-lian Journal of Education 51: 1.

Moore, T. J. 2011. “Critical Thinking and Disciplinary Thinking: A Continu-ing Debate.” Higher Education Research & Development 30(3): 261–274.

Nicholas, M. C., and Raider-Roth, M. 2011. “Faculty Approaches to As-sessing Critical Thinking—Implications for General Education.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association

for the Study of Higher Education, Char-lotte, NC.

Tsui, L. 2000. “Effects of Campus Culture on Students’ Critical Think-ing. Review of Higher Education 23: 421–441.

Mark C. Nicholas is assistant director in University Assessment and Test-ing, Jonathan C. Comer is profes-sor and graduate coordinator in the Department of Geography, and Doren Recker is head of the Philosophy De-partment at Oklahoma State Univer-sity in Stillwater. John D. Hathcoat is assistant professor and assistant as-sessment specialist at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

qualitative assessment projects would not require the same amount of detail as this one, the strategies outlined in this article easily could be applied, either individu-ally or in combination, to qualitative as-sessments of programs, services, and activities in other areas. While not an exhaustive list of options, the following serve as recommendations for future as-sessment endeavors in student affairs:• Develop a standard set of questions and

instructions to explore individual stake-holder experiences (interview protocol).

• Prepare facilitators to consistently ask and examine participant responses (training).

• Use multiple data sources and data col-lection techniques to corroborate evi-dence (triangulation).

• Share codes, themes, and findings with participants to elicit their feedback (member checking).

• Design a mechanism for recording rich, descriptive information, such as quotes, key phrases, and personal re-flections (rich description).

• Implement a system for chronicling and communicating decisions to ensure that the process is consistent and trans-parent (audit trail).

SummaryThe intent of this article was to de-

scribe the techniques used in one quali-tative assessment initiative and to dem-onstrate the ways in which qualitative assessment can bring life and depth to assessment projects in student affairs. As the demands for greater accountability in-crease, student affairs divisions will need to demonstrate both a capacity and will-ingness to implement rigorous methods to collect, analyze, and interpret qualita-tive assessment data. ■

ReferencesBolman, L. G., and Deal, T. E. 2001.

Leading with Soul: An Uncommon Jour-ney of Spirit. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Cooperrider, D. L., and Whitney, D. 2005. Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive

Revolution in Change. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Creswell, J. W., and Miller, D. L. 2000. “Determining Validity in Qualita-tive Inquiry.” Theory into Practice 39(3): 124–130.

Fifolt, M., and Stowe, A. M. 2011. “Playing to Your Strengths: Appreciative Inquiry in the Visioning Process. College & University 87(1): 37–40.

Keller, C. M., and Hammang, J. G. 2008, Fall. “The Voluntary System of Ac-countability for Accountability and Insti-tutional Assessment.” New Directions for Institutional Research S1: 39–48.

Lehner, R., and Hight, D. L. 2006. “Ap-preciative Inquiry and Student Affairs: A Positive Approach to Change.” College Student Affairs Journal 25(2): 141–151.

NASPA. n.d. Considering a Career in Student Affairs? NASPA: Student Af-fairs Administrators in Higher Education. Retrieved from http://www.naspa.org/career/.

Patton, M. Q. 1980. Qualitative Eval-uation Methods. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Patton, M. Q. 2002. Qualitative Re-search and Evaluation Methods. (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Vision Team. 2009. Telling the Stu-dent Affairs Story: Celebrating Our past

Applying Qualitative Techniques to Assessment in Student Affairs

(continued from page 6)

Developing and Implementing a Multidisciplinary Approach to Assess CT in General Education

(continued from page 9)

http://www.naspa.org/career/

http://www.naspa.org/career/

Copyright of Assessment Update is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its contentmay not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyrightholder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles forindividual use.

346 | PART B. SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. 5. No. 3. May, 2013 J. Pinkney, Michael F. Shaughnessy. Teaching critical thinking skills: a modern mandate. International Journal of Academic Research Part B; 2013; 5(3), 346-352. DOI: 10.7813/2075-4124.2013/5-3/B.52

TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS:

A MODERN MANDATE

Jeanine Pinkney, Michael F. Shaughnessy

Eastern New Mexico University (USA) [email protected]

DOI: 10.7813/2075-4124.2013/5-3/B.52

ABSTRACT

Modern mandates in education require that schools teach critical thinking. Although thinking comes naturally to most humans, people generally need training to think reliably, deeply, critically and well. Moreover, a populace which is generally capable of critical thinking is necessary for the proper functioning of a democracy and a free market economic system and society.

Critical thinking is traditionally taught through high school mathematics and science, particularly algebra, which requires Stage Four Piagetian skills. Demands that critical thinking should receive more emphasis in education are often addressed by adding more mathematics to the school curricula. However, research suggests that, while nearly all adults and adolescents of western cultures can reason at the Concrete Operational stage, only about one third of US high school graduates are capable of Formal Operational thought.

Thus, critical thinking should be taught within the Concrete Operational skills. This may be accomplished as a separate curricular offering, or integrated into the curriculum. Such instruction may provide the disequilibration necessary for Stage Four transition; even if not, students can learn to think critically using the Stage Three skills, provided these skills are properly addressed with fidelity and integrity.

There is no guarantee that universal proficiency in critical thinking is possible, but improvement may be attained if educators teach critical thinking in curricula which builds on the skills of the Concrete Operational stage where the majority of learners reside.

Key words: teaching critical thinking skills, a modern mandate 1. INTRODUCTION: DEMANDS FOR TEACHING CRITICAL THINKING No Child Left Behind mandates emphasis on higher order thinking as a necessary and attainable skill for all

children. This law requires levels of proficiency in all children, regardless of ability and socioeconomic status, and it penalizes school districts which are unable to show sufficient improvement. This law has brought greater urgency to trends that have been developing at least since the early 1980s. In its 1983 publication, Academic preparation for college, the College Board noted that competency in reasoning is necessary. At about the same time, the Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities (1980) and the American Philosophical Association (1985) issued similar statements (Ennis & Sternberg, 1987, p. 9). In 2000, the National Council of Teachers (NCTM) issued the Principles and Standards, placing emphasis on developing higher order thinking skills in all learners, at all levels (NCTM, 2000).

The quest for critical thinking is nothing new. In ancient legend, Eve craved the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and Socrates goaded the young men of Athens to question assumptions and discern subtleties. However, such earlier efforts were not accompanied by legal or social mandate that all children must develop proficiency. Indeed, Eve and Socrates were punished for their quests.

More recently, in response to the Space Race of the 1960s, the "new math" movement introduced elementary school students to some sophisticated mathematical notions normally encountered by math majors in college.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) laws and other mandates around the world have added urgency. Policy makers noted the achievement gap of minority and low socioeconomic status students (SES), and declared this unacceptable. NCLB mandates under penalty to the teachers and the school districts that all children attain the proficiency that NCLB architects observed in more fortunate young people. It is interesting to note that there was, and is no proof, that such universal proficiency is possible (Derthick & Dunn, 2009). Yet, standards demand that the United States education systems strive for and attain, if not universal proficiency, at least visible progress toward this goal.

2. WHY TEACH CRITICAL THINKING? Educators must teach critical thinking because the law requires it, but beyond this, why? One may argue,

people think all the time, naturally. There is no need to teach thinking.

Baku, Azerbaijan| 347

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. 5. No. 3. May, 2013 All of us compare, classify, order, extrapolate, interpret, form hypotheses, weigh evidence, draw

conclusions, and engage in various activities that are typically classified as thinking. This is not to say that we always do these things perfectly, or even that we typically do them all very well, but we do them with or without prodding or the benefit of formal training…(However,) the fact that we think spontaneously does not prevent us from succumbing to the stratagems of hucksters and demagogues, nor does it ensure the consistent rationality of our behavior. Indeed, the list of documented ways in which our reasoning commonly goes astray is a long one (Nickerson, 1987). Some policymakers justify the mandate to teach critical thinking through the assertion that critical thinking is

necessary to get a job, or to keep the US economy competitive on the worldwide market. But is this true? Goodlad (Nickerson, cited in Sternberg, 1987, p. 31) argued that few employers pay their workers to contemplate, question, and inquire; in fact, many discourage this. Some jobs at the professional and technical level require troubleshooting and problem solving within their domain, but Brown and Saks (Nickerson, p. 31) speaking from a strictly economic point of view, stated that "there is no obvious economic argument for maximizing the reasoning skills of the population."

On the other hand, Adam Smith (1776) argued that the combined action of rational choices by all members of an unconstrained economic system constitute the effect of an "invisible hand," which maximizes benefits for all. John Nash, in his Nobel Prize winning theory of Nash Equilibrium, refined this idea (Nasser, 2007). He showed that benefit is maximized not when all act according to individual self-interest, but instead when a rational actor, assuming that others in a transaction will continue their course of action, considers what actions would maximize benefits for all.

It is noteworthy that, in both models, the assumption is that actions are rationally considered and chosen. Unfortunately, this assumption is not always accurate. Thus, a case may be made for teaching critical thinking, even if there is no immediately visible economic benefit.

Likewise, the U.S. political system depends on citizens and leaders who can think rationally. We value democracy; however, the ancient Greeks, who enjoyed a prototypical democracy, observed that an educated populace is necessary to keep democracy from degenerating into mob rule. Indeed, this is echoed in Thomas Jefferson's forceful support of public education: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." (Bergstett, n.d.). Echoing this, Postman wrote, "There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the critical skills to distinguish lies from truth" (Nickerson, cited in Sternberg, 1987, p. 31). This is true even though society does not always reward or appreciate critical thinking; Eve remains vilified in mainstream Christian tradition, and Socrates was executed. Moreover, critical thinking does not always lead to immediate peace or tranquility; instead, it may lead to periods of social upheaval such as the 18th century Enlightenment-inspired revolutions of France, the United States, and Haiti, or the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Even though critical thinking may be troublesome at times, it is still highly valued as a skill of civilization.

3. CHARACTERISTICS OF CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS What do researchers mean by critical thinking? Two constructs come most readily to mind: Bloom's

Taxonomy and Piaget's theory on Formal Operations. There are other constructs as well. For example, Robert Ennis of the Illinois Critical Thinking Project discussed thirteen dispositions, which he regarded as "essential for the critical thinker" and a fourteenth, sensitivity to others, as also important. Ennis summarized these thirteen under the four headings of clarity, basis, inference, and interaction, and created a curriculum for teaching critical thinking (Ennis, 1985, p. 10). This curriculum may be found in the cited reference.

4. BLOOM'S TAXONOMY Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchical structure of thinking skills, which may be summarized as follows:

Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evalutaion. Bloom regarded Evaluation, Synthesis, and Analysis as higher order skills. Further, Bloom believed all children to be capable of all of these skills if given appropriate expectations and guidance.

Many educators believe that the hierarchy of these skills is essential, that is, that the skills build on each other and that students cannot attain higher level skills until the lower level skills are firmly in place. For example, in grade school, children learn addition and multiplication tables to automaticity, and perform calculations with fractions, decimals, percentages, basic geometric figures, and the division algorithm. Educators believe these rote skills serve a person well in developing number sense as well as form a foundation for understanding the field properties of the real number system. This foundation prepares students to abstract this number sense to algebra, an area generally regarded as a gateway to a rigorous study of science and mathematics (US Government, National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008)

Others object that such "drill and kill" is unnecessary, demeaning, and counterproductive (Devin, 2010). They note that very young children spontaneously show higher order thinking skills in areas that interest them, and the availability of calculators and computers makes it possible for children to carry out sophisticated endeavors in literature and mathematics even if they lack the underlying basic skills. Educators hope that the increased availability of technology may lessen the achievement gap seen in minority and low SES students even though the availability of technology in low SES communities may always lag behind such availability in affluent communities.


INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. 5. No. 3. May, 2013 5. PIAGET’S THEORY ON STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Unlike Bloom's Taxonomy, which applies to children of all ages, Piaget's theory on stages of cognitive

development is dependent on the learners' ages. In particular, Stage 4, the ability to think in a systematic abstract manner, applies to adolescent and adult learners. Piaget believed that these stages are universal; modern educational policies echo this belief. However, Formal Operations is not universal, (Huitt & Hummel 2003), and therein lies the problem.

Piaget developed his theories on cognitive development while employed at the Binet Institute in the 1920s (Herbert & Opper, 1979). His task was to develop a French version of the Binet IQ test for the purpose of placing French children in appropriate classes in their schools. In pouring over the results of these tests, Piaget noted that correct as well as incorrect answers showed qualitatively different thought patterns typical of varying age groups. He became interested in the children’s thought processes, which led to the patterns of erroneous responses which seemed to typify children of various age groups.

Piaget identified skills which generally appear in mid-childhood and enable children to think in a consistent

and logical manner. These skills continue to serve most people in western societies throughout their lives. Since most learners (Huitt & Hummel 2003) are in Stage 3, it is worthwhile to summarize these skills as follows (Ginnsberg & Opper, 1979), and to consider how they may serve as a basis for a practical course in critical thinking:

Seriation: the ability to sort objects in order according to any given characteristic. Transitivity: the ability to recognize relationships among various things in a serial order. Classification: the ability to name and identify sets of objects according to any given characteristic,

including the idea that one set of objects can include another. Decentering: the ability to take into account multiple aspects of a problem to solve it. Reversibility: the understanding that objects can be changed then returned to their original state. Conservation: the understanding that quantity, length or number of items is unrelated to the

arrangement or appearance of the object or items. (This is related to decentering.) Elimination of Egocentrism—the ability to view things from another's perspective (even if they do so

incorrectly). Piaget observed that, in their early teen years, many young people began to make certain types of mistakes

which may be generally described as "over-thinking." Also, he noted that some teenagers seemed to undergo a qualitative shift in their thinking, readily answering questions and completing tasks that stymied students a few years younger. Thus, Piaget hypothesized that the mind develops in discrete stages over time, associated roughly with the child's age in years, and that the highest stage occurs in early adolescence.

Observing his own children when they were very young, Piaget completed his description of the stages of cognitive development from birth to the threshold of adulthood, as follows:

Stage 1 Sensorimotor (infancy and very early childhood), Stage 2 Preoperational (up to around age 5-7), Stage 3 Concrete Operational (up to around age 11-12) Stage 4 Formal Operational (adolescence to adulthood).

Piaget further hypothesized that these stages progress naturally as a child accommodates and assimilates

new information. When a child encounters information that does not fit into current schema, an uncomfortable state of disequilibration can occur. Under optimal circumstances, new schema development resolves this disequilibration and stimulates progress into the next stage of cognitive development (Commons & Richards, 2002).

Piaget developed a set of tasks to see if children had achieved concrete operational abilities, and found that most middle class French children did achieve them at about the same age range, 5 to 7 years old. Other studies have found that these abilities develop at about the same age range in children in many parts of the world, especially in Westernized or literate cultures. However, the exact age, as well as the order at which the skills develop, may vary depending on which skills the given culture values (Suizzo, 2000). Other studies in non-reading cultures have failed to produce consistent results. These studies, however, may have suffered flaws in methodology and applicability to cultures very different from that of the researchers (Dasen, 1972). For present purposes, it is safe to say that concrete operational skills are generally established and functioning in non-cognitively impaired in adults and adolescents of Western cultures (Huitt & Hummel, 2003).


INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. 5. No. 3. May, 2013

Picture credit: Huitt W. & Hummel J. (2003). Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Educational Psychology Interactive, used with permission.

It is important to note that learners in the concrete operational stage are quite capable of rational inquiry and

problem solving. But they can reliably solve only problems that apply to actual (concrete) objects or events; abstract concepts and hypothetical tasks may leave them frustrated, exasperated, and overwhelmed. Because their reasoning is based on concrete events, they thrive on hands-on learning. They readily perform inductive reasoning, recognizing a pattern in examples and applying this pattern to understand and interpret subsequent experiences. But deductive reasoning, from abstract principles to concrete applications, is sporadic to non-existent. Stage 3 thinkers can devise and carry out experiments, and often enjoy doing so. However, left to their own devices, their experiments are haphazard, based on isolated rounds of trial and error rather than formulation and systematic testing of hypotheses.

Thus, the middle school science or math teacher can devise meaningful and engaging learning experiences subject to these conditions as long as the teacher is mindful of the strengths and limitations of concrete operational thought. Since many adults remain at the concrete operational stage (Huitt & Hummel, 1998), teachers at the high school and undergraduate college level would also do well to remember these characteristics of the concrete operational learner. Sometime around early teen years, and into adulthood, some learners successfully manage disequilibration, so that they develop the ability to mentally manipulate abstract concepts and solve problems by deduction from general principles, to specific circumstances. Piaget developed a set of tasks, such as the pendulum task, the flexible rods task, and the shadow task, in which researchers ask adolescents to devise an experiment, systematically testing variables in order to solve a problem or achieve a goal. Unlike the concrete operational tasks, the ability to complete these tasks was not universal, even in the middle class French children Piaget, studied and even less so in young people of other nations, cultures, and social classes.

Concrete thinkers use and manipulate symbols for concrete objects; in addition, formal thinkers use symbols to manipulate abstract concepts. Concrete thinkers reason about things; formal thinkers reason about ideas. A formal operational thinker can systematically consider the interaction of multiple variables, isolating them singly or in orderly patterns, in order to solve a problem or find a new relation. Stage 4 thinkers can mentally manipulate abstract relationships and concepts without a need for concrete models or even real-world examples, and do so reliably (Wood, Smith, & Grossniklaus, 2001). These are the skills required in mathematics from high school algebra on. Unfortunately, these skills are not universal.

Picture credit: Huitt W. & Hummel J. (2003), ibid, used with permission.


INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. 5. No. 3. May, 2013 Genovese (2003) argues that this is because concrete thinking skills are "biologically primary,” based on

the characteristics of matter and energy that humans encounter in their daily interactions with the physical world. A person who could not make sense of the environment in these or equivalent terms would be at a survival disadvantage. However, stage four thinking skills are "biologically secondary." Not necessary to survival, they pertain to abstractions that are not part of most people’s everyday experiences, so they do not occur as standard. According to Huitt and Hummel (1998), “only 35% of high school graduates in industrialized countries obtain formal operations; many people do not think formally during adulthood". This raises serious difficulties in mathematics and science education. As Genovese (2003) said:

The failure of adolescents and adults to reason in the ways predicted by Piaget is a serious problem

for both the theory and practice of education, for it is precisely the formal reasoning skills that are necessary for mastering academic subjects such as math and science beyond the elementary level.

The problem is clear: if a person is unable to operate on operations, algebra makes little sense to them, and

the pathway to a higher science education is closed. Yet the federal government and states require algebra for high school graduation, and, without a high school diploma, a person faces a life of marginalization. Moreover, there is a trend to introduce algebra in middle school, even in elementary school, and to require more years of math for high school graduation. Unlike the "new math" of the 1960's, the mandate to achieve accompanies this introduction.

So, the question is: how do educators foster these thinking skills in adult and adolescent learners? This question may be broken down further: what can educators do for those who remain at the concrete operational stage? How can educators create situations of disequilibration to nudge adult and adolescent learners over into formal operational thinking, without driving them to give up in frustration? Or, if this is not feasible, how can educators help learners to make optimal use of the concrete operational skills which they do have, so that they can function as rational beings at that level?

Critics have noted that Piaget's stages are not as context and culture free as they seem (Genovese, 2003) and that culture itself, helps to define intelligence (Suizzo,2000). Other critics have noted that the Piaget's stages may be artifacts of his testing process and that human cognition develops in a sequential and continuous manner (Dasen, 1972). Yet, there does seem to be qualitative differences in the thought patterns of those who are proficient in reasoning from abstract principles, and those who seem to be able only to reason from what they can touch, see, and manipulate, and this qualitative difference seems to be related to the opportunities that education stakeholders make available to students. These educational opportunities, in turn, can influence the socioeconomic status of students long after their formal education has ended. Thus, social justice demands that all interested parties investigate critical thinking and how it may be made accessible to more, if not to all.

6. ENNIS: CRITICAL THINKING DISPOSITIONS Robert H. Ennis (1985) of the Illinois Critical Thinking Project defined critical thinking as "a practical

reflective activity that has reasonable belief or action as its goal," that is, "the process of reflectively and reasonably deciding what to believe in do." He added:

Critical thinking is not equivalent to the higher order thinking skills, in part because that idea is so

vague. However, critical thinking, a practical activity, includes most or all of the directly practical higher order thinking skills. Furthermore, critical thinking includes dispositions which would not be included in a listing of skills. Ennis defined the basic areas of critical thinking as clarity, basis, inference, and action. These may be

broken down further as follows: clarity includes focusing, analyzing arguments and asking appropriate questions. Basis involves support for one's inferences and includes judging the credibility of statements and sources as well as observation. Inference is the process of developing frames of reference. Inference includes inductive reasoning (generalizing to create and test hypotheses), deductive reasoning (applying a principle or abstract idea to concrete situations, determining whether a conclusion necessarily follows from premises), and inference to value judgments, that is, making statements in terms of what people actually do or should reasonably do. Ennis added a fourth area, interaction with others, because the ability to see issues from others' points of view is necessary to refine one's thinking as well as to make it appropriate and applicable to functioning as a rational member of human society. It is interesting to note that most of these dispositions, through application to real world examples and hands-on experiences, can be made accessible to learners who possess concrete operational skills.

7. INSTRUCTION FOR CRITICAL THINKING Ennis developed a curriculum for teaching critical reasoning, described in the references. In this curriculum,

students learn to seek clarity, formulate questions, analyze arguments, judge the credibility of statements and sources, recognize valid logical processes as well as fallacies, make value judgments, and interact with others as rational beings. This curriculum was developed for use at the undergraduate college level. It would also be appropriate for high schools, if it were not for curriculum constraints imposed by federal and state law. That is, one may object: with all the required courses for high school graduation, how could schools afford to add a class like this? In view of the points raised under the topic "why teach critical thinking?," one could just as well ask, how can educators afford not to teach a class like this at the high school level, where, thanks to compulsory education laws,


INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. 5. No. 3. May, 2013 more young people would be exposed to this material. Perhaps a course like this could be offered in lieu of some

mathematics requirements. Traditionally, one reason given for teaching algebra and geometry is "to teach the (human) race to reason”

even though, "It does not, heaven knows, always succeed, but it is the best method that we have. It is not the only road to the goal, but there is none better." (Dudley, 2010) Unfortunately, those who are not capable of the type of thought described as Piagetian Formal Operations often balk at the effort, underperforming in mathematics and avoiding college major choices which require mathematics (Commons, Miller, & Kuhn, 1982, Salman, 2002). To address this, instructors may integrate critical thinking into courses on writing, philosophy, and social studies. The curriculum cited earlier by Ennis explicitly teaches critical thinking skills, as do courses in quantitative literacy, intended for liberal arts and social science majors.

At one southwestern university, the Mathematics department has developed a new math course, Math 106, to suit the needs of social science majors who need the basic math and critical thinking skills that are prerequisite to the statistics classes required by their major. This, in turn, raises the question among social science majors, “Why do we need statistics?” Such students argue that they are not going to be statisticians; they contend that they are going to be working directly with people. However, when they ask this, math faculty must point out to them that statistics is necessary to the scientific method, which in turn is necessary to social sciences in order to be truly scientific endeavors. At this juncture, it is helpful to show them how, as social science professionals, they will be in positions to create and administer social policy. Such professionals should base such policy on science and reason.

Educators can also integrate critical thinking into mainstream instruction at the secondary and elementary levels. Educators may teach children as young as age seven to analyze, compare, judge, and infer across the subject domains of reading, mathematics, and writing (Quellmalz, 1987). In social studies classes, teachers may challenge students to visualize and comment on historical events from points of view other than the usual mainstream, or argue an issue from a "devil's advocate" position (Swartz, 1987). Such exercises can nudge students out of their comfort zones and into a state of disequilibration that will, it is hoped, resolve itself into higher order thinking patterns.

8. CONCLUSION Educators must teach critical thinking because critical thinking is a skill which makes people fully human.

Although thinking comes naturally to humans, people generally need training in order to think reliably and well. Modern mandates in education require that schools teach higher level thinking, without really specifying what this means.

Paradigms provided by Piaget, Bruno, Ennis, and others, define higher level thinking and suggest ways that educators can foster these skills in learners. In particular, since most people are Concrete Operational thinkers, critical thinking should be taught in ways that rely primarily on the skills of Concrete Operational thinking. Such curricula may introduce enough disequilibration to stimulate transition to Stage 4, while, with a bit of care, educators can avoid overwhelming and frustrating learners with demands that they perform tasks that may seem pointless and impossible to Stage 3 thinkers.

There is no guarantee that universal proficiency is possible, but educators still need to aim for this, and can best do so by building on the skills which learners currently possess. Thus, we can achieve a populace capable of critical thought. Modern ideals of democracy and freedom demand no less.

REFERENCES

1. Bergstedt J. (N.D.). Thomas Jefferson's bill for universal education at the public expense. Retrieved from http://jschell.myweb.uga.edu/history/legis/jeffersonuniversal.htm

2. Commons M.L., Miller P.M. & Kuhn D. (1982). The relation between formal operational reasoning and academic course selection and performance among college freshmen and sophomores. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 3, 1-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0193-3973(82)90028-4.

3. Commons M.L. & F.A. Richards (2002). Organizing components into combinations: How stage transition works. Journal of Adult Development, 9(3), 159-177. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1016047 925527.

4. Dasen P.R. Cross-cultural Piagetian research: a summary. Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology. 3, 23-39, 1972. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002202217200300102.

5. Devlin K. In math you have to remember, in other subjects you can think about it (2010). Mathematical Association of America. Retrieved from http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_06_10.html

6. Derthick M. & Dunn J.M. (2009, June 22). False premises: The accountability fetish in education The Free Library. Retrieved from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/False-a0204614056

7. Dudley U. (2010). What is mathematics for? Notices of the AMS. Retrieved from http://www.ams.org/ notices/201005/rtx100500608p.pdf.

8. Ennis R.H. (1987). A taxonomy of critical thinking dispositions and abilities. In J.B. Baron & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.) Teaching Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice (9-26). New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.

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185

CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AND MEANING IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

Harits Masduqi ([email protected])

The University of Sydney New South Wales 2006, Australia

Universitas Negeri Malang

Jl. Semarang 05 Malang 65145, Indonesia

Abstract: Many ELT experts believe that the inclusion of critical thinking skills in English classes is necessary to improve students’ English compe-tence. Students’ critical thinking skills will be optimally increased if mean-ing is prioritized in English lessons. Those two inter-related elements can be implemented when teachers do collaborative activities stimulating students’ thinking process and meaning negotiation. Yet, the realization might be counter-productive if they are applied without careful consideration of task purposes and of students’ roles. Based on the consideration, this paper is fo-cused on presenting how critical thinking skills and meaning should be properly incorporated in an English lesson.

Key words: critical thinking, critical thinking skills, meaning, collaborative activities

Critical thinking has been a well-established subject and a debatable research field across disciplines for a very long time. It was first introduced by Greek philosophers and has been used since the Greek Empire era up to now, obtain-ing a significant, influential status during its extensive travel all over history. Many historians believe that the roots of critical thinking can be traced from Socrates’ teaching practice and vision 2,500 years ago. He brilliantly revealed a probing questioning method that individuals could not logically justify their as-sertive claims to knowledge. Socrates’ view of critical thinking, supported by

186 TEFLIN Journal, Volume 22, Number 2, July 2011

Plato, was then applied by Descartes and was a theme in essays written by Montesquieu and John Locke (Rfaner, 2006).

Critical thinking is the intelligently self-controlled process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. It is based on universal intellectual values that excel subject matter divisions: clarity, accura-cy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness (Scriven & Richard, 1987). In short, critical thinking is that mode of thinking - about any subject, content, or problem - in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them (The Critical Thinking Community, 2002).

At university level, critical thinking skills are essential abilities in using intellectual tools by which one appropriately assesses thinking. In this case, by utilizing critical thinking skills, students can use the intellectual tools that criti-cal thinking offers – concepts and principles that enable them to analyze, as-sess, and improve thinking. They will be able to work diligently to develop the intellectual virtues of intellectual integrity, intellectual humility, intellectual ci-vility, intellectual empathy, intellectual sense of justice and confidence in rea-son. To put it briefly, critical thinking skills are self-improvement in thinking through intellectual tools that assess thinking (The Critical Thinking Communi-ty, 2009).

Critical thinking skills play significant roles not only in learners’ academic achievements but also in their dynamic life of workforce after graduation. Hi-rose (1992) claims that numerous large corporations all over the globe deal with the lack of basic thinking skills performed by recent college graduates in their companies. He says that, “Many of today's youth lack the basic skills to function effectively when they enter the workforce. A common complaint is that entry-level employees lack the reasoning and critical thinking abilities needed to process and refine information” (Hirose, 1992:1).

In the context of higher education in Indonesia, especially in English De-partment, the limited use of critical thinking skills and the lack of meaningful activities are assumed to be the reasons why students in Indonesian universities are often ineffective in exchanging ideas and writing in English critically. They tend to accept opinions, especially on the current news of politics, corruption, and education, without evaluating them appropriately. This is probably because

Masduqi, Critical Thinking Skills and Meaning in English Language Teaching 187

most of them previously studied at primary and secondary schools which typi-cally applied too teacher-centered approach. Therefore, expressing ideas in English both communicatively and critically is not always easy for English De-partment students.

Based on what have been stated above, this paper will focus on presenting how critical thinking skills and meaning should be implemented in English Language Teaching. To begin with, the writer will first discuss English Lan-guage Teaching in Indonesia in general perspectives and then clarify the rea-sons why critical thinking skills and meaning should be prioritized in English classes. From this point on, the writer will suggest practical teaching stages in-corporating critical thinking skills and meaning in an English lesson.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING IN INDONESIA

English has been taught at secondary schools in Indonesia since the era of Dutch colonialism. The persistent, similar fact is that English has never been positioned as an official language, as in Singapore, Malaysia, India, or other nations where English has an important, influential status as a second language. A possible reason is that the effect of British colonialism in Indonesia is practi-cally invisible and United States had not been diplomatically close with the In-donesian government at that time (Dardjowidjojo, 1996).

Dardjowidjojo further states that the effort to establish English as a second language in 1950’s was also unsuccessful for at least two reasons. First, alt-hough Bahasa Indonesia is the national language, it is the second language for most people since most Indonesians speak a vernacular before they learn the national language. Second, triggered by the spirit of nationalism, Indonesian leaders and people were not willing to consider English as a second language. For these fundamental reasons, English remains as a foreign language in Indo-nesia.

The English language status gives significant impacts in all education lev-els. Even though English is a compulsory subject for students from Year 3 to the first year in tertiary level, the time allotment for English subject is not suf-ficient considering basic communicative competence should be achieved by the learners. At secondary schools, for instance, students only learn English for twice a week, 45 minutes each time. English is not prioritized and treated in the same way as other general subjects.


The condition is not even better at Indonesian universities. English in non-English departments is only taught once or twice a week, each meeting is 100 minutes during the first two semesters. In few cases, English is even not taught at all because it is not a part of core courses. This academic fact is disadvanta-geous for the students since a number of compulsory textbooks used by their lecturers are in English.

In English Departments, students usually endure a number of adjustments when they speak in English. Attending their first English class, most of them face a perplexing fact that they have to be able to communicate in English. This adjustment could be full of twists and turns because English is not a language used by Indonesian people in daily life. The majority of the students have lim-ited use of English in their societies and consequently, communicating in Eng-lish is often challenging for them.

In the most recent development, however, some Indonesian universities have started making a progressive step by giving more priority in English, such as using English as a medium of instruction in international classes, asking stu-dents to regularly translate English materials in Indonesian, supporting the es-tablishment of English clubs, having students speak in English for presenting their theses, and so forth. Nevertheless, such a constructive effort has not been widely received and conducted by other universities. This determination tends to be successful only in state and ‘elite’ private institutions in which the en-rolled students bring quite good language proficiency from their previous edu-cation levels (Sukono, 2004). It is, therefore, an appropriate approach should be immensely applied in English Language Teaching in Indonesia.

Communicative Approach was then expected to alter the English Lan-guage Teaching in Indonesia as it was chosen as an instructional approach in the 1994 English curriculum. With Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in the curriculum, there seemed to be a crucial change in English teaching, lessening grammatical and vocabulary emphases and moving to the new era in which students’ ability to converse in English communicatively will receive priority. Yet, due to the misinterpretation with oral-based language instructions and controversies among educators, the same approach was redefined and changed into ‘Meaningfulness Approach’ in the 1999 Curriculum (Huda, 1999). Furthermore, Musthafa (2001, pp. 3-4) summarizes the coverage of the approach as follows:


• Development of communicative competence—the ability to use English for communicative purposes—which covers all four macro skills: reading, listening, speaking, and writing; efforts should be made to strike a good balance among the four-macro skills.

• Mastery of linguistic aspects is to be used to support communicative abili-ties in both oral and written forms.

• The English syllabus represents an amalgam of various forms of syllabi: functional, situational, skill-based, and structural; given the nature of the syllabus, the basis for the organization of the materials is not linguistic as-pects but topical themes and functional skills.

• Assessment is integrated (covering more than one language components) and communicative (not exclusively on linguistic elements).

• Not all instructional objectives are measurable using a paper-and-pencil test (e.g., reading for enjoyment).

The fundamental points of communicative approach above are then elaborated in the four basic qualities should be achieved by the students when learning English. More specifically, students who are communicatively competent are those whose qualities as described below. • When speaking, the students are able to find what is appropriate to say,

how it should be said, and when, in different social situation in which they find themselves.

• When listening, the students can use all contextual clues to get the meaning of what is being said and how the message is being conveyed.

• When reading, the students are able to construct the meaning based on the messages provided by the text and in transaction with genres and their own reading purposes.

• When writing, the students are able to formulate their ideas into acceptable written English language in accordance with the writing situation and their own writing purposes.

(Musthafa, 2001, pp. 3-4).

Following the current trend of English language teaching in the world, the curriculum designers in Indonesia decided to adopt the Contextual Teaching Learning Approach in the 2004 Competency-Based Curriculum. The similar communicative approach was then modified in the updated 2006 School-Based


Curriculum. It has been implemented in primary and secondary school levels up to now. Furthermore, Renandya (2004) argues that the purpose of English Language Teaching in Indonesian education system is actually to provide learners with advanced reading skills that enable them to read and comprehend science-related texts in English. Although other language skills are not ignored, reading ability has always been the primary objective of English Language Teaching in Indonesia.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AT INDONESIAN UNIVERSI-TIES

In tertiary level, the English curriculum coverage above is still relevant and in fact, is still implied in the latest Competency-Based Curriculum. It should be noted that the competency-based learning of English at Indonesian universities actually has similar characteristics with communicative language teaching. The current approach demands flexible and independent learning. The ability to state one’s preference or intention, for instance, in competency-based learning is closely similar to that in communicative language teaching. Furthermore, in both approaches, learning results are clearly determined, formed, and evaluated as discrete elements of measurement within specific contexts and situations (Marcellino, 2008).

The problems of English language teaching in tertiary level are abundant in Indonesia. One of the main problems is the absence of visible social uses of English outside the classroom. It is often challenging to get students motivated when they do not experience direct necessity of English outside the class. Learning how to communicate in English fluently is an elusive concept for most students because they factually do not use the language in their daily in-teractions.

Another problem is that Indonesian lecturers do not have enough opportu-nities to conduct research or even catch up with regularly updated information of English language teaching. As a result, their instructional skills are not op-timal and might misinterpret the practice of communicative language teaching or competency-based learning. To make it worse, Indonesian lecturers often have to teach productive skills, i.e., speaking and writing, in large classes full of students with different language competence.

The next is cultural problem. One of the main features of communicative approach in competency-based learning is learner centeredness. In this case,


there should be a determination covering learning objectives, contents and pro-gress, methods and techniques and evaluation which supports learners’ auton-omy (Dardjowidjojo, 1997). Similar to the perspective, Richards and Rodgers (2002) state that language teaching in a communicative approach–based class should be learner-centered and responsive to the students’ needs and interests. This method is potentially fruitful in western countries in which people highly regard egalitarianism and democracy. Yet, the idea is almost impracticable in Indonesia, particularly because teacher-student relations are much influenced by local wisdom and cultural values.

Indonesian students, especially those from rural areas, are not accustomed to the idea that learning activities are student-centered. The features of commu-nicative competence discussed above seem to challenge the values and beliefs in the dominant culture of this nation, which is heavily influenced by the Java-nese tradition. For example, two famous Javanese philosophies such as manut lan piturut (to obey and to follow) and ewuh-pakewuh (feeling uncomfortable and uneasy) still dominantly exist in Indonesian people’s way of thinking. The impact of these cultural principles in English classes is that good students are generally those who follow their teacher's ideas without necessarily analyzing or evaluating them. Even, if they oppose the teacher’s opinions, they tend to be silent and seem to accept what the teacher says. Consequently, it is not easy to expect the students to communicate and interact openly and critically with their teachers. They might feel uncomfortable and uneasy to say something directly to their teachers, to talk about controversial matters, and to disagree with them (Setiono, 2004).

At last, generally English lecturers in Indonesia are not well-paid. Due the low salary, many of them do side jobs to get extra income. This condition cre-ates serious implications. With more and more energy being used for side jobs, the lecturers are less motivated to do their main teaching job. They are not in-terested in conducting classroom research or pursue professional development because there is no direct financial income from those kinds of academic en-deavors.

To sum up, the emphases that are put in the latest curriculum clearly indi-cate the understanding of the current approach of English Language Teaching and how the approach views the language teaching in foreign language con-texts. Nevertheless, such a good theoretical notion is not well translated into practice, particularly in the classrooms. This is because certain supportive con-ditions – such as, the existence or good language models, a great deal of expo-


sure to the language in real-life situations, and the involvement of critical thinking in meaningful tasks – are not clearly visible in English Language Teaching in Indonesia (Dardjowidjojo, 1997; Marcellino, 2008; Musthafa, 2001; Sukono, 2004). Instead of changing the teaching approach or method, Indonesian government and educators should find creative ways to solve the problems or to create conducive atmospheres for the more ideal practice of communicative approach in English language teaching.

WHY CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AND MEANING

In today’s higher education in Indonesia, many lecturers complain that In-donesian university students do not use their critical thinking skills sufficiently when they are doing both oral and written assignments. Based on his teaching experiences at English Department, the writer often finds students unenthusias-tic to exchange ideas critically and tend to accept experts’ ideas without analyz-ing them properly. Again, this is probably because some of them previously studied at secondary schools which typically did not apply learner-centered ap-proach and did not develop students’ critical thinking skills optimally. Con-cerning on a similar problem, Cromwell (1992) argues that the main purpose of advanced education is the enhancement of student thinking. This is in line with today’s concern that most graduates at all education levels do not perform higher level of thinking abilities.

In the national scope, the Indonesian government has nationally imple-mented the Competency-Based Curriculum in university level throughout In-donesia. This curriculum has been welcomed enthusiastically, in particular by English teachers, as it is claimed that this new curriculum will be more effec-tive in improving students’ academic, life, and thinking skills. Although the curriculum has been changed, English teachers’ ways of teaching have not changed significantly. English teaching is still teacher-centered and deals main-ly with complex grammar, long reading passages, and other activities that are far from the real purpose of the latest curriculum. Consequently, students are not given adequate opportunities to do meaningful collaborative tasks in which they should discuss, share, and challenge ideas communicatively and critically (Sukono, 2004; Masduqi, 2008).

The facts above show that there is an inconsistency between the principles of the curriculum and the actual implementation in classrooms which is still dominated by teacher-centeredness. No wonder Indonesian university students


still have difficulties in revealing ideas in English communicatively and criti-cally. Students’ critical thinking skills will be optimally enhanced if meaning is treated as the first priority in English classes. Those two inter-related elements can be more optimally implemented when teachers do collaborative activities (pair work and group work) which stimulate students’ thinking process and meaning negotiation in their classroom discussions.

THE REALIZATION OF CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS AND MEAN-ING

In order to activate students’ critical thinking skills, English teachers need to present alternatives, different ways of interpreting texts and different con-ceptions of the world. The importance of thinking in today’s education requires the main concept of critical thinking in which there is always more than one way to see things and that it is always up to the individual to judge just where the truth lies on any given issue (Mason and Washington, 1992).

Regarding the flexible nature of critical thinking, the writer proposes a teaching practice that can be modified in different ways. This is because the implementation of critical thinking skills and meaning in language teaching is not new and an absolute format has not been recommended so far. The underly-ing principle is that language learning is improved through increased motiva-tion and naturally seen in meaningful contexts. When learners are interested in a topic and are given chances to negotiate meaning, they will be motivated to discuss things critically and at the same time, acquire language to communicate (Darn, 2006; Rfaner, 2006).

As stated in the introduction, both critical thinking skills and meaning can be incorporated when teachers do collaborative activities, i.e., pair work and group work. Therefore, the writer would illustrate teaching stages of an English lesson that essentially integrate critical thinking skills and meaning. For practi-cal reasons, the writer would apply a series of teaching stages in a reading les-son (adapted from CELTT 1 Handbook, 2008). The teaching of Reading is chosen as an example since it provides ample opportunities to exploit students’ skills in English learning arise through reading texts. In this case, the proposed reading lesson draws on the lexical approach, encouraging learners to notice language while reading followed by activities involving meaning discovery and critical thinking skills. Accordingly, teachers can flexibly diversify methods and forms of classroom teaching and learning, improve learners’ overall and


specific language competence, introduce learners’ to the wider cultural context, and increase learners’ motivation (Darn, 2006; Lewis, 1997; Thornbury, 2006). More specifically, the teaching stages of the reading lesson are in the follow-ing: (1) Eliciting ideas • Give students one or two pictures which can be interpreted in various ways

(see some alternative pictures and activities in Doff, 1998). • Ask students what the pictures are about (Let the students speak freely in

this stage). • Dictate key words from the reading text. The objective of this stage is to introduce the topic of the story to students and to give them an opportunity to express their ideas openly. This is expected to be an initial chance for the students to activate their thinking process and en-courage them to exchange ideas critically. In doing so, the teacher needs be tol-erant with any ideas or interpretations proposed by them as an adage says, "A picture is worth a thousand words". Then, by dictating the key words, the teacher is indirectly fostering the learners to relate more easily to the characters and actions in the text later. (2) Highlighting lexis and their meanings/vocabulary • Check the words dictated (ask them to exchange their work with their part-

ners first). • Check meaning of any words that may cause difficulty. The purpose of this stage is to focus attention on meaning of key words in or-der to prepare students for the next prediction task. In this stage, the teacher should use guided discovery and contextual guesswork to discover meaning of the dictated words. Guided discovery involves asking questions or offering ex-amples that guide students to guess meanings correctly. In this way, the learn-ers are engaged in a semantic process that helps vocabulary learning and reten-tion. Then, contextual guesswork means using the context in which the word appears to derive an idea of its meaning, or in some cases, guess from the word itself, as in words originated from Latin or Greek (Moras, 2001; Thornbury, 2006).


(3) Giving the title of the story • Give students the title of the story they are going to read (Prompt them to the title). This is an extra stage which is also aimed at assisting the students to do the fol-lowing prediction task. The teacher can simply write the title on the white board without giving any information about the text. It is expected that the stu-dents will be curious and triggered to predict the text topic by relating the title and the dictated key words. In this way, the teacher prepares the students’ mind gradually before dealing with the whole text. Metaphorically, it is like a motor cyclist warming up his motor cycle before riding it on streets. (4) Predicting text • Put students into small groups and ask them to predict the story based on

the title and key words given. • Ask few students representing their groups to tell the class their predic-

tions. • Encourage other groups to ask questions, share ideas and even criticize

each other if necessary. The goal of this stage is to prepare students mentally to read the text by creat-ing a version of the text first in their minds and give the second chance to ex-change ideas critically. In this stage, it is important that the teacher should not judge whether they are right or wrong as the judgment might hinder the stu-dents to speak up and reveal their opinions openly. Let them freely predict what the text is about and discuss it in groups. Furthermore, discussing their predic-tions in class is also a good chance for them to communicate and challenge other people’s ideas. This collective interaction is necessary to stimulate their critical thinking skills for the more challenging tasks later. (5) Ordering jumbled paragraphs/Skimming • Hand out cut up version of the text (the students are still in groups) • Ask students to skim the story and order the paragraphs • Ask them what they looked for to help them decide on the order of the par-

agraphs.


The objectives of this stage are to apply group work in order to negotiate mean-ing and to do skimming. Working in groups help fostering learning independ-ence, and especially in ordering jumbled paragraphs, the students can exchange information and negotiate meaning when discussing new vocabulary items and ambiguous sentences. It is also expected that group work will be a motivating element, as students skim the text together, share ideas, and argue with each other constructively. This is a crucial stage of polishing up students’ critical thinking skills in which the teacher should only monitor and not interfere much in their classroom discussions. (6) Listening for the right order • Play a cassette telling the right order of the story. • Ask students whether or not their prediction is correct. This stage is aimed to provide the correct order and a reason for gist reading. While students are listening to the cassette and matching their paragraphs or-der, they are indirectly reading the whole text and paying attention on pronun-ciation and grammatical forms in the text. This introduces the pupils to correct pronunciation and grammatical constructions without making them a conscious focus. This kind of ‘inductive learning’ is more interesting, meaningful, and natural than ‘deductive learning, in which learners are presented with rules with which they then go on to apply’. It ‘pays dividend in terms of the long-term memory of these rules’ (Thornbury, 2006:102). (7) Reading comprehension • Ask some short questions based on the story The purpose of this stage is to focus on overall meaning and main ideas in the text. This is a usual teaching stage in which the teacher commonly uses Wh-questions to check whether or not the students are able to find out and under-stand main ideas and specific information in the text. In other words, Wh-questions are utilized to make sure that the students grasp the overall meaning of the text. It is advisable for the teacher to ask short questions that make stu-dents find the answers in and beyond the text. The teacher should not spend


much time on this task since the final task is also aimed at measuring students’ comprehension. (8) Acting out the story/Speaking • Put students into groups of 3, one person for each character in the story. • Ask them to act out the story or do a mini drama. The objective of this stage is to measure students’ comprehension in a fun, non-verbal way. In this final productive stage, the teacher can ask the learners to discuss the most practical ‘scenario’ before acting out the story. This extra oral practice potentially strengthens the previous collaborative activities in a re-laxed, enjoyable way. This is in line with Lightbown and Spada’s ideas (2003) that the more the students are provided with extra oral practice in a target lan-guage, the more they will be able to speak it communicatively.

By applying the eight teaching stages above, the writer expects English teachers to consider that the realization of critical thinking skills and meaning is feasible when teachers apply pair work and group work in which students think actively and negotiate meaning. The stages of pair-work and group work are also useful the students’ communicative competence. In the productive stages, the students have more opportunities to get more language exposure and practice (Moon, 2005). It would engage the learners talking to one another to exchange information communicatively and critically. They talk in order to communicate, activate thinking process, and exchange arguments, not just to practice the language (Spratt et al., 2005).

CONCLUSION

The realization of critical thinking skills and meaning in English Language Teaching is worth doing to improve students’ English competence. Those two important elements can be incorporated in English lessons as long as teachers do collaborative activities providing students sufficient exposure to thinking process and meaning negotiation. The variety of classroom activities does not only cater students’ communicative competence, but also create lively learning atmosphere. Indeed, this is not an easy task because the teachers have to make sure that the English lesson, involving both critical thinking skills and meaning, is reasonably inter-related and suitable to the level and needs of their students.


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138 Social Behavioural Sciences

REVISTA ACADEMIEI FOR ELOR TERESTRE NR. 2 (66)/2012

CONSIDERATIONS ON DEVELOPING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN STUDENTS OF ENGLISH

Gabriela MIH IL -LIC“Nicolae B lcescu” Land Forces Academy, Sibiu

ABSTRACTAs teachers, we are all aware that the students we teach

are individuals with unique learning needs who progress in their own characteristic ways. Nevertheless, a good command of English, irrespective of the students’ intelligence or type of learning, implies a thorough understanding of how the human mind operates. The teacher of English, as well as the colleagues who teach other subjects, tries to develop in his or her learners skills that will help them think in a critical manner: interpretation, observation, explanation, analysis, etc. “Critical thinking is the process of thinking that questions assumptions”[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking, retrieved on 23.02.2012]. This is a process of vital importance for education, especially for the higher education, and for the profession of officer. In the present paper we try to present some modalities of developing the critical thinking skills of the students of English, paying special attention to the specificity of the cadets of the “Nicolae B lcescu” Land Forces Academy of Sibiu.

Keywords: critical thinking, skills, education reform

Introduction

The concept of critical thinking is a very old one and defining it represents a challenge to the specialists in the field. Theterm “critical thinking” originates in the 20

th

century. The National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, 1987 defined this notionin a statement by Michael Scriven & Richard Paul at the 8th Annual International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Summer 1987 as “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action” [1].

Stages of critical thinking

Critical thinking should be the main objective of most teachers regardless of the subject they teach. However, we have to become aware of the fact that those we teach need to be taught this process, a process that has several stages. Linda Elderand Richard Paul in their paper entitledCritical Thinking Development: A Stage Theory with Implications for Instructionwarn that “most teachers are unaware of the levels of intellectual development that people go through as they improve as thinkers. We believe that significant gains in the intellectual quality of student work will not be achieved except to the degree that teachers recognize that skilled critical thinking develops only when properly

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cultivated and only through predictable stages” [2]. The same two authors are of the opinion that the passing from one stage to the next is not an automatic process, “success in instruction is deeply connected to the intellectual quality of student learning, and that regression is possible in development” [3]. The stages of critical thinking development the two authors come up with are the following:

“Stage One: The Unreflective Thinker

Stage Two: The Challenged Thinker

Stage Three: The Beginning Thinker

Stage Four: The Practicing Thinker

Stage Five: The Advanced Thinker

Stage Six: The Accomplished Thinker” [4]From our experience as English

teachers, we assume that most of the students we teach are in the process of reaching stage five, that of The Advanced Thinker, some of them having already achieved it and there are also some who belong to the category of accomplished thinkers.

Linda Elder and Richard Paul state that the advanced thinkers have already established “good habits of thought” [5].

They are capable of analyzingactively their thinking and “have significant insight into problems at deeper levels of thought”, but “they are not yet able to think at a consistently high level” across all the dimensions of their lives [6].

Critical thinking skills

In A Field Guide to Critical Thinking,

James Lett presents six simple rules that he developed in order to help students to evaluate evidence. The acronym that he came up with in order to facilitate their memorization is FiLCHeRS and it “stands

for the rules of Falsifiability, Logic,

Comprehensiveness, Honesty, Replicability,

and Sufficiency” [7]. The major challenge these thinkers have to face is “To begin to

develop depth of understanding not only of

the need for systematic practice in thinking,

but also insight into deep levels of problems

in thought: consistent recognition, for

example, of egocentric and sociocentric

thought in one’s thinking, ability to identify

areas of significant ignorance and prejudice,

and ability to actually develop new fundamental

habits of thought based on deep values to

which one has committed oneself” [8]. The military students, more often than

their civilian counterparts, choose their specialization driven by a desire to help and protect the country they belong to, often putting aside their own personal desires and emotions. Their esprit de corps and team skills are formed and tested throughout the three years of study at the Academy in various circumstances, they improve their cultural competence during the courses on foreign cultures and civilizations, thus being confronted and given an opportunity to get rid of their prejudices, and they also have the opportunity to strengthen their commitment to the values of patriotism, integrity, respect, justice, open mindedness.

Specialists inform us that “Advanced thinkers are also knowledgeable

of what it takes to regularly assess their

thinking for clarity, accuracy, precision,

relevance, logicalness, etc.” [9]. In this respect we have to specify that numerous English lessons we teach at the “Nicolae B lcescu” Land Forces Academy of Sibiu are dedicated to the structuring of speeches and essays into logical, coherent discourses, the teachers also insisting upon the accuracy and precision of these. The students not only receive information, but they also learn and are encouraged to ask questions on various topics and the fact that they do this in a foreign language gives them more confidence and helps them to understand better the relationship between thoughts and feelings.

The role play situations, especially the situations “with a complication” that we systematically employ for developing the oral skills of our students, provide them with numerous opportunities to see the importance of thinking and the way it can increase the quality of their lives.



An important skill that we try to teach our students is that of evaluating themselves and their thinking for the sake of improvement, a vital quality of every advanced thinker. We often ask and encourage our learners to re-read and edit their essays; they have to find the outlines of different types of essays and to write drafts that help them organize their ideas better; they check for things that are unclear or insufficiently explained. In this way, we hope to make the cadets realize what the strengths and weaknesses of their thinking are and how they can use them to their advantage. By advising them to try to eliminate the personal examples from the formal discourses, we actually insist on their becoming aware of their native egocentrism.

As far as the significant intellectual traits specific to the advanced thinkers are regarded and which the cadets at the Land Forces Academy try to develop by means of the subject we teach, we can say that one of the most important is empathy. Various language exercises require the learners to imagine they are certain real or fictitious characters and say what they would do, or think, or feel as those particular characters. E.g.: “If you were an officer and had to accomplish a mission in a desert area, what measures would you take to increase your and your men’s chances of success?” “What would you do if you were the minister of Defense for a day?”

In the classes focusing on debates, students are often made to realize that things are not only black and white and that contradictions are also present in their own lives. During these classes they are often challenged to address viewpoints that are different from their own or to respond to beliefs and ideas about which they have negative feelings. We try to persuade our students to approach all the ideas that are advanced without prejudice and in a fair manner. Before the actual debate takes place, we make sure that they can differentiate between facts and opinions and

present them with the rules they have to respect during the discussions. Some of the most significant are the avoidance of exaggerations, of overgeneralizations, of quarrelling and bickering, they have to respect their opponents, the time limits, to watch their tone of voice, their body language, to keep their perspective and to keep in mind that it is better not to win debate and lose a friend [10].

The debates that we have found to be the most discussion generating are the ones referring to the women being allowed to serve in the army in all the branches and specializations or the one referring to the legalization of use of guns by ordinary citizens.

We hope that our students, at the end of the academy, or by means of the courses they will undertake and of self-education will all enter the class of the accomplished thinkers. Probably, some of them will fail, but at least they will get an idea of what accomplished thinking is and they will make it their objective, they will learn to reflect about thinking and develop appropriate habits of thought.

Implications for teaching

From our activities in class, we have noticed that the students need to be required to analyze and determine the difficulties that may arise in respect to their thinking. In order to achieve this goal, the teachers should use a wide range of vocabulary related to the workings of the human mind and conduct discussions on how the mind operates, on how it can be improved. For those learning English or another foreign language, we believe it is of the utmost importance that they should be able to make a difference between the way the Romanians think and the manner of thinking of other peoples.

A good command of English implies a certain level of command over one’s thinking, which, in turn, implies understanding of the mind’s processes. Nevertheless, teachers

Social Behavioural Sciences 141


must pay attention to and respect the learners’ phases of intellectual progress. They also need to take special care to present the academic information that has to be conveyed to the learners in an intellectual way, provoking the students to act, react and think as speakers, readers, writers and listeners of a foreign language.

The role of questions for developing

critical thinking

When teaching students to think in a critical way, one should keep in mind the questions they have to answer and the purpose behind them. These questions have to be understood correctly, they and the information the answer is based on have to be interpreted, inferences, different points of view and various connections have to be discovered and analyzed. During the English classes special emphasis is laid on how the cadets ask and answer questions. The power the questions have to generate communication and their pedagogical role are widely recognized: “Asking questions is

a natural feature of communication, but

also one of the most important tools which

teachers have at their disposal. Questioning

is crucial to the way teachers manage the

class, engage students with content,

encourage participation and increase

understanding. Typically, teachers ask

between 300-400 questions per day,

however the quality and value of questions

varies. While questioning can be an

effective tool, there is both an art and

science to asking questions” [11].There are also dangers to asking

questions that must be avoided. Thus, teachers should not try to elicit from students more information than they posses, the questions they ask should be relevant and students should never be asked the question “Do you understand?” or questions “which may cause embarrassment or which

may offend through sarcasm (‘Are you

awake?’)” [12].

The questions represent a valuable pedagogical tool especially due to the fact that they help to maximize the student’s participation.

The benefits of critical thinking for

students

The most discussed benefits of critical thinking for students are the numerous. They:

“1) learn content at a deeper and

more permanent level;

2) are better able to explain and

apply what they learn;

3) are better able to connect what

they are learning in one class with what

they are learning in other classes;

4) ask more and better questions in class;

5) understand the textbook better;

6) follow directions better;

7) understand more of what you

present in class;

8) write better;

9) apply more of what they are

learning to their everyday life;

10) become more motivated learners

in general;

11) become progressively easier to

teach” [13]. To the advantages enumerated by the

two authors we would add the fact that critical thinking promotes creativity, it will transform the future officers into better team players, it will simplify problems.

On the other hand, if critical thinking is not accompanied by sound moral principles, it can transform into manipulation, it can become unethical and subjective.

Conclusion

The variety of methods used for fostering critical thinking is infinite. Nevertheless, we should keep in view the mind from an intellectual perspective and take into account the students’ stages of thought development.



0In order to achieve success, both teachers and cadets have to work hard and commit themselves to honing their critical thinking skills because it is human nature to seek the satisfaction of one’s interests, to immediately choose what is easy and comfortable, to avoid effort and complications.

Critical thinking becomes a useful instrument that can be used to improve every aspect of the academic life: “By means

of it, we begin to see important implications

for every part of the college – redesigning

policies, providing administrative support

for critical thinking, rethinking the college

mission, coordinating and providing faculty

workshops in critical thinking, redefining

faculty as learners as well as teachers,

assessing students, faculty, and the college

as a whole in terms of critical thinking

abilities and traits” [14]. It is our duty as pedagogues to

understand first the way we reason and then to encourage and facilitate high thinking in our learners as the very quality of our lives will depend on it.

REFERENCES

1. http://www.sla.org/PDFs/SLA2009/ 2009_critical-thinking.pdf, retrieved on 22.03.2012.

2. http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/ critical-thinking-development-a-stage-theory/ 483,retrieved on 23.01.2012.

3. Ibidem.4. Ibidem.5. Linda Elder and Richard Paul, Critical Thinking Development: A Stage Theory With

Implications for Instruction, http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/critical-thinking-development-a-stage-theory/483, retrieved on 20.02.2012.

6. Ibidem.7. http://www.csicop.org/si/show/field_guide_to_critical_thinking/, retrieved on 23.02.2012.8. Linda Elder and Richard Paul, cited works.9. Ibidem.10. http://www.paulnoll.com/Books/Clear-English/debate-advice.html, retrieved on

23.02.2012.11. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/asking-questions, retrieved on 22.02.2012. 12. Ibidem.13. Linda Elder and Richard Paul, cited works.14. http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Critical-Thinking/399802, retrieved on 22.03.2012.

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Assessing Online Discussions: Adoption of Critical Thinking as a Grading Criterion

Wei-Ying Hsiao, University of Alaska-Anchorage, U.S.A. Manfen Chen, University of Southern Indiana, U.S.A.

Hsing-Wen Hu, University of Alaska-Anchorage, U.S.A.

Abstract: Critical thinking has been a major part of 21st Century Skills. Jerald (2009) indicates that applied skills such as critical thinking and problem solving can be integrated into the academic curriculum. Given the prevalence of online course offerings, online discussions can be used effectively in promoting and encouraging critical thinking (Arend, 2009). However, according to Hsiao’s (2012) study, critical thinking is not highly promoted in online discussions. Thus, how to enhance critical thinking skills in online discussions becomes an important issue in higher education. The purpose of this study is twofold: to identify the elements/criteria of grading rubrics commonly used to assess online discussions and to investigate whether critical thinking can be promoted as a grading criterion for assessing online discussions. The results show that only 35% of 69 grading rubrics include critical thinking as one of grading criteria; however, after a presentation emphasizing the importance of critical thinking, 94% of participants recognized the importance of adopting critical thinking as a grading criterion and rated critical thinking as the number one grading criterion. This confirms Hurd’s (2013) suggestion that faculty members actually lack the concept of critical thinking. The implications of the results indicate that the importance of critical thinking can be promoted among faculty members and once faculty members recognize the concept of critical thinking, it is highly possible that faculty members will adopt the skill of critical thinking as a grading criterion.

Keywords: Online Discussion Assessment, Online Discussions Grading Rubric, Critical Thinking in Online Discussions

Introduction

n order to increase interactions among students and faculty for online courses, online discussions have been widely used to serve a critical role in online courses (Liang & Alderman, 2007). Online discussions allow students to practice active thinking and provide

opportunities to interact with others (Salmon, 2005). Online discussions have been used not only to promote learner-to-learner and/or learner-to-instructor interactions in online courses, but also to evaluate students’ learning outcomes. Students may benefit from online discussions by being able to construct their own knowledge, reflect the knowledge to the real world, and learn from others by exchanging thoughts or ideas through online discussions (Hewitt, 2005).

Many instructors use online discussions as a measure of participation and count them toward students’ grades. However, posting discussion threads and responding threads even with a few sentences is time consuming. According to Cox’s study (2011), many students indicate online discussions are “busy work” and meaningless assignments. When assessing online discussions, simply counting the frequency of postings does not lead to a good quality learning assessment (Meyer, 2004). More importantly, not only does counting the frequency of postings defeat the purpose of creating online interactions, but also provides no value for assessing students’ learning outcomes. Thus, there are two important issues that online instructors face. The first issue is how to promote meaningful online discussions. Counting the number of posting will definitely demote meaningful online discussions. The second issue is how to assess the quality of online discussions. The content of online discussions should exhibit a certain level of thinking such as being able to recognize the problem, gather relevant information, explore possible explanations or contradictions, synthesize ideas and create possible solutions, and finally being able to apply or test solutions (Garrison et al., 2001).

However, according to Hsiao’s (2012) study, critical thinking is not highly promoted in online discussions. Thus, how to enhance critical thinking skill in online discussions becomes an

I

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY, KNOWLEDGE, AND SOCIETY

important issue in higher education. The purpose of this study is twofold: to identify the elements/criteria of grading rubrics used to assess online discussions and to investigate whether critical thinking can be promoted as a grading criterion for assessing online discussions. The following questions are studied in this paper:

1. What are grading criteria for assessing online discussions in higher education?

2. Based on these grading criteria from question 1, what are five most importantgrading criteria in higher education?

3. Based on these grading criteria from question 1, which grading criteriaemphasize higher order thinking or so-called critical thinking?

4. Can these higher order thinking criteria be promoted?

Literature Review

Online learning has over 15 years of history. More and more colleges join the online universe by offering online courses. Emory University, Duke University, and Northwestern University among other seven elite universities have created a consortium to offer online courses, starting the fall semester of 2013, to students around the world (Diamond, 2012). Furthermore, according to the 2012 report released by the Sloan Consortium, there are more than 6.7 million students taking at least one online course in higher education. More and more courses are offered online. Without the face-to-face interaction a traditional classroom setting provides, online discussions play a critical role in assessing student’s learning and participation. Levenburg and Major (2000) discuss the importance of assessing online discussions in order to evaluate students’ time commitment and to encourage students’ efforts. Assessment criteria should guide students in learning and should be used to evaluate students’ learning outcomes (Celentin, 2007). Gilbert and Dabbagh (2005) indicate that grading criteria do play important roles as guidance to bring in more meaningful discussions to benefit all participants. Arend (2009) also indicates that online discussions can be used effectively in promoting and encouraging critical thinking.

The Critical Thinking Community defines critical thinking as “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.” (Scriven & Paul, 2007, p. 1). John Dewey (1910) calls critical thinking reflective thinking. He defines critical thinking as:

“Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends.” (Dewey, 1910, p.6)

Ennis (1987) defines critical thinking as “reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or what to do” (p.10).

The goal of applying the skill of critical thinking is to promote students to have deeper, meaningful discussions, which, in turn, requires students to use higher order thinking skills to apply, analyze, and synthesize new knowledge to reflect on the real world. Paul and Elder (2003) indicate that the skill of critical thinking encourages students to learn how to analyze and assess information. Williams (2005) recommends Halpern’s (1999) critical thinking model to address the importance of questioning skills for both instructors and students. Critical thinking can also

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HSAIO ET AL.: ASSESSING ONLINE DISCUSSION: ADOPTION OF CRITICAL THINKING

enhance collaboration (Gokhale, 1995). Bissell and Lemons (2006) argue that the difficulty of obtaining an appropriate measurement to assess critical thinking has hindered the inclusion of critical thinking as one of criteria for assessing online discussions. Garrison et al. (2001) has developed a model for assessing the critical thinking skill. The model includes four categories: triggering, exploration, integration, and solution. (See Table 1)

Table 1: Critical Thinking Categories, Indicators, and Sociocognitive Processes

Category Indicators Sociocognitive Processes

Triggering Recognizing the problem

Sense of puzzlement

• Presenting background information thatculminates in a question

• Asking questions• Messages that take discussion in a different

directionExploration Divergence within online

community

Divergence within single message

Information exchange

Suggestions for consideration

Brainstorming Leaps to conclusions

• Unsubstantiated contradiction of previousideas

• Many different ideas/themes presented inone message

• Personal narratives/descriptions/facts (notused as evidence)

• Author explicitly characterizes message asexploration-e.g. Does that seem right?

• Adds to established points, but does notsystematically defend/justify/develop

• Offers unsupported opinions

Integration Convergence among group members

Convergence within a single message

Connecting ideas, synthesis Creating solutions

• Reference to previous message followed bysubstantiated agreement, e.g. I agreebecause…

• Building on, adding to other‘s ideas• Justified, developed, defensive, yet

tentative hypotheses• Integrating information from various

sources: textbook, articles, personalexperience

• Explicit characterization of message as asolution

Solution Vicarious application to real world

Testing solutions

Defending solutions

Source: Adapted from Garrison et al. (2001, p. 15-16).

Williams (2005) indicates that the lack of critical thinking in education may have a negative effect on the development of the skill of problem solving. To improve online students’ skills of critical thinking and problem solving, higher order thinking skills should be promoted in online discussions. “Higher order thinking skills include critical, logical, reflective, metacognitive, and

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creative thinking” (King, Goodson, & Rohani, 2013, p1). Bloom (1956) develops the initial foundations of the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. He provides the definition of each category: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (See Table 2). These categories are arranged from the simplest to most complex; in other words, they are in order of requiring lower order thinking skills to higher order thinking skills (Krathwohl, 2002). The revised Bloom’s Taxonomy is proposed to support designing assessments (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Meyer (2004) conducted a study to analyze 278 postings from 17 different online discussions posted by 20 doctoral students in educational leadership classes using Garrison’s (2001) critical thinking categories and revised Bloom Taxonomy of Educational Objectives categories (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). The results of this study show that the majority of 278 postings (59.4%) focus on exploring and integrating ideas based on Garrison et el (2001)’s model and 54% of the postings focus on analysis, syntheses, and evaluation based on revised Bloom’s model (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Meyer (2004) suggests that both Garrison at el. (2001)’s and revised Bloom’s (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) models are frameworks to assess the level of analysis.

Table 2: The Six Categories of the Cognitive Process Dimensions and Related Cognitive Processes

1.0 Remember: Retrieve relevant knowledge from long-term memory 1.1 Recognizing 1.2 Recalling

2.0 Understand: Construct meaning from instructional messages, including oral, written, and graphic communication

2.1 Interpreting 2.2 Exemplifying 2.3 Classifying 2.4 Summarizing 2.5 Inferring 2.6 Comparing 2.7 Explaining

3. 0Apply: Carry out or use a procedure in a given situation3.1 Executing 3.2 Implementing

4.0 Analyze: Break material into its constituent parts and determine how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose

4.1 Differentiating 4.2 Organizing 4.3 Attributing

5.0 Evaluate: Make judgments based on criteria and standards 5.1 Checking 5.2 Critiquing

6.0 Create: Put elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganize elements into a new pattern or structure

6.1 Generating 6.2 Planning 6.3 Producing

Source: (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, pp. 67-68)

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Methodology and Data Collection

The purpose of this study is twofold: to identify the elements/criteria of grading rubrics used to assess online discussions and to investigate whether critical thinking can be promoted as a grading criterion for assessing online discussions. There are two phases of this study. Phase one is to examine grading rubrics used to assess online discussions and then to identify grading criteria commonly used to assess online discussions. The main source of the data comes from Internet. Several criteria are used when selecting grading rubrics. First, grading rubrics are adopted by online courses to assess online discussions. Second, in order to have a well-represented pool of samples, we select grading rubrics from as many disciplines as possible which include Education, Health Education, Engineering, Science, Psychology, and so on. Third, we include both graduate and undergraduate courses. As a result, a total of 69 grading rubrics across different discipline areas are selected and examined in the study. Sixty-seven rubrics are from the USA and two are from UK. The grading rubrics are selected from both asynchronous and synchronous online courses in both graduate and undergraduate programs. Sixty-five percent of our samples are from graduate courses and thirty-five percent of them are from undergraduate courses. Given a wide selection of grading rubrics, it is easier to identify common elements/criteria used in grading rubrics for assessing online discussions

Once the commonly used grading criteria are identified, phase two of this study is to investigate whether critical thinking can be promoted as a grading criterion for assessing online discussions. The data collection in phase two was conducted after a presentation of the results from the phase one study at Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) held in March, 2012. The presentation, entitled An Analysis of Online Discussions Assessment, mainly focuses on the 21st Century Skills, higher order thinking skills, and Bloom’s Taxonomy. The presentation was then followed by a discussion related to whether critical thinking should be addressed in online discussions. There were 20 faculty members, 14 female and 6 male from different states, in higher education who participated in the discussion. All participants either had taught or had taken online courses prior to answering the questionnaire. A questionnaire was given to each participant after the discussion. Each participant was asked to select top five grading criteria on the checklist which listed 16 grading criteria identified from the phase one study.

The instrument of this study is used in phase two. The instrument of this study contains two sections: demographic information and a checklist of rubric criteria for assessing online discussions. The demographic section includes three questions regarding gender, online course experiences, and position. The checklist of rubric criteria for assessing online discussions is based on the results of phase one of this study. A total of 16 elements are listed alphabetically in the checklist. See Table 3 for a list of these 16 criteria of grading rubrics for online discussions.

Data Analysis

Microsoft Excel 2010 is used to analyze the data for phase one, examining grading rubrics of online discussions, and for phase two, analyzing the top five grading elements among 16 elements. Descriptive statistics is used to analyze the frequency usage of grading elements for phase one and to analyze the frequency of the top five elements used to assess online discussions for phase two.

Results

In phase one of this study, all 69 grading rubric are examined. A total of sixteen grading elements (criteria) are identified from these grading rubrics for assessing online discussions. These grading elements include content/focus on topic (68%), reflection/connections (64%), critical thinking

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(35%), length (15%), new ideas/uniqueness (36%), timelines (46%), stylistics/writing (67%), resources (46%), interaction/response (38%), organization (9%), frequency (61%), initial posting (42%), clarity (28%), tone/positive words (23%), quality (16%), and integrity (1%). See Table 3 for all 16 elements, summary of indicators, and the percentage frequency for each indicator.

Of the 69 grading rubrics, 4 elements are identified as most frequently used criteria in assessing online discussions (See Table 4). Three elements are often used in assessing online discussions (See Table 5). Nine elements/criteria including the critical thinking skill are less frequently used (< 40%) (See Table 6).

The results from the phase one study show that among these sixteen grading criteria, only three of them are identified as categories of higher order thinking and critical thinking skills. These include reflection/connections (64% reflective statement, reflect to professional experiences), critical thinking (35% consistently analytical, thoughtful, perceptive, & provide new ideas related to topic addressed, refutes bias), and new ideas/uniqueness (36% a new way of thinking about the topic, depth and detail). Presumably, faculty members in higher education should put a lot of emphasis on critical thinking. However, the results of our study suggest that the skill of critical thinking is not frequently used to evaluate the quality of online discussions.

Table 3: Sixteen Elements of the Grading Rubrics and Indicators

Elements/Criteria % Indicators Clarity 28% Clear, concise comments formatted, easy to read

clear logic beliefs & thoughts Content/Focus on Topic 68% Understanding of the course materials and the

underlying concept being discussed. Critical Thinking 35% Consistently analytical, thoughtful, perceptive, &

provide new insides related to topic addressed, refutes bias

Frequency/Follow up Posting 61% 5-6 postings/week; 4-5 times/week, Analysis of others’ posts & extending meaningful discussion

Interaction/Response 38% Interacting with a variety of participants,

Initial Posting 42% Posts well developed; fully address all aspects of the task

Integrity 1% Learners’ own idea, posting by learners

Length of Posting 15% At least one paragraph, at least 250 words

New Ideas/Uniqueness 36% A new way of thinking about the topic, depth and detail

Organization 9% Information is organized,

Quality 16% Excellent understanding of the questions through well Reasoned and thoughtful reflections

Reflection/Connections 64% Reflective statements, reflect to professional experiences

Resources 46% Connections to other resources, site research papers using references to support comments,

Stylistics/Writing 67% Free of grammatical, spelling, & punctuation errors

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facilitate communication, well written Timelines 46% Meet deadlines, before due date, complete all

required postings Tone/Positive Words 23% Following online protocols, positive attitude,

encouraging, appropriate in nature,

Table 4: Most Frequently Used Criteria of the 69 Grading Rubrics

Elements/Criteria % 1. Content/focus on topic 68% 2. Stylistics/Writing 67% 3. Reflection/connections 64% 4. Frequency 61%

Table 5: Often Used Grading Criteria of the 69 Grading Rubrics

Elements/Criteria % 1. Timeliness 46% 2. References or Resources citations 46% 3. Initial Posting 42%

Table 6: Less Often Used Criteria of the 69 Grading Rubrics

Elements/Criteria % 1. Interaction/response 38% 2. Ideas/Uniqueness 36% 3. Critical Thinking 35% 4. Clarity 28% 5. Tone/Positive/Encouragement 23% 6. Quality 16% 7. Length 15% 8. Organization 9% 9. Integrity 1%

Phase two of this study is to identify the five most important grading criteria among these sixteen criteria. Participants are requested to select five criteria that they believe to be the most important criteria to assess online discussions. Surprisingly, the most important grading criteria ranked by these participants is critical thinking (94%) followed by reflection/connections (83%), content/focus on topic (61%), quality (61%), and new ideas/uniqueness (56%). See Figure 2 for details. The results indicate that faculty members recognize the importance of critical thinking but, in practice, critical thinking has not been used widely in assessing the quality of online discussions.

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Figure 2: Percentage of Grading Criteria for Assessing Online Discussions

Discussion

From the phase one of the study, only three out of sixteen grading criteria focus on skills of higher order thinking and critical thinking (reflection/connections 64%, critical thinking 35%, and new ideas/uniqueness 36%) based on revised Bloom’s (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) model. From the rest of sixteen grading criteria, two grading criteria, knowledge (content/focus on topic 68%) and comprehensive (resources 46%), are classified as lower level thinking skills; five of them focus on writing (stylistics/writing 67%, clarity 28%, quality 16%, length of posting 15%, and organization); two focus on time management and frequency (timeliness 46%, frequency/follow up postings 61%, and initial posting 42%); and two focus on manners (tone/positive/manners 23%, integrity 1%).

The results show that higher order thinking or critical thinking are not highly emphasized (only 3 out of 18, 18.75%) in evaluating online discussions. Hurd (2013, p.1) suggests three factors that result in the lack of implementation of critical thinking in higher education. First, faculty members lack the concept of critical thinking. Second, faculty members assume naively that the skill of critical thinking is embeded in their course teaching. Third, faculty members still focus on the traditional teaching methods of spoon feeding knowledge and expect students to memorize them.

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Clar

ity

Cont

ent/

Focu

s on

topi

c

Criti

cal t

hink

ing

Freq

uenc

y

Inte

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ion/

resp

onse

initi

al p

ostin

g

inte

grity

leng

th

New

idea

s/un

ique

ness

orga

niza

tion

qual

ity

refle

ctio

n/co

nnec

tions

reso

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s

styl

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timel

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/pos

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/ana

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…

22


The results of this study from phase one also show that writing style and organization are heavily emphasized on the online grading criteria (5 out of 16, 31.25%). This brings up a major issue of the purpose of online discussions. Is it for assessing writing skills or for assessing learning outcomes? If the course is an English writing course, then one would think that online discussions would emphasize writing. However, the grading rubrics gathered for this study are across different disciplines and different subjects. Obviously, online discussions involve more than just writing. The contents of the discussions may be evaluated too. For instance, online discussions may include some of the followings: identify problems, make auguments based on findings or research, express opinions, and create solutions and so on. Thus, higher order thinking should be encouraged and evaluated in online discussions.

The results of this study from phase two suggest that it is highly possible to promote the adoption of critical thinking as a grading criterion in higher education. The results show that only 35% of 69 grading rubrics include critical thinking as one of grading criteria; however, after a presentation emphasizing the importance of critical thinking, 94% of faculty members who participated in the discussion, recognize the necessity and importance of adopting critical thinking as a grading criterion and rate critical thinking as the number one grading criterion. This confirms Hurd (2013)’s suggestions that faculty members lack the concept of critical thinking. A wake-up call is necessary to draw faculty’s attention to integrating the skill of critical thinking into the curriculum and use it as a measure of assurance learning. The implications of our results indicate the importance of critical thinking can be promoted among faculty members and once faculty members recognize the concept of critical thinking, it is highly possible that faculty members will adopt the skill of critical thinking as a grading criterion.

Conclusions

The results of the paper indicate that: (1) critical thinking has not been the major grading criterion for assessing online discussions in higher education, (2) critical thinking or higher order thinking can be promoted as a grading criterion for assessing the quality of online discussions as long as instructors are aware of the importance of critical thinking in online discussions.

23


REFERENCES

Anderson, L. W, & Krathwohl, D. R. (eds.) (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: Longman

Arend, B. (2009). Encouraging Critical Thinking in Online Threaded Discussions. The journal of Educators Online, 6 (1), 1-23

Bissell, A & Lemons, P. (2006). A New Method for Assessing Critical Thinking in the Classroom. BioScience, 56(1), 66-72.

Bloom B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain. White Plains, New York.

Celentin (2007). Online education: Analysis of interaction and knowledge building patterns among foreign language teachers. Journal of Distance Education, 21(3), 39-58.

Cox, T. (2011). The Absent Graduate Student: An A-B-A Single-Subject Experiment of Online Discussion Participation. The Journal of Effective Teaching, 11(2), 96-109.

Dewey, J. (1910), How we Think , D.C. Heath &Co Publishers, Boston, New York, Chicago. Diamond, L. (2012). Emory joins other top colleges to offer online courses. The Atlanta Journal-

Constitution, Retrieved Feb. 11, 2013, from http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/emory-other-top-colleges-to-offer-more-online-cour/nS7FR/

Ennis, R. H. (1987). A Taxonomy of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities. In J. B. Baron & J. J. Sternberg (Eds.), Teaching Thinking Skills: Theory and Practice (pp. 9-26). New York: Freeman.

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., and Archer, W. (2001). Critical Thinking, Cognitive Presence, and Computer Conferencing in Distance Education. The American Journal of Distance Education 15(1), 7-23.

Gilbert, P.K., & Dabbagh, N. (2005). How to Structure Online Discussions for Meaningful Discourse: A Case Study. British Journal of Educational Technology, 36(1), 5-18.

Gokhale, A.A (1995). Collaborative learning enhances critical thinking. Journal of Technology Education, 7, 22-30.

Halpern, D. F. (1999). Teaching for Critical Thinking: Helping College Students Develop the Skills and Dispositions of a Critical Thinker. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No.80, 69-74.

Hewitt, J. (2005). Toward and Understanding of How Threads Die in Asynchronous Computer Conferences. The journal of the Learning Sciences. 14(4), 567-589.

Hsiao, W.Y. (2012). An Analysis of Online Discussions Assessment. In P. Resta (Ed.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2012 (pp. 1842-1846). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

Hurd, P. (2013). The State of Critical Thinking Today. Retrieved Feb 9, 2013 from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/the-state-of-critical-thinking-today/523

Jerald, C.D. (2009). Defining a 21st Century Education. Retrieved Feb 10, 2013 from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Learn-About/21st-Century/Defining-a-21st-Century-Education-Full-Report-PDF.pdf

King, F.J., Goodson, L., Rohani, F., (2013). Higher Order Thinking Sills: Definition, Teaching Strategies, Assessment. Retrieved Feb 9, 2013, from http://www.cala.fsu.edu/files/higher_order_thinking_skills.pdf

Krathwohl, D.R., (2002). A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 212-218

Levenburg, N., & Major, H. (2000). Motivating the Online Learner: The Effect of Frequency of online Postings and Time Spent Online on Achievement of Learning & Goals and Objectives. Proceedings of the International Online Conference on Teaching Online in

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Higher Education, 13-14 November 2000. Indiana University-Purdue University: Fort Wayne.

Liang, X. and Alderman, K. (2007). Asynchronous Discussions and Assessment in Online Learning. Journal of Research on Technology in Education. 39 (3), 309-328.

Meyer, K. (2004). Evaluating Online Discussions: Four Different Fames of Analysis. JALN 8 (2), 101-114

Paul, R. and Elder, L. (2003). Critical thinking: Teaching students how to study and learn. (Part III). Journal of Developmental Education, 26 (3). 36-37.

Salmon, G. (2005). E-tivities. Great Britain: Routledge Falmer. Scriven, M., & Paul, R. (2007). Defining critical thinking. The Critical Thinking Community:

Foundation for Critical Thinking. Retrieved Feb 2, 2013, from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766

The Sloan Consortium (2012). Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States. Retrieved Feb. 8, 2013, from http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/changing_course_2012

Williams, R.L. (2005). Targeting critical thinking within teacher education: The Potential Impact on Society. The Teacher Educator, 40 (3), 163-187

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr. Wei-Ying Hsaio: Dr. Wei-Ying Hsiao is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at University of Alaska Anchorage. Before moved to Alaska, she was an associate professor in Graduate Studies in Education at Southern Utah University, USA. She has taught Educational Psychology and Curriculum in undergraduate; in addition, she has been teaching Assessment, Classroom Management, Multicultural Education, Become a Master Teacher, Proposal Writing, and Educational Research both in online and face-to-face courses in graduate studies. Her recently research projects include diversity and multicultural education in the curriculum, e-books in school settings, integrated technology into curriculum, pre- and in-service teachers’ beliefs on technology teaching projects, learner–centered approach and learning environment, STEM curriculum, and online learning environment.

Manfen W. Chen: Manfen W. Chen received her DBA in Finance from Louisiana Tech University in 2003 and is currently an Associate Professor of Finance at University of Southern Indiana. Her research interests are information theory, regulatory policies, and asset pricing. Dr. Chen has published at the Journal of Regulatory Economics, the Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, and other refereed journals and proceedings articles.

Dr. Hsing-Wen Hu: Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the College of Education, University of Alaska-Anchorage.

25

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Integrated English IIII

Unit 2:Cinema and Beliefs

Stage 1. Desired results

Established goals: To become aware of the impact of the movie maker’s beliefs in his/her creation. To become aware of the power of movies in shaping cultural identity and vision. To identify the preconceptions, the values, the vision implicit in a movie. To value the contribution of a critical thinking as movie watchers To adjust the Theme of a given movie to match their own beliefs. To experience and evaluate the use of movies in TEFL/TESOL?

Understandings

Students will understand that…

movies convey cultural meaning

movies are subject to interpretation.

beliefs permeate the vision of the world portrayed in a movie.

Essential questions

1. What’s the impact of movies in shaping cultural memory and vision?

2. How are movies and culture related? 3. What’s the relevance of becoming a

critical movie watcher? 4. How could the perspective of a Universal

Topic be affected by beliefs? 5. What’s the value of using movies in

TEFL/TESL? What are some considerations to be taken into account at the moment of using them?

Knowledge Students will manage the following concepts…

art, cinema, beliefs, society, culture, ideology, criticism, learning, identity, pedagogical options, motivation

Skills

Students are expected to develop the following skills: a. Understand details of the conversations in movies. b. Explain the plot and theme in a movie orally and in writing. c. Understand movies as a possible

interpretation of reality. d. Analyze movies critically and express supported opinions orally and in writing. e. Compare different perspectives on a given Universal Topic seen in movies. f. Distinguish between facts and opinions. g. Judge the value of using movies in TEFL/TESOL. h. Explain and describe the use of movies in the teaching of English. h. Propose an interpretation on a Universal Topic.

i. Act out in a movi remake. Stage 2 – Assessment evidence

Performance task

Choose a movie adjust the theme to fit own beliefs and record the new version of the movie.

Other evidence

Writings and homework uploaded to wordpress. Participation in class: listening and speaking disposition. Fulfillment with class preparation tasks: readings, video viewing and others.

Wordpress journal

Journal entry 1: (video and writing): Deadline: May 4th, 2015

Stage 3 – Learning plan

Learning Experiences Extensive and intensive reading at home intensive and guided reading in class, watch short videos at home and in class listen (without viewing) in class) watch movies at home; watch, choose and analyze a movie. Individual and collaborative writing (essays, paragraphs, reports) at home

and in class class discussion and sharing pair and small group sharing; interviewing people in the streets write movie script and brochure (program) enact and record a movie remake. word maps and concept maps awareness and drilling language structures and phonetic strands in context.

Stage 4. Integration of language components

Language structuring Tense notions: unfinished, future and progression; modals

1. 1. Direct and indirect questions. 2. Present perfect: just, up to now, already,

yet and always, for and since 3.Present perfect progressive. 4.Past perfect simple and progressive. 5.Will / Going to. 6.Present progressive: “future

arrangements”. 7.Future progressive and future perfect. 8.Requests, orders, offers, permissions: can,

could, will, would. 9Ability: can, can’t, could, couldn’t, be able

to. 11.Obligation and compulsion: must, have

to, should, ought to. 12.Possibility and certainty: may, might,

could, must, must have, can’t have. 13.Collocations based on unit topic. 14.Linking 3 (Adding - Comparison)

Phonological/Phonetical components

Weak forms, statements, connected speech features. Awareness of features

1. Falling intonation for Wh-questions. 2. Rising intonation in yes – no questions. 3. Weak forms for modals, auxiliaries. 4. Statements. (Chapter 2.5) 5. /D, d, T/ 6. /b, v/ 7. Connected speech: assimilation, elision. 8. Transcription reading – phonetics symbols

Syntactic analysis: The Phrase (VP) (Biber,

D. 2002, chapter 5).

Unit bibliography

April 6 -10 Comolli, J. and Narboni, J. (ND) Cinema, Ideology and Criticism Movement! Action! Belief? Pence, J, Cinema of the Sublime, Theorizing the Ineffable. : Part I and Part 2 Neale, S. (2014) Art Cinema as Institution.Harvard: England. Harvard university Press.

April 13 -17 Yoon, S. (2009) Neoliberal World Order. Seoul, Korea: Visual Anthropology. Shoham, H. (2011) Urban Zionism. Tel Aviv, Israel: Israel Studies Review, Vol 26, Nº 2 Denninson, S. and Lim, S. (2006) Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film. London and New York: Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies, Vol 5, Nº 1. Gesamthoshschule, K. (2007) Film, authenticity and Language Teaching.London, England: Kings College London.

April 20 - 24 Etemadi, A. (2012) Effects of Bimodal Subtitling of English Movies on Content Comprehension and Vocabulary Recognition. Azad, Iran: International journal of English Linguistics, Vol 2, Nº 1. King, J. (2012) Using DVD Feature Films in the EFL Classroom. Azad, Iran: International journal of English Linguistics, Vol 5, Nº 15. King, J. (2010) Using Film Video and TV in the classroom Azad, Iran: International journal of English Linguistics, Vol 15, Nº 5. Casanave, C. and Simons, J. (1995) Pedagogical Perspectives of Using Films in Foreign Language Classes Part 1 (pages 1-17) and Part 2: Pages 45-52). Fujisama, Japan: Pedagogical Perspectives.



TASK 2

UNIT 2: Cinema and Beliefs

In this unit you will have to: Record a movie remake of 25 - 30 minutes length.

1. General outline

Form groups of 5 to 6. Choose a movie that you like. Watch it individually or as a group. In your group discuss what the beliefs behind the theme (the point of view of a given author on a Universal Topic) of the movie are. Film the new version of the movie considering the following: Keep the plot and make the movie “visible, but adjust the theme to fit your own beliefs and film the new version of the movie. You can use the scripts from the original movie and make some interventions on it and/or change some scenes or add others. The movie has to last 25 - 30 minutes, without including credits or extra features that you may like to include. Please note these will not be assessed (bloopers, credits, others). Make sure everybody has a speaking part and appears physically in the movie for 5 full minutes EACH. Please distribute the times each member equally.

a) task objectives

1. Become aware of the beliefs behind a movie. 2. Analyze a movie critically. 3. Take a stand on a given Universal Topic. 4. Make a creative proposal.

b) Dates

The movie has to be presented in class submitted in a CD/DVD/ flash drive in .avi

or .mpg. on Monday, April 27th at the beginning of the class (no later than 10

minutes after the time of the class) and all the members of the group have to be

present at this same time. Also uploaded to YouTube, and share the link through Wordpress the latest midnight on the same date.

e) Assessment

This task is a 10% of your Final grade. Find the rubric attached at the end of the document: Note that two extra

categories have been added to the Official Speaking Rubric.

c) Considerations

If for any reason your have problems conforming a group with the number of students required (5-6), you should approach your homeroom teacher to request for an exception. The teacher will will discuss it with the rest of the team and get back to you. Wait for the answer of your teacher before starting your work.

You will receive an individual grade for your speaking performance in the movie.

Videos with audio problems are not going to be evaluated If you film in an open area, please take special care of the background noise.

Your voice has to be loud and clear. Make sure music is not louder than voices. The evaluation will be focused on oral production.

If you fail to be present or you are late at the time of the presentation of the movie and submission of your work, you will receive the minimum grade.

Do not forget that Plagiarism is a serious offence which will be severely sanctioned. The first time work will be given a 1.0. If a second time occurs, course suspension and program expulsion may take place (Reglamento académico Título VI, Art.21)

ANGELAKIjournal of the theoretical humanitiesvolume 17 number 4 december 2012

I introduction

The founding gesture of Gilles Deleuze’s

philosophy of cinema is that movies are the

first art to fully capture, celebrate, and be

constituted by a version of the very same move-

ment of images that composes both physical

reality in the external world and psychic reality in

consciousness.1 The idea of movement-images as

the stuff of the world that are neither irreducibly

material (movement) nor irreducibly mental

(image) but an ontological joining of being and

appearance is the great idea Deleuze takes over

from Henri Bergson. Movies are pinned to this

idea. Movies are an art of immanence, bound to the

contingency of movements within what is finally a

cosmologically open system. What distinguishes

movies from other moving arts, say dance or

theatre, is that the camera, which is the stand-in

for consciousness, is itself mobile, ‘‘like a general

equivalent of all the means of locomotion that it

shows or that it makes use of’’ (C1 22); hence, the

condition for recording movement is itself in

movement, allowing us to experience the world as,

so to speak, movement all the way down. Our sense

that movies capture an intrinsically living, moving

world comes to eloquent fruition early on in the

history of cinema in Dziga Vertov’s Man with a

Movie Camera in the remarkable freeze frame of

the white horse cantering down a Moscow street.

The accumulation of energetic movement leading

to this moment makes it unavoidable that we

experience the horse’s movement as abruptly

halted or stilled, where the stillness that results is

and is felt to be made possible only through

movement (the repeating again and again of the

same image): duration not the instant is primitive.2

The second gesture of Deleuze’s philosophy of

cinema is that the distinction between classical

Hollywood cinema and the modern cinema

represented by Orson Welles, Italian

Neorealism, and the French New Wave can

itself be captured in the ontological terms of

reference guiding the theory as a whole: in

classical cinema, time is subordinated to move-

ment, to the ideals, needs and urgencies of action,

while in modern cinema, as significant action

becomes frustrated or increasingly impossible,

time is no longer subordinated to movement, to

the governance of action-orientations; it ‘‘increas-

ingly appears for itself and creates paradoxical

movements’’ (C2 xi). Classifying the shift from

classical cinema to modern cinema as a shift from

the movement-image to the time-image is the

empirical realization of the original depiction of

j.m. bernstein

MOVEMENT! ACTION!BELIEF?notes for a critique ofdeleuze’s cinemaphilosophy

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/12/040077^17� 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2012.747331

77

movement-images as simultaneously the stuff of

movies and the stuff of the world.

There is something probing and challenging in

this account, both in its offering movies a

metaphysical privilege over the other arts and in

its refusal to chart the development of film as one

in which, post-World War II, film would withdraw

from the task of more fully representing the world

for the sake of taking on the burdens of its

medium specificity in familiar modernist terms.

Whatever is most distinctive about modern

cinema, I am persuaded that it does twist free of

the standard modernist narrative of a shift from

representational art to medium-bound reflexivity,

endlessly declaring the demands of the medium

rather than those of the world (even if that

narrative does easily fit some modern filmmakers,

Godard most obviously). Movies never fundamen-

tally stop being representations of the world,

never stop tracking the fates of their protagonists,

never stop interrogating the fit between embodied

subjects and the material world they inhabit.

Something of this thought is acknowledged by

Deleuze, even demanded, and it is what draws the

agnostic reader to his texts: he makes a powerful

case for there being a radical transformation in

modern cinema that is deeply rooted in the

political realities of our time without yielding to a

standard modernist reading of that moment. All

that seems right and compelling; it is what makes

the metaphysical terms of his theory considerable.

Yet, in ways we shall come to, something

fundamental in the bent of modern cinema is

refused; the refusal, I argue, derives from an

illegitimate subordination of film to philosophy –

reducing film to its metaphysical lineaments –

which squanders what is best in the theory.

My attempt here is to demonstrate that the

categories Deleuze offers for the analysis of cinema

are insufficient to their object, getting wrong how

movies function and, thereby, utterly failing to

explain why movies matter to us (which I take to

be the sine qua non of any philosophical account-

ing of movies). My critique of Deleuze will rely

throughout on Andre Bazin’s realism. Of course,

Deleuze’s history of cinema tracks Bazin’s pre-

cisely, situating the break between classical and

modern cinema exactly where Bazin does, agreeing

that the transition must be regarded as a cinematic

advance in which the presuppositions of the

previous regime of movie-making are laid bare,

but contesting the idea that some notion of realism

that depends on cinema having a photographic

basis is the correct analysis of what has occurred.

Three distinct lines of criticism of Deleuze will

converge: (i) the ‘‘ontological’’ advance, as it

were, from movement-image to time-image

arrives, as Deleuze knows, because of a terrible

human regress, a destruction of the possibilities

of human living that is a consequence of the

destruction of the conditions for what has passed

for significant human action; but Deleuze cannot

adequately account for this fact because his

speculative, ontological practice itself invariably

and necessarily deposes the primacy of action (the

movement-image) in favour of the primacy of

belief (the response proper to the expansive

validity of the time-image). (ii) This failure is

connected to the fact that a cinema of the virtual

depends on the very Bazinian realism it means to

displace; realism is the cinematic condition and

truth of virtuality. (iii) Bazinian realism is the

cinematic form of philosophical modernism, of

the agent-based, subject-based anti-metaphysical,

anti-cosmological mode of philosophy that the

whole of Deleuze’s philosophy from its inception

rails against. From the perspective of Bazinian

realism, Deleuze’s philosophy often looks like the

pre-modern, scholastic, speculative metaphysics

it always was; clinging to Bergson’s shirttails does

not save Deleuze’s thought from being, give or

take a decade or two, four hundred years too late.

I begin with the transition from the regime of

the movement-image to that of the time-image; I

continue this interrogation by analysing Deleuze’s

theory of the time-image as given by his central

idea of movies as offering us experience of

‘‘sheets of past,’’ asking if the theory provides

materials sufficient to understand the dominant

features of Hiroshima mon amour – a movie, I

argue, that prima facie looks as if it was made to

fulfil the terms of Deleuze’s theory; it is, on any

account, an exemplary instance of the uprising of

the virtual, of the sedimented past in the present,

in response to the very historical impasses that

have forced the suspension of the action-image.

In fact, I shall argue, the terms of Hiroshima mon

amour are, finally, an object lesson in realism.

movement! action! belief?

78


II frommovement-image totime-image: the problem of action

Although the time-image is more ontologically

perspicuous than the movement-image, its emer-

gence comes at the cost of portraying a world in

which significant action is possible. So the kind of

cinema that makes ontological insight available in

some sense not only does but must occlude action

and with it the kind of sense-making attendant to

the lives of beings who are, essentially, agents,

the lives of humans as the life of action.3

Although it is not obvious from the cinema

books, there must be a primacy of the movement-

image over the time-image in its capacity to

capture agential life, while for Deleuze’s cinema

philosophy proper there is a philosophical pri-

macy of the time-image over the movement-

image. The philosophical primacy of the time-

image is the distortion that ruins Deleuze’s

philosophy.

We can begin getting at this problem with the

thought that the original greatness of cinema for

Deleuze is that it captures the fact that the world

is composed of movement-images: the material

universe is, Deleuze says, the machine assemblage

of movement-images; hence the universe can be

interpreted as metacinema (C1 59). After making

this claim, Deleuze goes on to provide a gram-

matical deduction of the ordinary categories of

experience as emerging from a core conception

of the world as composed of images in motion (of

things in motion whose being (movement) and

appearing (image) to one another are ontologi-

cally joined). Movement is understood as a

quality when we treat a state as persisting while

awaiting the arrival of another state; grammati-

cally qualities are adjectival. When movement is

understood in terms of what carries it out or

submits to it or bears it, we have the category of

body to which there corresponds the grammatical

form of nouns. Finally, when movement is

understood in terms of the provisional place it

is directed toward or the result to be secured,

then the movement is categorically an action to

which there corresponds the grammatical form of

the verb (C1 59). Without action the universe

would be static, hence not an assemblage of

movement-images at all. In this respect, the

very idea of a non-organic living universe is

equivalent to one in which there are actions.

Action is the categorical pivot of the movement

universe.

Deleuze immediately translates the categorical

scheme of quality, body, and action into the

articulation of the movement-image in the terms

of perception-image, affection-image, and action-

image. Now the movement from perception (as

the master of space) to affection as the charged

and dynamic interval between perception and

action, to action as the master of time is one

version of the metacinema of the world as such

because each such translation of perception into

affection and affection into action constitutes a

movement-image as such, as movement – it

projects the very idea of movement uberhaupt:

there is no moving body distinct from executed

movement, and there is no moved body separate

from received movement; between being moved

and moving is the interval of affective response –

cinematically fulfilled in the close-up – in which

is found the unique complex that gives a body its

perspectival orientation toward every other body.

The ordinary categories of the movement-image

as a whole directly correspond to the basic

categories of cinema itself: the perception-image

corresponds to the frame (which determines

everything that will be in a shot as well as what

will count as ‘‘out-of-field’’); the affection-image

bequeaths the shot; and action-images correspond

to montage (as the coordination of perception-,

affection-, and action-images). Diagrammatically,

the coordination looks like this:4

Perception-image

Framing � Shot � Montage Affection-image

� Action-image

�

Perception-image � Affection-image � Action-image

bernstein

79

bernstein

It is the tight coordination of the perception-

image, affection-image, and action-image (under

the governance of a certain idea of montage as a

work of totalization, an oriented idea of a work as

a whole) that constitutes the sensory-motor

schema. Now the sensory-motor schema for

Deleuze is both a cinematic idea and a practical

idea: it is the image of there being a match

between actions and the world where, all things

being equal, actions of a certain distinct kind can,

finally or at least ideally, secure their ends in a

corresponding world configured as intrinsically

hospitable to actions of those kinds; showing that

hospitality is what a cinematically realized

organic or dialectical philosophy of history

accomplishes. So the achievement of marriage

in the Hollywood comedies of the 1930s not only

says something about sexual difference, celebrat-

ing it, but understands the satisfactions of

marriage as the satisfactions of the American

dream-idea of equality and the pursuit of happi-

ness.5 One might say, then, that the action-image

assumes a moral view of the world in which the

true ends of human action can, at least in

principle, be satisfied in this world.6 (At a lower

level, Deleuze sometimes speaks of this world in

terms of hodological space, or, as might be said

now, a space of affordances. But while the idea of

space constituted as the habitat of action gener-

ally is phenomenologically important, indeed

constitutive for a conception of selves as agents,

it under-prescribes how stringent and complex

the fit must be between the normative or ideal

ends of human action and the causal structures of

the world housing them in classical cinema.)

What generates what I take to be the aporetic

relation between the movement-image and the

time-image, between classical and modern

cinema, is that the emergence of the time-image

occurs as a consequence of our no longer believing

that an ideal-preserving fit between action and

world is available. We no longer believe

that a global situation might give rise to an

action which is capable of modifying it – no

more than we believe that an action can force a

situation to disclose itself, even partially.

The most ‘‘healthy’’ illusions fall. The first

things to be compromised everywhere are the

linkages of situation–action, action–reaction,

excitation–response, in short, the sensory-

motor links which produced the action-image.

(C1 206)

And the upshot of this fact is that cinema is now

(at the moment of Neorealism and the French

New Wave) composed not of agents modifying the

world but seers taking in the scope of its horror

and injustice, which seem, prima facie, impervi-

ous to transformation. Irene in Europe 51 and

Travis in Taxi Driver are compelling versions of

these seers; whether it is correct to think of either

figure as just a seer rather than agent, or even

whether it makes sense to think of these movies as

despairing of making a narrative contract with

their audience, can be set aside for the moment. It

is sufficient that Irene’s transformation is above

all perceptual, a coming to see the world as

suffering and needy and demanding aid and

comfort, where the cost of so perceiving the world

is her incarceration and hence prohibition from

acting on the horror she sees; and that Travis’s

maddened action emerges from his blistering

Manichean perceptual experience of the streets of

New York as hell on earth in need of redemption.

But this is to say that the shift whereby each actual

image becomes shadowed by some version of its

virtuality, the temporal series that simultaneously

brings it about and is sedimented in it, cinemat-

ically – and practically – systematically occurs at

the cost of significant action of the kind in which

human ends are satisfied or disappointed in

explainable and transformable ways. This is why

Deleuze so emphatically does not provide a

hierarchical ranking of the movement-image and

the time-image: even if the time-image is more

philosophically perspicuous than the movement-

image – to such an extent that Resnais’s cinematic

practice can itself be regarded as ‘‘philosophical’’

(C2 199) – nonetheless the movement-image is a

version of cosmological movement, namely that

version tailored to the needs of human action, and

the cost of its demise is the cost of human action

within a viable collective life (each I a part of an

ethically substantive We), where action is the soul

of movement.

For Deleuze, modern cinema succeeds when it

provides reasons to believe in the world: ‘‘Cinema

must film, not the world, but belief in this world,


80


our only link. The nature of cinematographic

illusion has often been considered. Restoring

belief in the world – this is the power of modern

cinema (when it stops being bad)’’ (C2 172;

emphasis added).7 There are moments in which

Deleuze lays out this thought as a version of

Kierkegaard’s leap of faith in which belief in the

world replaces belief in God.

To believe, not in a different world, but in a

link between man and the world, in love or

life, to believe in this as in the impossible, the

unthinkable, which none the less cannot but

be thought: ‘‘something possible, otherwise I

will suffocate.’’ [Irene (Ingrid Bergman) in

Europa 51.] It is this belief that makes the

unthought the specific power of thought,

through the absurd, by virtue of the absurd.

(C2 170)

The final sentence strikes me as revoking any

reason one might have for caring about cinema,

or art generally, since one might suppose that the

absurd, the impossible, is as readily available

without aesthetic mediation as with it. There are

strains of the cinema books that lean heavily

toward a this-worldly version of what Paul

Schrader has termed the ‘‘transcendental style

in film,’’ making particular reference to Bresson

(a minor hero for Deleuze), Ozu, and Dreyer.8

Deleuze goes so far as to say that there is ‘‘a

Catholic quality to cinema’’ (C2 171), a quality he

attempts to provide with an inner-worldly,

Protestant twist. Beginning in Cinema 1 with

the account of the idea of any-space-whatever and

the emergence of lyrical abstraction, Deleuze

joins modern cinema (right back to Dreyer) to the

questions of faith and infinite choosing as

originally deployed by Pascal and Kierkegaard.

As he notes, belief was used by these philoso-

phers as a displacement of the primacy of

knowledge as grounding our relation to the

world. But that cannot be the relevant alternative

given his action-based account of the meaning of

classical cinema. Since Deleuze’s analysis of the

cinematographic virtual necessarily puts action

and narration out of play, then from the outset he

must mean the notion of belief to be opening the

depths of cinema to an emphatic notion of

experience detached from the parameters of

agential life, and that he opts for the notion of

belief in a world beyond this one as providing the

right kind of compensatory attachment for a

world bereft of action. Belief, I am suggesting, is

not an idle choice of term by Deleuze; his account

of the time-image demands that movies take on

the lineaments of religious faith, belief in its most

regressive sense being all that is left to agents for

whom no actions or possibilities of action remain.

The philosophy of the virtual, rather than being

immanent and materialist, when put into practice

in relation to the history of cinema becomes

redolent with abstract religiosity. (Or, one might

argue that Deleuze’s Spinozism is emerging here,

making the displacement of action final: assume

that ‘‘belief in the world’’ in the cinema books is

a version of Spinoza’s ‘‘intellectual love of God’’;

the movies would thus be credited with accom-

plishing the demonstration and acknowledgement

that was the task of the third kind of knowing in

Spinoza’s Ethics.9)

That Deleuze means belief to have its religion-

based connotations becomes even more obvious

once we recognize that the notion of belief in the

world is the religious version of the idea of

aesthetic experience providing conviction in and

connection to the world; that is, aesthetic expe-

rience is one in which our judgmental apprecia-

tion of a work simultaneously yields or involves

an affective response.10 Put differently, one

version of works of art succeeding is that they

return to our ordinary beliefs about the world the

feelings and emotions appropriate to those

beliefs.11 One might suppose that Deleuze was

thinking something of this order since he begins

his account of our need for reasons to believe in

the world with the claim that ‘‘the modern fact is

that we no longer believe in this world. We do not

even believe in the events which happen to us,

love, death . . .’’ (C2 171). Under the auspices of

this interpretation, one version of the unthought

or the unthinkable becomes believing in the

body: ‘‘It is giving discourse to the body, and for

this purpose, reaching the body before dis-

courses, before words, before things are

named . . .’’ (C2 172–73). The extreme version

of belief in the body is the now familiar cinema of

spiritual masochism: fighters, wrestlers, dancers,

and would-be gods punishing the flesh for the

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sake of a moment in which pain is transfigured

into something else – beauty or meaning or

redemption (where these are all equivalents for

art-making itself, transfiguring matter into mean-

ing; and for some notion of immanent transcen-

dence, some notion of believing in the world,

entailing art-making itself in such an achieve-

ment). A less extreme version would be Bazin’s

realist construction of love of the world. In

considering a version of the world before it is

named, it is difficult to avoid these sentences

from Bazin:

Only the impassive lens, stripping its object of

all those ways of seeing it, those piled-up pre-

conceptions, that spiritual dust and grime with

which my eyes have covered it, is able to

present it in all its virginal purity to my

attention and consequently to my love.12

Neither the exorbitance of spiritual masochism

nor the plaints of Bazin’s realist love song match

the exigencies of the time-image; Deleuze seems

to have chosen the notion of belief as a critical

alternative to notions like catharsis, aesthetic

experience, and love of the world. I shall return

to Bazin’s love and realism below. For now,

however, the question appropriate to Deleuze’s

theory is: does his account of the cinema of the

time-image show how these works succeed in

connecting affect and world? And can there be

such a connection that does not track back to the

possibilities of human action?

III a cinema of memory?

Near the beginning of Cinema 2 Deleuze affirms

Jean-Louis Schefer’s assertion that the cinemat-

ographic image releases time from the linkages

established through action sequences, entailing

that ‘‘cinema is the sole experience where time is

given to me as a perception’’ (C2 37). In both

classical cinema and ordinary life, situations are

represented in relation to the possible series of

actions they solicit and prohibit. One conse-

quence of the evaporation of the action orienta-

tions of classical cinema is that a perceived space

takes on an obdurate appearance, ‘‘pure optical

situations’’ (C2 2) in which the connection

between one image and the next or one action

and its successor is unmotivated, untethered from

larger purposes and ends, errant and dispersive.

Movements now appear ‘‘aberrant’’ (C2 36). Of

the seers who are represented as experiencing this

shattering of the world, Deleuze says:

They are rather given over to something

intolerable which is simply their everydayness

itself. It is here that the reversal is produced:

movement is no longer simply aberrant,

aberration is now valid in itself and designates

time as its direct cause. ‘‘Time is out of joint’’:

it is off the hinges assigned to it by behaviours

in the world, but also by the movements of

the world. It is no longer time that depends on

movement; it is aberrant movement

that depends on time. (C2 41; translation

modified)

Deleuze is contending that in modern cinema

time becomes detached from action to the point

at which it becomes manifest in itself: passing

emptily, frozen, the plague of ennui, the endless-

ness of a present that will not pass. I take the oft-

remarked ‘‘slowness’’ of much modern cinema to

be exactly this: the experience of a situation

suspended from the urgencies of action and the

demands of narrative resolution. However things

unfold, they will not accumulate under the

retrospective governance of an idea that binds

the meaning of past actions to some available or

hoped for end. Such a retrospective control of

action is how classical Hollywood montage, which

succeeds by hiding its own workings, subordi-

nated time to action. In the traumatized world of

modern cinema actions lose their meaning

because they are detached from ends, purposes,

and satisfactions internal to them. The sense of

actions depending on time means simply that

without deep structures of narrative motivation

all that bears actions into the world is the world’s

continual passing.

Yet if Deleuze’s theory stopped here, all that

modern cinema would accomplish would be a

mimesis of the ‘‘something intolerable and

unbearable . . . something too powerful, or too

unjust, but sometimes also too beautiful, and

which henceforth outstrips our sensory-motor

capacities’’ (C2 18). What is more necessary

under these conditions is to combine the


82


optical–sound image ‘‘with the enormous forces

that are not those of a simply intellectual

consciousness, nor of the social one, but of a

profound, vital intuition’’ (C2 22), hence an

image now which would be ‘‘anterior to the

controlled flow of every action,’’ yielding some

experience of ‘‘a birth of the world that is not

completely restricted to the experience of our

motivity’’ (C2 37; the last clause again following

Jean-Louis Schefer’s L’Homme ordinaire du

cinema). This idea of a birth of the world in

images configured as independent from action

and its motivations is the idea of the time-image;

the time-image thus provides Deleuze’s concep-

tion of how what is new becomes conceivable.

Arguably, the idea of sheets of past is the

conceptual core of the time-image: the present

exists only as an infinitely contracted past – the

past contracted into the duree of this living

present; hence,

between the past as pre-existence in general

and the present as infinitely contracted past

there are, therefore, all the circles of the past

constituting so many stretched or shrunk

regions, strata, and sheets: each region

with its own characteristics, its ‘‘tones’’, its

aspects, its ‘‘singularities’’, its ‘‘shining

points’’, and its ‘‘dominant’’ themes. (C2 99)

It is because the present is nothing but a

contracted past – a past simultaneously congealed

in and arriving at the present, looking backward

and forward at once – that Deleuze insists that

‘‘memory is not in us; it is we who move in a

Being-memory, a world-memory’’ (C2 98). If

memory were simply in us, we would be in

control of it, its master; we would be present

beings who have a past that was separate from our

present being, and all of the past that mattered or

could matter would be the past we could

remember. Because we are formed by our past,

then that formation is active and effective

whether psychologically remembered or not.

Psychological memory records one putative rela-

tion between fleeting present and regions and

strata of an individual’s past. But my past may be

utterly outside my existing psychological memory

since the fibres of my being have been woven by

events not directly experienced by me, and what

experience I have of some events may be the most

eviscerated version of them.

Alain Resnais is the great cartographer of the

sheets of past. In his cinema, writes Deleuze,

[M]emory is clearly no longer the faculty of

having recollections: it is the membrane

which, in the most varied ways . . . makes

sheets of past and layers of reality correspond,

the first emanating from an inside which is

always already there, the second arriving from

an outside always to come, the two gnawing at

the present which is now only their encounter.

(C2 207)

Hiroshima mon amour directly addresses a

conundrum between present and past that is a

token of the historical rupture that has made

classical cinema no longer possible and modern

cinema necessary. Although there will be com-

peting descriptions of this rupture, by placing the

emphasis on the events of Hiroshima and World

War II, Resnais, like Deleuze, appears to be

invoking the notion of a traumatic history. For

the purposes at hand, I understand trauma to

refer to an experience that happens but cannot be

digested, absorbed, narrated – it is altogether too

much, an excess beyond the terms through which

we understand historical experience. What hap-

pens is variable between two ways in which the

past and the present can fail to be integrated with

one another: the past can remain emphatically

present (nightmare, memory images, dissociation

from the present) and therefore never past; or,

the past can be utterly repressed, a hole or a

vacancy that yields a present without its attending

past, hence emptying the present of substance.

Both of these ways of expressing the temporal

curvature of traumatic history turn on there

being an experience that cannot be experienced,

that cannot be or has not been lived through.

I understand the Japanese man and the French

woman in Hiroshima to be suffering their

traumatized histories in the latter way, that is,

by having the most significant moment of their

lives utterly absent from the present construction

of those lives; and I further assume that Resnais

chose to figure their traumas thus in order that

they would match that of the cinematic audience:

we are living out this traumatic history almost

bernstein

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bernstein

completely in the mode of presents emptied of

their traumatic origins. Although I will

re-describe it later, the most patent symptom or

marker of this emptiness for both the man and

the woman is that they describe themselves as

‘‘happily’’ married, but are nonetheless both

sexually restless, their marriages neither fully

binding nor fully affectively satisfying (they only

half believe in their own present loves); and

further, that they experience their brief affair

with one another as utterly unlike previous sexual

liaisons. What occurs between them each regards

as the shattering of being in love, where that

shattering is both the French woman coming to

re-live her traumatic history, to share it with the

man, so in loving her he exposes himself to her

history; just as, in loving the man, she exposes

herself to both her history and his. We are further

meant to assume, all this still at a very high level

of abstraction, that what enables the shattering

and release of love and memory here is that for

each the other is utterly Other, one whose history

is not their history, one whose contracted present,

at least in the first instance, does not experien-

tially touch the other’s experiential present. This

gap between the histories that have made their

different presents possible is the source of the

debate between them in the strange and extended

opening scene in which she insists she has seen

and understood what happened in Hiroshima,

and he flatly denies her claims.13

He: You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing.

She: I saw everything. Everything. (HMA 15)

These are the opening words of the movie,

occurring directly after the hallucinatory opening

in which we see entwining limbs that are at first

unrecognizable, but seemingly those of victims of

some horrendous event (a nuclear event, say),

only to discover they are the glistening, sweating

limbs of the lovers – death and love entangled

from the beginning. One should not take the

words that open the film casually. Hiroshima,

finally, will turn on overcoming the ruptural

scission that leaves in its wake the impossible

duality between nothing and everything, the

traumatized hyperbole of absolute loss in oppo-

sition to the overwhelming rapture of bodily life.

Being and nothing are not only the terms of a

philosophical logic, they are also, and first,

begotten, the result of a century’s horror.

Learning how to curtail the authority of those

categories – learning how becoming becomes

possible – is what is at stake in learning how to

live through that history. Or, what turns out to be

the same thought, to overcome the impossible

oscillation between everything or nothing

involves moving from melancholic destitution to

mournful life.

In simple terms, the exchange between the man

and the woman raises the issue of the difference

between knowledge and experience: she has done

everything she can to understand what has

happened, returning again and again to the

museum, reading, contemplating. She is involved

in making a movie about Hiroshima that is a call

for peace, and an end to the nuclear threat of

annihilation. At some level she has seen every-

thing, everything she could reasonably see, every-

thing that any concerned citizen of the world

might reasonably be expected to see and take

responsibility for. And yet she has seen nothing.

Now the great gamble of Hiroshima is that we

will come to engage the meaning of the gap

between historical knowing and traumatic expe-

rience through the way in which the man and the

woman work out the meaning of the shattering of

their finding themselves in love with one another

in a way that is conditioned by their separation

from one another: only the touch of the alien,

bodily other can awaken them. To find one

another, love and acknowledge one another, they

must simultaneously take on one another’s past,

Hiroshima and Nevers (her childhood home,

where she lived throughout the war); absorbing

those pasts is their love, its burden and its joy.

Hiroshima is, in Deleuze’s terms, a crystal-image

through which we are enabled to experience the

virtual past in both its absence, as contracted, and

in its insistent, haunting presence; for example, in

the early scene of the woman’s waking from their

night together, as she returns from the terrace,

the sleeping body of the man suddenly becomes

for her the body of another young man lying in

the same position, but in a posture of death. We

will learn that this is the body of her German

soldier lover.


84


Duras and Resnais’s idea, which fully corre-

sponds to the Deleuzian thought of each person’s

present being a contracted past, is that the woman

and the man can come into contact with their own

traumatic history only by fully encountering the

sheets of the other’s past, which, understood

aright, also belongs to their past. And cinemat-

ically this is just what occurs: as the woman

comes to more fully acknowledge her love of the

man, she simultaneously feels drawn to commu-

nicating with him her wartime experience, and as

she does so he obliquely but emphatically

becomes the German soldier for her, making

present the confusion between past and present

that had occurred as a flashback in the bedroom

scene. So the experience of acknowledging their

love for one another really is the becoming of the

indeterminacy between actual and virtual, present

(the Japanese man here in the bar facing her) and

past (the Japanese man merging with the German

soldier):

He: do you scream?

[The room at Nevers.]

She: Not in the beginning; no, I don’t scream:

I call you softly.

He: But I’m dead. (HMA 57)

Deleuze endorses the view of Resnais’s cinema as

‘‘Lazarean,’’ his heroes returning from the land of

the dead (C2 208). Because Resnais and Duras

force us to surrender our easy ideas separating the

living from the dead, we are equally forced to

acknowledge a terrain of indeterminacy between

fact and fiction, real and imaginary, present vs.

past, self and other. As these constructive

categories that ground everyday ideas of actuality

dissolve in the scene of her narration of her

history, we come to recognize how this dissolu-

tion is only making explicit an indeterminacy and

difficulty in the nature of experience that is

always there. Resnais and Duras not only make

the virtual dimensions of experience perceptible,

they demonstrate their abiding character. I can

think of no fuller or more complete attempt to

think the claim of the virtual for the present as a

response to the dilemma of believing in the

present than the argument of Hiroshima. At one

level, this looks like the paradigm case of

Deleuzian cinema.14

The movie concludes with new life, with the

nameless French woman and the nameless

Japanese man finally being named, as if for the

first time, as if in a baptism into life: ‘‘Ne-vers’’

and ‘‘Hi-ro-shi-ma.’’ the broken, syllabic saying

of the names standing for their need to be

learned, for their being acts of original name-

giving; the hesitancy of the gesture corresponding

to, through naming, the birth of the world from

out of the ashes of the dead past. The urgent

question that naturally arises at this juncture in

the analysis is: is the description of the sources

and stakes of the traumatic history composing the

lives of the nameless French woman and the

nameless Japanese man conveyed accurately by

the idea of there being a separation between

present and past understood as through the idea

of sheets of past, through the making palpable the

virtual past of this present? Are Deleuze’s

organizing concepts those necessary for under-

standing how present and past, love and history

are here entwined? I want to argue, against

Deleuze, that Duras and Resnais ask the question

about the meaning of traumatic history through

the question of love – which Duras always

insisted is the crux of the project – because the

question of memory is finally about the dialectic

of memory and forgetting, melancholy and

mourning, and hence about the unavoidability

of betrayal. Betrayal, a category that I take to

belong firmly within the logic of action with its

narrative embedding, is the pivot of Hiroshima,

not the relation between actual and virtual; the

necessity or the inevitability of betrayal is

synonymous with the necessity or inevitability

of narrative, even if, as must be acknowledged,

modern cinema narrates otherwise than classical

cinema. Betrayal in this setting becomes one of

the terms necessary for an acknowledgement of

finitude; as a consequence that acknowledgement

must belong to moral psychology, to an ethics of

the past rather than to speculative ontology.

IV mourning asbetrayal: on theworksof love

Hiroshima is a story about the fragile, indeter-

minate border between life and death, about

death in life, about surviving and being a

bernstein

85

bernstein

survivor, about the precariousness of identity as

the woman keeps becoming or never stops being

the teenage girl holding on to her forever dying/

forever dead love, and the Japanese man who,

briefly, becomes the German soldier. Here is the

moment of the soldier’s dying, and her love

continuing to hold him in her:

Little by little he grew cold beneath me. Oh!

How long it took him to die! When? I’m not

quite sure. I was lying on top of

him . . . yes . . . the moment of his death actu-

ally escaped me, because . . . because even at

that very moment, and even afterward, yes,

even afterward, I can say that I couldn’t feel

the slightest difference between this dead body

and mine. All I could find between this body

and mine were obvious similarities, do you

understand? [Shouting.] He was my first

love . . . (HMA 65)

I take the pivot here to be that the moment of his

death escaped her, that she could feel only the

similarities – hand to hand, cheek to cheek, and

hence their being joined as lovers are. ‘‘He was

my first love . . .’’ concludes this description of

the event; first love here articulates the exposure

to love itself, the exposure to human connected-

ness as what makes an adult life worth having.

Our connection to the other is our connection to

life, its worth. So Resnais and Duras’s consid-

eration of love is tracking a terrain directly

adjacent to Deleuzian belief in the world; this, in

effect, is the stake of this analysis. The woman

could not imagine losing her German lover, for to

lose him would be to lose her connection to the

world, and if she had no connection to the world

she could not survive. If great love, first love is

what we think it is, we cannot survive its loss –

this is the belief of every lover. Love is the

experience and illusion of its unsurvivability;

melancholic destitution and traumatic suffering

are a consequence of that illusion. Hence,

conversely, we must come to perceive traumatic

suffering as melancholic destitution, and hence,

whatever the cause of the trauma may be, a

pathology of love. This is the precise gesture that

permits Resnais and Duras to construct the

question of life after Hiroshima, life after the

Holocaust, as a love story.

Rather than dying, as the woman guiltily

believes she should have (giving the notion of

survivor’s guilt its appropriate passionate origin),

she survives by taking her lover into herself, by

not letting him die, by keeping their love pure

and untouched by the world. The time in the

cellar is meant to image the living crypt, death in

life. This is what melancholic grief is, what all

grief is to some extent. Eventually, she tells the

man, she learned to become reasonable, to live;

but that is fac�ade: she kept her first love private,

pure, locked in herself, hence alive; the dead man

in her is her absorption by death. And it is this

that makes her restless, drawn to love affairs and

casual sex, seeking in erotic attachment the erotic

attachment to life that her melancholy has

foreclosed. So she is drawn too to Hiroshima,

the living place whose name means death. The

woman carries death in her, carries this stranger

in herself, and finally finds release only with

another strange love – another absolute other

(foreign, strange, not me, the man whose name

will mean absolute loss) who can be both himself

and that original other; his separation from her

will stand for and enable the separation from the

German lover. The man’s alien existence prior to

her forging it, being able to name it and make it

her own, calls her to an acknowledgement of

separateness. The other’s separateness from me is

their finitude, their mortality, that they might die

and leave me behind; this devastating separate-

ness is what the woman discovers in the shatter-

ing of her love for the Japanese man.

Resnais and Duras are using the woman’s story

as both an embodiment and an allegory of the

question of memory and ethics that connects to

both Hiroshima and the Holocaust. Toward the

end of the strange opening documentary and

argument about knowing or not knowing

Hiroshima, seeing or not seeing it, we find the

following:

He: No, you don’t know what it is to forget.

She: Like you, I have a memory. I know what

it is to forget.

He: No, you don’t have a memory.

She: Like you, I too have tried with all my

might not to forget. Like you, I forgot. Like

you, I wanted to have an inconsolable

memory, a memory of shadows and


86


stone . . . Why deny the obvious necessity for

memory? (HMA 23)

She feels connected to Hiroshima. She feels that

her bodily connection to the man vindicates her

sense of knowing; her sexual knowledge of him

and her knowing of Hiroshima are entwined. This

is why the argument, with its insistently repre-

sented (imagined? dreamed? recalled?) documen-

tary images of what she had seen, follows and

completes their lovemaking for her. Put all this

aside for the moment. I take the line ‘‘I wanted to

have an inconsolable memory’’ to refer to her

feeling of the memory she should have toward

her German lover, and hence the kind of memory

she thinks she must or can have through visiting,

acknowledging, seeing Hiroshima. Hiroshima

initially operates for her as a metaphor for

devastation of a kind for which only inconsolable

memory could be appropriate. Why does she

want an inconsolable memory? Why does she seek

melancholic destitution? Because to imagine

consolation is to imagine forgetfulness; to imag-

ine consolation is to imagine that some release

from that memory would be possible and worth-

while, that one would feel somehow relieved,

unburdened, purified; but in feeling thus con-

soled one has accepted the present and turned

one’s back on the past; hence to feel consoled is

to displace the past with the present, which is to

forget the past, betray it, let it pass.

This yields the dilemma that forms the motive

and meaning of Duras and Resnais’s project: if we

are inconsolable, if we cannot let go of the past, if

there really is ‘‘something intolerable and unbear-

able’’ in experience without release, then trauma

triumphs, melancholy triumphs, then the past

envelops the present so there is no present, no

living, the dead absorb the living, the living bear

the dead with them. That we should become the

living dead in this way is morally repulsive, yet

that is what the erotically and ethically charged

ideal of inconsolable memory means: nothing can

counter it, nothing ought to weigh in the scales in

relation to it. How could anything ethically

matter in comparison to that devastation? Yet,

if we are to live, then we must forget, forgetful-

ness is necessary for living and action. But if we

live and forget, we betray the past, we betray first

loves, we betray the dead. The past becomes past,

without a living present, almost nothing. If the

past becomes nothing, then we are nothing. The

dynamics and difficulty of this dilemma – either

the dead absorbing the living, or the living simply

using the dead, forgetting them (or remembering

solely for the sake of their own future, which is

what forgetting comes to) – are obvious in the

case of first love (love of parents, first romantic

love, love as the paradigm of our connection to

world), but they are equally obvious in the case of

the Holocaust and Hiroshima: either traumatic

attachment without consolation, or the consola-

tions of living as forgetfulness and absolute

betrayal. Not just for survivors but for us too:

after all, if we narrate the Holocaust or

Hiroshima, place them in a narrative, then we

use them for ends outside themselves, we use

them for our purposes. Everything turns on

seeing how the claims of first love and those of

absolute atrocity connect in their demands on

survivors, on the life that comes after.

The accusation of forgetfully using history is a

core of the Japanese man’s critique of the

woman’s claim to know Hiroshima. He asks

her: ‘‘What did Hiroshima mean for you, in

France?’’

She: The end of the war, I mean, really the

end. Amazement . . . at the idea they had

dared . . . amazement at the idea they had

succeeded. And then too, for us, the beginning

of an unknown fear. And then indifference.

And also the fear of indifference . . . (HMA 33)

The point here is that Hiroshima for her has

always belonged to her history, the history of her

war, her or French thinking about the new fear of

atomic warfare, and fear of not thinking about

this and being indifferent to it, and indifferent to

Hiroshima. Hiroshima as what occurred to

‘‘them’’ is no part of this self-consciousness.

Now funnel this worry into Resnais’s own. He

was asked and planned to make a documentary

about Hiroshima. After collecting archive footage

and thinking through the project, he hit a wall: he

could not fathom how a movie, at least by him,

about Hiroshima would be truly different from

his movie about the Holocaust, Night and Fog

(1955). The singularity of Hiroshima would

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be lost. In order not to betray Hiroshima, in

order to acknowledge its singularity, he makes a

movie in which the meaning of Hiroshima for us

is not given but placed in question, becomes the

movie’s question, through embedding that ques-

tion in a fictional love story between a French

woman and a Japanese man in which the mystery

of their relationship will turn on her love story

with the German soldier and her death-driven

love for Hiroshima. (Love is many things in this

movie: it is first love, connectedness to the world;

it is illusion; it is art; it is the connecting of

persons and events. Love binds what is forever

separate.)

As she narrates her captivity in the cellar,

addressing the Japanese man as if he is her

German lover, she says: ‘‘Oh! It’s horrible. I’m

beginning to remember you less clearly . . . I’m

beginning to forget you. I tremble at the thought

of having forgotten so much love . . .’’ (HMA

64).15 For the purposes of the argument of this

movie the forgetting of love and the forgetting of

overwhelming suffering and loss are the same

issue: to forget either is a wild betrayal. Yet as we

hear her tell her story to her Japanese lover, we

know at least two things: first, her story can be

narrated; for the sake of her passion or jouissance

with the Japanese man, for the sake of human

connectedness without withdrawal, she could and

had to tell her tale. So impossible pasts and

difficult presents can be joined in a manner

demonstrating that narrative retrospection, even

here, is both possible and necessary. And that

narrating in this way is a kind of forgetting and a

kind of remembering at once: ‘‘I was unfaithful to

you tonight with this stranger. I told our

story . . .’’ (HMA 73) she says to her German

lover as she stares at herself in the mirror. The

narrative of the movie concerns the becoming of

her narration of her first love out of an original

pure optical situation. There is a necessary

betrayal because the telling is a communication

to another, hence, and this is the complication

Resnais and Duras have been pondering, the

uniqueness of the story can only be sustained as it

is taken up, communicated, shared, formed,

dissolved in its stony singularity. So the saving

gesture of narrative remembering is simulta-

neously a betrayal and forgetfulness.

I take the notion of betrayal and infidelity as

all we have in order to sustain truth and memory

to be Duras and Resnais’s most urgent thesis.

After all, what are we to make of what is

essentially a fifteen-minute documentary on

Hiroshima that is told by a woman in a mood

of confession and insistence as she lies naked in

her lover’s arms after, we presume, a long night

of passion? Part of this I take to be the thought

that there is no witnessing, no remembering, no

narrating without pleasure, that pleasure can be

infringed upon, turned into a painful pleasure, a

jouissance, but as long as there is a communica-

tion and a satisfaction there is pleasure. That

there is or could be this pleasure is intolerable to

the Japanese man, which is the other explanation

for his insistent denials of the woman’s claim to

know at the beginning.

So, and here is the second thing we learn, we

come into proximity to the event of Hiroshima,

both its devastation and the difficulty of encoun-

tering that devastation, through her narrating and

remembering, and not through either history or

great politics. So whether it is Night and Fog or

Hiroshima mon amour, there is to the necessary

narrative communication of these traumatic

events something private, personal, involved,

not a politics but forms of communication outside

the political sphere: we narrate in order to live, in

order to live on, in order to live after. Cinematic

narratives, as forms of communication, contain

something metaphorical and general, a substitu-

tion of one thing for another, and thus a betrayal

of uniqueness. History, love, and mourning are

alike in this: betrayal is intrinsic to what of them

requires our acknowledgement.

Much of what the woman remembers is film

clips, newsreel footage, and even (this is a guess

about the hospital sequence) a scene from the

movie she is making. Our attachment to history

and one another will be technologically mediated,

formed, it will be a communication; it will bring

unwanted pleasure, solace, catharsis – such is

form. Mediation and betrayal are necessary.

Hence, however indexical the photographic

image, however transparent in its relation to its

object, the object is nonetheless absent. The

technical medium and the human memory may

both fantasize a pure attachment to the object, an


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ethical or passionate faithfulness, but if that

fidelity is fantasized as a perfect return, as a

perfect melancholic absorption, then only death

in life can result.

V inevitable actions, minor narratives

Our hearts can be broken by modern movies; to

call the heroine of Europa 51 ‘‘a mummy

radiating tenderness’’ (C2 171) is both fair and

misleading: Irene is both seer and agent, witness

to the world’s misery and comforter. And while

comforting is not transforming the world or by

itself sufficient to show that the world is available

to radical transformation, it is what action can

come to in that place, and it is sufficient in its

threat to make it worth being condemned by the

authorities. Analogously, the man and the woman

in Hiroshima mon amour lift themselves beyond

the confines of affective paralysis by letting the

surprise of erotic attachment become an occasion

for confession, forgiveness, communication, the

actions necessary for mutual recognition that

allow each through acknowledging love of the

other to find a space for love of the world amidst

its ruins. Of course, the essence here is love of the

world, as the form of affirmation appropriate to

modern lives. For Deleuze, the difference

between classical and modern cinema is that the

former is a narrative art while the latter is an art

of belief. Yet love of the world had a place in

classical cinema, and action and narrative do not

disappear from modern cinema – the lives

interrogated are still, finally, the lives of agents.

The Deleuzian notion of belief idles in these

contexts.

The difference between classical and modern is

more precise than Deleuze allows: classical

cinema anchors successful agency within a

world that it makes manifest and/or helps bring

into being; modern cinema shows that agents

must improvise a life that lacks metaphysical

comfort or support, that they have only them-

selves, their capacity for response to one another,

in order to make this life possible, at least here, at

least now. Classical movies promise a world;

modern cinema, like modernist art, promises

not the re-assembly of community, but per-

sonal relationship unsponsored by that

community; not the overcoming of our isola-

tion, but the sharing of that isolation – not to

save the world out of love, but to save love for

the world, until it is responsive again.16

If labels help, one can call the narratives of

classical cinema mythological and those of

modern cinema minor. While something in late

modernity is desperately broken, in identifying

the assumptions of the previous regime of

thought as mythological we are denying that

agency might ever have truly depended on them.

My hypothesis here is that the forms of action

exemplified by modernist art’s capacity to carry

on art-making in the absence of tradition and the

absence of the authority of the objects repre-

sented, modernist art’s manner of improvising

ways of going on and authorizing itself, becomes

in modern cinema the forms of action of its

protagonists. Modern cinema is not narrowly

modernist but the representation of a world

whose practical life has become, in disturbing and

difficult ways, modernist in itself: forms of action

that discover that we now must base our lives on

contingency, and that such contingent lives, in

their particularity and fragility, are nonetheless

exemplary of how life remains inscrutably possi-

ble or when not possible nonetheless a terrain in

which agents – not mummies or machines or

zombies – can take responsibility for their lives,

which is what the man and the woman finally are

doing at the end of Hiroshima, where it remains

systematically unresolved whether that requires

acknowledgement of life’s losses and compro-

mises, demanding a return to their old lives (her

inclination), or the betrayal of even that in the

name of love (his inclination). There is no

determinate answer to what taking responsibility

now comes too.

In making the operative distinction between

classical and modern cinema between mytholog-

ical and minor narratives, I do mean to deny that

the simple either/or given by the distinction

between movement-image and time-image –

either time subordinated to action or action

subordinated to time – usefully captures the

transition from classical to modern cinema.

That account of the transition assumes that the

sensory-motor schema is ‘‘shattered from the

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inside’’ (C2 40). Because narration results from

‘‘the sensory-motor schema and not the other way

round’’ (C2 272; emphasis added), narration

being not an imposition on the sensory-motor

schema but its reflective elaboration, then the

shattering of the sensory-motor schema must

entail the abandonment of narrative tout court.

Yet Deleuze’s own account of the upsurge of

modern cinema places this claim in question:

even if the particular illusions of classical cinema

that suture the demands of particular actions with

the disposition of the world as a whole fail, what

fails is a mythological outside, an idea regulating

the unfolding of action from a distance. More

urgently, we learn that the illusions of classical

cinema – illusions that seem to close off even the

idea of a vital future not dependent on historical

closure – are not necessary for meaningful action,

which is the difficulty and wonder of the best of

modern cinema. The sensory-motor schema is

indelible; without it nothing approximating

human life is possible. The question that its

indelibility forces upon us is solely how its

demand for narrative is to be satisfied: mytho-

logically or through minor narrative forms? That

minor narratives are a progress in the acknowl-

edgement of the demands for a disillusioned or

disenchanted humanism is the calling card of

Bazin’s realism.

Let me, however briefly, attempt to plant this

connection between realism and narrative respon-

siveness in Bazin’s thought. The notion of the

Gesamtkunstwerk, as that of a work of art

synthesizing all the different arts, presumes that

what is needed in order to provide a complete and

satisfactory representation of the world, to artis-

tically surmount alienation and nihilism, is an

overcoming of the separation of the arts from one

another. The sheer absurdity of this thought

should serve as a reminder that the meaning of the

arts depends on and necessarily devolves into the

separation of the arts from one another, each art a

form of excess beyond the ordinary representation

of the world that gives a fragmented mode of

experience a weight and salience repressed in the

ordinary flow of events. The surprise of art is that

modally fragmented or dispersed reconstructions

of experience should provide a profound enliven-

ment. My claiming that forms of art are forms of

excess is meant to provide an explanation of this

occurrence. So classical tragedy invokes the excess

of action over the individual whose action it is,

while modern tragedy invokes the excess of

character over action; sculpture provides for the

excess of the material habitation of space over the

thing in space; painting conjures the excess of the

presentation of the image over the image pre-

sented; poetry depends on the excess of the word

over the sentence of which it is a part; and music

the excess of temporalized sound over semantic

meaning. It is as if each art were a dimension,

stratum, or mode of experience that has been

permitted an autonomous elaboration. On this

construal, the arts have always known that they

lived off their separation from one another;

modernism is not the discovery of this, but simply

that art which means to live off nothing else.

What, then, is the excess that provides for the

specificity of photography and cinema? Bazin

begins from the obvious assumption that our

involvement with these arts depends on their

mechanical nature, on their being based on the

absence of subjectivity. His terms for this

mechanical reproduction – decal or transfer or

fingerprint or Veil of Veronica – all point to some

way in which the reality of the object causally

marks or imprints itself in the image of it such

that if the object had been different then its

image would have been different, where the

counterfactual difference in object and image will

occur irrespective of whether or not it is initially

noticed by the subject responsible for recording

the image: ‘‘No matter how fuzzy, distorted, or

discolored, no matter how lacking in documen-

tary value the image may be, it shares, by virtue

of the very process of its becoming, the being of

the model of which it is the reproduction; it is the

model.’’17 Whatever else Bazin might have meant

by his claim that cinema’s integral realism offers

‘‘the recreation of the world in its own image,’’18

he did not mean an accurate, veridical, compre-

hensive, or subjectively satisfying recreation. On

the contrary, if these natural translations of that

formula must fail, then realism is going to have a

sense closer to an image having the force of

evidence that ‘‘imposes and carries away some-

thing more than a truth: an existence.’’19 The

contrast here between truth and existence is


90


exactly right for Bazin: it is the moment prior to

the construction of truth that his realism intends,

hence that moment in which we are positioned

with respect to an object as such and in general

that he is seeking. Compressing this claim into a

formula corresponding to those I gave for the

other arts: cinema provides an excess of the

existence of a thing imaged over the image of the

thing. And like the other arts, this formula

requires some unpacking in order to see how this

fragmented partiality yields an aesthetic enliven-

ment, remembering all the while that nothing

ensures the movies will yield in practice to their

constitutive excess.

The join between Bazin’s ontology of cinema

and his aesthetic commitments comes most

quickly into view in ‘‘An Aesthetic of Reality:

Neorealism.’’20 In the opening pages we get the

usual piling up of realism’s existential claiming:

Italian cinema is wondrous ‘‘in the significance it

gives to the portrayal of actuality’’ (ARN 20);

Italian Neorealist films ‘‘never forget that the

world is, quite simply, before it is something to

be condemned’’ (ARN 21); reduced to their plots,

these movies can be ‘‘moralizing melodramas, but

on the screen everybody in the film is over-

whelmingly real’’ (ARN 21). Bazin begins to give

these assertions aesthetic meaning with his

remarks on Orson Welles’ discovery of deep

focus:

It is no longer the editing that selects what we

see, thus giving it an a priori significance, it is

the mind of the spectator which is forced to

discern, as in a sort of parallelepiped of reality

with the screen as its cross-section, the

dramatic spectrum proper to the scene.

(ARN 28)

What Welles accomplishes through his use of

deep focus is a mechanism for unframing what is

inevitably framed, hence the disaggregation of

the elements of a scene from one another in a

manner analogous to photography’s automatic

abstraction of its objects from spatial and

temporal conditions of meaning. Deep focus

enables the real to appear excessive to its

determinations in a manner that can only be

resolved through the spectator’s effort; hence

viewing the screened reality is less like decoding

an overdetermined work of art and more like

acknowledging an indeterminate piece of reality.

This thesis comes to fruition in Bazin’s

discussion of Rossellini’s Paisa. Here, finally,

the organizing power of the cinematic ‘‘shot’’ is

displaced by what Bazin calls ‘‘image facts’’:

These are in a sense the centrifugal properties

of the images – those which make the narrative

possible. Each image being on its own just a

fragment of reality existing before any mean-

ings, the entire surface of the scene should

manifest an equally concrete density.

(ARN 37)

When the force of mechanical reproduction is

adequately acknowledged by cinematic practice,

when cinematic practice allows itself to benefit

from the absence of subjectivity in the recording

of the image, then what will be screened is the

force of existence of each thing, each body, each

conjunction of thing and body, each conjoining of

bodies together before and as a condition for their

becoming intelligible. The achievement of cine-

matic realism is its capacity to make possible the

perception of a thing’s existence as what demands

a response, as in need of a response as the

fulfilment of its naked reality. This surely is what

Bazin’s idea of love of the world comes to: the

world, things and bodies, rising up and coming

into view as a condition for our shared habitation,

destitute things and bodies calling for a response

that might do justice to their sheer being there, as

if each image recorded a certain birth of reality

out of its past in which it should be named anew –

‘‘Ne-vers,’’ ‘‘Hi-ro-shi-ma’’;

Resnais making explicit what

the burdens of acknowledgement

are here, for the man and

woman, and us.

notes1 Allreferences in the text toC1orC2 followedbya page number are to: Gilles Deleuze,Cinema1:TheMovement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson andBarbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: U of MinnesotaP, 2006); and idem,Cinema 2:TheTime-Image, trans.HughTomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis:U of Minnesota P, 2006).

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2 See Laura Mulvey’s Preface to her Death 24x aSecond: Stillness and the Moving Image (London:Reaktion, 2006) 13^15.

3 In the Preface to the English-language edition ofher Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy, trans.Alisa Hartz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2008)xii^xv, Paola Marrati forcefully raises just thisconundrum about the relation between actionand the time-image. My debt to Marrati’s writingon Deleuze should be patent.

4 I am borrowing this diagram from JamesChandler, ‘‘The Affection-Image and theMovement-Image’’ in After Images of Gilles Deleuze’sFilm Philosophy, ed.D.N.Rodowick (Minneapolis: Uof Minnesota P, 2010) 243.

5 This reading of those romantic comediesderives, of course, from Stanley Cavell’s Pursuits ofHappiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1981). Deleuzenowhere objects to the utopian caste of thesemovies, nor their life-promoting illusions ^ all per-fectly sound Nietzschean coordinates for action.Only the fact that those illusions become hollow,vapid and useless for the advantages of lifedemands another cinema.

6 See Dieter Henrich, Aesthetic Judgment and theMoral Image of theWorld: Studies in Kant (Stanford:Stanford UP, 1992) for an argument that it is oneof the functions of aesthetic judgment, andhence art, to demonstrate what it would taketo make the world morally intelligible in amanner sufficient to ward off the threats ofnihilism.

7 For two recent examples of an acknowledge-ment of the centrality of the notion of belief inthe world for Deleuze but that fail, as far as I cansee, to show that he succeeds in wedding thisthought to his general account of modern cinema,seeD.N.Rodowick,‘‘TheWorld,Time,’’ and RonaldBogue,‘‘To Choose to Choose ^ to Believe in theWorld’’, both in D.N.Rodowick, ed., After Images ofGilles Deleuze’s Film Philosophy, chapters 6 and 7respectively.

8 Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu,Bresson, Dreyer (Berkeley: U of California P,1972).

9 I owe this suggestion in full to Matt Congdon.

10 Stanley Cavell, TheWorld Viewed: Reflections onthe Ontology of Film (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,1979) 117.

11 Jonathan Lear,‘‘Katharsis’’ in Essays on Aristotle’sPoetics, ed. Ame¤ lie Oksenberg Rorty (Princeton:Princeton UP,1992) 332.

12 Andre¤ Bazin, ‘‘The Ontology of thePhotographic Image’’ in hisWhat is Cinema?, vol. I,trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley: U of California P,1967) 15.That Bazin’s account of love of the worldis attached to his theory of cinema’s photographicbasis is, I presume, the reason for Deleuze towantto distance himself from it. Belief is an alternativeto Bazinian love.This becomes even more evidentwhen we recall the penultimate sentence (16) ofBazin’s essay inwhichhe offers his view as an expli-cit alternative to Pascal’s condemnation ofrepresentational art: ‘‘Henceforth Pascal’s con-demnation of painting is itself rendered vain sincethe photograph allows us on the one hand toadmire in reproduction something that our eyesalone could not have taught us to love . . .’’

13 All references in the text to HMA are toHiroshima mon amour, text by Marguerite Durasfor the film by Alain Resnais, trans. RichardSeaver (NewYork: Grove,1961).

14 See Siobhan S.Craig,‘‘Tu n’as rien vu a' Hiroshima:Desire, Spectatorship and the Vaporized Subjectin Hiroshima mon Amour,’’Quarterly Review of Filmand Video 22.1 (2005): 25^35.

15 In order to underline how forgetting is consti-tutive of love, in a late scene, at the CasablancaCafe¤ , the Japanese man will be displaced, so thathe and we come to see both their love and its dis-placement at the same time, their being joined and‘‘love’s forgetfulness’’ (HMA 68).

16 Stanley Cavell,‘‘AMatter ofMeaning It’’ inMustWeMeanWhatWeSay? (NewYork: CambridgeUP,1976) 229.

17 Andre¤ Bazin, ‘‘The Ontology of thePhotographic Image’’ 14.

18 Idem, ‘‘The Myth of Total Cinema’’ inWhat isCinema? I: 21.

19 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Evidence of Film: AbbasKiarostami, trans. C. Irizarry and V. AndermattConley (Brussels: Gevert, 2001) 44. For a fineexposition of Nancy’s photographic existentialismthat has influenced my thinking here see FionaJenkins, ‘‘Souls at the Limits of the Human:Beyond CosmopolitanVision,’’Angelaki 16.4 (2011):159^72. I should note here that all the dominantthemes of my analysis of Hiroshima ^ its


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fragmentary structure, the relation to othermod-ernisms, and, above all its existentialism ^ arealready clearly grasped in the remarkable round-table discussion with Eric Rohmer, Jean-LucGodard, Jacques Doniol-Valcrose, Jean Domarchi,Pierre Kast, and Jacques Rivette that appears inCahiers du cine¤ ma 97 (July 1959). An extract fromthe round-table, translated by Liz Heron, appearsin the pamphlet accompanying the CriterionCollection DVD ofHiroshimamonamour.

20 Collected in What is Cinema?, vol. II, trans.Hugh Gray (Berkeley: U of California P, 1971).References to this essay in the text are abbrevi-ated ARN.

J.M. Bernstein

Department of Philosophy

New School for Social Research

6 East 16th Street

New York, NY 10003

USA

E-mail: [email protected]

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Cinema of the Sublime: Theorizing the Ineffable

Jeffrey PenceEnglish and Cinema Studies, Oberlin

Abstract Cinema’s power to represent animate life, and produce a profound impres-

sion of reality, warrants and supports its other fascinating capacity, namely, to fab-

ricate frank yet appealing illusions. In certain instances, audiences may respond to

the fantastic creations as if to a new reality. Cinematic realism thus raises questions

about the nature of belief and reality that are of perennial, yet acutely contempo-

rary, interest in film history. A genre of the spiritual film—distinct from religious

films that rely on traditional sources of religious authority—explores these ques-

tions of being and the limits of the knowable. Recent film criticism has inadequately

responded to this genre. Film studies has aligned itself in various ways behindWalter

Benjamin’s call for an iconoclasm that would sever art’s connections with cultic tra-

ditions and contribute to social progress.The consequent suppression, or translation

to secular terms, of films’ spiritual aspirations comes at great cost. Complex works

that address spiritual topics in form and content, such as Lars von Trier’s Breakingthe Waves (1996), are treated as evidence by a self-affirming and secularizing criticalmethod. In neglecting the central concerns of such films, critics are complicit with

the worst features of modernity. A criticism that evades an open engagement with the

limits of the knowable becomes instrumental; a criticism geared exclusively toward

demystification ultimately produces reification. Amore proper analytic response is to

attend to the ways in which such films produce experiences, and call for responses, at

the edge of the knowable. Such an approach begins with abandoning methodologi-

cal certainty; the spiritual film demands an alignment of perception that cannot be

An earlier version of this essay was delivered at the Third International Crossroads in Cul-

tural Studies Conference, June 21–25, 2000, in Birmingham,United Kingdom. I would like

to thank Ann Hardy for her generous reading of an earlier draft and James A. Knapp for his

collaboration throughout this project.

Poetics Today 25:1 (Spring 2004). Copyright © 2004 by the Porter Institute for Poetics and

Semiotics.

30 Poetics Today 25:1

contained by a predetermined goal. This aesthetic response may contribute to an

open-ended ethical self-fashioning and may protect critical discourse from itself by

preventing the standardization of cultural experience.

1. Cinema’s Shadow: Realism and Criticism

This mute, grey life finally begins to disturb and depress you. It

seems as though it carries a warning, fraught with a vague but sin-

ister meaning that makes your heart grow faint. You are forgetting

where you are. Strange imaginings invade your mind and your con-

sciousness begins to wane and grow dim.

—Maxim Gorky, 1972 [1896]

Upon witnessing the first screening of the Lumiére brothers’ actualities—

including L’Arrivéê d’un train en gare—at the Nizhny Nogorod Fair, MaximGorky (1972 [1896]: 3) declared that he had just visited, or had visited upon

him, the ‘‘kingdom of shadows.’’ Considering the eventual socialist-realist

leanings of its source, this densely suggestive phrase can most obviously be

decoded along predictable political lines. While cinema may never have

seemed more an instance of modern progress than at its debut, Gorky links

it to the premodern by associating film with a kingdom. Particularly in a

Russian context, autocracy implies stasis, terror, and inequity.The linkage

of a kingdom of shadows and film works because of the ambivalence of

the term representation. In place of representative governance, and in com-pensation for the arbitrariness of its own privilege, autocracy offers power-

ful aesthetic representations of its own legitimacy. Regalia, ritual, and tra-

dition coordinate to produce at least the illusion of popular consent to

the autocrat’s identification with the state. Gorky suggests that cinema’s

mimetic prowess similarly substitutes bewitching representational effects

for an engagement with, for him, the most important dimension of repre-

sentation—namely, progressive political change. He grudgingly acknowl-

edges the films’ powers of display, the ways in which animate life visually

recorded and representedmay produce overwhelming affective experiences

in novice viewers. The choice of the second person ‘‘you’’ in his text seemsboth to base his analysis on personal experience and to generalize it as

typical. The intimacy of his language and the deliberate precision of his

pacing suggest someone struggling to wake from a nightmare so powerful

that it must by necessity be universal. But rather than interpreting these

new technical and textual capacities as markers of progress—of mimetic

accomplishment or aesthetic immediacy—he sees them as so much royal

plumage.

According toTomGunning (1999 [1989]: 818), accounts of initial encoun-

Pence • Cinema of the Sublime: Theorizing the Ineffable 31

ters with cinema have traditionally been derived formGeorge Sadoul (1975

[1948]), whose own research and conclusions are dubious. These accounts

tend to repeat a standardized myth of the primitives’ traumatic introduc-

tion to modernity. As the Lumiéres’ train pulls into the station, the story

goes, the audience panics, screams, and rushes for the exits. However much

this scene of upheaval captures, metaphorically, the early viewers’ surprise,

what it describes never literally occurred. As Gunning (1999 [1989]: 819)

demonstrates, evenChristianMetz’s (1982) sophisticated theorizing of spec-

tatorship depended on this easily debunked myth. Notably, Gorky’s own

contemporary account downplays trauma or panic in favor of a rapidly

acquired skepticism, as shadows suggest something baseless, second-order,

illusionistic, and ultimately political about the royal display of power just

witnessed.1Such an interpretation ofGorky’s remark resonateswith a domi-

nant, and currently predominant, strain in the history of cinema studies.

Since Walter Benjamin’s ‘‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction’’ (1979 [1936]), cinemahas been linked to the demise of cultish

understandings of art and the progress of critical reason, thanks to its ca-

pacity to represent and reveal reality in heretofore impossible ways. The

theory of cinema’s nature as essentially realist, and uniquely qualified to

disclose the essentially real, was initially developed by Béla Balász, André

Bazin, and Siegfried Kracauer.2 These critics emphasized and valued cer-

tain visual, aural, and editing conventions—such as the close-up, location

sound, and long takes linked by elliptical transitions rather than continuity

editing. In these techniques, they found in cinema a unique correlation to

reality, the way things appear in everyday perception enhanced by sugges-

tions of a meaningful depth, which habit, necessity, or even sensory limita-

tion elide in actual life. Subsequent theoretical developments, not to men-

tion film history itself, abandoned the insistence of these theorists that only

certain techniques and forms are true to cinema’s essence. Nevertheless,

more recent theories have explicitly retained an idea of realism that legiti-

1. Rachel O.Moore (2000) extends Gunning’s work, and to some extent undermines his reli-

ance on historicist procedures, by looking at cinema as a prime medium for negotiating the

relationship between the modern and the primitive more generally, as it combines techno-

logical progress with features understandable as magic.

2. For example, if, according to Kracauer (1965 [1960]: 3, 31), ‘‘each medium has a specific

nature,’’ then it ‘‘is evident that the cinematic approach materializes in all films which follow

the realist tendency.’’ Balász (1999 [1945]: 304) identified cinema’s power with its capacity to

represent dimensions of reality either ‘‘hitherto unknown’’ or presumed to have been known:

‘‘We skim over the teeming substance of life.The camera has uncovered that cell-life.’’ Finally,

Bazin (1999 [1945]: 196) famously declared the ‘‘history of the plastic arts,’’ which photogra-

phy and cinema both complete and escape, ‘‘to be essentially the story of resemblance, or, if

you will, of realism.’’


mates their own project, as a realist endeavor now oriented toward a social

or psychological reality barely discernible beneath ideology and illusion.

Kracauer is something of a hinge figure, albeit in reverse, in this change.

His major works relevant to this discussion, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psycho-logical History of the German Film (1947) and Theory of Film: The Redemptionof Physical Reality (1960), respectively take up cinema’s expression of socio-psychological turmoil and its fundamental capability to establish physical

existence. That his work moves from an emphasis on historical and politi-

cal interpretations to a more strictly formalist analysis, just prior to a more

general turn in the opposite direction in the study of film, suggests that the

history of film theory and criticism is not a narrative of progress. Instead,

this history is defined by an oscillation between interests and methods that

rest on different understandings of the relationship between film and reality.

In one view, film is part of a reality of social context, experience, and

conflict, whether or not a particular film evidences this fact deliberately or

symptomatically. Criticism here highlights the connections between film

and historical reality in the interest of social understanding or progress.

In another view, the specificity of the film medium may produce aes-

thetic experiences that impress audiences with a sense of reality, despite

the manifest difference between the film experience and normal experi-

ence. Criticism here considers what positive knowledge these encounters

may deliver—whether in regard to film technique, to the pleasures and

desires of viewers impressionable in these ways, or even to the potential

significance of these seemingly solid aspects of reality which are otherwise

invisible. The former approach is inherently modern, carrying on a tradi-

tion of critique established in the Enlightenment. It is skeptical of illusion

and the superstitious power of film to fascinate, and therefore manipulate,

audiences.While one of the verities of postmodernism is that the emancipa-

tory discourses subtending modern thought (Marxism and psychoanalysis

primarily) are neither objectively true nor superior perspectives on cultural

life, the tradition of critique remains the most important in contemporary

film studies. As such, it also extends the affinity of criticismwith an Enlight-

enment notion of reason as a privileged, scientific process that will lead us

to truth. The latter approach, that of focusing on real-seeming cinematic

experiences, can be understood as carrying on an alternative tradition of

seeking and valuing dimensions of thought and perception that continue

to attract us, despite being irreconcilable with a strict definition of reason.

This approach extends the affinity of art and criticism with features of reli-

gion that have been gradually marginalized in modernity. The oscillation

between alternative methods and interests that has defined cinema studies,

then, replays in miniature the oscillation in the modern West between sci-


ence and religion, reflecting the inadequacy of either orientation to satisfy

by itself all of our concerns.

The current dominance of an orientation toward social and historical

reality is obvious in cinema studies. Whether in the tradition of German

Kulturkritik from which Benjamin emerges (as with Anton Kaes [1989] or

MiriamHansen [1991]), or in the movements of AlthusserianMarxism and

Lacanian psychoanalysis that accompanied film studies’ institutionaliza-

tion in the 1970s and 1980s (for example, Christian Metz [1982] or Mary

Ann Doane [1987]), or in what might be understood as cinema studies’ dis-

persal into themore freewheeling explorations of power and identity in con-

temporary cultural studies (a diverse array including such figures as Anne

Friedberg [1993] and Bell Hooks [2000 (1992)]), a critical perspective skep-

tical of the social relations and mentalities implied by cinematic conven-

tions aligns itself with those aspects of cinema that appear most modern

and radical. A pivotal institution of technological modernity, cinema may

uniquely bridge the divides between subjective and collective experience:

the theater provides opportunities to restage and revise primal fantasies of

identity while simultaneously offering a metaphoric crucible for produc-

ing a secular public built upon industrial modes of production and bound

together by mass media.Therefore, at least potentially, through a reflexive

complication of its own conventions, film can supposedly reveal truths that

everyday convention prevents our perceiving. Once revealed, these truths

are imagined to be the basis for some form of social action.

This iconoclastic approach to film study, which Richard Dyer (1998:

6) calls ‘‘sociological-ideological,’’ shares many key features with its object

of skeptical study. That is, the film industry and sociological-ideological

criticism share an emphasis on film’s ability to reveal and remake a thor-

oughly human-centered world. When film and film viewing fail at these

projects, critics have found the cause in the medium’s putative affinity,

whether historically contingent or inherent to the medium, with structures

of fantasy and mystification. This identification of cinema with phantas-

mic social or psychic regressions was carried to its rigorous conclusion by

figures like Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni (1976 [1969]) and Jean-

Louis Baudry (1985 [1970]). While the array of critics mentioned earlier

rarely goes so far as Baudry in claiming that the cinematic apparatus, by

definition, is regressively ideological, the assumption remains that cinema’s

transformative potential is more than matched by a countervailing conser-

vatism. Although theorists like Anthony Giddens (1979) have demonstrated

the problems with critical pretensions to scientific certainty, something like

ideology critique remains the best descriptor of the sort of work that domi-

nates cinema conferences and journals. In the current critical paradigm,


then, cinema is either a force for historical change or a symptom of its con-

tainment. In this regard, the task of the critic has been to work against the

counter-utopian tendencies of film institutions and conventions in order

to resurrect the critical and liberatory potential of original cinema, the

potential for representational world-shattering that critics have so often (if,

according to Gunning, erroneously) projected onto the mythic moment of

the initial encounter with film as the embodiment of modernity.

Writing of the initial encounter withwhich I began,Gorkymoves quickly

from meditating on the moving images’ unsettling of consciousness to a

radical restabilization of self-awareness on the grounds of material history

and politics. As the replication of a ‘‘mute, grey life’’ begins to unravel

the viewer’s perspective, Gorky (1972 [1896]: 7) displaces the concomitant

anxiety by imagining an alternative, shockingly literal, and more ‘‘edify-

ing’’ film depicting a poleaxed social villain. This abrupt translation of his

experience to the realm of everyday politics is, on the one hand, cognate

with interpretive tendencies that still governmuch of critical practice today.

Whatever its motivational virtues, or even its (likely unmeasurable) efficacy

in the world of lived experience, the rapid default to everyday politics in

much cultural analysis reveals an anxiety about the value of engagement

with artworks if practical benefit cannot at least be imagined. On the other

hand, in certain respects, Gorky’s rush to construct a fantasy of social retri-

bution inadequately recuperates the cognitive and affective densities of the

cinematic encounter he has just elaborated. In fact, one may read the grisly

scene he imagines as an inverted mirror of the feelings of disorientation he

registered when lost in a world of shadows, as if only a violent commitment

to the known world could counter the temptations of illusion.

This tendency also persists in our present scene. In a recent survey of

cinema studies, Dudley Andrew (2000) argues that forces of the academic

market have put wind to the sails of socially and historically oriented criti-

cism, as, among other reasons, these modes offer more efficient ways to

produce and distribute a scholar’s work. I agree with him entirely while

wishing to insist that the resistance to the most challenging dimensions of

film aesthetics—that impression of reality that simultaneously seduces and

provokes ‘‘strange imaginings’’ in spectators—derives also from their resis-

tance to interpretation, or at least to interpretations that affirm the project

of criticism itself. The disjuncture between cinematic realism’s potential

opening to a ‘‘kingdomof shadows’’ and a critical apparatusmainly devoted

to a model of problem solving invites a quick retreat to more familiar inter-

pretive grounds. A ‘‘kingdom of shadows’’ suggests a realm of being other

than our own, yet one to whichwe seemmagically connected.The disorien-

tationGorky describes only begins to register the impact of a filmworld that


is uncannily familiar and different, reflecting and exceeding the perspective

for which it is seemingly organized.

Gorky’s default to imaginary political violence is not entirely convinc-

ing.That political violence was anything but imaginary for Gorky—whose

own death was likely a political assassination—does not mitigate his over-

hasty flight from an aesthetic engagement that seemed to call for a mode

of interpretation other than, or additional to, social allegory. (In much the

same way, one might argue, Gorky’s perspicuous political analyses cannot

justify the excessive prescriptivism of socialist-realist doctrine.) His under-

lying anxiety about the relationship between realism and representation,

a spiraling questioning that doubts not only the latter but also the former,

has remained a concern throughout cinema’s history. Indeed, one might

argue that a significant factor in cinema’s persistence as a unique medium,

with concerns of form and content sufficient to animate innovation, are the

particular ways it permits this dialectic of realism and representation to

be manifestly explored. Cinema has not, then, solely delivered on critical

rationality’s desire for a greater and transformative purchase on historical

reality. Pace Benjamin, cinema has also flourished precisely because it pro-vides a locus for exploring questions ofmeaning beyond the limits of empiri-

cism and rationality. In the words of Darrol Bryant (1982: 105), cinema

occupies a privileged position in ‘‘modern technological culture [that] has

inherited the alchemical dreams of the past.’’ Like the hermetic tradition to

which Bryant refers, film mediates between technique and magic, between

science and religion. Far, then, fromwithering in the face of film, the auratic

dimension of artworks found shelter in film.

2. The Aura Is Dead. Long Live the Aura!

Suggestive of a supraordinary quality, of a nebulous emanation of grandeur

that surrounds the unique artwork with exceptional, cultic power, the aura

was famously consigned to oblivion by Benjamin.Technological reproduc-

ibility, he argued (1979 [1936]: 852), depletes ‘‘the authority of the object,’’

which is vested both in its singularity and its identification with tradition.

According to Benjamin, film appears to confound the categories by which

audiences have come to accept the conventions of theatrical performance

as plausibly mimetic. In theater, a clear distinction exists between percep-

tions of dramatic representations as primarily realistic or illusionary, since

the production is physically oriented toward the audience’s perspective in

such a way that ‘‘the play cannot immediately be detected as illusionary’’

(ibid.: 862). Likewise, the labor and mechanisms that produce theatrical

illusion are well known but hidden behind curtains, beneath traps, and so


forth. In contrast, actual film productions (i.e., shooting sets) offer no per-

spective from which any witness could reasonably ignore ‘‘such extraneous

accessories’’ (ibid.) as photographic, lighting, and audio equipment as well

as the proliferating presence of crew, cast, and others.The conventions that

produce the illusion of realism in film are the result of postproduction tech-

niques. In the popular cinema, with which Benjamin is here concerned,

continuity editing illustrates such postproduction work. In this process, the

film illusion that was impossible to perceive in isolation at the time and

place of production becomes manifestly visible to the precise extent that

every other trace of that scene of production is erased. Such techniques as

match on action editing, shot-reverse-shot sequencing, and extra-diegetic

music support codified structures of narrative causality and coherence in

order to convert the work of production into a naturalized product on the

screen. As a result, ‘‘the equipment free aspect of reality’’ represented in

film ‘‘has become the height of artifice’’ (ibid.). Cinema’s seductive presen-

tation of the real, then, seems profoundly unreal: ‘‘the sight of immediate

reality has become the [unattainable] blue flower in the land of technology’’

(ibid.; interpolation in the original).

The blaue Blume here connects with Novalis’s—‘‘the quintessential sym-bol of romantic yearning for the unattainable’’ (Sagarra and Skrine 1999:

96). Also implied in the longing that imbues this poignant image is desire

for more than unmediated reality, as if such an encounter would deliver

us to another dimension of being altogether. Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofter-dingen (1802) concerns both the sensory distractions of experience and ‘‘inti-mations of something beyond’’; in the end, the novel ‘‘shuns completion

as a negation of continuity and eternity’’ (Sagarra and Skrine 1999: 96).

Whether or not Benjamin acknowledges the persistence of a desire for

something more than an unmediated glimpse of reality, or the theological

weight such a desire carries within it in the tradition he deliberately cites, is

far from clear.This stubborn desire for something connected to ‘‘continuity

and eternity,’’ for something auratic, must be addressed.

Benjamin attempts to make good on film’s lack, its patently false im-

pression of reality, by dialectically presenting this fact as progressive. The

analogy he employs here develops further the contrasts established between

theater and film, two notoriously collaborative enterprises, by drawing

another comparison between painting and film. On one side, representa-

tive of an earlier, cultic dispensation, is the art of painting, the painter as

singular creator and the magician as his or her role model. On the other

side, expressive of amodernmoment, is the art of film, the camera operator

as technician and the surgeon as his or her role model.Where contrasting

theater and film also establishes a similarity between them as two collabora-


tive enterprises, the comparison of painting and cinematography plays on

a connection between two practices (generally) of individuals.The focus on

subjective agency, in turn, evokes the analogies between the causal power

or creativity of humans and an originary causal power or creativity attribut-

able to a transcendent entity. As a technician, the cinematographer depends

on no such analogy.

According to Benjamin (1979 [1936]: 862), the magician heals by ‘‘a lay-

ing on of hands,’’ an extraordinary activity that maintains authoritative dis-

tance from reality even in direct human contact. Likewise, the painter’s art

is a direct and human handiwork that also preserves a proper, perspectival

distance from reality.The painter can thus produce a total picture, a view of

an organically unified image field, invested with a unique aura. In contrast,

the surgeon heals by incision, radically diminishing the distance between

healer and patient, as the healer penetrates the patient’s bodily boundaries

via standardized technique rather than the channeling of healing power

exterior to the magician and the patient’s body. Likewise diminished is the

human dimension of the interaction, no longer characterized by the recip-

rocal touch of hand and body but imaginable, per Luc Durtain, as ‘‘virtu-

ally a debate of steel with nearly fluid tissue’’ (ibid.: n. 14). As the surgeon

penetrates reality to refashion it, so does the camera operator, whose instru-

ments produce multiple, fragmentary images to be reassembled ‘‘under a

new law’’ (ibid.: 863). Benjamin suggests that this blurring of the distinction

between reality and technology, far from extending or further exciting any

desire for an auratic blue flower of unmediated reality, actually becomes an

end in itself. More problematically, he presents this combination of reality

and technology as an end to dialectical thinking.

For contemporary subjects, Benjamin (ibid.: 862) notes, the representa-

tion of reality by film far outstrips painting in importance: ‘‘since it offers,

precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of realitywithmechani-

cal equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment.’’ Fram-

ing a dimension of reality as free of technology would provide a unique,

even anachronistic, experience for modern subjects, living as they do in a

world increasingly saturated by equipment. Accomplishing this framing by

the most technological of means, on the other hand, would truly reflect the

experiences of such subjects, making the experience, in Benjamin’s idiom,

progressive. The movement of his argument is dialectical, establishing a

problematic premise and discovering within it an opposite possibility that

incorporates the first premise into a potentially positive reconciliation of

the two. However, it is not clear how or why this process effectively ceases

once Benjamin finds an outcome fitting for his purposes. One might won-

der precisely how the deep longing implied in the desire for the blue flower


of unmediated reality would be satisfied by this paradoxical, equipment-

driven presentation of an equipment-free reality.However, Benjamin (ibid.:

863) declares an end to such questioning because the paradox he has pre-

sented ‘‘is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.’’ The authority

supporting this prescription is obscure. In any case, however, entitlement

need not animate all of the desires we bring to cinema. It seems equally

possible that a longing for an auratic blue flower could coexist, peacefully

or not, with this decisive secularism. On the one hand, the blue flower,

painting, andmagic represent the ongoing traces of religious consciousness

and practice that continue after the Enlightenment, regardless of their loss

of unquestioned supremacy in organizing cultural life. On the other hand,

technology, cinema, and surgery represent the continuing power and pres-

tige of rationality in governing cultural life. Neither of these alternatives

singly seems to satisfy all the investments we may bring to aesthetic experi-

ences. Rather than arbitrarily arresting their dynamic relationship at one

or the other of these poles, as Benjamin does, we may imagine them as

inseparably connected, if only because each requires the other to provide

what it cannot. If an orientation toward artworks based on magic may not

be able to offer procedures of thought and interpretation that apply across

different aesthetic experiences, the methodical advantages of deliberative

reason in generating such protocols also comes at the expense of being able

to appreciate the singular, and potentially nonrational, dimensions of aes-

thetic desire and experience in certain situations.

3. Beyond Authority: Cinema and Spirituality

In its Hollywood and other commercial versions, and despite its technical

sundering of the auratic’s identification with singularity, twentieth-century

film has evidenced a committed pursuit of the auratic—an investment in

representations of reality that seem phenomenologically if not materially

singular, redolent of ontological associations directly linked to traditions

of spiritual aspiration that Benjamin sought to marginalize as cultic. It

remains for film critics, specifically, and cultural analysts, generally, to

come to terms with cinema’s own persistent interest in the auratic. Other-

wise, such an interest may only be understood, in Benjamin’s terms, as

‘‘ultrareactionary’’ (ibid.: 857). In fact, we barely have a language to begin

such a discussion.

As Dennis Taylor (1998: 3) writes of literature in a related context,

We live in an age of critical discourses that are expert in discussing the dimen-

sions of class, gender, textuality, and historical context. Yet an important part


of the literature we read goes untouched by our discourses, or is deconstructed,

historicized, sexualized, or made symptomatic of covert power relationships.

The negative hermeneutic of such reductive discourse has been thorough and

successful.

Yet, in the encounter with the auratic in certain cultural texts, this otherwise

potent hermeneutic is ‘‘cut athwart by another dimension’’:

What interrupts is not another system but something that challenges all systems,

something as questioning and unsettling as the best deconstructive scalpels of our

critics, but suggesting something unconditioned, all-demanding, and ultimately

unevadable. (Ibid.: 5)

Taylor notes the significant challenges facing any effort to establish an effi-

cacious discourse about such ineffable disruptions of systematic thought.

Such disruptive events render referentiality problematic: another way of

phrasing the ‘‘unconditioned, all-demanding, and ultimately unevadable’’

is as the unnameable.The nature of the disruption cannot fit into predeter-

mined cognitive or rhetorical categories; if it did, it would represent either

another system of meaning as yet unlearned or an internal variant in sys-

tems currently in effect.Taylor is clear thatwhatwe encounter is a challenge

to ‘‘all systems’’—which is to say something external to organized mean-

ing as we understand it. Rather than give this encounter a name, which

tends to stabilize and organize identity, we may think of it as being with

a vector or trace, an indeterminate movement that slashes ‘‘athwart’’ the

more stable frameworks we operate through and within. Its energy derives,

to some extent, from this fact of being unknown and dynamic. This open-

endedness, in turn, makes any discourse oriented to the ineffable suscep-

tible to universal parody (ibid.: 17).

Taylor proceeds to imagine a ‘‘tough critical language’’ (ibid.) attuned to

the demanding uncertainty of experiences of the ineffable but nonetheless

cognizable and consequential in the more familiar registers of critical and

reflective consciousness. Although he does not supply this language (prole-

gomenon seems to be the primary genre of contemporary writing on these

topics), Taylor (ibid.: 14) identifies its purpose as ‘‘untangling the relation

of the religious and the spiritual; or, better perhaps, the religious and the

ethical, with the spiritual some kind of linking category.’’ This untangling

that Taylor hints at requires some explanation.

The distinction between the spiritual and the religious positions the latter

as a determinant, and the former as a more indeterminant, understanding

of the nature of transcendent or ontological truth. Mieke Bal (2001: 242)

makes a similar distinction, and more straightforwardly reveals the stakes,


when she identifies ‘‘two desires that I wish to disentangle: the desire for

spirituality and the desire for authority.’’ In both formulations, the spiri-

tual is seen as potentially, but not necessarily, confused with the interpretive

and institutional authority of religion. Instead, it seems, for Taylor, to offer

possibly unexpected connections between religious belief and ethical ori-

entation; for Bal, spirituality ultimately becomes a generally exploratory

resistance to authority. In neither case is spirituality identical with the utili-

tarian and pragmatic calculations of a secular understanding of a social

contract. Instead, the spiritual, as the discourse for exploring experiences of

the ineffable and orienting them toward consequence in theworld of agency

and action, mediates between these otherwise opposed realms of transcen-

dence and everydayness. It is a questioning of the possible meanings and

implications of encounters otherwise beyond our customary cognitive and

rhetorical categories of understanding; it speaks not strictly to the faculties

of reason but to that admixture of thought and affect more characteristic

of aesthetic experience and ethical inquiry.

Certain aesthetic and ethical encounters present subjects with strikingly

similar situations, with objects or experiences of vexing indeterminacy.The

open question of how to respond to the uncertain beauty before one, or

to the complex demand of responsibility, has a powerful affective dimen-

sion. On the one hand, ‘‘beauty quickens . . . adrenalizes . . . makes the

heart beat faster’’ (Scarry 1999: 24). On the other hand, facing ethical

alterity, the sense of responsibility toward an unknown other, even toward

the unknowable per se, ‘‘elates the soul that, according to formal logic, it

should harm’’ (Levinas 1999: 75). In both aesthetics and ethics, then, inde-

terminacy may generate interest, affective involvement, and new possibili-

ties for thought.Our interpretive responses in these instances can be seen to

replenish more everyday experience by renovating the individual’s capaci-

ties for thought and action. I am concerned here principally with dilemmas

of choice making at the edge of our understanding of what beauty and jus-

tice might be. Potentially, these situations may provide opportunities for

energizing and transforming the deliberative agent’s sense of what is pos-

sible both in theworld and in judgment. It is equally true that such situations

may exceed our abilities to comprehend and respond to their challenges.

In neither case am I suggesting a wholesale conflation of aesthetics and

ethics, which would, as Jane Bennett (2001: 132) warns, ‘‘license the unruly

and selfish or, at best, morally indifferent forces of appetite and will.’’ The

inverse is also possible—the aesthetic could then become a didactic exten-

sion of a moral certitude rather than a source of innovative experimenta-

tion. Instead, I insist here only on the parallels between the two realms, their


family resemblance, as regards their presentations of novel and demanding

opportunities for thought and feeling.

4. Seeing without Knowing

In ‘‘Towards a Religious Visuality of Film,’’ S. Brent Plate (1998) echoes

Taylor’s location of the spiritual as a mediating term, one plausibly con-

necting a cognizable ethical realm to a suprarational realm of the ineffable.

He also elaborates further on the analogy between spiritual and aesthetic

experience. Rather than focusing on the content of a film or the inner life

of a believing character or viewer, a ‘‘religious visuality of film would oscil-

late in the between space, between language and image, between film and

audience, between film and world’’ (ibid.: 30). The goal of this essay is to

analyze spirituality in cinema as such a mediating dynamic in something

like the hard language without dogma that Taylor calls for.

This special issue’s larger commitment to exploring the critical space

between thing and theory has features specific tomy analysis of the ineffable

in film.Critical response to cinematic treatments of the spiritual tend to dis-

miss these efforts, albeit in two seemingly opposed ways. As James Knapp

and I have argued (2003), historicist approaches express criticism’s gravita-

tion towardmaterialist and positivist (‘‘thing’’-centered) modes of thinking.

In this context, historicist critics will allegorize spiritual concerns as symp-

toms of more tangible issues of power and politics.When criticism oscillates

away from the thing, and toward the metacritical concerns that Knapp and

I have abbreviated as ‘‘theory,’’ spiritual films fare little better but for rea-

sons specific to the history of cinema studies. This discipline emerged as

a legitimate academic specialization in tandem with a complex discourse

about the nature of filmic representation and spectatorial involvement.The

search for general principles of the medium—for instance, in the work of

Christian Metz (1982) and Laura Mulvey (1986 [1975])—emerged as the

most privileged practice within the field. This concentration was accom-

panied by a tendency to prescribe the boundaries within which film events

could sensibly occur; conventions of form and reception could be effectively

treated as more or less inflexible laws. The ambition of exceeding custom-

ary parameters of perception and thought, which characterize some films

interested in spirituality, clashes directly with this tendency toward pre-

scription. As historicist approaches reprocess the spiritual as the secular in

disguise, theoretical approaches reprocess the spiritual as an attempt to dis-

guise the medium’s own inherent limitations—its inability to lead beyond

itself. Neither approach promotes an openness to the differences from con-


vention that may be encountered in certain films that engage with the inef-

fable. As such, both orientations are more properly self-affirming methods

than dispositions enabling self-reflection and refashioning in the face of dif-

ficult and indeterminate aesthetic works.

The realm of subjective experience is finite and bounded; any continuity

and coherence of subjective identity depends on the assumption of limits

defining who one is, what one knows, and what life one has lived. It is

no great difficulty to extend this model from an individual to a collective

register, since the scale alone would change but not the principle. In con-

trast, we may conceive of the ineffable as infinite and unbounded. It rep-

resents alterity per se, that which one is not, what one does not know, the

experiences one has not had. And we can again easily conceive of inef-

fability regarding collective mentalities. However great the sample, the

group, there is always implied a greater exterior and differentiated realm

against which the collective’s identity is known. The structural binarism

operative here may become more perceptibly dynamic if we consider, fol-

lowing Plate, the spiritual’s role as a mediating term, as a way in which the

specific relationship between identity and experience, on the one hand, and

the ineffable, on the other hand, changes in specific ways. The spiritual,

in this regard, introduces temporality, change, and possibility into a model

that may otherwise appear to bind our aspirations within its analytic terms.

This is precisely what ‘‘thing’’—or ‘‘theory’’—oriented methods tend not

to offer, as they confirm their own procedures against the desires evident in

both aesthetic works and consumers for the possibility of something as yet

unknown to happen in spiritual films.

How might we understand the spiritual as the mediating interval be-

tween the finite and the infinite so defined? A strongly religious or mythic

perspective might view the spiritual as, to a greater or lesser extent, a trans-

parency, granting visitations between the religious and experiential realms

with a corresponding diminishment of their distinction.A strongEnlighten-

ment or rationalist perspective, in contrast, might see the spiritual as either

a mirror for the projection of values and taboos or an opaque lens through

which nothing is discernible. The one depends upon the miraculous, the

other upon its reduction. Both explanations disparage spirituality’s medi-

ating role—as hardly necessary, on the one hand, and hardly possible, on

the other hand. As a realm in which experience is reflected upon in order to

transform the subject in the interests of ethical self-management, the spiri-

tual may instead be conceived in utilitarian fashion as a theater of counter-

factual ideals, in which alternativemodes of living are imagined.This prag-

matic alternative can, however, easily be understood as a weaker version of

the Enlightenment or of the mythic perspective. It can be seen to follow the


former in ultimately relocating the significance of the spiritual to secular

experience. Soft functionalism is still functionalism.That alternativemodel

equally risks promoting the spiritual as the quasi- or not-yet-known, since

the uncertainty encountered there is presumed to edify and communicate

by its nature. This presumption domesticates the spiritual even before it is

encountered.

Rather than abandoning this notion of the spiritual as the critical inter-

val between the ethical and the ineffable, however, I prefer to strengthen it.3

Thebenefits and attractions of seeing the spiritual as a potential resource for

ethical corrigibility, to borrowAlan Singer’s term,may bemaintained if we

simultaneously insist upon a contrary notion: namely, that the spiritualmay

strip away the categories we presume native to the ethical, even to under-

standing itself. In this sense, while being neither amystical transparency nor

a worldly projection, the spiritual may hold out the promise of enrichment

or the danger of disorientation without any discernible purpose. The aes-

thetic generally, but the sublime more particularly, I shall argue, provides

the intermediate affective experiences that Plate outlines above as well as a

language for speculating about the consequences of the auratic dimensions

of cinema.

The unfashionable language of the argument so far may appear scandal-

ous. The ‘‘real,’’ ‘‘spirituality,’’ the ‘‘ineffable’’: what value can such terms

have in contemporary critical discourse, except as objects of scorn? My

task would be easier if I knew, or believed I knew, what these terms meant

exactly. But in that case, this essay, and the desire to reformulate our criti-

cal discourse so that it might remain open to the possibility that these terms

may have vital force in accounting for crucial aspects of aesthetic experi-

ence,would have no purpose, and its audiencewould be restricted to sharers

of the same creed. In any case, the awkwardness of the language of the inef-

fable comes not from any belatedness, a turning of the discourse back to the

vestiges of a mythic, pre-Enlightenment moment. Instead, the embarrass-

ment of this language resides in its continual reminder to critical thought

that its most fundamental questions have less been answered by universal

secularism and the triumph of reason than they have been evaded. Per-

haps it is our task to learn to abide with these ineluctable questions, to work

through embarrassingly portentous terms in order to understand how the

challenge to critical convention they provoke may ultimately strengthen

critical discourse, if only by protecting it from its own tendency to idolize

its own methods.

3. I owe the phrase ‘‘critical interval,’’ with its connotations of a structural relationship and

a temporal dynamic, to Merrick Burrow (2001).


5. ‘‘Already a Kind of Miracle’’: Spirituality and Criticism

The easiest case to make for cinema’s relationship to spirituality is circum-

stantial. According to Judith Wilt’s (1998: 331) survey of the uneven litera-

ture on the topic,

writers interested in film and popular culture seem to feel, mixing approval with

disapproval, that film itself, as the chief vessel of twentieth-centurymass popular

culture, is religion in the sense that it does for themass audience the cultural workthat religions have done, that is, supply models for ethical action and provide

grounding images for ideals and desires.

Such a vaguely anthropological approach, whichWilt herself eschews, has

only a limited appeal. We could easily replace cinema in this formulation

with sports, politics, popular music, the culture of celebrity, or a number

of other practices and receive an equally satisfactory account of the persis-

tence of mythic forces in contemporary life.What is needed is an account

of the particular features of cinema that distinguish its purchase on these

questions.

In André Bazin’s elegant phrasing, the spirituality of cinema inheres in

the medium: ‘‘The cinema has always been interested in God,’’ because

‘‘the cinema is in itself already a kind of miracle’’ (Bazin 1992 [1951]: 393).

Bazin aims to highlight cinema’s distinctive form of mimesis. For him, the

impression of light upon the chemical surface of filmmade cinema themost

literally realistic of media, as it physically indexed the material world with

an automatic accuracy. As much an extension of reality as its representa-

tion, then, cinema allows us to see reality anew. Most importantly, certain

techniques (the long take, deep focus, elliptical editing) may, in the right

narrative context, permit us to discern a general depth of being—indicated

above as a distinctive interest in God—that normal conventions of percep-

tion and thought fail to indicate. In a similar vein, David Jasper (1997: 240)

suggests that the medium itself is the locus of film’s potential for spiritual

exploration: ‘‘cinema comes closest to stimulating theological reflection . . .

not by its themes or specific motifs, but by its very form and nature.’’ Film

has a physical basis in chemical sensitivity to light and various techniques

for recording sound. What is gathered by instruments designed to exploit

these physical potentials is remediated by a variety of visual, aural, and nar-

rative conventions in the process of scripting and editing a film. The final

product of this process is itself remediated by the apparatus and conven-

tions of exhibition, whether at a public screening or in alternative formats

at home. Despite these multiple forms of mediation, cinema is nevertheless

often responded to as if it uniquely captures or expresses reality in some

immediate fashion.


An illusory projection of shadows and light accompanied by disembod-

ied sound, cinema receives the audience’s investments of attention, desire,

and faith. The audience’s pleasurable experience of individual fascination

and collective absorption can suggest transcendence of normal experiences

of subjective and collective identity. That this transcendence is never fully

realized does not disqualify it from consideration. Indeed, the process of

provoking, frustrating, and reanimating spectatorial desire for an elusive

connection—whether with the auratic, with an existentially deep aspect of

reality, or with some form of transcendence—may be understood as char-

acteristic of film’s capacity to mediate between material and immaterial

dimensions of reality. Thomas Carlson (1999: 40) argues that such a pro-

cess also characterizes consumer capitalism, in which subjects’ desires are

by their very nature attenuated, their satisfaction infinitely pursued and

postponed.Here, the deferral of any final coincidence ofmaterial represen-

tation and spiritual aspiration actually links the material and immaterial

more closely:

a theological shadow . . . haunts the interplay of image and desire within con-

sumer culture—a play whose very movement and meaning feed on deferral and

on the radical expectation that deferral alone can sustain . . . signal[ing] both

a theological dimension of consuming culture and a consuming dimension of

theological desire.

Carlson’s argument parallels and extendsmy earlier claim about the consti-

tutive conceptual relationship between categories of the finite and infinite

and between categories of experience and the ineffable. Here, the interplay

of the material world of objects and experience and a range of desires that

exceed any such material satisfaction is seen to characterize contemporary

life’s most superficial and deep aspects—that is, shopping and theology.

The material and the immaterial, or even the secular and the spiritual,

seem inseparable in this formulation.Treating this inseparable relationship

presents a challenge to a critical discourse that tends to rely onmuch firmer

distinctions between what is and is not knowable.

Contemporary analysts of film and culture tend to reproduce in their

own work a methodological realism that functions along instrumental lines

that, consciously or not, mirror Heidegger’s notion of techne. For Heideg-ger, instrumentalist rationality, as a mode of revealing being within techne,

treats the entirety of nature and experience as a usable resource.Whether

an extractable mineral or data mined for a purpose, all elements within

the world have value only insofar as they can be organized into what Hei-

degger (1977 [1953]: 322) terms, in ‘‘TheQuestion concerningTechnology,’’

a ‘‘standing reserve’’ of such resources. Such an ordering is aggressive, a


setting upon nature that, to the extent it does reveal some aspect of being

by such force, is equally blind to other aspects of being that are not redu-

cible to predetermined notions of use. Techne is inherently imperialistic,crowding out othermodes of revealing being, and ultimately subsumes even

humans who conceive of themselves as masters of instruments within its

logic. Under this sort of rationality, we ourselves become useful resources.

In suggesting that much cultural analysis operates under a logic of instru-

mentalism, I mean specifically the tendency to develop and promulgate

methods that either ignore other possiblemodes of thought, expression, and

feeling or convert themviolently into themethod’s own terms. I will address

examples of such criticism at length below; as the introductory essay to this

volume attests, however, such examples are far from atypical.

The spiritually oriented film that serves as my example, Lars von Trier’s

Breaking theWaves, resists instrumental appropriation by such critical meth-ods. The initial question of how to relate to a film that confounds expec-

tations becomes something larger, as our responses go to the very heart of

what cultural studies is or might be. The film exaggerates conventions of

realistic representation to potent effect. However realistic the surface of the

film, any critical attempt to tether this representational style to an actual

historical reality fails to account for the film’s drive to exceed the particu-

larities of its concrete setting. Michael Quinn’s (1999) attempt to situate the

film in contemporary European politics, discussed further below, represents

such an interpretive move. Moreover, such attempts reveal the constrictive

hold of a certain cognitive and critical realism—the technology of repre-

sentation—on cultural studies. Such a mode of analysis easily moves from

demystification to reification, particularly when critique is directed solely at

the object of scrutiny and not turned on the analyst’s practice as well. A film

that plays to, and then attempts to exceed, our customary sense of a film’s

mimetic relationship to reality ought to provoke self-awareness about the

role of such a category of mimetic realism within critical practice. Other-

wise, criticism risks hardening into predictable method. I am not calling

for a revival of an ahistorical formalism, much less for a willful gullibility

in the face of film’s more grandiose features and claims—such as Bazin’s

claim for the miraculous chemical nature of the medium itself. Rather, I

seek to highlight the ways in which the conventions of mimetic realism in

cinema may lead not strictly to secular concerns but to consideration of

equally profound, and potentially far more difficult, questions about aes-

thetic experience’s relationship to the ineffable.

Following Kracauer (1965 [1960]: 232, 233), cinema shares with the novel

a capacity for the ‘‘rendering of life in its fullness,’’ which in turn produces

a drive to transcend the boundedness of any particular representation by


virtue of a ‘‘tendency toward endlessness.’’ The point here is that realism’s

initial drive toward the particular heightens awareness of particularity in

general.4 In turn, this awareness raises the stakes and ambitions of the realistproject, which is now haunted by the knowledge that the really real it per-

petually pursues exceeds, even as it animates, the representationally real.

As Wilt, borrowing from Paul Giles (1987), phrases this relationship, the

boundary of comprehension is marked by the trace of the Other beyond

the known, which is equally that ‘‘ ‘element of indecipherability, of incor-

rigibility, of alterity’ . . . at the heart of the sacred’’ (Giles quoted in Wilt

1998: 352). In analyzing how cinematic realism may frame ‘‘the teleology

that religion and film share,’’ Wilt (ibid.) notes the paradox that, despite

the ‘‘ ‘abundance’ of cinema . . . [its] glamorous profusion of image and

the momentum of narrative,’’ in fact ‘‘it is interestingly difficult to properly

produce the effect of the extraordinary, the uncanny, the exalted, the tran-

scendent, the holy.’’ Putting the moviemaker’s full arsenal of visual, aural,

and narrative techniques into the service of evoking the miraculous may

paradoxically undermine the effort to represent suprarealistic entities—in

the way that Cecil B. DeMille–style spectacles draw attention to themselves

rather than direct it beyond them in some fashion. Wilt finds an alterna-

tive mode of representation in the work of Paul Schrader (1972) and Robert

Ray (1985). Both emphasize the potential of stylistic austerity in exploring

spirituality. Limited camera movement and montage, narrative simplicity,

elliptical editing, and natural sound, for them, deepens our attentiveness

to a suggested depth of experience rather than distracting us by abundant

techniques.

In stripping away cinema’s more spectacular special effects, Wilt (1998:

351) discovers a baseline aesthetic form capable of simultaneously achieving

textual closure and prolonging an open-ended experience for viewers:

The chief special effect of narrative, of course, is that it ends. The special effect

of film narrative is that it wraps itself all together, concludes with a satisfying

and inherently ‘‘religious’’ teleology a split second before the world of the film,

coherence of color and sound, meaning and feeling, shatters, and the world of

the seats and the screen and the crowds and the streets and the meaning still to

be made returns.

Aristotelian patterns of resolution produce pleasure for audiences, regard-

less of the specific desirability of any particular final state of affairs revealed

4. In another register, this paradox runs through Helen Freshwater’s contribution to this

volume; in particular, Freshwater points out that the archive seems to offer a record of the

quotidian totality of existence while necessarily containing only a tiny portion of the reality

toward which it gestures.


in a representation. The reversal of fortune that precedes closure and ca-

tharsis is accompanied by an increase in knowledge that more than com-

pensates for any anxieties viewersmay have about the nature of the outcome

itself.Wilt emphasizes the audience’s cognitive, affective, and aspirational

investment in the providential ordering of experience revealed in this form

of ending. Whether this investment is acknowledged or not, it clearly ex-

presses religious, and specifically teleological, desires.

In Crimes and Misdemeanors (directed by Woody Allen, 1989), Wilt findsthis teleological component of filmnarrative accompanied by its opposite—

namely, a failure to end:

The film . . . produce[s] an effect both teleological (religious in the standard

sense) and unsettlingly ongoing, religious in the postmodern sense that figures

the sacred as the ‘‘trace’’ of ‘‘the other,’’ always elusive, always a challenge to

faith. (Ibid.: 352)

Rather than a resolution that would advance closure or the indeterminate

openness thatWilt discerns, she locates an attenuated juxtaposition of these

opposite effects and affects in the audience. We may desire, and to some

extent experience, the providential temporality implied by a well-shaped

ending. At the same time, we may experience, and to some extent desire, a

more unsettled type of ending that points beyond itself as a sort of search-

ing and an unresolved obligation.Wilt’s employment of ‘‘the other’’ as the

mobilized source of the sacred makes an equation easily associated with the

work of Emmanuel Levinas (1999). For Levinas, the experience of alterity as

ethical obligation and practice is inseparable from, if not identical to, tran-

scendence.This dual, contradictory experience—seeming to encounter the

telos we want and desiring its ultimate deferral—describes precisely the

state to which Von Trier seeks to bring his audience.

6. Screening Spirituality: Breaking theWaves

In a remote Scottish community of extremely observant Calvinists, Bess

is distinguished by the passionate style of her religious practice. Although

womenmay not speak during services, nor attend ghastly funerals in which

the menfolk consign sinners’ souls to hell, Bess’s devotion to her faith ex-

ceeds the normal limits of her place and time. She cleans the church during

the week—a sign not only of an entrenched local patriarchy but also of an

extraordinary capacity for selfless service.More obviously, she talks directly

to God; in fact, she holds regular conversations, answering herself in the

pitched-down voice of a judgmental God-the-Father.While it is clear that

she has had psychological problems in the past, these discussions with the


divine are coded as a profoundly serious ethical self-searching, as Bess rep-

resents and challenges her own desires and duties.The film establishes our

discovery of Bess as a central purpose.While the camera relentlessly scru-

tinizes every aspect of her face and body, the narrative frames her actions

and emotions with sensitive appreciation. Physically, sexually, emotionally,

and spiritually, Bess appears to couple an extraordinarily intense capacity

for feeling with exceptional fragility. As our perspective aligns with those of

the camera and narrative, either lovingly devoted to Bess, the film’s mode

of address is fundamentally geared toward soliciting and deepening our

sympathy with her, even as her experiences become increasingly difficult

to appreciate. In this way, the film pushes us not to view Bess as a victim of

a psychological disorder or social manipulation, as a depleted subject with

a weakened degree of agency and suspect powers of self-representation.

I would like to suggest we do the same with the film—namely, take seri-

ously its gambit for the sacred no matter how irrational this effort initially

appears.

As the film begins, Bess weds a stranger to the community’s xenopho-

bic theocracy, Jan, a Norwegian oil rigger. After Bess’s joyous emotional

and sexual awakening, Jan must return to work on a North Sea oil plat-

form; this necessity devastates Bess. Material circumstances, tradition, and

her mother’s threatening her with another psychiatric hospital stay enjoin

her to accept the restricted pleasures of a long-distance marriage; so, too,

does her own representation of God’s impatience with her selfish desire for

her husband. Nevertheless, Bess cannot accept Jan’s absence. Just after she

pleads with God for her husband’s immediate return at any cost, an acci-

dent paralyzes Jan, who is rushed ashore in critical condition. For reasons

that remain unclear (at one point he warns that he is evil in his head and

should be left to die), Jan eventually asks Bess to pursue sexual encounters

with other men and tell him, as he lies paralyzed, the story of these experi-

ences. Bess comes to believe that these acts—self-destructive humiliations

in her conscience and community—will save Jan. When Jan’s condition

worsens, she presses herself into more dangerous liaisons, ultimately being

assaulted horrifically by men on a ship so notorious that the local prosti-

tutes refuse to visit it. She dies in the same hospital in which Jan likewise

seems doomed, but he appears, wounded but mobile and healing, at the

subsequent inquest into her death. After claiming her body and taking it

offshore for burial at sea (and to save it from the local minister’s curse),

Jan and his workmates hear bells—forbidden by the church—ringing in

the sky, making good on Bess’s desire to combine religious devotion and

self-sacrifice with joy and pleasure.

Director Lars von Trier is a signer of the manifesto of Dogme 95, a


mock-serious group of Danish filmmakers devoted to correcting the deca-

dence of contemporary film via a ‘‘vow of chastity’’ (Dogme 95 Collective

1995). Forbidden indulgences include most artificial lighting, tripods, non-

synchronous sound andmusic, noncontemporary settings and studio shoot-

ing, the importation of props onto locations, and the naming of the direc-

tor in the credits. Breaking the Waves clearly does not qualify for the Dogmecertificate of authenticity ( jokingly offered for sale on the Internet). For

instance, the film is set over twenty years in the past and features highly styl-

ized panoramic scenes that introduce each ‘‘chapter’’ of the plot: they are

characterized by their tripod-dependent stability and evolving, computer-

enhanced visual richness, quite different from the relentless searching and

earthy palette of the handheld camera work elsewhere. These panoramas

are accompanied by extended samples of period pop music, which stands

against the film’s normal reliance on diegetic sound.

As Stephen Heath (1998: 104) writes, ‘‘The panorama scenes are a rest,

a tranquil third-person, film-theology view of God.’’ Heath (ibid.) rightly

indicates that these ‘‘little moments of escape’’ actually relieve us of the

rest of the film’s frenzied groping for ‘‘the incomprehensible, unlocalisable

[sic] range of God.’’ Yet they also serve to foreground the introduction ofspirituality as themost apparent contradiction of Dogme 95’s avowed natu-

ralism. This unchaste film nevertheless powerfully enacts the conventions

of cinéma-vérité and centers on the physical expression of emotions by thecast, both core production values of Dogme 95.The spiritual initially seems

opposed to conventional standards of realistic representation; ultimately,

however, they become inseparable in their definition of each other and the

audience’s reactions. Stylistically, this symbiosis is apparent in the two ele-

ments that dominate our experience of the film: Robby Müller’s handheld

camera work and extraordinary palette of textures and colors suggests a

grounding in mimetic accuracy, while Emily Watson’s stunningly persua-

sive performance of Bess (modeled on Renee Falconetti’s Jeanne d’Arc, fre-

quently called the finest screen acting ever) suggests a reaching for dimen-

sions of reality beyond or beneath normal apprehension.The film operates

in two registers that support each other. A jerking camera, wild sound, and

undecorated faces and places bolster the overall plausibility of the screened

world. This plausibility extends its influence to the exploration of spiri-

tual questions, an extension ultimately warranted by the apparently literal

answering of Bess’s prayers. At that point, this formulation can also be

understood in a reverse fashion: the reality of the film’s spiritual aspira-

tions extends its authority to warrant the surface realism, now revealed as,

potentially, more than a set of conventionalized gestures.

The primary challenge that Breaking the Waves presents to audiences and


critics is obvious.What are we to make of this stylized yet straightforward

treatment of the ineffable? Secular, cosmopolitan viewers are predisposed

to de-emphasize the film’s religious content and are encouraged to do so

throughout.5 At one level, the film suggests that Bess is mentally and emo-

tionally fragile. Are we to understand that her discussions with a transcen-

dent being are madness? At another level, Bess seems to express the distress

produced by a social context so constrictive and life-denying. Are we to

understand Bess in terms of a social allegory of the need to liberate desire

and transgress conventions of gender and religious atavism? At still another

level, the film’s attitude toward religion is deeply ambivalent. Bess’s reli-

giosity is bizarrely anachronistic (too primal for her conformist community;

too late for the world of pop music and outsiders which attracts her and to

whichmost of us belong). In fact, her excessive, childish indulgence of spiri-

tual impulse is apparently the awkward cause of Jan’s trauma and her own

degradation and death. Are we, then, to follow this tendency in the film to

view religion skeptically?Wemight, in this sense, see religion from the van-

tage point of that most secular and cosmopolitan of perspectives, Critical

Theory, for which, according to Russell Berman (1999), religion has always

been an embarrassment.

5. Von Trier seems to have intentionally tested the limits of his viewers’ credulity. In light

of the film’s melodramatic emphasis on the physical expression of emotion—he notes that

Bess’s love ‘‘tread[s] on the verge of kitsch’’ (Maslin 1996: 1)—he hoped that ‘‘for more intel-

lectual audiences the story will excuse the tears’’ (ibid.). Nevertheless, he locates the power

of his work precisely in this conjunction of the credible and incredible: ‘‘the strength of my

films is that they are easy to mock’’ (Travers 1996: 1). Their vulnerability to mockery makes

acceptance of the work a sort of ‘‘leap of faith’’ (Maslin 1996: 2); a leap accompanied per-

haps by an elevated sense of pleasure in the film. At the same time, such a leap is not only

impossible for some critics, the suggestion that it be taken at all may be perceived as unac-

ceptable. In this light, Kenneth Turan (1996: 1) declares that the film offers a ‘‘flimsy illusion

of profundity,’’ which is more likely ‘‘a fool’s errand.’’ Typical of many such responses,Turan

(ibid.: 2) focuses on the narrative vector of Bess’s sexual sacrifices as expressive of a ‘‘tarted up

and even misogynistic’’ perspective on Von Trier’s part that is ‘‘puerile’’ and renders the film

‘‘trite and even juvenile . . . more embarrassing than convincing.’’ If Turan finds Von Trier

pathetically exposing his own immature notions of sexual sacrifice and saintliness, Jonathan

Rosenbaum pursues another line common among dissatisfied reviewers. For him, the film

is best understood as a pastiche-like reworking of earlier films by related directors, such as

Dreyer, or films, like La Strada; it participates in what Rosenbaum (1996: 2) takes to be a com-mon ‘‘calculated and postmodernist sense of film reference.’’ Against this backdrop of Euro-

pean art cinema, ‘‘the cynicism and shameless crudity of Von Trier’s plot and dramaturgy

make it impossible to take him seriously’’ (ibid.). Rosenbaum’s main charge seems to be that

the indeterminacy of truth in the film, combined with its insistence on the possibility of the

impossible, makes it a ‘‘very clever con game, a faux-naif masterpiece,’’ in which the direc-tor ‘‘heaps on so many layers of postmodernist irony about truth and faith that isolating any

form of belief or disbelief from the resulting tangle seems impossible’’ (ibid.: 3, 5). He ulti-

mately locates Von Trier’s failure to produce clear meaning in his misfortune at being part

of a post-1950 generation for whom the world has never offered optimism.


The problem with the three readings I have given is, on the one hand,

their overreliance on a critical method that privileges that which is already

known—and hence the cognitive templates in which the already known is

framed—over openness to the possibility of encountering the unexpected.

Broadly speaking, this critical method is a kind of conventional realism

expressing standards of recognition and protocols of reasonableness simi-

lar to those of a realistic aesthetic style. On the other hand, the problem

with these interpretations is their not being quite realistic enough.The first,

psychological, reading arbitrarily selects one of the interpretive possibili-

ties of the film while suppressing others. After all, the bells are visible and

do ring out, as diegetic sound in the middle of the ocean upon Bess’s burial;

if her avowed perceptions reveal her as mad, then so do ours cast doubt

upon our own rationality. If such an interpretation depends upon import-

ing an extraneous sense of what is authentic to clarify this film, the sec-

ond sort of reading, which explains identity, belief, and action historically,

does so even more obviously. Michael Quinn (1999), for instance, has dis-

cussed the film as an expression of nationalist anxiety at the coming of the

European Union, with Jan and his international assortment of oil workers

representing the multifaceted miscegenation perceived to menace tradi-

tional European cultures defined by the borders of the nation-state.While

this reading is dexterously suggestive in its linking of global transforma-

tions and local struggles, it nevertheless comes at the enormous expense of

ignoring the real elephant in the room: the European Union has extraor-

dinary powers but has yet to pull a single Norwegian back from the dead.

So unexpected as to qualify for consideration as a miracle, Jan’s recovery is

coded as a resurrection linked to Bess’s sacrifice.The possibility of a power

greater than life and death outreaches any reading that seeks to localize

the film’s meaning in well-understood social structures.Unless, that is, one

wishes to project on the new political organization of Europe the sort of

incredible power the film suggests to be at work. The final reading, which

acknowledges and then disavows or dismisses the film’s spiritual aspect,

comes from Stephen Heath’s ‘‘God, Faith and Film’’ (1998) and deserves

more attention.

Initially, Heath (1998: 94) accurately identifies the film’s attempt to yoke

together representation and the embodiment of the unrepresentable: ‘‘it

seeks to depict and urge something about love at the same time that it wants

to stand for—indeed be—it.’’ Hence the tension between love represented,the romantic fuel of narrative cinema, and love embodied, an ideal that

no representation could satisfactorily capture. Approaching cinema as a

symbolic system, a language understood along Lacanian lines, Heath sees

the film’s attempt to escape the limits of representation via stylistic exag-


geration and affective implosion as a failure. If the love Von Trier seeks to

embody is an ideal, that ideal connects to a tradition of imagining God as

love: the film aims ‘‘impossibly at enjoyment of God’’ (103). Responding to

the film’s undecidability, Heath, one of the most important theoreticians

of film form, aesthetics, and spectatorship, oddly resorts to journalism. In

interviews,VonTrier indicates no definite religious beliefs beyond an inter-

est in Catholicism.6On this basis, Heath (ibid.: 105) decides that Von Trier

treats the spiritual like a fetishist who pretends that something exists even

when he knows otherwise: ‘‘Not believing but hoping is like the fetishist’s

knowing but refusing all the same to know.’’ Heath thus finds that the film’s

ending delivers something like a false miracle and a negative reaffirmation

of the ineffable’s absolute remoteness. Von Trier

makes up with his film a security of meaning against the knowledge that there

is no miracle, nothing to save reality. The film overcomes its obstacle of reli-

gion . . . and produces its miracle; at the same time, what it knows against its

end (both close and purpose, the former given as the confirmation of the latter),

is the impossibility of completion, the limits against which it breaks through-

out. . . . Possession of God would be exactly the loss of any sense . . . would be

the terrifying enjoyment of what cannot be integrated into symbolic order and

representation. (Ibid.)

Although the terms could not be more different, Heath’s analysis shares

with Quinn’s an air of the orthodox. An established theory and method

meet a film whose aesthetic, even spiritual, ambitions differ markedly from

their normal parameters; in the encounter, the established theory unsur-

prisingly tailors the thing to its own demands, ignoring or deriding the

irrecuperable features of the work.

Heath goes on to focus on Bess’s exclusion from her own miracle, seeing

in the film a continuation of the gender politics of the represented world

itself. In his analysis, by contrast, Bess finds her rightful place in a Lacanian

allegory: ‘‘The woman touches on this, the God-face, which is to say that

woman and God both figure and conceal the impossibility of this jouissance:they edge on to, that is, but cover over the void of the non-existence of the

Other—there is no answer, no ultimate signifier, no final guarantee to be

had’’ (ibid.).

In its own terms, this reading has a persuasive force. The trouble is that

it is difficult to decide whether this force comes from its particular accu-

racy in this instance or from the internal coherence and rhetorical authority

6. I imagineVonTrier consciously imitating his great forbear, CarlDreyer, here. BothDanes,

at either end of the century, produced extraordinary films about nations and religions not

their own.


of its method. Its conclusions seem applicable to virtually all cinema (for

what is film, without sex and God?). After all, if the foundation of gender

disparities is immanent in language, then language itself is the ineluctable

foundation of ‘‘the terms of human subject identity’’ (ibid.). In this light,

Heath seems ultimately to accuse the film of not being worldly enough, not

owning up to the manifest vacuity of all claims to experience or represent

the ineffable. By this move, however, he becomes the mirror image of the

town patriarchs who condemn Bess to the everlasting lake of fire, precisely

for being too worldly. Neither judging party has done justice to Bess’s gam-

bit against orthodoxy. Doing justice to Bess and the film requires a different

approach.

7. Reverse Fetishism: Knowledge against Belief

These various readings all fail because viewers must face an ending that is

comprehensible only in terms of the extraordinary, the transcendent, the

sublime: a sudden, shocking encounter with an order ormagnitude of being

(such as the infinite) that nearly outstrips our abilities to perceive and pro-

cess it. According to Michael Bird in ‘‘Film as Hierophany’’ (1982), such

an experience is affective, deeply emotional, and potentially truthful in a

manner that need not be strictly rational. The nonrational need not equal

nonsense, since the binarism of instrumental reason does not necessarily

hold sway everywhere:

In spite of the triumph of determinant judgment in the contemporary world (in

the values of programming, forcasting [sic], efficiency, security, computing, andthe like), other games or genres of discourse are available in which formulat-

ing a rule or pretending to give an explanation is irrelevant, even forbidden. In

particular this is the case with esthetic judgment. (Lyotard 1988: 21)

What appears from a conventionally rational or realistic perspective to be

incoherent in the film’s ending may, instead, be apprehensible by means of

a positive form of nonrational knowledge. By affirming Bess’s self-sacrifice

through sensory evidence—not only Jan’s recovery but also the pealing

bells over the ocean—the film’s ending redeems and embodies our affec-

tive investment in her spiritual desire. In an inversion of fetishism, we get

what we want but believe to be impossible.We are arrested in a Derridean

quandary: what we see cannot be true, while equally it must.

Hierophany connotes ‘‘a disclosure of the transcendent or sacred pre-

cisely through thematerial of reality’’ (Bird 1982: 3). Against Heath’s depic-

tion of an inescapable and circumscribed symbolic order, and of the impos-

sible remoteness of a miraculous exterior perspective, Bird follows Paul


Tillich (1956) in erasing the distinction between these realms. If thematerial

world, governable by or at least cognizable by reason, ‘‘presents us with

the limits of finitude and the awareness of nonbeing,’’ it is this very ‘‘empti-

ness that places us in a condition of ‘openness’ to the Unconditioned’’ (Bird

1982: 5). Far fromexcluding themiraculous as irrational, then, ‘‘ ‘reason asks

for revelation,’ seeking an ultimate unity of its conflicting and unresolved

polarities’’ (ibid.: 4). Bird (ibid.: 6) emphasizes Tillich’s notion of ‘‘belief-

ful realism,’’ located midway between ‘‘a ‘technological realism’ (which

recognizes only the immediately visible world) [and] a ‘mystical realism’

(which eliminates thematerial world as an obstacle to the ascendingmind).’’

Instead of bifurcating the abstract and the actual, ‘‘belief-ful realism’’ cap-

tures a sense of nuance and paradox by which ‘‘discernment of the tran-

scendent is made possible by turning in the direction of the real’’ (ibid.).

‘‘Belief-ful realism’’ turns us away from a bipolar opposition of the par-

ticular and apprehensible, on the one hand, and the general and abstract,

on the other hand. Rather than set against each other, we can imagine

these alternative foci of thought and representation as commingled in a

process of mutual imbrication. In turn, this relationship illuminates, by

homology, the general concern of this essay and volume. Both argue against

the assumption that a fundamental conflict between critical approaches

that privilege an orientation to either thing or theory demands our choosing

between them. Rather, a conceptual error of simplification produces and

exaggerates the opposition between these orientations. Furthermore, this

false dichotomymay be seen as the root cause of the sweeping oscillation in

recent criticism between these alternatives, since neither orientation alone

can account for aesthetic experience in any complete fashion.Throughout

its history, cinema has been understood and explored in a bipolar fash-

ion, as a medium whose technological and textual features lend themselves

either to a transparent representation of reality or to the creation of illusions

that border on the magical.This binary conception of film derives directly

from the nineteenth-century opposition of science and religion, reflecting

the former’s increasing public authority and the latter’s decline into pri-

vate desire and behavior. Art was then conceived of as mediating between

the poles of science and religion, as a practice that could accurately reflect

and transform reality while addressing the aspirations for greater or deeper

understanding of our existence that were at one time more reliably met by

religious institutions. Nevertheless, film history and criticism reveals a ten-

dency to downplay this mediating role in favor of focusing more strongly

onmimetic or fantastic concerns.The spiritual film, in contrast, has always

foregrounded thismediating role.The remainder of this essay exploreswhat

it wouldmean in practice to reflectively abide in between the particular and


abstract, between thing and theory, in a way which we might recognize as

productive, even if unexpectedly so.

8. The Subject of the Sublime

According to Bird, appreciating this alternative form of realism in art re-

quires resisting the impulse to treat a work either as a self-sufficientmaterial

or a symbolic entity; I would add that we must also resist treating a work

as an allegorical unit metonymically linked to a larger realm. In the wake

of Mikel Dufrenne’s (1973 [1957]) phenomenology of aesthetic experience,

Bird (1982: 8) argues that this resistance entails attending to the sensuous

aspects of the artwork, not only or primarily its physical qualities but the

way in which ‘‘it is feeling that enables an encounter with depth, rather thanmerely the surface of reality.’’ In this sense, he posits that the artwork must

be understood as more a subject than an object, one that elicits sensuous

reactions that are actually responses to demands.

Bird insists that the artwork functions as a subject in order to reorient our

treatment of it away from instrumentality and toward some more indeter-

minate receptivity.What sort of subject the artwork would be is less clear.

We might conceive of it as an extension of the agency of its creator. Per-

haps a corollary conception of the artist’s creative agency as expressive of a

fundamental creative force in the universe could lead us through a particu-

lar artwork toward ‘‘discernment of the transcendent.’’ It is equally likely,

however, that, for good or ill, such a formula would redirect our attention

to the subjectivity of the artist as an end in itself. In that case, we would only

have (re)discovered a way to treat the artwork as evidence of something that

seems far from ineffable. It is more productive, I think, to consider the art-

work as having the form and function of a subject in a basic sense of its need-

ing us, asking us for something, making demands that, however minimal

or difficult to discern, are greater than what we may impute to objects. If

the artwork needs something from us, then we need its solicitation; neither

the work, on the one hand, nor the consumer’s own paradigms of under-

standing, on the other hand, sufficiently define the aesthetic engagement.

Their particular engagement may, in the instance of the spiritual film, lead

toward something irreducible to either alone.

The artwork here can in no way be treated as mere evidence upon which

method can confirm its presuppositions. At the same time, the audience’s

task is less a narrowly defined epistemic understanding or decoding than

it is an ethical alignment of their own affective and cognitive disposition

with the demands of the work—indicated by the audience’s own sensuous

responses—understood itself as a subject in form and function:


I must make myself conform to what feeling reveals to me and thus match its

depth with my own. For it is not a question of extending my having but rather

of listening in on a message. That is why, through feeling, I myself am put into

question. . . . To feel in a sense is to transcend. (Dufrenne 1973 [1957] quoted

in Bird 1982: 8)

Bird’s example of such a transmogrified realism comes directly from Kant

and Burke’s earlier depictions of the sublime as a feature of indomitable

nature:

It is as in a thunderstorm at night, when the lightning throws a blinding clarity

over all things, leaving them in complete darkness the next moment. When

reality is seen in this way with the eye of self-transcending realism, it has become

something new. (Tillich 1956 quoted in Bird 1982: 6)

Translating these extraordinary dimensions of nature into filmic terms, Bird

(ibid.: 14, 15–16) privileges a ‘‘cinematic realism . . . that . . . explores the real

bymeans of the real,’’ because ‘‘a realismwhich is poetic (sensitive to beauty)

is simultaneously a realism which is spiritual (sensitive to meaning).’’ Carl

Dreyer’s Jeanne d’Arc is a chief example for Bird as well as one of VonTrier’sinspirations. It illustrates how a stylistic realism which is neither superficial

nor mystical can reveal cinema as ‘‘a diaphragm which is sensitive to the

speech of the cosmos waiting to be heard’’ (ibid.: 20).

Given Taylor’s appreciation of the triumph of a negative hermeneutic

noted earlier, it is probably a greater challenge to critical thought to read

Bird’s claims sympathetically than it is to note similar aspirations inBreakingthe Waves. There are unmistakable traces of an almost positivistic religionof art in Bird, derived in equal parts from Tillich and Dufrenne. However,

this formulation of poetic spiritualism, or spiritual poeticism, may still hold

if we recast it in acceptable skeptical and relativistic terms. Arthur Danto

(1986) argues that, after Andy Warhol, if not Marcel Duchamp, artworks

may be better understood by the questions of their statuses they provoke

than by any registering of their objective qualities.We may, then, rephrase

Bird in this fashion: a realism which is poetic (sensitive to the question of

what beauty might be) is simultaneously a realism which is spiritual (sensi-

tive to the question of what being might be).We thus retain the sense of the

aesthetic as exploration, but as exploration of the not-even-yet-established.

Crucially, we must appreciate Bird’s refusal, via Dufrenne, of the positivis-

tic implications of ‘‘extending my having’’—as if the ineffable were a con-

tent we could grasp like any other. Emphasized instead is the attainment

of a receptive disposition, an openness to the possibility of the unexpected,

which is the critical difference from Heath’s certitude.

Jean-François Lyotard (1988: 18–19) describes this openness as a disposi-


tion of perceptivity achieved only by the disciplining of normative cognitive

processes:

The secret of such ascesis lies in the power to be able to endure occurrences as

‘‘directly’’ as possible without the mediation or protection of a ‘‘pre-text.’’ Thus,

to encounter an event is like bordering on nothingness. . . . There is a close con-

nection between this idea of an event and the question of matter or existence. . . .

We have tomake our condition that of a suspicious, exacting receiver, with recep-

tion focused on the unmistakable, uncanny ‘‘fact’’ that ‘‘there is’’ something here

and now, regardless of what it is.

The stakes of this recurrent language of listening to a call that we do not,

cannot, fully master become clear when Lyotard (ibid.: 19) suggests that the

source of that to which we respond may ultimately be ‘‘Being, or that entity

Kant calls ‘the X in general.’ ’’ This conclusion brings us suggestively near

to Lyotard’s revisionary view of the sublime.

For Lyotard (ibid.: 40), the sublime results from an experience in which

‘‘there is a failure in the synthesizing function of either the imagination or

the will.’’ Confronted with an object or condition whosemagnitude or force

exceeds the mind’s ability to organize percepts into form, a mixture of pain

and pleasure results. Pain arises as ‘‘the mind experiences its own limita-

tions’’ (ibid.). Pleasure results from the necessary mediation of an Idea of

reason at the threshold of imaginative or cognitive failure, at which point

‘‘the mind discovers that it can conceive of something like the infinite’’

(ibid.). In Kantian epistemology, fidelity to the Idea of reason is developed

within speculative or moral cognition, with their progressive registers of

achievement. Speculative reason may produce greater knowledge; moral

reasonmay produce greater justice. ForKant, aesthetic judgment is exempt

from any similar measurable progress, and this permits it to function as

a free space for cognition without instrumental goals. From the perspec-

tive of the late twentieth century, Lyotard, in contrast, is skeptical of any

record of speculative or moral achievement, both of which he understands

as susceptible to subsumption within an inhuman process of technocentric

development. He inverts Kant’s formula and locates human advancement

in the experience of the sublime, where

a kind of progress in human history is possible which would not be only the

progress of technology . . . not a progress of the beautiful . . . but of the responsi-

bility to the Ideas of reason as they are negatively ‘‘presented’’ in the formlessness

of such and such a situation which could occur. (Ibid.: 41)

In this situation, the openness of the subject in the face of the sublime per-

mits an affinity with the infinite to emerge. Against Heath, it is possible

to imagine representation and aesthetic reception as less strictly bounded


by the linguistic rules of competence and comprehensibility. Instead, these

practices may be conceived of as continually approaching and altering,

without erasing, the boundary between the knowable and the unknown. For

Lyotard, this highly abstract notion of progress indirectly replenishes and

refreshes our capacities for thinking with nuance and ‘‘responsibility’’ in the

putatively more transparent realm of the ethical. The implication is that a

politics driven by pretext pales beside a subtle ethics sensitive to the appre-

hension of the necessity of actions we do not fully understand. (To return

to an earlier point, this is why I am hesitant to suggest that the spiritual

film offers a ‘‘theater of counter-factual ideals in which alternativemodes of

living are imagined.’’ Such a formulation already predetermines experience

by assuming that what we will encounter in spiritual film will not only be

recognizable but almost immediately useful.) In turn, this notion of hear-

kening to a call brings us very close to the most generous view of Bess—

as an ethical subject, answering the call of a duty she cannot claim to fully

master.

9. Cinema and the Reality of Redemption

The errors in the interpretations detailed earlier, as well as in the myriad

reviews which tediously point out that northern Scotland in the 1970s was

not exactly as represented in the film, have their equivalents in currently

dominant forms of film studies and cultural studies in general. There,

a superficial diversity of interpretive approaches masks a deeper homo-

geneity, or what we might call the hegemony of the antihegemonic. Most

of these approaches share an emphasis on reason as the chief form of cogni-

tion in their own practice; a primary facility with realistic texts that mirror

their affinity with this representational mode; and an understanding that

their fundamental goal is the decoding and debunking of sociological and

political power. Quinn and Heath’s analyses can stand as exemplars here,

and these sorts of interpretation can alert us to the pressures that social and

political contexts bring to bear on cultural production and consumption.

Bess’s social and historical context does influence her fate and our interpre-

tations, even if these influences do not amount to the ultimate meaning of

either. A strict understanding of culture as a sphere of political struggle risks

reducing complex works to the object (and abject) status of evidence, even

when such works literally demand we focus on unanswerable, even inef-

fable questions. What is more, when critique is applied instrumentally to

objects, without a corresponding self-questioning of themotives and proce-

dures of the critic, it can become as moralistic as the judgments of the town

patriarchs. Cultural studies tradition holds that critique equals demystifi-


cation equals liberation. Yet when critique’s ironic force is unconstrained,

it may become indistinguishable from reification, as the world is progres-

sively emptied of any significance that is not adaptable to the predeter-

mined values of the critical method in play.

The balance of short-term gains (i.e., efficacious, even liberating, acts of

demystification) and long-term risks (i.e., reification) has been a question

since early in the Enlightenment. Drawing on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s

critique of contemporary Enlightenment antireligiosity, Russell Berman

(1999: 42) argues that ‘‘the suppression of religion . . . impoverishes human

life. Culture without religion is not emancipated; it is only insipid.’’ Ber-

man (ibid.: 43, 44) privileges explicitly the ‘‘axial world religions’’ of ‘‘Juda-

ism, Christianity, Islam and Buddhism,’’ since it is within their relation of

‘‘experiences of the divine . . . as pertaining not merely to a tribe, but to the

full cosmos’’ that ‘‘the life of humanity is largely played out.’’ While based

upon a questionable and indiscriminate privileging of major traditions, this

move enables Berman’s valuable schema of ‘‘the dialectic between the local

and the universal’’ within these religious cultures’’ (ibid.). The key features

of this dialectic include:

1. ‘‘a dramatic capacity for anti-traditionalism,’’ as each of these reli-

gions emerges by a strong break with dominant practices;

2. a countervailing force of ‘‘an orientation toward tradition within reli-

gion,’’ which stabilizes antitraditionalist tendencies while providing

the grounds for their reemergence.This force provides, that is, a rich

idiom for shaping innovative religious practices while guaranteeing

some degree of legibility for them, and with it the flexible constraints

against which antitraditionalism may operate;

3. a shared emphasis on ‘‘the centrality of beginnings,’’ which ‘‘derive[s]

from the religious imagination of the human freedom to create in imi-

tation of the divine creator’’;

4. a related, chronological analogue to the ‘‘tension between local-

ism and universalism [found] along a temporal axis between past

and future, tradition and creativity, memory and aspiration.’’ (Ibid.:

44–45)

Taken together, these elements amount to ‘‘a project of redemption,’’ for

which ‘‘fallenness . . . is a constant fact of human life; its critical-theoretical

designation is reification, and the crux of axial religions, and of Critical

Theory, involves the project of calling reification into question’’ (ibid.: 45).

If, for Bird, reason seeks revelation, Berman has captured a similar sense

in which reason seeks redemption.This dialectical schema helps us under-

stand the ways in which a particular spiritual struggle, like that depicted in

Breaking the Waves, warrants its claim to universal or cosmic significance.


Breaking theWaves paradigmatically, and the cinema of the sublime moregenerally, offers the opportunity to imagine and take seriously alternate

forms of cultural practice which are notmethodologically harmonious with

the tendency toward reification that typifies both modernity and cultural

studies. Rather than centered around reason and transparent realism, this

film and any analysis that would do it justice (by which I mean would

treat it as more than a system of von Trier’s madness) must foreground

other modes of apprehension and knowledge. The film works because of

the way in which it utilizes and undermines our most familiar mode of cog-

nition, representation, and critical interpretation—which I gather under

the rubric of realism. The film extends realism beyond the point at which

its short-term gains of exposing and disabling power relations have begun

to produce the negative effect of disenchanting the world by blinding us

to those features of experience that are unrecognizable in its terms. Break-ing the Waves insists on the power of realistic technique to present a situa-tion for the viewer that embodies, if only asymptotically, an encounter with

the ineffable. Whether such an encounter is deferred indefinitely or con-

stitutively, following Carlson, or is only negatively cognizable, and thus by

either route fails to satisfy the demands of reason, seems to me to miss the

point altogether.We may learn here from Stanley Cavell’s explorations of

the ontology of cinema.

Like Benjamin, Cavell insists that to appreciate film’s potency requires

acknowledging its technical capacity to frame an aspect of reality for our

scrutiny.Unlike Benjamin, Cavell argues that this scientific or rational ele-

ment of cinemadoes not necessarily define themedium in opposition to illu-

sion, fantasy, or even magic. Rather, he writes, ‘‘movies arise out of magic:

from below the world’’ (Cavell 1979 [1971]: 39). ‘‘The world’’ here is insepa-rable from the templates of consciousness that frame this entity for com-

prehensible perception. As a medium generally, and within the genre of

the spiritual film explicitly, movies reenact for our reflection the process of

framing by which the infinite possibilities of sensory perception and inter-

pretation come together in a pragmatically coherent entity (the world). By

this reenactment, movies alert us to the prior and foundational existence of

that which is not yet framed as a world. Furthermore, they remind us of the

persistence of the as yet unknown, here figured as the ground ofmagic with-

out which reason and representation would have no context or materials to

work with. In this light, we may read Breaking the Waves, and its miraculousconclusion in particular, in an affectively intelligible manner different from

Heath’s mere recognition of its impossibility.

ForCavell (ibid.: 102),modern sensibilities and conditions have produced

a situation ‘‘in which our natural mode of perception is to view, feeling

unseen.We do not so much look at the world as look out at it, from behind


the self.’’ Cinema’s power lies in its ‘‘automatic’’ framing of the world for

us. In screening the world for us, film also screens the world from us.Unlike

theater, films unreel like events without witnesses. In accounting for why

this exclusion from the labor of framing the world would appeal to audi-

ences, Cavell suggests that the lifting of our responsibility for such fram-

ing results in a draining of anxiety, and the possible emergence of a per-

ceptive state similar to Lyotard’s notion of ascesis. Lyotard also links this

responsive openness to the Stoics’ disciplined pursuit of apatheia, or culti-vated indifference. This latter disposition suggests a mode not simply of

resisting the potentially overwhelming stimulation of perception, but also

of transcending the grip of individuated perspective itself.7 Paradoxically,

this makes ‘‘movies seemmore natural than reality,’’ as they ‘‘permit the self

to be wakened, so that we may stop withdrawing our longing further inside

ourselves’’ (ibid.).

The key to cinema’s relation to the ineffable, therefore, does not lie in its

subjecting the world to new standards of scrutiny. Rather, cinema’s spiri-

tuality inheres in the effects produced in viewers freed to reflect on powers

of perception and forms of desire which have been either diminished by, or

excluded from, conventions of thought and action, including those of criti-

cism.Unlike Heath, Cavell imagines a certain alienation of the subject as a

given that may be assuaged; when this happens, the subject is not so much

delivered over to another realm than to the world that is normally filtered

and occluded by and for an alienated identity. There is a parallel here to

the situation of the camera as well as a broad difference from Heath’s rep-

resentation of cinema and consciousness as more or less satisfying prison

houses of language. If ‘‘the camera is outside its subject as I am outside my

language’’ (ibid.: 127), then we can understand the disjunctive final shot of

the bells pealing over the North Sea neither as a proxy point of view of God

nor as an inflation of our own perspective. Instead, we peer from behind

this perspective, above the scene of Bess’s burial at sea.This vantage point

ought not be evaluated by a criterion of answering or failing to answer our

desire for ‘‘time’s answer to the ineffable . . . the wish for total intelligibility’’

(ibid.: 148).

If the final, flyaway shot of the film—oil platform and funeral below,

swinging bells above—belongs to anyone, it is to Bess, who is no longer

either there or here. At best, wemay peer from behind this ghostly perspec-

tive, imagining its implications for Bess, who imagined her implications for

7. If even our best students, or even ourselves, continue to be attracted by the thoughtless

bliss of cinema as against the cognitive pleasures of other pastimes, Cavell may here have

explained why this attraction is anything but a lapse of moral or working habits. Instead, it

goes to the very heart of what we desire from cinema.


another, as if in a mythical chain of contiguity and obligation.The close of

Cavell’s The World Viewed captures something of the complex dialectic ofthis ending:

A world complete without me which is present to me is the world of my immor-

tality.This is an importance of film—and a danger. It takes my life as my haunt-

ing of the world. . . . So there is reason for me to want the camera to deny the

coherence of the world, its coherence as past: to deny that the world is com-

plete without me. But there is equal reason to want it affirmed that the world is

coherent without me. That is essential to what I want of immortality: nature’s

survival of me. It will mean that the present judgment upon me is not yet the

last. (Ibid.: 160)

To linger receptively on Bess’s vision of her own exclusion, in a form that

defers judgment of her indefinitely, does not ‘‘produce [God] as filmic abso-

lute’’ (Heath 1998: 103). Rather, it evokes a profound sense of the extent of

our aspiration. As hierophany, the ending reveals the persistence of hope,

which is to say, the persistence of cinema itself. It preserves the possibility,

against all expectation, that the absence of rational certainty about fun-

damental concerns amounts less to their negation than to their increase.

Crucially, it delivers more than the affirmation of any particular material

or transcendent desire; it reawakens a more diffuse and oceanic sense of

the continuity and uncontainable potential of openness toward the sub-

jects of our reflective judgment to transfigure our own subjectivity. In so

doing, Breaking the Waves offers a sublime challenge to criticism, one thatcan be resisted (as irrational), or translated into secular terms (like power),

or treated in terms of a reality we do not pretend to fully know ormaster but

to which we owe the greatest obligation. Shouldn’t the same obligation to

act without pretense to certainty, to listen for the unsettling call beyond and

within the real, animate the heart of cultural studies? And if this is the case,

finally, might not cultural studies realize a mode of real resistance: Break-

ing the leveling waves of reification, which threaten to flatten everyone and

everything into computable commodities and exchangeable determinant

judgments, we can begin to imagine the reenchantment of reality and the

redemption of hope.


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1998 ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Oxford Guide to Film Studies,’’ edited by John Hall and PamelaChurch, 3–10 (New York: Oxford University Press).

Friedberg, Anne

1993Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley: University of California Press).Giddens, Anthony

1979Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berke-ley: University of California Press).

Giles, Paul

1987 The Culture of Criticism and the Criticism of Culture (NewYork: Oxford University Press).Gorky, Maxim

1972 [1896] ‘‘The Kingdom of Shadows,’’ in Authors on Film, edited by Harry Geduld, 3–7(Bloomington: Indiana University Press).

Gunning, Tom

1999 [1989] ‘‘An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator,’’

in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by Leo Braudy and MarshallCohen, 818–32 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Hansen, Miriam

1991 Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-sity Press).

Heath, Stephen

1998 ‘‘God, Faith, and Film: Breaking the Waves,’’ Literature and Theolo� 12: 93–107.Heidegger, Martin

1977 [1953] ‘‘The Question concerning Technology,’’ in Basic Writings, edited by DavidFarrell Krell, 311–41 (New York: Harper and Row).

Hooks, Bell

2000 [1992] ‘‘The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,’’ in Film and Theory:An Introduction, edited by Robert Stam and Toby Miller, 510–23 (Oxford, U.K.: Basil

Blackwell).

Jasper, David

1997 ‘‘On Systemizing the Unsystematic,’’ in Explorations in Theolo� and Film: Movies andMeaning, edited by Clive Marsh and Gaye Ortiz, 235–44 (Oxford,U.K.: Blackwell).

Kaes, Anton

1989 From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-sity Press).

Knapp, James A., and Jeffrey Pence

2003 ‘‘Between Thing and Theory,’’ Poetics Today 24: 641–72.Kracauer, Siegfried

1965 [1960] Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress).

1974 [1947] From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press).

Levinas, Emmanuel

1999 Alterity and Transcendence, translated by Michael B. Smith (New York: Columbia Uni-versity Press).

Lyotard, Jean-François

1988 Peregrinations: Law, Form, Event (New York: Columbia University Press).Maslin, Janet

1996 ‘‘Breaking theWaves,’’ NewYorkmes on theWeb. Available at www.nytimes.com/library/film/waves-film-review.html.


Metz, Christian

1982The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, translated byCelia Britton (Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press).

Moore, Rachel O.

2000 Savage Theory: Cinema as Modern Magic (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).Mulvey, Laura

1986 [1975] ‘‘Visual Pleasure andNarrative Cinema,’’ in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideolo�: A FilmTheory Reader, edited by Philip Rosen, 198–209 (NewYork: Columbia University Press).

Novalis

1964 [1802] Heinrich von Ofterdingen, translated by Palmer Hilty (New York: F.Unger).Plate, S. Brent

1998 ‘‘Religion/Literature/Film: Towards a ReligiousVisuality of Film,’’ Literature and The-olo� 12: 16–38.

Quinn, Michael

1999 ‘‘Alternative Conceptions of Spirituality in the Public/Private Spheres: Breaking theWaves and The Rapture.’’ Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for CinemaStudies,West Palm Beach, Florida, April.

Ray, Robert

1985 A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930–1980 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-versity Press).

Rosenbaum, Jonathan

1996 ‘‘Mixed Emotions: Breaking the Waves,’’ Chicago Reader on Film. Available online atwww.chireader.com/movies/archives/1296/12066.html.

Sadoul, Georges

1975 [1948] Histoire générale du cinema (Paris: Editions Denoël).Sagarra, Eda, and Peter Skrine

1999 A Companion to German Literature (Oxford,U.K.: Blackwell).Scarry, Elaine

1999 On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).Schrader, Paul

1972 Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress).

Taylor, Dennis

1998 ‘‘The Need for a Religious Literary Criticism,’’ in Seeing into the Life of Things: Essayson Literature and Religious Experience, edited by JohnMahoney, 3–30 (NewYork: FordhamUniversity Press).

Tillich, Paul

1956The Religious Situation, translated by H. Richard Niebuhr (Chicago: University of Chi-cago Press).

1957 The Protestant Era, translated by James L. Adams (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress).

Travers, Peter

1996 ‘‘Breaking theWaves,’’ RollingStone.com. Available at www.rollingstone.com/mv reviews/review.asp?mid=72929&afl=imdb.

Turan, Kenneth

1996 ‘‘Movie Review: Breaking the Waves,’’ LAmes.com. Available at events.calendarlive.com/top/1,419,L-LATimes-Movies-X!ArticleDetail-4268,00.html.

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STEVE NEALE n

ART CINEMA AS INSTITUTION

T H E A i M O F this article is to outline throughxontemporary andhistorical examples the role played by what has come to be called'Art Cinema' in the attempts made by a number of Europeancountries both to counter American domination of their indigenousmarkets in film and also to foster a film industry and a film cultureof their own. The context for this lies firmly in the current debatesaround independent cinema in Britain. These debates centre inparticular on the role of the state in financing and in legislatingthe conditions for the production, distribution and exhibition offilms and on the relationship between this role and variouspotential strategies either for renewing or, more radically, fortransforming British cinema and British film culture, particularly aseach of these strategies can be said to centre on independentcinema as it currently exists. A number of factors and events havecontributed towards sharpening the urgency and importance ofthese debates. They include the continuing catastrophic declineof the indigenous mainstream film industry, the proposals for anddebates around the nature of the fourth television channel, theappearance, as a response to proposals for the establishment of aBritish Film Authority, of statements both by the Association ofIndependent Producers (AIP) and the Independent Filmmakers'Association (IFA) which draw (very differently) upon notions of therole and function of Art Cinema in Europe, and, last but by nomeans least, the appearance of Radio OH (1979), and with it astrategy within the BFI Production Division of a high level of fund-ing in production and promotion around films which it is felt arecapable of penetrating a sector of the commercial industry at the

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1 John Ellis, 'Art,Culture andQuality —Terms for aCinema in theForties andSeventies',Screen, vol 19no 3, Autumn1978.

2 GeoffreyNowell-Smith,'Radio On',

•Screen, vol 20 no3/4, Winter1979/80.

3 Ibid, p 36.

level of exhibition and, perhaps, of opening a space within thatsector for the development of a kind of British Art Cinema, acinema which, in turn, will allow for the exhibition and discussionof forms of independent cinema on a scale entirely different fromthat which exists at the moment. The basis for such a strategy hasto some extent been outlined by John Ellis in his article on ArtCinema in Screen1 and the case of Radio On and the ambiguitiesand problems involved in the strategy in this particular instancehave been outlined by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith,2 so I don't wish togo into these arguments and debates directly here. What I dowant to do, through the examination of instances in other coun-tries at other times, is to bring out and to re-state some of theambiguities and problems involved, some of the dangers and someof the issues as they affect independent cinema understood notsimply as 'films made outside mainstream commercial cinema andmainstream television* but rather as a practice which, in Nowell-Smith's terms, 'is in every sense on the frontiers of cinema — inthe language it speaks, in the conditions under which it is pro-duced and circulated'.3

During the 1960s and early 1970s in particular, at a time whenthe polemics surrounding 'popular culture" and Hollywood wereat their height. Art Cinema was often defined as the 'enemy': as abastion of 'high art' ideologies, as the kind of cinema supported bySight and Sound and the critical establishment, therefore, as thekind of cinema to be fought. To parody the debate somewhat, itwas a question of Siegel, Fuller, Hitchcock, Hawks and Cormanversus Antonioni, Bergman and Fellini, of genre versus personalexpression, of (in some extreme instances) trash versus taste,hysteria versus restraint, energy versus decorum and quality,Undenvorld USA (1960) and Bringing up Baby (1938) versusPersona (1966), La Dolce Vita (1960), 8J (1963) and The RedDesert (1964).

This is a parody, a simplification. The debates were crossed byall kinds of complexities, not the least of which was the carefulanalysis and detailed attention given by both Movie and TheBrighton Film Review (and Monogram, its successor) to Antonioniand Bergman and the New Wave in France, the attention given byCinema to certain strands of the avant-garde (Cocteau, Anger,Warhol and so on), and the wish on the part of many to analyseHollywood in terms of its artists and auteurs.

What it is true to say is firstly that the debates and polemicswere heavily dependent upon the terms provided by literary ideol-ogies and secondly that Art Cinema itself was rarely defined. The

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importance of Leavisism in general and 'left' Leavisism in partial- 13lar has often been mentioned in the context of the popular culturedebates, its contradictions leading on the one hand to a validationof popular cinema and to a detailed attention to its styles, mean-ings and structures and on the other to fairly traditional notionsof authorship, traditions which, in turn, proved fruitful in pro-ducing a knowledge of Hollywood and its auteurs. This particularideology, however, was more interested in validating Hollywood'sartists than in examining its institutions and conditions. As such,it was part of a wider project of engaging with the cinema's artand artists, including its European variants: Robin Wood couldwrite books on Bergman and Antonioni as well as on Hitchcock,Penn and Hawks. It is hence not surprising that there was neverany systematic attention given Art Cinema as an institution. Therewas never any systematic analysis of its texts, its sources offinance, its modes and circuits of production, distribution andexhibition, its relationship to the state, the nature of the dis-courses used to support and promote it, the institutional basisof these discourses, the relations within and across each of theseelements and the structure of the international film industry.

All these elements are crucial to Art Cinema. Art Cinema is byno means simply a question of films with particular textual charac-teristics, though there are a number of such characteristics,recurring across its history. Art films tend to be marked by a stresson visual style (an engagement of the look in terms of a markedindividual point of view rather than in terms of institutionalisedspectacle), by a suppression of action in the Hollywood sense, bya consequent stress on character rather than plot and by aninteriorisation of dramatic conflict. A different textual weight isaccorded the proairetic code,1 whose units are inscribed and articu-lated in a manner that tends to be distinct from that markingHollywood films. A different hierarchy is established between actionand actant. Different orders of motivation sustain the relationsbetween the two. If cinema has tended massively to exist hithertoas an institution for the perpetuation of the novelistic, then it hashistorically been the case that it is within the institutional spaceof Art Cinema that film has most closely approximated that versionof the novelistic that we associate with writers like Eliot, Mann, ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ —

James and Tolstoy, shading at times into the hesitations of themodernist novel (Faulkner, Dostoievski, the nouveau roman), while Barthes S/ZHollywood has tended to produce and reproduce the version of the Hill and Wang,novelistic we associate with the genres of popular fiction. It is also v YorK>

true that Art films are marked at a textual level by the inscription ^ H H ^ ^ ^ H H

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14 of features that function as marks of enunciation — and, hence,as signifiers of an authorial voice (and look). The precise nature ofthese features has varied historically and geographically, as itwere, since it derives in part from another, simultaneous functionthat these features perform: that of differentiating the text ortexts in question from the texts produced by Hollywood. Hencethey change in accordance with which features of Hollywood filmsare perceived or conceived as dominant or as basically charac-teristic at any one point in time. In Neo-Realist films, the featuresin question are those of location shooting, the absence of stars,a non-systematic laxity in the inscription of the codes involved inarticulating spatial and temporal continuities. These features over-all connote realism and function as the positive marks of Artboth insofar as certain definitions and discourses of Art involvean ideology of realism and insofar as they simply contrast withfeatures marking Hollywood films at this time. In an Antonionifilm, on the other hand, the specific features that perform thesefunctions are different. In this case they generally include anextreme de-dramatisation coupled, as a corollary, with a lack ofspatio-temporal 'intensity', a problematisation of character motiva-tion and a re-balancing of the weight of attention accorded thehuman figure on the one hand and landscape and decor on theother. These features are similar to those of Neo-Realism, how-ever, in that they differ equally, so to speak, from the textualfeatures of Hollywood films. They engage the other primaryideology of Art, the Romantic view that Art is subjective expres-sion. They function both as the signs of such expression and,hence, as the marks of Art itself.

The function of differentiation is crucial. If Art films have tendedto display the kinds of features noted above, then this has in partbeen because they are features that contrast with those of Holly-wood. Simultaneously, and partly for this reason, they are featureswhich circulate as the signs of art in established cultural institu-tions. The importance of this is that Art Cinema is bound to thedefinitions and value judgements these institutions produce. Theirdiscourses are nearly always involved one way or another in articu-lating the criteria used to promote Art Cinema in countries seekingto counter American domination of their domestic market in film.Art is thus the space in which an indigenous cinema can developand make its critical and economic mark.

Equally, to turn the equation around, in competing with Holly-wood for a share in the market, or in seeking a space of its ownwithin it, the films produced by a specific national film industry

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will have in any case to differentiate themselves from those pro- 15duced by Hollywood. One way of doing so is to turn to high artand to the cultural traditions specific to the country involved.Either way, the films will be shown in different cinemas and bedistributed by different distribution networks. And they will bemarked by different textual characteristics. In constructing andsustaining such differences, the films will almost certainly tend tocoincide with and to become supported by discourses functioningto define and perpetuate art and culture. The only reasons whythey may not do so is if they transgress the social, sexual, politicaland aesthetic boundaries that these discourses construct. In whichcas they will find themselves in different institutional spheres ofcirculation: the avant-garde, agit-prop, pornography, and so on.

The discourses of Art and Culture are hostile to Hollywood ona variety of grounds and for a variety of reasons. Hence thevariety of Art films themselves: from Neo-Realism to Felliniesquefantasy, from the austerity of Dreyer and Bergman to the plushvisual spectacles of Bertolucci and Chabrol, from the relativelyradical narrative experimentation of Antonioni, Godard andResnais to the conventional story-telling of Visconti, De Sica andTruffaut, from the marxism of Bertolucci to the romantic humanismof Truffaut, and so on. Equally, however, that variety is containedboth by the economic infrastructure of Art Cinema, its basis incommodity-dominated modes of production, distribution and exhi-bition, and by the repetitions that tend to mark cultural dis-courses in general and the discourses of high art and culture inparticular. Hence the relative constancy of those features andelements noted above. Even where the marks of enunciation them-selves are heterogeneous, they tend to be unified and stabilisedwithin the space of an institution which reads and locates themin a homogeneus way (each mark serving equally as the signof the author) and which mobilises that meaning in accordancewith commodity-based practices of production, distribution andexhibition (the mark of the author is used as a kind of brandname, to mark and to sell the filmic product).

In order to concretise the discussion of Art Cinema, and inorder both to disentangle'and to interrelate some of the factorsand elements involved within it, I want to look in a little moredetail at some of the instances and moments in its constructionand perpetuation in three different countries: France, Germanyand Italy. In each case I want to concentrate as a point of historicaland theoretical departure upon the fact of Hollywood's increasingdomination of the mass market in these countries after the First

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16 World War. From here it will be possible both to pull out a setof recurrent themes, issues and characteristics and to mark a setof differences and specificities, adding one or two importantpoints not detailed in the sketches which follow, before relatingthem finally to the current situation here in Britain as it affectsin particular the work and concerns of British independent cinema.

5 Quoted in EricRhode, A Historyof the Cinema,Allen Lane, 1976,pp 117-8.

6 Quoted Ibid,p 118.

FranceAlthough something in the nature of an Art Cinema existed inFrance before the war in the form of Le Film d'Art, a company pro-ducing stage classics designed specifically to appeal to a middle-class audience, it was after the war and the consolidation andspread of Hollywood's influence that, as in so many other Europeancountries, a diversification in national production began in conjunc-tion both with a sustained intellectual interest in film (an interestnearly always manifested as a theoretical concern with defining thenature of film as a specific art form) and with the beginnings ofproduction of experimental forms.

Before the war, Pathe Freres had been one of the largest filmcompanies in the world. During the course of the war, however,the German invasion diminished the home market and opened itup to German films, while America seized the opportunity to pourits films into France. The journalist Henri Diamant-Berger wrotein the weekly magazine Le Film that 'British production is insigni-ficant. Great Britain is no more than a colony to the American filmindustry. If we don't take warning at this example, we shall undergothe same fate.'5 Ten years or so later Leon Moussinac was simplyto write as follows: 'In 1914, 90 per cent of the films shownthroughout the world were French; by 1928, 85 per cent of themwere American.'8

If the industry in France collapsed during the war, it was thewar period that saw the first sustained intellectual interest incinema, with De Mille's The Cheat (1915) acting as a specificcatalyst for many French intellectuals. Interest was sustained byAbel Gance's La Roue (1921), and, in common with many othercountries at this time, books and magazines devoted to the 'art'of the cinema began to appear, alongside the establishment ofnon-commercial cinemas and cinema circuits and alongside thedevelopment of a cinematic avant-garde. The Club des Amis duSeptieme Art was started by the Italian-born art critic RicciotoCanudo in 1920. Canudo had been a supporter of the Italianfuturists and cubists and was able to attract a considerable circle

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of artists and intellectuals to his Club. Louis Delluc, who edited a 17a magazine called Le Film, which included Colette, Coceau, Aragon,Germaine Dulac and Marcel L'Herbier among its contributors,founded the Cine Clubs de France (which merged with the Clubdes Amis du Septieme Art on Canudo's death in 1923). GermaineDulac founded the Federation franchise de Cine-Clubs in 1925.Two specialised cinemas opened in Paris in 1924, the Vieux Colom-bier and the Studio des Ursulines.

All these cinemas were committed to the'emerging French avant-gardes and all were also to show films from abroad, notably workfrom the Soviet Union, which was to have such an impact onEurope in the twenties. It is important that a number of the figuresmentioned above not only promoted experimental films throughtheir participation in exhibition, but also wrote about them andmade them themselves. Between 1919 and 1923, Delluc wrote anddirected six films and provided scripts for many others. GermaineDulac directed La Souriante Madame Beudet in 1922 and The Sea-shell and the Clergyman in 1928. Jean Epstein made La Daphnie(1925). Coeur Fidele (1923), La Glace a Trois Faces (1927) and FinisTerrae (1929). Marcel l'Herbier made L'lnhumaine (with setsdesigned by Leger, Mallet-Stevens, Autant-Lara and Caval-canti) in 1924 and Feu Mathias Pascal, based on a novel by Piran-dello, in 1925. Much of this work was privately financed. GermaineDulac had her own production company and L'Herbier's work after1924 was financed by himself. Renoir's first films were also pri-vately financed. A number of these people also worked within theindustry, however, and it is perhaps significant that L'Herbier, forexample, started by making films for Gaumont. It was only at thepoint at which Gaumont was absorbed by Metro-Goldwyn in 1925,that he branched out on his own.

Overlapping, historically with the 'first French avant-garde'Dadaist and Surrealist work in the cinema was similarly supportedby the exhibition infrastructure of cine'-clubs (which was aug-mented later in the twenties by Leon Moussinac's Les Amis deSpartacus). Films by Man Ray, Bufiuel and Dali. however, dependedexclusively upon private financing and patronage, with the Comtede Noailles being particularly important in this respect: as wellas financing L'Age d'Or in 1930, he also financed Cocteau's LeSang d'un Poete (1930).

Although a number of these films produced in the 1920s fed intothe notion of a national cinema of quality (especially and obviouslythose produced within the industry itself), it is important tostress both the influence and popularity of elements of Holly-

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7 Quoted inGeorges Sadoul,Histoire Giniraldu Cinima, vol 6,Denoel, Paris,1946, p 525.

8 Roy Armes,"Images ofFrance", TheMovie, no 16,P 301.

wood cinema among the intellectuals, writers and film-makers ofthe time (especially the Surrealists) and the extent to which allavant-garde activity was marked by an ideology of internation-alism. As an example of this Jean Tedesco, founder of the VieuxColombier, called in 1928 for the creation of an internationalorganisation for the ting-clubs that had sprung up not only inFrance, but also, notably, in Holland and Britain:

OUR AIM is to re-unite all those elements among the cinema'selite public who have become convinced by the arguments 1 havejust elaborated. The complete ruination of our art must be stopped.French law can no longer be allowed to isolate French thoughtfrom international thought and we declare that as from today thecinema is a form of international thought.

OUR DUTY is to lend a helping hand to all those who, in Europeand America, are struggling to elevate the art of the movingimage above that created by businessmen.7

The arrival of sound both markedly changed the structure of theFrench film industry and ensured the disappearance of the avant-garde. The extra cost of sound films eliminated many of thesmaller film companies and made private sponsorship and patron-age almost impossible. The early 1930s also saw the establishmentof large-scale multi-language production in Paris by Paramountand the German company, Tobis. Co-productions continuedthroughout the decade with UFA, but a number of Germanemigre's worked in the French industry during the same period.

Although small companies established in the 1920s disappearedwith the coming of sound, others continued to proliferate, thoughthey were generally under-capitalised and short-lived, and it wasthese which tended to provide the base for the films and thefilm-makers that became synonymous with 'Art Cinema' in the1930s: Renoir, Pr6vert and Carne\ Jacques Feyder and JulienDuvivier; Toni (1934), La Bete Humaine (1938), Le KermesseHerolque (1935), Le )our se Live (1939), P<?p<; le Moko (1936) andso on. The French market was dominated by foreign films. Accord-ing' to Roy Armes the native film industry never supplied anymore than 25 per cent of the films distributed annually in France.8

With the withdrawal of the two combines formed out of PathSand Gaumont in the mid-1930s, film production became very un-stable: out of this situation arose both the films mentioned aboveand the precariously-based production companies that made them.

In 1940, the industry fell under German control and in 1942

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a new system of finance and control was set up with the Comited'Organisation de lTndustrie Cinematographique. This was replacedafter liberation by the Comit6 de Liberation du Cin£ma Frangais,itself dissolved and replaced in 1946 by the Centre National duCine'ma Frangais. The CNCF incorporated all the various produc-tion organisations involved in the French industry, and one of itsimmediate aims was to protect it against an influx of foreign —especially Hollywood — films by reinforcing its quota system. In1949, the Loi d'Aide a l'lndustrie Cinematographique was passed,giving aid on a non-selective basis to French producers through atax of 25 per cent on recipts from foreign films. This law expiredin 1953 and was replaced by the Loi de Developpement de l'lndus-trie Cinematographique.

The importance of this law was that enormous stress wasplaced on art, culture and education both in drafting the law andin arguing and reporting it to the various state bodies involved.Hence Jacques Debu-Bridel speaking to the Conseil 'de laRepublique: 'We affirm that in our eyes educative values havemore weight and more importance than exchange values';9 and GuyDesson, speaking to the Assemblee Nationale: 'it must not be for-gotten that while the cinema is undoubtedly an industry, it isalso, being a means of expression, an art.'10 Hence, too, the factthat the jury involved in the allocation of funds comprised repre-sentatives from the fileds of art and education, as well as fromthe industry itself. The feature films benefiting from this system— in a sense the product of its ideology — included Marcel Camus'Mort en Fraude (1956), Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958) and LouisMalle's Ascenseur pour VEchafaud (1957). Short films, particularlyimportant for directors like Franju (who made nine before movinginto features) and Resnais (who made eleven), were also covered bythe law. Again, the emphasis in distributing funds was on qualityand culture ('quality', said Guy Desson, "must be fundamental tofilms of this kind').11

Despite all this, it should be noted that the late 1950s (theperiod of the emergence of the New Wave), was a period of crisis,with a sharp decline in cinema attendance from 1957 on. TheNew Wave was partly a product of this crisis. What is interestingand important to note about it is, first, that it grew directly outof a school of critical writing, second, that it related itself to there-construction of a national film-making tradition (with Vigo,Cocteau and Renoir especially prominent), third, that it con-sisted in large part of a re-inscription of elements of Hollywoodcinema across the terms of the art film, and finally that its emer-

19

9 Quoted in PaulLeglise, 'LaPolitique Fran?ais<du Cine'ma*,Cinima Aujourd'hui, nos 12/13Autumn/Winter1977 p 21.

10 Quoted Ibid p 22.

11 Quoted Ibid p 22.

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20 gence was, to a considerable extent, due to the cheapness of thefilms and to the existence of 'enlightened' producers like DeBeauregard and Braunberger.

Largely as a response to the crisis, there was a further re-orientation of state intervention in 1958 and 1959. In 1958, theAssemblee Nationale increased the number of prizes for qualityshorts from 80 to 120. The same year, tax concessions were grantedto the cini-clubs and the cin&mas d'art et d'essai, contributingtowards the development of a numerically powerful Art house cir-cuit (that year over five million spectators attended the cini-clubsalone). In 1959, with Malraux as Minister of Cultural Affairs,and as part of his policies for the encouragement of art and cul-ture, the Centre National de la Cinematographie came under hisministerial aegis. And in June, following the expiry of the 1953legislation, a whole series of measures was introduced to encouragethe production, distribution and exhibition of 'quality* films, themost significant being the introduction of interest-free advances onbox-office receipts, distributed in accordance with criteria laid downby a specially constituted committee. These measures led, directlyand indirectly, to the funding of films like Jules et Jim and LaFemme Infidele. A further development under Malraux was theestablishment of Maisons de Culture, centres of art, sport, educa-tion and recreation, whose film programming integrally includedcritical introductions and discussions led by paid animateurs.

This basic system continued through the 1960s and into the1970s, though it was modified after the events and criticism ofMay '68 specifically to encourage 16mm production and the workof new film-makers. It continues to exist today after the essenceof its modes of financing was re-adopted in 1976. If, however, thesestructures and practices continue to exist, so too does the problemof the domination of Hollywood and American distributors. As afinal confirmation of this, it is worth noting that in 1977. the per-centage of aid to distributors worked out so that the six com-panies distributing Hollywood films received 40%, the eleven com-mercial French distributors 44%, the 35 distributors of films d'artet d'essai only 4% and the 63 independents 12%. Even within theterms of the Art cinema problematic it can be seen there are con-siderable drawbacks, while the problematic itself, of course,remains open to criticism that it erects a false distinction betweencommerce and culture and that it tends to ghettoise the work offilm-makers whose films circulate only in the Art house nexus:

The whole economic and aesthetic evolution of French cinemasince 1958, in other words for the last twenty years, has served

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only to accentuate the gap between commercial and 'cultural' pro-duction . . . This conception [ie Malraux's] which in effect counter-poses culture and education, is based on an overvaluation of theformer and on the complete absence of consideration of the cul-tural needs of the public in its broadest sense.12

GermanyAs in so many other countries during the period of the early1910s, Germany participated in the movement towards an earlyform of Art Cinema based largely in 'classical' literature anddrama, both historical and contemporary. Following the Kineformmanifesto of 1910 (signed, among others, by Gerhart Haupt-mann, Hermann Sudermann, Arthur Schnitzler and Paul Lindau),Oskar Messter founded a subsidiary to Messter Film GmbH calledAutoren Film specifically to produce art films and Paul Davidson'sProjektion-AG Union began to involve established artists andintellectuals (including, significantly. Max Reinhardt) in the plan-ning and production of its films.

Foreign domination of the national market occurred very earlyin Germany, with the number of German-produced films in distri-bution heavily outweighed by films imported from America and(especially) Denmark and France. The 1914-18 war aided andstrengthened the domestic industry considerably, with the homemarket closed to many foreign countries and the French industrysuffering from German occupation and war. It was towards the endof the war, in 1917, that UFA was founded, funded in part by thestate and in part by large banking and industrial interests. UFAwas essentially an umbrella organisation, covering all threespheres of production, distribution and exhibition, though for along time its primary concren was with distribution (it was onlyofficially registered as a production company in 1924).

At the end of the war, the government was forced to relinquishits stake in UFA, but its initial position of strength enabled it toweather the economic crisis of the early 1920s and to establishitself in the face of intense American competition. It was res-ponsible for the first significant international economic and intel-lectual successes after the war (Lubitsch's Madame Dubarry (1919)and Anna Boleyn (1920) and Sumurun (1920) and played a signi-ficant part in the 'expressionist' films of the period 1919 to 1926.

Germany passed the first quota legislation in film history on29th May 1920 with the Reich Film Act, restricting the number offoreign imports to 15% of its overall annual total (a figureamended the following year). The act also imposed a municipal

12 Michel Marie,'L'Art du Film enFrance Depuis La"NouvelleVague"', CinemaAujoud'hui, 12/13Autumn/Winter1977 p 53.

21

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13 See SiegfriedKracauer, FromCaligari to Hitler,Princeton UP,1971 p 65.

14 Ibid p 142.

entertainment tax on cinema seats, but, crucially, concessions weregranted to those exhibitors showing films recognised as havingartistic and cultural value by a special committee of cultural'experts'.

Partly as a consequence of these legislative measures, partly asa consequence of UFA's strategies and strengths both domestic-ally and abroad (when UFA took over Nordisk, it obtained accessto an important and significant foreign exhibition circuit), andpartly as a consequence of the effects of domestic inflation onproduction, investment and export, there was a post-war boomin German film production. The films produced included a seriesof titles serving them, as subsequently, as the very indices of ArtCinema, from the 'expressionist' cycle (Caligari (1919), Waxworks(1924), Warning Shadows (1922) et al) through the Kammerspiele(from Backstairs (1921) to The Last Laugh (1924)) to a series ofperiod spectacles (Tartufie (1925), Faust (1926) and Manon Lescaut(1928)). What is important to note .about this phenomenon is notonly that it was encouraged by the 1920 legislation, but also thatit was pursued as a conscious policy by producers as a meansof gaining international prestige and access to foreign markets.

As Siegfried Kracauer has noted, it was a policy pursued in par-ticular by Erich Pommer, producer of Caligari for Decla Bioscopein 1919 and subsequent head of production at UFA.13 Indeed, apartfrom features and its activities in distribution and exhibition,UFA produced a whole series of documentaries whose generic titlewas, precisely, the Kulturfilm, promoted by the slogan 'Theworld is beautiful; its mirror is the Kulturfilm.'1*

UFA was by no means the only important film company in Ger-many at this time. The development of German Art Cinemaowed its existence also to a multitude of small independent com-mercial production companies: Phoebus, Gloria, Helios, Luna,Terra, Nero, Rex, Neptune and so on. Because of its size andbecause of its presence in the sphere of distribution, however,UFA remained important, though it was forced in 1925 to sign awaymuch of its autonomy in an agreement with Paramount andMetro-Goldwyn, following the Dawes plan and the stabilisationof the mark. With the introduction of a new monetary system,the previous currency could no longer be used to finance foreigntrade. UFA was then cut off from its export market. The Paru-famet Agreement, as it was called, gave Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn effective control of UFA's quota certificates and itsmovie theatres in exchange for loans. UFA, however, regainedsome of its former autonomy when Hugenberg stepped in in

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1927 (UFA went on to produce one of the most important talkies,Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930)). The way the agreementfunctioned with respect to the quota laws was symptomatic, how-ever. There was an increasing number of quota quickies producedby American subsidiaries located in Germany during this period.What is important about them, though, was that they provideda space for a small sector of the avant garde. Both Berlin, Symphonyof a Great City (1927), directed by Ruttmann, and The Adven-tures of a Ten-Mark Note (1928), produced by Freund from ascript by Bela BaMsz, were made as quota quickies for Fox.Richter's Inflation (1927), meanwhile, was made as a kind ofprelude to a conventional commercial feature film.

Richter, Balasz and Ruttmann were all influential and importantfigures within the German cinematic avant-garde in the 1920s.What distinguished the German avant-garde at this time was thatalthough, like elements within the French avant-garde, its activi-ties had social and political dimensions, they were dimensionswhich were often institutionalised and formalised: through con-nections with the Bauhaus, through links with Piscator's theatrein Berlin, through the production of films by political parties,through organisations like the Popular Association for Film Artand the German League for Independent Film (which arrangedscreenings and discussions of avant-garde and Soviet films) andthrough the existence of links with the Soviet Union throughWilli Muenzernberg's organisation, International Workers' Aid. IAH(its German abbreviation) set up its headquarters in Berlin, tookover a production firm in Berlin called Prometheus and began todistribute Soviet films, and, later, to make films as well. Alongsidethe use of private capital for avant-garde production, there alsoexisted, then, some opportunities within the mainstream industryand a socially-radical infrastructure for the production, distribu-tion, exhibition and (importantly) criticism and discussion of films,

The coming of sound radically curtailed the possibility ofproducing films outside of the industry proper — if only for reasonsof cost. With the coming to power of the Nazis, many film-makersfled the country. The issue of Hollywood's domination of thenational market came to. be re-articulated within the terms pro-vided by a specifically nationalist iedology. Relations between thestate and industry were reorganised both by means of the estab-lishment of a set of interlocking cultural apparatuses and bymeans of the establishment of the Filmkreditbank, the FKB.15 Theindustry was finally nationalised in 1942, and it should be notedthat throughout the period of Nazi rule, the cinema, like the

23

15 For details seeJulian Petley,Capital andCulture, GermanCinema 1933-1945, BFI,London 1979,pp 51-55.

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16 ThomasElsaesser, 'ThePostwar GermanCinema', inTony Rayns (ed)Fassbinder, BFI,London 1976.

17 See SheilaJohnston "TheAuthor as PublicInstitution*,Screen Education,nos 32/33Autumn/Winter1979/80.

18 Elsaesser, op cit,pp 13-14.

other arts, was conceived of as having a specific role to play inthe construction and re-construction of a German cultural heri-tage, encouraged by the existence of a system of prizes andawards based on criteria of artistic and cultural merit.

After the war, the German industry was heavily restructuredin line with American foreign policy. Production was dispersed andAmerican domination ensured, while the problems of the Germanindustry were exacerbated by a determination to make it indepen-dent of imports and to regain for German production the wholeof the home market. The result was a stream of insular andprovincial commercial genres.

Various systems of state aid began to be introduced in the1950s in the form of government-guaranteed credits and, later,subsidies through tax-relief. The latter involved quality ratingsto films of "artistic merit', and were administered by the FBW(Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden). However, as Thomas Elsaesserhas pointed out, the systems worked either in favour of thosealready occuping a dominant position within the market and/or functioned as a means of censorship within the climate ofthe Cold War.18

The facts and details of state intervention following the Ober-hausen Manifesto of 1962 are fairly well known: the setting upof the Kuratorium junger deutsche film in 1965. the Film SubsidyBill of 1967, and the various interlocking systems of grants, sub-sidies and prizes since then, each feeding into the establishmentof the 'New German Cinema'. What needs re-stating in this con-text is, firstly, that there was a very limited home market forthese films. They achieved international acclaim (and internationaldistribution) but lacked distribution and exhibition opportunitieswithin Germany itself. Secondly, the cultural criteria involved inthe distribution of the funds available were heavily linked to aromantic conception of authorship through the concept of theAutorenfUm,11 with the result that the New German Cinema wasa series of star films by star names, the films themselves almostobliged to contain marks of personal eccentricity (Herzog's per-haps are both the most extreme and the most typical, taking thelogic to its limits).18 Thirdly, and despite the role of television inproviding a space both for production and exhibition, the contra-dictions and the political problems produced by the vicious circleof a continually declining commercial sector, a culturally privilegedproduction divorced from a strong exhibition network, and aplurality of funding sources each geared within a narrowly defined

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-set of cultural criteria have caused severe problems for film- ' 25makers lacking the adroit opportunism of someone like Fassbinder.

ItalyIn reply to the vogue for French Films d'Art (inaugurated by TheAssassination of the Duke de Guise), the Italian industry towardsthe end of the first decade of the 1900s produced its own Siried'Or, beginning with Luigi Maggi's The Last Days of Pompeii in1908. The Last Days of Pompeii, a classical epic spectacle, was toinaugurate a specially important and successful cycle whichincluded Quo Vadis? (in its numerous versions), Spartacus (1914),and above all, in 1914, Cabiria. As well as epics, Italy drew uponShakespeare, Dante, Dumas and others in film versions of TheThree Musketeers, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Inferno and Joan of Arc.PathS, the producers of Film d'Art, were so worried that theyestablished a subsidiary in Rome entitled the Film d'Arte Italiano(FAI), while one of the epics, The Fall of Troy (1911) became sowell known internationally that it broke the American MotionPicture Patents company's blockade on European independentproduction.

The producers of these films, primarily Ambrosio, Cines andItala, established a domestic position of great strength in theface of French and American productions thanks both to theirSMe d'Or and to the advantages they enjoyed by virtue of Italy'slate entry into the First World War. The Italian futurists, mean-while, were polemicising for an explicitly Italian avant-garde, andwrote extensively about the cinema. 1916 saw the publication ofa manifesto entitled The Futurist Cinema published by Marinetti,Corra, Emilio Settimelli, Arnaldo Ginna, Giacomo Balla and RemoChiti, as well as the production of Arnaldo Ginna's Vita futuristicaand three films by Anton Bragaglia ll mio Cadavere, 11 perfidoIncanto and Thais, each (presumably) privately financed.

Neither the futurists nor the international prestige and successof the Italian cinema much outlasted the war. A holding company,l'Unione Cinematografica Italiana (UCI) was formed with capitalprovided by the Banca Commerziale Italiana, Banca Italiano diSconto and Credito Commerziale di Venezia under GiuseppeBarattolo in a move to strengthen the Italian industry, but foreignmarkets became gradually closed to Italian films following theinvasion of Hollywood producers and distributors. UCI was dis-solved in 1923 after making its last film (another version of Quo

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19 Quoted in JeanMitry, Histoire duCinema vol 2,EditionsUniversitaires,"Paris 1967, p 369.

Vadis?) with the help of German capital.These events fed into a series of measures, statements and dis-

cussions concerned with the Italian industry and Italian film culturethat occurred during the period of fascist rule under Mussolini.On the 2nd April 1926 a royal decree instituted a commission ofenquiry into the industry which led to establishment of L'Unioneper la Cinematografia Educativa (LUCE) and the passing of a quotalaw in October decreeing that at least 10% of the films shownin Italian cinemas should be Italian. Meanwhile a group of youngcritics centred around the magazines Cinematografo and LoSchermo (Umberto Barbaro, Francesco Pasinetti, Luigi Chianni andAlessandro Blasetti) began to articulate a demand for a newcinema 'inspired by genuine facts and social realities'.19 Theyformed a production company, Augustus Film, and produced Bla-setti's first film Sole in 1929.

With the coming of sound, the Italian state began to restructurethe film industry even further, with the aim of stimulating Italianproduction. The Direzione Generale per la Cinematografica wasfounded in 1935, a year which also saw the opening of theSezione Cinematografica of the Banca del Lavoro, the state bank.The Sezione Cinematografica was opened specifically as a meansby which to encourage the production of culturally approved filmson the basis of advances on box-office receipts. Meanwhile, Cine-citta studios, opened by Carlo Roncoroni, were taken over by thestate on his death in 1937. The following year a system of rebatesto producers was established which were paid in proportion tobox-office takings. The result of all these measures was a steadyincrease in domestic production, which accelerated appreciablyduring the war, from 30 films in 1933 to 119 in 1942. As in thecase of Germany during the fascist period, state intervention over-all was clearly linked to a wish to produce a national (indeednationalist) cinema marked by specific ideological and artisticfeatures. Not an Art Cinema as such, but, rather, something likea nationalist popular cinema; not a cinema that was necessarilyexportable, nor one that appealed to the values of 'art' and 'culture'as established in the capitalist democracies.

The end of the war saw both the emergence of the Neo-Realistmovement and the swamping of the Italian market by Americanmovies. Neo-realism became the very paradigm of Art Cinema inthe period immediately following the war, from the late 1940sthrough to the early 1950s. It embodied nearly all the elements andqualities which John Ellis lists in his analysis of attempts toestablish a commercial Art Cinema in Britain during the sameperiod: realism, humanism, lack of spectacle, lack of excesses in

I!

J

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style and technique and so on.20 It is important to note firstlythat its unity as a movement was conjunctural insofar as it wasdependent upon a particular political situation: 'the euphoria ofliberation and the alliance of all political forces — Liberal, Catho-lic, Socialist and Communist — involved in the struggle againstFascism and German occupation'.21 Secondly, many of the directorsand critics involved in neo-realism had at some point been con-nected either with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia,founded by the state in 1932, and, or with one of the two majorfilm journals. Bianco e Nero and Cinema. Thirdly, as regards pro-duction, distribution and exhibition, neo-realism was a hybridphenomenon, in part commercial, in part receiving state support(Bicycle Thieves (1949) was financed by the state distribution ser-vice, Italneggio, and exhibited in the state exhibition circuit), andin part linked to political organisations like the ANPI (AssociazoneNazionale Partigiani Italiani). Fourthly, despite its internationalprestige, Neo-Realism came under strong attack from the govern-ment in 1949, partly because it was considered to lack commercialpotential and partly because of its political overtones. Under the'Andreotti Law' of December 1949, the Direzione Generale delloSpettacolo, a body empowered to subsidise films, was established,and it used its powers to stop, in effect, both the production andinternational distribution of neo-realist films.

The Andreotti Law was introduced in response to the flood ofimported films and the concomitant crisis within the Italian filmindustry after the war. According to Thomas Guback, 600 Americanfilms were exported to Italy in 1946.22 Over 800 films a year wereimported into Italy over the next three years. Under Andreotti'sproposals, a system of support for the industry was devised, con-sisting essentially of a tax on imported films to support domesticproduction. For each film imported, the distributor had to deposit2,500,000 lire with the Banca del Lavoro. The money was chan-nelled into a fund from which producers could draw at very lowinterest rates. There was thus no technical restriction on im-ported films (and exemptions were granted in return for importlicences from foreign countries for more Italian films), but thenumber of American imports was reduced and Italian productionwas increased, aided still further by the signing of a co-productionagreement with France. The agreement was signed in 1949, fol-lowing calls from Italian producers themselves:

The only way we can stand up to the Americans is to extend stillfurther the system of co-production, either with France, or evenwith England. At this moment 500 American films are on the

20 John Ellis, op cit.

21 GeoffreyNowell-Smith,'Voyage to Italy:Rossellini inContext", Eye toEye, September/October 1979.

22 Thomas Guback,The InternationalFilm Industry,Indiana UniversityPress 1969, p 24.

27

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23 The ItalianproducerScalera speakingin 1947, quoted inPierre Leprohon,The ItalianCinema, Seekerand Warburg,London 1972, p 97

24 Claude Degand,Le Cinema . . .Cette Industrie.EditionsTechniques etEconomiques,1972 p 31.

25 Quoted inGoffredo Fofi, IICinema Italiano:Servi e Padroni,Feltrinelli, Milan1973 p 48.

26 Ibid p 48.

27 These figures arequoted in theReport of theCommittee onCulture andEducation,Council ofEurope,Strasbourg, 1979.

market in Italy — a great danger for the Italian film and even the

French film.2%

Like the Andreotti Law, the agreement with France was designedspecifically to aid the production of 'quality' films, and thus togain a niche within the world market:

Article 1 stated that the aim was to facilitate by all possiblemeans the coproduction of Quality Films, films which generallyrequire a high budget and whose costs are then distributed betweendifferent producers; over and above this, it was specified that thebasic idea was to make films of such quality that they wouldenable the expansion of French cinema and Italian cinema through-out the world.21

During the period that followed, up until the next major AidLaw in 1965, the Italian Art Cinema flourished, with films byAntonioni, Fellini, Pasolini and Bertolucci, among others, makingtheir critical and financial mark both nationally and internationally.

The Aid Law of 1965 largely strengthened both the systems ofstate aid and the cultural ideology lying behind it. The law, indeed,stated the importance of the social function of cinema as 'a meansof artistic expression, cultural information and social communica-tion'.23 The production fund of the Banca del Lavoro was aug-mented by state funds, and producers were empowered to draw upto 30% of their production costs at an interest rate of 3%, thefund being specifically designated as support for films 'inspiredby artistic and cultural aims'.28 There was also a system of prizesoffered for films of cultural merit.

The situation remains much the same today, with state fund-ing channelled through the Banca del Lavoro (2 million lire in1978 going to 'films of artistic and cultural merit'27 and with asystem of awards and prizes acting in conjunction with importrestrictions and co-productions to sustain the Italian industry asa whole and its Art Film sector in particular.

There are one or two other points worth noting. One is thepowerful and influential role played by producers like Dino deLaurentiis and Carlo Ponti. Another is the way in which a con-siderable portion of funding is reserved for promotional and cul-tural activities: festivals, conferences and the like. This is especi-ally true of funding at a municipal level and is a result of inter-party rivalry; the Christian Democrats and the PCI compete withone another for cultural prestige. The third and final point to note

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j is the crucial role played nowadays by Italian television (there are 29! similarities with the role of television in France and Germany).

RAI 2 has produced and shown films by Rossellini, Bertolucci, Olmi,Petri, Cavani and Pasolini, as well as films by Straub-Huillet andJancso. Importantly, it pays high fees for showing Italian filmsand has engaged in a significant number of culturally prestigiousco-productions. Once again, inter-party rivalry (articulated in thecontrol of RAI 1 and RAI 2) has played an important part.

The rough pattern of the history of Art Cinema in these coun-tries is thus as follows: following an early period in which thecinema appealed to and addressed what would seem to have beena largely proletarian audience, a number of countries, includingGermany, France, Italy and the United States (through Zukor'sdistribution company Famous Plays by Famous Players) begandeveloping a cinema which sought an address to the bourgeoisie.A process of change and differentiation was at work, but the shiftwas less towards a bourgeois audience and away from the pro-letariat than a shift towards an address to the two together. Thewar provided Hollywood with an opportunity to extend its shareof the world market and to challenge the prominence hithertoenjoyed by France and Scandinavia in particular. Concomitantly,through the work of Griffith especially, Hollywood films them-selves succeeded in allying proletarian and bourgeois genres withnovelistic conventions of cinematic narration, thus producing aunified and unifying mode of textual address, a genuinely popularform of entertainment with a mass rather than a class-basedaudience.

The mode and terrain of Art Cinema thus shifted during the1920s, emerging as a strategy through which to counter Holly-wood's dominance in line with the first acts of legislation (quotalaws and the like) designed to restrict the flood of Hollywood pro-duct. The 1920s in fact saw a considerable fragmentation and dif-ferentiation in production, distribution and exhibition with thebeginnings of the emergence of those distinct spaces of cinematicactivity we are used to today: entertainment, Art Cinema, theavant-garde, agit-prop and political cinema, and so on. Where

j previously figures like Chaplin and Griffith were able to embodythe virtues and features of entertainment, experimentation and arttogether, the configuration of forces inside and outside thecinematic institution began to fracture that unity into a set ofdistinct spheres of practice, circulation, discussion and activity.

The coming of sound consolidated these distinctions (in effect

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30 eclipsing avant-garde production until after the Second WorldWar) and ensured the hegemony of Hollywood and novelisticentertainment. State support for indigenous European industriesincreased, especially in the fascist countries, but it was not untilafter the Second World War that state support became firmlylinked to the promotion and development of national Art Cinemasunder the aegis of liberal-democratic and social democratic govern-ments and under the pressure of the presence of America andHollywood in Europe. The result was an efflorescence of ArtCinema, the production of the films and the figures and the move-ments with which Art Cinema tends massively to be associatedtoday. Before pulling some general and theoretical points from thehistorical sketches given above, it is worth, firstly, stressing theextent to which the development of Art Cinema policies in thesecountries, allied in particular with systems of state support, pro-vides a strong point of contrast with what has happened inBritain. Britain's course has nearly; always been to try and com-pete with Hollywood on its own terms, in part because it sharesthe same language. Where, after the Second World War in par-ticular, that language (in alliance with other manifestations ofAmerica's cultural, economic, and political presence) could appearquite simply as a sign of foreign presence in most continentalcountries, its threat in Britain (accents notwithstanding) was muchless marked. Moreover, sharing a language with the United Stateswas one reason why British producers could entertain so seriouslythe idea of competing with Hollywood for the American market.At any rate, there has been no investment in a 'British cinema ofquality' comparable with what has occurred elsewhere in Europe.This is one reason why independent cinema in Britain has takenthe course that it has, emerging as a conjunction of avant-gardeand agitational practices across currents in film criticism andtheory: there was simply no space, even on the margins of theindustry, for the emergence of aesthetically or ideologically inde-pendent work. In other European countries, thanks to the existenceof an Art Cinema sector and to the financial support that that sectorreceives (and thanks also to the role of television in these coun-tries), progressive and innovative work by Godard, Rivette, Straub-Huillet, Duras and others has emerged in the interstices of theArt Cinema institution.

The second point concerns the extent to which, historically,censorship and sexuality have figured as crucial elements in theemergence and consolidation of Art Cinema. The development offilm clubs and cini-clubs in the 1920s — the exhibition basis for

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the subsequent emergence of Art Cinema as a distinct sector withinthe cinematic institution — was due in large part to censorshiprestrictions on the showing of films from the Soviet Union. TheSoviet films themselves became the models for notions of film asart and the fact that they were subject to political censorshipmeant that they could only be shown in private members' clubs.The conjunction of censorship with an intellectual interest in theaesthetics of the Soviet films and with the construction of aspecific exhibition space not only for Soviet films but also forother films considered to have particular 'artistic' qualities set theseal on the construction of Art Cinema as a cinematic space dis-tinct from that of the mainstream cinema of entertainment. Cen-sorship continued to be an important factor from the 1930s on,though less in the area of politics than in the area of the repre-sentation of sexuality.

It could be argued that the cinematic tradition constructed andreconstructed over the years as the tradition of Art Cinema hasalways been concerned with the inscription of representations ofthe body that differ from those predominating in Hollywood. Withthe emergence of the star system at the point of the elaborationand stabilisation of novelistic modes of cinematic narration, thebody, in Hollywood, became simultaneously the incarnation of thecoherence of fictional characterisation and the nodal site of afetishistic regime of eroticisation and sexual representation. To-gether with a reticence of gesture and (later) vocal delivery, thesefeatures came definitively to mark the representation of the bodyin Hollywood films. European Art Films from the 1920s on weremarked by (major and minor) differences. German expressionismstresses the rhetoric of bodily movement and gesture: Soviet filmswere often marked by a refusal of the star system, the use of non-professional actors, and, in Eisenstein's case at least, the develop-ment of a system of 'typage'; Renoir's films stressed the artifice ofacting, pushing the oscillation between body and role as far as itwould go within the limits imposed by the novelistic28; neo-realism was marked by its refusal to use stars; Antonioni's filmsoften stressed the plastic qualities of the body as a component partof an overall decor by refusing certain elements of character andnarrative motivation; Fellini's films, from La Dolce Vita (1960)onwards, constructed an 'over-inscription* of the fetishised body ofthe star (especially the female star) through a rhetoric of systematichyperbole; and so on.

Part and parcel of this process of differentiation has been, sincethe mid-1950s at least, a difference in the 'explicit' representation

31

28 See Jean-LouisComolli, *ABody Too Much',Screen, vol 19 no2, Summer 1978.Comolli refersonly to LaMarseillaise butsimilar remarksapply also, incertain respects, toNaria, La Rigledu Jeu, LaGrande Illusion,The Golden Coachand The VanishingCorporal.

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32 of sexuality and sexual activity in general and the female body inparticular. It is a difference whose existence and significance forArt Cinema was importantly determined by the adoption of theHays Code in Hollywood in 1934. Before the Hays Code, sexualityand censorship were issues and features common to both Europeanand Hollywood cinema. From time to time the product of certainspecific countries acquired a special notoriety (the Danish whiteslave trade cycle and the 'health and hygiene' films produced inGermany towards the end of the First World War are two ex-amples), but, by and large, each country produced films which wereequally 'explicit', equally notorious and equally subject to demandsfor censorship and propriety. Indeed, it seems there was a veryspecific regime of sexual representation tied to the epic and thehistorical spectacle that was common to the United States, Italyand France in particular, and included films by De Mille, Griffith,Gance and Von Stroheim. The adoption of the Hays Code arosepartly as a consequence of vociferous demands for the censorshipof films in the United States. It was a way in which Hollywood wasable to ward off these threats (as much economic as ideological —censorship legislation in individual states would have made manyfilms unmarketable on a national scale) and to standardise its ownproduct as 'family entertainment'.

The Code prohibited representations of sexuality, the naked maleand female body, and sexual relations and activities. On the con-tinent, censorship systems and the debates around them drewheavily upon discourses around the 'adult' nature of art and around'realism', linking in with debates around the representation ofsexuality in the other arts. The consequence was that continentalfilms differed — or were able to differ — from those of Hollywoodwith respect to representations of sexuality and the cultural statusthat those representations were able to draw upon. Hence filmslike Une Partie de Campagne (1936), La Bete Humaine (1938), andLe Jour Se Lbve (1939). (The fact that these examples from the1930s are French rather than German or Italian is a reflection of thefact that the latter at this time were fascist countries). However,since the Hays Code was in effect the instrument of the Motion Pic-ture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA — later theMPPA, Motion Picture Association of America), and since the MPPDAcontrolled the entire industry in America, films from outside theUnited States which were considered to infringe the Code weredenied distribution and exhibition. After the war though, as theanti-trust legislation began to divorce exhibition from productionand distribution and thus to weaken the grip of the MPPA (as it

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was then) and the Hays Code as it applied to imported films, al-ternative distribution and exhibition circuits began to be formedto show films from Europe including those which would previouslyhave been denied access to American screens.

With the opening of a market in America, European films wereable to trade more stably and commercially both upon their statusas 'adult' art and upon their reputation for 'explicit' representationsof sexuality. Hence the steady accumulation of these films throughthe 1950s and into the 1960s: La Ronde (1950), Summer withMonika (1952), And God Created Woman (1956), La Notte (1960),L'Eclisse (1962), La Dolce Vita (1960), Les Amants (1958).Viridiana (1961), The Silence (1963), S | (1963), Une FemmeMariie (1964) and so on. Indeed, it could be maintained that fromthe mid-1960s onward Art Cinema has stabilised itself around anew genre: the soft-core art film. Hence Last Tango in Paris (1972),Belle de ]our (1967), Pasolini's trilogy of The Arabian Nights(1974), The Decameron (1970) and The Canterbury Tales (1971),as well as Theorem (1969) and Salo (1975), VAmour Fou (1968),La Bete (1975), Immoral Tales (1974), Casanova (1977) The NightPorter (1973), Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976) and so on.Where previously the history of Art Cinema had been, apart from itsauthors, one of a series of unstable and short-lived movements(expressionism, Poetic Realism, Neo-Realism, the New Wave), thenames of its authors, indeed, serving as the only conceptual meansby which to categorise its output consistently, it now appears thatthere is a relatively permanent genre towards which Art Cinemainternationally has begun to gravitate, assured as it is of an inter-national market, notoriety and (generally) a degree of cultural andartistic prestige.29

It is at this point that I want to pull together some elementsfrom the historical sketches of Art Cinema in France, Italy andGermany, pointing to a number of general characteristicsand drawing some general conclusions, before moving on to someremarks on independent cinema at the moment. I shall be con-centrating largely on the limitations and problems of Art Cinemaand of Art Cinema policies.-But it is important to state firstly thatArt Cinema has, historically, provided real — if limited — spacesfor genuinely radical work, though the impact of that work hasoften been blocked and nullified by the overall institutional con-texts in which it has found itself. Moreover, despite the generalisa-tions I shall make, it is, certainly for those working towards aradical practice of cinema in the countries I have instanced, the

33

29 It is in thiscontext thatPaul Willemen'sremarks on thefourth look andvoyeurism withrespect to the artfilm andpornographyacquire aparticularsignificance. See'Letter to John',Screen, vol 21 no2, Summer 1980,esp pp 57-8.

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34 differences, distinctions, specificities and opportunities that areimportant.

The first important general point to note about Art Cinema isthat it always tends to involve balance between a national aspecton the one hand and an international aspect on the other: at thelevel of the market, at the level of the discourses of film theoryand film criticism, at the level of the discourses involved in thearticulation of policies (either within the industry or within thestate) at the level of legislation, and at the level of the filmsthemselves.

The production, distribution and exhibition of films always takesplace within the context of pre-defined national boundaries, cul-tures, governments and economies. Because of the determinationsexercised by this context, Hollywood's international dominance isnearly always conceived by the countries whose markets it domin-ates as a specifically national problem. Because of this, policiesarticulated as a solution to the problem nearly always involve theconstruction and reconstruction, firstly of a national industry towhose experiences they can refer and to whose structures, practicesand problems their statements can be addressed, and secondly ofnational cultural and cinematic traditions which the measuresembodied in such policies are expected to foster, through pro-tection, encouragement and incentive. Stretching back throughMalraux's policies as French Minister of Culture, through SwedishArt Cinema after the Second World War (where Bergman, forexample, emerged as an artist working within a specific Swedishcultural movement — the 'writers of the forties'), through Bla-setti's polemics in Cinematografico to Erich Pommer's policies ashead of production of UFA, concern with national culture, thenational economy, the national industry and with national cine-matic traditions has remained a constant in Art Cinema and thediscourses it has involved. Legislation — in the form of quotas,subventions, prizes or awards — can only apply across a nationalterritory organised through a national state apparatus (though thismay be modified with the development of EEC legislation) andalmost always involves definitions of what constitutes an Italian (orFrench or German) film. It is only on the basis of such definitionsthat aid laws can function. Hence while the films made within anyone country will tend inevitably, because of the overdeterminedsituation in which they are produced, to derive their intertextualaffiliations from national cultures and traditions, the adoption ofArt Cinema policies tends to re-mark such affiliation, encouraging

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their systematic inscription into the films produced under the aegis ™ ^ ^ ^ ^ " ^ ^ ^ ™ « B 35of such policies. The films themselves thus participate actively and 30 Nowell-Smith,systematically in the construction and reconstruction of particular °P cit> PP 17-18.national identities while the marks of nationality with which they m^^^^^^^^^^m

are inscribed serve further to differentiate them from the filmsproduced "in Hollywood. (It is no accident, in this context, thatGeoffrey Nowell-Smith's review of Radio On touches on the par-ticular issue of the way in which the film situates itself at aniconographical level within the traditions of British realism, pre-cisely the tradition appealed to so often as its-major artisticheritage and hence, the potential basis upon which a native ArtCinema could be built).30

There is also an important international dimension to ArtCinema. Art films are produced for international distribution andexhibition as well as for local consumption. Art Cinema is a nichewithin the international film market, a sector that is not yet com-pletely dominated by Hollywood (though it is one that Hollywoodhas begun to take seriously, as its European co-productions and asfilms by Altman, Coppola and others perhaps start to illustrate).Art Cinema also, in its cultural and aesthetic aspirations, reliesheavily upon an appeal to the 'universal' values of culture and art.And this is very much reflected in the existence of internationalfilm festivals, where international distribution is sought for thesefilms, and where their status as 'Art' is confirmed and re-statedthrough the existence of prizes and awards, themselves neatlybalancing the criteria of artistic merit and commercial potential.This international aspect of Art Cinema is one reason why thepolicies pursued by the fascist governments in Italy and Germanyduring the 1930s and 1940s cannot simply and easily be seenmerely as extreme initial tendencies in what was to become ageneral trend. In these instances the international dimension wasmissing and the policies were elaborated within the context ofvery specific nationalist ideologies.

Art Cinema is always, then, a matter of balance between thesetwo aspects. The nature of this balance can perhaps best be ex-emplified by the fact that during the course of their internationalcirculation. Art films tend nearly always to retain a mark whichserves simultaneously as a sign of their cultural status and a signof their national origin. This mark is that of the national language.When they are shown outside of their country of origin, wheretheir national status and their place within specific nationaltraditions will be evident, Art films tend to be subtitled rather than

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36 dubbed. The international circulation of 'entertainment' films, bycontrast, tends to involve the erasure of this mark. The balancebetween the two elements is, thus, a different one.

National Art Cinema policies involve, of necessity, mechanismsof selection, differentiation and evaluation in the allocation offunds through loans, guarantees, prizes and awards. To that extent,they also require the elaboration of a set of criteria as to what,in any one instance, constitutes 'art', 'culture' and 'quality' and, asa corollary, a set of marks is inscribed into the films, projects,scripts and scenarios to which these criteria are applied, differentia-ting them from conventional commercial projects and signifyingtheir status as Art. There exists, then, a space for the interventionof a number of competing definitions of art, culture and quality andfor the consequent funding of a range of practices differing fromthose of the mainstream commercial industry. Historically, how-ever, that space has been foreclosed. What has tended to fill it hasbeen an ideology of art as individual expression, manifest both inpolicies to support and to fund new film-makers (conceived asindividuals who otherwise would be denied the means to expressthemselves) and in the prevalence of auteurism within the dis-courses circulating centrally across the institutions involved in ArtCinema as a whole. Hence the German Autorenfihn. Hence thedominance of auteurist ideologies in funding committees, awardspanels and juries. And hence at a broader cultural level, the over-whelming association of Art Cinema as a whole with a set ofindividual names: Antonioni, Bergman, Bertolucci, Bresson, Bufiuel,Chabrol, Dreyer, Fassbinder, Fellini, Herzog, Truffaut, Visconti,Wenders, etc.

There are a number of reasons for this. Concepts of art as indi-vidual expression are predominant within most cultural institutionsand discourses. And they are readily mobilised in marking andconceptualising what is held up as a basic difference betweenHollywood and Art Cinema: that the former is the realm of im-personal profit-seeking and entertainment where the latter is the

• realm of creativity, freedom and meaning. Authorship, moreover,can perform other functions. It can exist as a means of accountingfor and unifying conceptually the multiplicity of differences thatcan exist between Art films and Hollywood films, reducing thatplurality to a single homogeneous principle. The name of theauthor can function as a 'brand name', a means of labelling andselling a film and of orienting expectation and channelling meaningand pleasure in the absence of generic boundaries and categories.

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And as a means of categorisation itself the concept of the authoris essential to aid policies geared to the funding of individual filmsrather than to funding specific practices. In giving a coherentrationale both to the policies and to the films they produce (theyare all instances of 'self-expresion' — hence their eclectic hetero-geneity), authorship serves partly as a means by which to avoidcoming to terms with the concept of film as social practice.

Overdetermining all these reasons and, indeed, most of theother features that mark Art Cinema and its films, is the fact thatto varying degrees Art Cinema functions and has always functionedin terms of a conception of film as commodity. Art Cinema, funda-mentally, is a mechanism of discrimination. It is a means ofproducing and sustaining a division within the field of cinemaoverall, a division that functions economically, ideologically andaesthetically. The terms of that division are constructed through adiscrimination between art and industry, culture and entertainment,meaning and profit. However, the division and its discriminationsdo not, in general, function so as to challenge the economic,ideological and aesthetic bases of the cinematic institution as itcurrently exists. They function, instead, so as to carve out a space,a sector, within it, one which can be inhabited, so to speak, bynational industries and national film-makers whose existence wouldotherwise be threatened by the domination of Hollywood. In thedivision of labour it sustains (with the ideology of authorshipreinforcing a distinction between intellectual and manual labour);in the practices of production, distribution and exhibition it entails(with the relations between distribution and exhibition on the onehand and production on the other taking the form of commoditycirculation); and in the forms and relations of representation withwhich it is associated, Art Cinema has rarely disturbed or alteredfundamentally the commodity-based structures, relations andpractices of what it likes nevertheless to label the 'commercial'film industry. It has merely modified them slightly. Certainly,radically avant-garde and insistently political practices have beenpersistently relegated either to its margins or else to a differentsocial and cinematic space altogether.

It is a conjunction of avant-garde and politically propagandistpractices which, together with specific currents in cultural, politicaland cinematic theory, characterises British independent cinema, or,rather, its IFA wing. And it is precisely commodity-based structures,relations and practices that independent cinema has sought tochallenge under the rubric of a social practice of cinema.31 Re-

37

31 See Sue Claytonand JonathanCurling, 'OnAuthorship',Screen, vol 20no 1, Spring1979, esp pp35-37.

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38 cognising that a socially progressive cinema is not simply a mattereither of films or of new relations between form and content, butthat it is also a matter of production practices, modes of distri-bution and exhibition, and new relations between films and theiraudiences (indeed, a new conception of 'audience' altogether),independent cinema in this country has begun decisively to struggleagainst commodity-based conceptions of cinema and the boundaries— political, aesthetic, ideological, economic — that such con-ceptions can constitute.

With the mainstream commercial film industry in this countryat the point of collapse and disappearance, it could be — and hasbeen — argued that a space exists for investment in a national ArtCinema (with a scale of funding similar to that available in otherEuropean countries) and that this Art Cinema may in turn open aspace for the consolidation and expansion of genuinely independentwork. It is undoubtedly the case that arguments couched in termsof the discourse of Art Cinema are more likely to win funds atgovernmental level than those couched exclusively in terms of adiscourse of social practice. It is also the case that independentfilms tend by and large to circulate as Art films in any case, byvirtue of the fact that they are multiply marked as distinct fromthe films of Hollywood (through their textual characteristics, sub-ject matter, and spheres of circulation). Both facts indicate thenecessity and the urgency of a serious engagement with ArtCinema and its practices on the part of organisations like the IFA.Clearly also, however, any strategy of engagement would be use-less if it amounted in practice simply to the production of filmsdesigned smoothly to fit the structures, discourses, relations andpractices that have marked Art Cinema hitherto. A strategy of thiskind would then simply amount to the renewal of Art Cinemarather than to its transformation. What would need to mark a moreprogressive and productive strategy would be a recognition, firstly,of a distinction between films themselves and their mode ofcirculation and, secondly, of the different modes in which films areviewed and audiences constructed across the sectors comprisingthe cinematic institution as a whole. Finally, in articulating argu-inents for the construction of an indigenous Art Cinema thatwould allow the beginnings of a transformation of each of itsspheres of practice (production, distribution, exhibition, criticaldiscussion) two conceptions central to the institution of ArtCinema as it exists internationally at the moment need to be dis-placed: those of authorship, on the one hand, and of the individual,

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self-contained work on the other. It may well be that the debatesaround television and the Fourth Channel will begin to providethe terms and the opportunity for mounting arguments that do notcentrally depend on these conceptions, since television as a wholeis much less dependent upon either of them than film. Whetherthis proves to be the case or not, Art Cinema policies in Europe,both contemporary and historical, are, it seems to me, moreuseful as a strategic precedent than as a model, since, with fewexceptions, they are and have been constantly marked by a com-bination of commodity-based structures, relations and practices onthe one hand and the culturally reactionary discourses of high arton the other.

39

I would like to thankBen Brewster, MarkNash. Rod Stonemanand Paul Willemenfor their commentson an earlier draftof this article, whichis based upon ashorter articlewritten for the BFI'snew ProductionDivision catalogue.

'We really feel the lack of a magazine of this kind in Great Britain.If only there was a way of producing a monthly so packed withinformation within a solid ideological perspective! Our monthliesare really an embarassment in comparison, as so much to do with'British' culture... The design is very distinctive ittlblends inexceptionally well with the dynamic and gutsy cc^yage itconsistently affords.' (Framework 12, p. 48)

SKRIEN, postbus 318. Amsterdam

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....IF Mty \mrtreRTO

A Catalogue of new radical publications, News from Neasden lists books,pamphlets and periodicals with a short description and full bibliographicdetails. Each issue also includes twenty pages of articles and reviews. 'Mailedfree to bookshops and financed by radical publishers, the service is non-critical.' Bill Katz, Library Journal.

Subscription, (three issues) — Individual £2.50/$6, Library £5/$ 10. OutsideEurope copies will be sent by accelerated surface post.

News from Neasden, 12 Fleet Road, London NW3 2QS, UK

Richard Nixon was educated at Whittier College.

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The Neoliberal World Order and PatriarchalPower: A Discursive Study of Korean Cinemaand International Co-production

Sunny Yoon

This research is an attempt to examine the ideological aspects of Korean cinema inthe context of politico-economic changes. Korean cinema is in the process of econ-omic restructuring, driven by neoliberal forces on a global scale. These economicforces also influence film texts on a concrete level, creating hybrid characters andnarratives in blockbusters and co-produced films. These new genre films havetended to reinforce patriarchal ideology, making it increasingly pronounced, asKorean films become more technologically advanced and the production systemglobalized. To illustrate these effects, this article offers a textual analysis of NeverForever [Kim Jina 2007], which was the first U.S.–Korean co-production.

The Korean film industry has been undergoing a structural transformation inrecent years. The entire film industry, including production, distribution andexhibition, has been transformed in response to international and domesticmarket forces. The new system has produced alternative genres and styles offilm. Under neoliberal pressure, this film industry has come to produce block-buster genre films and to form a monopolistic film market. The diversity ofKorean cinema, in terms of both content and production, has been weakenedas big-budget blockbuster films and multiplex theaters have come to dominatethe market. The Korean economy, on account of its dependence on exports,has been open to neoliberal market forces since the 1980s, especially to those ofthe American and European economies. While the neoliberal world economyhas affected the Korean economy directly as a whole, the Korean film industrymanaged to maintain its public support and diversity against global competitionuntil the beginning of this century. The battle over keeping a Screen Quota, aprotection measure to ensure that a certain amount of screen time is dedicatedto Korean cinema, has been at the forefront of the struggle to protect the domesticfilm industry. Until 2006 the Screen Quota had mandated that Korean films beshown for more than 146 days a year. In effect, that figure was actually 106

SUNNY YOON is a communication scholar specializing in visual culture and global media flows,particularly in East Asia. She has conducted research focusing on cultural studies in connectionwith political economy. She has published various books and articles on Korean cinema andtelevision shows in the context of global market forces and cultural resistance in the region. Sheis an Associate Professor in the School of Communication at Hanyang University in Seoul, Korea.E-mail: [email protected]

Visual Anthropology, 22: 200–210, 2009Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online

DOI: 10.1080/08949460802625247

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because screenings during the high season earned greater points towards meet-ing the Screen Quota requirements. In other words Korean films, prior to 2006,were required to occupy about one-third of the total screen time.

Ironically, the film industry faced its greatest challenge from neoliberalismwhen military authority was demolished and a Korean civilian governmentfinally came to power in 1998. This initiated a period in which the Screen Quotawas threatened and big conglomerates and financial capital entered into theKorean film market. Despite a very public resistance launched by the film indus-try, the government bowed to U.S. pressure, and the Korea–U.S. Free TradeAgreement (FTA) signed in 2006 cut the number of days Korean films must beshown by half, bringing the Screen Quota for Korean films down to 73 days a year.

At the same time, the Korean film business started to seek other ways besidespolitical resistance to enhance the domestic industry. The big-budget blockbusterfilm was one such response. Internationalization in order to raise the budgetsrequired for such films was another. Presently Korean filmmakers consider inter-national co-productions, particularly with Hollywood, to be a means to surmountthe crisis in the Korean cinema. This industrial=economic response also has ideo-logical consequences. In my view, these neoliberal mechanisms have strength-ened conservatism, particularly in the representation of women. As a casestudy, this paper will analyze Never Forever [Kim Jina 2007], the only co-producedfilm between Korea and the United States that has been released so far.

THE KOREAN FILM INDUSTRY IN THE NEOLIBERAL WORLDPOLITICAL ECONOMY

Since 1998 when the United States, working on behalf of Hollywood, sought toeliminate protective measures such as the Screen Quota, people in the industryhave been in the midst of a political battle against Hollywood. According to theU.S. Trade Representative (USTR), diminution of the Screen Quota was one ofthe conditions for opening the FTA negotiations. In turn, the Korean film industrystarted to organize international cooperation against Hollywood’s dominance. Inthis effort, they found the French Coalition for Cultural Diversity (FCCD) to bemost supportive, and Korean delegates also addressed the French parliament in2000 [Society for Screen Cultural Ties 2000, www.screenquota.com]. SinceHollywood’s dominance in EU countries had gone up by 70 percent in 2000, theKorean policy was viewed as an exemplar for supporting domestic films.

Additionally, Korean filmmakers participated in convening the Convention onthe Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expression of UNESCOin Oct. 2005, and demanded that the Korean parliament legalize the rule officially[KOFIC 2006]. They argued that U.S. pressure on cutting off the Screen Quotawas a violation of the UNESCO international convention. The convention wasalmost unanimously passed by support of 148 countries, with only two votesin opposition cast by the United States and Israel at UNESCO in 2005. The con-vention claimed cultural exception to the free trade principles of the WTO andapproved sovereignty of each nation’s cultural policies. Koreans in the filmindustry in March 2006 filed, along with Canada’s coalition for Cultural Diversity

Neoliberal World Order and Patriarchy 201

(CCD), an appeal to the U.S.–Korea FTA hearing at the House in the UnitedStates arguing that USTR’s requirement for reducing the Screen Quota was aviolation of the UNESCO convention.

These global struggles gained further visibility through international filmfestivals, in particular, those instances where Korean films won awards, as atCannes, Venice and Berlin.1 Here film directors and actors turned their awardspeeches into political commentary. Also the Pusan International Film Festival(PIFF), which has within a decade emerged as the most important film festivalin Asia and the tenth largest in the world, has become a stage for garneringinternational resistance against U.S. dominance. PIFF has consistently organizedseminars and protests against the undercutting of cultural diversity and theScreen Quota.

However, the political struggle to protect the Screen Quota has had only ahalf-way success as indicated by the cut of the Screen Quota to half in 2006.The other side of the battle with Hollywood is a strategy of compromise, anassimilation of its aesthetic and industry practices as a means to enter the globaland domestic U.S. market. The first aspect of this compromise is industrial: the‘‘Korean blockbuster,’’ which, as in Hollywood, has led to an enlargement inthe size of the movie at the cost of diminishing the number of productions [King2000; Hozic 2001]. The budget of Korean films has been doubling each year sincethe first Korean blockbuster Shwiri hit box office success 10 years ago. Theseblockbusters have recovered 50 percent of the domestic market for the Koreancinema and also led the Korean Wave=Hallyu in Asian countries.2 Neverthelessthe success of these big-budget films has reduced the likelihood of small-scale,independent movies being produced these days.

The distribution system is also veering towards a monopolistic structure,eroding the earlier decentralized system of ownership. Until the 1990s numeroustheater owners were involved in film distribution so that no central control hadworked effectively. However, since neoliberal restructuring two big companiespresently take up 80 percent of total film distribution [KOFIC 2007]. Since bigconglomerates have entered the film distribution market, they have establishedvertical concentration, combining control over distribution, exhibition, andproduction to drive out the independents. At the end of 2006, UIP, the inter-national distributor of Paramount and Universal,3 left Korea after a decade sincefirst having come to do business in 1988, when Korean filmmakers and distribu-tors brutally battled against them, even putting snakes in movie theaters. As aresult of monopolizing distribution, small-budget, independent films had only6.0 percent of the total viewership although they accounted for 45.7 percent ofthe total Korean film production [Korean Society for Filmmakers 2007]. WhileKorean filmmakers have fought for diversity in the international market, theyare ironically losing that very battle at home. The director Kim Ki-duk, whohas won several awards in prestigious international film festivals, recently chal-lenged the limits placed on independent cinema at home. He declared that hewould no longer show his films on domestic screens, accusing blockbustermovies like The Host, which drew the highest number of Korean viewers(13 million) in history and occupied 62 percent of the total screening [Cine 21,2006], of benefiting from an unfair distribution system.

202 S. Yoon

Moreover, Korean films have begun to imitate the forms and genres ofHollywood’s blockbuster cinema. Narratives have become simpler, and actionheroes emphasized. This is not to say that blockbusters in the two countriesare exactly the same, because Koreans are trying to defend their film cultureagainst Hollywood by developing domestic issues and stories. For instance, itwas popularly held that the huge success of Shwiri was based on the fact thatit was grounded in the Korean social context (i.e., conflict between North andSouth Korea). Yet the style of the film was similar to Hollywood’s. One can easilyfind, quite literally in films of this genre, direct lift-offs from Hollywood. For thepurposes of marketing as well, Korean movies frequently emphasize that theyuse the same technology, items and staff as certain Hollywood productions.

In these films, one can also observe a conservatism regarding female charac-ters, who are trivialized and portrayed as passive in comparison to the maleaction figures. Since Shwiri (6 million viewers), the biggest blockbuster hits havehad male action heroes. For instance, in Friends (8 million), Silmido (10 million),Taegukgi: Brotherhood of War (12 million), The Host (13 million)—all box officerecord setters—women are mostly reduced to auxiliary or dependent roles.

At first glance, the woman protagonist of Shwiri [Kang Jaekyu, 1998], a NorthKorean spy, is a unique female character in Korean cinema. The film, a love story,revolves around the relationship she develops with an intelligence officer of theKCIA whom she had initially approached in order to destabilize him. Instead shefalls in love with him and is killed in the end. The film traces the collapse of thiswoman, who in spite of her training and talents as an assassin is shown to be analcoholic femme fatalewho is so confused and neurotic that she ends up sacrificingherself (and her nation and faith). The hero, her lover, on the other hand emergesas the center of the film’s morality—he shoots and kills her in a face-to-faceencounter in which she had actually turned her gun upon others in a bid to savehim. In the end, her character is summarized as ‘‘Hydra,’’ citing the Greek mythwhose protagonist is a monstrous femme fatale destined to be punished.

Since this film, the representation of women in Korean blockbusters hasbecome progressively problematic. In the movie Friends [Kwak Kyungtaek2001], female characters were trivialized and represented as targets of sexualconquest amongst gangsters. Overall, women remained peripheral to a plotfully taken up with friendship and betrayal amongst men.

Silmido [Kang Useuk 2003] took this masculinist logic to an extreme. Its settingin spy-training ruled out having any main female characters. Based on a truestory, the film is set in the military government practice of training felons to serveas spies in North Korea. The film is full of male bodies undergoing dreadfultraining and torture. Two men escape from the island to the town where theybrutally rape a civilian woman. The scene, played out in graphic detail, is theonly instance when a woman appears on the screen. Silmido offers no humaniz-ing sketch of this victim to counter its lingering examination of the torn-upfemale body left by the two men. Taegukgi: Brotherhood of War [Kang Jaekyu,2003] also minimized female characters while emphasizing realistic descriptionsof the battlefields of the Korean War and brotherhood amongst men. The movieis a tragic tale of two brothers who are separated by the Korean War. The elderbrother goes to fight the war in order to protect his younger brother. He becomes


a war hero and a killing machine, leaving the younger brother to reconcile withthe memory of his tragic death. The women in the film are weak and vulnerable,merely there to further the plot. The main female character is the lover of theelder brother. She is accused of being a prostitute and sacrificed to a deathdespite her innocence and self-sacrifice. The Host [Bong Junho 2006] presentedgreater complexity in its portrayal of women, as it also combined diverse genres.This film is about a monster born due to pollution of the Han River and a familythat tries to save their teenage daughter who has been kidnapped by this mon-ster. There are two main female characters: one is the kidnapped teenage girland the other is her aunt, who eventually shoots down the monster with anarrow. Yet the girl is portrayed stereotypically as the ultimate bait of the monsterand the aunt’s defensive attack is shown to be humorously weak and outdated.In contrast to the male characters in the film who act, discuss and even causetrouble, these women remain largely silent props. Moreover, the other imagesof women in the film are as victims of the monster’s brutal attacks with no meansto act in their self-defense. Men are also attacked, but women’s fatalities arerendered in far greater dramatic detail. In sum, the patriarchal submission ofwomen is not an invention of the blockbuster film nor is it new to Korean cinema.However, Korean blockbusters have aggravated the problem with the magnifiedscale of visual effect and presentation.

INTERNATIONAL CO-PRODUCTIONS AND NEOLIBERAL POWERON THE WOMAN’S BODY

These expensive blockbusters cannot rely on domestic distribution alone to breakeven: consequently international co-production is considered necessary to enterthe international market. Although, the popularity of Korean cinema in Asiahas made a dent, the film industry remains interested in the North Americanmarket for its size and influence. In an interview the film director HyunseungLee, who was also then the chairman of KOFIC (Korean Film Commission), sta-ted that international co-production would be the only way to explore the U.S.film market.4 He had himself directed A Love Story [Siwolae, Lee Hyunseung2000], the first Korean film to be remade by Hollywood under the name of LakeHouse [Alejandro Agresti 2006]. Allaying the fears of Koreans regarding Holly-wood, Hyunseung recounted that once he had met people in Hollywood hefound them to be open-minded about the cinemas of other nations and willingto buy their films as long as they were ‘‘good.’’

KOFIC has recently set up a policy of supporting global market exploration;called the ‘‘Filmmakers Development Lab’’ (FDL): the policy declared that‘‘2007 will be the first year that Korea explores North American film markets.’’At the FDL, five selected projects have been developed into scenarios, assistedby five mentors who were in Hollywood-related businesses including WilliamMorris and Columbia, but nothing has been funded or made so far. Additionally,there has been enormous news coverage of famous Korean actors and directorsgoing to Hollywood to make films. Although Korean society is mobilized bythe discourse of Hollywood co-production, few projects have actually been

204 S. Yoon

executed. The film Never Forever [Kim Jina 2007] is the first example made as aKorean–American co-production. It was not made by a major Hollywood studiobut by an American independent film company, Vol. 3. It has been released bothin Korea and some European countries, and got fairly good reviews.5 Yet it hasnot been distributed in the United States yet.

The basic story line of Never Forever is a melodrama featuring an illegalKorean–American immigrant (Jiha) and an upper middle-class American woman(Sophie) whose husband (Andrew) is a successful lawyer and a second-generation Korean. The film opens on Sophie’s cultural maladjustment andpsychological instability, framing her alienation from the Korean community ina funeral service where she sits isolated from the others. Sophie’s alienation iscompounded by her husband’s deep depression and repeated suicide attempts.She blames herself for this and believes that Andrew would be cured of it if onlyshe could have a baby.

Subsequently, she hires a Korean-American illegal immigrant, Jiha, a laborer inthe Chinatown of New York City who had tried to sell his sperm but had beenrejected on account of his illegal status. What starts off as a contractual sexualrelationship between the two ends up as true love. Although the movie showsa contrast between two classes, its main focus, according to the film director, istheir love story.6 The love story is, in my view, distinctly patriarchal as thewoman’s body becomes the site of violation and intimidation and is separatefrom the individuality of the character, Sophie.

Sophie voluntarily commodifies her body, treating it as a childbearing entity inthe service of so-called Confucian values and the happiness of her husband andhis family. Pure and passionless, she considers her sexuality too as belonging toothers; a point the film drives home by showing Andrew’s mother’s coldnesstowards her until her pregnancy. Andrew too shares a similar disregard forher person. He makes sexual demands on her without consideration of herdesires. It is within this cultural context that the film explains the extreme lengthsto which Sophie is willing to go in order to please her husband, including seekinganother man to free her from the guilt of childlessness.

The movie shows that the immigrant’s male body is commercialized as well.Jiha has no choice but to sell his body in order to survive as an illegal immigrantin the United States. The first part of the movie shows Jiha’s toil and labor in Chi-natown as Sophie chases him and spies on him without his knowledge. Jiha is insearch of the ‘‘American dream,’’ to free himself from poverty and bring over hisgirlfriend from Korea. Well integrated into the neoliberal world trade in humanlabor, Jiha is in deadlock, trapped in a cosmopolitan society with no other meansof production at his disposal but his body. His American dream appears realiz-able when he meets Sophie, a blonde American with blue eyes.

Some critics have appreciated this film for its discovery of the eroticism of theAsian male, which has been so far quite understated in Western society.7 How-ever, Sophie does not desire Jiha’s body. She is merely paying for it as the sourceof semen. She is repulsed by the commercial nature of the relationship even asshe starts to get sexually involved. For instance, she puts the clothes she bringswith her to Jiha’s apartment in plastic bags, symbolizing the disgust she feelstowards her sexual involvement. Once during sex, Jiha looks down on Sophie


and says ‘‘Shit, why your eyes are so blue?’’ He sarcastically tells Sophie that‘‘you are the American dream that everyone dreams of.’’ Additionally he asksout of jealousy, after seeing her husband, ‘‘Is this your first time to pay forsex?’’ The woman’s body is described here both as the target of desire andconquest. At the same time, it is also denigrated and put down as filthy andresponsible for male humiliation. It reflects patriarchy and male narcissism.

The plot takes a new turn after Sophie experiences sexual ecstasy. At thismoment, she breaks into tears and falls in love with Jiha, desiring him as a willfulhuman being. In turn she herself becomes a subjective being able to express andpursue sexual desire. She breaks her contract and keeps on the relationship withJiha after becoming pregnant. The dirty house in Chinatown now becomes aparadise for her. In this new stage in the relationship they start to talk to eachother. The first dialogue between the two is ‘‘What do you wish?’’ Sophie replies‘‘My wish? I hope for happiness of everybody around me.’’ Jiha urges her to havea wish for her own. He helps her to discover her dreams. According to thetradition of melodrama, she finds her wish fulfilled in sexual desire. Obsessedby Jiha, she takes every opportunity to meet him until she is found out and brut-ally punished by her husband who hits her and also reports Jiha’s illegal status tothe police. Sophie refuses to comply with her husband’s demands or social normsand leaves home. It is certainly possible to see this narrative as a feminist tale of awoman’s self-realization but one must ask, why does she need a man to completeher bid at self-realization? The film can in fact be seen as just another variant ofthe Cinderella myth; except that in this case the prince offers sexual ecstasyrather than riches as a means for the woman to come into her own. The filmis structured along the typical Korean melodramatic portrayals of women aspassive victims.

In an interview, the film’s director, Kim Jina, a Korean-American woman,explained that she was fascinated by the 1970s Korean melodramas, which inher view showed beauty even in mundane love stories.8 In my view, the compari-son this sets up between Never Forever and the 1970s films is not quite inaccurate,or better stated, the former lacks the political subtext which informed the latter.The popular melodramas from the 1970s typically featured stories of ‘‘pure’’women from the countryside who would fall in love with a man and end upas prostitutes after being betrayed by him. However, this genre had appearedin the midst of an otherwise extremely repressive militaristic and bureaucraticregime in the 1970s. It was therefore both a product of and a protest againstthe military government. On the one hand, the military government encouragedgreater sexual depiction by deregulating censorship, leading to the birth of a newgenre, ‘‘hostess (meaning prostitute) movies’’ in Korean film history. On theother, filmmakers used the prostitute figure as a metaphor for social resistanceagainst an economic order, which turned working-class men and women’sbodies into commodities. The prostitute also symbolized the utter helplessnessagainst a military dictatorship.

While Sophie is like the heroines of these earlier melodramas cast as passiveand sacrificial she is in fact a rather odd choice for such a casting. She is the onlywhite woman among Korean immigrants. She belongs to the upper middle classand is a well educated woman who lives in New York City. In contrast to the

206 S. Yoon

metaphorical representation of military authority in the ’70s prostitute films.Never Forever does not comment on the neo-imperialist relationship betweenKorea and the United States. The woman victim in this case is an Americanwoman who chooses between two men of Korean descent, choosing the immi-grant worker over the wealthy one. While she may thus be validating the Koreanunderdog figure rather than the one who has made it in the United States sheherself, as a white American woman, remains the object of desire. At the end, Jihadoes get his ‘‘American dream.’’ The curious casting of a white woman in a rolewhich is more passive and traditional than any female character in contemporaryKorean cinema is indicative of a nationalist and patriarchal ideology that hasaccompanied Korea’s embrace of neoliberalism. The film dramatizes patriarchalpower by emphasizing the vulnerability of the white woman. In an interview,director Kim stressed that the film was not mainly about race but that it was alove story. The characters were based on her personal experiences of living inBoston, where she explains she rarely came across interracial marriages betweenwhite American women and Asian men: ‘‘I thought it would be interesting tohave a white woman with two Asian men . . . I was interested in her blue eyesand innocent face when I met Vera Farmiga, the main actress’’ [Jang 2007].Her explanation, apolitical as it is, erases the history of imperialism which hasdominated the U.S.–Korean relationship up to the present moment.

Feminist scholars have pointed out that imperialism has gone hand in handwith patriarchalism [Spivak 1988]. Imperialism has been reshaped and exercisedby alternative mechanisms in the postcolonial world. As neoliberal ideologyturns out to be predominant in the contemporary world, new politico-economicpower is exercised at a more concrete level by being submerged into the privatelife of people. Cultural production is a central means of perpetuating neoliberalworld order in everyday life in the postcolonial era. Foucault’s [1977] notion ofmicro power is relevant to understanding how the oppressed are managedinto offering their voluntary consent such that the boundaries between repressionand resistance are collapsed. Neoliberalism, based on the ideology of the freemarket, manages its subjects through the voluntary consent of both parties.Nationalist ideology, which has accompanied the neoliberal opening of thenation’s economic and cultural boundaries, is one such mechanism forinternalizing neoliberal power.

CONCLUSION

In its bid to fight the objective pressures of the U.S.-initiated Free Trade Agree-ment, Korean cinema is ironically imitating the Hollywood system more thanever before [Miller 2001; Maltby and Stokes 2004]. The production, distributionand exhibition of Korean films have become increasingly monopolistic. As‘‘Korean blockbusters’’ dominate the domestic film market and big conglomer-ates proceed with centralizing film distribution, diversity has dwindled and filmproduction homogenized, both in terms of content as well as in industrial struc-ture. Moreover, Korean blockbusters tend to reproduce patriarchal ideology, pre-senting it as a nationalist resistance to neoliberal globalization. Last year was no


exception: in the 130 minutes of that year’s biggest hit, The Good, the Bad and theWeird [Kim Jiun 2008], no women’s role of any substance could be found.

This analysis discloses diverse dimensions of power in contemporary culturalproducts. The recent co-produced film, Never Forever, shares certain conventionswith 1970s Korean melodramas. But it has pulled those conventions out of theirsocial context and constructed an asocial image of femininity. The film substi-tutes the social critique of the former with a language of personal choice, i.e.,neoliberal ideology. Furthermore, patriarchal representations of women asobjects and targets of sexual desire or social violence have returned in the newblockbuster films. In other words, conservative and patriarchal ideology havefound a vehicle in the culture of the free market.

NOTES

1. Korean films have been feted in prestigious film festivals since 2002. Starting with BestDirector award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002 for Chiwhasun (director ImKwontaek), Oasis (Lee Changdong) was awarded the Best Director in Venice. Samaria(Kim Ki-duk) got the Best Director award in Berlin in 2004. Old Bo (Park Chanuk)got the juror’s award in Cannes. 3iron (Kim Ki-duk) in Venice in the same year, andCybor 2006 (Park Chanuk) was awarded the Alfred Bauer in Berlin 2007.

2. Korean Wave refers to the popularity of Korean cultural products in Asia which startedthe onset of the 21st century. It began with television shows and music in East Asiancountries. Now it tends to expand all over the world. Particularly, Korean films drawattention in the famous film festivals.

3. In 2006, Columbia and Disney distributors were merged and established Korean SonyPictures, releasing Buena Vista in order to build up competitiveness against local distri-butors. CJ, a local distributor, took up Paramount in Korea [Hanguerae Daily, Jan. 11,2007].

4. Interview with the director Lee, March 17, 2007.5. Cahiers du cinema, Oct 15, 2007, Telerama, Oct 17, 2007.6. ‘‘Chungmooro attacks the U.S.,’’ Interview with the director Kim Jina, Cine 21, Oct 20,

2006. Chungmooro refers to the center of the Korean film industry.7. Andrian Gonbo, a journalist at Positive, wrote that Never Forever discovered the Asian

male body for the first time since Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour. Cine, 21,Dec l3, 2007. Director Kim agreed to this point in an interview; Cine 21, June, 20, 2007.

8. Moon: ‘‘Chungmooro attacks the U.S.’’ Cine 21, Oct. 20, 2006. In another interview, sheappreciated Douglas Sirk as the role model of her melodrama: Jang, Cine 2l, June 20, 2007.

REFERENCES

Ashcroft, Bill, ed.1995 The Postcolonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge Ashcroft.

Ashcroft, Bill, et al.2000 Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge.

Bhaba, Homi1994 The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

Cho, Haejung1998 Alternative Culture. Seoul: Yonsei.

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Codell, Julie, ed.2007 Genre, Gender, Race, and World Cinema. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Deleuze, Gilles1986 Cinema 1: The Movement-image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.1989 Cinema 2: The Time-image. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari1987 A Thousand Plateaus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press.De Vany, Arthur

2004 Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry. London:Routledge.

Fanon, Frantz1995 Black Skin: White Mask. London: Macgibbon & Kee.

Feng, Peter, X. ed.2002 Screening Asian Americans. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Feng, Peter, X.2002 Identities in Motion: Asian American Film Video. London and Durham, NC: Duke University

Press.Flaxman, Gregory, ed.

2000 The Brain is the Screen: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Cinema. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press.

Foucault, Michel1977 Discipline and Punish: Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.

Gandhi, Leela1998 Postcolonial Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Gongbo, Andrian2007 Erotism [sic] of Asian Men. Cine 21, www.cine21.co.kr

Gormley, Paul2005 The New Brutality Film: Race and Affect in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema. Bristol: Intellect

Books.Hill, John, and Pamela Gibson

2000 American Cinema and Hollywood: Critical Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Hozic, Aida

2001 Hollywood: Space, Power, and Fantasy in the American Economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress.

Jang, Hanseok2007 Interview with Kim Jina. Cine 21, www.cine21.co.kr

Kim, Soyoung1995 Cine-Feminism. Seoul: KS.

King, Geoff2000 Spectacular Narratives: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster. London: I.B. Tauris

Publisher.Maltby, Richard, and Melvyn Stokes, eds.

2004 Hollywood Abroad: Audiences and Cultural Exchange. London: British Film Institute.Miller, Toby, et al.

2001 Global Hollywood. London: British Film Institute.Moon, Seok

2006 Choongmooro Attacks the U.S., Interview with Kim Jina. Cine 21, www.cine21.co.krNicholson, H, ed.

2003 Screening Culture: Constructing Image and Identity. New York: Lexington Books.Said, Edward

1991 Orientalism. Harmonsworth: Penguin.1993 Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus.

Spivak, Gayatri1988 ‘‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’’ In her Marxist Interpretation of Culture. Pp. 271–313.

Basingstoke: Macmillan.


Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman, eds.1994 Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Yoon, Sunny2002 Democratisation and Restructuring the Media Industry in South Korea. Media Development,

49: 23–28.

FILMOGRAPHY

Agresti, Alejandro2006 Lake House. Los Angeles: Warner Brothers.

Bong, Junho2006 The Host. Seoul: Chunguram.

Kang, Jaekyu1998 Shwiri. Seoul: Kang Jaekyu Film.2003 Taegukgi: Brotherhood of War. Seoul: Kang Jaekyu Film.

Kang, Useok2003 Silmido. Seoul: Hanmaek Film.

Kim, Giwoon2008 The Good, the Bad and the Weird. Seoul: Geurim Film.

Kim, Jina2007 Never Forever. New York, Seoul: Vox3, Now Film.

Kwak, Kyungtaek2001 Friends. Seoul: Cineline.

WEBSITES

Film Magazine Cine21. www.cine21.comKorean Association for Film Art Industry. www.kafai.or.krKorean Film Commission, KOFIC. www.kofic.or.krScreen Quota Cultural Ties. www.screenquota.com

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ARTICLES

Of Other Cinematic SpacesUrban Zionism in Early Hebrew Cinema

Hizky Shoham

AbSTRACT: The Zionist ethos is commonly described as pro-rural and anti-urban, with the imagined Zionist space perceived as being rural and the Zionist drama as a reflection of the life of the pioneers in Palestine. Recent studies of early Hebrew cinema shared this view. This article ana-lyzes two Jewish films from inter-war Palestine, Vayehi Bimey (In the Days of Yore) (1932, Tel Aviv) and Zot Hi Ha’aretz (This Is the Land) (1935, Tel Aviv), to suggest a more complex view of the Zionist ethos and spatial imagery in the context of the relationship between the urban and the rural. A thematic and formal analysis of the films shows their sources of Soviet influence and reveals the presentation of the city as a nationalist space.

KEywORdS: Hebrew cinema, identity, imagery, Jewish space, Soviet cin-ema, urbanization, Zionism, Zionist ideology

Nationhood, Space, and Place

The question of ‘space and place’ has recently acquired a central place for scholars in the social sciences and humanities with discussion of a ‘spa-tial turn’, following the pioneering work of Lefebvre (1991), who talked about space as socially produced rather than as physically given (see also Gunn 2001; Tuan 1977).1 Growing attention is given to what the cultural geographer Edward Soja (1996: 56) calls “Thirdspace,” which encompasses “subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined, the knowable and the unimaginable.” In other words, the under-standing of socially produced space involves, along with physical space, the study of cultural products of space design, such as maps, stories, cultural boundaries, visual images, and other human-made cultural mechanisms.

Israel Studies Review, Volume 26, Issue 2, Winter 2011: 109–131 © Association for Israel Studiesdoi: 10.3167/isr.2011.260207

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Modern nationalism has made a strong claim in favor of the connection between a specific social group and a defined space, employing the sug-gestive power of human imagination in the design of the physical space, as emphasized by Benedict Anderson (1983). Although Anderson focused largely on the impact of modern novels and journalism, the inventions and developments that propelled film production from the late 1800s to the early 1900s introduced into public life a powerful sensual and mental tool to help design the national imagery of space.2 Discussions on this topic have led to a lively conversation about the construction of national identity in and through films by evoking national imagery, rather than through the manipulative use of nationalist propaganda (Abel, Bertellini and King 2008; Hayward [1993] 2005; Hjort and MacKenzie 2000; Kra-cauer 2004; Street [1997] 2009: 1; Williams 2000).3

This article will discuss the role played by the cinematic imagery of urban space in the process of nation-building. Nationalist ideology is commonly linked with rural landscapes, particularly in the case of Zionism. Indeed, a number of fiction and non-fiction films dating from pre-statehood Palestine, such as Spring in Palestine (1928), Oded Ha-noded (Wandering Oded) (1933), and many others, presented rural landscapes as the typical national space. For example, the film Tzabar (Sabra) (1935) focused on the ‘frontier’ as the locus of Zionist drama (Ben-Shaul 1997: 50–57; see also Troen 1999). Nonetheless, cinematic representations of urban landscape were also utilized for national mobilization. I will ana-lyze two Jewish films from inter-war Palestine: Vayehi Bimey (In the Days of Yore) (1932, Tel Aviv) and Zot Hi Ha’aretz (This Is the Land) (1935, Tel Aviv). An analysis of the complex interactions, reciprocal influences, and conceptual clashes between real and imagined space in these films reveals a strained relationship between the urban and the rural in the construction of national space, a relationship more complex than the one represented in the anti-urban ethos that is overstated in scholarly studies of Zionism.

The question of the desired design of national space posed a fundamen-tal internal conflict in Zionist thought and praxis from the outset (Ben-Ari and Bilu 1992; Gurevitch and Aran 1994; Mann 2006). Modern national-ism in Central and Eastern Europe was heavily influenced by folkloristic anti-urban stances, which viewed the peasantry’s allegedly simple world, uncontaminated by industrialization and urbanization, as symbolic of the true national spirit (Bendix 1997; Burke 1987: 3–22; Oinas 1978). Non-fiction folkloric films frequently presented rural customs and landscapes as “typi-cally national” (Kessler 2008: 23). Toward the end of the nineteenth cen-tury, these trends were often combined with anti-Semitic stereotypes that specifically linked the Jews to European urbanization. The alleged anomie,

Of Other Cinematic Spaces | 111

alienation, and corruption of the Industrial Revolution were attributed to ‘prototypical’ Jewish qualities, such as detachment from the soil and lack of patriotism (Pulzer 1964: 65–73; Wistrich 1989: chap. 7). Regardless of their truth, many Zionist writers and activists accepted these stereotypes and desired to ‘invert the pyramid’—that is, to transform the typical Jewish middle-class city dweller of Central and Eastern Europe into ‘a new Jew’, one attached to the land, rooted, and ‘productive’ (see, e.g., Eisenstadt 1998; Shapira 1997; Zerubavel 1995: 20–28). This internalized stereotype created a powerful anti-urban ethos for Zionism and the Yishuv. From an ideological perspective, rural productive life was glorified, while the urban luftgescheft (a derogatory Yiddish designation for ‘non-productive’ livelihoods, such as commerce) was constantly criticized.

Nevertheless, Palestine went through a process of urbanization and industrialization that began in the 1850s and expanded rapidly after the British conquest in 1917–1918, along with Zionist colonization. It soon became clear that most Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and else-where preferred to settle in cities. Indeed, the only Jewish city, Tel Aviv, witnessed unparalleled growth—from 2,000 residents in 1920 to 160,000 in 1939, a figure representing more than one-third of Palestine’s Jew-ish population (Druyanov 1936: 340–341; A. Gertz 1947: 46; Gonen 2003; Roman 1989; Shavit and Bigger 2001: 93). Based on standard measures of patterns of population, economic development, and socio-economic strat-ification, the Zionist project was in fact—from its outset—an eminently capitalist enterprise of urbanization and industrialization in Palestine (Metzer 1998: 8–9, 215).

However, the anti-urban ethos did in fact influence politicians, build-ers, and planners: new Jewish cities were not built in Palestine during the British Mandate, and national funds were mostly invested in purchasing agricultural lands (E. Cohen 1977; Efrat 1984: 1–18; Troen 2003: 112–140). From an ideological perspective, the city’s “cultural diversity was pre-sented as ‘Babel’ and as a threat to the Zionist aim of consolidating a monolithic national culture” (Helman 2008: 122). The anti-urban critics viewed the city as an extension of corrupt exilic life. Nevertheless, the cap-italist geographic-economic reality sustained Yishuv politics, culture, and ideological life, beginning with the Mandate period itself (Helman 2010; Troen 2003: 85–111). Among other factors, the urban space in which at least 80 percent of the Yishuv lived during the inter-war period was integrated into the rural imagery of national space and thus created complications, as we shall demonstrate.

With regard to Zionist cinema, the dominant standpoint in scholarship underscores the transformation of the ‘old Jew’, whose negative qualities included his urban nature, into a ‘new Jew’, a productive peasant, laborer, or

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warrior (Feldstein 2009; N. Gertz 1998), and views the frontier as the focus of Zionist drama. In the two films discussed here, urban space is included in the national space, revealing a complicated relationship between rural and urban space in early Hebrew cinema, which in turn discloses a rather complex approach to the city in Zionist ideology.

Vayehi Bimey

The silent short film Vayehi Bimey (In the Days of Yore) (1932, Tel Aviv)4 was the first to be entirely produced in Palestine. Although the technol-ogy of talking cinema had been in existence as early as 1927, the film was silent due to lack of funds and equipment: the entire budget was between 25 and 28 Palestinian pounds (see Halachmi 1995: 105). This film is a short (18-minute) comedy of errors about mix-ups at the Tel Aviv Purim carnival among three couples who represent different backgrounds: ultra-Ortho-dox, American bourgeois, and rural pioneer. The couples become involved in a series of mistaken-identity incidents in which they are masked and exchanged with each other.

The main plot line is focused on the ultra-Orthodox couple and the struggle of Mendel the tailor for liberation from his obsessive and domi-neering wife. As part of this effort, he runs away from home, dresses himself as a pioneer, gets drunk, and sings and dances, while she searches for him all over the city. The other two couples try to identify each other’s costumes, but since they are wearing face masks, they almost marry the wrong person when they eventually meet at the office of the rabbinate. However, thanks to a rabbi who forces them to remove their masks, Men-del’s wife forgives him, and the other two couples find each other and live happily ever after. Between the staged scenes of the movie’s plot, the producers added documentary footage (18 percent of the entire film) from the actual Tel Aviv Purim carnival (Bursztyn 1990: 40–44; Feldstein 2009: 72–77; Halachmi 1995: 114; Tryster 1995: 155–160).

The film conveys a classic carnivalesque picture, reflecting the rich and imaginative literary and theatrical tradition of Yiddish satires and farces. This tradition also had a degree of cinematic continuity, which can be seen, for example, in the Soviet-Yiddish film Jewish Luck (1925) (Hoberman 1991: 92–96). In the Days of Yore made extensive use of carnival-type props, such as costumes, face masks, and alcohol, and carnival themes, such as the war of the sexes (including the almost inevitable misogyny) and drunkenness, which distorts the perception of physical space. For example, the visual effect of upside-down camera movement shows the world of the drunken Mendel turned upside down. Consequently, it seems to subvert bourgeois


family values, as it implies that Mendel was actually looking for sexual excitement while wandering through the city streets. The carnivalesque space distorts the clear judgment of all the participants, who fall victim to material lusts, disguises, and fiascos of misidentification.

Strangely enough, the real Purim carnival in Tel Aviv of the 1920s and 1930s was quite different from the one portrayed in the film. Unlike his-torical, wild, premodern Purim celebrations, the Tel Aviv carnival was a respectable tourist event that had been imported to British Palestine from contemporary Mediterranean/Southern European carnivals, comparable to those traditionally held in Monte Carlo, Venice, and similar locales. In addition to its economic function, the Tel Aviv carnival also had a nation-alist function, that is, to demonstrate Jewish control over the urban space through the visual presence of Jewish masses in the streets (Shoham 2009). Accordingly, it was perfectly organized, with careful attention to pub-lic order. City officials, let alone British rulers, were highly intolerant of chaos. Still, the maintenance of order at the event was not only a result of law enforcement, but also a consequence of a bourgeois values system that stressed civility (Carmiel 1999; Helman 2006).

Three subversive, classical carnivalesque themes were key elements of pre-Zionist Purim, especially among Eastern European Jewry: (1) public drunkenness and gluttony; (2) wild sexuality and the war of the sexes, which were specifically characteristic of early modern Jewish Purimspiels, as well as the biblical book of Esther itself; and (3) violence, such as the centrality of the hanging of Haman as a key scene in the biblical text as well as in street performances stretching back hundreds of years (Bel-kin 2002; Hanegbi 1998; Horowitz 2006). All of these cultural elements—rituals of violence, vulgar language, role reversals by men and women, rude sexuality, drunkenness, and grotesque eating—were conspicuously absent from Tel Aviv’s carnival. The carnivalesque space of Tel Aviv dur-ing Purim was thus all but carnivalesque, if we understand this term, in keeping with Bakhtin’s (1968) definition, as subversive, disguising, and space-distorting (see also Hayman 1983).

Since documentary footage composed only 18 percent of the film, this gap between image and reality was concealed in the sequencing of the scenes. The film, with its farces and disguises, appears to be a historical oddity. Its intended audience had first-hand knowledge of the real Purim carnival and knew, for example, that the celebrants did not wear face masks. It is worth mentioning that the film was generally well-received by its audience of Palestinian Jews, and the commentators in contempo-raneous media, who were generally very sensitive to unrealistic cinematic representations during this period, did not remark on this misrepresenta-tion of the carnival and generally liked the film.5

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In fact, the film was part of a wider carnivalesque discourse. Despite the very limited presence of actual carnival-like elements in this respect-able bourgeois event, there was a lot of talk about such components as part of the quest for ‘authenticity’—a key concept of modern national-ism. For a number of reasons, the carnivalesque genre was perceived as ‘authentic’ folk culture to a greater extent than other possible genres. In popular songs, newspaper articles, and other types of public discourse, the Tel Aviv carnival was portrayed as the place in which the real spirit of the ‘folk’ could finally exhibit freedom of self-expression, in keeping with the previous wild, pre-Zionist festivities. The fact that their tourist event was actually respectable and orderly, unlike the celebrated subversion and wildness of the pre-Zionist Purim practices, was explained as the outcome of the alleged harmony of a ‘real’ folk culture that was given its true free-dom only in Tel Aviv, the city of sun and fun (Shoham, forthcoming a).

It is somewhat surprising that the first fiction film created in Jewish Palestine was entirely about the city, while rural space does not appear in the film at all. The appearance of the halutzim (pioneers) in the film is strik-ingly marginal: they are the third couple in the mistaken identity gambit, with secondary roles in relation to the two main couples, the bourgeois and the religious. Pioneers function as an image, ideal, and desired object for the other two groups, who both masquerade as pioneers, if they can. Moreover, the pioneering women, the halutzot, stimulate a ‘youthful spirit’ in Mendel the tailor. It is the American bourgeois and Orthodox couples who are at the heart of the plot, which is not about criticizing the old Jews or describing their transformation into new Jews, as in Feldstein’s (2009: 72–77) interpretation, which neglected the spatial imagery in the film. It is about the inclusion of all these groups in the national space. The only national space to appear in this film is the urban, with its emphasis on Jewish traditionalism and bourgeois family values, to which even the pioneers subscribe.

Traditionally, epic national cinema (most notably, Soviet cinema) has been at the center of discussions of national cinematic landscapes rather than comedy (see Kessler 2008; Smith 2000).6 This scholarly overemphasis emanates from excessive conceptual attention being given to the explicit messages of the films, rather than to the spatial image of the nation they reflect. However, In the Days of Yore is a nationalist film because it creates an imagined national space in which everyone is Jewish and every Jew is eventually happy, in his or her own way. Tel Aviv thus appears as a Jewish space rather than a Hebrew space. The confusions and misidentifications at first create a distorted space of imagined wild freedom. But no one is hurt, the human bodies remain hale and hearty, there is no irreversible sexual misbehavior, and the three couples live happily ever after, following the


resolution of the conflict in the office of the rabbinate, that is, within the bourgeois institution of marriage.

The imagined loosening of the moral reins during the carnival results in greater harmony on the collective level and thus, at the end, serves to enhance the social order. The carnivalesque space represents concord among different groups in Jewish society: the Orthodox religious circles, the rural pioneers, and the bourgeoisie. This fictional depiction of Tel Aviv refers directly to its most notable myth, ‘the first Hebrew city’, recreating and empowering it, depicting the collective Jewish body as flourishing in the urban space. Since nothing in the cityscape is particularly ‘Hebrew’ or ‘Jewish’, its Jewishness is more of a discursive and demographic fact than a physical or cultural statement (Helman 2008). Thus, the film in no way treats the city as an unavoidable evil, as cities are often viewed by Zionist institutions. The ability to imagine an entire physical space as having a flex-ible Jewish identity was the greatest achievement of In the Days of Yore.

The film contained no nationalistic lectures about the greatness of the nation, let alone direct (or even indirect) advocacy of national sacrifice. But in terms of spatial images, it offered a specific image of a particular urban space as Jewish (and bourgeois). In doing so, it thus established a positive link between space and identity, a necessary step in order for the Jewish community of Palestine to imagine itself as a modern nation.

Zot Hi Ha’aretz

In its day, the film Zot Hi Ha’aretz (This Is the Land) (1935, Tel Aviv)7 attracted great interest, both in the Yishuv and throughout the Jewish world, as the first Hebrew non-silent film to be produced in Palestine (the films that had preceded it were shot in Palestine but edited and produced elsewhere). The film describes 50 years of Zionist colonization in Palestine, which had begun in the 1880s, combining documentary footage from the daily news-reels of Aga Film (owned by the film’s producers, the brothers Baruch and Yitzhak Agadati) with staged scenes—a format that commentators now designate as ‘docu-drama’ (Schnitzer 1994: 34).

Unlike In the Days of Yore, This Is the Land depicts the Zionist story as an epic drama of the human struggle against the wilderness, presenting a vibrant montage of the Zionist project with its varied components: agri-culture, settlement, handicraft, industry, and culture. Thematically, it lacks individual protagonists with names and faces, reflecting the influence of some of the works of the Soviet montage school, in which the main pro-tagonist was the masses (Eisenstein 1988: 59–64).8 The film makes exten-sive use of innovative contemporaneous editing techniques, such as the

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simultaneous display of several shots or images and the gradual dissolv-ing of one shot into another. These techniques, and the philosophy behind them, were also largely derived from the Soviet montage school. Hence, in contrast with my discussion of In the Days of Yore, in which the focus was the film’s theme, the following discussion will combine theme and style.

This Is the Land was privately produced by the Agadati brothers with no assistance from Zionist institutions or any other public funds. The brothers bore the full production cost in anticipation of significant profit. Film ele-ments that would be defined today as ideologically motivated or as ‘pro-paganda’ were present, but not as the outcome of any external pressure. The film presented the Zionist grand narrative, which was understood by the film’s creators and viewers as a gripping drama with commercial potential (Feldstein 2009: 117; Gross and Gross 1991: 151–160).

Almost immediately after its first showing in theaters, these great expec-tations were deflated by harsh criticism, which raised several important issues. First, Arabs were completely absent from the film’s Zionist drama. This was an artistic choice emanating from an Orientalist worldview, which associated Arabs with the wilderness. In this film, the wilderness would be identified with, and overcome by, the collective Zionist protagonist. Hence, Arabs were only indirectly represented—by camels in the opening sequence.9 As we shall see, the omission of Arabs also derived from the desire to imagine Palestine as a ‘Jewish space’. Another important issue raised by critics was the absence of basic cinematic elements, such as plot line and protagonists, or at least the faces of actors and actresses, which might have strengthened the loose links between the scenes and created a sense of continuity. Another valid point was the persistent preference for dramatic lectures over the visual representation of Zionism (Gross and Gross 1991: 140–150; Zimmerman 2001: 142–158).

This Is the Land indeed lacks a plot line; instead, it presents a coherent historical narrative from the early immigration of the 1880s through the hardships of World War I, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and the rapid development that took place during the British Mandate. A few staged scenes fictively recreate historical events, such as the establishment of the colony of Rishon Le-Zion in 1882, the foundation of Akhuzat-Bayit (considered to be Tel Aviv’s first neighborhood) in 1909, and the Balfour Declaration. The scenes of early Zionism are portrayed in light of the con-temporaneous reality (1935), which exceeded the most optimistic expecta-tions. A few sequences present the first pioneers as a vanguard of macho men who made the revolutionary decision to come to Palestine, confront the wilderness, and change their lives (Talmon 2001: 80, 106). Women are almost absent from the film and, except for a few dancers and one singer, appear as shrieking mothers and wives.10


In the first sequences of the film, the Zionist meta-narrative is presented through the familiar romantic themes of return to the soil, personal sac-rifice on behalf of the nation, and the land itself, while providing long shots of pastoral rural landscapes, including some famous tourist sites (cf. Kessler 2008). As the story of the colonization of the wilderness develops, there is more documentary footage at the expense of the staged scenes, including an increased depiction of ‘civilization’ and fewer scenes of the ‘wilderness’ and picturesque landscapes. After the dramatization of the Balfour Declaration, the film illustrates the gradual process of the coun-try’s mechanization and industrialization, emphasizing the growth of the (already sizable) Jewish society, exemplified by the remarkable numbers of residents in Tel Aviv and Rishon Le-Zion.

The scene that focuses on the foundation of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1925 ends with a rhythmic montage sequence of masculine construction workers crushing the rocks with a pneumatic hammer and passing bricks from one to another (Talmon 2001: 77).11 The immediate message of this narrative of progress comes across as mechanization and industrialization—in short, modernization, which is employed in Zionist discourse as a moral-political justification for the colonization of Pales-tine (see, e.g., Hirsch 2009; Troen 1999). Up to this point, the film bears a striking thematic resemblance to Sergei Eisenstein’s The Old and the New (1929, Moscow), which depicted the mechanization of Soviet agriculture and strove to reconcile the rural and the urban in nation-building (Carroll and Banes 2000).

At this point, however, the heroic and consistent narrative is interrupted by a dialogue regarding the city between a worker (a new immigrant) and his veteran manager. The conversation takes place in an orchard when the worker (actor Rafael Kalatchkin) stops working for a moment and approaches the manager (actor Meir Te’omy). The worker is still holding the turiya (a square hoe) in his hand, while the manager is busy with the branches of a citrus tree:12

Worker [reclines on the turiya with one hand on it while the other holds a pole stuck in the ground]: There is one question that bothers me. Perhaps you can answer me, Baruch.

Manager: Why? What am I, a professor?

W: Well, you see, you have already been in the country for many years, and I have only been here a few months.

M: This is true, you are still … a green cucumber.

W: You see, I came here—I revolutionized my life. Before that, I was a grocer like my father. And now look! [taps on the turiya, which resonates with a metallic sound] I am a laborer!

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M: You are not a laborer yet. You still don’t know how to hold a turiya.

W [close-up on his face]: Ehh … if not today, I will learn tomorrow. But please don’t interrupt. Look. I look around and I see communes, villages, kibbut-zim. Beit-Alfa, Ein-Harod, Tel Yosef, Deganya. I see the new Hebrew nation. And I see these young fellows who left everything, who revolutionized their lives, who left all they had and followed the shovel and the plow. But let me ask you: why don’t the new immigrants go to the villages, and why do they want to stay only in the city? What is it? [He wrinkles his forehead]. We ran away from the city. Do we really want to create a ghetto here?

[Tense silence; the fingers of the worker nervously tap the turiya.]

M [again in a wide frame]: Hey—you pioneer! [pats the worker’s shoulder] You don’t understand a thing! The Hebrew city in the land of Israel is a great creation. The Hebrew city is a hub of industry, a center for commerce, handicrafts, and culture, of course. Schools, a Technion, a university. Above all, the city is important for us, for the village. The city—it buys our products … in short [puts his hand again on the worker’s shoulder], without the city, the village cannot exist. Do you understand, cucumber?

[As the manager speaks, the worker scrapes clods from his turiya, removes his hat, and scratches his head while nodding.]

W: Yes, I understand—and don’t … [at that moment, the manager removes his hand from the worker’s shoulder] but … it is advisable to see a city. Indeed, I have never seen a city in the Land of Israel [again, taps the turiya with a metallic sound].

M: Here, we will have a day off. We will take a trip, and then we will see the first Hebrew city.

W: OK [pats the manager’s chest].

M: Nu, and now—to work, to work! [sends him back with many pats].

The following sequence (about 12 minutes) is a montage of cities, mostly Tel Aviv but with a bit of Jerusalem and Haifa as well. This is the most effervescent and energetic sequence in the film, marked by jumpy editing of newsreel footage and the increased use of photomontage. It then dis-solves into spectacular superimpositions with corresponding pounding music (Zimmerman 2001: 143). This sequence, with its frenetic depiction of the city and similarly invigorating music, is an example of the inter-war ‘city symphony’ genre, which is also present in films such as Manhatta (1921, New York), Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927, Berlin), and, most notably, Djiga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Camera (1929, Moscow).13

The urban sequence comes to an end after three minutes of documentary footage from the (real) Tel Aviv Purim carnival, in which huge masses are seen in appallingly overcrowded city settings. Only then does the invigo-rating music become subdued, and the manager from the previous scene appears once again. He stands at the head of a stairway, near what seems to


be an unfinished building. A few people, including the ‘green cucumber’, are assembled and listen to the following speech:

Well, comrades, we saw the city. We saw its positive side: industry, commerce, handicraft, and culture. Very well. However, along with it, we saw its negative side—the abhorrent side. We saw the parasites of the cursed exile. These para-sites are sitting in cafés and pimp the nation’s body and soul. They sell the land from one to another. The land! And also, we saw youth going about with no purpose, no creativity, no love; its soul is empty and hollow and dissipates itself on the noisy urban sidewalks. [The camera moves to another angle from which we can see only the upper half of the manager’s body, above the listeners’ heads.] And also, they build houses here, with hundreds of people living in a building of three or four stories. And I’m telling you, comrades, this is not good! The city is corrupt, corrupt! If you are young, if the blood hasn’t yet clotted in your arteries, leave the city. Go to the spacious fields. Remember, comrades, the reason we came to this country. Was it not for the sake of the regeneration of our youth? Was it not for the revival of the nation? And what is the essence of our revival? The land, yes! The land! This is the essence. We need villages. We need people of the hoe and plow. We need land. Let’s go, comrades, let’s go!

[No answer, no one moves.]

[Cut. A new scene in a rural-pastoral landscape. A song is heard:]14

From the city, from the metropolis,From the walls of the houses,Rush, pioneer, rise and run awayTo the village!Rush, pioneer, rise and run awayTo the field!To the moshav, the kibbutz,Rise, run, rush away,Pioneer!To the village, to the field,Rise, run, rush away,Pioneer!To your mother, to the soil.Don’t ask “why”Don’t say “what”Everyone knows—Soil!Soil—is the name of a mother,Soil—plow ahead,Soil—the hand is working,Soil—this is a homeland,Soil, soil—Homeland—soil.Don’t ask “why” …

[All of the assembled now form a convoy to Kibbutz Yagur, at the foot of Mount Carmel.]

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From this point to the end of the film, only Hebrew agriculture is depicted, while the song is played in the background or sung by Yosef Goland, standing on a carriage and traveling to the village.

Away from the City?

The ongoing debate in the Yishuv at that time regarding the city is sum-marized well in the opening and closing urban scenes of This Is the Land. The argument against the city, explicitly or implicitly, is that it recreates the ghetto mentality and thus contradicts the personal revolution sought by the pioneers. It uses land (the nation’s ‘soul’) for commerce (‘profiteer-ing’), nurtures hedonistic youth, and is overcrowded and unhealthy. As an argument in favor of the city, the film shows that it consumes agricultural products, that it is the hub of Hebrew handicrafts, industry, commerce, and culture, and that, implicitly, it is a good place for recreation from the routine of hard work.

Whatever the arguments in this debate in terms of plot structure, the two scenes defamiliarize the city for us. Seen through the eyes of pioneers, the city is depicted as a strange phenomenon, an uncanny element that must be explained, interpreted, and justified. In the second scene, the speaker repeatedly uses the third person regarding city dwellers, although the scene takes place in the city and urbanites could be among his listeners. In the first scene as well, the worker differentiates between the ‘we’ who ‘rev-olutionized our lives’ and the townsmen who wish to preserve the ghetto mentality in Palestine. This third-person reference is at odds with the fact that the film itself was produced in the city by eminently bohemian urban-ites and was screened mainly in the cities. It also did not align well with the fact that 80 percent of the Jewish population of Palestine, the potential viewers of the film, then lived in the cities, with a third in Tel Aviv itself. Unlike Eisenstein’s The Old and the New, in this film there is no reconcilia-tion between city and country but rather an estrangement from the city.

The views of the urban scenery are introduced by the ‘green’ worker, who says that he has already spent a few months in Palestine but has never seen a city—quite a strange story, since he had to alight from a boat in a port and at least pass through a city before finding an agricultural job (his unmistakable Eastern European accent precludes the possibility that he arrived via land). The story’s structure thus leads the audience to view the city through the eyes of pioneers who are enjoying a day off and go to the city for recreation. In other words, the city is portrayed through the eyes of a stranger, a flâneur, who strolls through it with no specific purpose beyond gaining an impression of the sights and the continuum of stimuli


that constitute the urban experience.15 The manager’s monologue draws a moral conclusion from the tour: the city is corrupt and hence, “Let’s go, comrades, let’s go!” It is as though the comrades are considering relocat-ing to the city, but the charismatic speaker dissuades them, helping them to overcome temptation. Rebuked, the comrades learn the pioneering les-son, conclude their urban sojourn, and travel back to the village, the main locus of the Zionist drama.

The depiction of city life is framed between two scenes that portray the passage to and from the city, thus signifying the city as a socio-cultural site that is ideologically located at the margins of the Zionist project and poses a threat to the center. Although the Hebrew city did not fit into the grand narrative of the redemption of the pioneers through the return to the soil, the film’s creators did not ignore the city in the same manner in which they ignored the Arabs. The city was included for three reasons: personal, stylistic, and thematic.

On a personal level, the creators of the film lived and worked in Tel Aviv and were part of a markedly urban, even bohemian, cultural scene. Baruch Agadati, the film’s senior producer, spent a few months each year in Paris. From there, he introduced into Palestine the latest trends in a variety of cultural spheres, including dance, mass entertainment, and cin-ema. He likely could not resist the temptation to include newsreel footage from the Purim carnival in the film because of his (somewhat overstated) personal reputation as a founder of the carnival (Carmiel 1999; Shavit and Sitton 2004: 91).

Stylistically, the sequence of urban life, which employs superimpo-sitions and dissolves, is the most intense montage in the film and has exceptional expressive power. Had it been cut out of the film, the narra-tive would have been much more tightly contained, but it would have been visually poorer. Purim celebrations were the catalyst for the largest physical gathering of Jews in mandatory Palestine (Shoham 2009), and, in keeping with the approach of Soviet cinema, which viewed the masses as the primary protagonist of the drama,16 it was a means to portray the Jew-ish masses visually as part of the urban fabric.

Thematically, the meta-narrative of the struggle to overcome the wilder-ness would have been seen as incomplete without the depiction of city life. The city has always been a pre-eminent mythical expression of the ability of human beings to overcome nature, with their intelligence and spirit, and to construct an orderly, rational, and controlled ‘cosmos’ out of ‘chaos’ (Eliade 1954: 12–21; Tuan 1978). Indeed, at the beginning of the film, the myth of the creation of Tel Aviv from the sand dunes is cultivated by a fabricated recreation of the alleged foundation ceremony. In this fic-tive ceremony, the future mayor, Meir Dizengoff, makes a speech in which

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he envisions a sizable city with 20,000 inhabitants.17 Toward the end of the urban sequence, there is footage of an actual speech by Dizengoff,18 in which he announces that the city has exceed all expectations and now numbers more than 100,000 inhabitants. At least in terms of quantity, which was very important for the cinematic schools that inspired the production, no other project depicting Zionist colonization was similarly impressive.

The struggle to overcome the wilderness is, for the most part, presented as a linear development from desert to civilization, that is, as a process of mechanization, construction, industrialization—and urbanization. Taken to its logical conclusion (again, as in The Old and the New), it would have transpired that the entire region was shifting from country life to city life, which indeed happened, despite the anti-urban ethos. The framing of urban life between the dialogue and the monologue creates a different narrative: the creation of the new rural Jewish peasantry is presented as the main Zionist story, whereas urban development is exceptional and unpredictable, and hence requires explanations and justification. In order to reach a nuanced understanding of the relationship between rural and urban space in the narrative, let us take a closer look at the two scenes in This Is the Land that frame the depiction of urban space.

dialogue and Monologue

These two scenes were analyzed in detail by cinema scholar Yigal Bursztyn (1990), who regarded them as typical of Zionist lectures in early Hebrew cinema. Bursztyn interpreted the first scene between the worker and the manager as static: “[Kalatchkin] is shot in close-up, talking fast and over-excited; his face is static like the camera. Is he deceitful? Yes, he is … how-ever, it is not the words that lie, but the actors’ faces. The actors pretend to be human beings, while they are actually nothing but instruments, a loudspeaker for ideology” (ibid.: 47; emphasis in original). Bursztyn goes on to explain: “Had Kalatchkin, during the conversation in the orchard, performed some act, instead of standing upright and static, then his body movement would have humanized his face and diverted the attention from the words to the speaking actor. Had he wiped the sweat from his face or coughed or drunk some water—these banal acts would clash with the dramatic words and turn the entire scene into a caricature” (ibid.). According to Bursztyn, Kalatchkin “does not act for himself but for the collective. The collective has no face” (ibid.).

However, zooming out of this speech by Kalatchkin, a second look reveals a different picture. The two scenes described above in detail are stylistically and formally different from each other in their compositional design, in the


language used, and in the position of the camera. A particularly prominent difference is the number of the interlocutors in the conversation: whereas the first scene is a dialogue, the second is a monologue. The first scene is notably dynamic when compared with the monotonic tone of the rest of the film. This is the only sequence in This Is the Land that is supposed to be somewhat amusing, in contrast to the dramatic tone of the entire film. The interlocutors do act, in addition to speaking: they walk, cut branches from the trees, pat each other, lean against each other while conversing, use slang, and fondly tap the turiya. They even interrupt each other’s speech. The enthusiastic anti-urban speech is located within a dialogue that is quite humane. Even more important, during most of the scene, both figures are in the frame. There are almost no close-ups and no shooting from a lower angle, techniques that are characteristic of propaganda films that aim to create a heroic aura for their protagonists. In fact, this is the only passage between two sequences in the film that is made through a visual story, rather than merely through captions. In contrast to the first scene, the second one is totally static: no one moves, nor does the camera, except for one close-up of the speaker, above the heads of his listeners. None of the workers even thinks about speaking up, so no one has to say, “Don’t interrupt.” Bursztyn’s harsh criticism is more relevant to this scene than the previous one.

The framing of the depiction of urban life in Jewish Palestine between a dialogue and a monologue may be explained by the different cultural work that is performed by the two types of conversation, according to Bakhtin (1981, 1984), who developed the concepts of ‘dialogism’ and ‘monologism’ beyond the denotation of the number of interlocutors in conversation (see also Kristeva 1980: 35–91). The temporary shift to the city in the middle of the romanticized rural narrative of the return of the pioneers to the soil undermines its unity and creates an unexpected diversity in the narrative. The city that emerged in Palestine was definitely part of the civilizing Zionist project of seeking to overcome the wilderness; however, it did not conform to some dictates of Zionist doctrines—developing independently (and even in spite) of them—or to the dramaturgical dictates of the film’s creators. The ‘cucumber’ summarizes the discussion by saying, “I under-stand—and don’t.” This is precisely why he wishes to see the city.

In other words, the film’s audience is introduced to the city through the depiction of its ideological ambivalence. The dialogue thus points to multiplicity in the Zionist project by positioning urban life, with its merits and shortcomings, as one among several options. The urban sequence that follows, with its colliding montage, demonstrates the multiplicity that is inherent in the hustle and bustle of urban life. The monologue oper-ates in the contrary direction. It aggressively nullifies the option of mul-tiplicity and regains the Zionist project’s unity and necessity through its

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presentation of an indisputable rural ethos, which does not leave room for doubts or indecisiveness. The film thus returns from the vibrant montage of urban life to the long pastoral shots of the rural landscapes.

The first scene breaks down the Zionist narrative into multiple com-ponents, whereas the second one reclaims the narrative’s unity. The por-trayal of another Zionist narrative also frames the ‘main’ narrative as one possibility among others. The subsequent monologue is supposed to silence the questions of the ‘green cucumber’ and to turn the narrative ‘away from the city’. Since the narrative frame was already unpacked and diversified, a fierce action is needed to bring the audience back to that meta-narrative. In other words, the city could indeed be part and parcel of a Zionist narrative, but only if this narrative is pluralistic and the meta-narrative undermined. The city introduces internal tensions into Zionist meta-narrative because it provides the film’s only indicator of the option of more complicated and non-linear developments, unpredictable and uncontrolled, in the story of the redemption of the land.

Although the narrative appears to be repacked, the spatial representa-tion remains plural. The film contains various and different subspaces within its imagery of national space (i.e., the homeland), which is experi-enced by the audience as being composed of different sub-societies. This diversifying role of the city is not accidental. The culturally uncontrolled urban space of the capitalist-industrial city exemplifies human multiplic-ity and diversity (Low 1996), not abstractly, but sensually, through the experience of walking in the city (Certeau 2000) or, alternatively, through visual representations of the urban masses on screen. On the other hand, the industrial city emerges as a main arena of socio-cultural and politi-cal disputes and, at the same time, a central site for collective identity construction (Lefebvre 1996: 68). The emergence of the urban Yishuv in inter-war Palestine represented the national space as diversified, despite nationalist doctrines that advocated otherwise.

However, this diversity itself made a noteworthy, although controversial, contribution to the imagery of the city as a Jewish space. Although rural space is depicted as ethically superior to urban space, it is presented as aes-thetically inferior. Thus, there is a disparity between style and themes in the film, which implies that the dual nature of the rural and the urban does not undermine the power of Zionist ideology conveyed in This Is the Land. Con-trary to Bursztyn (1990), Zionist ideology does not become a caricature just because the ‘green cucumber’ taps his turiya and his manager teases him; it is displayed as an authentic expression of a real life form, rather than as a one-dimensional placard. Among the staged scenes in the film, the dialogi-cal scene is, more or less, the only one with which the viewers can identify to some degree. It is the only scene to describe an element of pioneering life


in Palestine that reflects a real issue that the settlers encounter and the only one that includes (a bit) more than dramatic lectures.

Conclusion

Anderson (1983) emphasized the notion of ‘empty, homogeneous time’ in which modern narratives take place (in journalism and novels) and give expression to nationalist imagery. Although this is true with regard to cinema, films also allow for the simultaneous imagery of multiple sub-spaces, which are far from being homogeneous or empty. Sequenced in the film in a narrative structure, the heterogeneous spaces diversify the homogeneous meta-narrative. However, diversifying the homogeneous nationalist narrative does not necessarily mean its deconstruction. The multiple spaces can sometimes coalesce to create one social space that has its own imagined unity—Jewish—thanks to (and not in spite of) its ability to contain collisions of different narratives.

Although urban space was not favored by Zionist ideology, the rapid urban development of inter-war Palestine forced itself on Zionist spatial imagery. The contradictory appearances of urban scenarios and city-scapes in the films discussed above reflect various inner tensions of the Zionist project: vanguard versus mass society, overdramatization ver-sus prosaic life, asceticism versus celebrating the body, unity versus multiplicity in space design and nation-building. Whereas in the film In the Days of Yore, the city appears as the only actual Jewish life form in Palestine, in This Is the Land, it is one among other options—but it is the one that introduces diversity into the national space. Ironically, the multiculturalism and polyphony of the city, which so threatened Zionist ideologues, were vital for the domination of Zionist ideology and the ability of various Jewish communities to imagine Palestine as a Jewish space. The Jewish city—Tel Aviv—was the only place in which the new Jewish mass society in Palestine emerged as a historical entity with a physical and visible presence, both in the street and on the screen. Only the urban mass society could indeed be convincingly designated by the pretentious term ‘nation’.

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ACKNOwLEdgMENTS

The article was written thanks to the Program for Judaic Studies at Yale University, where I served as a Postdoctoral Associate between 2008 and 2010. I am particularly indebted to Steven Fraade and Paula Hyman for their constant support. I wish to thank Miri Talmon, Barbara Mann, and Olga Gershenson; the editors and the reviewers of Israel Studies Review; and, above all, my friend Nava Dushi for useful comments on this article.

HIzKy SHOHAM teaches at Tel Aviv University and is a Fellow at the Insti-tute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jeru-salem. His research interests include the cultural history of Zionism and cultural theory. His book Mordechai Is Riding a Horse: Purim Celebrations in Tel Aviv (1908–1936) and the Building of a New Nation (in Hebrew) is about to be published by Bar-Ilan University Press.

NOTES

1. For more on this topic in Judaic studies, see Brauch, Lipphardt, and Nocke (2008), Fonrobert (2009), Mann (2006: 1–25).

2. On the national imagery of space, see Gellner (1983: 102–108) and Portugali (1993). For more about the unique role of cinema, see Shohat and Stam (1994: 100–104) and Smith (2000: 56).

3. The concept of ‘national cinema’ in not taken here to represent a particular local cinema (French, Italian, etc.), which is characterized by a unique style or cinematic language, or a protectionist cinema in the local language, as opposed to a globalizing Hollywood cinema (see Hjort and Petrie 2007; Jarvie 2000; Walsh 1996).

4. Vayehi Bimey (1932) Palestine Production Company, Tel Aviv: screenwriting and shooting, Natan Axelrod; staging, Hayim Halachmi. Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, VT DA016. I thank Mr. Yosef Halachmi for allowing me to possess a copy of the film.

5. See critiques of the film quoted in Feldstein (2009: 72–77) and Halachmi (1995: 114).

6. On comedies and national identity, see Keeler (2008) and King (2008). On pioneers’ theatre, see Ofrat (1980: 120–127).

7. Zot Hi Ha’aretz (1935), Aga Film, Tel Aviv: producers, Baruch and Yitzhak Aga-dati. Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, VT DA330.

8. See Gross and Gross (1991: 136) on the influence of Soviet cinema on the Aga-dati brothers.


9. On the camel as an Orientalist symbol in Zionist culture, see U. Cohen (2003). 10. On masculine biases in Israeli and Hebrew cinema through the end of the

twentieth century, see N. Gertz (1996), Lubin (1999), and Zanger (1999). 11. For the detailed plot of This Is the Land, see Feldstein (2009: 108–116). 12. The transcription and translation of film dialogue here and following are by

this author. 13. See Michelson’s introduction in Vertov (1984: xxxvii–xl). On the city sym-

phony genre, see Hillard (2004), Kracauer (2004: 182–189), and Suárez (2002). 14. The song’s lyrics are by Immanuel Harusi, the melody by Mordechai Ze’ira. 15. For more on the flâneur, see Benjamin (1997) and Simmel (1997: 174–185). On

the flâneur in the context of Tel Aviv, see Eidar (2003). 16. See Eisenstein’s October (1927, Moscow) and Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam-

era as examples of Soviet films that cast the masses as the protagonist. 17. On this myth, see Azaryahu (2007: 54–58), LeVine (2005), Mann (2006: 74–76),

Rotbard (2005: 126–132), and Shoham (forthcoming b). 18. For the full speech by Dizengoff (in Hebrew), see Yediot Iriyat Tel Aviv 5, no.

6–7 (1934): 307–308.

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Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies 5:1 (2007), 89-93

REVIEW Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim. Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, 203 pp. ISBN 1-904764-62-2. THE SOUBRIQUET ‘world cinema’ is an amorphous phrase, frequently used to describe a diverse array of cinema while evading any clear‐cut definition of what this category actually entails. While this is understandable, it has often had the unfortunate side‐effect of creating a theoretical vacuum for analysing and approaching films which fall into this elusive category. In response to this ambiguity, it is not uncommon for ‘world’ cinema to be reductively atomised and reduced to a category comprised of individuated national cinemas. Thus world cinema is concretised by a conceptual orthodoxy – one that appeals to the palate of the cosmopolitan cinephile by constructing a cinema that displays the requisites of the diverse, the exotic and above all, the ‘foreign’.

In Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, editors Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim attempt to address what is tantamount to a ‘deceptively simple question’: ‘What is world cinema?’1 Fortunately, both they and the various contributors to this collection acknowledge the futility of seeking definitive answers and choose instead to provide a cautious, considered account of how ‘world cinema’ is both discursively and empirically constituted. As a result, fifteen well‐crafted, rigorous essays analysing an assortment of films have been collated in this volume. Diverse theoretical approaches are thoughtfully fielded in an attempt to interrogate and reconfigure existing orthodoxies of ‘world cinema’ predicated on the notion of nationalised films.

‘Let me not be coy. We still parse the world by nations,’ notes Dudley Andrew in ‘An Atlas of World Cinema’. 2 This observation is particularly critical of the rigid, often nationalistic cartographies currently maintained in film studies. Not only is Andrew concerned with re‐defining film studies as an academic discipline, but he is simultaneously attentive to issues of pedagogical practice. Consequently, he advocates a departure from panoptic practices that merely ‘survey’ the foreign, while moving towards a pedagogy of localised engagement which may subsequently disorient and even discomfort the student or audience: ‘Displacement, not coverage, matters most; let us travel where we will, so long as every local cinema is examined with an eye to its complex ecology.’ 3

Andrew’s use of political, demographic, and linguistic ‘maps’ not only lends concision to the dilemma of how world cinema might be approached, but also offers alternative models of re‐conceptualisation. In his essay the term ‘orientation’, for example, refers to the emergence of a local‐global nexus in which film displays a perspective that is firmly situated in the local, yet remains outward‐looking and interactive. Drawing on Deleuze‐Guattari’s ‘The Nomad’, Andrew contemplates marginalised practices of production and distribution that are situated beyond Western epistemes.

Gibbs/Review of Remapping World Cinema 89

He also constructs a somewhat idealised, yet useful set of ‘topographical cartographies’ in order to specifically ruminate on a ‘nomadic cinema’. According to his conception, the ‘nomadic’ is defined as marginal to more orthodox studio‐based and industry‐financed models of production and distribution, and is consequently posited in an imagined ‘periphery’. This reveals a highly localised, free‐flowing process of film production ‐‐ one that is characterised by flux, invisibility, indigeneity and an elusive resistance to the centripetal logic of imperial classification and institutionalised film. While Andrew’s various cartographies are periodically acknowledged as ‘promising’ by other authors, they remain, by and large, abstract proposals confined to the borders of his essay. Nevertheless, the opportunity exists for other writers and readers to actively pursue and utilise the diverse approaches that are proposed.

Andrew aside, there are several equally informative, even outstanding contributions on offer in this collection which covers territory ranging from South American to East German cinema. Discourses of post‐colonialism, race, gender, and the ways in which they contribute to or disrupt national filmic identity are also interrogated and critiqued. Rosanna Maule for instance, investigates the spectre of colonial displacement and alienation that haunts the post‐colonial films of French director Claire Denis. Consequently, the burgeoning seeds of transnational identity scattered through Denis’ work are brought to light for further examination. Issues of gender and sexual orientation are simultaneously explored, an approach which ultimately complicates, and thus unsettles, monolithic conceptions of (French) national identity, and by extension, (French) ‘national’ cinema.

A later sub‐section entitled ‘Interrogating Gender’ is comprised of twin chapters that foray into the shifting politics of on‐screen gender representation in Japan and China, both past and present. Issues of identity are further explored in brief essays on Brazilian and French starlets Sonia Braga and Isabelle Adjani. These chapters detail their ethnic origins and subsequent trials and tribulations. There is an oblique discussion on how race is articulated through the performances of these actresses and an examination of the socio‐political implications of this process. Arguably however, both pieces are not only far too brief in their analysis, but are also too narrowly preoccupied with the cult of individual personality (and celebrity) to effect a wider, more fruitful discussion.

A refreshing change of focus however, occurs midway through Remapping World Cinema as David Robb and Evelyn Preuss contribute thoughtful, theoretically rigorous pieces informed by the work of Bakhtin. The inclusion of these two essays diversifies a visible focus on South American and Asian cinemas and the prevalence of post‐colonial and feminist theory throughout the collection. Essays such as these successfully dispel any potential misapprehension that Remapping World Cinema is merely a critique of Third Cinema masquerading as world cinema. A preoccupation with East German film is evident as both writers describe a temporally framed cinema, wrought in the milieu of ‘industrial modernity’, yet rooted in the venerable traditions of commedia dell’arte and comédie française. 4 An examination of the carnivalesque directs the reader toward a subversive cinema imbued with the potential to undermine the politics and propaganda of nationhood.

Robb creates a compelling case study, comparing the overlooked talents of Karl Valentin to the undeniable genius of Charlie Chaplin. Fortunately, the work and

www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/gjaps 90

methods of the more obscure East German comic assiduously receives the lion’s share of analysis. Valentin’s ability to wed high art or the avant‐garde to the Volkssanger or folk tradition culminated in his portrayal of a ‘Hanswurst’ ‐‐ a harlequinesque figure who evoked covert strategies of absurdity and defamiliarisation in order to provide a humorously veiled social critique. Both Robb and Preuss introduce a detailed and welcome element of class analysis to the collection. This draws attention to a cinema that reflected (German) national boundaries and spoke to internal social stratification, thus further redrawing the conceptual lines of world cinema.

While most of the volume attempts to dispense with national lines of cinematic production, allowing for the titular ‘remapping of cinema’, it inadvertently occludes entire geographies of filmic imagination from its analysis. Although world cinema is ‘remapped’ across these essays, it is noteworthy that this brave new cartography fails to feature any cinema external to established national sites of film production and distribution within the free‐floating categories of ‘third’ and world cinema. Thus Pacific, Australasian, and Middle Eastern cinema along with any Asian film industries unfortunate enough to be positioned beyond the cinematic trinity of China, Japan and India, are conspicuous by their pronounced absence from the ‘world’ stage, leading to a poverty of representation. The category of ‘Fourth’ cinema is similarly excluded, thus foregoing any consideration of cinematic perspectives and practices that lie peripheral, parallel or in contradistinction to the notion of the nation‐state as logical site of cinematic production. In all fairness, these omissions will be partly attributable to pragmatic considerations such as the writers’ time not to mention the space available in this collection. Ultimately however, the decision to exclude these regions of cinema rests with Dennison and Lim and it is an editorial oversight that somewhat diminishes this collection.

Nevertheless, the aforementioned absences leave a glaring swathe of cinema excised from the proceedings. Furthermore, a clear inequity exists among those cinemas that do receive representation. A glimpse of the Caribbean and Basque country is captured through Rob Stone’s comparison of the films, Soy Cuba and Ama Lur. Discussion of Ama Lur in particular provides Remapping World Cinema with perhaps the only chapter to truly contemplate uniquely cultural and indigenous modes of filmic expression. Stone’s overarching interest however, lies in examining contrasting modes of Marxist rhetoric that are present in both films. South American cinema is a vital presence, while ‘Africa’ is mentioned, but only as a figment of the Western imaginary, rather than an extant site of cinematic creativity.

Direct‐to‐video films in Nigeria are promising filmic territory that receive the most cursory, though admittedly tantalising, of glances in the latter stages of Dudley Andrew’s contribution. ‘Africa’ is revisited by both Keith Richards and Rosanna Maule in cogent analyses of the post‐colonial works of Claire Denis and Pier Paolo Pasolini respectively. Both essays identify the myriad ways in which ‘the continent’ functions as a highly meditative, self‐reflexive site for both European directors. While these essays are interesting, accessible and a boon to any student or reader interested in both the insights and problems of the Western ethnographic gaze, scant if any attention is afforded to cinema actually crafted by African film‐makers.

It is unfortunate that Lúcia Nagib’s provocative proposal for, ‘…a method in which Hollywood and the West would cease to be the centre of film history…’


remains largely unaddressed. 5 Although Remapping World Cinema offers a pithy analysis of the West’s presumed primacy in cinematic discourse, it fails to truly move beyond this paradigm. It is ironic that intelligent discussion concerned with ‘de‐centring’ the West reifies it as an overriding theoretical preoccupation and point of reference. In effect ‘the West’, as theoretical construct, exerts an overweening hegemony through which all ‘other’ cinema is filtered, compared, analysed and critiqued, operating as both indispensable counterpoint and frame.

Both Hideaki Fujiki’s essay and Kaushik Bhaumik’s conclusive chapter provide exemplary cases in point as they demonstrate the pressing need to address Western hegemony on the one hand, and the potential pitfalls of a Western‐centric discourse on the other. Fujiki’s considerable focus on Western cinema is understandable insofar as he accounts for a critical historical and cultural juncture wherein American cinema collided with and later informed female representation in traditional Japanese theatre. In this instance, an unfolding account of the Western gaze and its effects on later Japanese cinema is both pragmatic and essential; likewise with Rachel Hutchinson’s considered analysis of authenticity, self‐appropriation and Occidentalism in jida‐geki or ‘period action drama.’6 The notion of a filmic dialogue between America and Japan arises, and with it the exploration of cinematic techniques that both answer to and re‐assimilate Western conceptions of Japan. This not only further forges but critiques Japanese identity and cinema from a distinctly Japanese perspective.

Bhaumik’s essay similarly examines the conventions, concerns and cinematic contribution of Bollywood to world cinema and attempts to take the West’s dismissive, often ignorant view of Bollywood to task. Unlike Fujiki and Hutchinson however, he is so wholly engaged with refuting the Western gaze that his work is inexorably paralysed in that self‐same glare, resulting in a largely reactionary, if lively piece. Bhaumik’s focus on British and American failure to engage with Bollywood dominates his essay to such an extent that the cinema he describes is critically contained by the paradigm he seeks to dismantle. As a result, he strives to justify the filmic and cultural ‘worth’ of Bollywood ‐‐ not to the world at large, but to the West. Reading this chapter, (entitled ‘Consuming ‘Bollywood’ in the global age: the strange case of an ‘unfine’ world cinema’) one might assume that Bollywood was an unpopular, insular, and marginal form of film on the global stage. Such an assumption however, ignores Bollywood’s widespread popularity throughout South‐East Asia and overlooks the rich opportunity to examine an artistic reciprocity within Asian cinema.

Rather than merely proposing the radical de‐centring of the West, a strategic focus on Bollywood’s immense international popularity could well provide the means to actually achieve this objective. Conditions of cinematic syncretism, such as those that often characterise Indian and Indonesian films, could be fruitfully appraised without constant referral to an imagined centre. Perhaps it is unfair to criticise this fairly comprehensive collection for what it fails to do, in light of its successes. There is, however a point at which theory and praxis must meet, where the former should be expressly materialised through the latter. A failure to do so renders even the most promising theoretical shift inert in the realm of abstraction. Sparkle Anne GIBBS University of Auckland

www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/gjaps 92

NOTES

1 Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, ‘Introduction: Situating world cinema as a theoretical problem’, in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, p.1.

2 Dudley Andrew, ‘An Atlas of World Cinema’ in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, p. 26.

3 ibid., p.19. 4 David Robb, ‘Carnivalesque meets modernity in the films of Karl Valentin and Charlie Chaplin’ in

Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, p.94.

5 Lúcia Nagib, ‘Towards a Positive Definition of World Cinema’ in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, p.34.

6 Rachel Hutchinson, ‘Orientalism or occidentalism? Dynamics of appropriation in Akira Kurosawa’ in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, p.176.


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Film, authenticity and language teachingBarry Baddock aa Gesamthochschule KasselPublished online: 06 Aug 2007.

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Film, aulhenficily and language teaching

Barry Baddock Gesamthochschule Kassel

Inlroduction To the film enthusiast (in contrast to the language teacher), an "authentic film is one which accurately and realistically recreates a particular period or environment. Take, for example, David Lean's A Passage to India (1984). Although it was based on a work of fiction and made 60 years after that work was published, it is authentic insofar as it recaptures the idiom, atmosphere and behaviour of life in 1920s British India. Cinematic authenticity is not the open-ended realism of the pure documentary, but the selective image-making of the film-maker. Pierre Sorlin develops the point in assessing the 1939 epic Gone With the Wind:

Authenticity, constantly reaffirmed, is drawn from general and individual behaxa'our. I am not claiming that Scarlett's story is given as a 'true story', but that 'the true history" of the war is presented as a mixture of general massacre and individual suffering. The Civil War is an accumulation of private misfortunes and disasters - all of them gathered together in a general ove r th row . . . (w)e are not looking at 'war in itself" but at images of war?

As we shall see, cinematic authenticity - the accuracy of "general and individual behaviour" portrayed - is important from a language learning perspective too.

We may feel that a documentary film, characterised by unscripted, 'real-life' dialogue, offers a stronger guarantee of authenticity than a feature film. But this assumes that a more accurate record of reality is to be found in the documen T In fact, a documentary-maker, just like a feature film-maker, uses techniques of selection and arrangement which project his own interpretation of reality. Furthermore, the range of the documentary film is limited by its very realism - limited, that is, to those real-life situations which can be genuinely filmed. By contrast, feature films, being products of the imagination and capable of using the talents of actors, can portray and present a wider range of "general and individual behaviour" - and the language which belongs to it. The film theorist Siegfried Kracauer saw the proper film form as "a balance between the documentary which tries to follow the random flow of nature and the story film which strives to pull nature into a human shape"? In other words, a film will ideally contain a mixture of realistic and formative techniques - to both record and reveal the culture being portrayed.

Aulhenticily in language learning Dur ing the 1970s, l a n g u a g e came to be seen in w i d e socio-cultural contexts. This led, in turn, to wider approaches in language teaching. The main objective became 'communicative competence' - the ability to use language appropriately in various socio-cultural cL, rumstances. It was not enough for students to put words together to make sentences, and to master an abstract linguistic system. It was necessar~ too, to practise the language in realistic contexts. So the question of authenticity moved to centre stage: how could we be sure that students would learn language as used in the real world for real purposes, rather than language 'invented' by linguists and textbook writers? One kind of guarantee, it was felt, would be to base classroom activities on 'authentic ' materials - materials, that is, produced by native speakers for native speakers' use.

During the debate which followed, t]uee kinds of authenticity came to be seen as important to language learning:

Language material Is the material "the real thing", in the sense just described? Is it true of the language samples in a textbook, for example, "that nothing of the original text is changed and also that its pl~senta-

16

tion and layout are retained"? 3 Any effort to make language simpler, or more structured, for the student will automatically make it different from the ways native speakers use it in real life. So (the reasoning goes) materials artificially prepared for language students will delay or retard the learning of authentic language.'

Language tasks Are we asking the student to do something with the material which (s)he would want or need to do in real life? This is a question of the "appropriacy" of the task. Authenticity in this sense, means that the important factor "is not the text itself but the reader and whether he has the necessary knowledge . . , to inter- p re t i t correct ly , tha t is, be c a pa b l e of the ' a p p r o p r i a t e response'"? Authentidty, here, is a matter of what the student does (or is asked to do) with the materials, and depends, really, on his or her attitude to them.

Picture of the culture Do the m a t e r i a l s h e l p the s t u d e n t ga in ins igh t s in to the behaviour of people in the foreign culture: their motives, intentions, desires and interests? In an increasingly unified and multicultural Europe, for example, an understanding of the mentality and habits of neighbour countries is now seen as important and necessary. In the search for cohesion and unity, nationalities are realising how little they understand one another's ways. Conse- quently, students are being trained to become 'cultural transla- tors" - prejudice-free mediators between cultures. Indeed, an insight into the thinking and behaviour of the foreign culture is nowadays seen as part of communicative competence. ~

Traditionally, a "culture' element - e.g. Civilisation Franqaise, Landeskunde, Life and Institutions - was added to a language course. Much of this consisted of high literature and factual information (sa)9 about educational institutions and political systems) which students could have looked up on their own. But the 1970s brought a shift. Just as language study widened its grammatical focus to include communicative aspects (how people interact), so foreign culture study widened its factual focus to include psychological aspects (how people think)7 So the focus on literature and institutions has widened. Nowadays, language textbooks contain 'everyday" items which shape and reflect life, habits and thought in the target culture, e.g. recipes, street scenes, advertisements, Press cuttings.

Film in language learning Let us now see how film use in class is compatible with these three kinds of authentidty:

Language material Is the language of a scripted film "the real thing'? Is it legitimate at all to regard the p roduc t s of the c inemat ic i n d u s t r y as 'authentic materials'? After all, a fllmscript contains artifidal language, as in a drama or a novel - fictional dialogue, which was never spoken in real life. The comparison with literature is apt. Some literary works are fine representations of life and language - and some are not. The abundance of (in this sense) un-authentic literature does not deter us, as language teachers, from selecting and using texts which are good reflections of life, language and relationships. The same is true of films: there is profit in seeking out the best of them for teaching purposes.

Another objection to film dialogue is that it is often too difficult or too rapid for language students to follow. But this is really a question of how to use the film - a question of tasks. The fact remains that any film produced by native speakers for a native- speaker audience is authentic language material, and is not arti- t idal ly produced for language students. It will not lack any of

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the dimensions of authentic language use. One area where film is unique is in its portrayal of the com-

municative environment. Are the speakers in a public place, or in private? Can they be heard by anyone else? How old are the speakers? What kind of relationship do they seem to have - familiar or formal? What mannerisms, facial expressions, body language suggest this? What does this or that gesture signify? It is normally difficult to rc~:reate these features in language teaching. Yet they often determine what is actually communicated. The policy, common in 'authentic" materials, of providing background information (about speaker relationships, setting and so on) serves only to emphasise how un-authentic that policy is. In its ability to portray the communicative environment, film scores heavily over other authentic materials: to a very great extent, it can show the context in which speech acts take place? As an example of this, consider a prison cell scene in Jim Jarmusch's film Down By Law (1986). A recently-arrived Italian convict lays a comradely ann around the shoulders of his two American cell- mates. They turn awa~ embarrassed - an effective signal to the newcomer: he has overstepped the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. Words are spoken in the scene, but they can only be understood as part of the overall communicative behaviour. Film can show all this more completely than any other medium, including drama and prose.

Language tasks It has been suggested that there can be no such thing as an authentic text in language teaching since an authentic text is one speaker/writer 's communication to a partioflar audience at a given moment?

Extending this, we can say that a film is authentic, in cultural and sociolinguistic tenm, only to a certain native.speaker group - the producer of a French film did not have ~ or F~gli.~h viewers in mind. Sometimes, a student's awareness that (s)he is outside the intended audience can affect motivation. The student "may simply not feel himself in any way engaged by the text being presented to him and so may refuse to authenticate it by taking an interest? °

This danger exists with any learning material. There is nothing which has a universal appeal , and every film will be unattractive and unmotivating to some students. But we can try to anticipate this problem by asking: what kind of learning tasks are authentic when using film? More specifically, what tasks are "appropriate" to students seeing a foreign language film? Clearly, the receptive tasks of listening and (to a certain extent) reading are. ~ But can film go further than this, and provide conditions for genuine communication to take place? One commen- ta tor has sugges ted that , for this to happen , a genu ine 'information gap" is needed, with the necessary elements of unpredictability, freedom of choice (concerning what to say and how to say i0, meaningful context and purposeful use of language? z At first sight, film does not seem to provide these conditions, one writer has described an activity involving someone in a phone box describing the movements of someone else to a third person. This has been suggested as a meaningful interaction on the basis that it occurs frequently in detective films! ~ This is reminiscent of Kracauer's view of the "sleuthing motif ' as an exemplary cinematic story form. "Here a conventional literary plot device (the detective seeking out the truth) drives both the film-maker and the spectator back into the raw material of life in search of significant clues" and thereby "forces us to use, not play with, our imaginations in seeking out the meaning of the world around us."" I think that examples like these are far from convincing descriptions of "meaningful contexts" leading to "purposeful use of language".

Instead, let us consider the abilities which a viewer authenti- caUy uses in order to make sense of a foreign language film. First, (s)he can transfer "native' communicative skills to the task, such as recognising significant features of behaviour (gestures and body language) or deciding what kind of meaning a half- heard utterance must have had. Second, the student-viewer will also have, through familiarity, an understanding of film conventions and techniques. When these abilities are used in the effort to understand a foreign language film, then "given' abilities are assisting in the task of learning new ones.

But we can go further than this: understanding a film is a creative process in which the spectator contributes much more than knowhow about communication and understanding of film techniques. '5 Consider the information gaps which the viewer has to cross in the effort to make sense of a foreign film, and to impose logic and order on it. (S)he has somehow to deal with the lack of that background knowledge (about social types, jokes, class differences, folk sayings, family customs and the like) which the film-maker shares with the "native" viewer. A 'non-native" viewer, though, brings a different combination of experience and knowledge to the task. Though there will be elements the viewer will not recognise, (s)he will try to make sense of the film, and to understand it. (S)he does this by contributing something from his or her own experience and knowledge in order, so to speak, to creatively fill the gaps.

What kind of 'understanding' is at work here? How does the 'non-native" viewer make sense of a film which reflects (be- haviourial, socio-cultural, political and psychological) realities of another culture? We do not know exactl3~ But we can say that the task of understanding a film is partly a creative effort on the part of the viewer - a psychological process in which (s)he tries to impose order and a logic on what is seen. Whatever the film- maker 's original intentions, the viewer cannot be prevented from making a contribution in this creative way. By merely putting together a series of images, the film-maker leads the viewer to answer questions like "Why these shots rather than others? why does this follow that?' The viewer on his or her own tries to give to the images some kind of meaning and human significance.

This creative effort is essentiadly an internal one. The question is: how to get the student to go on to do something with the material (here: the film) which (s)he would want or need to do in real life? What communicative activity would be 'appropriate'? A frequent tactic in language teaching is to try "relating the task to (the student's) own life a n d . . , providing a purpose for undertaking the activi~. "16 Here, the necessary conditions - information gap, unpredictability, freedom of choice, meaningful context, p u r ~ e f u l use of language should stem from the student's desire to express opinions based on his or her own experience.

In certain circumstances, 'film talk' can provide these conditions. Custen, investigating native (American) speakers' responses to film, found that they did not talk like critics, seeking out the "message" of the film, or "decoding" the film-maker's intended "meaning". 17 Instead, they related parts of the film to their personal lives and circumstances. There was no evidence of interpretational skills. The speakers mentioned a particular scene they liked, because i t reminded them of a car they owned or something which happened to them yesterday. In other words, spectators tended to "reach inside and outside the film to make it understandable and meaningful. ' '8

This research was not conducted among language students, but it does suggest a lead for teachers to follow. Students could be encouraged to relate what they saw to their personal experience, to discuss what they liked or found difficult in the film, and how they viewed this or that scene. To get students to expand formal knowledge of language into overall communicative ability, we have to ask them to do tasks which they would want or need to do in real life. Film talk, as a catalyst for personal response on the part of students, can provide this kind of task.

Picture of the culture Since film-makers are shaped by their cultural milieu, their films reflect the life and psychology of the country of origin, as well its language. So national modes of film have evolved - that is, distinctive British or German or Australian film styles. In classes where the language and culture of a particular country are being studied, the existence of a national film tradition should be an advantage.

But there are difficulties of definition here. As Le Fanu explains, after looking into national film styles for a very short time.

one soon comes to realise just how difficult it is, in practice, to provide accurate descriptions of film's formal syntax - descriptions which take into account not only such relatively

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identifiable matters as shot length, frequency of close-up, use of narrative ellipsis, but harder and more crudal concepts like rhythm, musicality and intensity of philosophical gaze. It follows from the poverty of this scientific vocabulary that it is equally difficult to pinpoint with confidence the "culture- specific" status of a given national dnema. 1~

Given this difficulty, I suggest that, for language teaching, it is best to avoid the question of whether and how this or that film is an example of a national film style. It is better to start out with the question: could the film lead to insights into the behaviour, motives, intentions, desires and interests of people in the foreign culture? As I have argued elsewhere, the best films for this purpose will be those portraying contemporary language and society - that is, recent films, set in their own time and culture? ° q-IistoricaI' films are unsuitable, as are those which portray a culture which is outside the 'target culture'. In a changing world, a film older than 20 years wi]l illustrate out-of-date language and attitudes rather than current social realities and language usage.

Films portraying the quality and character of a particular lo- cality (e.g. Scottish director Bill Forsyth's Glasgow-based films That Sinking Feeling (1979), Gregory's Girl (1980) and Comfort and Joy (1985)) are especially valuable because they are concrete and limited in focus. Small-scale episcxies from local films provide good bases for teaching units in the language class. Since film

presents language and behaviour in visible social contexts, episodes could be used which reveal significant points of difference between the student's own culture and the target culture. Clearly, film provides real scope for cross-cultural study, where the emphasis is on getting students to think their way into the psychology and life-style of the target culture. Apart from in- forming about the target culture, it can also lead students to think about, and to question, behaviour and practice in their own culture.

Conclusions Though feature films are likely to be among the most economical and available of teaching aids, their uses as "authentic materials' have not been fully assessed. When we say a firm is authentic, we normally mean that it satisfyingly recreates the idiom, atmosphere and appearance of a particular period or environment. In language teaching terms, though, 'authentic' is a term describing (a) language material made by native speakers for native speakers" use. (b) learning tasks which can be based on this material and (c) the educational value of the material as a mirror of the culture. I hope I have indicated how film can meet all these criteria, and offered bases for further thought and discussion on the use of film in language classrooms.

Notes and references 1. P. Sorlin. The Film in History. Oxford: Blackwel11980, p. 111. 2. quoted in J. Dudley Andrew. The Major Film Theories. London: O.U.P.

1976, p. 120. 3. E Grellet. Developing Reading Skills. Cambridge: C.U.R 1981. p. 4. See D. Clarke. 'Communicative theory and its influence on materials

production.' Language Teaching (April 1989), pp. 73-86. 5. Clarke. p. 78. 6. It is this insight which helps students to 'relate to the target value

system and reach personal decisions about their own values.' G. Hughes. 'An argument for cultural analysis in the second language classroom." American Language Journal 2,1 (1984), p. 38.

7. Concerning the distinction between "institutional questions" and 'psychological questions' in foreign culture study, see Hughes, pp. 38-39.

8. We can point, too, to the wealth of 'unsuccessful' communication which pervades real life and which 'authentic' teaching materials notably lack. Lee gives the examples of the No Parking notice when we have no car and the loudspeaker announcing Bristol train. P/afform 3 when we are not going to Bristol. Here, too, of course, film has a strong advantage over other authentic materials. See W. Lee. 'Sense and nonsense about communicating by language'. IATEFL News/etter 57 (1979), p. 9.

9. IC Morrow. 'Authentic texts and ESP" in 5. Holden (Ed.). English for Special Purposes. London: M.E.P. 1977, p. 15.

10. H. Widdowson. Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford: O.U.R 1978, p. 80. For Candlin emd Bmen, authenticity to the student is of paramount importance and has little if anything to do with the nature of the materials themselves. See C. Candlin and M. Breen. "Evalua~m& adapting and innovating language teaching. On TESOL "79: Tile Iamm, r in Focus. Washington: TESOL 1979.

11. See D. Wilkins. Notional Syllabuses. Oxford: O.U.P. 1976, p. 79, on training receptive abih'ties with authentic materials.

12. K. Johnson. 'Communicative approaches and communicative processes' in C. Brumfit and K. Johnson (Eds.), The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching. Oxford: O.U.P. 1979. p.26.

13. Widdowson, p. 9. 14. Dudley Andrew, p. 124. 15. This is a view that was long expounded by the French film theorist

Jean Mitry. 16. Clarke, p. 83. 17. G. Custen. 'Talking about film' in S. Thomas (Ed.). Film~Culture.

Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1982, pp. 237-46. 18. Custen, p. 242. 19. M. Le Fanu. 'A song and dance about identity.' Times Higher

Education Supplement, 15.12.89, p. 16. 20. B. Baddock. 'Using dnema films in foreign language teaching.' Praxis

des neuspcachlichen Unterrichts 3 (1989), pp. 270-77.

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www.ccsenet.org/ijel International Journal of English Linguistics Vol. 2, No. 1; February 2012

Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 239

Effects of Bimodal Subtitling of English Movies on Content Comprehension and Vocabulary Recognition

Aida Etemadi

Department of English Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University

2nd door, Lane 8, Martyr Ramezani St., Iman Shomali St., Shiraz 7187914134, Iran

Tel: 98-91-730-7799 E-mail: [email protected]

Received: October 13, 2011 Accepted: November 22, 2011 Published: February 1, 2012

doi:10.5539/ijel.v2n1p239 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v2n1p239

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to study the impact of bimodal subtitling on content comprehension of English movies and vocabulary recognition. Forty four senior undergraduate students studying at Shiraz Islamic Azad University were selected from two intact classes of Tapes and Films Translation course. Two BBC documentary movies (Dangerous knowledge and Where’s my robot?), one with English subtitles and the other without subtitles were selected based on the content and level of difficulty of the language. First, both classes watched the same movies, but class 1 first watched ‘Dangerous knowledge’ with English subtitling and then ‘Where’s my robot?’ without subtitling. To counteract the order effect class 2 first watched ‘where’s my robot?’ and then ‘Dangerous knowledge’. After viewing the movies, the participants answered the relevant multiple choice vocabulary and content comprehension questions. The data gathered were subjected to the statistical procedure of paired samples t-test. The results clearly indicated that bimodal subtitling had a positive impact on content comprehension of English movies. It can be said that the participants comprehend the subtitled movie better than the one without subtitle. However, for some reasons bimodal subtitling did not have an effect on participants’ vocabulary recognition.

Keywords: English movies, Bimodal subtitling, Content comprehension, Vocabulary recognition

1. Introduction

English movies are available in many countries around the world and are a popular form of entertainment with many students learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Using films to teach a foreign language can help motivate students and remove some of the anxiety of not knowing the language. However, they are not just entertainment; they are also a valuable language teaching tool. The use of movies as a teaching tool is not new in the field of foreign language teaching and learning. Movies not only allow the teacher to introduce variety and reality into the classroom, but discussions based on movie content allow students to bring their own background knowledge and experiences into the discussion. Furthermore, almost everyone finds watching films pleasurable and enjoys talking about them. From a motivational perspective, it seems that movies are a perfect choice for use in a language learning classroom. However, the burden is on the teacher to find ways to make movies an educationally valuable tool for instruction. This medium provides not only rich aural input, but also, the use of subtitles can expose learners to visual input as well. It is the latter type of input which this study will address. As Kusumarasdyati (2005) states, teachers play such movies without subtitles and ask learners to view them while attempting to comprehend the conversations spoken in the target language. However, it is also possible to present movies with subtitles in the native language. With advances in technology, options of how one can watch movies become numerous. Not only can the sound and images be adopted, but the subtitles of various languages are also called for assisting comprehension and language learning.

Subtitles in any language are wonderful tools that let people enjoy films from other cultures and countries, but for language learners subtitles might offer a new path to language comprehension. The National Center for Technology Innovative and Center for Implementing Technology in Education (2010) asserts that for students who are learning English (or another language), subtitled movies can have benefits. The use of subtitled movies has been proved to be more effective at improving overall listening comprehension than non-subtitled movies.


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Students who watch subtitled movies to learn a foreign language have shown improvement in reading and listening comprehension, word recognition, decoding skills, motivation and vocabulary acquisition.

The reading of subtitles must be separated from the “normal” reading of words and sentences printed on a page. Seeing subtitles is perhaps closer to the act of listening than that of reading. The words are shown once, then gone away. The viewer has no chance to go back and refer to an earlier part in the text. Not only do students need to rely on their ability to take in printed material, but also they need to do it very quickly. The addition of subtitled movies to classroom instruction has a further benefit of shifting watching typical classroom movies from a picture-viewing activity to a reading activity, supplying struggling readers with additional reading practice. (National Center for Technology Innovation & Center for Implementing Technology in Education, 2010, para. 10).

The National Center for Technology Innovative and Center for Implementing Technology in Education (2010) asserts that research has shown that watching movie appears to have a positive impact on comprehension skills, and combining viewing with text, i.e. subtitles, appears to boost vocabulary acquisition. Though most students do well with subtitled movies, the speed of subtitles could pose a problem for very young children or struggling readers. For particularly low-level readers, teachers should consider using subtitled movies where vocabulary is less likely to be difficult. “These programs may include those where the main characters are children or teenagers, animated movies, family programs, or movies with young children in the cast.” (para. 7).

In the EFL classroom, the use of foreign language subtitles projected on the screen during viewings of English-spoken movies is common. However, DVD technology now provides the powerful function of selecting various subtitles that can facilitate the listening comprehension of learners with different levels of proficiency and enhance their motivation toward learning the target language. Katchen, Lin, Fox and Chun (2002) characterize six combinations of subtitles as presented in the following sections:

1) Standard Subtitling (L2 audio with L1 subtitles)

2) Bimodal Subtitling (L2 audio with L2 subtitles)

3) Reversed Subtitling (L1 audio with L2 subtitles)

4) Bilingual Subtitling (L2 audio with L2 and L1 subtitles simultaneously)

5) Bilingual Reversed Subtitling (L1 audio with L1 and L2 subtitles simultaneously)

6) No Subtitling (L2 audio with no subtitles at all)

1.1 Objectives and Significance of the Study

The present study intends to investigate the effect of bimodal subtitling on content comprehension of English movies and vocabulary recognition of Iranian EFL students. It aims at finding answers to the following research questions:

1) Does bimodal subtitling have any effect on content comprehension of English movies?

2) Does bimodal subtitling have any effect on L2 vocabulary recognition?

As King (2002) states “films provide more pedagogical options and are a rich resource of intrinsically motivating materials for learners.” (para. 1). When learners are exposed to films, they can learn some words and phrases used in the films and ultimately improve their target language. Various types of films, such as fiction, science-fiction, romance, horror and historical movies, catch individuals’ interests and arouse learners’ motivation. Watching films is among learners’ favorite activities. As learners who lack interest in learning a foreign language often fail to make progress, films of various types that arouse different individual’s interests can be adopted as language learning materials. However, the way one watches movies has a particular effect on one’s learning. One way is watching movies with subtitles either in L1 or L2.

By using L2 subtitled movies, students can learn how to pronounce many words. Moreover, subtitles can reinforce the understanding of English context-bound expressions and help learners acquire new vocabulary and idioms. Furthermore, subtitles can motivate learners to study English outside the classroom context by watching English movies, listening to the original dialogues. Finally it allows learners to follow the plot easily; in other words, to enhance comprehension. Some researchers compared the presence and absence of subtitles. One study revealed that the learners interacted more frequently when the subtitles were provided in the listening class (Grgurovic & Hegelheimer, 2007). Few empirical studies have been conducted to test the effectiveness of bimodal subtitling on content comprehension of movies in Iran. However, the case of vocabulary is different;



there are a number of studies that investigated the effectiveness of subtitles on vocabulary recognition. Therefore, this study could have significant implication for both teachers and students.

2. Review of Literature

2.1 The effect of subtitles on language learning

Various studies have investigated the different aspects of the effect of subtitling on second/foreign language learning. Zanon (2006) investigated the contribution of computer-based subtitling to language learning and concluded that subtitling could motivate learners to appreciate the huge amount of content of the film that does not reach the audience when it is presented to them dubbed. In the same vein, Kusumarasdyati (2005) studied the effect of subtitled movie DVDs and found them an effective teaching device to develop the EFL learners' listening skills.

Borras & Lafayette (1994) incorporated subtitles into short video segments that were integrated into an interactive multimedia course. The participants were able to see and control a video segment with or without same language subtitles. Results indicated that having the opportunity to see and control subtitles positively influences both comprehension and production of language.

Grgurovic & Hegelheimer (2007) used a multimedia listening activity containing a video of an academic lecture to compare the effect of second language subtitles and lecture transcripts on the comprehension of the lecture. It turned out that students preferred subtitles and used them more than the transcript.

To study the effect of subtitles on film understanding, Grignon, Lavaur, & Blanc (2005) compared three versions of a film sequence (that is, dubbed, subtitled, and original versions). They found that the dubbed and subtitled versions lead to better performance than the original version.

2.2 Effect of subtitles on vocabulary learning

A number of studies have more specifically focused on the effect of subtitles on vocabulary learning. Bird and Williams (2002) conducted two studies examining the effect of single modality (sound or text) and bimodal (sound and text) presentation on word learning. Both experiments led to the conclusion that subtitling can improve the learning of novel words.

In a study, Koolstra and Beentjes (1999) investigated whether children in two primary school grades in the Netherlands would learn English vocabulary through watching a television program with an English soundtrack and Dutch subtitles. They concluded that vocabulary acquisition was highest in the subtitled condition. Two hundred and forty-six Dutch children in Grades 4 and 6 (aged 9+ and 11+) watched a 15-minute documentary having been assigned to one of three experimental conditions: (i) program about grizzly bears with an English soundtrack and Dutch subtitles, (ii) the same program with an English soundtrack but without subtitles, and (iii) a Dutch language television program about prairie dogs (a control condition to establish a baseline of English vocabulary knowledge). These grades were chosen as English classes start in Grade 5, so in Grade 4, they would have had no formal English lessons, while in Grade 6, they would have already had English on a regular basis.

Vocabulary scores for those watching with subtitles were higher than for those watching without subtitles and scores in this latter group were higher than those in the control group. Grade 6 children performed better than those in Grade 4. More words were recognized after watching the subtitled documentary than the non-subtitled version, and, again, Grade 6 children outperformed Grade 4. Children with a high frequency of watching subtitled programs at home had significantly higher English vocabulary scores than children with a low frequency and medium frequency of watching subtitled programs. The findings confirm the many anecdotal accounts that children can acquire elements of a foreign language through watching subtitled television programs. Vocabulary acquisition was also found in children who watched the condition without Dutch subtitles. The findings provided further evidence that the subtitles do not distract from hearing the words.

Stewart & Pertusa (2004) explored gains in vocabulary recognition made by intermediate students viewing films in Spanish with English subtitles and others watching the same films with Spanish subtitles. They reported that intralingual subtitles are more effective in enhancing vocabulary recognition.

Markham (1999) also examined the effect of subtitles on aural word recognition skills and found that the availability of subtitles significantly improved the participants' ability to identify the key words when they subsequently heard them again (p: 323-4).

2.3 Effect of subtitles on movie comprehension

Hinkin, Michael (2009) Performed Two studies to investigate the effects of subtitled movies on the comprehension of movie content. Both investigations involved the presentation of 10-minute movie clips from A


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Few Good Men and See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Participants completed three types of multiple-choice recognition questions for each movie, including: pictorial-only questions, verbal-only questions and combined-information questions. Experiment 1 was designed to investigate the difference between levels of comprehension, when verbal information was presented only in the participants’ native language (i.e. English soundtrack and/or subtitles). Results of Experiment 1 indicate that participants performed significantly better on verbal-only and combined-information questions when their native language was present in the subtitles as opposed to the soundtrack. These findings confirm previous findings that reading verbal information in subtitles is more efficient than listening to the soundtrack. Comparison of performance on the pictorial-only questions across presentation formats in Experiment 1 showed participants in the English soundtrack with no subtitles condition performed significantly better than all other conditions. Although Experiment 1 provides a basic understanding of how native language soundtracks and subtitles influence comprehension of movies, subtitled media are primarily used when viewing a movie with verbal information from a foreign language. Experiment 2 built on the results of Experiment 1 by incorporating an unfamiliar language (i.e. French). The question sets used in Experiment 1 were also used in Experiment 2; however, two French vocabulary tests were also used in Experiment 2 to measure incidental foreign language acquisition. Consistent with the results of Experiment 1, participants performed significantly better on verbal-only and combined-information questions when their native language was in the subtitles. This finding extended the conclusion that native language verbal information presented visually (i.e. subtitles) yields better performance on questions requiring verbal cues than native language verbal information presented orally (i.e. soundtrack) to foreign language material. Comparison of performance on the pictorial-only questions across presentation formats in Experiment 2 showed no significant differences. Comparison across the two experiments reflected a distraction effect associated with the presence of a foreign language. Performance on the French vocabulary tests was very poor across all conditions and yielded no significant differences, suggesting that the tasks may have been too difficult.

In a study, published in the open-access journal PLoS One, Mitterer and McQueen (2009) investigated whether subtitles, which provide lexical information, support perceptual learning about foreign speech. Dutch participants, unfamiliar with Scottish and Australian regional accents of English, watched Scottish or Australian English movies with Dutch, English or no subtitles, and then repeated audio fragments of both accents. Repetition of novel fragments was worse after viewing movies with Dutch-subtitle but better after watching movies with English-subtitle. Native-language subtitles appear to create lexical interference, but foreign-language subtitles assist speech learning by indicating which words (and sound) are being spoken.

A study by Hayati and Mohmedi (2009) represented a preliminary effort to empirically examine the efficacy of subtitled movie on listening comprehension of intermediate English as Foreign Language students. To achieve this purpose, out of a total of 200 intermediate students, 90 were picked based on a proficiency test. The material consisted of six episodes (approximately 5 minutes each) of a DVD entitled Wild Weather. The students viewed only one of the three treatment conditions: English subtitles, Persian subtitles, no subtitles. After each viewing session, six sets of multiple-choice tests were administered to examine listening comprehension rates. The results revealed that the English subtitles group performed at a considerably higher level than the Persian subtitles group, which in turn performed at a substantially higher level than the no subtitle group on the listening test.

To summarize, most of the studies mentioned so far, seem to confirm that subtitles can improve language learning, vocabulary acquisition and content comprehension.

3. Methodology

3.1 Participants

This study involved 44 undergraduate students aged between 20-27 selected from senior students in the autumn semester of 2010. They were both male and female and were English Translation majors from two intact classes of Tapes and Films Translation course at Shiraz Islamic Azad University. Common to all of the participants was at least six years of exposure to EFL instruction during which they had learned English. With regard to nationality and language background no difference existed among the participants; all were Iranians and their mother tongue was Persian. Furthermore, none of the participants had lived in any English speaking country.

3.2 Materials

Two BBC documentary movies, one with English subtitles and the other without subtitles, were selected for this investigation. The one with subtitles was ‘Dangerous Knowledge’, about a mathematics professor, Georg Cantor, who started a revolution he never really meant to start. It eventually threatened to shake the whole of mathematics and science on its foundations. He started this revolution by asking himself a simple question: ‘How



big is infinity?’. This movie took about thirty minutes to play. The other movie without subtitling was called ‘Where’s my robot?’, which introduced different kinds of robots. The duration of this film was twenty minutes.

The movies were selected based on the content to be interesting, the level of difficulty of the language to be appropriate for the participants and the duration of the films to be less than thirty minutes.

3.3 Instruments

Two different tests were used for each movie to collect the data. A set of ten multiple choice comprehension questions and another ten multiple choice vocabulary questions were developed by the researcher for each movie. These are four-choice questions and were extracted from the movies (Appendices A & B). For the comprehension questions, first the researcher had to watch the whole movies to realize the theme and the subject. Then, she watched them carefully part by part to pose the comprehension four-choice questions. The advanced vocabulary was chosen from the movies for the vocabulary questions. Some of the sentences for the related vocabulary were extracted from Cambridge and Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary. To estimate the reliability of the tests, SPSS was used. The reliability for the comprehension and vocabulary items (subtitle and without) was calculated as .756 which is acceptable for a test of this kind.

3.4 Procedure

3.4.1 Data Collection

The participants were informed about the research project before the administration so as to stir motivation and interest. First, both classes watched the same movies, but group 1 first watched ‘Dangerous knowledge’ with English subtitling and then ‘where’s my robot?’ without subtitling. To counteract the order effect the second group first watched ‘where’s my robot?’ without subtitling, then ‘Dangerous knowledge’ with English subtitling. The movies were presented in one session. Then, after watching the movies, the participants of both classes received tests of vocabulary and content comprehension. After the first movie was played, students received a set of twenty multiple choice comprehension and vocabulary questions related to the movie, they had 15 minutes to answer the questions. Then, the second movie was played and following it the related questions were answered in 15 minutes.

3.4.2 Scoring and Data analysis

Data in this study consisted of the answers to the multiple choice comprehension and vocabulary recognition questions. The participants received one point for each item answered correctly. The data gathered were subjected to the statistical procedures of SPSS. First the scores were computed. Each participant had two scores, one for the movie with subtitle, and the other for the one without subtitle. Then, these two scores were categorized into four groups, including comprehension / vocabulary, and subtitle / without subtitle. In order to compare each participant’s grade in one subcategory to their grade in another subcategory paired samples t-test was run to calculate the significance of the difference between the means of the two sets of scores. The four categories were total scores, comprehension with subtitle scores and comprehension without subtitle scores, vocabulary with subtitle scores and vocabulary without subtitle scores. In the following chapter the results of the analysis will be presented and discussed.

3.5 Design of the Study

The design of this research is one-shot case study; since, there was only one group without control one and also no pretest was run.

4. Results and Discussion

4.1 Results

To understand the participants’ performance on the experimental task of the study, the statistical program of SPSS was used. Paired samples t-test was run to calculate the significance of the difference between the means of two sets of scores among three categories as presented below:

Subtitle and without subtitle scores, comprehension with subtitle scores and comprehension without subtitle scores, vocabulary with subtitle scores and vocabulary without subtitle scores.

4.2 Discussion

Referring to Table 1 the main effect obtained is that the participants performed better when the movie was played with bimodal subtitling. This includes total vocabulary and comprehension questions. The second row of this table deals with comprehension questions; in this row the results are better than the total. It can be said that the participants did actually perform better on comprehending the English movie with subtitle than the one


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without subtitle. However, there isn’t any significant difference between watching a movie with subtitle and without for understanding the vocabulary of the movies. Therefore, our participants were more successful in comprehending the English movie with bimodal subtitling than without subtitling, since the written forms of the dialogues were presented to them. However, in the case of vocabulary viewing movie with subtitle had no particular effect, due to the fact that learning vocabulary from subtitled movies may need watching the film more than once.

5. Conclusion

This research on watching English movies with bimodal subtitling has shown that films are not only a means of motivation to entertain students, but also they could assist learners to comprehend the language as spoken in various accents. That is, EFL learners in general are exposed to the authentic language uttered by people with different accents in various parts of the United States and United Kingdom. Therefore, it is hard for learners to hear every single word, because they are used to the Standard English. Furthermore, this is a useful practice to get acquainted with different accents of English around the world, and bimodal subtitling is a perfect choice to assist the comprehension of the movies.

However, in this research bimodal subtitling had no effect on L2 vocabulary recognition, due to the fact that expose to the film once had probably no effect on vocabulary learning. Since, as Koolstra and Beentjes (1999) claimed, for learning vocabulary from subtitled movies students have to watch them with high frequency. It can be assumed that subtitled movies could have an effect on vocabulary recognition if learners watch the movie more than once. Viewing the movie twice or more may help students recognize vocabulary and they may learn new expressions and idioms.

References

Bird, S. A. & Williams, J. N. (2002). The effect of bimodal input on implicit and explicit memory: An investigation into the benefits of within-language subtitling. Applied Psycholinguistics, 23(4), 509-533. [Online] Available: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/jnw12/subtitling.pdf (September 26, 2010)

Borras, I. & R.G. Lafayette. (1994). Effects of multimedia courseware subtitling on the speaking performance of college students of French. The Modern Language Journal, 78(1), 66-75. [Online] Available: http://www.jstor.org/pss/329253 (September 26, 2010)

Grgurović, M. & Hegelheimer, V. (2007). Help options and multimedia listening: Students' use of subtitles and the transcript. Language Learning & Technology, 11(1), 45-66. [Online] Available: http://llt.msu.edu/vol11num1/pdf/grgurovic.pdf (September 26, 2010)

Grignon, P., J. M. Lavaur & N. Blanc. (2005). The effect of subtitles on film understanding. [Online] Available: sites.google.com/site/jeanmarclavaur/grigronlavaurblanc2007.pdf (April 29, 2010)

Hayati, M. & Mohmedi, F. (2009). The effect of films with and without subtitles on listening comprehension of EFL learners. British Journal of Educational Technology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.01004.x

Hinkin, M. (2009). Comprehension of multiple channel messages: Are subtitles more beneficial than soundtracks? [Online] Available: http://krex.kstate.edu/dspace/bitstream/2097/1679/1/MichaelHinkin2009.pdf (September 26, 2010)

Katchen, J. E., Lin, L. Y., Fox, T. & Chun, V. (2002). Developments in Digital Video. [Online] Available: http://mx.nthu.edu.tw/~katchen/professional/developments%20in%20digital%20video.htm (August 11, 2010)

King, J. (2002, February). Using DVD feature films in the EFL classroom. ELT Newsletter, The weekly column, Article 88. [Online] Available: http://www.eltnewsletter.com/back/February2002/art882002.htm (January 5, 2010)

Koolstra, C. M. & J. W. J. Beentjes. (1999). Children's vocabulary acquisition in a foreign language through watching subtitled television programs at home. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47(1), 51-60. [Online] Available: http://www.springerlink.com/content/7951541774721423/ (August 11, 2010)

Kusumarasdyati. (2005). Subtitled Movie DVDs in Foreign Language Classes. Monash University. [Online] Available: http://www.aare.edu.au/06pap/kus06105.pdf (April 29, 2010)

Mitterer, H. & McQueen, J. M. (2009). Foreign subtitles help but native-language subtitles harm foreign speech perception. [Online] Available: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0007785 (January 5, 2010)



National Center for Technology Innovation and Center for Implementing Technology in Education (CITEd). (2010). Captioned Media: Literacy Support for Diverse Learners. [Online] Available: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/35793 (September 26, 2010)

Stewart, M. & Pertusa, I. (2004). Gains to language learners from viewing target language closed-captioned films. Foreign Language Annals, 37(3), 438-447. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2004.tb02701.x

Zanon, N. T. (2006). Using subtitles to enhance foreign language learning. Porta Linguarum 6. [Online] Available: http://www.ugr.es/~portalin/articulos/PL_numero6/talavan.pdf (September 29, 2010)

Appendix A

Part A: Comprehension

1. Who was Georg Cantor?

a) A philosopher c) A mathematician

b) A physicist d) A scientist

2. Cantor started the revolution by asking the question ……. .

a) What is infinity? c) Is there any infinity?

b) How big is infinity? d) How can infinity be proved?

3. What is Cantor’s last major publication about?

a) Set theory c) Continuum hypothesis

b) Infinite theory d) Modern mathematics

4. What did Cantor find after his first publication?

a) Infinity is a vague number without end.

b) He could not prove continuum hypothesis.

c) Set theory is not true.

d) He could add and subtract infinity.

5. When was the happiest and most inspired period of Cantor’s life?

When …….

a) his theory came into publication.

b) he discovered there was a vast mathematics of the infinite.

c) he came to the Alps to meet a mathematician.

d) he proved the continuum hypothesis.

6. Where did Cantor spend his entire professional life?

a) In the asylum c) In the lecture theater in the university

b) In the Alps d) In his hometown, Hallie

7. What was Cantor’s dream?

a) To prove continuum hypothesis

b) To receive an invitation to one of the great universities

c) To publish his work

d) To meet his friend in the Alps

8. What did his one time friend and teacher, Kronecker, say about Cantor?

He said he was ……… .

a) a corrupter of youth c) the father of mathematics

b) a math sicker d) a great scientist


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9. What is the most precious possession of Cantor’s?

a) His publication c) His continuum hypothesis

b) His father’s letter d) His set theory

10. Which statement is not true about Cantor?

a) He proved the continuum hypothesis.

b) He worked on the continuum hypothesis for the rest of his life.

c) He had the musical talent.

d) He never fully recovered.

Part B: Vocabulary

1. Most of the people are in the ………. of happiness in their lives; some will reach it but others won’t.

a) realm b) tinge c) pursuit d) haste

2. When questioned by the police, the suspect, who had actually committed the crime, gave his questioners ………., insubstantial answer.

a) elusive b) reticent c) furtive d) rudimentary

3. I think I managed to ………. the main points of the lecture.

a) detain b) grasp c) deter d) glance

4. They showed obvious hostility towards their new neighbors.

a) hospitality b) hatred c) havoc d) humility

5. The government is planning to ………. a bench marking scheme to guide consumers.

a) excel b) launch c) abolish d) alter

6. Most of the students living in the dormitory in Iran have many adversities, which they have to overcome.

a) nuances b) differences c) pretexts d) difficulties

7. It took a lot of ……….. to stand up and criticize the chairman.

a) asperity b) brutality c) audacity d) brevity

8. We are …………. affected by what happens to us in childhood.

a) interminably b) profoundly c) indiscriminately d) pragmatically

9. On this occasion we pay ………… to him for his achievements.

a) homicide b) budget c) homage d) blunder

10. We’ve got a long way to go before we unravel the secrets of genetics.

a) abandon b) conceal c) reveal d) blend

Appendix B

Part A: Comprehension

1. What did Danny quest for?

The ……….. robot.

a) beautiful c) perfect

b) intelligent d) walking

2. Which robot was in the Stanford University lab?

a) Stair c) HRP3

b) Domo d) Robotic 101

3. Why didn’t Andrew tell Danny that Stair could talk? Because he …….. .

a) thought Danny might know it c) forgot to do so

b) thought it was something ordinary d) wanted to surprise him

4. Why did Danny come to Japan? Because ……….. .



a) there were lots of robots there

b) many Japanese worked on robots

c) Japanese were famous for making complex robots

d) highly intelligent scientists were in Japan

5. Why did Danny show us a little Samurai robot on the train? To indicate that …….. .

a) a robot could walk

b) a robot could be small

c) a robot could do what you wanted it to do

d) Japanese have made humanoid robots for many years

6. Why is HRP3 unique in walking robots? Because ……… .

a) It can turn around

b) It doesn’t need to be pre-programmed

c) It can both talk and walk

d) If it falls down, it can get up by itself

7. Where is HRP3 supposed to work?

a) In the office c) In construction

b) In surgery d) In the laboratory

8. Which statement is NOT true about HRP3?

a) It is very expensive.

b) It can tackle a large bump.

c) It is a robust manual worker.

d) It is a super robot.

9. Why does Domo need a vision system?

a) To recognize human faces

b) To detect color objects

c) To make sense of the world

d) To walk through rough surfaces

10. According to Danny, what is a crucial skill for robots if they are to do our bidding?

a) Moving around

b) Recognizing human faces

c) Talking and feeling

d) Making sense of the world

Part B: Vocabulary

Seeing that her husband was coming, she hastily changed the subject.

a) interminably b) permanently c) inexorably d) promptly

Nothing will stop them in their ………. for truth.

a) quest b) embrace c) quiver d) endure

The talks ended abruptly when one of the delegates walked out in protest.

a) unexceptionally b) unfoundedly c) unexpectedly d) unfairly

That’s weird, I thought I’d left my keys on the table but they’re not there.

a) funny b) interesting c) odd d) annoying

This glass has been used, please ………. me a clean one.


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a) fend b) feud c) flay d) fetch

Her bicycle hit a ……… in the road and threw her off.

a) clamp b) bump c) clique d) baffle

Early ………… of the cancer improves the chances of successful treatment.

a) expansion b) depiction c) estimation d) detection

My father asked me to do my mother’s ……....... after his departure.

a) braiding b) besiege c) bidding d) binding

Take care when you walk on that path, the paving stones are rather ……… .

a) unformed b) unbroken c) uncovered d) uneven

Jack watches at least two movies a day, in fact he is a movie ……... .

a) fanatic b) critic c) fringe d) cripple

Table 1. t values for the difference between the means of participants’ two sets of scores

Mean difference t df Sig. (2-tailed)

Pair 1 total

1.02273 2.475 43 .017

Pair 2 comp (+sub)-

comp (-sub) 1.47727 4.650 43 .000

Pair 3 vocab (+sub)-

vocab (-sub)

-.45455 -1.690 43 .098

According to Table 1 the value of t for total vocabulary and comprehension questions was statistically significant (t = 2.475 p< .017). It means that there is a significant difference between the two means. In other words participants answered the subtitled movie questions better than the questions of the movie without subtitle. Based on this table the value of t for comprehension was more statistically significant than total (t = 4.650 p< .000). These results showed that participants comprehended the subtitled movie better than the one without subtitle. However, there isn’t any significant difference between the two means for vocabulary.

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Using DVD Feature Films in theEFL ClassroomJane KingPublished online: 09 Aug 2010.

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Computer Assisted Language Learning 0958-8221/02/1505–509$16.002002, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 509–523 # Swets & Zeitlinger

FORUM

Using DVD Feature Films in the EFL Classroom

Jane KingSoochow University, Taiwan, R.O. China

ABSTRACT

DVDs have substantially replaced traditional VHS videotapes as the movie medium of the newmillennium. In addition to their compactness and availability, there are a variety of specialfeatures offered on DVDs, including interactive menus, theatrical trailers, behind-the-scenescommentary, foreign languages, captions and subtitles, and immediate scene access. With thesespecial features, DVD feature films provide a wide array of pedagogical options and represent arich resource of intrinsically motivating materials for learners. This study is three-fold in nature:the first part is devoted to a discussion of film-viewing approaches; it then provides anassessment on the use of closed-captioned and non-closed-captioned DVD feature films fordifferent levels of learners. Finally, suggestions are provided for choosing appropriate films topromote active viewing and interaction in order to maximize classroom application of DVDfeature films.

1. INTRODUCTION

When commercially available video serials, explicitly designed for ESL/EFL,

were first utilized in the classroom, the student response was positive. Video is

a much more dynamic medium than a static text or an audio recording. In spite

of its promise, however, within a relatively short time span the use of videos as

a teaching medium failed to sustain student interest. Watching the same few

video actors and actresses appear in episode after episode became a dull and

uninspiring routine for most learners. Such classroom-styled videos were

Address correspondence to: Jane King, Soochow University, Taiwan, RO China. E-mail:[email protected]

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intended to maintain student engagement by eliciting specific responses or

answers from them based on the viewing material. This was done in ways that

required students to ‘‘analyze’’ a multitude of specific linguistic details in a

self-conscious manner rather than ‘‘absorb’’ the living language and get a

general gist of what was being said.

Learning English through film viewing represents a novel approach for

some students whose preconceived notion of learning English is based on their

past learning experiences. For the most part such experiences have been

primarily textbook-oriented and test-driven, the focus being on form and

accuracy rather than meaning and communication. Such standardized

teaching materials lack a realistic and meaningful context and fail to deal

with contemporary issues that are relevant to their lives. For such

students, ‘‘English has few moorings in the social nature of communication.

Language study is more often anchored in a berth of alienating frustration’’

(Shea, 1995, p. 3). With their training limited to endless grammar exercises

and the tests they take designed to analyze the fine points of formal English,

students struggle to understand main ideas in listening and reading. Some

learners insist on understanding everything that is said or written, a strategy

which runs counter to that employed by effective language learners: give

their best guesses, follow their hunches, endure ambiguity, and absorb

language input. Learning English through films compensates for many of the

shortcomings in the EFL learning experience by bringing language to life.

It is a refreshing learning experience for students who need to take a break

from the rote learning of long lists of English vocabulary and soporific

drill practices. Their encounters with realistic situations and exposure to the

living language provide a dimension that is missing in textbook-oriented

teaching.

Films are invaluable teaching resources for many reasons. They present

colloquial English in real life contexts rather than artificial situations, and

they expose students to a wide range of native speakers, each with their own

slang, reduced speech, stress, accents, and dialects. Feature films are

more intrinsically motivating than videos made for EFL/ESL teaching

because they provide students with a film to be enjoyed rather than a

lesson that needs to be tested on. Moreover, the realism of movies

provides a wealth of contextualized linguistic and paralinguistic terms and

expressions, authentic cross-cultural information, classroom listening com-

prehension and fluency practice (Braddock, 1996; Stempleski, 2000; Wood,

1995).

510 JANE KING

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2. MAKING THE MOST OF THE FILM MEDIUM

The use and feasibility of feature films in the classroom have inevitably

evoked controversy among classroom teachers who have a curriculum to

follow and limited time to allocate. Too many teachers still view movies as a

medium of ‘‘entertainment’’ that was not encouraged in a pedagogic setting,

or, at most, one that is to be used for either an outside classroom assignment or

as a class treat.

Films, however, offer endless opportunities to generate pedagogically

sound activities for developing fluency. The key to using films effectively lies

primarily with the teacher’s ability and savvy in preparing students to receive

the film’s message. Many teachers have come up with multi-purpose creative

ideas to enhance active viewing among students (Davis, 1998; Donley, 2000;

Fox, 1999; Holden, 2000; Lin, 2002; Katchen, 1996a; King, 2002; Ryan,

1998). A growing number of teachers choose to make use of viewing sheets

consisting of simple multiple-choice questions to promote fluency, rather than

impose many new lexical items and idioms upon students, which only serves

to divert the focus from fluency. Other teachers integrate film-response

journals into lessons, or use a whole-film approach based on a response-based

engagement with opinions and ideas. Films may prove amenable to other

types of projects that can be incorporated into the classroom setting. Casanave

and Freedman (1995) assigned a film presentation project for their

intermediate English students in which films were viewed holistically and

critically. The implementation of PowerPoint and DVD in student film

presentations represents another collaborative group work that encourages

computer applications (King, 2002).

Thus, ‘‘make the most of movies’’ has been adopted as a motto for many

teachers who are convinced of the merits of films as a powerful tool for

language acquisition. At the same time, these teachers feel obliged to make

the most of learning opportunities through films in order to justify their use in

the classroom. To start with, several questions may be posed: What are the

pedagogical reasons for using a particular film sequence (Stempleski, 2000,

p. 10)? What type of approach in dealing with movies should be taken,

viewing a film in its entirety or in segments? Will non-closed-captioned or

closed-captioned films be more appropriate for a particular class? What are

the film selection criteria? And finally, what kind of activities will integrate

speaking, reading, writing and listening skills into the course? How can

teachers elicit student involvement and avoid passive viewing?

USING DVD FEATURE FILMS 511

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3. THE SHORT-SEQUENCE APPROACH

In presenting films, teachers have adapted several structurally-driven

approaches, including the following: a sequential approach of teaching

scene-by-scene or one segment at a time; a single-scene approach in which

only one scene or segment from the entire film is utilized; a selective approach

featuring only a few scenes from different parts of the film; a whole-film

approach that shows the full-length film in a single viewing. All of the

above approaches are feasible; a particular approach should be chosen to

match one’s teaching objectives and target groups.

Many teachers advocate short sequences for less advanced learners. They

recognize that a 2-hr feature film may burden such students with language

overload; the sheer length may also prove daunting, so teachers need to

provide bite-sized chunks for students to digest. Essentially, a teacher has to

decide which function a given sequence is to perform (Stempleski, 2000,

p. 10). Is this sequence used to generate a theme-based discussion, to practice

listening strategies, or to present cultural background? What activities will

prove most beneficial?For mature and advanced learners, films should be chosen not simply for

their entertainment value; they should be timely and deliver a clear message to

enhance classroom discussion. The short-sequence approach can be used for

theme-based discussion. Dealing with thought-provoking films the teacher can

select from among a wide range of fields and topics such as medicine,

education, science, history, marriage or justice (See Appendix A). The teacher

can first engage students in a preliminary conversation concerning any of the

general themes that the film itself will be exploring. Afterwards, the teacher

moves on to focus on more specific issues concerning the film’s topic,

illustrated by selected key scenes to generate what should turn out to be a

stimulating discussion.

A theme-based discussion allows students to explore relevant issues raised

from a variety of perspectives, develop critical thinking skills, elicit responses,

converse freely on many of the aspects of the film they have viewed,1 while

freeing them from overly restrictive learning habits that focus exclusively on

1For example, questions posted by Dead Poets’ Society: see http://www/10pair.com/�crasydv/weir/dps/questions.html

Some excellent reviewing questions for The Shawshank Redemption can be found athttp://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resources/units/shawshank/viewing_workhseet.html

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grammar and vocabulary. As a rule, theme-based films do not lend themselves

to complete viewing due to time limitations and overall language difficulty.

When showing such a film, the teacher may prefer to use random access to

select the main plot line and ignore the subplots. A DVD feature film2 is

divided into many segments or chapters. If the teacher needs to go to a specific

chapter, they just press the closed captions key on a DVD remote control or via

the DVD menu. Moreover, if the teacher wants to skip some scenes, DVD

rewinding and fast-forwarding are much faster than a video.

4. THE WHOLE-FILM APPROACH

The whole-film approach is an approach in which a feature film is shown in its

entirety and studied as a whole. It usually takes 1 or 2 hr rather than the

shorter, more typical video-teaching techniques such as sound only, silent

viewing, pause/freeze-frame, and split viewing. This approach avoids the

problems of repeatedly turning on and off a movie video, rewinding it,

replaying it and analyzing it in piecemeal fashion. Shea (1995, p. 14) argues

persuasively that using full-length films is a theoretically and empirically

sound way of teaching English. ‘‘If I cut up the movie in five minute segments,

focusing on the linguistic structure and the form of the language, the students

might never have recognized the emotional force and narrative dynamic of the

video as a story about important things in the human experience, aesthetic and

ethical things like dreams, imagination, and commitment; things that drive

language and ultimately stimulate students to learn it in the first place.’’ A

short-segment approach may be useful with many types of videos, for

example, TV commercials, or news clips to supplement content materials.

However, ‘‘. . . if communication is to be emphasized, the complete

communicative process of a movie is in order as the vehicle for study.

Obsessive word-by-word study approaches can be avoided by training

students to develop gist understanding via key conversations and lines of

2Fair use rules for videotapes/DVDs: Each country has its own video/DVD copyright laws andadopts the provisions of international treaties as it sees fit. In the US, Section 110 (1) of theCopyright Act of 1976 specifies that the following is permitted: Performance or display of awork by instructors or pupils in the course of face-to-face teaching activities of a nonprofiteducational institution, in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction (Simons, 1995). InAsia, teachers need to purchase films in public viewing version from distributors who chargeabout US$100 per film.


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dialogue and thus producing many extra opportunities for language

development in every possible skill direction’’ (Wood, 1995, p. 3). Moreover,

using a comprehensive approach would be less time-consuming and more

logical, coherent, and motivating for students (Chung, 1995).

Showing a complete film enhances student motivation to such an extent that

students are visibly impressed by the amount of English they can figure out on

their own. Their confidence soars when they realize that understanding a

movie is not as difficult as they had originally imagined.

In addition, insufficient amount of listening input places EFL students at a

disadvantage when it comes to learning everyday English and current usage.

Fragments of audio recordings that accompany textbooks designed for EFL

learners hardly begin to prepare them for the full-length listening required in

advanced studies. The whole-film approach, which features abundant

exposure to authentic listening, not only facilitates listening strategy training

among learners, but also increases their awareness of pragmatic usage – an

essential component of communicative competence.

5. SUGGESTIONS FOR USING FEATURE FILMS

The merits of uninterrupted film viewing are numerous with the proviso that a

teacher follows accepted standards for choosing films. Finding an appropriate

feature film for a particular level of students is one of the most useful things

that a teacher can do. Arcario (1992) suggests that comprehensibility is a

major criterion in selecting a video for the purpose of language learning. It is

important to choose scenes that balance dialogue with a high degree of visual

support, and provide appropriate speech delivery, a clear picture and sound,

and a standard accent. Sometimes even though the storyline might be

appealing to students, actors’ enunciation, speed and accent may be very

difficult for them to understand. Using a film that is too difficult to understand

can lead to utter frustration. Students may end up confused, depressed and

convinced they will never understand ‘‘real’’ English. Viewing films can all

too easily turn into a frustrating experience for learners who might give up on

this stimulating tool for learning English.

The appropriateness of content and the comfort level of students need to be

taken into account in the selection process. Films with explicit sex, gratuitous

violence and excessive profanity should logically be ruled out. Furthermore,

films with minor scenes of sex, violence and profanity could be skipped and

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fast-forwarded past whatever may be deemed offensive in some cultures. The

newest DVD authoring software now allows teachers to edit and customize

their films for teaching.

As far as student motivation and interest are concerned, entertaining films

are sometimes enjoyable and relevant to learners’ appreciation of popular

culture. Dramatic tension and good acting surely will make students forget

about language and focus more closely on the plot. Recently released films are

more appealing to students than classic ones (preferably within the last 15

years and with a notable box office success), even though old films are by and

large inoffensive. Choosing films that are age and culture appropriate and

suitable for both genders is also important. Romances, romantic comedies,

and less-violent action movies with relatively simple plots and subplots are

also good choices for college students.

The length of viewing time in the whole-film approach is, of course, quite

different from existing language-based video-teaching approaches. For more

proficient students, it is better to show a 2-hr movie in two class periods. It

serves as good intensive listening training. When students are attracted and

deeply absorbed by the story, they do appreciate the continuity their teacher

allows. For low-level learners, usually one class period is recommended

because of the problems of overload and attention span.

6. DVD CLOSED CAPTIONS AND SUBTITLES

DVDs have replaced videotapes as the medium of the new millennium since

they hit the market a few years ago. DVDs are vastly superior to videotapes

because of their compactness, audio-visual quality, availability and other

interactive features. In educational settings, many classrooms and language labs

have been upgraded from VHS videotapes to this new popular movie medium.

Usually every DVD has the capacity to carry captions and subtitles in up to 32

different languages. Language teachers should prepare for the coming of DVDs

and consider the benefits of incorporating DVDs into language classrooms.

DVDs greatly aid classroom teachers who plan and carry out film-based

lessons for instruction. There are a variety of special features offered on DVD

films that make the use of films in the classroom convenient such as closed

captions and subtitles in different languages, random access, behind-the-

scenes and scenes that were deleted from the film. Usually a teacher can check

the back of a DVD package for a listing of special features.


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DVDs offer subtitles and closed captions, selectable without the aid of a

caption decoder. Closed captions not only provide the visible text for spoken

audio, but also identify all the sounds, different speakers, music and lyrics.

The audience can easily get a clear image of related dynamic verbs and sound

effect words which appear in brackets on the screen, synchronized with

corresponding actions and sounds such as a phone ringing. Unlike closed

captions, subtitles translate only the spoken word (Johnston, 2000). Further-

more, DVD closed captions and subtitles are different from TV captions

because they will not appear in a black box.

DVD subtitles and closed captions also can be turned on and off via the

DVD menu or remote. The teacher is not forced to use just one mode all the

time. A given film can be viewed with English subtitles the first time to get an

understanding of the whole film and then viewed without subtitles to focus on

listening comprehension.

6.1. English Closed-Captioned FilmsTeachers are sometimes fraught with uncertainty as to whether first

language subtitles help or hindrance students’ English learning (Katchen,

1996b; Lin, 2001). Should teachers show a film with or without

closed captioning? Which way will benefit their students most? The answer

is that each one serves different purposes depending on the teaching

objectives.

As this interest in closed-captioned materials is increasing, abundant

research in the field indicates that closed-captioned videos/films are more

positive and effective than non-closed-captioned videos/films in terms of

improving learning motivation and attitude, overall listening comprehension,

vocabulary development, oral fluency, and in helping EFL students’ compre-

hension ability (Borras & Lafayette, 1994; Garza, 1991; Kikuchi, 1997).

From my experience and observation, the value and benefits of using closed-

captioned films for language learners can be summarized as helping

students to:

– follow a plot easily and get involved in plot development.

– learn to pronounce proper nouns in different disciplines.

– acquire colloquial, context-bound expressions and slang.

– process a text rapidly and improve rapid reading.

– keep up with closed captioning that accompany the native-speed spoken

English.

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– provide relaxing, stress-free learning environments where students can

comprehend jokes and have a few hearty laughs.

– learn different strategies for processing information.

The problem with using closed-captioned DVD films is primarily that the

activity becomes reading skills or vocabulary development rather than

listening comprehension training. Since they read word by word on the screen,

they no doubt understand better what the characters say. It may also help

students practice pronunciation by repeating after the characters. However, the

closed captions sacrifice listening strategy training such as guessing and

inferring meanings from visual clues.

Furthermore, once using closed captions, students may become hooked.

Closed captions serve as a crutch that provides security and without which

habituated students become afraid to take a step on their own. Learning to

view non-closed-captioned films is a big step that students have to take

sooner or later if they are ever to experience a breakthrough in English

learning.

6.2. Non-Closed-Captioned FilmsEFL learners, who are eager to comprehend spoken materials intended for

native speakers of English, but, at the same time, have misgivings regarding

their own proficiency levels, experience mixed feelings about non-closed-

captioned films. They are worried that they might end up becoming

confused and frustrated when fast-paced dialogues in English films whiz

by them. Several apparent difficulties watching non-closed-captioned films

arise mainly from language: the rapid pace of speech; unclear speech and

accents; technical or specialized terminology; an overload of slang and

idioms; unfamiliarity with the cultural background/knowledge; culturally

specific humor. Exposing learners to authentic materials, however, is a

necessary stage in the learning process to help them master listening

strategies.

Some compelling reasons for using non-closed-captioned films for listening

comprehension and fluency practice should not be ignored:

– help students develop a high tolerance of ambiguity.

– enhance students’ listening strategies such as guessing meaning from

context and inferring strategies by visual clues, facial expressions, voice,

and sound track.

– promote active viewing and listening for key words and main ideas.


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– motivate students to make use of authentic English material on their own.

– provide students with the opportunity to experience a great sense of accom-

plishment and self-assurance.

7. DEVELOPING FILM ACTIVITIES

7.1. PreviewingPreviewing activities prepare students by introducing synopsis, key words and

phrases and aid their comprehension of the film. The teacher can detect

potential troublesome words and phrases from scripts available on the Internet

or the DVD. Some websites provide plot summary and definitions of

colloquial vocabulary for popular films, and are an especially helpful resource

for non-native teachers (See Appendix B). Random accessing is a feature that

is tremendously helpful for teachers in locating specific scenes, explaining

difficult lines in the script and providing repeated viewings.

7.2. PostviewingAfter a film has been viewed, trouble-shooting should prove helpful in terms

of clarifying confusing scenes and enhancing students’ overall comprehension

of the movie. The whole-film approach is capable of employing a trouble-

shooting method by identifying, recording and clarifying several confusing or

complicated scenes and allowing students to focus on them. Afterwards,

study/discussion questions are used to ensure overall comprehension and

promote application.

7.2.1. Identifying and Clarifying Difficult Scenes

One effective way to check students’ comprehension is to explicitly ask them

about confusing scenes and dialogues that can be reviewed in class. The

teacher may go over in detail the scenes they failed to comprehend, repeating

them several times until learners have a clear understanding of these clips.

American humor obviously is one of the listening hot spots for

students. A teacher knows all too well when students fail to catch the

humor of a given situation; that is, when the joke is delivered and no

laughter ensues, just complete and total silence in the classroom. Proper

nouns and cultural backgrounds are other areas that a teacher needs to

focus on.

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7.2.2. Preparing Study and Discussion Questions

Study questions should be designed to check students’ understanding of

specific details and clear up some complex issues, which greatly enhance

students’ comprehension of the film. Discussion questions are aimed at

extending and expanding students’ understanding and experience of the film,

requiring them to reflect on issues in terms of their own experience and to

compare cultural differences such as the wedding customs in the film, Father

of the Bride.

The following previewing activities are aimed at raising students’ interest,

promoting class discussion and developing oral fluency.

Speaking

� Start the class with a guessing game by listing movie titles in English;

students then have to guess the title of each film in their first language.

� Students choose their favorite films/actors/actresses and elaborate with

supporting reasons for their choice.

� Engage in a bi-or tri-weekly film review group discussion depending on

available class time. Students share their personal reviews on preassigned

films with each member of their small group.

� Students record their own movie reviews on tapes as oral journals for

fluency practice.

ListeningDVD films provide sufficient listening input with images for students. The

teacher makes an audiotape of the soundtrack of important scenes and has

students listen to it several times, and the teacher devises some information-

gap activities for language practice to go with the tapes. For example, students

transcribe one selected scene by actively repeated listenings or by guessing

what is happening from listening without actually viewing the scene. Another

good exercise is using teacher-made cloze exercises from the script for

students to fill in key words by repeated listenings rather than passively

listening to the script.

ReadingThe Web can be an unlimited resource to supplement lesson plans. Students

can surf on the Internet and find personal data or information about their

favorite actors/actresses and share such findings with the class or they choose

two film reviews of an assigned film and have their reviews ready for small

group discussion. Sometimes students find reviews written by professional


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movie critics too wordy, confusing and difficult to comprehend. The teacher

should first screen film review websites and recommend easy reading ones for

them. Audience reviews are more comprehensible than professional ones. In

addition, reading each other’s discussion questions is another activity that

satisfies students’ curiosity about their classmates’ opinions about a film.

WritingA bi-weekly film review and discussion can also be done in journal writing.

Students write personal reviews or a summary of an assigned movie as

homework and in class share them with classmates by employing a clock-

sharing mode. In this mode, students sit face to face in two rows. Members of

one row remain seated while the others, starting with the first person, move

down the row after each reading. In this way, students have the opportunity to

read their classmates’ reviews. In addition, students can write an article

reporting the events in a film or write a letter to one of the film characters. In

this way, students have the opportunity to read their classmates’ reviews. In

addition, students can write an article reporting the events in a film or write a

letter to one of the film characters.

8. CONCLUSION

DVD feature films provide enjoyable language learning opportunities for

students if the teacher chooses appropriate films, which are purposeful and

tailored to students’ learning needs and proficiency level. The closed captions

selection feature benefits students in various ways. English closed-captioned

films are a rich source of instructional materials that provide examples and

content in oral communication. Non-closed-captioned English films are

challenging and can be exploited for listening comprehension practice, even if

the comprehension is limited to advanced students. A teacher might work at

different purposes, and aim overtly at different aspects of language, by using

both closed captions and non-closed-captions alternatively.

An instructor’s initial attempt to implement the teaching of DVD feature

films in the classroom may be overwhelming. However, with each successive

attempt and increasing teaching experience, teaching DVD feature films can

turn into a rewarding experience for both students and teachers. When

students are provided with well-structured activities designed to promote

active viewing and stimulate involvement for making the most of learning

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opportunities from films, there is no doubt that DVD feature films are the most

stimulating and enjoyable learning material for the e-generation.

REFERENCES

Arcario, P. (1992). Criteria for selecting video materials. In S. Stempleski & P. Arcario (Eds.),Video in second language teaching: Using, selecting and producing video for theclassroom (pp. 109–121). Alexandria, VA: TESOL.

Borras, I., & Lafayette, R.C. (1994). Effects of multimedia courseware subtitling on thespeaking performance of college students of French. The Modern English Journal, 78,61–75.

Braddock, B. (1996). Using films in the English class. Hemel Hempstead: Phoenix ELT.Casanave, C., & Freedman, D. (1995). Learning by collaboration and teaching a film

presentation project. In C. Casanave & Simons (Eds.), Pedagogical perspective on usingfilms in foreign language classes (pp. 28–39). Keio University SFC Monograph #4.

Chung, V. (1995). A Comprehensive Approach to Teaching with Movie Videos. Paper presentedat the 21st Annual JALT International Conference, Nagoya, Japan.

Davis, R.S. (1998, March). Captioned video: Making it work for you. The Internet TESLJournal, Vol. IV(3). Available, http://www.aitech.ac.jp/�iteslj/

Donley, K. (2000, April). Film for fluency. English Teaching Forum, 24–27.Fox, T. (1999, March). Enhancing the power of passive film viewing. The ETA-Rep. of China

Newsletter, 3(1).Garza, T.J. (1991). Evaluating the use of captioned video materials in advanced foreign

language learning. Foreign Language Annals, 24(3), 239–258.Holden, W. (2000). Making the most of movies: Keeping film response journals. Modern

English Teacher, 9(2).Johnston, S. (2000). A guide to DVD subtitles and captioning. Available: dvdfile.com/ site/faq/

caption_guideKatchen, J.E. (1996a). Using authentic video in English language teaching tips for Taiwan’s

teachers. Taipei: The Crane Publishing Co. Ltd.Katchen, J.E. (1996b). First Language Subtitle: Help or Hindrance? Paper presented at the

Annual Meeting of the Japan Association of Language Teachers, ERIC 421873.Katchen, J.E. (1997). Improving English through Chinese subtitles and X-files. TESOL Video

News, 8(1), 4,9.Kikuchi, T. (1997). A review of research on the education use of English captioned materials in

Japan. Available: www.robon.org/gary/captioning/kikuchi.htmlKing, J. (2002). DVD feature film project learning. CALL Review: the Journal of the IATEFL

Computer Special Interest Group.Lin, L.Y. (2001). The effects of different subtitles upon the learners’ listening comprehension

performance. Proceedings of 2001 International Conference on the application ofEnglish Teaching, pp. 274–287. Taipei: The Crane Publishing Co. Ltd.

Lin, L.Y. (2002). Effective learner-centered strategies for extensive viewing of feature films.Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Conference on English Teaching andLearning in the ROC (pp. 329–336). Taipei: The Crane Publishing Co. Ltd.


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Ryan, S. (1998, November). Using films to develop learner motivation. The Internet TESLJournal, IV(11). Available: http://www.aitech.ac.jp/�iteslj/

Shea, D. (1995). Whole movies and engaged response in the Japanese university ESLclassroom. In C. Casanave & Simons (Eds.), Pedagogical perspective on using films inforeign language classes (pp. 3–17). Keio University SFC Monograph #4.

Simons, J. (1995). Copyright laws and video in the classroom. In C. Casanave & Simons (Eds.),Pedagogical perspective on using films in foreign language classes (pp. 3–17). KeioUniversity SFC Monograph #4.

Stempleski, S. (2000, March/April). Video in the ESL classroom: Making the most of themovies. ESL Magazine, 10–12.

Stempleski, S., & Tomalin, B. (1990). Video in action: Recipes for using video in languageteaching. NY: Prentice Hall.

Wood, D. (1995). Film communication in TEFL. Video Rising: Newsletter of the Japan Assoc.for Language Teaching, 7(1).

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APPENDIX A

Suggested Films for Theme-Based Discussion

1. Education: Dead Poets’ Society, Good Will Hunting, Mr. Holland’s Opus

2. Romance and Marriage: When Henry Met Sally, As Good As It Gets, Ten

Things I Hate About You, My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Story of Us,

Regarding Henry (video), Pay it Forward, Father of the Bride, Notting

Hill, You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle.

3. Justice: The Shawshank Redemption, Amistad, Green Mile, The

Hurricane, Men of Honor.

4. Media: Insider, Enemy of the State, Primary Colors, Truman Show.

5. Culture: Anna and the King, Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon

(English subtitle).

6. Music/Dance: Billy Elliot, Moulin Rouge.

7. Environment: Erin Brockovich.

8. Science: Bicentennial Man.

9. Drugs: Traffic.

10. Medicine: Patch Adams.

APPENDIX B

Websiteshttp://us.imdb.com (internet movie data base).

http://mrqe.com (movie review quest engine).

http://www.cinemachine.com

http://screentalk.org

http://www.teachwithmovies.org (organize films by theme and by genre).

http://www.eslnotes.com (provide definitions of words and idioms).

http://www.dailyscript.com

http://www.script-o-rama.com (scripts).

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html.(DVD FAQ)


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ED300848 1988-00-00 Using Film, Video,and TV in the Classroom. ERIC Digest

Number 11.

ERIC Development Team

www.eric.ed.gov

Table of ContentsIf you're viewing this document online, you can click any of the topics below to link directly to that section.

Using Film, Video, and TV in the Classroom. ERIC Digest Number 11 1

THE POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS ARE WIDE-RANGING 2

FILM CAN LINK DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES 2

FILMS CAN SERVE VERY SPECIFIC COURSES AND UNITSFILMS CAN TARGET AND MOTIVATE WRITING

ERIC 01,0 Digests

ERIC Identifier: ED300848Publication Date: 1988-00-00Author: Aiex, Nola KortnerSource: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills Bloomington IN.

Using Film, Video, and TV in the Classroom.ERIC Digest Number 11.

THIS DIGEST WAS CREATED BY ERIC, THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ERIC, CONTACTACCESS ERIC 1-800-LET-ERICTeachers have long used the media--and particularly film--to accomplish variousinstructional objectives such as building background for particular topics or motivatingstudent reaction and analysis. The appeal of visual media continues to make film, video,and television educational tools with high potential impact; and they are now

ED300848 1988-00-00 Using Film, Video, and TV in the Classroom. ERIC Digest Page 1 of 7Number 11.

www.eric.ed.gov ERIC Custom Transformations Team

considerably more accessible and less cumbersome to use.

The use of film in the classroom has become more popular since the arrival of thevideocassette recorder (VCR) with its relative economy and ease of operation. Theopinion of one teacher probably echoes the opinion of many others: "The VCR gave usflexibility. We could watch the first exciting twenty minutes, stop the tape and discusselements of introduction, mood, suspense, and characterization -and view itagain....The VCR is simple to operate, portable, and less expensive." (Farmer, 1987)Another educator who has considered the potential of the VCR believes that "one of thepedagogical tasks of the next decade may well be discovering the most efficaciousways of employing this omnipresent piece of technology." (Gallagher, 1987) Anotherteacher pinpoints a reason for the potential: "Because students live in a media-orientedworld, they consider sight and sound as 'user friendly." (Post, 1987)

THE POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS AREWIDE-RANGING

Even before the advent of the VCR, the "introduction to film course" had become astaple in most American universities (Lovell, 1987). What has become apparent overthe years is that film can be used as an adjunct to almost any discipline, especially thelanguage arts. And it can be particularly effective in teaching different kinds of learners.Lovell notes that in addition to encouraging the use and development of communicationskills, film can be used to establish a social context for English as a second languageand to provide visual "texts" for deaf students.Post (1987) argues that videotapes of literary classics can become powerful allies of theteacher in the English classroom if used effectively. She adds that films allow theteaching of longer works that might otherwise be omitted or of controversial works thatmight be excluded from the curriculum. The example she gives is of TennesseeWilliams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Although it is definitely an adult film, its screenplaycontains none of the potentially objectionable material or language that appears in theoriginal play.

FILM CAN LINK DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES

Film can also be used in interdisciplinary studies. Krukones and several colleagues(1986) designed an interdisciplinary college-level course integrating political science,literature, and film to examine politics on the local, state, national, and internationallevels. Based on the premise that students too often sort information into categoriesdictated by the different courses they take, the authors developed the course to enablestudents to get from theoretical politics a clearer, practical meaning with broaderimplications. Such concepts are not easy for all students to grasp, but can be moreaffectively experienced when studied in the context of a political novel or movie.In Krukones's course, four novels and their analogous films correspond to particular

Page 2 of 7 ED300848 1988-00-00 Using Film, Video, and TV in the Classroom. ERIC DigestNumber 11.

ERIC Resource Center www.eric.ed.gov

political spheres: "The Last Hurrah" (local), "All the King's Men" (state), "Advise andConsent" (national), and "Fail-Safe" (international). Following an overview of a novel orfilm, specific scenes and passages are discussed and are related to real-world politics.Classes meet for 2 1/2 hours once a week, so that more than one discipline can bedealt with and sufficient time for movie viewing is available.

FILMS CAN SERVE VERY SPECIFIC COURSESAND UNITS

The range of courses in which film can play a major instructional role is wide. Forexample, White (1985) reported on the effective use of film in a college-level coursecalled "Women and Violence in Literature and Film"; Dyer (1987) developed asecondary-level mini-course on "Rural America in Film and Literature."Dyer's course encompasses nearly all the mass media forms. It begins with readings ofseveral classic short stories with rural settings by Willa Cather and John Steinbeck. Itproceeds by examining articles from the newspaper about farm issues and incidents,and then it has the students view the recent movies, "Country" and "The River," both ofwhich portray contemporary life on a farm. Next the students view a 27-minutetelevision documentary about three women farmers in Minnesota; and then the coursecontinues with the study of the recent best-selling novels, "The Beans of Egypt" and "InCountry." It concludes by having the students listen to several segments of the radioprogram "Lake Wobegon Days."

Rebhorn (1987) also uses Hollywood movies to enliven and enrich history classes, withthe conviction that film brings an immediacy and interest to historical events thatstudents often consider dull because they occurred long ago and faraway. Some of thefilms which she uses are "Inherit the Wind," "The Grapes of Wrath," "All the President'sMen," and "Reds."

Another example of more focused use of film and television in the classroom is found ina course on the Holocaust (Michalczyk, 1982). A review of Holocaust films yieldedmaterial in various popular genres--newsreels (both German and Allied),documentaries, fiction films, and TV docudramas; the value of the particular type ofmedia in teaching about the recent past was considered along with the content of eachpiece. Michalczyk had Holocaust survivors and educators evaluate the diverse films andtheir potential for teaching the Holocaust as an historical event with profoundimplications for humanity; and their reactions and experiences were incorporated intothe course material.

FILMS CAN TARGET AND MOTIVATE WRITING

Boyd and Robitaille (1987) offer suggestions for using the popular mass media togenerate topics for a composition workshop designed for the college writer but



adaptable for secondary school students. They concentrate on advertising images butalso use movies, monthly magazines, and television series to help foster critical thinkingwhile writing. The work-shop is built around a sequence of analogies between whatstudents already know experientially as viewers of film and television and what theyneed to know as writers of essays.Another approach to teaching college composition classes (Masiello, 1985) organizesbrainstorming sessions around themes from popular movies--for example, talking aboutfamily relationships as portrayed in "Breaking Away," "The Deer Hunter," "TheGodfather," "Saturday Night Fever," and "Terms of Endearment." He finds that the filmviewing helps students learn to observe carefully and often results in sharper writingskills.

Moss (1987) uses the lowly, elemental daytime soap opera as a vehicle for teachingremedial writing in the SEEK program in New York City colleges. Using a VCR so thateveryone can watch the episode at the same time (and filling in gaps in plot lines byreading "Soap Opera Digest"), he begins by asking the students to write on the mostelementary level. The assignment is intended to tap into their passionate devotion to"the soaps"--which characters do they like the best, the least, and why? Then the classmembers discuss the acting and begin to impose certain critical criteria on the material.A short lesson on genres establishes appropriate aesthetic categories, and the studentscan begin to dissect the narrative in a composition.

Jeremiah (1987) outlines an instructional model for using television news anddocumentaries for writing instruction in the secondary and postsecondary classroom.He believes that the structure and content of news presentations mirrors the practice ofessay writing, and thus can serve as a writing project that effectively serves instruction.

A step-by-step examination of a selected TV program can be undertaken in a singleclass period, using the following strategies: 1) as a warm-up mechanism, the teacherintroduces the writing skill (for example, to provide information or to persuade); 2)students are allowed time for questions and comments; 3) the news segment ordocumentary is shown; 4) students produce an outline for the news report they will writein response to the stimulus; and 5) the outlines are assessed for organization. Theoutlines are collected at the end of the class period to minimize any external influences;and the students produce a full-length essay during the next class period, after theiroutlines have been returned.

The instruction using this model and the evaluation of the products that result shouldstress that the news treatment of a topic should include an introduction and adequatesupporting detail and explanation. If the aim is to persuade, the writing should includeadequate argumentation. Both formal and informal mechanisms should be used forevaluation, and the students should be given opportunity to revise.

A novel approach in the use of film in generating enthusiasm for writing in the


ERIC Resource Center www.eric.ed.gov

elementary grades is advocated by a librarian who sponsored a writing contest in which1,100 students participated (Simpson, 1982). She began by showing the classic shortFrench film without dialogue, "The Red Balloon." Students viewed the film and wereallowed two weeks to complete entries that included poems, short stories, or essaysexpressing any themes or experiences connected with the movie. Entries were judgedon the qualities of appeal and originality, and all the participants received certificates onHonors Day. The winners additionally received ribbons on their certificates.

The mass media are an integral part of the environment in which today's students learnto read, write, listen, speak, and make meaning of their lives. Thus a properly designedcourse of instruction can use media to channel a student's enthusiasm and route it to anacademically useful goal. The documents cited here are but a small sample of those inthe ERIC database illustrating how teachers can do that.

REFERENCES

Boyd, Veleda, and Robitaille, Marilyn. "Composition and

popular culture: From mindless consumers to critical writers," English

Journal, 76 (1), January 1987, pp. 51-53. Dyer, Joyce. "Rural America in film andliterature,"

English Journal, 76 (1), January 1987, pp. 54-57. Farmer, David L. "The VCR: 'Raiders'as a teaching

tool," English Journal, 76 (1), January 1987, p. 31. Gallagher, Brian. "Film study in theEnglish language

arts." In Report by the NCTE Committee on Film Study in the English

Language Arts, 1987. 23 pp. [ED 287 165] Jeremiah, Milford A. "Using television newsand documentaries

for writing instruction." Paper presented at the 38th

Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and

Communication, 1987. 13 pp. [ED 280 031] Krukones, Michael G., et al. "Politics infiction and film:

An introduction and appreciation. A team-taught course," 1986.

30 pp. [ED 280 086] Lovell, Jonathan H. "Where we stand." In Report on Film

Study in American Schools. Report by the NCTE Committee on Film Study



in the English Language Arts, 1987. 23 pp. [ED 287 165] Masiello, Frank. "The lessonsof popcorn." In Spielberger,

Jeffrey (Ed.), Images and Words: Using Film to Teach

Writing, 1985, pp. 56-59. 93 pp. [ED 260 393] Michalczyk, John J. "Teaching theHolocaust through film."

Paper presented at the Modern Language Association Meeting,

1982. 20 pp. [ED 240 011] Moss, Robert F. "The next episode: Soap operas as a bridge

to improved verbal skills," English Journal, 76 (1), January

1987, pp. 35-41. Post, Linda Williams. "Frankly, my dear," English Journal,

76 (1), January 1987, pp. 28-30. Rebhorn, Marlette. "Hollywood films as a teachingtool,"

1987. 6 pp. [ED 286 815] Simpson, Jeanette. "A writing contest? Why bother,"

Exercise Exchange, 26 (2), Spring 1982, pp. 47-48. White, Kathy. "Teaching aboutwomen and violence," 1985.

14 pp. [ED 268 528] ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication SkillsIndiana University 2805 East Tenth Street, Suite 150 Bloomington, IN 47408

This publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational Research andImprovement, U.S. Department of Education, under contract no. RI88062001.Contractors undertaking such projects under government sponsorship are encouragedto express freely their judgment in professional and technical matters. Points of view oropinions, however, do not necessarily represent the official view or opinions of theOffice of Educational Research and Improvement.

Title: Using Film, Video, and TV in the Classroom. ERIC Digest Number 11.Document Type: Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs)(071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073);Target Audience: Teachers, PractitionersDescriptors: Elementary Secondary Education, Films, Higher Education, InstructionalMaterials, Interdisciplinary Approach, Mass Media Role, Television, VideotapeRecordingsIdentifiers: ERIC Digests###


ERIC Resource Center

[Return to ERIC Digest Search Page]

www.eric.ed.gov

ED300848 1988-00-00 Using Film, Video, and TV in the Classroom. ERIC DigestPage 7 of 7Number 11.

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 423 689 FL 025 492

AUTHOR Casanave, Christine Pearson, Ed.; Simons, J. David, Ed.TITLE Pedagogical Perspectives on Using Films in Foreign Language

Classes. SFC Monograph #4.INSTITUTION Keio Univ., Fujisawa (Japan). Inst. of Languages and

Communication.ISSN ISSN-0918-1199PUB DATE 1995-05-00NOTE 97p.

PUB TYPE Collected Works Serials (022)EDRS PRICE MF01/PC04 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS Classroom Techniques; College Instruction; *Copyrights;

Critical Thinking; *Cultural Education; Film Study; *Films;Foreign Countries; Higher Education; InstructionalMaterials; Journal Writing; *Listening Skills; SecondLanguage Instruction; *Second Languages; Sex Role; SkillDevelopment; Sociocultural Patterns; Student Journals;*Student Projects; Thinking Skills; Videotape Recordings

IDENTIFIERS *Japan

ABSTRACTThis collection of articles on use of films in second

language instruction, particularly for teaching English as a second language(ESL) in Japanese colleges and.universities, includes: "Whole Movies andEngaged Response in the Japanese University ESL Classroom" (David P. Shea);"Films in English Class: Going Beyond a Content Approach" (Jeffrey Cady);"Learning by Collaboration and Teaching: A Film Presentation Project"(Christine Pearson Casanave, David Freedman); "Finding the Last Puzzle PieceThrough Conversion" (Yoko Shimizu); "The Value of Reading and Film Viewing inFostering Critical Thinking" (Sae Yamada); "The Listening-Viewing Diary in anAdvanced Listening/Speaking Class" (Naomi Fujishima); "The Portrayal of Womenin American Films: A Scenario for Misunderstanding" (Yoshiko Takahashi); "AnAnthropological Perspective on Films in the Language Class" (Thomas Hardy);and "Copyright Law and Video in the Classroom" (J. David Simons). (Individualpapers contain references) . (MSE)

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PEDAGOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON USING. yums INFOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSES

Christine Pearson Casanave and J. David Simons, Editors

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SFC 4

PEDAGOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON USING FILMS INFOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSES

Christine Pearson Casanave and J. David Simons, Editors

Sae Yamada, Assitant Editor

CONTRIBUTORS

Jeffrey CadyChristine Pearson Casanave

David FreedmanNaomi K. Fujishima

Thomas HardyDavid P. SheaYoko Shimizu

J. David SimonsYoshiko Takahashi

Sae Yamada

March 1995

(see also Journal Writing: Pedagogical Perspectives,C. P. Casanave, Ed., Keio University SFC Monograph #3)

i21114M**-AMER >

Table of Contents

Introduction ii

Whole Movies and Engaged Response in the Japanese University ESL Classroom 1

David P. Shea

Films in English Class: Going Beyond a Content Approach 18

Jeffrey Cady

Learning by Collaboration and Teaching: A Film Presentation Project 28

Christine Pearson Casanave and David Freedman

Finding the Last Puzzle Piece Through Conversion 40

Yoko Shimizu

The Value of Reading and Film Viewing in Fostering Critical Thinking 45

Sae Yamada

The Listening-Viewing Diary in an Advanced Listening/Speaking Class 52

Naomi K. Fujishirna

The Portrayal of Women in American Films: A Scenario for Misunderstanding 63

Yoshiko Takahashi

An Anthropological Perspective on Films in the Language Class 71

Thomas Hardy

Copyright Law and Video in the Classroom 78

J. David Simons

Author Biostatements 91

4

INTRODUCTION

Christine Pearson Casanave and J. David Simons

In preparing this monograph, eight teachers and two students came together in an

extraordinarily rewarding collaborative undertaking to produce a collection of papers on

various aspects of how and why we use films in classes of English as a foreign language.

When we began this project, we knew only that many of us used films in language

teaching and learning, and that as a theme for our mongraph, the topic of films would

thus allow a maximum number of people to contribute essays to the volume. However,

we did not expect the rich variety of perspectives, approaches, and writing styles that

now characterize the finished publication. As a result of this variety, the monograph has

surpassed our expectations in terms of interest, quality, and value to readers. It is a

collection that has something for everyone--for those who use films primarily as cultural

content and those who use them as linguistic resources; for those who want to know how

films can be used in classes to those who want to know how students respond to films as

they are used in those classes.

Some of the papers address common or complementary issues. We have grouped

these papers together so that they may be read in sequence, if readers so desire. The first

two papers, for example, deal with two different views on the question of how films can

be used in the language class. David Shea argues persuasively that films are best used

holistically, as content for critical thinking. Not fully convinced by the point of view

presented in Shea's paper, Jeff Cady struggles with the issue of whether to use films

primarily as content or as resources for focused language instruction. Christine Casanave

and David Freedman then describe a film presentation project for their intermediate

English students in which films were used holistically to help students learn to view films

critically and to present their views to a real audience. While the authors remain

committed to a holistic use of films, they also recognize the need to provide students with

sufficient language support to complete the tasks that teachers assign.

The next two papers look at the holistic use of film in the language class from the

student's perspective. The positions taken in the two student essays represent two (of

potentially many) different responses, and remind readers that students do not respond in

uniform ways to films as the primary source of content. Yoko Shimizu did have a

positive experience, describing a "conversion" experience that changed her from a person

who viewed films solely as entertainment to one who now views films as texts to be

5li

engaged with at deeper analytical and personal levels. Sae Yamada, on the other hand,

found that the way films were used in her English class could not engage her mind in

critical and imaginative thinking to the same extent that reading does. In a less holistic,

more narrowly focused approach to film in the English class, practicing teacher, Naomi

Fujishima describes how she experimented with a "listening-viewing diary." In this

technique, students make notes and presentations on specific short scenes from full-

length films. The author found both benefits and drawbacks to this technique for helping

students increase their knowledge of both linguistic and cultural aspects of the films.

In the next two essays, the authors discuss the ways that films do or do not lend

themselves to helping students increase their understanding of their own and others'

cultures. Yoshiko Takahashi analyzes the portrayals of women in several American

films, arguing that the messages in these films can easily be misinterpreted by Japanese

students, who evaluate the feminist issues in the films according to their own cultural

expectations. She cautions teachers to contextualize these films within a background of

information about Western culture. Thomas Hardy, on the other hand, finds that

American and Japanese films can productively be used to help students recognize the

stereotypes they hold about Americans, and to then reflect their new understanding back

on themselves. The result is not just that students learn something about American

culture, but that, more importantly, they come to know their own culture in more

perceptive and critical ways.

The monograph ends with a very practical look at the complex and little-understood

issue of copyright law regarding the use of film and video in the classroom. In a

discussion of the copyright laws in both Japan and the United States, David Simons takes

readers through a number of scenarios that classroom language teachers might face as

they prepare lessons using films and videos, noting the legal and ethical dilemmas that

arise.

This collection of essays in no way presumes to offer a complete picture of issues

concerning the place of films in foreign language teaching and learning. It does,

however, represent a variety of contrasting viewpoints that we hope will make readers

consider these and other issues in the context of their own teaching. The process of

writing and then reviewing each other's essays has done that for the authors who have

contributed to this monograph, and helped us appreciate the value of diversity in our

approaches to language teaching.

Ill

W OLE MOVIES AND ENGAGED RESPONSEIN THE JAPANESE UNIVERSITY ESL CLASS OOM

David P. She&

One of the definitive moments of clarity I've experienced as a teacher of English

occurred a couple of years ago when getting on an elevator. I'd just finished class and

was returning to my office with an arm full of papers and the video I was showing at the

time, Chariots of Fire. As I stepped onto the lift, I ran into a fellow teacher, a British

chap whom I'll call Nigel for the sake of argument.2 Nigel was holding in his hands a

copy of the video Tootsie. "Oh, so you're using movies too?" I asked, thinking to pick

up a few tips about using film in the ESL classroom. "Oh yes," he said, "but only for

five minutes."

"Five minutes?"

"Of course," he replied confidently. "ESL teachers too often misuse videos. They

simply turn on the television set and sit back to enjoy the movie. Students don't

understand the words and fail to grasp what's being said. They just watch the gestures

and scenery in the background and try to figure out what's going on without the

vocabulary or grammar or any linguistic features whatsoever. It goes in one eye and

comes out the other and doesn't even reach the ears!" Nigel chortled.

I was mortified. Nigel's description of irresponsible ESL methodology pretty well

summed up the way I had just run my class. Always susceptible to self-doubt, I thought

I'd better find out more about Nigel's view of language pedagogy, so I followed him out

of the elevator and into the teachers' room.

"I show a five minute segment of a video," he explained. "Then we review critical

vocabulary and expressions. Students answer comprehension questions about what

happened, or complete an information-gap exercise where half the class knows something

the other half doesn't. We talk about linguistic features such as register in the dialogue,

and students perform role plays where they work on features of intonation. Sometimes

they complete exercises utilizing relevant linguistic structures. After we fully analyze the

language used in one five minute segment, we watch the next selection, working our way

selectively through the movie."

1This paper is a substantially revised version of a presentation made at the SFC Symposium on Videosin the EFL Classroom, Keio University SFC, January, 1993. I am grateful to Yoshiko Takahashi for theoriginal invitation to participate in the conference, and to Chris Casanave and J. David Simons for theirmany helpful suggestions and criticisms during the revision process.

20riginally Nigel was a real person, but I have changed his name and put words in his mouth. He did,however, express reservations about the misuse of videos as we rode the lift.

1

There it was: a rigorous, linguistically oriented approach to learning English through

movies. What more could I say? My confidence shaken, I went home to think about my

approach to teaching. I also went to class the next day and asked my students what they

thought about my approach to teaching and, after a good deal of reflection, some more

questioning and a little research, I'm willing not only to admit I have continued using

"whole" full-length movies in my classroom over the past two years, but also to argue

that it's a reasonably good idea. It even serves, in some contexts, to facilitate successful

language acquisition, but of course that depends on what you mean by language

acquisition and why students go about the endeavor in the first place.

The Social Fabric of Language Education

In my own second language training, I come from grammatical stock. I was raised a

FALCON in the Cornell intensive program in Japanese,3 where ten hours of drill,

language lab, and study a day take students from zero to linguistic sixty in twelve

harrowing months. It's the only way to go, especially if you've got other things to do

and don't really mind teetering on the brink of exhaustion. The FALCON program is the

brainchild of Professor Eleanor Jorden, who has very clear ideas about using videos in

the language classroom. Jorden (1991), for example, believes that videos should be

(among other things) linguistically sound (i.e., structurally driven), ordered (i.e., based

on frequency), and "clean" (i.e., building on what has already been mastered), rather than

humorous skits where the focus is on a story instead of language. Full length movies are

out of the question. They aren't structurally driven, they're certainly not clean, and

there's no apparent linguistic order to the dialogue.

But FALCON is for high-flying language birds, intent on where they're going and

willing to sacrifice much of themselves (including most of their time) to get there. There

is also a "washout valve" (Schumann, 1978) which allows slow-moving slaggards who,

for one reason or other, don't work to be "flushed," so to speak, out of the program.

Moreover, most of Jorden's (1991) comments are focused on start-from-the-beginning

students, not the "false beginners" at Japanese universities who not only have already

extensively studied structural aspects of the language, but also routinely expect to pass

English whether they come to class and do any of the assignments or not. Not to mention

other overwhelming constraints on actually studying English at the university: two hour a

day commutes to campus on crowded trains, eight to ten classes per semester, thirty five

to forty students per class, and so on.

3Callal FALCON for Far East Asian Language Concentration, presently directed by Robert Sukle.

2 8

Nigel reminds me somewhat of a baby FALCON, or perhaps a robin dressed in

falcon feathers. That is to say, on one hand Nigel wants to focus on language, its

structure and form, in the interests of successful and effective acquisition. On the other

hand, Nigel seems to be rigorously unprincipled about the linguistic aspects of the movies

he introduces, and he's willing to use entertainment as a teaching tool. Jorden argues that

serious language pedagogy and entertainment don't mix, which seems especially true for

learners at initial stages. Nigel appears to be sitting on a theoretical fence, as robins are

wont to do, between movie aficionados in their ground-floor seats and falcons circling

high in the rarefied linguistic air above.

Although I too feel that a clean, structurally driven approach is probably the most

efficient and linguistically sound way to use videos in the ESL language classroom, I

don't feel that it's necessarily the most appropriate pedagogy in every context of study.

There are obviously other contexts imaginable, such as my freshmen and sophomore

Japanese university students who have already studied a good deal of English grammar in

rather artificial, test-driven situations, and who have some very definite, though not

always congenial ideas about what English is and where they stand in personal relation to

it. A grammar-centric approach is inherently based on small classes of highly motivated,

begin-at-the-beginning students with a lot of time on their hands to do things like devote

much of it to study.

The issue is not simply that the structure of the curriculum in Japanese universities

doesn't allow for rigorous, efficient, intensive language practice. The issue primarily

concerns the six to seven year odyssey Japanese students typically make through the

hellishly intricate grammatical maze that's called English education in this country. Some

have gone so far as to compare the effort to battling the monster Godzilla (McCornick,

1992). By the time they enter the university, most Japanese students have already

memorized, if not learned, a good deal of English grammar and vocabulary, even though

in most cases they can't articulate that fact themselves. We must be careful, then, about

assuming that language acquisition takes place in a sterile vacuum which involves

linguistic ability measured on a test, unaffected by extraneous variables such as the social

fabric in which English is woven. It is critical to recognize that language study is not

simply about the linguistic facts of English, especially when much of language is not

about linguistics anyway, but about culturally situated thoughts, ideas, and feelings

which are related to things that might be best defined as the social world. From the

student point d view, however, English has few moorings in the social nature of

communication. Language study is more often anchored in a berth of alienating

frustration.

3

Input, Interest, and Responsive Engagement

A case can be made (though neither Nigel nor Professor Jorden would likely make it)

that popular films provide extensive exposure to new linguistic expressions that can be

acquired in the process of trying to understand communicative messages. Krashen

(1982), for one, makes this kind of argument. He might describe movies in terms of

providing "mass quantities" of interesting input which, if more or less comprehensible to

students, can be acquired in the course of trying to understand wilat's going on and

what's being said. Watching movies, students are exposed to new idioms and

vocabulary items, different accents and rhythms, as well pragmatic routines (both

formulaic and otherwise) of doing things with words. But even if this natural account of

language acquisition is true, it is only half the story (if that much) of what I'm trying to

accomplish in English class by using films.

Actually, I use popular movies as much to stimulate interest in English as to provide

input of pragmatic and linguistic features of the language to be learned. Movies are

narratives that, like literature (and even, in fact, conversation), tell a story about the

world, presenting imaginative slices of reality, mini-worlds in which viewers are invited

to enter and take part. In the case of popular movies,4 the dynamics of the narrative are

intriguing and compelling to many people, not just English teachers who are paid to be

compelled about language and indeed go so far as to spend their spare time thinking about

it. The popular movie is a proven hit, an intrinsic motivator guaranteed to capture the

attention spans of even large groups of ordinary people, and it is this arresting act of

arousal which can draw jaded university students into the "world" of English as a second

language, thus transforming it from an alien, dusty academic subject into a matter of

personal significance worthy of attention, engagement, and sometimes even excitement.

In other words, the emotional wallop of film serves to stimulate responsive engagement,

which is at the heart of authentic communication, even though it's characteristically absent

in the traditional English classroom.

I don't completely reject the notion of attention to form as a component of language

acquisition (e.g., van Lier, 1989; Schmidt, 1994). I admit that I do ask students to

approach the story as language students, to watch the movie, for example, with their

hands as well as their brains, taking notes on word use, recording unfamiliar vocabulary

and expressions, in addition to noticing various aspects of the literary structure of the

41 would distinguish between popular movies and vapid movies without substance. That is, I would admitthat some movies, though popular would not be appropriate for an ESL class. While beauty is admittedlyin the eye of the beholder, I exclude gratuitous violence and pornography from use in class.

4 1 0

narrative.5 And as an orientational prop before the movie begins, I often present general

background information that includes such relevant details as the names of central

characters, the time frame and location where the action takes place, and a broad overview

of major themes. I also ask leading questions. For example, I might say, "Do you like

rock music? You know the Beatles, of course. But did you know that the Beatles were

influenced by Black music from America?" in order to introduce the concept of "Soul" in

The Commitments, which is a story about Irish working-class lads who play the music of

African Americans because they consider themselves the "Niggers of Europe."

However, my central focus is not a unidirectional concern with stimulating interest,

whether it's in the service of comprehending the general meaning of a communicative

message or noticing the grammatical structure of linguistic form. In either case, such an

approach captures only part of what it means to develop fluency (or "literacy") in English

the second language. To stop there would be, in effect, to adopt the transmission model

of pedagogy Freire (1970) has called "banking" education. Students aren't empty

receptacles into which teachers rich in knowledge transfer facts and information, making

linguistic deposits into mental bank accounts. Even though the transmission model of

education is widely accepted, perhaps even expected, in Japan, it's important to avoid the

recipient way students are positioned in discussions of language "acquisition" as

consumers of language merchandise, as if they were accumulating fashionable vocabulary

apparel and grammatical accessories.

In addition to engagement as stimulated interest in English, I want to emphasize the

active, dynamically productive character of response when language is approached as a

form of social activity in the world. In other words, language "acquisition" is located in

active, creative response to what other people say (both in conversation and in film), and

that's where it derives its energy (and "success," too). Through articulating what they

think and expressing their feelings and opinions, students "acquire" language by making

it their own and using it to understand what's going around around them.

It's not easy to make sense of the world, and not just because inscrutable government

bureaucrats and crooked politicians devise arcane rules and obstruct citizens' rights.

Sense making is an inherently dynamic and creative activity that requires the expressive

articulation of ideas and opinions. Even to understand the phrase, "Mary had a little

lamb," for example, requires an active, engaged construction of ideas. Unless the context

is defined, it's impossible to say what the words mean, whether Mary cared for a sheep,

5There's no need to restrict language acquisition to word-level skills and knowledge of grammaticalstructure. Interpreting a cultural text, whether an artistic production or daily conversation, also requires anunderstanding of such "literary" elements is theme, symbolization, imagery, which are critical to graspthe full nuance of what is being conveyed.

5

1 1

ate a meat dish, or gave birth to a meek child.6 And such semantic shenanigans only hint

at the dynamic complexity of the response required to "understand" what the word "Stop"

might mean in the first scene of the movie Boyz N the Hood when Tre Stiles and his

elementary school classmates walk past the one-way street sign. No text, whether a short

phrase or a whole movie, means anything apart from our active engagement in articulating

what it means, which is point of Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia and the multivocality

of all utterances (Voloshinov, 1973). The interaction between the audience (in this case,

students) and the text (in this case, movies) serves to tells us what the movie "says" and

what it "means." Without this interaction, without the dynamic engagement of the learner

producing his or her own interpretation of the text, there is no communication. Arguably,

there is no language learning either.

Strong arguments have been made for the value of production in second language

acquisition. In Swain's (1986) formulation of "comprehensible output," distinguished

from Krashen's (1982) more passive notion of comprehensible input, second language

students are thought to need a "push" beyond a loose, general "understanding" of the gist

of communicative messages. Without the nudge to explicitly articulate thoughts, feelings,

and opinions, Swain tells us, students can fail to notice the linguistic means of

expression, such as the syntactic structure, which in turn works to improve accuracy and

thus (the argument goes) develop fluency:

[11roducing in the target language may be the trigger that forces the learner to payattention to the means of expression needed in order to successfully convey his orher own intended meaning. (Swain, 1986, p.249)

While I find that, in some respects (i.e., the respects about productive expression

being central to developing second language fluency) I agree with this formulation, I

think there is a need to more fully recognize the social role of communicative activity in

production. I have particular doubts about the phrase "intended meaning," which sounds

very rational and fixed. Since language doesn't exist for the transmission of chunks of

information between individual speakers, any message's meaning is situated within a

social relationship, where meaning is fluidly and creatively shaped according to the

dynamic quality of the audience's engagement. How a listener orients to a speaker

changes not only the meaning of what is said but also, in a sense, the kind of person

saying it. Although this joint, cooperative character of language use is often overlooked

by individualistic capitalists who have no interest whatsoever in sharing anything with

other people, the heteroglossic, collaborative character of communication reminds us that

6The example is adapted from Ede lsky (1992, pp.99-100).

1 26

the acquisition of ESL "fluency" (or ability) cannot be divorced from the contexts of

interaction because language itself is generated there. That is why comprehending what a

movie (or a novel or a person) is saying involves far more than the composite of

vocabulary words and correct grammatical structure. That is also why resolutely

focusing on these components of language, rather than the movie, can be such a

deadening, incomprehensible endeavor for so many students trapped in university ESL

classrooms.

Classroom Practice

The concrete response to Nigel remains: "How do I use whole movies in English

class?"

Typically, when I show a film, I stop midway (partly because movies are ordinarily

120 minutes or longer in length and classes are only 100. The movie simply won't fit in

one class). Then I ask students to make an entry in their notebooks, writing their

response to what they've seen or thought about as they watched the movie. In some

classes, I adopt an open-ended approach, asking students to write whatever response

comes to mind. I say, "Anything is fine: whatever you think, whatever you feel."

Sometimes, though, especially when students appear unsure and reluctant to respond, I

use a list of questions adapted from a handout by Robert Probst (see Appendix 1) to

stimulate thinking and elicit response.

In either case, my primary concern is with the content of a message, with what the

students have to say, and I emphasize fluency far more than accuracy, if I mention

accuracy at all. In large part, the purpose of response at this stage, both spoken and

written, is to break the ice and stimulate thinking, allowing students to explore relevant

issues freely, without concern for spelling or grammar or other standards of conventional

style. The primary goal is to invigorate student brains, which too often seem frozen in

permafrost, incapable of generating ideas much longer than single sentences.7 Stiff,

naked opinions need to be warmed up and clothed in persuasive explanations of example,

argument, and illustration, which I often try to initiate by asking, "What do you mean?"

or "Why do you think so?" I use other comments, appreciation ("That's a good idea!"),

extension ("From a related point of view...") and even challenging critique ("What about

this aspect, how would it fit in?") with much the same purpose.

71 hold to the opinion that this reluctance is due more to experience in high-pressure test-driven highschool English classes engendering passivity, than to any cognitive inability or lack of linguistic skill.

713

A major pedagogic battle, then, is ideological, waged in the contest over the definition

of the activity and to what purpose students talk in English and put pens to ESL paper. I

want students to recognize that they're communicating to someone about something; at

the same time, I want them to recognize that, in relation to their classmates, they are that

someone and that something is important and worthy of attention, not simply a matter of

required performance for the teacher's evaluation based on notions of formal accuracy or

prescriptive style.

Since by training, many Japanese students of English feel more comfortable writing

their thoughts and opinions than articulating them orally, the journal entry is also a chance

to crystallize ideas, giving students a self-constructed scaffold which will later support

oral discussion and contributions to small group as well as large class interaction.

After the preliminary journal entry, I ask students to divide into small groups of four

or five, where they take turns expressing their impressions and opinions, talking about

aspects of the movie they find interesting, or perhaps about aspects of their own

experience they find relevant. Depending on the class and individual personalities, this

group work often generates an excited babble of talk, and the talk is primarily in English,

even in "lower level" classes (though I do have to remind people once in a while not to

lapse into Japanese). After everyone has had a turn to talk, I generally ask one or two

members of each group (or as many people as time and attentions spans permit) to stand

at their desks and make an oral summary, either of their own contribution or their group's

discussion, to the class. My job is to reply to that response, and it is an important job.

I try not to correct linguistic errors, even when I hear them, but to respond to the

substance of the ideas, focusing on content in a way consistent with techniques used by

teachers who employ journals as communicative tools in the ESL classroom (e.g.,

Casanave, 1993). First, I try to encourage and support student production while resisting

the urge to take control of the talk or ask "known-answer" questions which only lead

students to confirm what I already may know and want to hear. Second, I respond to

what students say using interactive discourse strategies of engaged response: summary,

clarification, restatement, extension, and so on. By doing things like noticing ideas,

asking for more explanation, extending important implications, and pressing for

clarification, I am engaging with students as an authentic partner in a joint, scaffolded

construction of talk (see Cazden, 1989; Palincsar, 1986; Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976 for

discussions of scaffolding). I am also demonstrating a wide range of discourse practices,

from vocabulary words and grammatical structures to interactional patterns and pragmatic

routines, as well as interpretive approaches to texts, which students, through their own

engagement in the interaction, can appropriate as their own (Donato, 1994). Through this

scaffolded interaction, students can also develop a sense of the discourse community in

8 14

which they are a part, and the voices of their classmates with whom they are talking.

Then I ask students to go home (or to the computer lab) and write their ideas in a two

page (500 word) journal, or informal essay, by which I mean that I want students to

speak from their own experience in everyday, conversational language, writing as if they

were talking to a friend and trying to explain what they're thinking. Although some

students spend a considerable amount of time and effort on these journals, with multiple

revisions and careful computer spell-checks, other students seem to dash them off in one

unmodified, last minute sitting the night before it's due. Regardless, I guarantee all

essays an "A" if they are long enough, 100% the student's own words, and submitted on

time. Interestingly, and rather paradoxically, I found that not only the stylistic flair but

also the accuracy of the writing actually improved from one semester to the next when I

instituted this guaranteed grade policy. In spite of my nearly total lack of attention to

features of correctness (apart from insisting that everyone run a spell check program and

put two spaces after a period), the writing is often clean, sharp, and vivid, with a

resonant authorial voice and sometimes surprising insights.

In the next class, students exchange their essays with up to three or four people.

They read each other's writing and then write their own response in the margins or the

bottom of the page.

At this point, I collect the papers and take them home to read. As I proceed through

the essays, I also respond in the margins, sometimes asking for clarification, sometimes

expressing surprise or agreement, sometimes posing questions, sometimes making a

related comment on the topic being discussed. At the bottom of the page, I add a slightly

more extended reply. In my written responses, I try to follow the same principle of

scaffolding engagement that I use to respond to student talk in class, with a primary focus

on the content of ideas.

Then I give the papers back. Until now, that was the end of it, more or less, though

it shouldn't be. First, in order to be more effective (and more naturally engaged), I think

I need to deepen the texture of the interaction by letting students respond again to my

comments. That is, I will hand the essays back to students and ask them to respond in

turn to my comments as they revise what they've written for more clarity,

persuasiveness, thoroughness, and so on. In this way, the focus on critical ideas, jointly

negotiated among the students and the teacher, will drive the further development of

communicative skills. Second, I'm sure that this kind of exchange needs to be more

vigorously integrated into a student publication program. As Yoko Shimizu reports in

this volume, her class produced a collection of response essays on film, which we

distributed to class members and the school library. This kind of publication, which

makes the connection between the classroom writer and the real world reading audience

9

even clearer, should be a regular, institutionally sustained feature of every English class.

Student Voices

Another question remains. How much English do students learn engaging in this

kind of classroom activity, focused on an engaged response to whole movies? Would

they learn more from Nigel perhaps?

I have to admit that I'm not sure and, though it may sound rather irresponsible, I'm

not sure I want to find out either. Students would have to be tested and, aside from not

wanting to spend already limited class time on non-productive evaluation, tests are not

accurate measures of the kind of learning (or, rather, activity) I'm talking about. The

joint scaffolding of conversational and journal interaction is not measured on most testing

instruments. Fluency of expression and a focus on ideas and feelings is not usually

recognizzd either. In fact, tests are a big part of the original problem, because

communication is inherently fluid and the degree of its success depends largely on what

the participants bring to it and in turn expect to receive. Alternative testing measures are

called for, ones which include such factors as attitudes toward language use, confidence

in expressing ideas and experiences, fluency and the persuasiveness of ideas, quality of

engagement and participation, and so on. These aspects of language use are not easy to

measure.

It also depends on what we mean by "English," too. When language is defined as a

kind of social practice carried out in contexts of use, the context of sitting at a table

making grammaticality judgments fails to help the student much and usually bolsters only

the self-esteem of the test-giving scientist. Taking tests is generally alienating for

everyone but students who get good marks anyway, which brings us full circle back to

the examination grind (some call a battle with Godzilla) leading up to entering the

university in the first place.8

What I do know, though, is what students say, and for the purposes of this paper,

I've collected a few excerpts from recent class journals.9 These selections come from a

"low-level" class full of young men who were generally good at sports but quite sceptical

about English (for good reason in many cases, given their spartan training in the formal

8For an insightful critique of the perils of testing and biased conceptions of reading and writing,particularly the tendency to trivialize "context-specific activity" and standardize interpretation, see Ede !sky(1992, pp.141-153).

91 have edited the excerpts slightly, correcting spelling and typographical features for ease of reading.

10 16

intricacies of English leading up to the university entrance exam). For present purposes,

I will call them class B (for basement). The excerpts included here, however,

demonstrate an engagement in the communicative use of English, both in terms of

interested excitement, as well as the active production of personally relevant

interpretations of meaning and action in the world. Though a wide range of opinions are

evident, the comments nevertheless suggest (to me, at least) that a Nigelian focus on

English rather than movies, might well only serve to increase the scepticism toward

second language study, which arguably played a roll in originally having the students

assigned to a low level class.

The students are responding to the movie Field of Dreams:

This story made me think about "What is my dream?" and more things "What amI doing?" and "Do I really find what my heart really want to do." Concerningabout my recently life, I noticed that I did not have any serious things to do.

Hitoshi

I don't usually like watching movies, because I am bored ... to sleep at last. So Ihave been to watching movies only 3-4 times. Of course, I don't like watchingrental video. But I like watching movies at English classes very much. Becauseafter I watch the movie once you [Mr Shea] explain substances of the movie ineasy understanding English. I can understand substances of the movie. - Shinji

Seeing this movie, maybe many people cry. And I realize that everybody has"Field of Dreams" in his or her mind. I think this story is excellent! and thismovie hit homer on our mind! - Hiroaki

We can tell about human relations as a metaphor of Catch Ball. Ray's fatherthrew a ball as a expectation to Ray, but Ray refused to catch it when he wasseventeen, and his father died. But at the end of the movie, he could catched theball that his father threw to him... Ray's father felt pain when Ray [doesn't returnthe ball], and at the same time, Ray himself would felt pain, unconsciously. Thispain would turn into he Voice, and talk to him. Tagiru

Hitoshi makes the connection between the film's theme and his own dreams and

reality, while Shinji points out how he typically doesn't watch video movies, but given

the chance provided in class, he was able not only to appreciate the movie but also have a

positive experience in English. What strikes me about Hiroaki's comment is his use of

metaphoric image, which is the spark of interesting composition. And Tagiru's

identification of the pain of separation between father and son with the mysterious Voice

heard in the cornfield is insightful and perceptive, demonstrating his sensitivity to the

story's thematic timbre. Each student's focus of attention is different, and what they see

and hear in the movie resonates with their own experiences and ideas, but this is the locus

of engagement, where language becomes an essential tool of critical thought and a matter

of relevance for the students.

11 ,...,

(

I confess that I am not walking around in my underwear by presenting these

excerpts.10 Even though B class is a "low" level group, these are the better students, the

basement elite, and I have picked journals to which I responded positively. Yet you can

certainly see the students' underwear in the form of their less than perfect grammar and

stilted expressions. At the same time, their mistakes are outweighed by the depth of the

ideas and the quality of the engagement, by the sincerity of opinion and critical reflection.

Given time and authentic participation in scaffolded interaction, these students would

certainly develop their language fluency.

An important aspect of response is, naturally, what students themselves think, so I

asked them. I asked B class, "Do you think it's useful to show movies in your class as

we've done this semester?"11 Most said yes, though for various reasons. Many focused

on the entertainment value of film, expressing their sense of relief that English could

actually be fun. Some pointed out how movies present the cultural context of language

use, while others commented on how the narrative helps situate understanding:

Of my experiences studying English at this university, using movies has been themost meaningful. This is because through the media of film, I can get directlyinto English and know the culture of the country where English is spoken as anative language... The best point was probably that we could enjoy ourselves aswe studied English. I could understand a little of the enjoyment of studyingEnglish.

I think it is very enjoyable to use movies in the English class. Very enjoyable. Icould hear interesting lectures and learn living English. I want you to continue.

Through movies, you can enjoy English. It's the most enjoyable way to studyEnglish I've experienced.

Watching movies, you can see the gestures and facial expressions, so it helps tounderstand the dialog. I studied a good deal of grammar in high school, and Idon't want to repeat the same kind of class. Even if I don't understand all thegrammar and vocabulary of the movie, I think I will develop my listeningcomprehension.

To use English movie is very interested for me. I do not like study aboutgrammar, because it is so difficult and not so useful thing. So in high school, Idid not like English. But now I think I like English, and I can write <...> not sofear about English grammar. I think this writing has many problem, but I canwrite this by English.

I think that using videos is a very good way to teach, because you can learn

10As Robert Sukle, one of my Japanese professors, used to say in regard to being self-conscious aboutone's language use in front of outside observers.

111 told students not to write their names (some did anyway) and that they could write in Japanese if theypreferred. Nearly everyone wrote in Japanese, and all the names are fabricated. Translations are my own.

1812

English along with the excitement as you are drawn into the movie's world andbegin to follow its story.

The material which the teacher prepared (the transcript) helped. At my level,watching videos without subtitles is still too difficult and has no meaning. Fieldof Dreams has many abstract problems so it is a very hard to understand movie, Ithink. But it is good to use [in class] because the content of the story captures ourinterest.

Not every comment, however, is positive. Some students doubted the effectiveness

of using movies as instructional texts, since they couldn't understand all the words all the

time. They felt they relied too much on visual images and guesswork about the dialogue.

And, related to this criticism, some students pointed to the extra effort required to deal

with movies directly, without subtitles to figure out what's going on, even though they

admit that perhaps they ought to go so far as to make the effort:

I didn't understand the content of the story. It's better to have the Japanesesubtitles.

In general, watching movies is not useful. If you don't watch a scene over andover, you can't remember the expressions. To learn English from a movie, youhave to watch it on your own many times.

While my effort [to study] was insufficient, I also feel that in one respect, Icouldn't keep up with the dialogue [tuite ikenakatta men ga alto].

Partly in response to these kinds of comments, I've taken to showing only films

which have Japanese subtitles.

Some students pointed out how useful movies can be since they provide background

information about the interaction, which helps them better understand the natural give and

take of spoken language.

Usually, we have few opportunities to hear natural English, so my ear is notaccustomed to it. I think, "Okay, I'll listen" or "I'll talk," but it doesn't turn outthe way I expect, so by using movies in class, my ear becomes tuned and I learnhow conversation proceeds.

I cannot learn its intonation from the book. I cannot learn the timing we must sayfrom its book.

I recognize that it's not always advisable to listen to students. Every comment

depends on its context and motivation and, while every student writes an opinion, some

students are motivated to study and others are motivated to drink, socialize, and read

comic books. And a distinction should probably be made between a nineteen year old's

heart of hearts, and the heart on his or her sleeve. In their heart of hearts, most college

13

19

ESL students really do want to learn English, but in the heart on their sleeve, they seem

reluctant to sacrifice the amount of blood the task requires. But overall, I think students'

positive response to film is a critical component of motivation and engagement in

language study.

Conclusion

I have to admit that, in the end, I have no solid proof I'm right and Nigel's wrong. I

recognize that all positions can be deconstructed and their contradictions pointed out,

including the classroom practice of responsive engagement to whole movies (see Jeff

Cady's article in this volume, for example). As stated above, pedagogic success depends

on one's point of view and definition of language. I do think it a valid question to ask

whether students benefit from spending forty or more hours a semester under my

tutelage. But my doubts are tempered by a theoretical recognition of the primacy of

motivation (or orientation) in learning and the necessity of student response. And my

worry that I'm not doing enough instruction about language is not as strong as my

conviction that a responsive engagement with real stories serves to drive language

learning and acquisition of the skills Nigel is spending most of his time teaching. I

believe that using whole movies, based on a response-based engagement with ideas and

opinions, is not a pedagogical cop-out but a theoretically and empirically sound path to

follow in the ESL college classroom. In the end, I find that I can't accept the structuralist

neglect of the central importance of aesthetic and authentic narrative, even if it is made in

the name of accuracy and efficiency.

A closing illustration: when my B class was watching the last scene of Field of

Dreams, a movie which no matter how many times I watch, invariably brings me to tears,

I had to look out the window and think when Ray asked his dad, who had come back

from the grave to play baseball on the field Ray had built, if he wanted to play catch. The

movie ends with this scene, and when the classroom lights came on, I was shocked but

partly relieved to see a significant number of teary faces in the room among the students.

I didn't want to count how many faces in front of everyone, and besides, I was busy

trying maintain my own composure, but I thought that if response is a critical element in

narrative, then many of the students had constructed a profound and moving story. If I

had cut up the movie into five minute segments, focusing on the linguistic structure and

the form of the language, the students might never have recognized the emotional force

and narrative dynamic of the video as a story about important things in the human

experience, aesthetic and ethical things like dreams, imagination, and commitment; things

that drive language and ultimately stimulate students to learn it in the first place.

14

20

References

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Casanave (Ed.), Journal writing: Pedagogical perspectives. (pp. 95-115). Fujisawa,

Japan: Keio University SFC Institute of Languages and Communication.

Monograph No. 3

Cazden, C. (1989). Classroom discourse. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Donato, R. (1994) Collective scaffolding in second language learning. In J. Lantolf & G.

Appel (Eds.), Vygotskian approaches to second language research. (pp. 33-56).

Norwood, NJ: Ablex

Edelsky, C. (1992). With literacy and justice for all: Rethinking the social in language

and education. London: Falmer Press.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Jorden, E. (1991). The use of interactive video in the learning of Japanese. In B. Freed

(Ed.), Foreign language research in the classroom. (pp. 384-392). Lexington, MA:

D.C. Heath.

Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Oxford:

Pergamon.

MacGowan-Gilhooly, A. (1991). Fluency first: Reversing the traditional ESL sequence.

Journal of Basic Writing 10(1), 73-87.

McCornick, A. (1993). Journal writing and the damaged language learner. In C.

Casanave (Ed.), Journal writing: Pedagogical perspectives (pp. 6-17). Fujisawa,

Japan: Keio University SFC Institute of Languages and Communication.

Monograph No.3

Palincsar, A. (1986). The role of dialogue in providing scaffolded instruction.

Educational Psychologist 2111, 73-98.

Schmidt, R. (1994). Consciousness, learning, and interlanguage pragmatics. In G.

Kasper & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics (pp. 21-42). New

York: Oxford University Press.

Schumann, J. (1978). The acculturation model for second-language acquisition. In R. C.

Gingras (Ed.), Second language acquisition and foreign language teaching.

Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: some roles of comprehensible input and

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van Lier, L. ( 1989). The classroom and the language teacher: Ethnography and second-

language classroom research. New York: Longman.

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Voloshinov, V. (1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language. Cambridge, MA:

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Appendix 1Talking to a Story12

1. What is your first reaction to the movie? (i.e., what are your emotions?)

2. Do you think the movie is a good one or not? Why do you think so?

3. Does the movie remind you of any things in your life, such as sights, sounds, or

feelings?

4. Does the movie suggest any thoughts or ideas?

5. What sort of person do you imagine the author to be?

6. Do you feel involved with the movie? Or distant from it?

7. What questions do you have after watching the movie?

8. What image or picture was called to mind by the movie?

9. What is the most important point of the movie?

10. What is the most difficult thing to understand about the movie?

12. Does the movie remind you of another story? What are the similarities and

differences?

13. Is there something else about this story not on this list?

12Adapted from a handout by Robert Probst (n.d.), Dialog with a text

FILMS IN ENGLISH CLASS: GOING BEYOND A CONTENTAPPROACH

Jeffrey Cady

I recently was asked to help out with two film classes planned by some of my

colleagues at Keio University, Fujisawa. In the course of the term, I came to realize how

much my own approach to using films in class is shaped by my background teaching

English in a rather conventional (if communicative) syllabus. I tend to use films in most

ways the same way I do textbook tapes, publishers' video materials or TV news stories.

My emphasis is on understanding (at least to some extent) the language of the films. I

felt, however, that my colleagues at Keio were largely ignoring the films as listening

material and taking an approach much closer to the way I would expect them to teach a

film course in an American or British University. As it turned out, their expectations for

the course were more than linguistic (see Casanave and Freedman in this volume) but the

course started me thinking about whether a purely content-based approach to films was

better than the one I had always used. When I was asked to contribute to this monograph

as well, I found I had to go back to the books and look again at the theory behind both the

use of listening materials in class and content based language teaching.

Theoretical Trends Supporting the Use of Films in English Class

Since the seventies, and the interest created by Stephen Krashen's emphasis on the

importance of input in language learning, the attention in the classroom to listening for its

own sake has increased, and there has certainly been a shift in the kinds of recorded

support materials used. During my own career the main published recorded materials

available have changed from audio-lingual drills to relatively naturalistic studio dialogues

and I see ever increasing use of various kinds of "authentic" recordings among my

colleagues, including unscripted dialogues and discussions and recordings originally

produced for native speakers: radio news, dramas, television entertainments and even

complete films.1 Despite the occasional protests of those students that prefer the

"easier", scripted, slow-spoken, pre-digested, traditional dialogues, the trend in listening

materials seems to be clearly toward sampling reality in one form or another.

At the same time that listening materials have been moving more toward the real

world, for a number of years theorists in second language acquisition have supported the

1The widespread availability of cheap audio and video technology in recent decades has certainlycontributed to this. For the legal aspects of this trend, see Simons in this volume.

2 48

notion that the best way of studying a foreign language may in fact be to study something

else in that language. In the 70s, H.G. Widdowson, among others, proposed that

students of English should be taught through "the other subjects on the school

curriculum" (Widdowson, 1978, p.16). His concern was that much teaching at that time

was based on the teaching of language usage, "the citation of words and sentences as

manifestations of the language system" as opposed to language use, "the way the system

is realized for normal communicative purposes" (Widdowson 1978, p.18). We were

teaching about language rather than how to do language and what we were teaching

about language wasn't even the whole story. Students were learning how nouns and

verbs were joined together properly, but not how they were used to deal with the world.

Widdowson observed that a usage approach dealt with language only at the level of word

or sentence, while it was becoming more and more evident that this was not sufficient to

explain (nor, probably to teach) language use. In the last couple of decades, both

teachers and language theorists have been forced to acknowledge the importance of

discourse considerations, the larger contexts that give meaning to grammar and

vocabulary. Many have accepted the importance to language teaching of cohesion, genre,

the mechanics of conversational interaction and other aspects of "communicative

competence" (e.g. Brown, 1980; Savignon, 1983). Some have gone so far as to assert

that practicing particular elements of language is either essentially useless or at least is less

effective than learning through some kind of actual communication2 .

In recent years we've seen two areas of practice emerge directly from the insights of

Widdowson and the other theorists. On the one hand, content classes mostly avoid the

issue of explicit teaching of language. In fact, research (reviewed by Ellis, 1994) seemed

to show that traditional approaches to explaining or drilling particular points of grammar

are problematic or don't work. These findings together with the complexity of the

discourse view of language, may have initially discouraged some people from hoping that

a similarly explicit approach would work any better at the discourse level. Content

teaching offered a straightforward way of introducing natural use into the classroom.

On the other hand, many teachers, unwilling to abandon teaching language directly,

have discovered that non-content communicative teaching of many sorts is possible and

in fact "communicative" has become a buzz-word for publishers of English language

materials. Simulations and information gap activities create a kind of real communication

in the classroom, skills training in reading, writing, speaking and listening give much

more attention to function and context than before. There is finally some research support

2Ellis (1994), cites Krashen (1982) for the stronger position, and Prabhu (1987), for the weaker. Morerecently, Krashen seems to have somewhat softened his position to allow the explicit teaching of someelements, if not grammar (Krashen, 1985). Ellis himself seems to support a modification of the weakerview (see below).

19 r

for the feeling of many teachers that carefully designed explicit teaching of language can

work (Ellis, 1994). Indeed, Widdowson allows that a use-based approach "does not

mean that exercises in particular aspects of usage cannot be introduced where necessary"

(Widdowson, 1978, p.19). He was making room for grammar practice, but "exercises"

no longer has to mean just audio-lingual drilling (communicative grammar teaching is

enjoying a certain amount of popularity lately), nor does focusing on particular aspects of

language have to mean studying grammar at all. It can mean studying appropriateness,

function or cultural differences or any other aspect of language in context. Though

Krashen rejected "fine tuning" of input (meaning trying to adapt input to focus on

particular grammatical points), he didn't reject every kind of intervention. On the

contrary, he regarded adjusting the level of difficulty, and giving attention to context

creating "comprehensible input" as essential (Krashen, 1987).3 Ellis (1994), after

surveying the current research reaches the (admittedly cautious) position that:

Facilitating selective attention by devising instructional activities that equiplearners with conscious rules, or that help them interpret the meanings ofspecific forms in the input, is both psycholinguistically feasible andpossible in practical terms (p.657).

To come back to my question about how best to teach a film class, Widdowson

proposed that content-based teaching would provide an automatic context for language

use which is both natural and familiar to students in school and may be more relevant to

the learner than other approaches. He asserted that the learning experienced in it is more

immediate in that it corresponds with the way the learners use their own language in the

study of other subjects. That students see film as relevant (and interesting) makes film

courses a natural subject for content courses but also a natural focus of the trend to

authentic listening. Theorists are urging us to provide learners with lots of "input" that

they can understand, and giving us some leeway to teach language explicitly. Theory

tells us that content classes, like other classes for language learners, need to supply

learners with comprehensible input, and it does not exclude helping learners to notice and

interpret the ways language is used. If these concerns apply to that part of a film class

where we talk about the film, should they not also apply to viewing the film itself? If we

can manage it, shouldn't we try to give some attention to the language in the films we

study and also to making the language easier for our students to understand?

3Michael Rost (1990) warns of the dangers of "easification" that distorts the language that students receiveor dilutes the authenticity of their interaction with it, but he is mostly concerned about conversationalinteractions where native speakers are modifying the language they produce, trying to make it easier tounderstand. The language of films remains "genuine", but the teacher must have some concern for the"authenticity" of the students' interactions with it--not to lose track of the usual relations between filmsand their viewers. See my comments about control below.

26 20

For a More Langrumge-Ihnitensive Approach to Film

Interest in so-called content-based EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teaching has

increased, and attempts to actually try it out have been made (in Japan perhaps

encouraged by the habit of universities and, recently high schools, of hiring foreign

teachers whose specialties are outside the teaching of English as a foreign language). But

as Bernard Mohan (1986) puts it "While the need for coordinating the learning of

language and subject matter is generally recognized, just how this should be

accomplished remains a problem" (p. iii). Often EFL teachers don't feel competent to

teach in another field and non-EFL teachers struggle with how to adapt their teaching to

learners for whom the main learning difficulties are linguistic. The area where we may

find most cases of EFL teachers teaching content may be film, both as part of more

traditional language courses and as separate film-only courses.

Most of the papers in this monograph address film classes essentially as ordinary

content classes, more or less as if we were teaching geography or literature or cooking,

where the fact that the objects under study are in some way themselves linguistic objects

has small relevance to the way the class is designed. Their concern is with what the film

is about or how it was done--with the meaning of the whole film. Students may see quite

a few films in a term, where comprehension of the film's language is dealt with as a side

issue. Although they are encouraged to watch the films again on their own, very little

attention is given to the language of the film, as language, except in the same way it might

be dealt with in a film class for native speakers. In fact I've come to realize that I have no

serious quarrel with this approach; it allows a maximum of attention to other very

important aspects of the films, such as style, message, viewer's reaction, cultural

implications and so on, and the original theoretical arguments for teaching through

content hold up pretty well. Theory, however, does not limit us to this sort of arms-

length approach. There is support for a language based treatment that both makes the

films' language more comprehensible as input and that talks explicitly about the language

and the rules that govern it (whether grammatical or discoursal). A more intensive

approach to filth language is not incompatible with other aspects of film study (except,

perhaps in terms of time available). Furthermore, if we believe that input is important to

language learning, by neglecting a film's language we may be missing an opportunity that

films especially offer in the classroom. Compared to almost anything else, whether

textbooks, a blackboard, posters, magazines and newspapers, "realia" props, even

invited speakers or a library, films are a fantastic resource for language in the classroom.

As listening material they are in many ways almost ideal, offering us a vast range of

language, in context, complete with the best, most complete settings, both ordinary and

extraordinary that Hollywood (or the studios at Pinewood, or Cinecitta or Toei) can

construct, built-in character and motivation for each situation, with discourses features

suitable for analysis at every level. They are often better written and certainly better

illustrated than any textbook dialogue, and they cover an enormous linguistic territory,

from "ET call home" to "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows

of outrageous fortune..." to "Hoo-ahh".

As language vehicles, films are also very attractive to our students, whether in some

cases because of enormous advertising budgets, famous faces, and slick production, or in

other cases for the almost opposite reasons that attract students to cult films and obscure

documentaries. Not only are films at the heart of mass culture right next to television, but

they also exist at the fringes of culture and have a respectability among students that TV

may not. They offer students a chance to study language through something that is at the

same time fun and serious, authentic and innovative, more demanding than television, but

less intimidating than pages of printed text. We may wonder though if it is possible to

study a whole film in the intensive way that we treat other listening materials.

Practical Considerations for an Intensive Approach

Why haven't films completely taken over language classrooms? Or why do film

content classes shy away from dealing with the language in the films? There are several

apparent difficulties that may discourage teachers. Some of these look serious at first

regard but may not be as great as they seem. Several more are important, but can in many

cases be reduced or overcome.

Isn't the Language Too Difficult?

There is not only a huge amount of language in any film, but the language situations

are complex, the language is hard (and it certainly doesn't fit very well into any traditional

language syllabus sequence), and dealing with it takes a lot of time. A typical scene in a

good film can be fantastically more complicated than a textbook dialogue. Not only may

there be far more details visible (and audible) than even in a video teaching dialogue, but

these details have meaning, and these meanings interact with each other. A film audience

might be expected to notice what she's wearing, her running mascara or that he hesitates

for a long time before he continues after he says "A coffee and..." We may need to know

quite a bit more about the people involved because there's probably more going on than it

just being lunch time.

28 22

This seeming drawback may be a bonus, however. Our students may be limited in

what they know about English, but they've grown up with film and television and the

greater part of the vocabulary of film is entirely international. They know what a tense

confrontation or a love scene looks like--even an American love scene (or a French one

for that matter). They've been trained by experience, the same as we have, to respond to

camera angles, editing pace and music. Furthermore, if the students know that the focus

is on a particular language point, they may be willing to accept some fuzziness around the

cultural or dramatic edges and vice-versa. If you simply point out the cocktail dress, the

hesitation, the lifted eyebrow, guessing is sometimes as good as knowing. And on the

other hand, the vivid reminder that a conversation has meaning, that it occurs in a

particular situation, said by particular people for a reason, transforms it as a teaching

vehicle. If you've ever led a patient but uninspired class through the first repetition of a

dialogue and then seen them come awake just from being forced to include "umm" at the

beginning of one of the sentences, or to stress one word a little differently, or to make a

minor gesture at the right moment, you've seen how the life of language is in these details

and so, maybe, have they.

The difficulty of the language in a film may not be as great as it at first seems, either.

In fact, once the characters, their motivation, the setting and so on have been dealt with,

such a traditional language teacher concern as grammar often turns out not to be such a

great issue in comprehension. And some films are much less difficult than others. The

density and complexity of the language varies a great deal according to whether the film is

intended for general audiences, whether the story is complicated and how much of it is

told visually, the amount of action, the period, the number of characters involved, their

accents, whether the characters and situations are ordinary (family members, household

settings vs. lawyers in courtrooms, etc.), and the number and importance of topical

references. Exotic accents, mistaken identities, topical comedies are hard. Mysteries can

leave students worried that the one word they don't know is a crucial verbal clue (though

they should be able to count on the teacher to keep them current), while, on the other

hand, in a science fiction film they know that some of the words will be new to native

speakers as well! Comedy may be mostly topical or it may be highly visual or almost

entirely based on very ordinary language.

The very attractiveness of films can help to make them easier. Rost (1990) points out

that "[Listening] texts which are vivid or interesting may be easy to understand even

though they contain unfamiliar content or difficult language features," and also "Listeners

may expend more effort on a difficult text provided the text offers useful and informative

insights" (p.159).

23 9

Making the Language Easier

When the language is too difficult, yet crucial to understanding an important scene in

the film, if there is time, it can still be dealt with without resorting to devices such as

subtitles. Over the last decade or two a range of techniques has been developed for

making difficult recorded texts more accessible to students' understanding. Some of

these approaches, traditional or recently developed, break a seemingly difficult listening

task down into something that learners, even at a fairly low level can deal with.4 Thes

approaches include pre-listening exercises and discussion, and methods of presentation

that separate the obstructions of context from those of the language itself (such as viewing

the scene first silently), or that supply some or all of the language on paper, with or

without explanation of crucial vocabulary and usage. We should remember also that both

from a theoretical and a practical point of vieW there is probably no necessity of the

students producing the same level of language as we are asking them to listen to.

Won't It Ruin the Excitement?

There is a danger, in examining scenes and the language in them in detail that we will

neglect one other aspect of a film--its pace. In fact, films are not really made to be

watched in small pieces and viewers' interest will not survive too much attention to

detail. But in intermediate to advanced classes a balance is achievable, if we work with

both the interesting fine points and with complete scenes, if students always have a

chance to view the forest as well as some of the trees, and if we are careful not to forget

about movement and suspense. Indeed we can put suspense back in where slow

comprehension has lagged behind and missed it. With the lowest level students,

however, a 90 or 120 minute movie can drag on forever if we attempt too much.

Letting go

After presenting some techniques and worksheets at a teachers' conference a yearpr

so ago, I was taken to task a bit by someone who had been at the presentation. He was

concerned that the work was so controlled. I think he was partly concerned about my

looking so closely at detail (what I presented in the conference was mostly limited to

exercises that focused the students on particular details and ignored the larger picture), but

he may also have been referring to a more general consideration. As we may want to give

4For video techniques see Lonergan (1984), Cooper, Lavery, & Rinvolucri (1991), and for generallistening skills many recent textbooks, including Richards, Gordon & Harper (1987), Viney & Viney(1986), and Soars & Soars (1986).

3024

our film classes opportunity to ask the wider questions and look more at the overall

meaning of the work, we should give them more control over how the inquiry is

conducted as well--to let them control their own learning. This can have value in any

kind of film class.

Part of the value of interaction in language class is the importance of giving learners

control of input. In discussion this means the teacher giving up control and in listening it

is the same. At the conference, in trying to present twenty-some exercises for film

comprehension in 45 minutes, I may have given a rather teacher-centered presentation.

But where the control rests will depend on how we use the tools available. Simply

stopping the film and playing a scene again has already shifted control away from the

makers of the film to the teacher. Giving the remote control to the students shifts it the

rest of the way. Other methods involve letting students decide the questions, letting them

choose how much to watch and how long to focus on a section, even letting them choose

the film. Student presentations (about language or, of course, other aspects of the film)

likewise put control and a chance for creativity back into student hands. Student control

can be crucial to sustaining interest too.

Does This Take a Lot of Time?

The one aspect of a language intensive approach to film study that is not vulnerable to

theoretical insights or modern strategies is that it does take time. An intensive approach

somewhat similar to those used for purpose-made language teaching videos or for

listening to recorded news, divides a full-length film into 10-12 two hour intermediate

level lessons, including time to view each one week's 8-12 minute section several times,

do vocabulary and comprehension work and some general discussion. This is a lot of

time spent on one film and may vary with the level of the students, the film chosen and so

on. It can involve a lot of preparation for just one teacher as well, although the same film

can be used in other terms or with other classes. The time devoted can also vary with the

amount of attention teacher (and students) want to devote to the language of the film.

Although I'm arguing the advantages of an intensive approach, there's no reason to make

the issue black and white. A friend who teaches at a language school successfully teaches

intermediate non-college students to view and enjoy English language films with very

little language support by concentrating on general comprehension and does it in less

time. This requires, however, a deft touch and a good knowledge of one's students. If

other factors demand it (teacher or student interest, curriculum, administration), more or

less attention can be given to language vs. other aspects of film study, from an intensive

approach to one that deals with film language only when it is significant in some way to

25I.

any audience (the future language of Clockwork Orange or 1984 for example).

Conclusion.

A language-intensive approach to film does take time. It is also true that students can

often appreciate a film and learn from it even if their level of comprehension of the

English in it is not high. But it is hard to justify the view that some greater understanding

of the language, or more detailed examination of its component parts, and the ways in

which these parts relate to their contexts in a general way, will not contribute quite a bit to

their study of the film if the opportunity is there. Furthermore, many of our students,

even in universities, come to English class primarily because they are interested in the

language as language, and may be resistant to a content approach that doesn't take this

into account. In truth, lots of our students aren't interested in film as art. Some of our

students are only interested in karate movies. (though they may see them as art). And

there are many teachers who don't feel competent to teach film as art either, or in fact as

anything but language.

In fact while I now think it is possible to choose (and justify) either a purely whole-

film approach (e.g., film criticism) or a very intensive, language based approach, there is

a lot of of middle ground available. Though, on the one hand, the content approach can

often benefit from greater attention to language, on the other hand, it will be a great waste

if we go too far the other way and treat films simply as splendid language samples. Just

as a text dialogue is hollow without some kind of transference to a real situation, we need

to follow up on our intensive attention to form and intonation with discussions at least of

how we relate to the story on the screen (the open questions why? and what if? as well as

the closed what? and when? and where?), and very possibly we need to pay some

attention as to how the scenes and the language in them are shaped by the technique of

writer, director and actors.

My return to the language theory books has given me renewed respect for teaching

content in language classrooms. I am beginning to think again about ways that I can

make language learning work more below the surface by teaching it less directly, and

possibly with the outward focus on learning other subjects. Nonetheless, I feel strongly

that language teaching theory can also justify the more intensive approach to films I've

used myself for a number of years. I think that this approach is feasible in a practical way

and otfers resources and possibilities that are otherwise difficult to duplicate, and that

teachers should use films when they can as a source of language for study to the great

benefit of their students.

32 26

References

Brown, D (1980). Principles of language learning and teaching. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice Hall.

Cooper, R., Lavery, M., & Rinvolucri, M. (1991). Video. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Ellis, R. (1994). The study of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. London:

Pergamon.

Krashen, S. D. (1985). Inquiries and insights. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Alemany Press,

Prentice Hall Regents.

Lonergan, J. (1984). Video in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Mohan, B. (1986). Language and content. Reading, MA.: Addison Wesley Publishing.

Richards, J., Gordon, G., & Harper, A. (1987). Listen for it. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Rost, M. (1990). Listening in language learning. Harlow, Essex: Longman Press.

Savignon, S. (1983) Communicative competence: theory and classroom practice.

Reading, MA.: Addison Wesley.

Soars, J., & Soars, L., (1986). Headway, Intermediate. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Viney, P., & Viney, K. (1986). A weekend away. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

3 327

LEARNING BY COLLABORATION AND TEACHING:A FILM PRESENTATION PROSECT

Christine Pearson Casanave and David Freedman

What Motivated This Project?

In the fall semester of 1993, we asked each of three classes of students to choose a

film, analyze it, and present ("teach") their results to each other in a large group setting.

We were led initially to this film presentation project because we faced a systemic

problem at the university that we needed to solve--namely, too many students and not

enough teachers to give classes as small as we wanted. Because students had class three

times a week, we were able to toy with a number of possible solutions, and decided to

experiment with a large-class/small-class combination. For the large class, we combined

the three smaller classes of about 35 students each at the same level and used the time to

show films, which many of us do in our smaller classes anyway. Ideally, we argued, the

films would constitute input (of content, primarily) for work that would then be done in

the smaller "core" classes, which tend to focus on critical thinking skills at the

intermediate-advanced levels. In these classes, English is the medium rather than the

object of instruction, and multi-skill language instruction occurs as a consequence of our

focus on nonlinguistic matters.

Why did we choose films as the main source of content? In the project we report on

here, the structural constraint that we faced made films an ideal source of content. By

showing films in a large lecture hall, we could be sure that all 100+ students would have

the grounding they needed for the further work that would take place in the core classes.

The content of the films was also accessible to all students, regardless of proficiency,

because we used subtitled versions. Finally, well-chosen films are interesting to many

more young people than are books, regrettable as this may seem to some. They are also

interesting to teachers, as lively lunch room conversations on our campus on the topic of

films have demonstrated.

Teaching, Learning, and Collaborating

This project pushed us to rethink our notions of teaching, learning, and collaborative

group work. Before discussing the specifics of what students did, we lay out some of

these notions as a way to ground our discussion in issues that turned out to be important

in helping us understand what worked and did not work in the project.

In the first place, we found it hard to separate teaching and learning into distinct sets

of activities carried out by different kinds of people, teachers and students. In language

learning, as in other kinds of learning, we recognized that we as teachers often seem to

learn more than our students do. The activity of teaching, we reasoned, results in high

quality learning because the teacher-learner does all the work essential for good learning:

researching, organizing, and communicating ideas to and with others. Indeed, all of us

who teach have probably experienced regularly the pleasures and surprises of learning

something new as we prepare materials to teach or as we interact with interested students

and are forced to articulate our knowledge in response to their (and our own) questions

and confusions. For most of us, the activities of preparing to teach and teaching result in

deeper and longer lasting learning for us than did our own past classroom learning

experiences.

What are some of the characteristics that distinguish this kind of learning from

traditional information-transfer learning? First, as teachers we know how to access the

resources we need to prepare to teach. These resources include not only books, journals,

and professional meetings, but also colleagues with whom we interact. We do not work

in isolation. Second, we are highly motivated to prepare lessons in ways that will be

optimally accessible to people who we presume do not already know the material or skill

we are teaching. The audience, in other words, is real, and has reasons (intrinsic or

extrinsic) for learning. Third, the activities of preparing to teach and teaching demand

that teachers exercise a wide range of linguistic, cognitive, social, and creative skills.

Fourth, we feel accountable and responsible not only for our own performance, but also

for ensuring that others (i.e., students) progress. In the stereotypical student role, on the

other hand, the student feels responsible only for him or herself. Finally, we are not

tested artificially on what we learn by teaching. Awareness of our successes consists,

rather, in evidence from ongoing implicit and explicit evaluation from our classes, such

as knowing that we have held the attention of our audience, helped them see something in

a new way, or inspired them to continue learning. It also consists in a very nontrivial

marker of success--our own growth in knowledge and interest in a particular content area.

Why, then, do we not routinely construct learning opportunities for our students that

mirror some of these fundamental facts about the close ties between teaching and

learning? The brief literature review that follows, particularly that on

cooperative/collaborative learning, captures some of the ideas we wish to ground our

thinking in, and suggests some of these ties.

29

Some Ideas from the Literature

There are many conceptions of learning, but they share the notion that some kinds of

learning involve memorizing and quantitative increases in knowledge (of facts,

procedures) and that other kinds are more abstract, involving so-called higher order skills

such as interpreting reality and conceptualizing. In all cases, we can say that learning

involves some kind of change. But deep learning, in which people use synthetic,

analytic, and abstracting skills in order to reorganize and interpret information, is prized

because it is thought to be longer lasting than surface learning, as well as more closely

connected to meaning, comprehension, interest, and motivation.

In the school setting, according to Kember and Gow (1994), "...these conceptions of

learning are important because of the evidence that they have a strong influence upon the

study approach students use for particular study tasks" (p. 58). For example, in a surface

approach to studying, students try to memorize material on which they will be tested. In

a deep approach, they focus on the meaning of reading material or of project work

(Kember & Gow, p. 59). In particular, Kember and Gow found that interactive teaching

methods, rather than teacher-fronted lectures where information is delivered in a one-way

fashion, encouraged students to study deeply, with interest and enthusiasm.

How, then, have educators designed interactive teaching and learning activities?

Some of the most effective interactive learning has been found to occur in small,

cooperative learning groups (Cohen, 1986; Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Slavin, R.,

1983). Cohen (1994) defines cooperative learning as "students working together in a

group small enough that everyone can participate on a collective task that has been clearly

assigned" (p. 3). In such groups, particularly when the mix of students is

heterogeneous, and the goals and group members are interdependent (i.e., when the task

cannot be completed by individuals working alone), students not only learn from each

other, but they also create knowledge that none of the members had before. (Both Cohen

[1986] and Johnson and Johnson [1994] point out that the benefits of group work do not

accrue automatically, but that students need to learn the social and discourse skills

necessary to work together effectively.)

One experiment demonstrates the potential of cooperative learning groups to foster

high quality learning in at least some situations. In a pre-service teacher education

program, Wedman, Hughes, and Robinson (1993) taught students in each of two

sections of a reading methods course to use reading inventory procedures. One group

received direct instruction through lectures. The other learned how to use and understand

reading inventory procedures in cooperative learning groups. In post-tests and follow-up

° 630

questionnaires, the experimental cooperative learning group achieved significantly higher

scores, and believed that working in a group benefitted their learning in ways that lectures

alone could not.

Related to cooperative learning is another approach referred to as a "workshop"

approach, which most closely resembles the approach we took in this film presentation

project. In the university setting in which they worked, Arredondo and Rucinski (1994)

designed a workshop approach that consisted of the following key elements: 1) reflective

journals, 2) individual student-professor conferences, 3) structured small group

discussions of project work, and 4) final presentation of the student projects to the whole

class (Arredondo & Rucincski, 1994, p. 274). Their purpose was to involve students

"...in complex projects requiring the meaningful use of language" (p. 275). At the

conclusion of five university education classes, both graduate and undergraduate, where

this approach was used, the authors learned from questionnaires that most students

favored this approach to a more passive approach. Graduate students responded

somewhat more favorably than undergraduates, however, and ratings were highest when

the professors' guidelines and expectations were clearly laid out. While a few students in

this survey preferred listening to lectures, writing individual reports, and taking tests,

most students appreciated the workshop approach for helping increase the depth of their

thinking, their creativity, and their motivation.

For our purposes in our SFC English classes, the second language acquisition

literature on the topic of interactive teaching and learning is less helpful than that

described above. The main reason is that the bulk of the second language literature

concerns language acquisition in a much narrower sense than we are interested in. In this

literature (some of which is described or presented in Allwright and Bailey [1991],

Kessler [1992], Nunan [1992], and the October 1994 issue of The Language Teacher)

researchers and teachers are concerned with the amount and quality of linguistic input and

output and their relation to students' language development. The same concern is

manifested in the work on task-based learning (e.g, Nunan, 1989). We believe that

students' language will develop as it is used for meaningful purposes (Krashen, 1987)

such as (in our case in Japan) work on a long-term project. We are also less concerned

with students' linguistic proficiency than are some English programs in Japan, and more

with what we call "educational growth"--the development of curiosity, critical and

analytical thinking ability, and skill in problem posing and exploration (Casanave, 1992).

For these reasons, we have found that the general education literature fits our purposes

better than does the literature in second language education.

Our point is that teachers, as a normal part of our class preparations, do what is

necessary for good learning to take place. We select, collaborate, confer, revise,

31U. 0

organize, synthesize, and articulate. In the traditional language class, indeed, the

traditional class of any kind, students rarely do this. It is in this sense, then, that we use

the expression "learning by teaching." We want students to do what all of us do every

day, and by doing so to begin developing the same sense of interest and confidence in, as

well as responsibility for, their own knowledge that we as teachers gain as a result of our

teaching. In the context of the film course that we devised for our third semester

sophomore students, we felt we had the opportunity to experiment with some of these

ideas.

The Students, Class Structure, and Presentation Assignment

Our students during the film presentation semester consisted of three high-

intermediate university English classes (called EI, EJ, and EK, TOEFL mid to high 400s)

that met together once a week to view films as part of the class structure described above.

The film segment was run by a part-time teacher with whom we consulted regularly. We

selected films based on the theme of "The Human Dilemma," how individuals react to and

handle major crises in their lives, and showed one film every 2-3 weeks in a large theater-

style room. All films were in English, subtitled in Japanese, and included Mermaids,

Dominick and Eugene, Talent for the Game, and Witness.

In the second half of the semester, students also worked on their final presentations.

We often have students do final oral presentations rather than take a final exam, and we

reasoned that it made a great deal of sense to have the three classes present to each other

rather than to themselves. Therefore, in a final project, each class selected its own film

for a 100-minute presentation to the other classes. Each presentation was to contain a

summary, an analysis, a pro-con critique, and visuals. Beyond these basic requirements,

the students were fairly much on their own as to how they would divide the work and

what the specific content would be. Students worked primarily outside of class on this

presentation, but we did some of the groundwork in class, as well as set interim deadlines

for them (not always followed, of course).

Regular Core Class Activities

When the three classes met separately once a week in their core classes, we followed

up on the films that were shown with a variety of activities that were designed to help

students use English to practice the kinds of thinking the would need for their final

presentations, and to make the film viewing itself a more "active" (participatory) process.

For example, for each film we designed film-viewing worksheets that covered plot and

20 32

character development of the narrative line (summary), exploration of the issues or

dilemmas faced by the characters (analysis), and "open" questions on individual reactions

to the filmwith reasons explained (critique). Also, we required that students read a

published film review (e.g., Roger Ebert) for each film, and helped them see the elements

of summary, analysis, and critique in those reviews. This approach helped us structure

the discussion in the core classes so that we could concentrate on these three aspects of

reviewing. Further, this style of reviewing, we presumed, would help students prepare

for their final presentation project, where they, as a class, would review a film of their

choice and teach what they had learned to the other two classes.

Journals were a useful medium in which students could develop their ideas, and we

required that students write at least one journal on every film. In Chris Casanave's class

(EK), students wrote once a week, alternating between a response journal and a

summary. In David Freedman's classes (EI, EJ), in the first journal the emphasis was on

summary. The students were asked to briefly tell the story of the film. In the next

journal along with the summary an analysis of the main character was called for (Why, do

you think.., would you?). In the third journal a critique of the film techniques had to be

added (music, acting, writing, directing, and so on). In both Chris's and David's

classes, the students had the Roger Ebert review of each film to use as a model; also the

questions on the film viewing guide acted as a starting point for the students' writings.

Before or after collecting the journals, we asked students to discuss their ideas from them

in small groups. In order to keep the discussions in English and to lower anxiety about

speaking, students were allowed to "read" their opinions from their journals. In the

activity of small group journal sharing, we hoped to encourage the students not only to

make public their opinions, but also to begin to see how they could eventually collaborate

as a group to present a coherent view of different aspects of a film for their final

presentation.

Preparing for the Final 'Presentations

To prepare for the presentations, at about mid-semester, each class chose a film that

dealt with some kind of "human dilemma." The students had been given a project

worksheet outlining the requirements for their project. In the 100-minute class period,

each class was to present a summary, an analysis, and a pro/con critique of their film;

distribute a handout that would help convey the presenters' main points to the audience;

and integrate visuals with their presentation, such as video clips and transparencies for the

overhead projector. Each student had to sign up for one of the work groups that they

devised for themselves. The groups consisted of 4-6 people, which the students called

33

by a name such as Summary, Character Analysis, Critique, Technical Aspects, Handouts

and OHP, and Video Clips. Each class also chose two overall coordinators, and each

small group chose a group leader, and conferred with other groups as necessary to design

a presentation that would not be fragmented or repetitive.

As we mentioned, most of the specific work that students did for their final

presentations took place outside of class. However, in addition to the general activities

mentioned above, we helped students in more specific ways. David experimented with

the activity and concept of "teaching" in one of his classes, by having small group mini-

presentations where the group had to teach a skill to the rest of the class. The groups

were required to have both written and oral directions, but the subject was left open with

the proviso that at the end of the "lesson" the other students had to have either a physical

object or a new skill. Some of the presentations were Making Okonomiyaki, How to Tie

a Scarf, and Doing Calligraphy. The short detour into teaching a concrete skill with its

preparations helped the class understand the idea of teaching, and, indeed, the final

project of this class stood out in terms of how the students explained concepts and found

creative ways to get their ideas across.

In Chris's class, the students also gave mini-presentations as they began organizing

the various parts of their presentations. These helped students become comfortable

speaking in front of a group, develop appropriate eye contact, learn to modulate their

voices, learn to solicit questions and comments, and in general to make contact with their

audience in ways that encourage a teaching-learning interaction. Chris also gave students

some time in class to work in their small groups and to collaborate with other groups so

that they could coordinate potentially overlapping aspects of their presentation.

Both of us encouraged the students to prepare their handouts ahead of time so that we

could assist with proofreading, but only one of the three groups did this. We also copied

the handouts (last minute) for each group, as well as evaluation sheets for the audience to

fill out. We graded the small groups of students holistically, and averaged this with other

elements on which students were evaluated individually (e.g., attendance, participation,

and journal submissions).

Critical Discussion of the Presentation 'Projects

At this point, in order to comprehend the struggle for meaning that each group

brought to their final presentation, it may be worthwhile to listen to the language of a film

critic. Maya Deren in her seminal essay, " Cinematography: The Creative Use of

Reality" (1960/1985) writes, "As we watch a film, the continuous act of recognition in

which we are involved is like a strip of memory unrolling beneath the images of the film

'40 34

itself, to form the invisible underlayer of an implicit double exposure" (italics ours) (p.

56). Our students, like most people, tend to watch films purely as passive entertainment.

But in our class this semester, students were pushed to bring a deeper meaning to films--a

second layer of exposure, so to speak--that they otherwise would have watched only for

fun. In other words, we expected students to be active viewers, who brought their own

meanings to the films, whatever those meanings might be. It is this struggle to make the

invisible meaning visible that thrusts the students into the very heart of language and

teaching.

We had purposely left students on their own to engage in the struggle of selecting,

developing, and organizing issues from their films. It was in this preparatory work,

where students worked together to construct their own meanings and develop mediums to

communicate them effectively, that we hoped the main benefit of the "teaching" aspect of

the project would reside. It was our belief that the presentations would reveal the kinds

of thinking and organizing that had gone into their preparation.

On each of the three presentation days at the end of the semester, groups from each

class had set up the video equipment, OHP, microphones, and lights. One group had

even set up several extra TV monitors in the auditorium, in addition to the main screen on

stage, "in order to attract attention," a boy explained. Each group passed out its handout

and evaluation forms to the audience and took charge of quieting the room. The

presenting class sat up front, and each small group came forward to do its part. For the

most part, the presenters read from scripts they had prepared, and coordinated their

speaking parts with video clips and OHP transparencies that other students were

managing.

EK class presented first. They had chosen Fried Green Tomatoes, a film about the

identity struggles of two generations of women in the American South. The concept they

had developed for the film was two-fold. First, they saw the narrative structure as a

parallel construction of past and present stories. They very effectively communicated this

concept through the use of video and commentary in their summary section. Second, they

tried to develop the idea of the relative nature of truth from the perspectives of different

characters. This was presented via handouts and lecture, but was not communicated

nearly so effectively. A possible cause could be that this concept did not fit a "multi-

media" presentation (a topic that enjoys great popularity on our campus, to be discussed

further below), and the students could not find alternative resources to present their ideas.

EI class presented Awakenings, a film about an alienated doctor who becomes

involved in the lives of his "awakening" catatonic patients. El's main concept was that

the narrative should be viewed through the characters as representatives of groups (i.e.,

patients, doctors, parents, etc.), rather than as individuals. Once again the main method

4135

of teaching in their presentation was through film clips, though enlivened by students

appearing in costume to present the story from the viewpoint of their "group." Their

secondary theme, the role of windows in the film, was brought forward visually (via

video), but the students were unable to initiate a discussion of the meaning of this

symbolism, perhaps due to a lack of specific vocabulary for discussing symbolism in

film.

ET class presented last. Their film, A Few Good Men, is a film about the conflicts

between duty and honor, truth and loyalty in the Marine Corps. Their interpetation

hinged on the personal and psychological motives of the main characters, and how they

interacted with and exploited each other. The students used an OHP presentation and

handouts to demonstrate the "lines of relationship" that they saw in the film. While this

method had helped them as a class to clarify their ideas, they were unable effectively

communicate their concepts because the key diagram on these visuals lacked the clarity of

their preparatory discussion in class. They lost sight of the fact that their final

understanding of their concepts of the film had been reached via a process of learning that

their audience had not shared. Consequently, we can see that while each class struggled

within itself to elucidate a theme, and did so fairly successfully, each class, when faced

with the task of effectively explaining their ideas and engaging the audience in a further

exploration of their theme, was not so successful.

As we look critically at this learning-by-teaching project, we find that we have

questions about many aspects of it. Perhaps the greatest problem was over the amount of

target language necessary to work in class and do the project. Some terms were given in

vocabulary sections on the viewing sheets, but at the end, when the students became

involved in their projects, their concepts outstripped their linguistic skills and left some

parts of the final presentations unclear and weak. The question remains as to whether it

would have been better to preteach some specific, higher analytical vocabulary (such as

the language of the visual symbolism of windows for EI, or the language to allow EK to

develop the concept of women nurturing women), or whether the decision to offer the

teacher-as-resource (which is more consistent philosophically with the collaborative goals

of the class) was the better choice. We were disappointed that few groups used the

opportunity offered by the teacher-as-resource, even for proof-reading their handouts.

A problem brought up by the students in their final journal was the feeling that some

students worked while others loafed, and the class, as a whole, had no means of forcing

a classmate to participate. This problem remains to be solved in classes using large group

work as a final project. However, one comment was nearly universal on an end of

course questionnaire. When asked if they felt they learned anything from the course,

80% said they had learned presentation skills and felt more confident speaking (as

4 36

opposed to 15% who said they had learned critic's skills). Even if the students did not

end up exactly where we wanted them to go, the teaching process brought its own

lessons to the students.

A larger issue concerns the basic concept of learning-by-teaching. Our idea was that

if we allow the students to choose their own material (film) and to find issues on their

own with relatively little guidance from teachers, they would develop their own concepts

that they would then want to communicate to the other students. The difficulty that the

students had in achieving this goal does not negate the method. In fact, perhaps one of

the most exciting aspects of this project was to watch students come up with ways to

think about their films that we had not thought of, and to watch them struggling to find

and articulate their ideas. Our own views of what was needed to be analyzed and

critiqued often went unheeded. And in spite of our desire to help students find the "real"

meaning in the film, and analyze and critique the film in ways that showed they had read

and understood Roger Ebert's film review, and our guiding comments to this end, they

went their own way. In the end, we had to allow them to do this, and to respect their

solutions, as long as we knew they had genuinely struggled with ideas in the film and

with how to present their ideas most effectively to an audience other than themselves.

Our biggest disappointments and praises came, paradoxically, in the same two areas.

In the case of Chris, she was both amazed at and disappointed in her class's summary

section. It was smooth, clear, and extraordinarily well presented as a combination of

narration and video clips, the technology of which was faultless. At the same time, she

felt that the efforts that went into the summary, particularly the media aspect, were made

at the expense of what she had hoped would be deeper thinking and engagement with

broader meanings in the film, the kind of thinking that some of the individual students

exhibited in their journal responses throughout the semester. But in the final

presentation, only a few students in the whole group seemed to reach any level of

profundity. In many ways, students' journals on other films showed more of this kind of

insightful, analytical thinking than did their final presenation.

Related to this, was the students' infatuation with media itself, not surprising given

that "multimedia" is THE buzzword on our campus. We see lots of showy technology--

students learning computer graphics, computer music, data base technology, video

making and editing, and so on, but it is not yet clear whether the mechanics cif our high

tech campus are diverting our students' attention from serious intellectual pursuits to flash

and hype. In this project, we saw more flash in some cases than depth of thought. At the

same time, we can praise the students' ability to put together a coordinated "show" (if you

will), a task that may be neither deeply intellectual nor English-language oriented, but one

that does require intensive collaboration, negotiation, organization, planning, technical

37 4 3

expertise, and so on. The EK students, for example, particularly the video group (the

technical support group), were as involved in their production as any students could be in

a learning-teaching experience, and no doubt learned a great deal from their experience.

As is often the case with an educational experience, however, they may not have learned

what the teachers intended them to learn.

Finally, we learned a great deal about what is involved in coordinating a project

involving three classes and over one hundred students. In brief, we learned that it was

possible, and that it was also both exciting and demanding in terms of how we planned

the timing and orchestration of so many parts into a coherent whole.

Final Thoughts

In this film presentation project, students had the opportunity to select, analyze, and

critique a film, using both the English language and a variety of visual media to "teach"

what they had learned to other students. In spite of the project's rough edges, we believe

that our students learned more about critical engagement with ideas and issues by

working collaboratively toward this goal than if we had guided and controlled the project

in more traditional, teacher-centered ways. In our case there were special advantages to

using films for the project, not only to solve our structural problems during this particular

semester. The films, unlike printed novels and stories, allowed students to enter quickly

into an analytical and critical frame of mind. Students did not, in other words, need to

spend the majority of the semester struggling with linguistic aspects of reading; instead,

they spent their time on complex thinking and organizing tasks, and on the linguistic

aspects of presenting their ideas orally to a real audience. Given the time, and fewer

structural constraints, teachers and students can certainly craft the same kind of learning-

by-teaching experience using media other than film, such as readings. The goal remains

the same: to involve students in an intellectual and communicative activity that requires

complex thinking, organizational and presentational skills, and language.

We remain committed to a learning-by-teaching approach that involves collaborative

group work and presentation to real audiences, whether or not we need to solve a

structural problem of large classes. We also remain committed to instructional activities

that allow us to relinquish control of the specific ways students prepare their ideas while

still providing them with ongoing guidance. We recognize that by giving up some

teacherly control, by asking students to do their own preparation for teaching, what

students learn cannot be predicted to the extent we may wish it to be. The benefits have

to do primarily with increased learner autonomy and with the possibilities for providing

students with chances for deep rather than passive engagement with tasks.

4438

References

Allwright, D., & Bailey, K. M. (Eds.) (1991). Focus on the classroom: an introduction

to classroom research for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Arredondo, D. E., & Rucinski, T. T. (1994). Using the workshop approach in

university classes to develop student metacognition. Innovative Higher Education,

18, 273-289.

Casanave, C. P. (1992). Educational goals in the foreign language class: The role of

content-motivated journal writing. SFC Journal of Language and Communication,

Vol. 1, 83-103.

Cohen, E. G. (1994). Restructuring the classroom: Conditions for productive small

groups. Review of Educational Research, 64, 1-35.

Cohen, E. G. (1986). Designing groupwork: Strategies for the heterogeneous

classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Deren, M. (1985). Cinematography: The creative use of reality. In G. Mast, & M.

Cohen (Eds.), Film theory and criticism (third edition) (pp. 51-65). New York:

Oxford University Press.

Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, R. T. (1994). Cooperative learning in second language

classes. The Language Teacher 18 (10), 4-7.

Kember, D., & Gow, L. (1994). Orientations to teaching and their effect on the quality

of students learning. Journal of Higher Education, 65, 58-74.

Kessler, C. (Ed.) (1992). Cooperative language learning. Englewoods Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice-Hall.

Krashen, S. D. (1987). Principles and practice in second language acquisition.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall International.

Nunan, D. (Ed.) (1992). Collaborative language learning and teaching. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Nunan, D. (1989). Designing tasks for the communicative classroom. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Slavin, R. (1983). Cooperative learning. New York: Longman.

Wedman, J. M., Hughes, J. A., & Robinson, R. R. (1993). The effect of using a

systematic cooperative learning approach to help preservice teachers learn informal

reading inventory procedures. Innovative Higher Education, 17, 231-241.

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4 5

FINDING THE LAST PUZZLE PIECE THROUGH CONVERSION

Yoko Shimizu

When I was six years old, my family and I moved to the United States because of my

father's job. I was educated there for 12 years until I came back to Japan. In Japan, I

discovered the difficulty of the Japanese language. Not only were my kanji skills very

poor, but I also realized that my Japanese skills overall needed a lot of work. In the

beginning, I even had difficulty understanding lectures and seriously thought I might fail

all of my courses taught in Japanese. I missed being able to speak English freely and to

express my thoughts on paper without so much hesitation. To maintain (or possibly

improve) my English skills and to regain confidence in myself, I decided to take English

as my required language choice at Keio SFC. Therefore, in the Spring of 1993, I

enrolled in the Intensive English Course for high level English students (mainly

returnees) with TOEFL scores of 600 and above.

A Movie Is for Entertainment? My Original Thoughts about Film Viewing

"Wonderful! I'm going to watch films in my English class!" This was my first

reaction when I discovered I would be watching films as a central part of class. Until

then, I had only watched movies for entertainment, as I'm sure most people do.

Cuddling together on a couch with my friends, I used to hold a big bucket of buttered

popcorn and run the video that we had chosen according to its popularity and the number

of "cool" actors and actresses that showed up in it. Once the video ran, it never stopped

until the movie ended. I saw only the main story, the story that anyone could understand

from just watching the film. For example, when I watched Fried Green Tomatoes for the

first time, I understood it only as a story about an old woman in a hospital who tells a

story about a friend she had when she was young, while a fat woman with an eating

problem listens and learns to be strong. Because it never occumed to me that there might

be another story in it, I didn't like the film very much.

Although I obviously didn't expect comfortable sofas nor buttered popcorn in the

course, I did expect to have some fun, as in the fun that I often experience while watching

videos with my friends, laughing about ridiculous jokes and accepting the story as it is.

However, my expectations were not fulfilled. In the class, I was too busy writing notes

to laugh at jokes. In the film course, the students were taught to look into the "other side

of the story" and to watch films critically. With a pencil in one hand and a notebook in

the other, we tried to look at everything the screen showed and wrote down anything that

.4 6 40

we even slightly suspected was a symbol, a sign of foreshadowing, or anything that

might be helpful for us to further understand the film, not just the main story. In the end,

what we had in our notes gave us ideas about the theme of the film, the message of the

film, or whatever came as the topic of the paper that we wrote after viewing each film.

Learning to Ask Questions!

Before taking this course, I often felt an indescribable feeling of dissatisfaction after

watching films, as if something kept me from saying "Now that was a good movie!" Just

as a puzzle is incomplete until the last piece is set, I felt as though I failed to place that last

piece in the right place. It was in this film course that I found the answer why--I hadn't

looked into the movie deep enough and was missing important points.

The first day the class watched the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, the instructor, as

always, froze the scene at a very odd place--a scene showing a rusty old truck getting

pulled out of muddy water--a scene I thought was almost meaningless to the story.

Annoyed and frustrated that he wouldn't let the film get to it's main story, I waited for his

explanation.

Pointing at the screen, he asked us "What do you think that means?" Confused, I

asked myself, "I don't understand....what else is it but a dirty truck? So what if a truck

was found in dirty water?" Since the teacher told us to write whatever we felt about the

scene into our notes, I wrote down, "What is the significance of the truck? What is the

significance of the filthy water?"

The instructor continued to press the pause button every time scenes changed or

something he thought was important appeared in it, and told us to write down anything

we felt or saw. When traintracks appeared on the screen, and he paused it again, and

asked the class, "What did you see? Did something catch your attention? If so, write it

down," I still didn't understand his intention. Instead of being interested, I became more

confused. I had no idea what to write, but I decided to write what I could think up, so I

jotted down, "What is the significance of the traintracks?" feeling "My gosh, what a

boring thing to think about, let alone, write about." Not for even a second at that time did

I ever think I'd be writing about it, and enjoying it.

The instructor not only constantly told us to write down what we thought, but he also

often called on some of the students to tell him what they thought. In a scene where Mrs.

Couch, the overweight woman with little confidence in herself, begins to show signs of

self-confidence, he stopped the tape and called on me to explain what I thought about it, if

I could relate Mrs. Couch's growth to someone else's in the film. For a minute, I looked

through my notes and came up with an idea. "Could it be that Mrs. Couch's growth is

41 4 7

very similar to Idgie's?" I asked. As soon as I understood the point, I was able to

present my opinion smoothly.

Once I realized how to answer questions that piled up in my notes, I eventually

learned to find the scavenging for answers quite fun because of the satisfaction and the

confidence I felt when I found them.

Oh, I Get It:

After watching the movie once, I was overwhelmed with questions, words, and

phrases in my notebook, and as I looked at them, I realized I'd written the same words

more than once. One such word was "train", and ironically, I felt attached to it because it

appeared so many times in my notes and convinced me that there must be something

important about it. Ultimately I chose to look further into the connection between the

story and the train.

As soon as I decided what I wanted to further look into, I put together all of my notes

on "train." When I came up with my list of where the train appeared and when, I began

to see a pattern "Oh, I get it! The train passes by Whistlestop whenever Idgie

experiences a change in her life, first when Buddy dies, next when she takes Ruth onto

the train, and finally when Ruth dies." When Idgie loses her best friend, Buddy, in a

railroad accident, she becomes even more withdrawn and selfish. When she and Ruth go

on the train to distribute food to the poor, we see that she has become more caring for

others and less self-centered. Finally, when Ruth, her best friend after Buddy's death,

dies she learns to accept death, and to become an adult, a lady. Thus, I found my thesis:

"The train takes Idgie from an immature tomboy to a grown-up adult."

This is why I now strongly feel that notetaking about even something one may think

is just a minor aspect of the story, is important in finding one's strong thesis.

Finding Evidence to Convince the Readers

After I found my thesis, I needed to watch the video again to find a convincing

argument to prove my idea was correct. Because I knew what scenes were crucial to my

paper, I watched them with much attention. I compared Idgie's actions before each

"train" incident with her actions after the scene, and checked that Idgie had matured, as I

suspected she had. When I made sure my opinion was correct, I knew I could write an

argument that was descriptive and convincing, and that even the strict instructor will

enjoy reading my paper.

Because I knew exactly what I was to write, all I had to do was to type it out which

48 42

turned out to be quite simple. I had my thesis, my notes, and my main points

straightened out, which were all I needed. As if I had already written my paper in my

head, I wrote it without hesitation, which was unusual for me. Until then, I had

sometimes found difficulty writing my papers. Often, I had stayed up all night to come

up with something interesting and convincing, but in the end, I was left with a boring,

meaningless paper. Now I realize that the reason for my continuous failure was my

inability to come up with an interesting thesis, and to look deeper into my text which

meant that I was trying to write papers with very little understanding about it.

Soon after I finished my paper the instructor called on my to present my idea, and I

could explain my idea to the class with confidence. I learned how good it felt to be

satisfied about my work, and to be able to present it, knowing that I had a strong

argument.

Conversion: From Viewing IFilm as Entertainment to Viewing Film asText

As a result of my taking this course, I learned a new way of watching films-- viewing

film as a text. By having learned this method, I feel as though I have found the last

puzzle piece. Because I changed from an indifferent viewer to a critical viewer, asking

questions about an awkward scene or looking for signs that might give me a clue to an

answer, I can now look forward to discovering something new everytime I see a film,

more than just the main story. As "the train served as a symbol that alerted the viewer to

Idgie's maturity," the film course itself served as a guide to my growth in understanding

film watching.

My Improvement in English

As I stated above, I took Intensive English to gain confidence in myself and to

improve my English skills. After one semester of the English Film Course, however, I

realized I gained much more than that.

Now as a junior at the University, I can understand lectures with less difficulty and

write papers that make sense. More important, however, is the fact that I learned much

more than I expected from Intensive English. Not only did my English writing improve,

but my ability to view films also improved, which I never expected from taking Intensive

English. I feel as though I took a film course and an English course at once. I learned

the techniques of film watching, constantly thinking about each scene of the film and

about everything that appears in it, but I also discovered how to find my own idea about

"4

43 t. 4 9

the film, find my own thesis through my notes and through my thoughts about the film

and to communicate these ideas in English. Although I knew how to find a thesis for a

paper about a novel or about a poem, it never occurred to me that I could find my own

idea in a movie. Before the course, I thought movies gave me all the information, that all

I had to do was sit and watch. Now, I know differently.

5044

THE VALUE OF READING AND FILM VIEWING IN FOSTERINGCRITICAL THINKING

Sae Yamada

I am presently a junior who has just finished taking the advanced level English

Intensive Course at Keio University's Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC). In all the three

semesters of this course, the aim of the class was not to concentrate on grammar, spelling

or vocabulary. We were required to think. Think intellectually and critically on issues or

certain themes. To achieve this aim, films and readings were used in class as text

materials. Throughout the three semesters with both readings and films, my mind

developed much more when reading than film viewing. So did the process of critical

thinking.

In the first semester, the class proceeded by first viewing films, then talking in

general about the film we saw. Then we broke up into groups of five to six people. Here

we exchanged ideas and sometimes read each other's response journals which we wrote

almost every week. The class procedure was almost the same in the second semester.

The difference was that instead of films, we did readings.

All films and readings we did in class dealt with certain themes. "Cross-cultural

Conflict" was the theme for the first semester. In the second semester it was "Human

Relationships." The materials used in providing the themes were films such as Fried

Green Tomatoes (discrimination against women and between whites and blacks), Do The

Right Thing (discriminaton among races in America such as blacks, Hispanic, Koreans

and whites), The Milagro Beanfield War (discrimination between the Hispanics and the

whites in America) and Children of a Lesser God (discrimination between the

handicapped and non-handicapped). For the theme "Human Relationships", we watched

When Harry Met Sally , a film about the relationships between men and women. We also

read short stories written by a variety of authors from "A Family Supper" by Kazuo

Ishiguro to "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan. We also had class presentations at the end of

each semester. My class as a whole did Children of A Lesser God in the first semester as

our final presentation. At the end of the second semester, my group did a presentation

based on our analysis on the book, Lord of The Flies by William Golding.

As I worked throughout the semesters with films and readings, I felt my mind

developed and grew a lot more when we read and not when we viewed films as materials

for critical thinking. From this experience, I believe that critical thinking can be better

achieved by reading than film viewing. The difference occurs for three reasons: the

difference in intellectual engagement of the mind, the difference in imagination that is

45 51

required, and, most important, the difference in the interpretive process involved.

Intellectual Engagement

Viewing films does not require the full involvement of the intellectual mind. In other

words, viewing films is usually a passive act. I do not mean that students just sitting and

watching films in class is a passive act. Viewing films is passive because it does not

require the full engagement of the brain. In other words, it undermines the necessity to

understand what is going on in the film and has a tendency to divert the audience's

attention from the real message or essence of the film.

In class, when viewing a film, most of us students just had to keep our eyes open but

not the mind. To know what was going on, we just had to keep watching the film. Even

if there were parts we did not understand, the film kept moving forward. So even if we

did not get what was going on at that moment, it was still possible to keep up with the

film because just watching it, we could guess what had happened. Seeing is believing;

therefore, we just had to watch to follow. This could be a big help for some students

who give up easily especially when dealing with something that is in English, which is

their second language. On the other hand, this discourages the viewer from thinking

actively on his/her own. For example, the film Do The Right Thing was a heavy film. I

found it difficult to understand every scene and what the director, Spike Lee, was trying

to convey to us. It was certainly difficult to keep my mind alert at all times but

understanding every scene was not necessary. I could still take part in the discussion

with my classmates.

Reading was a different matter. For example, "The Cat Bird Seat" by James Thurber

took a lot of energy and I had to make use of all the knowledge I had. I had to read and

reread the story several times to finally understand what the situation was and what was

the context of the story. It was only then that I could participate fully in the discussion.

For me, I was more prepared for the discussions after going through a reading in class

than after watching a film. Discussion after watching the film helped me understand the

film better but discussion after going through the written work, drove the discussion

deeper in a more academic way. We became more aware of the themes and became more

conscious of the theme itself.

I find that films do the thinking for us. The necessity of understanding the incidents

is undermined by viewing films. If we get used to this, then when we do readings, just

reading good books or good articles, becomes tough work. This might lead some

students to laziness or tend to make their minds dull. From my experience with readings,

I had to recognize words, sentences and details to get the picture. I needed the

5 2 46

participation of every cell in my brain to help me recognize these. Also there are parts or

paragraphs in the readings which are important and need to be digested by the brain until

the readers get the points. I had to go back and forth through the pages to understand

those certain parts. Of course, we can watch films over and over again but it is not as

convenient and easy to review films as it is to review the readings. Furthermore, we can

go through the pages anytime, anywhere in our own free time, in trains or while waiting

for the bus which is not possible with films.

Most films that succeed in capturing the audience's attention are films that are either

fast moving, or that have scenes that are fascinating or otherwise amusing. Films tend to

take the audience's attention away from important conversations or events that could

otherwise engage us intelectually to scenes of violence or sex. Visual images have a more

effective way of staying in our minds; therefore, rather than the important dialogue or

message, these scenes are the ones which stay with us.

Imagination

One reason that I like reading is that it gives me a chance to develop my imagination.

I believe imagination helps develop the reader's thinking skills. Imagining does not limit

itself to what the characters look like, what kind of environment the characters live in or

what kind of car they drive in the year 2599. Imagination goes beyond that. We can also

imagine the characters' feelings, the pain, the joy, the hardship, and the jokes. At the

same time, understanding why the characters feel the way they do is what I call

imagination.

Most important, it is exciting to create the story (following the reading material of

course) in my own way and my own style. Reading encourages and stimulates my

imagination. As I read, the words turn to images. In "A Family Supper" by Kazuo

Ishiguro, there is the line, "My father was a formidable-looking man with large stony jaw

and furious black eyebrows." Imagine that. Imagine the "furious eyebrows." What you

and I imagine can be completely different. This could lead to self discovery because we

can compare what we imagined and understand more about ourselves. Haven't you ever

felt disappointed after watching a favorite book made into a film? What you imagined

was totally different and maybe sometimes it takes your hopes away.

When I imagined Simon with flies buzzing around his head and there was no way to

get rid of them in Lord of The Flies, I believe the effect would be different when reading

that page and when watching the film. I would think, "Uggh! Disgusting!" when

viewing the film, but when reading, I would not be distracted by the ugly scene and will

be able to concentrate on what is happening in the story and allow my imagination to run

47 53

on freely. Imagining the flies around Simon's head and my head would make me want to

throw up but at the same time, I would be fascinated by what I imagined and how it

would affect me. Here, I am able to put myself into Simon's shoes. I would be able to

imagine what he is going through. What would I do in such a situation? And on my

imagination goes. It would also be interesting to read the same page again sometime later

and see if I still imagine things I did the last time.

Imagining the characters' feelings will shed some light not only on other people's

behavior and attitudes but also on our own. Putting ourselves into other people's shoes

and imagining what they are going through will help us understand people better. I am

always confused when my friends talk or laugh or act in a way that I find disturbing, and

not knowing why they act that way makes things worse for me. Or sometimes I just

wonder why I find some people weird and strange yet I like them. Or why my parents

are the way they are towards me. All these questions with no answers. The surprising

thing is that sometimes I find the help or solutions in books. The details and the

information written in the book give us the opportunity to go into another person's life

and see things the way that person does. When the characters are in a similar situation as

I am or as others are, I will be able to imagine other's feelings and apply my

understanding to real life situations.

Interpretive Process

Viewing a film is watching someone else's work. Films such as Fried Green

Tomatoes are based on a book. When the work of interpreting is done, and the film is

made, we have a director's interpretation of the book. And when we view Fried Green

Tomatoes, we are looking at one person's interpretation of the original work. There is

not much critical thinking that can be done here because we students who watched Fried

Green Tomatoes in class, did not read the original material. If we had read the original,

we would have developed our own interpretation and understanding of the original piece.

It would have prepared us because if we have the preknowledge of the material after

reading, we can watch the film critically. We can compare our interpretation with 'the

director's interpretation. This is more stimulating because we can actually compare what

is different or new or the same. As both the audience and the director have read the

original work, there is a standard base everyone can refer to. If we do not read the

original and just watch the film, it is natural to feel bored and become passive. This

attitude will of course, raise no intellectual doubts or questions in the minds of the

audience.

Boredom and passivity will influence us to value the film as just a piece of

48

5 4

entertainment or another person's thoughts. Films are entertainment because they do not

require much interpretation, allowing the audience to sit back and relax. It is through the

director's thoughts or eyes that we see things. What the director wants us to see is what

we see. It narrows our range of vision, as if to say, "This is what you see" for films.

For readings, it is, "This is all there is, you figure out what to see and how to think about

what you see." When we read, we, the students or readers, have to make our own

interpretation of the reading, whereas the interpretation is already done in films. The

mind involvement required is very small, and amounts just to following the development

of the story. Forget the reality and enjoy the film because film is a world of dreams. We

do not need to bother with the fact that the themes brought up in those films deal with

sensitive issues such as cross-cultural conflict and discrimination.

I believe interpretation is the key that opens the story to us. When I do my own

interpretation, first of all I have to understand the vocabulary, the words used, and at the

same time, why the author wrote the book. As I read and understand the story, I feel

closer to the characters. I also develop a sympathy towards these characters and can

understand why they take such actions towards problems and conflicts in the way the

story develops. I do not, however, feel close to whatever happens in the film. The

themes "Cross-cultural Conflict" and "Human Relationships" are something I face in my

daily life with friends, family and people. So when I watch films that deal with these

themes, I should be able to identify with the events and feelings in the film. Somehow to

my discovery, I felt closer to the characters and seem to understand the meaning of the

context better when I read. It is as if the films and I are too far apart, perhaps because I

do not need to interpret much here. I cannot connect the issues in the film to my life

without feeling forced to do so. Do The Right Thing felt so far away, as if what

happened was none of my business. When I read "Ten to Ten" by Can Themba or "Like

a Winding Sheet" by Ann Petry, I felt closer to the story and felt the progress of the story

stronger. For example, as I was reading "Like a Winding Sheet" I could feel the tension

building up between the husband and the wife and the whole atmosphere that surrounded

the husband as I struggled to understand the story. When the tension erupted (the main

character, Joe, loses control of his temper after a long hard day), I could feel the tension

coming and could sympathize along with Joe and his wife. I unconsciously entered into

the story and entered Joe's mind. In Do The Right Thing the film had it's own way of

building up the tension. I could tell that the tension was about to erupt and where and

what the climax would be but I did not feel it as strongly as when reading "Like a

Winding Sheet."

The time and effort taken for interpretation varies depending on the reader or the

students. Often the work of interpretation takes up too much time. As students, we

49 55

know that class time is very limited. We prefer not to spend too much time on one thing.

It is true that reading is time consuming but I find this not a good enough reason for using

films rather than readings. Films such as Fried Green Tomatoes can be watched

elsewhere. Although readings can also be done elsewhere, I needed the help of the

English instructor just to explain some points that needed to be straightened out before

any discussion could occur. Rather than using an hour and a half or more time for a film

in class, it is better to spend the class time going over the book.

This also affects the intructor's way of teaching. If films are used in class, the

instructor need not explain or help the students with any interpretation at all. I always

seek the help of my instructors mostly when writing essays, and at other times, when I

cannot understand the context of the readings and therefore am unable to do my own

interpretation.

Conclusion

Reading develops our minds not only in the sense that we train ourselves to think

critically but it also helps us grow in other beneficial ways. We can improve our

language and enrich our writing expressions.

At SFC, where critical thinking is what we are expected to do, we (my classmates and

I) had a lot of discussions in class. Here we voiced our opinions and thoughts.

Everyone can do this. It is easy to talk, to express one own's thoughts to others. When

it comes to writing, it is not as simple as talking. In writing it is important to be able to

express thoughts effectively with concrete reasons to the other person. In class, if asked

to voice out their opinions, everyone will do so. But when it came to writing, not many

participated. I was the editor for a collection of essays for our class. I found out that

most of us did not know how to write and including myself, we did not have enough

writing practice to write an essay we could be proud of. There exists a big handicap

when trying to express feelings in words. Using words to express what we saw, felt,

and wanted to say was hard work because we did not learn any of these, at least in class

when watching films. It is important to know how to explain the complex situation and

human feelings in written language, and reading can help us do this.

Readings are souvenirs of our thoughts. After reading or viewing films, after

discussion or after thinking about what we have just read or watched, sometimes our

minds change or the way we think changes. Right after watching Do The Right Thing, I

was confused and disturbed by the film, because although I knew the story, I did not

understand it. After discussion, I finally got some ideas and so the way I saw the film

has changed. But this is only a reward of knowing that I finally understood what the

: 5 650

director saw and not the real issue being discussed. Also, it is easy to miss out important

details in films (with the violence and sex distractions). With readings, we can underline

sentences, make marks, and go back afterwards. We cannot make marks in a film.

There is the possibility to take notes during film viewing but while taking notes, we could

miss tiny, important details that occur as we are writing.

Where critical thinking is concerned, I believe reading rather than viewing films

achieves this better. Reading keeps the intellectual mind alert and awake at all times,

develops our imagination, and most important of all, allows us to construct our own

interpretations.

5 751

THE LISTENING-VIEWING DIARY IN ANADVANCED LISTEN1NG/SPEAKING CLASS

Naomi K. Fujishima

In an EFL environment, it is often difficult to find materials which give students

exposure to English as it is spoken by native English speakers as well as exposure to

Western culture. Listening to taped lectures, songs, and radio programs are some

examples of ways to develop skills in listening and speaking, but video is another more

powerful medium as it offers both audio and visual cues to the language learner. With

video, students not only can learn about language, but also how it is used in the target

culture. Because of the many advantages that video offers, there has been a growing

amount of video materials available to teachers and students.

Basically, videos can be divided into two categories--video material designed for

English language teaching (ELT), and non-ELT material (Allan, 1985). Videos designed

for ELT have the advantage of offering graded language use and providing exercise

materials to aid the students and teacher. On the other hand, non-ELT material, or

authentic material, is geared toward native speakers and, thus, does not provide graded

language use. For the second language learner, authentic video allows the student to see

how native speakers interact in either staged or natural settings of real-life situations. In

EFL situations, finding opportunities outside of class to listen to native speakers can be a

difficult task. For that reason, movie videos can give the students this opportunity. I

base my own choice to use authentic video in the language classroom on these four

tenets, following Stempleski (1994):

1) It presents real language.2) It provides an authentic look at the culture.3) It gives students practice in dealing with the medium.4) It motivates learners.

Because the teacher must compile and choose authentic materials from a number of

sources, classroom preparation can sometimes be rather time-consuming. However, the

advantages far outweigh the disadvantages when the teacher can see the interest authentic

video sparks in the students. In addition, for many students, video viewing is an

entertaining and enjoyable experience.

In Kwansei Gakuin University's Intensive English Program (IEP), movie videos

were used as one assignment, designed with the above points in mind, to provide

students with a project they could enjoy doing, while at the same time presenting them

with realistic examples of language and culture. The assignment was called the Listening-

5852

Viewing (LV) Diary.

The idea of the LV Diary was adapted from an article written by Michael

Furmanovsky called "The Listening-Viewing Video Diary: Doubling Your Students'

Exposure to English" (Furmanovsky, 1994). Furmanovsky describes how, after reading

through numerous student diaries, he designed an elaborate notetaking form where

students could systematically jot down notes regarding both cultural and language aspects

of the movie they watch. Students were to choose three or more language aspects and

two visual or cultural observations from one scene and take notes. He also gave his

students the freedom to choose a movie of their liking. At the end of the term, he

assessed students by either asking them to give a 5-6 minute presentation or conducting

what he called "rotating pair dialogs" where "students questioned each other about their

diaries for 6-8 minutes before moving on to another student" (p. 49).

According to the article, Furmanovsky's main purpose for this activity was to give

students more exposure to spoken English and to non-Japanese cultures. Although

Kwansei Gakuin's IEP allowed students more exposure to native English than other

regular track, non-IEP classes, I felt that two 90-minute classes a week still wasn't

enough. Based on Furmanovksy's appraisal of the LV Diary that students' exposure to

"native spoken English...can easily be doubled" (p. 26), I decided to use it with my

Advanced Listening and Speaking class.

The Setting, The Students, and The LV Diary Assignment

At Kwansei Gakuin, the LV Diary was used as a homework project for students

taking an Advanced Listening and Speaking Course to give them exposure to both the

cultural and sociolinguistic aspects of the English language. The class met twice a week

for 90-minute periods, and was made up of approximately 28 students from various

departments such as Law, Science, Sociology, Humanities, Economics, and Business.

The course was an elective, so students who first passed a screening test signed up

voluntarily to take it. The textbook for the class was called Passages: Exploring Spoken

English (James, 1993), for high-intermediate learners. The LV Diary was used as an

additional assignment and was not related to any topics referred to in the textbook. Since

the class was made up of students from various disciplines, the LV Diary was assigned as

a way for them to focus on something that everyone had in common, that is, watching

movies.

Many of the steps in Furmanovsky's article were used in the Kwansei Gakuin

assignment; however some adjustments were made. For example, the notetaking form

was simplified and only required the students to choose one language aspect and one

53 ,

59

visual or cultural observation (see Appendix A). In addition, each scene the students

were to watch could only be 3-5 minutes in length. This was included because, at the

beginning, some students tried to watch a whole 20-minute segment of the movie and had

a hard time focusing. With short segments, it was easier for the students to concentrate

on one or two aspects and analyze them critically. After the students took notes, they

were to write a 100-200 word essay which included these points:

1) their viewing technique (students had the option of watching the movie in itsentirety before or after their analysis)2) a summary of the content of the scene3) why they chose this particular scene (what cultural or language aspectinterested them the most)

At the beginning of the semester, I took an informal poll to see which movies students

thought were popular. From the results of the poll, I selected three movies that students

were to base their LV Diaries on. Each student chose one of the three movies to focus on

throughout the semester.

Since this assignment was a rather new concept for the students, it took some time to

explain the notetaking form and how to use it. I chose a short, one-and-a-half-minute

scene from Lethal Weapon for students to practice with during class. The scene was

somewhat simple--Detective Murtaugh, played by Danny Glover, walks into the kitchen

in the morning and is greeted by his wife. He has a brief conversation with her, gulps

down some orange juice and gets ready to dash off to work. As he leaves the kitchen, his

young daughter complains to him about her brother. He gives her a kiss, pats her on the

head, and is about to leave when his teenage daughter appears in a sexy party dress to ask

for his approval. A look of shock is on his face as he realizes uneasily that his little girl is

growing up. His facial expression is that of anxiety and worry as he goes out the door.

First, I explained each point carefully in the note-taking sheet. I emphasized the fact

that even though they were only watching one-and-a-half-minutes of a movie, there were

many language and visual cues to work from. Even though students were to do this

assignment individually outside of class, I had them work in groups during class to help

each other look for the cultural or language aspects. I didn't use a closed-captioned

version because none was available, but I was hoping the students would try to look for

visual cues rather than specific language observations. However, my expectations were

perhaps too high, and students were confused as to what they were supposed to do.

Since I only gave them two or three chances to watch the segment, they didn't have

enough time to absorb the information. I emphasized the fact that at home, students could

watch the segment they chose as many times as they wanted to find their observations.

In this particular scene from Lethal Weapon, I wanted students to notice the close

relationship between the daughters and their father, and how openly affectionate the father

was. Of course, not all fathers are this way, but in general, in the U.S., it is socially

acceptable for middle-class parents to show affection to their children. On the other hand,

in Japan, people are usually more reserved and do not show affection so openly. After I

explained this comparison, we watched the scene again, and the students tried once more.

I stressed that it was not so important to understand what was actually said, but how the

participants spoke and reacted to each other, such as intonation and facial expressions. I

also reminded them to look at the surrounding elements of the scene, such as the layout of

the house or the clothing being worn. In the end, some were even able to catch a few

phrases which I put up on the board afterwards and explained in detail.

After going through this introduction exercise, the students were to do the LV Diary

on their own time outside of class and turn in five entries all together in one semester.

The three movies they could choose from were Pretty Woman, Dead Poets Society, and

Roman Holiday. Each student looked at one movie and chose five different scenes on

their own to analyze. I made sure the students knew that I would be available to help

them if there were any areas they couldn't understand. At the end of the semester, the

students, either alone or in pairs, presented a language or cultural observation which they

taught to the rest of the class (see Appendix B for explanation of this assignment). Class

time was allotted for the students to work in movie groups, so they could all choose

different scenes to present.

As an example, one group of students taught the class the phrase "Seize the day!"

from Dead Poets Society (#1 in the Looking at Language section of the notetaking form-

Appendix A). At first, they showed the scene where it was uttered by the English

teacher, Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams. Then, they asked the audience if

anyone could understand what was said. After choosing one or students to guess, they

wrote the phrase on the board and explained the meaning. In this particular scene, Mr.

Keating tells his students that every living being ends up as "food for worms". To make

the boys' lives worthwhile, he says they must "seize the day, make your life

extraordinary." The group ended their presentation on a positive note, saying that they

were influenced greatly by this particular phrase.

The Problems

One of the purposes of this assignment was to give students exposure to slices of

Western culture by using movies they were interested in and to give them another

assignment different from the textbook. Many students expressed enthusiasm for movies

and wanted to know what the actors and actresses were saying in their favorite scenes.

What better way to satisfy their curiosity than by using the LV Diary? Students could see

and hear authentic language in context as well as learn about other features such as facial

expressions, gestures, formal and informal settings, and social and economic status.

However, after giving this assignment once, I found there were some considerations to

keep in mind for future assignments.

Although one purpose was to give students exposure to western cultures, I also

wanted students to focus on various language aspects of the films. The first problem I

noticed was that students sometimes had trouble using new vocabulary words correctly in

a new sentence or really understanding new expressions or idioms. If students were able

to use what they heard by making up an original sentence with the new vocabulary word,

it was an indication that they understood the meaning. On the notetaking form, there

were spaces to write in the meaning and make up a new sentence (for the new vocabulary

word). Sometimes, the spaces were left blank or the meanings did not match the context

in which the word or expression was used in the scene. Some students did check the

meaning with me or other native speakers, but it was difficult to monitor all the students.

In a class with fewer students, this task would have been easier to carry out. An example

of a section of the filled out notetaking form is in Appendix A.

Another difficulty for some students was the diary entry. Some students wrote one or

two sentences only, or made a list of items that they thought would fulfill the writing

requirement. Explanation about how to write journals in English was not specifically

addressed in class because the assumption was that since this was an advanced listening

and speaking course, the students would have had exposure to journal writing in previous

classes.

One more problem involved the final oral presentation. Some students lacked the

necessary skills for effective public speaking, such as speech organization, timing, eye

contact, loudness, posture, etc. Students need to practice these skills more and be better

prepared for this final assignment.

Finally, I found that some students were not used to the notion of watching a movie

actively, where they must participate in the viewing and learning process. As Lonergan

(1984) states, "It is essential....that learners are introduced gradually to video in the

classroom, and guided to an understanding of how valuable the medium can be" (p. 6).

In some diary entries, students wrote comments such as "I enjoyed watching this movie"

or "Audrey Hepburn is pretty, so I chose this movie." I appreciated their honest opinion,

but felt they could have delved deeper in their analysis of the scene they chose.

The Benefits

In spite of the problems I encountered with this assignment, I still feel it is a

6 9- 56

worthwhile activity to use in the language classroom. Even with the lack of journal

writing and oral presentation skills, students were challenged by the LV Diary to take an

active role in the viewing process. At the same time, they were given the freedom to

choose scenes and movies they liked. Since the students worked on several diary entries

throughout the semester, they were able to grow more analytical and improve each entry

as time went on.

Several students commented that although the assignment was time-consuming, it

helped them learn new expressions and vocabulary words, as well as learn about different

American customs. In the diary entry, some students asked me questions about specific

points in the scenes they viewed. For example, one student asked about a scene in Pretty

Woman where Edward, played by Richard Gere, takes Vivian, played by Julia Roberts,

to a formal business dinner. The student wondered if it was usual for an American

businessman to take his girlfriend or wife to a business meeting. I learned that, in Japan,

it is rare for a businessman (or woman, for that matter) to bring along his (her) spouse or

companion to a company dinner or party. In another scene from the same movie, another

student found it strange that Vivian took a bubble bath. In Japan, people do not usually

put bubbles in their baths.

Another positive outcome of the cumulative diary entries was the final assignment.

As mentioned earlier, at the end of the semester, students gave oral presentations, either

alone or in pairs, on one language or cultural observation which they chose from their LV

Diaries. The presentations were a good way for the students to analyze thoroughly the

language or cultural aspect they presented, as well as to learn about other language points

or cultural differences from their classmates. At the end of the term, many students

commented that even though the presentations were stressful, they were glad they did it

because they could learn new expressions and note cultural differences from their peers.

Conclusion

Furmanovsky (1994) neglects to mention in his article the learning level of his

students, making it difficult to determine the audience for this LV Diary project. He states

that they were "second-year university students," but levels can vary from one university

to another, indeed, from one school department to another. This was especially true in

my Advanced Listening and Speaking class at Kwansei Gakuin with students from six

different departments with ages ranging from 19-22. In a different setting, for example

with a more homogeneous group, this activity might have been more successful.

In addition, Furmanovsky states that the ideal size of a class to assign the LV Diary is

20 and under. With a smaller class, the teacher can focus on more specific problems and

57

communicate better with each student. I became keenly aware of the communication

problem between student and teacher with my class of 28. Perhaps choosing one movie

for larger classes would help alleviate this problem for the teacher. With one movie, the

teacher could have groups of students working on specific scenes together and any

questions that arise could be shared with the whole class.

In the future, I will spend more time explaining and introducing this activity step-by-

step. I now know the potential limitations of the students, and the extent of their own

ability to choose and evaluate their observations. However difficult this LV Diary may

seem, it is still a practical way for students to be exposed to native language use and to

other cultures outside of the EFL classroom.

References

Allan, M. (1985). Teaching English with Video. Essex, England: Longman Group

Limited.

Furmanovsky, M. (1994). The listening-viewing video diary: doubling your students'

exposure to English. The Language Teacher, 18 (4), 26-28.

James, G. (1993). Passages: Exploring Spoken English. Boston, MA: Heinle &

Heinle.

Lonergan, J. (1984). Video in language teaching. .Cambridge, England: Cambridge

University Press.

Stempleski, S. (1994). Teaching Communication Skills With Authentic Video. In S.

Stempleski & P. Arcario (Eds.). Video in second language Ttaching: Using,

selecting, and producing Vvdeo for the classroom (pp. 7-24). Alexandria, VA:

TESOL, Inc.

6 4

Appendix A

LISTENING-VIEWING DIARY (with example)

scene length: minutesName: Dept:

Movie Title: Date:Diary Number:

Looking at Language(Choose It or more)

1) Expression or Idioms

Situation:

Speakers:

Meaning:

2) SlangSituation:

Speakers:

Meaning:

3) New vocabulary tragedy

New Sentence:

The 1989 earthquake in California was agreat tragedy.

Situation: boys in thestudy group are talkingabout Knox's dinner atthe Danberrys

Speakers: Knox and

other boysMeaning: a terrible or

unhappy event4) Pronunciation

Situation:

Speakers:

How is it different?

59G5

5) Function (greetings,

apologies, compliments,

excuses, etc.)

6) Other notable aspects

CHALLENGE

YOURSELF!

'Visual or culturalobservations (Choose 1)1) Facial expressions and

body

language

2) Cultural differences --

U.S. and Japan

3) Interesting or unexpected

translations

4) Other notable as_gects

CHALLENGE

YOURSELF!

66

60

NOTE: On the back of this page, please write a 100-200 word diary entryof your analysis (See details on other side)TRY TO COVER THESE POINTS IN YOUR DIARY ENTRY (Of course, you may add

more, if you like!):o your viewing technique

e a summary of the content of the sceneo why you chose this particular scene (what cultural or language aspect

interested you the most?)

C 761

Appendix B

LISTENING-VIEWING DIARY

ORAL PRESENTATION ASSIGNMENT

The final presentation for this class will be based on the Listening-Viewing Diaries you

have compiled throughout the semester. You may work in pairs or individually on your

scenes.

1) Find a scene that is interesting to you and has some language or cultural aspect

which you can teach to the rest of the class.

2) Show the scene to the class. (Naomi will provide the videotape, so let her know

where the scene is -- give the time count)

3) Explain the expression or gesture to the class. First, ask the class what they think it

means, then give your interpretation. You may use the blackboard or OHP, if you

like (let Naomi know ahead of time if you need the OHP).

4) Explain the differences between the U.S. and Japan.

5) Give examples, so everyone understands clearly. If you are presenting with a

partner, a role play will enhance the presentation.

6) Your presentation will take about 15 minutes.

7) The presentations will be scheduled for 6/22 (Wed), 6/27 (Mon), and 6/29

(Wed). A sign-up sheet will be available soon.

BE SURE TO REMEMBER THESE POINTS:

Look at your audience

Do not read from a script

Organize your presentation so it's easy to follow

Speak loudly and clearly so people in the back can hear you

Don't be nervous!

C 8-; 62

THE PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN FILMS:A SCENARIO FOR MISUNDERSTANDING

Yoshiko Takahashil

From the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s, two main cycles of films have dominated

commercial films in Hollywood as a result of the women's movement (Kaplan 1983). In the

first cycle, Hollywood followed a policy of total avoidance. It ignored issues associated with

gender differences and excluded women from films almost entirely, focusing instead on films

of male bonding. In the second cycle, a new trend emerged as Hollywood evidently came to

believe the issues dealing with gender differences could no longer be avoided. Women came

to be targets of violence. In A Clockwork Orange and Last Tango in Paris, women are

brutally abused and raped. Kaplan (1983) explains this phenomenon as society's reaction to

the women's movement. Male-dominant American society, says Kaplan, feels a serious

threat from the women's movement, and women have to be put down in films.

In the 1980s, as American society had become more tolerant of women's battle for

independence, for the first time mainstream commercial films started being made which

explicitly address the social, political, and economic issues raised by the women's

movement. Looking for Mr. Goodbar, made in 1977, may be the epitome of films in this

genre. Theresa is among the first female characters to break the traditional female image in

Hollywood films. She is attractive, but not a pretty doll; she is aggressive and often angry;

she has explicitly depicted sexual desires. However, my experience with this film in the

Japanese context suggests that the message of women's independence does not necessarily

come through in the way(s) that the filmmaker may have intended.

In the fall semester of 1994, while I was teaching a seminar on feminism, I decided to

use the film Looking for Mr. Goodbar as a text. My original idea in showing this film was

to make my seminar students aware of the problems concerned with a woman's attempt to

achieve independence. At the same time, I was hoping that the students would realize how a

society, at least American society in 1977, was structured in such as way as to hinder

women's liberation.

Student reaction, however, was contrary to my expectations. Their comments centered on

the main character, a woman whom they described as displaying "aggressive behavior." It

became immediately obvious that I was dealing with an "outculture" film (films made in or

depicting other cultures) in hopes of engendering content discussions in the language

1 I would like to thank my friends and colleagues for their patience in discussing, reading and editing thispaper. I would especially like to thank Alan McCornick for his excellent editing and David Freedman forhis insightful comments. I am also grateful to Christine Casanave and J. David Simons for their superbeditorial comments.

63 9

classroom. I would like here to reflect on two aspects of this learning experience: the implicit

cultural messages which undercut my intended political goals, and the subtextual semiotics in

the film structure itself that undercut its purported feminist message. I will examine three

additional films in addition to Looking for Mr. Goodbar that are generally familiar to

audiences in the United States and Japan. These films are Thelma and Louise (1991), Switch

(1991) and Working Girl (1988).

Looking for Mr. Goodbar

Looking for Mr. Goodbar purports to address explicitly the social, political, and

economic issues raised by the women's movement of the 1970s. These issues, while quite

familiar to American audiences of the time, were still hard for my Japanese students in 1994

to grasp. Looking for Mr. Goodbar deals fundamentally with issues of women's

independence in a patriarchal society. Theresa, the main character, is a teacher of deaf-mute

students. She leaves home to free herself physically and psychologically from her father, a

tyrannical patriarch. Theresa rejects all the roles and values of this man, as well as the man

he wants her to marry. The film follows her as she searches instead for men in singles bars.

In the end, she is stabbed and killed by one of her one-night stands.

The film fails to reach Japanese students because the basic premise of the film, Theresa's

need to escape oppression, is not evident to them. What is she running from, they wonder.

To explain her behavior, two pieces of cultural information are necessary. The first is the

power of religion in Western society. The power of religion is not perceived by the majority

of polytheistic Japanese. The authority of the church which underlies the message of

Theresa's fatherthat a woman's happiness can come only through marriage and child-

bearing--does not communicate to the Japanese viewers the meaning that Catholic dogma

carries to Western audiences. Unless a student can be made to feel the oppressiveness of

religion embedded in Theresa's psyche, her struggle for liberation from its unconscious

influence remains unsympathetic.

The second piece of cultural information is the power of the father in a patriarchal society.

It is often said that the power of the Japanese father ended with defeat of the Japanese in

World War II. Contemporary Japan is distinguished from other Asian cultures by its

lessening of a son-fixated tradition. Girl babies increasingly tend to be as welcome as baby

boys in contemporary Japanese families. The social and domestic climate which in the past

made baby boys more attractive than baby girls has been quickly changing in Japanese

society. Socially speaking, the feudalistic ie ("family") system which prescribed that only the

eldest son could inherit the family name and the family fortune has almost ceased to exist in

Japan. In the past, families without a son had to adopt a boy or a man to maintain the family

64

line. Discontinuation of the ie in one's generation was considered to be a shame and a

betrayal to the family's ancestors. Since World War H all children regardless of their gender

and the order of their birth are treated equally before the law. This change lifted social

pressure on families to have male children.

From a domestic point of view, daughters are considered to be more useful than sons to

parents. When daughters are small, they tend to stay psychologically and physically close to

their parents. Even after marriage daughters tend to keep close contact with their parents.

Many people say that when sons marry, you lose them and when daughters marry, you gain

sons. What this means is, at least among middle-class families, married sons visit their

wives' families equally or more often than their own families due to strong psychological

bonds between daughters and mothers. Daughters can expect financial and physical support

from their own mothers, and mothers and fathers in return expect to be cared for by their

own daughters in old age.

Feminist activists in Looking for Fumiko (1993), a film documenting Japanese women's

liberation movements in the 1970s, explained that at least at home Japanese women remain

the center of the household and had power in the domestic sphere. The activists in the film

claimed that Japanese women had control over their husbands, children's education and

household budget. This domestic power made Japanese women less sympathetic to the

international women's liberation movement. Lacking general support, women's liberation

movements in Japan failed to attract many followers. I recognize that there is still broader

scalle sexual discrimination against women in Japan. However, for students whose

experiences are limited to mainly domestic spheres (where mothers are the center), it is very

hard to understand the experience of a working class family like Theresa's, ruled by a

parochial authoritarian male.

As I worked with students, encouraging them to examine the issues cross-culturally,

instead of judging Theresa's behavior in terms of their personal values, I began to realize

problems in the film itself. The further the class moved into the film, the closer we came not

to the feminist struggle, but to a Hollywood notion of gender roles. On the surface, Theresa

appears to be struggling for liberation. But there is an insidious subtext of visual clues and

verbal hints to suggest a different message. In the daytime, Theresa is a compassionate and

capable teacher of deaf-mute students. At night, however, she becomes a promiscuous

woman in search of pleasure. The image strikes one as schizophrenic. The sacred mother

during the day becomes the nymphomaniac at night, the bad girl deserving of punishment

and banishment.

Theresa seems to be enjoying herself. But as the camera captures the filth in her kitchen

we become aware of her constant restlessness, her insecurity, and her complete failure to

achieve independence. We are left with the implication that there is no place in this world for

65 .7 1

a woman like Theresa, and no fate for a woman who rejects a man's protection but death.

As I stated earlier, Japanese students failed to capture the basic premise of this film.

They could not understand Theresa's need to escape from oppression. The power of religion

and patriarchal oppression was alien to Japanese students. Theresa's struggle was perceived

as too radical and violent by them. In addition to the lack of cultural information, however, I

found more serious problems in the film itself. That is, superficially the film showed a

feminist struggle, but closer examination of the film reveals that it conveys a different

message (perhaps, a traditional Hollywood notion of gender roles). The visual cues of

Theresa's dirty kitchen and her promiscuous behavior in the evening certainly confused

Japanese students' attempts to justify Theresa's rebellious behavior, and therefore, the

message of the film itself.

Thelma and Louise

Made in 1991, Thelma and Louise deals on the surface with the same theme as Looking

for Mr. Goodbar, the price a woman has to pay for being on her own. In Thelma and

Louise, two working-class women, a housewife and a waitress, set forth on a short summer

trip. Before long they are involved in a series of serious difficulties. They stop off at a

shabby roadside bar and Thelma, who is married to a despotic self-important man who

shows little interest in her, fires herself up with margaritas and flirts with one of the roadside

cowboys. The flirtation ends in an attempt at rape, but the rape is thwarted by Louise, who

has a gun. The murder of the would-he rapist sets them off on their fatal journey.

In their flight from the police, they are verbally abused by a truck-driver, are robbed, and

end up robbing a general store themselves. There is no turning back now and they become

the target of a police search. No one, Thelma's husband included, makes any attempt to

understand what is happening to the two women and in the end, they choose death rather

than surrender to the forces about to engulf them.

I showed Thelma and Louise to a group of Japanese students in a summer program in the

United States with the expressed purpose of generating discussion on gender issues. Once

again, I found their understanding to flounder on two points. Why, they wondered, did

Thelma and Louise have to go to such extremes of revolt? And why was Thelma so afraid of

her husband?

Accustomed to a society where the value of harmony deflates the inclination to protest,

the students find Thelma and Louise's choices incomprehensible. When faced with a social

injustice, Japanese are likely to step back and ponder. What went wrong? Who is

responsible? But to take action, to show oneself in a disturbed state of mind, has always

been considered ignoble. Problems are to be solved or suffered quietly, at the personal level.

Indeed, the attitude is still common that society is bettered through self-improvement. This

was the conclusion reached in the Japanese feminist movement of the 1970s and documented

in the film Looking for Fwniko (1993). The women who participated in the movement came

to the conclusion that they should improve themselves and not revolt. Given this

background, it is not surprising that Thelma and Louise's violent and reckless actions should

carry little sympathy with Japanese audiences.

In Thelma and Louise, Thelma's suffering originates in her husband's oppression. Too

scared to face him, Thelma has to leave him a note to tell him she is leaving for a short

summer trip with Louise. Thelma's relationship with her husband parallels the relationship

between Theresa and her father in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. The characters of the father

and the husband represent the controlling power in a patriarchal society.

Louise's anger and frustration come in part from her relationship with her boyfriend, a

musician unwilling to commit to settling down. Unable to achieve the marriage she seeks,

the institution which society teaches her is necessary for her satisfaction, she lives in a

relationship characterized by tension. Both Thelma's anger and Louise's frustration reflect

the tension of relationships.

Japanese young people's relationships develop in a considerably different context.

Students, especially those from affluent middle class families, are seldom exposed to the

threat of a father's male power. They are not controlled by their professional salary-man

fathers in the same way as the characters of Theresa and Thelma and Louise are controlled by

their male authority figures. Instead, unmarried girls often have controlling power over their

fathers and boyfriends. The fact that Japanese girls often have a number of boyfriends for

different purposes may support my assumption. For example, boys are labelled asshii-kun

(from "ashi" leg - in Japanese) if they are seen for their ability to provide girls with a ride in

a car. Or they are mitsugu-kun (from "mitsugu" - contribute, or supply) if they are good

providers of gifts.

The visual clues in Thelma and Louise, like those in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, carry

different meanings for Japanese students from perhaps those intended by the filmmakers. In

one scene, a police detective investigating Louise's house, finds her kitchen shining clean,

and he concludes Louise cannot be the loose woman she is purported to be. He sympathizes

with her and offers her help. Louise's personality and values are suggested by her clothing

and her hairdo. Originally buttoned up and tidy, her clothes and hair gradually loosen as she

approaches the fall. What is this "looseness"? Increasing freedom or the road to destruction?

Japanese students tend to interpret these clues as a sign of Louise's fall from grace.

In addition to the two films I have discussed in the previous section, I would like to talk

about two more films which are commonly used by colleagues to effectively foster

discussion on gender issues in language classes. They are Switch (1991) and Working Girl

67

(1988). In contrast to Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Thelma and Louise, these films appear

to carry little misleading cultural information. However, if we simply view these films as a

means of approaching women's issues, we are still apt to find ourselves outwitted by student

expectations. Students may actually draw the opposite "lessons" from those intended.

Switch

Switch (1991) serves to illustrate how verbal and nonverbal behavior are gender specific.

In this film, Steve, a male chauvinist and exploiter of many women, is finally killed by one

and condemned to hell. At the last minute, God gives him one chance to escape his destiny.

If Steve can find a woman who truly loves him, God challenges him, he will be allowed into

Heaven. He is sent back to Earth to complete his mission. It turns out the job is not as easy

as Steve thinks. God has turned him into a woman.

Steve, now called Amanda, encounters all the usual women's difficulties in learning to be

a stereotypical woman. The tight clothes, high heels, the long hair all restrict movement.

Amanda cannot cross her legs, talk loud, or be vulgar. She learns to feel like a piece of meat.

Only when she gives birth to a baby girl, at the last moment of her life as a woman, does she

stop loathing being a woman. Up till that point, the film is a satire on gender polarization and

the unfair treatment of women. Suddenly, the message becomes the lesson that a woman's

hardships can all make sense, that life with difficulty can pay off, through childbirth!

Students who were laughing loudly up till that last moment at the stupidity of gender

polarization usually become serious at this point in' the film. At that point, instead of

analyzing the meaning and the validity of the lesson that the film is trying to teach, students

start entertaining the idea that, after all, childbirth does justify a woman's existence.

Working Girl

Working Girl (1988) serves to illustrate class distinctions within gender. Tess, the main

character of the film, is a secretary in a merger and acquisition company. She works for a

female boss about her own age but different in every other way. Unlike Tess, the boss is

poised, confident and capable. She dresses conservatively and speaks in a low well-

modulated voice, in striking contrast to Tess's cute-little-girl character with make-up and

hairdo fashioned to make her look like "just a secretary."

Tess is not just a secretary, however. She has ambition and a talent for business. She

discovers that her boss has stolen her business ideas, outwits her and eventually wins over

both her business and her business partner/boyfriend. The structure of Working Girl is

similar to that of the previous films. There is a woman in need of help, and men capable of

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4

helping. This time, however, the woman accepts. She also succeeds in a big way. And she

gets it all. The students' interpretation of this film is usually simplistic. That is, a woman

with a wicked mind is punished and a woman with a good heart succeeds. Students rarely

reach the level of analysis where a stereotypical structure between men and women surfaces:

men are the ones who have the power and resources and women are the powerless and

resourceless ones. The stereotype persists that, without men's assistance and protection,

women never succeed.

D iscussion

I have identified two potential sources of problems in the use of "outculture" films in EFL

programs. These are implicit cultural sources of power and authority and the subtextual

semiotics in the film structure itself which undercut the purported message of feminism. In

Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Thelma and Louise, without proper cultural guidance,

Japanese students fail to understand the motivation for Theresa's rebellious behavior and for

Thelma and Louise's rampage. In Switch and Working Girl, the stories and characters are

less difficult to follow, but the treatment of the battle between the sexes, the hierarchy

between men and women, the struggle between the powerful and the powerless still escapes

them. If these Hollywood films are to be taken seriously, one would have to conclude this

hierarchical structure has not changed since Adam was given Eve to be his companion and

assistant. The cultural problems can be seen in two contrasting views of Japanese women--

one is espoused in the work of Jane Condon (1985) and the other in the work of Sumiko

Iwao (1993). The former portrays Japanese women as being seriously oppressed and the

latter describes at least middle class women as being autonomous and unoppressed. If my

assumption is correct, and Iwao has the better understanding, her view should help explain

the Japanese students' perceptual gap.

Among the four films discussed, only Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Thelma and Louise,

the two with tragic endings, are generally taken by viewers as serious feminist statements.

The women not only fail; they are killed in their attempt to become free. There are father

figures who offer help and protection. Rejection of that help puts them out in the cold as they

come to be threats to the social institutions of a patriarchal society. In both cases, it is the

kitchen which is used as a symbol of a woman's quality.

There are some interesting differences between the films. Theresa's desire for freedom is

serious and intense; Thelma and Louise's is more casual. This may suggest that in the last

twenty years it has become easier for women to liberate themselves physically. Secondly, in

Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Theresa is only a victim of a crime, but in Thelma and Louise, the

women become criminals themselves. Women, now equipped with a gun/phallus, are able to

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75

attack and take revenge. No longer merely the recipient of male violence, where the phallus

is a weapon of assault, they are now equals in their capacity for defense. Louise shoots the

attempted rapist and later she and Thelma shoot up an abusive truck driver's truck in

retaliation for violence. The women have become perpetrators now of violence.

From a feminist point of view, these changes in the depiction of women are not

necessarily improvements. Women, still stereotypically associated with the kitchen, have to

die to achieve their ends. Is that the message? There are only two choices? Death or the

kitchen?

Women tend to be depicted in Japanese films with far greater power and strength of

character. One thinks of Oshin and of women in Trasan films. Even yakuza films have

featured women in main character roles (cf. the Hibotan Oryuu series popular among men in

the late 1960s and early 1970s and Gokudoo no Tumatachi in the late 1980s and early

1990s.) Indeed, Japanese women characters may actually outnumber female characters in

Hollywood films. This is not to imply equality in Japanese films but it is suggestive of the

way films may be a key to the analysis of cultural values and the ways gender issues are

culture specific.

Language learning is inseparable from culture learning. In this paper, I have tried to

show how Japanese students may fail to capture the premise of American films. In order to

get below a superficial interpretation of the content of outculture films, proper cultural

guidance is necessary. In order to understand Western films, information on various aspects

of Western culture, for example, some knowledge of the Judeo-Christian tradition, Greek

mythology or Freudian psychoanalytic theory, is desirable. When using outculture films in

class, teachers should not assume that students are equipped with cultural information

required to appreciate the film. Themes conveyed in Hollywood films are diverse, complex,

and often deeply embedded in cultural discourse. Equally important is an understanding of

one's own culture if we are to recognize the filters in place when we attempt to analyze

cultural artifacts. Teachers should always be aware of this potential cultural gap between

films and the students. Otherwise, as my scenario for misunderstanding suggests, students

may not achieve the depth of understanding that the instructor intends.

References

Condon, Jane. (1985). A Half Step Behind. Japanese Women Today. Tokyo: Charles E.

Tuttle Company.

Iwao, Sumiko. (1993). The Japanese Women.. Traditional Image & Changing Reality.

New York: The Free Press.

Kaplan, E. Ann. (1983). Women & Film: Both Sides of The Camera. London: Routledge.

70

AN ANTH OPOLOGIICAL PE SPECTI1VE ON FILMS IN THELANGUAGE CLASS

Thomas Hardy

About four years ago I became dissatisfied with the use of films in my content-based

English classes in comparative cultures. Students were simply comparing societies,

saying, for example, "The United States is individualistic, Japan is cooperative." What

students were missing, and what some asked for, was a sense of where these differences

came from and how they affected people's lives--in films and in real life. For example,

Naomi Y. noted in her comments on an end-of-class evaluation that she had learned a lot

about the USA. For her this was a first step in being "international." But she wanted

more. "An international person needs to know more than information about America. Or

about Japan. We need to learn to think abut other cultures and our own in an objective

way ."

This and similar comments started me thinking about using films in comparative

culture classes to emphasize critical thinking skills. Some have suggested that these skills

are particularly important, and difficult, for Japanese students, given the rigor of their rote

and prescriptive education (McComick, 1992). Without endorsing this view, or

suggesting that miracles can be worked, I have found that films can start students

thinking analytically and critically of the cultures of others, of their own culture, and their

place in it.

This reflects my background in anthropology, which I see as a comparative and

critical discipline. Comparative in that anthropologists look both at particular cultures and

the diversity within and among them, and at constants within and between them. Critical

in that, for many anthropologists, the knowledge they wring from their particular and

comparative studies leads them back to their own culture. The process goes something

like this: The particular studies let us appreciate the fit or lack of fit of experience to its

particular social structure and historical context. Comparing these studies allows us to

see the range of human experience and the diversity of responses to similar situations.

This, hopefully, awakens in the observer a sense of the constraint she or he lives under

and a sense of the alternatives possible. I use films to help my students through

something like this anthropological process.

In no way is this a new approach to comparative social research. Montaigne, writing

in 1590 in Renaissance France, practiced it in his essay "Of Cannibals" (1991). The

particular knowledge gained in the early voyages of European exploration, the knowledge

of the Other, allows Montaigne to compare it with life in Europe at the time and to make

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critical sense of his own life and culture. To the students in my classes these analytic and

critical skills are new. Using films, a medium they enjoy and seem to think of as a

pleasure, starts them thinking along these lines while making the job of learning content

and analytical skills in the medium of English seem less like work. A discussion of one

such class might help make what I mean more clear.

Americans: Values and Society

I start the class by asking students to describe their "typical" American, the person

they see as hero or heroine in most films they watch. Given time they usually come up

with a short list that comes close to describing the dominant or referent group of the

United States: male, white, English-speaking, Protestant, professional or managerial,

suburban, and college-educated, among other characteristics. I tell the students that I

have reservations about using and reinforcing this view of America and Americans.

Nevertheless, I let it stand. First, because justly or unjustly this referent group does

indeed exercise power in the United States. Second, this group does, in most ways and

under most circumstances, set the standards against which other, less powerful groups

(women, African Americans, and gays, to name just three) resist or acquiesce. Third, for

the purposes of comparison, either within the United States or between the United States

and another culture, some base is necessary.

I then ask students to work in teams and, thinking about their experience with

Americans or popular American movies and television, come up with a list of values,

beliefs, or standards of conduct of the dominant American group. With a little work and

artful manipulation of answers I can usually get a list of values that roughly replicates that

of Alexis de Tocqueville (1945) on his visit to the Untied States in the 1830's, namely:

individual freedom and self-reliance, equality of opportunity and competition, and

material wealth and hard work.

As we work out the meaning of these terms in the American context, I remind

students that these are the ideal values, the tatemae, not the reality or honne of American

life. The films they normally see--comedies or tragedies, romances or action films--

represent these ideals, affirming, rejecting, or simply provoking a reaction to them in one

way or another. I remind them again that these are the values of a specific group: the

dominant group. Those in power can use these values to suppress and limit the lives of

others who are outside of the group--through birth or training or skills or inclination.

These are values that would be different, very different, if we were considering films by

and about, for example, inner-city women or the rural poor or migrant workers.

Once the students seem to have a basic idea of what these values are about, I ask them

7 .772

where Americans experience them, what are the institutions of society. We usually wind

up with a list that includes the family, economic and business institutions, government,

education, and religion. We also usually include institutions specific to American society

because of particular historical experiences. In the case of the United States, one is

ethnicity and race, from the experience of assimilation and diversity and slavery in

American society. Another, differing wildly in depth, is sports and recreation, from the

ways organized sports, as distinct form individual play, illustrates and reinforces

American values.

I assign specific social institutions to teams of students. They use worksheets to

describe the institutions in the lives of Americans and, analyze the ways the values of the

dominant social group are reflected in it. We exchange these reports.

Films and American Values: Bull Durham

With this background of team reports and discussions, we vote on an institution of

general interest and I select an appropriate film to watch. If, for example, students select

sports, we watch Bull Durham, a film about a minor league baseball team set in Durham,

North Carolina. We spend a couple of classes watching parts of the film and analyzing it

in terms of the American values laid out earlier. With frequent use of the pause button,

students get used to the ways values are reflected in films. They learn, first, that popular

culture is packed with all sorts of information about the society that created it. It is their

jobs, as careful viewers, to unpack it and select what is important from what isn't, to

recognize the biases and prejudices of the work and build analyses around them, to

identify examples and counter-examples of the values, and to recognize the way these

biases are played on in the film.

Here is the way I have approached one short three-minute scene form the film. Ebby

(Tim Robbins) is an undisciplined but talented pitcher, put out in the farm leagues to

develop. The "organization" has brought in Crash (Kevin Costner) to groom Ebby in the

ways of baseball. After a series of entanglements--professional, moral, and romantic--

Ebby gets transferred to a major league team and rushes to a local pool hall to tell Crash

the news. Crash is less than thrilled and picks a fight.

Crash: What do you mean you're not goin' to fight me.[Crash shoves Ebby in the chest with his hands as he talks.]Crash: You fuck.Ebby: Fuck? Why am I a fuck?Crash: Why are you a fuck?Ebby: [Overlapping] Why am I a fuck?Crash: Cause you got, 'cause you got talent. I got brains but you got talent.[Crash raises Ebby's arm.]

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Crash: See this right arm? Worth a million bucks a year. All my limbs puttogether aren't worth seven cents a pound. (Shelton 1992, pp. 91-92)

I first get the profanity out of the way--in part by linking it to the values of the male

subculture of sports and the processes of male-male bonding. From there I go on to

focus students' attention on the values inherent in Crash's anger. He is hardworking.

He puts in the time. He has the loyalty and the smarts. He reveres the fair play and

competition that are part of the creed of the Church of the Diamond. Yet the rewards for

his hard work, most specifically material wealth, escape him. Ebby, on the other hand,

by virtue simply of his talent will succeed in ways that Crash will never. Talented Ebby

will become rich, hardworking Crash will remain poor. The failure of the American

values of hard work and material success to reciprocate the way they should fuels the

anger of the film in this scene and makes Crash a sympathetic character.

Together we unpack the values and assumptions of two or three more scenes in the

movie. Then students go to the movies. I hand out a short list of suggested films for

each social institution. Each team selects one film, watches it off campus, analyzes it,

responds to it in some way, and shares their work with the class.

By the end of this exercise, students seem to have a fair grasp of the basic skills of

analysis and the ways films and society reflect one another. The fact that the culture

being analyzed is some exotic Other society (Durham, North Carolina, in the example)

seems to help students see the workings of social values, since it can be difficult for them

as insiders to see these values in their own culture. Additionally, I try to avoid

stereotypes by constantly reminding students that most of the films represent the values of

America's dominant group, even when the film critiques the group and its values. This

brings us about half way through the semester.

Films about Japanese Values and Institutions

In the second half of the semester I have students take their skills at analyzing the

values and practices of other cultures and turn them on Japan. The values become a lens

to see their own society more clearly. We spend one class coming up with a profile of the

dominant group in Japanese society and another class making a list of some of the values

of that group. This usually includes such values as group orientation, hard work

(gambaru), hierarchy, dependency, cooperation, and harmony. Next we develop a list of

significant institutions, usually but not always replicating the list from the United States.

Changes might include replacing race with community. Students then get back into their

teams and do some research on the nature of their team's institution in Japan. They use

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worksheets to describe their institution in the lives of Japanese and, analyze the ways the

values of the dominant social group are reflected in it. We exchange these reports.

By this point, it is time to start watching Japanese movies. Earlier in the term we

watched sections of an American film together in class (the Bull Durham example). Each

team has watched a film about a specific American institution and has reported in detail to

the class on the expression of their institution in a film. For films about Japan, I rely

heavily on students' judgment. I suggest films, for example Tokyo Monogatari for the

team working on the family or Kurosawa's Ikiru as a classic film about government.

Ultimately, I let the students pick and choose. As they did for the United States, each

team selects a Japanese film about an assigned institution, watches the film off campus,

and then analyzes, and responds to it. Later, each team shares its work with the class.

Student Illesponses

I have collected student comments about the class on course evaluations for the last

three years. The responses have been generally positive. Most find it an insight that

films can be more than entertainment. They are surprised to find films laden with the

values of their makers. The comment by Hiroko 0. is typical of this response. "It's

good for me to watch some movies. I only watch movies till this class just started. But

now I see movies with thinking about their background values. It will get interesting to

watch movies and TV in my future."

Other students go beyond this and make their first critical insights into their own

culture and values using the comparative and analytic skills of the class. Yoshiko A.

wrote, "I realized that to be International people we should know not only other country

but also to know our own culture well." Another student, Yasue K. took this a step

further when she noted, "I had have opportunity to think about Japanese values. When

we leave in Japan, we sometimes don't think what the Japanese based on history or our

origin. I fount that our life has a important meaning with values to understand what the

Japanese is." Or there are the comments of Tomomi 0. who noted that the class brought

films and thinking about Japan together for her when she wrote, "I have had the chance to

look at Japan and movies from an objective view, so that I fund lots of new facts of the

Japanese society which I did not recognize before."

Some students go beyond the a recognition of the values inherent in popular culture

and beyond simple comparative statements. They begin to make a fuller critical and

reflective response to their own society and their place in it. Take for example the

comments of Nobuaki I. "Dominants have their own values and use it to control other

people. I watch movies and think to touch on this." Misato S. had a similar response

75

when she wrote, "I learned ways to analyze the values of the dominant group in a each

culture. The values itself (like Japanese dependence) were thought-provoking." Another

student, Yuko S, took this critical response a step further. She commented on the ways

the values of the dominant group shape the values and responses of less powerful groups

when she wrote, "I think to learn dominant groups is to know not dominant groups. For

example, if I learn about the white, I can know the discrimination of the Negro and if I

learn about the men-dominant society, I can know that women are often not still accepted

in the society. At this point, the film work is very useful for me."

A few students begin seriously considering their own culture and their places in it

critically. They start to question what before had been simple truths to them. By

extension, this questioning might awaken them to a sense of the diversity surrounding

them. Consider the comments of Toshio K., "As for me, the Japanese way of thinking is

that the one who always receive many information will never analyze and criticize them.

The worse is, he believe these information are his original ideas even though they may be

some propaganda of some institutions. This class and films is good for always

emphasize the important of criticizing and analyzing movie and society. You try us to

realize there are many ways of thinking in the world (and even in Japan)."

Student responses suggest that the course is doing what I want it to. In the first

place, all the work in the class is conducted in English. Even more importantly, many

students comment that the course develops their "objective" ability to compare cultures

and that they become aware of films as more than simple entertainments. Others note that

the course has helped them consider for the first time the ways the dominant group of any

society, including their society, uses cultural values to reinforce its position in the society.

Conclusion

It is a long way from the critical and reflective musings of Montaigne to the responses

of Japanese college students. But read sympathetically, the students share certain features

with the French essayist. First, both exercise the basic anthropological skills of

comparative thinking. They take the particulars of a society and use them to develop a

sense of social diversity and constants. Second, both the students and Montaigne

exercise the anthropological skill of critical thinking. They use what they have learned

about particular cultures to reflect on their own culture and their places in it.

There are still things I want to do with the class. I want to find a way to start students

thinking more concretely about the ways the dominant culture and its values work to

suppress diversity. I want to reshape the class to help students become more aware of the

alternatives less powerful groups have constructed, of other perceptions and experiences

76

and values. This might require shifting the course to focus on those groups rather than

on the dominant group. It might require a class in liberation movements rather than

relatively straightforward comparative cultures. It might require getting students out of

the classroom and into the street, participating, observing, and interviewing. But this is

getting away from a basic class in comparative culture and the use of films.

As it stands, the class is a good start in the basic anthropological skills of comparative

and critical thinking. Students tell me that the structure of the early part of the class, by

referring to another society, frees them to watch, analyze, and respond to films in ways

they might not have done had they started with the too familiar, with Japan. They tell me

that films, more than books, make the characters' experiences of the institutions, and the

values there embedded, alive and immediate. Using the films allows them to bring

together a personal response with critical cognitive analytic skills--skills the students can

use in other classes, other situations, and, best of all, outside of class.

Refferen ices

McCornick, A. (1993). Journal writing and the damaged language learner. In C.P.

Casanave (Ed.), Journal writing: Pedagogical perspectives (pp. 6-17). Keio

University, SFC, Institution of Languages and Communication.

Montaigne, M. de (1991). The essays. London: Allen Lane.

Tocqueville, Alexis de (1945). Democracy in America. New York: Vintage.

Shelton, R. (1992). Bull Durham. Tokyo: Four In Creative.

77

83

COPYRIGHT LAW AND VIDEO IN THE CLASSROOM

J. David Simons1

Like many things in life, your attitude towards copyright law may depend on your

vested interest in the subject. If you are an educator who is teaching or researching then

copyright law regarding copying books, articles, videos etc. may be quite restrictive. In

this respect, you may believe in the view that all knowledge, art and culture once created

should be free and accessible to everyone. Alternatively, if you are an educator who is

publishing then copyright law becomes your friend and possibly the reason for your

income. In this respect, you may take the view that the interests of those who create a

work should be protected thus encouraging the authors of such work to produce more for

the benefit of the public or for benefit to themselves.

The type of material which can be copyrighted can vary extensively--from the rights

to a book, a soundtrack, a computer program, a public image or even to situations which

you might consider to be quite extreme. Take for example the case of Carson v Here's

Johnny Portable Toilets Inc. (1983) where a court upheld that the entertainer Johnny

Carson had exclusive rights to the phrase "Here's Johnny" and was thus able to prohibit a

toilet company from using his magic words to market their portable toilet.

Whatever your attitude towards copyright law, the fact is that it does exist, and I

would like to provide here some guidelines as to how it relates to the recording and

performance of video material for educational use. I will explain the general laws and

guidelines in two countries: Japan and the United States and in two categories 1) off-air

recording from broadcasts, satellite, or cable--in other words, recording from the TV and

2) the use of pre-recorded video tapes in the classroom. I would like to point out that

these are guidelines only to provide some context in which to consider your use of video

material. It is not specific legal advice. If you have a particular copyright problem, then

it would be advisable to approach the copyright owners directly or to consult the

guidelines (if they exist) of your local educational authority.

International Copyright

When we look at the copyright laws of different countries, the important point to

remember is that even though there are international copyright conventions and treaties to

which most major countries are signatories, technically there is no such thing as

II would liketo express my thanks to my assistant, Mica Yano, for her invaluable help in the research ofJapanese copyright law.

8 4.78

international copyright. Each country has its own copyright laws and adopts the

provisions of international treaties as it sees fit. However, one of the major outcomes

under these treaties and conventions is that each country protects the works produced in

another country as if they had been produced within its own borders (Berne Convention,

1971). In other words, Japan will protect a video produced in the United States to the

full extent of Japanese copyright law while the United States will protect a video

produced in Japan to the full extent of U.S. copyright law. In a situation where the laws

of the United States are stricter than the laws of Japan, this may lead to the anomaly of

Japanese film makers enjoying more protection of their work in the United States than in

their own country.

As with individuals, a country's attitude towards copyright law will depend on its

vested interests. A country like the United States which has a huge film industry will be

concerned with protecting strenuously the rights of ownership to its products while, on

the other hand, Japan which has a huge manufacturing industry especially in the field of

video cassette recorders, would perhaps logically want to encourage less copyright

control and more pro-user sentiment. An example of this conflict of vested interests can

be seen when Sony introduced the world to the video cassette recorder with its own

record function. In 1979, in the United States, Sony was sued by Universal City Studios

Inc. on the grounds that this record function was encouraging the illegal copying of

copyrighted material. In a landmark decision, the U.S. Courts finally upheld the right of

Sony to sell Betamax VCRs to home users for the purpose of "time-shifting," i.e.,

recording a TV program for private use at a more convenient time, thus paving the way

for a home video recording boom (Universal City Studios v. Sony Corporation of

America,

Japan

1981).

Off-air Recording

In Japan, the main provision governing copying copyrighted material for educational

purposes is contained in Article 35 of the Japanese Copyright Law (1970) which states as

follows:

A person who is in charge of teaching in a school or other education institution(excluding those established for profit making purpose) may reproduce a workmade public to the extent deemed necessary for the purpose of using it in thecourse of teaching. Provided that, this shall not apply if it prejudicesunreasonably the interests of the copyright owner in the light of the nature and useof the said work as well as number of copies and mode of reproduction.

79 0 c

What does this mean as far as recording programs from television is concerned? Let

us look at this question step by step.

First, the person instigating the recording must be the teacher. In other words, if a

friend of yours records a TV program and then comes to you and says "You might want

to use this video in class" then technically this would be illegal as the recording was not

made by the teacher in charge of the class.

Second, the education institution for which the recording is done must be non-profit.

This will include a private university but will not include a language school or cram

school. Therefore, any copying done for a private language school of television

programs will be illegal under the Act.

Third, there is the proviso that such copying shall not unreasonably prejudice the

interests of the copyright owner. Now, in Japan, it is very difficult to discover what

"unreasonably prejudice" means because virtually no cases have gone to court on this

subject so there is no legal definition of the phrase.

In the absence of case law, I was referred often in my research to the work of

Moriyuki Kato (1994)2 and it seems that in the practical application of Japanese copyright

law, his opinion is very well respected. In order to examine "unreasonable prejudice" in

educational use he considers four points:

1. the kind of material used, e.g., copying a whole novel or fairy tale for a Japanese

class is not allowed. Copying part of a literary work that has a limited availability is not

allowed.

2. the purpose of copyright material, e.g., copying a student workbook or

audiovisual teaching material for a class would not be allowed.

3. the number of copies--obviously the quantity copied will have a direct bearing on

whether the educational use conflicts with the commercial rights of the owner

4. the form of reproduction, e.g., making copies in a form that is marketable would

be illegal.

Using these four criteria as a guide to the interpretation of what prejudices

unreasonably the right of the copyright owner, when the educational use clashes with

commercial interests and overwhelms the profit or potential profit of the material, then the

use of that material will be prohibited. With regard to videos, it seems that since the

economic value of the material is very high, then the standards applied to dubbing will be

very strict (Kato, 1994).

2The references to Kato have been translated from the Japanese by my assistant, Mica Yano, andparaphrased by me.

80

How does this translate into practice with regard to copying off-air? As long as the

recording of programs from Japanese television complies with the conditions of Article

35 then it cannot be regarded as an infringement of the Copyright Law. That is to say, if

you are an instructor at a non-profit educational establishment, you are able to record or

authorise the recording of any TV program for use in your classroom provided such use

does not unreasonably prejudice the right of the copyright owner. However, according to

Kato (1994), once the recorded material has been used, thereafter keeping the reproduced

works in school or in a video library would probably infringe the law and therefore it is

desirable to discard a videotape after use.

Since the advent of satellite television is only a recent occurrence in Japan, no

distinction is made between programs transmitted from terrestrial TV channels and those

transmitted by satellite. However, my research assistant did have an interesting

conversation with a representative of the satellite television company WOWOW.

Originally, when asked if copying their broadcasts for educational purposes was

permissible, they said that it was, subject to the guidelines Kato mentions with regard to

kind of material, purpose, etc.. However, the next day they called back to say that they

now considered recording of their programs even for educational purposes to be

prejudicial to their commercial interests. If WOWOW chooses to take such a stance, there

is no Japanese case law with which to challenge their policy. However, the converse will

also be true in that if an instructor records a satellite broadcast for educational purposes

and that instructor feels he or.she is not unreasonably prejudicing the right of the

copyright owner, the satellite company has no case law with which to challenge the

instructor either. Until a case involving this phrase "prejudices unreasonably" is

interpreted by the Japanese courts, then both copyright owner and instructor will continue

to be in this copyright no-man's land.

In practice, it is understandable why a television company is reluctant to announce

publicly that programs can be recorded for educational use under Article 35. For

example, movies, sports programs and news programs are normally purchased under

contracts which will restrict the recording of these programs by third parties or which will

protect the rights of privacy or publicity of those persons appearing in, for example, a

documentary. Any public comment by a television company authorising an Article 35

recording may result in a breach of those contracts.

Pre-recorded Video Tapes

The relevant section of the Japanese Copyright Law 1970 which deals with the

showing of a video in the classroom is Article 38 which reads as follows:

8187

A work already made public may be publicly presented, performed, recited orpresented cinematographically for non-profit making purposes and withoutcharging any fees to the audience or spectators.

The three criteria involved in Article 38 are 1) not being for profit-making purposes,

2) not collecting entrance fees, and 3) not paying the performers, which in the case of

showing a video in the classroom is irrelevant here. With regard to the first criterion,

non-profit making purposes, judgement should be made from the viewpoint of whether

the use will indirectly lead to profit-making (Kato,1994). I am not sure how showing a

movie at a language school would be interpreted, but I suspect that it would be seen as

being for indirect profit-making purposes, even though students are not being directly

charged for seeing the movie.

Provided therefore that all three criteria of Article 38 are met, a teacher at a non-profit

making establishment can show a video movie in the classroom. It should be noted here

that there is no provision as to whether the performance should be for educational

purposes or who the audience should be.

As far as dubbing from a pre-recorded video is concerned, the Japanese Video

Copyright Warning or American FBI Warning at the beginning of a pre-recorded tape,

whether rented or purchased, makes it quite clear that such an act is illegal. However, the

problem of copying movies for educational purposes is not generally a priority of

copyright infringement enforcement agencies. In Japan, there are two reasons for this,

both of which are based on practicalities. The first is that it is very difficult and

complicated to get a copyright licence and secondly, there are more serious problems for

the video industry such as the showing of videos in hotels, saunas and sightseeing buses

for profit. In other words, showing dubbed movies in an educational establishment does

not present as much of a liability to the video industry as other illegal uses do. However,

the knowledge that an action is illegal but will not be prosecuted presents an ethical

dilemma which I will address later.

Finally, how does the law apply to the copying of small clips from movies, e.g., to

illustrate a language point in the classroom such as the use of certain idioms or

conversational techniques? Again there is nothing in Japanese law to help you here apart

from the "prejudices unreasonably" phrase in Article 35. If you feel that copying say a

five-minute scene from a movie for educational purposes does not unreasonably prejudice

the right of the copyright owner, at the moment there is no case law in Japan to

specifically challenge this use.

82

United States

The Doctrine of 'Fair Use'

In the United States, the most important principle to consider for our purposes is the

doctrine of fair use which was embodied into statute by Section 107 of the Copyright

Law ( Copyright Law of the United States of 1976). Basically, the doctrine of fair use is

an equitable rule of reason (now expressed in statute) allowing a person to use

copyrighted material in a situation which is deemed to be fair. It is not unlike the

Japanese "doesn't unreasonably prejudice" except that the principle is much more defined

in Section 107 of the Act which is as follows:

Notwithstanding the provisions of Sections 106 and 106A (which defines theexclusive rights of the copyright owner) the fair use of a copyrighted work,including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any othermeans specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, newsreporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, orresearch, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the usemade of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be consideredshall include:

1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of acommercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes;2) the nature of the copyrighted work;3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrightedwork as a whole; and4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrightedwork.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if suchfinding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

This doctrine applies to all uses of copyrighted material and is especially useful

regarding making photocopies. However, the criteria embodied in Section 107 offer

guidance only and each case will raise its own situation which will have to be decided on

its own facts.

How does the doctrine of fair use affect the use of video? As an example, we can

apply the criteria of section 107 to the situation where an instructor wants to use video

clips to illustrate a language or cultural point. In this specific case, an instructor wants to

copy a one-minute scene from the movie Rising Sun starring Sean Connery to show

students how introductions are made between Japanese and non-Japanese. Let us apply

the criteria of fair use to this situation. First, is the purpose for non-profit educational

purposes? Yes. Good, that will go a long way to helping us. Second, what is the nature

of the copyrighted work? Is it a rare movie? It is a general release movie and video.

83 89

Good. Therefore the work is not particularly exclusive. Third, is the copied portion a

substantial amount of the whole? No. It is a one-minute clip only, less than 1% of the

whole. However, we have to be careful here because a small portion does not necessarily

mean unsubstantial. For example, if I copy just the smile from the Mona Lisa it may be

just a small portion but it represents the substance of the painting; or I copy the final

scene from a movie with the last line "The butler did it!"--only four words but an essential

part of the plot. In one case in the United Kingdom, the producers of the T'V series

Starsky and Hutch successfully sued a publishing company for using one frame of a

fifty-minute film for use on a poster. The use of the one-frame was found to be

"substantial" although it should be remembered here that the frame was used here for

commercial not educational purposes (Spelling. Goldberg v. BPC Publishing, 1981).

The final criterion to apply is what is the effect of the use on the potential market? In

this case, almost negligible as it is unlikely that the instructor would wish to buy this

particular video for just a one-minute segment. Therefore, under Article 107, the

instructor has justification for saying that copying this one-minute clip was fair use

(although the courts may say differently).

However, there is one additional point I would like to make here to demonstrate how

complex copyright law can be. In the United States, there exists what is known as a right

of publicity where a person (usually a famous personality) has the right to grant the

exclusive privilege of publishing his/her picture or in the case of Johnny Carson, his

catch-phrase, or in the case of look-alike actors, their visual image (although this right

does not apply if the celebrity's activities have a bona fide news value). Therefore, if

Sean Connery felt in anyway exploited by the use of this clip (which is probably not the

case here), he could have an action against the instructor.

Off-air Recording

The most important application of the fair use doctrine with regard to off-air recording

has been incorporated into guidelines laid down by a Negotiating Committee appointed by

the House of Representatives--a group comprising representatives of educational

organizations, copyright proprietors, and creative guilds and unions in the United States

such as the National Education Association and the Directors Guild of America

(Copyright Office, 1992; Appendix). These guidelines have not been incorporated into

statute but they do provide the educator with useful rules as to what is considered fair use

in taping off-air.

According to the guidelines, as with Japan, off-air recordings may be made only at

the request of and used by individual teachers of a non-profit educational institution. The

30 84

recorded program can be retained for 45 consecutive calendar days after date of recording

after which time it must be erased. Unlike Japan, there is a specified retention period in

the United States for the recorded material. Broadcast programs here are l'V programs

transmitted by TV stations for reception by the general public free of charge, therefore

these guidelines would not apply to cable TV. The recording can only be used once

within the first ten consecutive school days of the 45 day retention period and may be

used again within that period only for the purpose of teacher evaluation. Provided an

instructor follows these guidelines for recording programs off-air, then his or her conduct

will be considered fair use of the material.

Pre-recorded Video Tapes

The relevant section in the US Copyright Act governing the performance of movies

and videos in the classroom is Section 110(1) which states that the following is not

infringement of copyright:

performance or display of a work by instructors or pupils in the course offace-to-face teaching activities of a non-profit educational establishment, in aclassroom or similar place devoted to instruction, unless in the case of a motionpicture or other audiovisual work, the performance, or the display of visualimages, is given by means of a copy that was not lawfully made under this title,and that the person responsible for the performance knew or had reason to believewas not lawfully made.

Therefore, a legally obtained video being shown by instructors or pupils in the course

of face-to-face teaching activities, again of a non-profit educational institution, in a proper

place of instruction is quite legal. I should point out here that the showing of the video

must be in the course of teaching activities and therefore, it is technically illegal to show a

video to your class, say, at the end of semester, purely as entertainment. Furthermore,

this section of the Act limits the non-profit making activities to educational institutions

only whereas in Japan no such distinction is made.

*****************************

To sum up the situation in both Japan and the United States, I would like to go over

briefly some of the main points of taping and performance for educational purposes.

With regard to recording programs from the television, in Japan such recording is

permissible provided it is instigated by an instructor at a non-profit educational institution

and does not unreasonably prejudice the right of the copyright owner. In the United

States, off-air recording is similarly permissible if made at the request of and used by

85

91

individual teachers of a non-profit educational institution but is also subject to specific

guidelines and retention periods as laid down by the Negotiating Committee. The

existence of these guidelines helps educators in the United States to interpret the fair use

doctrine thus avoiding the problems of the Japanese legislation where the interpretation of

unreasonable prejudice is extremely vague.

With regard to showing a pre-recorded video in the classroom, the relevant law in

Japan is more generous than in the United States because the legislation refers not only to

educational establishments but to any situation where a video may be shown publicly.

Therefore, the presentation of a pre-recorded video in Japan is permissible provided only

that the presentation is for non-profit making purposes and no entrance fees are collected.

In the United States, however, the showing of a pre-recorded video is restricted to

educational purposes and therefore is only possible in the course of face-to-face teaching

activities at a proper place of instruction in a non-profit making educational institution.

The Satellite Question

As I mentioned previously, there is no such thing as international copyright law--each

country has its own set of copyright laws. This notion is being severely challenged at the

moment by satellite broadcasts. Normally, copyright owners are able to control the

transmission of their work because a transmitter is linked to a certain country. Therefore,

when a company acquires the right to broadcast a piece of work, it usually acquires the

right to broadcast over all its transmitters in a particular region or country. However, a

satellite is a transmitter in space outside the territory of any nation and cannot be related to

the law of any nation. The footprint of the satellite, i.e., the reception area, will not

necessarily match country's boundaries and anyway each country will have its own laws.

In Europe, the EEC is in the anomalous situation of trying to harmonise the laws of

copyright within its own boundaries, which are not necessarily within the boundaries of

the satellite. Then there is the question of when the broadcast can be controlled for

copyright purposes. When it is transmitted to the satellite or when it is received from the

satellite? Some countries will allow recording for educational purposes, others will not.

People with powerful dishes will be able to receive broadcasts outside the nominal range

of the broadcasts and can make illegal copies. Legal action against such use will be

costly.

Solutions will always lag behind technology but my own feeling is that the copyright

laws will generally move more in favour of the user rather than the authors mainly

because the ability to control the use of copyright material is becoming increasingly

difficult.

9 286

Conclusion

Being aware of the laws regarding performance of videos in the classroom means you

cannot now claim ignorance of the law as an excuse--which is not a valid defence

anyway. However, the enforcement of copyright laws, especially as regarding video

performance or copying is concerned, is very difficult and time and effort by enforcement

agencies are generally directed against video piracy on a larger scale than the use of

videos in an educational establishment. In fact, I have only experienced one case

involving the illegal performance of a movie and that was when I lived on a kibbutz

(small community farm) in Israel. My neighboring kibbutz was fined by a film company

for broadcasting a film to the whole kibbutz without permission because it was deemed to

be a public not private performance even though the audience were all members of the

community and did not pay any admission charge. (Note: such a performance would be

legal in Japan because the performance would be for non-profit making purposes and no

distinction is made between public and private performance and educational use).

Therefore, the dilemma for us as educators will tend to be ethical rather than practical.

Certainly, when teachers become members of their local educational authority in the

United States they subscribe to the Code of Ethics of the Education Profession (National

Education Association, 1994-95) which states that "the educator accepts the responsibility

to adhere to the highest ethical standards." Is making illegal copies of videos without

paying for them adhering to the highest ethical standards? Do we believe that material

which has an educational and informative use should be freely available? Would we take

a flower from someone's garden to let our students see a rose? In order to overcome

these dilemmas, I think it is important for each educational authority or establishment to

take the responsibility of creating a set of guidelines regarding copyright policy to help

their staff. Where these guidelines do not exist and you are unaware of the law (this is

relevant to all copyrighted material not just videos), I think a good yardstick to apply is

the fair use principle of the United States. If you apply these conditions to what you are

doing, I think you will find you are taking a responsible attitude towards your use of

copyrighted material. By measuring your behaviour against the fair use criteria, you will

either be able to justify your use as being fair or you will know that it is probably

advisable to seek permission for your actions from the copyright owners.

87

References

Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Paris Revision

1971), Article 5. ,

Carson v. Here's Johnny Portable Toilets Inc., 698 f.2d 831 (6th Cir 1983).

Copyright Law of the United States of America 1976 [title 17 of the United States Code,

Public Law 94-553, 90 Stat.2541(revised to February 1, 1993)].

Copyright Office. (1992). Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and

Librarians. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Kato, M. (1994). Chosakukenhou chikujyou kougi (Copyright case law studies).

Tokyo: Chosakuken Jyouhou Center.

National Education Association. (1994-95). NEA Handbook (pp. 387-388).

Spelling, Goldberg v. BPC Publishing 1981 RPC 280 [CA](NCET 6.4).

Universal City Studios Inc. v. Sony Corporation of America, 480 F. supp. 429, 203

U.S.P.Q. 656 (C.D. Cal. 1979) rev'd in part, 659 F. 2d 963, 211 U.S.P.Q. 761,

551 PTCJ D-1 (9th Cir. 1981).

9 4

88

Appendix

Guidelines for Videorecording of Broadcast Programming for Educational Purposes

developed by the Negotiating Committee (U.S.)

1. The guidelines were developed to apply only to off-air recording by non-profit

educational institutions.

2. A broadcast program may be recorded off-air simultaneously with broadcast

transmission (including simultaneous cable re-transmissions) and retained by a non-profit

educational institution for a period not to exceed the first forty-five (45) consecutive

calendar days after date of recording. Upon conclusion of such retention period, all off-

air recordings must be erased or destroyed immediately. "Broadcast programs" are

television programs transmitted by television stations for reception by the general public

without charge.

3. Off-air recordings may be used once by individual teachers in the course of

relevant teaching activities, and repeated once only when instructional reinforcement is

necessary, in classrooms and similar places devoted to instruction within a single

building, cluster or campus, as well as in the homes of students receiving formalized

home instruction, during the first ten (10) consecutive school days in the forty-five (45)

day calendar day retention period. "School days" are school session days--not counting

weekends, holidays, vacations, examination periods, or other scheduled interruptions--

within the forty-five (45) calendar day retention period.

4. Off-air recordings may be made only at the request of and used by individual

teachers, and may not be regularly recorded in anticipation of requests. No broadcast

program may be recorded off-air more than once at the request of the same teacher,

regardless of the number of times the program may be broadcast.

5. A limited number of copies may be reproduced from each off-air recording to meet

the legitimate needs of teachers under these guidelines. Each such additional copy shall

be subject to all provisions governing the original recording.

6. After the first ten (10) consecutive school days, off-air recordings may be used up

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89 35

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0 6

90

AUTHOR BIOSTATEMENTS

Jeffrey Cady teaches at Athenee Francais in Tokyo and at Keio University SFC. HisB.A. in philosophy is from Brown University (1974) and his M.Ed. in TEFL fromTemple University, Japan (1988). He is co-author with Roger Barnard of BusinessVenture, Vols, 1 and 2 (Oxford). He has presented on video, teaching business English,and professional development for language teachers at teachers' conferences in Japan.

Christine Pearson Casanave received a PhD from the Stanford University's Schoolof Education in 1990. She is now Associate Professor of English at Keio UniversitySFC and an adjunct instructor at Teachers College Columbia University's Tokyo campus.Her interests include second language reading and writing, disciplinary socialization, andthe professional development of language educators.

David Freedman teaches English at Keio University SFC, and is deeply interested inthe nonlinguistic issues raised by the use of film in the language classroom.

Naomi K. Fujishima received an MA TESOL degree from the Monterey Institute ofInternational Studies, and is currently teaching English conversation at Yasuda Women'sUniversity in Hiroshima, Japan. Her teaching interests include global environmentalissues and authentic video in the EFL classroom.

Thomas Hardy received a PhD in anthropology from the New School of SocialResearch in the literature department at Tamagawa University, and has a special interest incritical and comparative perspectives.

David IP. Shea received his PhD in Language Education from the University ofGeorgia in 1993. Since then, he has tried to to integrate pedagogic theory with classroompractice while teaching in the intensive English program at Keio SFC. His areas ofresearch interest include intercultural communication, the sociopolitical dimensions oflangauge learning, and Vygotskian approaches to learning.

Yoko Shimizu is a senior in the Faculty of Policy Management at Keio SFC. She livedabroad for many years and hopes that some day she will be able to finish theautobiography she began after she returned to Japan.. During her spare time, she enjoyskaraoke and writing nonfiction stories.

J. David Simons is a visiting lecturer at Keio University. He received his law degreefrom Glasgow University in 1973, and practiced law in Scotland for several years beforemoving into the field of language education.

Yoshiko Takahashi received her PhD from Stanford University's School of Educationand is now at Keio University SFC. She teaches English and seminar courses in gender,communication, and feminist issues in films. She is interested in sociolinguistics andcross-cultural women's issues.

Sae Yamada, a third year student at Keio University SFC, grew up in Malaysia. She ismajoring in Environmental Information. Her hobbies include aikido and reading.

9 791

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