nm1088: thank you very much for all of you and CELTE members er for inviting as 
a visiting fellow er actually this is this is this is one of the er i mean the 
major event in my life actually [laughter] i have been learning i have been a 
learner of English for myself for more than twenty years agos-, er years or so 
but the i mean [sigh] you just don't learn anything until you just just see 
something yourself er i mean to the actually er the some of our some of our 
students er say at the graduation ceremony in my university says er to the dean 
actually er she actually er said to the dean that one of the happiest moment 
one of the most exciting one of the happiest moment of of my college life is in 
the CELTE [laughter] this is this is a a sort of the well i mean [laugh] to 
some er for for some point of view i mean this is a embarrassment to the dean 
because i mean [laughter] after all i mean she's just said something like very 
complimentary to 
the dean but i mean [laugh] this is a truth so er ever since i came here i 
began to see more and more far more point in er Professor er er namex namex or 
the professor namex is doing and i really thank you for inviting me and giving 
opportunity to stay here so er i k-, kept saying to myself that i sh-, maybe er 
no i mean i must do something for you i must do something for you because i 
just can't have the privilege of staying here and maybe i can do from the 
future but this is the one small thing that i can do is this is that the er to 
talk about the methodological er point er methodological point of view er for 
the er teacher er development 
nm1088: okay er i was er just a normal [laugh] [laughter] undergraduate student 
in Japan i was just quite happy with er er the coursework er but well er the 
privilege of er being a young man and a stupid person is [laugh] [laughter] to 
be ambitious and i began to look for something more deeper or 
scientific and then i became at the M-A course in M-A er areas sort of a semi-
psycholinguist [laugh] and i just read er books on er psychology of reading et 
cetera but at some point some er moment i was so disillusioned actually er with 
the well maybe this is not a fair er remark for psychologists [laugh] but you 
see the more technical you get in psychology er the less point i mean less 
point i began to see in my work so i mean i began to think [laugh] and then if 
you think too much one pitfall is that you begin philosophy [laughter] and i 
became sort of this student oh i mean i'm not i haven't been a formal student i 
mean in a formal sense but i sort of the independent learner of er philosophy 
and then gradually over the years i what i began to summarize what i am doing 
as philosophical investigations in E-L-T [laugh] that's a very [laugh] 
ambitious topic but and the to be s-, more specific what i've been doing is 
that the er in one work i er took er Krashen's Monitor hypothis 
i in i s-, think i saw much point intuitively when Krashen says that 
consciousness er conscious lear-, conscious learning doesn't lead to 
acquisition or language use i saw much point and what i wanted to do was that 
to just see i mean to to rationalize his argument i mean just saying that well 
look i mean this this must be the truth b-, because we intuitively knows this 
is a truth is doesn't convince other people so er by er introducing 
Wittgenstein's philosophy of rule forming i tried to reconstruct er Krashen's 
Monitor Hypothesis but the paper is was written in Japanese and i mean the most 
papers if i mean in these days i used to write in English but i mean as i began 
philosophy i began to write in Japanese which is my native language or i did er 
i thought about er grammar teaching because after all i mean if you think 
simply if you teach rules and teach vocabulary students should produce a 
language i mean s-, students should be able to use the language but as we all a-
, as we know this is 
not the case usually and i began to see why and i began to reconstruct again er 
why this that is so or i mean the more i hear about the er learner's experience 
in Japan or on the outside Japan well almost all er almost all learners say 
that imitation played a major role in their learning experience but what we 
often see in the textbook for er language er acquisition is that no i mean w-, 
imitation doesn't work er one famous example is that nobody doesn't like me and 
the correction comes nobody likes me ten times and then er you produce i mean 
er a learner produce the same result and obviously y-, we have Chomsky which is 
critical so critical about the imitation and but i mean it is like the throwing 
a baby with the hot i mean with the water so i began to er see some point in 
the imitation by Heidegger's epistemology or recently er i am involved in the 
er sort of the informal seminar called passagen seminar in Japan this is an 
informal er informal er association in Japan er teachers just gather 
because the mo-, their motivation is that they are not particularly happy with 
the academic preten-, presentations in their academic conferences nor they are 
particularly happy with the say er the the seminars are sponsored by the 
Ministry of Education because everything is can be very formal in there so i 
mean they just want er informal exchange of views and every time i attend there 
i see i mean i see a lot of wisdom produced by the experienced teachers they 
are not they may not be theoretical particularly but they i see much point when 
they someth-, they say something and er i began to see i i began to think that 
the my role as a sort of researcher is that to try to see er try to give 
theoretical framework to them and then we can cooperate as i mean together to 
for i mean to improve our our English education and also i am recently involved 
with a joint work called re-engineering and this is the another work i mean if 
you read comics of Dilbert or something like 
that i mean you should know [laughter] these sort of thing this is er sort of 
the well new i mean catchy word but i mean what i mean is that the er my point 
here is that if you try to be too scientific then you will get lost and for 
some people it is i mean i mean it is sometimes so hard to convince scientific 
oriented people [laugh] to sort of to convert their beliefs about that so i see 
my role as a sort of the er say er directing ourselves this is again too 
ambitious but again [laugh] since i am young and stupid so [laugh] maybe i have 
that er privilege so er er so what i am doing er my argument is mainly er 
normative by which i mean philosophical or theoretical and methodological so er 
here i have er this is the er home page that i have but unfortunately well er 
everything is done in i mean it's written in Japanese and er one thing er one 
er thing that i say to myself these days is that i mean now that i have yes 
this privilege of staying in a 
for-, in a in an English country i must have another er e-, er English home 
page and er maybe hopefully [laugh] i will have some er er English home page 
nm1088: today i will talk about studies in teacher under the title of er 
studies in teacher development a methodological viewpoint and the whole point 
is actually sum-, can be summarized as such and now this point i can say that's 
all but [laugh] no this is not [laugh] fair so maybe er perhaps you er you 
don't er you can let me read er here okay perhaps it is sensible to start er 
with my motivati-, er with my motivation to write this paper for i think papers 
should be read in the larger er context of our intellectual and social 
backgrounds what i perceive to be the case is that i-, at least in Japan we are 
in short of practically relevant academic studies in our fields or applied 
linguistics as sometimes possibly misleadingly called large numbers of s-, er 
teachers are quite eager for self-development yet when they 
turn to academic researchers for some help they often find that some 
researchers only produce experimental studies with little relevance to teaching 
practice as far as i can see in Japan the findings of er the researchers are 
often only comprehensible from a very limited technical perspective which is 
too remote or detached or even completely different from teaching perspective 
or the findings are sometimes too patchy and interpretable only in the er 
controlled situation of that experimental study it seems that it is usually 
supposed that teachers not researchers are to are expected to integrated these 
different and and fragmented findings to turn them into practical knowledge but 
i believe this is a unfair burden of labour for teachers if researchers like my 
like me only produce er replication of linguistics or psychology under the name 
of applied linguistics applied psychology i believe they should be advised to 
learn the construction of their 
own theoretical framework for teaching practice however er this er discrepancy 
between the researchers and practitioners seemed to be only widening at least 
in Japan for example in some academic journals in Japan major er academic 
journals the standard format for a paper or a presentation is just like that of 
a psychological a psychology journal and takes the form of introduction method 
result discussion it is as if only experimental works are encouraged 
unfortunately enough it is as if you have to stop caring about teaching 
practice at all [laugh] in order to be a competitive researcher or you have to 
give up being academic in order to er h-, be helpful for teachers in practice 
apparently we must er find our own methodology to produce practically relevant 
and academic or rigid er studies and i suspect Japan isn't the only country to 
see the chasm between research and practice to take only one other example 
rather thoughtlessly i wonder the U-K here 
this country isn't the same i i just don't know i mean if you say resoundingly 
no in chorus then i shall stop but [laughter] perhaps er i i can continue er 
for example the Times Higher Educational Supplement recently er quoted er 
Professor Hargreaves at Cambridge University a member of the government's 
standard task er force when he says in a nineteen- er -sixty-nine teaching 
teacher training agency lecture that quote much educational research is of 
little relevance to improving cla-, classroom practice Times Higher Education 
cla-, er Supplement also carries an even more critical view by Professor 
Hillage at Sussex University's er Institute of Employment Studies the author of 
a report on the state of the educational research and quote there are three-
thousand id-, er education researchers educational researchers in university 
education departments and teacher training colleges too much of what they do is 
small scale lack rigour and does not advance 
knowledge the burgeoning of er the burgeoning forest of academic research 
papers appears to be increasingly impenetrable to academic audience let alone 
to the wider education community if academic research er er research papers sit 
in the library to be read by a few scholars whose research and personal 
interest touch on the same issues as the Guardian higher education section er 
put it teachers do not benefit from the outcome of the tax money in the form of 
academic works so er methodological consideration for educational research er 
seemed to be an international task as it were the current paper is an attempt 
to of what little academic contribution i can make for the community of 
researchers and teachers this paper deals with the methodological norms for 
studies in teacher development and seek a way for a better er cooperation 
between researchers and teachers and here i'd like to say that well er my i 
mean this paper is also er based on these experience or sorry 
these experiences particularly in the informal discussion medium called 
passagen seminar in Japan this is an informal but so i mean i learned quite a 
lot 
nm1088: first er comes the teacher action and well philosophers are rather 
notorious for saying something obvious er philosophers just say if P then Q P 
therefore Q ah God [laughter] i mean how how how can we make this sort of 
inference you see [laughter] so i mean [laugh] what i'm stating maybe er just 
the ob-, er obvious but by stating the rather obvious maybe i hope that we 
begin to see something better so er this is the first point as a definition we 
make ac-, er we take actions of an ex-, experienced er competent teacher to be 
rational by and large the teacher is not merely a-, er adopting ad hoc measures 
for it's hard to explain the fact that she has had a successful career for a 
long time simply in terms of hapza-, haphazard luck nor teachers' actions are m-
, are mere simple er simple automatic skills for they are often 
apparently done in conflicting situations which doesn't allow do not allow easy 
er fixed responses the purpose of studies in teacher development should be to 
explore that rationality of teacher actions the studies should er clarify the 
rationality which ha-, has not always been described in a coherent way so far 
this definition implies that we have to take er assumptions in the following 
sections which are mutually related these assumptions should be explicitly 
adopt-, adopted for confusion or in methodology can lead can easily lead us 
nowhere indeed although i am of the opinion that Chomsky linguist Chomsky's 
project has little or practically no relevance to studies in teacher 
development but i must i i must admire his er methodological excellence in 
explicating his normative nature of research programme it is i believe the 
combination of the normative or philosophical argument and the descriptive 
arguments specific arguments that turn Chomsky's 
revolution into orthodoxy which has been lasting for more than thirty years 
what studies in teacher development need is normative awareness of their own 
methodology after all er we are not in short of practical tips for tomorrow or 
small ideas for Monday morning it is lack of methodological foundation which 
makes them look like collection of ad hoc advice which are not coherent to each 
other without proper methodology we might fail to see the rationality of an 
experienced competent teachers and continue to treat it er as something anybody 
would quickly acquire after experience without much effort but that is not the 
case we need to explore er the rationality of an e-, experienced competent 
teacher so that we can share and develop our understanding of the profession 
yet this does not suggest that we should pick up one teacher and treat her as 
an example of perfect rationality in language teaching as human beings all 
teacher are under obvious constraints and thus 
prevented from being an exemplar of perfect rationality so we don't take 
actions of one particular teachers as to as sort of sacred facts er to be 
explained unquestionably they er their actions could have been more rational 
this statement mine s-, might sound like truism for some people but it is 
important to acknowledge once and for all that no teacher should be treated as 
a sort of an icon for it is sometimes the case that some teachers are so 
admired that they be-, they begin to accept less and less critical v-, reviews 
and establish an exclusive group of their own actually this is the case in 
Japan i mean some er educational journals are so hard to read but it is not 
because they are intellectually hard i mean they just use words which is not 
exactly technical jargon but just just i mean they just communicated 
communicate within a limited group and i just er think that it is a sad thing 
for us i mean so we need to er be er right er we just er we just n-, shouldn't 
have an 
icon er this i-, would be more plausible in an authoritarian culture when where 
a democratic exchange of views are not e-, is not encouraged maybe jap-, in 
Japan i mean it is sometimes hard to exchange i mean frank views i mean because 
i mean some teachers are just in authoritian sits [laugh] and and they just say 
they can just say something but they rarely listen well i mean maybe i [laugh] 
[laughter] i am exaggerating a little bit but [laughter] this is what i i s-, i 
sometimes thinks so studies in er teacher development is not to impart our 
teachers' knowledge to other in-, inexperienced teachers with no enquiring mind 
if that is all meant is meant by sharing experience we would only see 
deteriorate-, deteriorating practical wisdom of teachers for by definition a 
copy cannot be better than the original so our knowledge of teachers er one 
teacher can be only diminished or distorted when imparted therefore when we 
share 
experience we must try to understand rationality in that experience not just 
the experience in it-, in in itself but the rationality in it and explore some 
other cases some potential cases that could be or could have been possible if 
we agree to treat er regard teacher actions as instantiation of rationality we 
can discuss the issue objectively incorporating discussion apply the finding 
properly not blindly to each unique situation in other words we should cease to 
see teacher development in a craft model as some er some people call it er we 
have to er distance thoughtfully distance ourselves away from non-critical 
ethos or blind following of mentor's behaviour some might argue then if teacher 
development is a matter of rationality er we only have to adopt scientific 
method my reaction is yes and no because the word scientific or science can be 
ambiguous unlike the German word wissenschaft or the Japanese word gakumon the 
English word science is sometimes taken 
to mean only natural or physical scientists science to the exclusion of social 
science or human science if we take science in this narrow sense the answer is 
no because er it seems that we can only be scientific in this sense by being 
for example semi-psychologists who replicates experiments in L-two settings or 
applied linguists er who works for research questions set by theoretical 
linguists not by language teachers in practice the consequence of such 
scientific approach is much widening er gap between theory and practice er or 
researchers and teachers criticism for this kind of applied science model is 
much discussed and i won't repeat it here here suffice it to say that neither 
side benefit from this gap scientific researchers in our field cannot avoid 
being uncritical er followers of other presumably advanced scientists because 
the former lack their own original research questions for education and 
practical teachers will stay further away from 
methodological rigour so we will pursue studies in er te-, for er teacher 
development in a wide sense but what is a scientific approach in the wide sense 
or the critical approach to avoid the ambiguity of the term if there are any 
other way than f-, psychology or linguistics for example to explore the issue 
of er teacher development some researchers have already referred to 
ethnomethodology and proposed reflective model this paper is in line with this 
movement and argues that if critical enquiry which is different from natural or 
physical science is er is done in a methodologically proper way it will be it 
will reveal what natural or f-, physical scien-, science cannot reveal in what 
follows i will make clear methodological assumptions that we have to adopt in 
studies in teacher development and these are the assumptions i think that we 
have to follow if the purpose of study er studies for teacher development is to 
explore the rationality of an 
experienced competent teacher's actions we need to adopt the intentional stance 
not the design stance or the physical stance because er the only s-, er the f-, 
the intentional stance is er the only er stance of the three that can deal with 
human rationality these three stances are er philosophical concepts advocated 
by Dennett a part of his motivation seems to be t-, er to make us critically 
aware that stance adopted by natural scientists the nat-, er physical stance is 
not the only possible way to view the world from the intentional stance here 
the word intentional is a rather er used in a technical sense of philosophy and 
does not exclusively mean purpose-, purposeful or purposive okay but er from 
this intentional stance we see and try to understand an intelligent being in 
our case teacher [laughter] by ascribing rationality to it that is we treat the 
intelligent as we treat the intelligent being as the one that has beliefs and 
desires and other 
mental states like hopes fears et cetera and try to explain and predict its er 
actions by assuming that it will act with these mental s-, er states on the 
basis of rationality with some possible obvious excep-, exceptions like the 
fatigue or something we take it for granted that it or the teacher will act 
rationally even when er it appears to be acting not rationally we do not 
ascribe we shouldn't ascribe you irrationality immediately but still ascribe 
the er maximum amount of rationality to it and try to account for the action by 
examining what beliefs and desi-, or desires er have led to their action on the 
other hand even in the case of reasonably er rational action we attribute again 
the maximum rationality to the intelligent being and try to explore what other 
potential actions could be or could have been taken which are more rational 
applied to the studies in er teachers' development er from er from this er 
intentional stance we view teacher actions as an actual 
instantiation of rationality for seemingly unusual or unexpected actions by 
maybe inexperienced teachers or young teachers or experienced teachers we won't 
just condemn the teacher herself but instead try to uncover what led her to 
that action by examining her beliefs and desires et cetera by mutually finding 
out her unrealized er beliefs or desires et cetera er we give her a chance for 
reflection for theoretical on the other hand for theoretically trained but 
inexperienced teacher we might be able to reveal what she could have done given 
the strength of her theoretical beliefs from this intens-, intentional stance 
we construct er reconstruct the rationality of our teacher so that we can share 
her actual and potential actions in an explicit and understanding way thus 
studies in teacher development should be construed as a rational reconstruction 
of existing practice but extending that er beyond that practice by exploring 
its internal structure and suggesting other 
potential practice in short this stance is the one that we just usually take 
[laugh] in er the reflective model of teacher development this intentional 
stance should not be confused with the design stance er for if we we take the 
design stance ex-, exclusively er in teacher development what result may well 
be coercion not reflection from the design stance we see a being as what is 
designed to serve a certain purpose to perform a certain predetermined 
functions this view is of limited help er only when teachers are expected to do 
fixed activities these routine behaviours are certainly one element of teacher 
actions but yet not the major element after all it is possible or arguably even 
desirable to replace these fixed teacher actions with some teaching machines 
[laugh] for er er as far as fixed and er non-creative functions are concerned 
machines are much faster more accurate and even perhaps more humane because it 
er is more patient [laughter] and actually but i 
think major major issue for our profession is the i-, information technology i 
think i mean this can change a lot i mean industrial revolution can change the 
life of workers i mean the manual workers then i mean if this is the 
information revolution that we are witnessing we our change i mean our work 
will change a lot that's what i think i suspect okay and er in other words 
teacher development exclusively from the design stance would discourage 
teachers from developing er to be more flexible and compatible with conflicting 
situations in real classrooms the design stance er alone cannot deal with this 
sort of open-minded open-ended questions 
nm1088: from the physical stance we only er we see a being solely on the basis 
of the actual physical state as the natural or physical scientist usually do 
this stance does not deal with human rationality or purpose for they do not 
enter into the realm of the physical world of the natural scientist this 
physical stance is what 
some s-, school of psychology and linguistics are trying to take although i 
would say er er there are other types of psychology and linguistics that is 
seen from the design stance not the physical stance for example what some er 
experimental psychological researchers are changing into er neuroscience or 
brain science that's neuropsychology for the er these types of researchers has 
simply a more precise instruments of measurements and this is capable of 
producing finer theories in linguistics Chomsky often says that linguistics is 
and should be ultimately biology this stance can produce argualy arguably the 
finest picture of reality however we have to remember that this stance by 
definition excludes the rationality of a teacher and the design er design of 
teaching you need more than er terms of physics to deal with these sort of 
human concepts therefore i mean er by just trying to look er like science 
scientific we are turning ourselves further away from the teaching 
practice here we have to be careful about scientism if we naively believe in 
scientific method and assume that if if scientific application is the ultimate 
panacea and justify ourselves er mimicking experiments by psychologists or lin-,
er linguistics in the hope of finding the ultimate answer to practical human 
questions by these small scientifics er steps we are i believe doomed [laugh] 
er well to i think i would say that it is like a hopeless situation where a 
tortoise starts not even before but alas after Achilles [laughter] and finds an 
infinite number of passing points leading to ever running er Achilles the more 
s-, er natural science advances the more educational researchers have to 
replicate and natural scientists run much faster than educational researchers 
[laughter] because they are much in larger in number er much larger in number 
and have far fewer burden of er explanation than educational researchers 
educational researchers i believe have to learn to benefit 
from the result of natural science not to mimic as it were natural scientists 
so we should er not take f-, er for granted the priority of the s-, er three 
stances that scientism implies scientism holds that physical stance so er 
physical stance as paramount the design stance being a mere application of the 
finding from the physical stance nothing more than a secondary interest for the 
follower of scientism the intentional stance may only have a derogatory 
connotation for it is far from the precise desrip-, description that physical 
stance can produce however this priority order of physical stance first and 
then f-, design stance and the intentional stance is not only possible one nor 
the only sensible one as i have implied suppose we take only the physical 
stance for teacher development X years later with the advance of er 
neuroscience educational researchers too might have a far more detailed 
pictures of er teacher actions yes yet this picture whose reading requires a 
lot of 
study in neuroscience would er be far less of help for teachers because this 
picture is f-, f-, far too detailed and yet too vast in the information to be 
understood in real terms it might perhaps start from the excitement of some 
neurons [laugh] in some er some domains of the brain to the transmission of 
chemical substance in the muscle and then finally to the picking up one piece 
of chalk [laughter] and [laugh] obviously it's not good picture if this sort of 
precise scientific findings are to be of some help for practitioners scientific 
enquiry must be properly directed by some other principles with educational 
orientation so my er what i er in other words i think i mean we shouldn't start 
from here or even start from here we should start from here er this is my point 
er by so er it er enq-, our enquiry must be directed by a less precise yet more 
economical stance that is far more relevant to practice of education thus for 
us i mean we must reverse er priority order thus er 
intentional stance comes first followed by the design stance and then finally 
by the physical stance we must limit our enquiry to the realm of the 
intentional stance unless it becomes undeniably necessary that without local 
findings from a more precise er stance we cannot go on only then do we began er 
begin to take the design stance the physical stance should come even later when 
efforts er from the design stance are exhausted this order might seem er 
unscientific or even antiscientific to some people however i argue that this is 
not in the broad sense of that term science and that this is a very reasonable 
order by which we can increase our practical knowledge if we start er from the 
physical stance or even the design stance critical enquiry for teacher 
development is far too vast it would be too arbitral to pick just one or two 
aspects of the whole scientific enquiry and claim these studies studies in er 
teacher development by definition pure s-, er 
natural er or physical scientists must be blind to design and human 
intentionality human concepts but we cannot be blind to them also by definition 
i would say in order to be reasonable in teacher development we cannot afford 
to be physical er scientists and we will go to the next point 
nm1088: adoption of intentional stance entails commitment to holism bec-, er 
for our intentionality meaning our human concepts our human understanding 
beliefs hopes desires anxieties et cetera is so inter-, internally connected 
that we are that one change in one part of our intentionality may cause some 
other change in some parts for example we may want our s-, want our students to 
make an immediate response to a question in the target language in classroom 
but it may only be so as long as she does not the student does not develop too 
much reliance on strategic competence too much frequent er too frequent er 
circumlocution which discourage er syntactic development or er unless she er 
she does not er develop too much reliance on easy set phrase which whose 
semantic content is not necessarily an expression of her feelings nor would 
teacher want an im-, immediate response if it threatens the teach-, student's 
des-, er affective sense of security our beliefs and desires are so 
interconnected that it is practically impossible to pick up one proposition er 
from our intentionality and treat the proposition as a kind of decontextualized 
e-, ex-, eternal truth of course we sometimes take the proposition and perhaps 
we see we find no practical problem in saying that an immediate response from a 
student is desirable but we have to be reminded that when we make this sort of 
type er this type of statement we omit for the economy of speech a restrictive 
phrase like other things being normal indeed or we have to be careful about the 
balance of significance between the proposition part and the restrictive er 
phrase part other things being normal in natural or 
physical science where the target of the study is highly focused or controlled 
restrictive er phrase may sound a platitude yet in the case where a proposition 
is actually in the web of other propositions and contextual factors play a 
major role it is indeed the proposition part that may er become a platitude 
indeed restrictive phrase other thing being e-, er normal may be the focus of 
our enquiry a holistic question like what other factors are significantly 
related to this proposition may carry more relevance to teachers who already 
know the content of the platitudinous proposition in this sense i i'm rather 
sceptical of of experimental studies in teacher development of course you can 
er compare for example two types of teaching technique in a semi-experimental 
manner and have a conclusion that one technique work better than the other but 
if the study neglects exploring what constitutes the de-, er context including 
the teacher herself the conclusion is of little significance to 
other teachers or even the teacher herself when she is put in a different 
situation i believe proliferi-, er proliferating this type of experimental 
studies leads us nowhere unless we take the holistic nature of reality as the 
foundation of our studies hence action research should be encouraged for it er 
supposedly encourages our reflection over holistic situation rather than 
jumping to a hasty conclusion but without proper understanding of the holism 
action research er could perhaps degenerate into a rather arbitrary comparison 
study which is far from scientific er experimental design and sensible er 
reflection 
nm1088: okay next point adoption of re-, intentional stance and holism commands 
a more flexible type of rationality than we normally think because if when we 
say we are rational and we often er think of er rationality in formal terms for 
it would be inconceivable that we often come up with sensible solutions in this 
complex world satisfying our 
holistic intentionality with only simple formal deductive type of rationality 
in this section therefore i introduce Habermas' theory of rationality for a 
more flexible account of rationality Habermas er distinguishes two types of 
rationality cognitive instrumental rationality and er communicative rationality 
stating that although the er cognitive instrumental rationality is the self-
understanding of the modern era contemporary world it should be subsumed by the 
latter er communicative rationality which is connected with the ancient er 
conception of logos exertion of cognitive instrumental rationality is measured 
by successful intervention if one is able to fulfil her purpose by making 
informed and intelligent change in the environment she is regarded as 
possessing cognitive instrumental rationality this is er teleological and non-
cognitive and does not require at least theoretically agreement with other 
persons as long as she makes her purpose clear and change 
the environment so that er it more satisfies her purpose she has shown 
instrumental mastery and that is enough for cognitive er instrumental 
rationality to make internal reference we typically exert this rationality from 
the design stance some er we somehow receive purpose from the intentional 
stance and tactfully gain knowledge from the physical stance and then relate 
them to fill fulfil the purpose yet this is not a good picture for teacher er 
development as you would assume er as we have confirmed the purpose or the end 
of a teacher action is not always independent and unchangeable because of the 
holistic nature of our teaching experience only some portion of er teacher 
actions can be properly explained by this cognitive instrumental rationality 
from the design stance so we need a more flexible and comprehensible notion of 
rationality and that according to Habermas is communicative rationality we hold 
that rationality of teacher actions 
comes its-, er manifests itself through the use of this communicative 
rationality okay communicative rationality is exerted for unifying consensus 
bridging force of argumentative er speech er what i mean is that in this er 
sort of communication different participants overcome their merely subjective 
views and by the use of communicative rationality they try to er achieve and 
they integrate different aspects of the same world in a coherent way so for 
example when we talk and when we reach an ar-, agreement we just don't simply 
follow one type of argument some people says when in terms of this rule i mean 
your action is wro-, i mean wrong or something like that whereas the other 
person might say but you see just just think of how she must be feeling right 
now which is quite different logic er somehow we reach an understanding and 
Habermas er says that we should er acknowledge this that sort of er more 
flexible rationality that's what he means by er communicative 
rationality and inherent in this er communicative rationality is communicative 
understanding this rationality is exercised particularly when it becomes 
obvious that there is apparent disagreement in understanding among ourselves 
with different orientations in our case teacher often encounters students or 
student er and situations which are quite different from what she expected and 
do not allow an easy solution she then has to talk as it were with herself or 
actually with other persons other colleagues or friends when she has time to 
find a better solution she must take into account different aspects of teaching 
that's different students and different s-, er situations bring and find that 
unified understanding of the whole picture of teaching er she m-, c-, she must 
come up with the solution by way of communicative rationality communicative 
rationality is therefore motivated by such ordinary questions like how come she 
sees it and you don't i mean this type of mindset is 
quite incompatible in fact and in fact in unimaginable from the physical stance 
or the design stance which only presupposes the the one and only one 
unquestionable realistic world or purpose and see disagreement among us as a 
mishap not as a starting motivation for further enquiry the communicative 
rationality takes phenomenological style which allows different looks of the 
world er from different interpretive backgrounds therefore communicative 
rationality is er compatible with holism rather than the instrumental er 
cognitive instrumental rationality and also er compatible with the intentional 
stance in addition since communicative rationality is a more comprehensible 
concept er this subsumes cognitive instrumental rationality it is an undeniable 
fact that our daily life is occasionally supplemented by instrumental mastery a 
life with no instrumental mastery is not a human life but a life which is only 
made up of instrumental mastery is not a human life either we 
need to make clear the as-, sort of the asymmetrical w-, relation of our 
communicative rationality and cogniti-, cognitive instrumental rationality and 
try not to misrepresent a human life or teacher actions in theoretically biased 
way 
nm1088: okay then argumentation suppose that so suppose a teacher comes to us 
and we try to see er rationality by the use of communicative rationality then 
what are the specific requirements in the argumentation Habermas says that our 
argumentation should be seen as a process that is unfinished work unfinished 
continuation so in natural science you should have an answer if you don't have 
an answer that's a failure but in our discussion i mean in our setting maybe we 
don't have a complete answer and we shouldn't have a complete answer if you 
think you should you have a the ultimate i mean complete er right answer then 
you must be taking er design stance or physical stance or this er rationality 
cognitive instrumental rationality so we we 
shouldn't be ashamed of the fact that sort of as it were we are endlessly 
talking [laugh] i mean from different er perspectives also er Habermas says 
that we must follow certain procedure i mean argumentation should be seen er 
procedure and we must follow s-, er certain types of rules for example er 
Habermas says er we should thematize no we just i mean in the process we just 
don't chat we just thematize the claim and we try to see we try to clarify the 
reasons behind it not the er claim itself for example when she says when er one 
teacher says something like the i think the introductio-, i mean the use of 
music enhances the student's motivation et cetera rather than focusing on that 
content itself oh no in my experience it didn't work w-, et cetera or music is 
not related to the cognitive development something like that we should try to 
see the reasons reasons and argumentations these are the core of the er 
argumentation and er we shouldn't take the attitu-, er we should take the 
sort of the hypothetical wor-, er attitude and stop saying well if you have the 
experience if you have experience like mine you will see or you cannot say 
anything you cannot say real-, er say anything really if you are not 
experienced er if you are not experienced i mean we should as i said er we just 
i mean we should begin we should see the teacher actions in terms of 
rationality so we we should try to see the rationality behind it so reasons not 
the context or the i mean experience is obviously important but experience is 
not absolutely necessary to understand our profession and but we should have er 
at some point i mean we should turn these discussion or argumentation into a 
product otherwise i mean we'll get nowhere i mean this sounds rather 
contradictory to each other but in in actual case i mean we should have the 
sort of the intent er report or a summary otherwise er and that is okay and 
that er sort of the product is enough er i don't have time so i have no time to 
introduce er Wittgenstein's er concept of certainty oh in short Wittgenstein 
says i mean scientists are concerned with truth but we don't er spend our lives 
based on the truth we act on certainty and certainty is enough that's what 
Wittgenstein says in the f-, rather thick book but [laugh] [laughter] just 
let's i mean [laugh] i don't know [laugh] and we so sort of produce 
argumentation or discussion then we have to make it a study and er in the s-, 
er in order to have a study or a research programme we should have normative 
and we should distinguish normative descriptive prescriptive er argumentations 
or types er aspect of the research er i would like to say unless we clearly 
distinguishes these three aspects er we cannot develop our s-, er discussion 
into a study okay prescriptions i mean prescriptions is just advice from the 
senior teacher and usually we just take it or and some people says that no no 
you shouldn't prescribe you shouldn't you shouldn't er er 
have you should have no prescriptions et cetera but er actually er proper 
prescriptions is quite possible if we have normative theories and descriptions 
okay by normative theories er as i said er s-, since we see the teacher actions 
as an instantiation of rationalities er we have to we sort of the we should 
come up with the theories that is philosophically sound and solid er what i 
mean is that if we er yeah we should rather than starting from here my point is 
rather than s-, starting from here just to quote er Chomsky or some other 
psychological studies we should start from the er here our sense of practice we 
do have a good sense of practice and then er we should sort of be by some happy 
accident we should come up with the er possible normative theories and then if 
we have these normative theories we can describe according er according to that 
normative theories otherwise if we just try to describe it is like a diary i 
mean you describe something but i mean you see i 
mean other people can see er little point in them so normative theories and 
descriptions must er come together if i mean one cannot exist without the other 
i would say er particularly descriptions and if we compare normative theories 
and descriptions then there should be a gap i mean should it be the case that 
this is the normative theories and should it be the case that there are some 
paths er which are not really the case in the descriptions we can have the 
prescription I-E i mean we have to concentrate our effort in this er er stance 
i mean in this area of research so er if i can summarize quickly i think er we 
have been er we have an applied science model as i said in applied science 
model normative theories comes first but i i think it it should not be the case 
on the other hand we sometimes just er just try to describe without er having 
the n-, normative theories but this is not the case and in order to have the 
normative theories i i'd like to say that we shouldn't be natural 
science or we shouldn't be the normative theories er themselves we should just 
like just like an engineer is quite happy to learn some of the results of the 
scientific findings and apply it we should be happy to be not original 
scientists or pure scientists we cannot be scien-, i mean real scientists in 
practical terms and that's not a shame this is my er contention and pres-, 
prescriptions it's still possible and i mean if a prescriptions comes with the 
normative theories and descriptives er descrips-, descriptions er prescriptions 
are not just blind thing so well i sort of hasten to conclude but i think this 
is er all i want to say right now thank you very much 
nm1089: 
well thank you very much indeed Professor namex 
nm1089: i think you may have got some sense of the experience i was describing 
in er Professor's namex's office sparks flying in all directions i was 
[laughter] so we certainly got our money's worth this afternoon [laughter] 
thank you very much indeed er i heard the clatter of teacups a little while ago 
and i don't want our tea to get cold so i'm going to suggest if anybody has 
immediate responses they'd like to make now for perhaps about five minutes or 
so and there are many many areas we could follow through trying to catch those 
sparks and and then if we can all go into room three-five-seven where i believe 
the tea is we can continue informally over a cup of tea so any any immediate 
responses or comments or questions or namex yes of course 
nf1090: 
can i just make one observation do you see it as a hopeful sign that Chomsky is 
now saying that everything has become much too complicated and he wants to go 
back to a much simpler model er of er language learning in order to understand 
really what's going on 
nm1088: do you mean that Chomsky is saying that he he's sort of the er trying 
to give up the account of the language development 
nf1090: that's right that's right 
nm1088: yes i think that's why he he he can survive i mean that's the way he 
survives 
nf1090: yes 
nm1088: 
right i mean he i mean his i mean his normative theory is nativism innate 
theory 
nf1090: yes 
nm1088: and that's the most important part right and the some people say oh 
it's not fair because you have to account for various things like the language 
development 
nf1090: mm 
nm1088: but if he tries to do that i think his er project might have collapsed 
nf1090: mm 
nm1088: and by er concentrating his efforts to the to his normative theory he 
can make it methodologically clear and that's why people er er linguists all 
over the world can cooperate so i mean er i think we have to sort of not in the 
Chomskian sense but we have to certainly er narrow our focus actually er in the 
form of normative theories otherwise i think er we keep talking and that's fine 
that's fine because w-, each time hopefully we understand better but if we are 
to cooperate then we should have normative theories according to which we can 
cooperate