Carol,

 

I’m pretty much with Bill on the meaning of “paradigm shift.”  I associate the term with Thomas Kuhn’s seminal book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” which was required reading when I was in graduate school back before the first moon landing.

 

A term like this tends to get coopted by other disciplines, in this case other than the history and philosophy of science, and I suspect your student was using not to describe a paradigm shift in communication media but rather to justify a broad neglect of the most important technology of information storage, retrieval, and transfer in the history of humanity:  the printed page.

 

I won’t just now go into my association of this neglect with the trivialization of constructivist learning theory by converting it into an all-pervading pedagogical approach.  More on that later, if anyone’s interested in a retired guy’s rant.

 

Herb

 

 

Carol,

 

Paradigm shift is something I associate with revolutions in scientific theories, but not automatically with shifts in everyday practices, although those might eventually follow. I think there has been something that we could call a paradigm shift in models of “literacy,” in that what were originally models only of reading have been expanded to deal with other “literacies” (I’m using quotes not because I don’t like this approach, but because I’m still a bit conflicted over using a term that refers to letters for things that letters aren’t involved in; i.e., I’m a fogey). Saying that science needs to discuss how people “read” visual images and the like is not the same, though, as saying that we now think they don’t need to read written texts.  

 

Some students (and others) do seem to assume that acknowledging the utility of a wide range of modalities means that we can abandon written text, and I suspect they see discussions of multi-literacies as verifying that assumption and signaling the end of written text as a medium. This view can dove-tail with an overextension of discussions of multiple learning styles (“I’m not a verbal learner, so I shouldn’t have to read anything”).  In my classes with education majors, I try to get them thinking about the subject by asking them to come up with a visual symbol for relationships like “although” – just as visual representation is much better at some things than language is, language still lets you handle concepts that can’t be visualized with any degree of generality. And written text is still the best means of making language persistent and rapidly navigable (you can use an audio recording, but….ever try to skim one of those for particular pieces of info?).

 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University

 

 

Hello Grammarians,   I was a bit astounded today when one of my freshman writers announced in class that there has been a "paradigm shift" from reading books to viewing films and other visual texts as a means of acquiring knowledge. This was immediately after I took an informal poll to ask how many class members read books. (Only 2, including myself, raised their hands). I was impressed with the student's insight, but also wondered if this related to his poor writing skills and the writing skills which seem to be lacking in other students who don't "read." I'm not really trying to discuss the relationship of reading and writing so much on the grammar list, but rather the usage of "paradigm shift." I've always struggled with terms like this and also with terms such as "agency" which are buzz words in academia, but used in so many different contexts that their meaning becomes fuzzy to me after a while. Any thoughts? (About "agency" or "paradigm shift"?) Thank you! Carol

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