Summary of Recognition and identity education: identity skills and school governance

 

Starting from an epistemological critique of contemporary theories of recognition, this book addresses the relationship between education, identity development and autonomy, in order to identify pedagogical and institutional avenues capable of equipping students for the identity work they will have to confront throughout their lives.

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Based on the observation that, these days, individuals have more control than ever over how they relate to themselves, the question this book answers, more generally, is: what can schools do to help students take responsibility for their relationship with themselves? The answer, which comes in two stages, takes the form of an educational policy that places professional well-being, attentional autonomy and the legitimate authority of teachers at the forefront.

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Indeed, while the link between a positive relationship with oneself and autonomy is already well established by theories of recognition, our critical work first enables us to formulate the concept of “identity skills” and thus to investigate explicitly which competencies participate in the development of a durably positive, and therefore continually transformative, relationship with oneself. Then, when we compare the results of this conceptual work with both current practices and the pedagogies that are most likely to be aligned with them, we discover that the competency dimension of identity work is inadequate. Indeed, the language of competencies fails to describe the attentional component needed to support the development of autonomy through educational institutions. So, in order to address the specific form of attention conducive to sustaining positive identity development momentum, as well as the institutional modalities capable of supporting it, our investigation moves on to the relationship between attention and school governance. What emerges from this analysis is a series of institutional factors that facilitate or hinder collective attention to human developmentality or non-identity of the self - the ineliminable capacity of each individual to evolve his or her relationship with self. According to our results, this crucial form of attention is sustained when teachers have sufficient attentional autonomy and are able to develop continuously throughout their careers, both professionally and personally. However, the scientific literature on school governance shows that many recent developments tend to hinder attentional autonomy and, more broadly, contribute to the adoption of defensive postures harmful to the development of a healthy form of collective attention. Thus, this part of the book leads to two key chapters: one that targets the most counter-productive governmental trends, and the other that formulates a positive vision of successful pedagogical relationships, in order to identify the institutional configurations most likely to support them. Finally, the study concludes by taking a step back to examine the philosophical legacies that have informed our thinking, the relationship between education and the current societal and technological conjuncture, and the relationship between responsibility for identity and the future of the climate.

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This summary will cover the four parts of the book, namely 1) The problem of recognition, 2) Identity skills, 3) Attention and school governance and 4) School, society and its transformation.

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1. The problem of recognition

Although the first part of our study is not directly concerned with the question of education, it does provide a solid theoretical foundation for educational analysis. The aim is to understand the link between the development of a sense of self (identity), autonomy and the relational phenomena that threaten it. Our starting point is therefore contemporary theories of recognition, which have the great merit of describing precisely 1) the way in which human relationships forge the individual's relationship to the self, 2) the extent to which the ability to orient oneself by setting rules for behavior (autonomy) depends on a sufficiently solid and positive relationship to the self, and 3) the vulnerability of identity in the face of experiences of injustice, which risk undermining the individual's relationship to the self and thus hindering autonomy through “identity shock”. While these theories help us to understand how the relational genesis of identity leads to vulnerability of the same kind, the conceptual framework they mobilize does not allow us to envisage an educational policy capable of reinforcing a positive relationship with the self. Instead, the political side of these theories has focused on abolishing the institutional sources of systematic experiences of injustice.

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So, in this first part, after reconstructing the conceptual framework inherited from this theoretical pool, we flesh it out using tools from narrative psychology and contemporary theories of trauma, before analyzing attempts to politicize recognition. This last stage is important in that it enables us to grasp the blockages encountered by the already articulated politics of recognition, in order to avoid their repetition.

 

2. Identity skills

It is at the beginning of this section that the critical epistemology work leads to the formulation of the key concept of our study. Indeed, it is through a critical analysis of four “theoretical moments” in the writings of Axel Honneth (a leading author on the issue of recognition) that we identify a blind spot, a theoretical unthinkable, which we call “identity skills”. Although the term “identity skill” had already appeared a few times in the scientific literature prior to our study, it was either a pseudo-concept with no theoretical basis or definition, or the skills involved in managing a firm's public identity. Our construction of the concept, first defined as a skill involved in the development of a positive and continually transformative relationship with oneself, thus already represents an important theoretical gain: any concept is a cognitive tool for directing our attention towards the salient aspects of problematic situations, and the concept of identity skills precisely questions the ability of educational institutions to provide students with the necessary (but not sufficient) ingredients to become responsible for the relationship they have with themselves. Obviously, at this stage, we still need to identify which skills are worthy of such a qualification. However, the critical epistemology described at the beginning of this section already gives us an initial idea of the skills that could be useful in the ongoing work of identity. Indeed, it seems that Honneth presupposes a series of competencies when he describes the dynamics of “struggles for recognition”, when he confronts the related questions of perspective adoption and norm legitimacy, and when he sketches out “institutional spheres of learning to freedom” in a more recent book. On the other hand, when it comes to describing identity vulnerability as such, Honneth seems to presuppose the absence of similar competencies, without making them explicit. These skills include imagination, mastery of narrative tools, understanding and managing emotional flows, the ability to engage in dialogue, and critical thinking.

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And yet, to establish our key concept, it's not enough to note that these skills have been forgotten in some theoretical pool. On the contrary, it needs to be positively anchored in a coherent conceptual framework. Thus, the second chapter of this section sets out to anchor the concept of identity competencies in a framework of identity reflexivity. Indeed, if autonomy is conditioned by identity, it is necessary to continually launch a reflexive operation in order to guarantee the durability of the psychic foundation of the ability to orient oneself. Our chapter on reflexivity and identity competencies begins by combining three epistemologically distinct perspectives on identity rigidity in order to identify their commonalities. Taking these perspectives into account then allows us to move forward in articulating the reflexive operation itself, notably on the basis of recent critiques of Donald Schön's concept of the “reflexive practitioner”. Indeed, Schön's reflexivity suffers from a blind spot precisely at the level of the identity relationship that conditions, for better or worse, the dynamics of professional reflexivity. Similarly, Schön's theory tends to overlook the relational dimension of reflexivity. Similarly, Schön's theory tends to obliterate the relational dimension of reflexivity. By reconstructing the reflexive operation that emerges from Schön's criticisms, we arrive at a second definition of identity competencies, namely those competencies that foster the emergence of relational experiences conducive to inciting a reflexive operation and that underpin its completion. The chapter continues by detailing the five fields of competence that we believe correspond to this definition. We therefore analyze how imaginative, narrative, emotional, dialogical and critical skills contribute to the development of a lasting positive relationship with oneself, enabling the integration of shocks rather than suffering their after-effects. And yet, at this point, the competency dimension of identity-based reflexivity becomes limited. Indeed, what the language of competencies fails to capture is attention to the non-identity of self to self: the fact that everyone can always transform their relationship with themselves, that no self is preordained or, indeed, that no personal identity is essential. Without this kind of attention, the skills identified run the risk of working at cross-purposes: if our attention is directed towards the essential, non-transformable character of identities, we can deploy our imaginative, narrative, emotional and other skills to protect an identity relationship that is no longer capable of sustainably supporting autonomy.

 

However, before turning to the practical avenues to which this last limitation leads us (part 3), we conclude this second part by exploring the pedagogical potential of our key concept in chapter 6, “Identity skills at school”. This exploration begins by reconstructing the history and reception of the competency-based approach (CBA). This approach, which has its roots in the English-speaking corporate world, was the subject of considerable theoretical debate in the French-speaking world during the 1990s. While the competency register seems to have conquered the educational world today, this conquest was not without resistance, and the reasons behind the resistance encountered are instructive in pinpointing what competencies can include, in terms of knowledge or basic abilities, and what remains outside the field. The chapter then goes on to examine the few works that have dared to tackle the relationship between identity and education head-on. If education is necessarily involved in identity development, their explicit articulation can be frightening, and for good reason. And yet, it's crucial to engage reflexively with this inescapable implication, knowing that the utmost care is required to avoid misunderstandings evoking the image of extrinsic identity programming. This work has been started by psychologist Elli Schachter, who proposes an analytical grid to mark out the points of contact between identity and education, and by Mark Bracher, a professor of literature who proposes a radical pedagogy based on Lacanian psychoanalysis. However, Bracher's epistemological basis complicates his applicability to existing educational frameworks, which explains the lukewarm reception of his highly original and rigorous approach. So, according to our hypothesis, reframing identity issues on the basis of the proven register of competencies enables us to make progress towards a real practical potential - that of equipping our future citizens for the identity work that will be theirs throughout life - while respecting the epistemic norms that govern the world of education.

Next, this chapter (6) on identity skills at school questions the viability of an approach that would develop these skills as part of a “special course”. To this end, we examine two existing practices that seek to train certain skills identified in the previous chapter. The first case concerns the philosophy and citizenship course (CPC) recently introduced in Belgium, whose strengths we identify in the light of our conceptual framework. Indeed, the competency framework associated with this course reveals a willingness to develop emotional, dialogical and critical skills, particularly in order to help students open up to new perspectives. On the other hand, this program does not aim to develop the crucial skills of imagination and narrativity. The second case is that of American courses based on positive psychology, such as the Penn Resiliency Program. While such a program has the merit of making explicit the value of a form of “preventive mental health”, its epistemological anchoring makes it a poor candidate for the development of identity skills (apart from critical competence). Indeed, positive psychology as a whole is haunted by too much individualism, leading us to believe that individuals can self-affect without a relationship to others, whereas our construction of the reflexive operation in Chapter 5 demonstrates the crucial role played by the inclusion of an otherness, without which the individual lacks a background against which the aspects of his relationship to himself can reveal their contingency. Yet the distinct problems encountered by these two approaches ultimately remain secondary to their common obstacle: the fact that a single course is unable to ensure the development of such important cross-disciplinary skills.

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Finally, this chapter, as well as part 2 of our study, ends by posing a new question: if the idea of a separate course is not enough, what would it take, in terms of teaching posture, to develop identity skills in courses of any discipline? Once again, we compare the two existing approaches that are probably closest to our competency chart. The first is Jack Martin's neo-Meadian educational psychology. While G. H. Mead's developmental psychology was central to the first part of our study because of its mobilization by Axel Honneth, we had already voiced certain criticisms of its translation into educational thought. Indeed, the notion of adopting perspectives - crucial to the incorporation of otherness - forms the conceptual core of Meadian thought, but two major problems complicate its educational translation. The first concerns the role played by imagination, narrativity and emotions in the “decentering” movement. Martin's approach relies almost exclusively on the exchange of positions - physical and dialogical - to ensure the adoption of alternative perspectives. While this approach usefully outlines the importance of dialogue and critical thinking in shaping open-minded, enlightened citizens, its most inescapable problem concerns the level of abstraction at which it is constructed. Indeed, the teacher's role is conceived as that of a mediator between perspectives, but his or her day-to-day activity is not very well defined. Finally, while this approach coincides with our psychological starting point and offers an interesting critique of certain current practices (such as, for example, positive psychology), it does not lead to a viable teaching posture. We therefore turn to the neo-Vygotskian approach of Kieran Egan, an Irish educational philosopher who proposes a pedagogy based on the “story-form”. This pedagogy is conceived and presented in a directly applicable way: Egan shows how to script a course in such a way as to generate an emotional tension that stimulates interest and motivates collective learning, how to exploit the key tools of imagination and narrativity to forge links between abstract ideas (Vygotsky's scientific concepts) and lived experience (spontaneous concepts), and how such a course construction enables all disciplinary material to be retained but more cross-disciplinary skills to be worked on. We find in this pedagogy all the identity competencies identified upstream, with the exception of critical competence. Yet even this gap seems to be taken into account by the Vygotskian perspective; as Matthew Lipman demonstrates, the form of dialogue that emerges during discussions conducted in such a setting is nothing other than the critical spirit that is expressed on a collective level before being internalized by the students taking part. Finally, if Egan formulates his learning outcomes in terms of “cognitive tools”, our analysis of APC demonstrates that competencies are precisely such tools. Thus, a reformulation of Egan's pedagogy in the register of competencies increases its compatibility with today's educational world without altering the substance of his highly original and interesting proposal.

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To summarize the key findings of this part of the study, we can say: 1) that the concept of identity competencies, properly situated within the conceptual framework of identity reflexivity, makes it possible to overcome a series of institutional, epistemological and pedagogical obstacles to the inclusion of psychological-identity issues in public education, 2) that a special course remains insufficient to develop such competencies, and 3) that the best opportunity to guarantee their development lies in a pedagogical posture that can be generalized to any disciplinary subject.

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3.Attention and school governance

This part of the study involves a double shift, from skills to attention, and from pedagogy to school governance. While we have been able to identify a pedagogical posture that incorporates almost all of our identity skills, two crucial questions arise in parallel. The first concerns attention to the non-identity of the self, which we have identified as crucial to ensuring the proper use of identity skills. The second concerns the institutional conditions that promote or inhibit a teaching posture capable of developing identity skills and participating in the collective orientation of attention towards the transformability of the self.

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This section begins by addressing the first question through a critical study of Carol Dweck's self-theory theory. A positive psychologist who began her career studying the link between motivation and the type of goal one sets for oneself (achievement goal theory), Dweck founded a vast field of psychological research on the implicit theories everyone has about the nature and malleability of the self. Initially, working on the distinction between learning goals and performance goals, Dweck sought to understand what led people to set goals related to the development of abilities, instead of goals to demonstrate abilities already acquired. The answer? Those who saw intelligence as a fixed entity were more inclined to demonstrate what they had already mastered, while those who saw intelligence as the product of effort were more attracted to learning opportunities. Over the years, the research program based on these experiments generalized its key concept to include not only intelligence, but everything that goes to make up identity. Thus, over three decades of research have been carried out in psychology to understand the role played by implicit beliefs (“lay theories”) about the self and its transformability. This paradigm has produced pedagogical recommendations, but these remain fundamentally limited to the use of specific expressions or terms that refer to the non-essential nature of the self. The problem we have identified, which complicates both empirical results and pedagogical translations, is the formulation of these implicit theories in terms of beliefs. If a belief can be applied uniformly to any context, self-theories don't seem to act that way. Reconstructing the Dweckian issue in terms of attention to the non-essential character of the self allows us both to resolve a tension identified in the empirical results and to envisage a far more comprehensive educational application. Downstream of this reconstruction, we arrive at the following twofold lead: to set themselves up as models of identity transformability, teachers need to be able to continue developing throughout their careers, both professionally and personally; to draw students' attention to their own developmentality, teachers require a certain attentional autonomy enabling them to focus on the students themselves and on their next areas of development, without being distracted by the multiplicity of attentional demands.

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The remaining three chapters of this section therefore explore the institutional modalities that foster or complicate the constitution of a teaching force capable of focusing students' attention on the transformability of the self. Chapter 8 deals with teacher training, looking in particular at the concept of the reflective teacher and the way in which a given educational psychology can pre-orient the attention of teachers-in-the-making. Indeed, most of the scientific literature on teacher reflexivity focuses on this pre-professional moment. However, we find that these preparatory measures are very limited in terms of guaranteeing an attentional posture that lasts a career. More fundamentally, such a posture requires an institutional framework that values teachers' attentional autonomy and remains aware of the factors that produce defensive postures. The exploration of all these institutional modalities thus occupies the majority of this section.

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In Chapter 9 (School Governance), we conduct a top-down analysis of school governance to identify best practices and pitfalls to avoid at all organizational levels. The chapter begins by examining educational policies formulated at a national or regional level. It then moves on to the organization of collective learning within a given school, in order to identify how different forms of collaboration take shape based on governmental configurations, and how this collaboration can stimulate reflective practice (which leads to continuous development) or hinder it through the excessive inclusion of third-party perspectives. Indeed, if too many third parties are invited to intervene in a teacher's activity, their attention risks being distorted by the anticipation of decontextualized evaluative perspectives. In this case, instead of focusing their attention on the pedagogical goals that seem important to them, the teacher may feel forced to position themselves defensively in order to prevent any external criticism. Next, we examine further how a school's normative regime is subjectively experienced by teachers. The chapter outlines an ideal-type of the case to be avoided: when the legitimate authority of teachers is consolidated at the higher hierarchical levels of the institution, and when other participants in the life of the school (parents, students, management, external advisors, etc.) have too much power over the way a teacher carries out his or her professional activity, the teacher finds himself or herself alone at the center of a circle of evaluative gazes, and the development of defensive postures should not surprise anyone. Finally, the chapter ends with a step back to assess the role of school culture in the way a form of school governance is experienced.

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Chapter 10 takes up the same issues as the previous chapter, but from different concepts and with a view to producing a positive ideal-type of the pedagogical relationship that can occur when teachers have healthy and legitimate authority to anchor their reflective stance and sufficient attentional autonomy to orient the collective attention of the class towards the developmental potential of each individual. It is the concept of interpellation that allows us to articulate how the desires of students and teachers to learn can amplify each other. Indeed, the introduction of this concept moves us from a framework of "capacitation" to a framework of motivation sustainably supported by successful pedagogical relationships. Similarly, by providing additional theoretical tools on collective attention (notably the recent work of Yves Citton), this chapter gives us the opportunity to further specify what attentional autonomy, as an ideal horizon and not as an absolute phenomenon, concretely consists of. In line with previous analyses of teacher professionalism (Chapters 8 & 9), we demonstrate that attentional autonomy requires a minimum level of collective control over teachers' working conditions, because to influence their future attention, it is necessary to be able to modify the environment that conditions their future perceptions. Finally, this supplementary chapter concludes by summarizing the institutional factors that direct teachers' attention from above, distract them, and distort their view of their professional activity.

 

4. School, Society, and Its Transformation

This final section places our study within a broader scope by assessing the philosophical legacies that informed it and then highlighting the current relevance of an "identity turn" in education.

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The interest in comparing the results of our study with the writings of two philosophers—Michel Foucault and J.G. Fichte—who were not used in our argument is not purely academic. While this comparison allows us to recognize how our ideas, formulated in the current language of education, have a much longer history, it also offers an opportunity to provide additional clarification through the contrasts that emerge with very similar positions. Indeed, Foucault's approach to the question of the care of the self resonates with our pedagogical approach to identity reflexivity, and Fichte's educational policy, which evolved throughout his productive period, results in a passionate defense of collective control of educational institutions by a teaching body endowed with legitimate authority.

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The penultimate chapter then examines the technological, legal, and societal developments that make identity a key issue for the 21st century. We demonstrate that these developments grant individuals more power than ever before over their self-image and, more generally, their relationship with themselves. Obviously, this increased power requires a proportional increase in responsibility, particularly because of the established link between the relationship with oneself and autonomy. Taking responsibility for one's spontaneous actions implies taking responsibility for one's identity, hence the urgency of developing identity skills and directing our collective attention toward human development: the ineluctable transformability of any relationship with oneself.

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Finally, our study concludes by turning to the future of the climate. In a short chapter, we outline the links between, on the one hand, identity responsibility and, on the other, both individual ecological responsibility and the success of political movements demanding actions capable of sustainably ensuring a climate favorable to human life—the common interest par excellence.