Mitch Bleier's Proto-memorandum on Jardine

Hi all.

I’ve been struggling with Gadamer, Warnke, Jardine and others. I am having a difficult time getting a handle on hermeneutics. I think that part of my problem is that I need some concrete examples that speak to me. I have found some writing that I will read on the subway today that may be helpful, but I wanted to put up my partially-formed thoughts for comment. This may or may not become a memorandum.

--Mitch

Mitch Bleier’s Proto-memorandum on…

Jardine, D. (2006). On hermeneutics: “Over and above our wanting and doing.” In Tobin, K. & Kincheloe, J. (eds.). Doing educational research -- A handbook, 269 - 288. Rotterdam (NL): Sense Publishers.

Hermeneutics is, in part, a critique of the ways that the human sciences have methodologically, epistemologically and ontologically “aped” the natural sciences to terrible, damaging, effect…and how education has become spellbound by a weak and intellectually dull-minded version of the methodologies of the natural sciences (p. 274).

Hermeneutics is interpretive. The hermeneutist interprets the text (which is defined in the broadest sense) through her/his construal of the speaker/writer’s frame of mind, point of view. It requires empathy—it is empathy.

Jardine asserts that in an effort to ensure objectivity, we remove an incident from its context. We pretend that it exists with some meaning outside of the people whose story is being told, that we can sever all ties with the time, the place, the people. We, in effect treat experiences as “isolated incidents” rather than as a part of one’s experience -- having a context, a history a then, a now, a laden-ness. Perhaps we even can quantify it, look for it elsewhere and measure frequencies, calculate correlations, “identify” cause and effect. [pp. 274 – 275]

Jardine later (p. 278) writes that “the methodological attainment of such objectivity does not altogether prevent playful, risk-laden, unanticipated interchanges.” But that their “occurrence is divested of any claim of or access to truth.”

A hermeneutic approach seems to be what an involved teacher in her classroom employs both consciously and intuitively. She responds to her students’ (a) talk with other students and with herself, (b) her students writing, drawing, constructions and other “products” of classroom activity, and (c) facial expressions, gestures, body language, postures – anything from a poorly suppressed smile to eyes filling with tears.

Teachers, especially elementary teachers do not implement the plans that they write at home. (Although, even in writing the plan, teachers take their students in to account.) They bring their plan to the mix and, with the children, live (and reflect on) a dynamically-evolving day. The experienced teacher even on day one does not interact with the concept: CHILD, but interacts with twenty-five interacting, constantly changing children.

This raises questions for me:

• What does a hermeneutic approach look like?
• What does the hermeneutist do?
• What formal or informal structures does one use to do hermeneutic research?
• What would a published piece of hermeneutic research look like?