WITTGENSTEIN’S CONTEXTUALIST APPROACH TO JUDGING 'SOUND' TEACHING: ESCAPING ENTHRALLMENT IN CRITERIA-BASED ASSESSMENTS

Comparing the early, analytic attempt to define “sound” teaching with the current use of criteria-based rating schemes, Jeff Stickney turns to Wittgenstein’s holistic, contextualist approach to judging teaching against its complex “background” within our form of life. To exemplify this approach, Stickney presents cases of classroom practice (reexplanation), auditioning dance students, teacher inspection, and mentoring student teachers. These examples highlight problems with the epistemological and criterial construal of teaching, in that both sets of rules tend to constrict unnecessarily the ranges of “reasonable” practice. Shifting to the contextualist approach, according to Stickney, reveals these occluded, political aspects of assessing the “soundness” of teaching and invites a renegotiation of arbitrary limits.