Educating for ethical know-how: Curriculum in a culture of participation and complicity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ethical is the progressive, firsthand acquaintance with the virtuality of self. (Varela, 1999, p. 63) Abstract In this paper, we point to an infamous example of cyber bullying (the Wars Kid) to frame a consideration of the sort of situated ethics needed to mediate relationships in a seemingly infinitely and complexly connected communicative cyber world. We argue curriculum that educates for know-how aims to provide students with meaningful opportunities to represent and refine their empathetic identifications with others in both real and virtual contexts, by drawing on both real and imagined experience. We begin with an overview of contemporary theories of human consciousness, and further explore the ways in which consciousness is inevitably entwined with emerging technologies. We then look at how this entanglement has been taken up by critical and complexivist conceptions of curriculum and pedagogy. We end on a tentative note by considering the daunting questions and yet-to-be-understood implications of a participatory understanding of consciousness and an emergent understanding of ethics. ********** Over the past several decades, theories of the subject, of subjectivity, of mind, and of language and narrative have profoundly influenced work in curriculum studies in terms of what constitutes the identities of learners. Informed in particular by poststructural perspectives on language and narrative, learners are understood to be both producers of and products of discourse and discursive practices. As many commentators have argued, schooling participates in the ongoing production of the subject (Britzman, 2003; Davis, Sumara, & Luce-Kapler, 2008). From this perspective, curriculum is not seen only as the topics, ideas, or materials that are provided for learners, but also as influential to the ways learners might experience and interpret their own and others' identities. While this theoretical understanding provides a more hopeful and expansive view of subjectivity, it also presents a few challenges, particularly now when experiences and expressions of identity occur in cyberspace. What sort of ethics might guide our relationships with others in spaces that are not always face-to-face? Can something be learnt about curriculum practice by examining cases where what Varela (1999) would call know-how breaks down in the social spaces of the Internet? Can we teach ethical know-how? We grapple with these issues in this article, framing the discussion by revisiting an event of cyber bullying that drew international attention. We then offer a brief overview of contemporary theory and research on human consciousness, followed by a look at how new technologies both inform and are informed by these studies. We then link discussions of consciousness and technology to education by drawing on the work of critical theorists and complexivists who have troubled common-sense conceptions of curriculum. Concluding with the assertion that ethical must be taught, we present some questions and challenges for how educators might think about this daunting task in a seemingly infinitely and complexly connected communicative cyber world. The Star Wars Kid as a limit-case example In its ubiquity, the following case has seeped into public consciousness and now frames most popular discussions of cyber bullying. It is the tale of 15-year-old Ghyslain Raza, infamously known as the Wars Kid. Using equipment available at his private high school in Quebec, Canada, Ghyslain innocently made a video of himself wielding a golf ball retriever as a mock lightsaber while re-enacting a scene from Star Wars. The video was not very flattering to its portly star, and his actions were often clumsy and awkward. Yet none of this should have mattered. This was a private production. However, on 14 April 2003, three boys from the same school found Ghyslain's video and posted it on the Internet without either his knowledge or consent. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.018 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.018 | 0.075 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.018 | 0.015 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.019 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".