Competing Superveniences

List & Pettit's arguments in Group Agency are well structured and transparent to follow.  One of their theorems is that holistic supervenience is consistent with robust group rationality (pp. 69).  In simpler terms this means that a group which rationalizes things generally can't make judgements in a piece-wise fashion.  The group's judgments must supercede individual judgements.  For things on which the group speaks, everyone must listen.

Image from http://www.gopixpic.com

Now if this is the case, then how can education hold competing purposes? For example, how can education vacillate between a focus on things like social equality and a focus on things like the selective academic streamlining*?  Within List & Pettit's logical structure, education can't have a logical split personality.

The following options emerge; well at least they emerge from my deduction.

CLOSE CALLS
Social equity & streamlined academics must produce close judgment calls for dominance.  Ebb and flow of group members and environmental factors may cause one or the other to rise or fall in predominance.

The problem with this position is that cultural evolution suggests a fairly strong selection gradient.

The reason is simple: cognitive attractors will rapidly concentrate the cultural variation in a population. Instead of a continuum of cultural variants, most people will hold a representation near an attractor. If there is only one attractor, it will dominate. However, if, as seems likely in most cases, attactors are many, other selective forces will then act to increase the frequency of people holding a representation near one attractor over others. Under such conditions, even weak selective forces (“weak” relative to the strength of the attractors) can determine the final distribution of representations in the population. (Henrich, Boyd, Richerson, 2008)

Thus, one shouldn't really expect to see a long-lasting tension without a fairly explicit organizational structure facilitating the competing memes.

MUTLI-LEVEL GROUPINGS
Another option explaining durability of two competing judgment conclusions for a List & Pettit group agent is that individuals form multiple groups, each with their own supervening judgment conclusion.

This fits in incredibly well with multi-level selection theory.  Rather than the aggregate of individual judgments producing competing group conclusions, it is competition between competing holistic superveniences which produce education's competing purposes.  Thus group allegiance tensions most inform education's competing purposes.


PREMISE BASED CHANGE
Another way you could get two competing judgment conclusions would be to vacillate between premise based judgment aggregator functions.  Put in simpler terms, you change the logic used to take premises to conclusions.

This would seem highly likely to produce more than two stable states.  Now its entirely possible that educational purpose vacillates between more than two states.  While this is true when analyzing things with a precise sense, educational change history really does seem to reveal a pattern of cycling between large group orientation and local group orientations.  While premise function aggregators may only produce two stable outputs, I'll rely on a simple probabilistic argument that this is highly unlikely given the number of premises operating within education.  However, I'll certainly concede that a two state output based on a complex function is theoretically possible.


SPECIALIZED GROUPS
List & Pettit also mention another way that could explain a scenario of competing purposes.   Conclusions formed by specialized groups dictate all individual attitudes on a given issue.  This places the group agent in the role of rationalizing multiple conclusions.  Rationalization occurs by the laity's formation of a supervening holistic conclusion.  However, a quote seems to baffle this last idea, so I must be missing something:

First for each presumes, the attitudes of some subgroup - the relevant 'specialists - suffice to determine the group attitude on that premise, whereas other individuals' attitudes are not necessary; and the subgroups in question differ across premises.  Second, to determine the group attitudes on the entire agenda of propositions, each individual needs to contribute only a single attitude on a single proposition, namely on the premise he or she 'specializes' on; no contribution on other propositions is needed. (pp. 75)

The statement as written begs the question of formation of a single supra conclusion.  I don't think they would leave this to mysterious "emergentism".  Nor do I think they are unaware of the aggregation problem the quote as written begs.  Therefore, the only thing I can think of is that the gross laity also form a single conclusion for the group agent.  This single conlcusion then has the role of rationalization potentially contradictory multiple specialist conclusions.  It doesn't over-write them, but "vox-splains" them into a coherent narrative.  This narrative is certainly may be logically inconsistent.

However, List & Pettit seem to leave the rationalization act as a very weak form of emergence:

Let a collection of individuals form and act on a single, robustly rational body of attitudes, whether by dint of a joint intention or on some other bases, and it will be an agent. (pp. 75)

As I mentioned, joint intention seems to be the supra conclusion of the laity.  This either minimizes (if the group's conclusion is an attitude) or completely eliminates emergence (if the group's conclusion is an agreed upon structure, or perhaps even an attitudinaless action).  In practice, you end up with specialized groups getting feedback from the group's supra conclusion in a manner potentially describe by social-cognitive theory.

I'd suggest the specialized group explanation is tatamount to my multi-level group explanation.  Difference seems to be the extent to which sub-groups are best considered embedded within the larger group or competing with the larger group.  List & Pettit's specialized group approach seems unstable over time.  If people have a tendency to form groups, then there is little reason why that tendency wouldn't express itself in the autonomization and dissociation of small groups from a large group.

Cognitive dissonance theory may be used as a descriptive approach to when embodies ends and competition begins.  Because I'm more interested in the causal side than descriptive side, cognitive dissonance explanations don't excite me much.  I just chalk it up to "that's down to complex behaviour....".



*While lots of people do mental gymnastics to reconcile how social equity, ensuring people don't get too far apart from each other, and academic streaming, ensuring people get as much acceleration as they can easily be handled, the two are pretty mutually exclusive.  Weak social equity can certainly handle a bit of streamlining.  However, because the have's get accelerated more than the have-nots, the end results reveal the weakness of this cover-up. Addressing student needs at the non-universal level will (eventually) always produce streamlining which challenges social equity.

One purpose to rule them all....

Tweets are nice.  Getting a vibe for where people's thoughts are at is interesting, especially if you aren't working within a vibrant research team.

This tweet (part of an apparently upcoming debate between Pasi Sahlberg, Graham Brown-Martin and George Siemens) is particularly ripe for  deconstruction.

The main thing I find interesting is the possible hidden assumption that education's purpose is 

Image from http://sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk

1. singular,

2. frameable in noun-like language,

3. stabilizable.

Now obviously I don't think a tweet reveals any of these assumptions.  However, these assumptions do tend to come across in amateur educational discourse, and even at academic level discourse.

1. Singular & 3. Stabilizable

The history of education certainly suggests some sort of cyclical (or perhaps non-deterministic) pattern.  This suggests it is highly unlikely that education will ever tend to a single stable "purpose".  I personally take the view that education's purpose is non-deterministic, rather, I assume that it can be described a a cycle between (two) characterizable states.  I'd also add that there is always a non-zero chance of everything going-to-pot (complex dynamics).

2. Frameable

The other issue I really wonder about is the assumption that education's purpose is frameable in normal language.  By this I don't mean that the process or end-point orientations aren't frameable, just that you can't easily separate out process & state.  This leads to a bit of a conundrum: 

• is it more effective to take a process approach, giving up a bit on end-point characterization ease and introducing functionalist bias, or
• take a fully functionalist process approach giving up the ease of talking about "things",
• take a fully non-functionalist process approach, like multi-level selection theory.

Mixing process & state is certainly unstable and enables intended and un-intended abuse. A fully non-functionalist approach is accurate, but perhaps unsatisfying for those that like descriptors (thing-talk).

Perhaps, when talking about education's purpose, the best we can do with common-language is to adopt the "tension" term.  Thus education's purpose is worded as some sort of tension between large-group orientation and smaller-group orientation.  As can readily be seen, leaving things this vague, while accurate, is unsatisfying.  Thus the fully non-functionalist process approach, while accurate, leaves one striving for more statist (thing-based) descriptions.

Here's a summary some ways to frame educational tension according to the three options to the stated conundrum.

Functionalistic Process	Process + State	Non-functionalistic Process
social equity ends	large-group orientation characterized by behaviour which elevates the value of social equity	expressed dominance of large  group traits
vs.	vs.	vs.
contextualized academic/vocational needs/preferences	small-group orientation characterized by behaviour which elevates the value of contextualized needs & preferences	expressed dominance of small group traits

What is obvious is that any process+state combination of explaining education's purpose probably requires more cumbersome language than the simple noun descriptions people seem drawn to.  Similarly people just aren't used to pure process descriptors.  Nor is a process approach economical in this case: there are just lots of (functionalist) sub-processes going on.

CONCLUSION

So, before debating what "schooling is for", it's probably best to talk about where along the process-state spectrum educational purpose can be adequately characterized for the depth of discourse sought.

The Cultural Evolution Piece

This summary of a paper by Henrich, Boyd, and Richardson is exactly what I needed.

Image from http://photos.demandstudios.com

While I have yet jumped very far into the cultural evolution literature, its a piece that is needed to support how (institutionalized) education functions as an adaptive group.

MODEL SUMMARY

My basic model posits tension in education between group-level orientation and individual-level (or more precisely, smaller group) orientation.  It also posits a slight preference for toleration.  Toleration preference orients the system to group-level inclusivity (i.e. toward a universalist moral position).  This fosters low frequency but sudden phase changes.  Reform resistance emerges due to the weak-to-moderate moral nature of the group.  Reform resistance is therefore governed by the various social factors associated with adaptive groups (i.e. norm variation detection & punishment, costly commitment displays, moral big brother, etc.).

I'm still playing with the notion of whether the end points of large group-orientation and small group-orientation are or are not strange attractors.

CULTURAL EVOLUTION CONNECTION

That's why this quote from Henrich, Boyd and Richardson is so interesting:

[C]ultural transmission does not involve the accurate replication of discrete, gene-like entities. Nonetheless, we also believe that models which assume discrete replicators that evolve under the influence of natural- selection-like forces can be useful. In fact, we think such models are useful because of the action of strong cognitive attractors during the social learning. 

The reason is simple: cognitive attractors will rapidly concentrate the cultural variation in a population. Instead of a continuum of cultural variants, most people will hold a representation near an attractor. If there is only one attractor, it will dominate. However, if, as seems likely in most cases, attactors are many, other selective forces will then act to increase the frequency of people holding a representation near one attractor over others. Under such conditions, even weak selective forces (“weak” relative to the strength of the attractors) can determine the final distribution of representations in the population.

Furthermore, the summary of their position by carcinisation.com is at least as interesting.

A major feature of cognitive attractors is that particulate cognitive information is less costly to hold and transmit than blended information - for example, it's easier to model the moon as either purely a rock in space or purely a conscious entity than some combination of the two.

Education's social equality camp is a cultural attractive well.  Education's academic/contextualized-needs camp is another cultural attractive well.  Intractability in premise or conclusion judgment prevent a stable solution.

Now whether the end-points are or are not strange attractors is a hard question.  Dynamics could be due to the attractors or due to the environment which the attractors lay (i.e. the judgment process).

??? Proposition-Conclusion = Individual-Group ???

Image from http://blog.colorjive.com/

Multi-level selection theory posits tension between group-level interests and individual interests.  In some cases group orientation is more adaptive than an individualistic orientation.  In lieu of worrying about fitness, List & Pettit (2011) take a philosophical (logic-based) approach based on List's judgment aggregation theory.  This is used to filter some of the conditions involved in judgement aggregation, bypassing the impossibility theorem (there is no single way to aggregate a single net-judgement when propositions are interconnected non-trivially with 3+ people)/.

List & Pettit's preferred way out of the impossibility trap,

involves prioritizing some propositions over others and letting the group attitudes on the first set of propositions determine its attitudes on the second. (pp. 56)

CONNECTIONS TO MULTI-LEVEL SELECTION?

Now what strikes me as interesting in this approach is its dyadic nature.  This is eerily similar to the dyadic nature of multi-level selection (which is usually operationalized with a two-level view).  While I may be stretching a bit, a little tidbit from List & Pettit is provocative: suppose the group assigns priority either to premises or conclusions... Further suppose the group delegates responsibility to premises to subject-specialists and to conclusions to the laity.  To me, at least, this roughly parallels multi-level selection's individualist vs. group tension.

In my nascent "Education as an adaptive group theory" I've suggested tension between group orientation and individual orientation models the dynamics of education's reform resistance and a slight preference for tolerance creates a 50 year total reform cycle.  However, observations hint that "individual orientation" as used by evolutionary biology isn't a perfect fit.  In education, the "individual orientation" seems to center around what is appropriate for contextually localized, identifiable small groups.

For example, I'd suggest that in education, an orientation for a system optimized for the small percentage of academically oriented critical thinkers is an "individual orientation".  In multi-level selection theory I currently suspect I have to posit 2 group levels within education: the supra "institution of education group" and the sub "special interests in education groups".  While likely feasible, this isn't exactly parsimonious.

INTERESTING FOILS

Image from http://www.extremetech.com/

What is interesting though, is thinking about whether special interest education groups tend to operate via premise or conclusion based judgements, and whether Education operates via premise or conclusions based judgments

Education has a historic tension that, since the mid-1800's has cycled between social equality and academic content progression.  I've tended to view the social equality paradigm as based on an universalist based avoidance gradient: i.e. "Do you really believe this person/group doesn't deserve a proper education?"  On the other hand, I've tended to view the academic paradigm as based on contextualized analyses flavoured by return on investment justifications: i.e.  "Let's do what is best for identifiable groups, making sure we scaffold the system for those smart cookies who'll make a real difference for society."


While my gut feeling suggest the social equality paradigm seems conclusion based and the academic paradigm is principle based, however, I suspect there isn't enough information to go on.  Plus I'm not sure how reasonable it is to try, at this level, to differentiate premises and conclusions.  My gut feeling is pretty much based on the hunch that the academic paradigm seems more granular/contextual, thus at a lower organization level, and thus more likely to be based on components rather than a whole. However, this reduction seems logically unrelated to the proposition-conclusion question.

UPDATE:
Interestingly enough, List & Pettit do go on to suggest that group agents can allocate premise based judgments to subject experts while conclusion based judgement can remain with the laity.  While this seems to match up with a common-sense intuition of how groups function in practice, it does nothing to get around the impossibility problem.



References

List, C. & Pettit, P. (2011).  Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents. Oxford University Press

Quick Summary

Here's a quick summary of my approach to an explanatory model of the education reform problem.

1. Posit that the institution of education functions as an adaptive level group as characterized by Wilson's multi-level selection theory.
2. Model the tension (boundary points / attractors) which occurs with between-group selection (group) and within-group selection (individual).  Weak between-group dominance produces the complexity and dynamics of education reform resistance
3. Interpretation of this modelling can be done within a functionalist paradigm or within a non-functionalist paradigm.
1. A functionalist interpretation investigates what drives motion to the two complexly competing attractors.  It also investigates possible attractor descriptions.  It assumes  a reductionist paradigm/philosophy.
2. A non-functionalist interpretation investigates nesting among groupings and competition between groups.  It assumes a process philosophy/paradigm.

One feature that comes out of this model is stochastic complexity characterized by cycling between the group state and the individual state.  Sigmunds (2001) Tides of Tolerance model is a good fit.  This model shows that minor individual preference for tolerance causes a slow but steady rise of tolerance in a modelled population followed by a rapid phase change to intolerance.  Behaviour is cyclical.

Ed Reform Resistance Drivers

Here's an interesting study showing that teachers' satisfaction increases as educational systems innovate more.  This result is interesting because it supports my hypothesis that education reform resistance occurs as in-group tolerance increases until it is so diverse it almost becomes a splinter of individual interests rather than an adaptive group.   Sigmunds (2001) Tides of Tolerance simulation shows a sudden phase change to intolerance when groups of individuals have a slight preference for tolerance over intolerance.  Tolerance spreads gradually until there is a sudden and dramatic phase change back to a state of intolerance. This happens in their simulation when connections back to old tolerant states are lost.

Multi-level Selection Theory & Process Philosophy

I love the insight multi-level selection theory offers educational change theory.  Here's one reason why.

Sociology has a long history of struggling with the micro-macro problem. The micro-macro problem tackles transitions between individual properties/behaviours and group properties/behaviours.  During the founding of formal sociology, Durkheim was quite adamant about not trying to reduce the group level (sociology) to the individual level (psychology).  Academics who have tried to bridge these disparate levels have not been successful.  Both the "why" and "how" of cross over remain intractable. (See Sawyer's amazing book on Complex Sociology for solid history applicable to any study involving human dynamics)

Multi-level selection theory avoids the "why" and "how" of micro-macro cross over by taking a ground up reductionist approach leveraging gene fitness/presence as a unit of measure.  In terms of my chosen problem of educational reform resistance, mimicking this strategy makes for a rather elegant and parsimonious approach.  Ignore explanatory reasons for reform resistance by positing some form of dyadic tension (multi-level tension).  A specific dyadic tension will yield a characteristic dynamic curve.  Agent based modelling or equation based modelling filters reasonable dyadic choices based upon observed education reform data. The crux involves finding the right unit of measure.

Such an approach belies a number of philosophical and theoretical assumptions.  Off the top of my head, I can see having to worry about:

• reductionist vs. non-reductionist theoretical approaches
• operationalizing a micro-macro dynamic
• tackling or avoiding driving forces (i.e. functionalism or ant-functionalism)
• an insightful level of analysis (i.e. large group, small group, individual, genes, etc.)
• the proper unit of measure (i.e. large group, small group, individual, genes, etc.)

For this post, I'll mainly stick to thinking about operationalizing a micro-macro dynamic.  I'll see how such an operationalizing fits with the other points of worry.

OPERATIONALIZING MULTI-LEVEL SELECTION THEORY

In multi-level selection theory the group and the individual exist in dynamic tension.  Sometimes fitness is increased with more groupish behaviour, sometimes fitness is increased with more individualistic behaviour. If I were a sociologist, I'd be very tempted to think of social behaviour as an emergent property of this dynamic tension.  However, my academic interest involves seeing whether or not this class of dyadic relation can adequately characterize educational reform resistance physics.

As I've thought about multi-level section theory (image on the left), I've been trying to figure out if "group" & "individual" best represent strange attractors (a complexity approach) or boundary characterizations (a process philosophy approach).  Conformity with reductionist or non-reductionist philosophical stances are impacted by such operationalization.

STRANGE ATTRACTORS or BOUNDARY LABELS

Strange Attractors
A strange attractor operationalization of multi-level selection theory seems like a good fit for interpretation at the level of the individual.

Individuals may be attracted (in a self-interested way) to group participation.  They may also be attracted to narrow (direct) individual self-interest.  In non-funcationalist evolutionary language, do you increase your fitness by constraining immediate self-interest to group norms or not. The individual effect is complex cycling between group orientation and individual orientation.  The interaction of multiple individuals undergoing such tension should produce, in a complex way, emergent social phenomenon.

However, modelling of ed reform resistance as dynamic tension between groupish and individualistic attractors may be unwise.  What is the attraction acting on? Individuals? Groups? Genes? Behaviours? Picking a level of attraction walks you right into the micro-macro problem.  This seems messy and does not fit well with multi-level selection theory*1.


Boundary Labels
Analyzing things in terms of the group leads me to interpret "group" & "individual" as end states/boundary labels. A confluence of groupish processes would suggest I'm in the group state (for a particular aspect of analysis).  A confluence of individualish processes would suggest I'm in the individual state.  In this sense neither "group" nor "individual" are attractors.  They simply represent rough characterizations imposed by the role of an interpreter.

Process philosophy is well suited for non-reductionist questions where we don't really care why you're in a given state, only that such a descriptor is reasonably apt.  Process resists reductionist impetus to drill down. In a process sense, sufficiently complicated underlying dynamics produce multiple competing processes whose aggregate results vary in time.  We don't care what those underlying dynamics are, just that they fit observed characterizations for the time scale of study.  For example, emergent social phenomenon are the result of various combinations of group processes and individual processes. This amalgam is better characterized as social phenomena rather than specific combinations of group states / individual states.

A process approach is a non-reducationist strategy that avoids questions of driving forces.  This comes at the expense of expense of rationalizable/reductionist explanatory power.


THE CRUX
Multi-level selection theory seems to have avoided the conundrum of process & reductionism by finding an unambiguous unit of measure (the gene).  Cognitive scientists studying the science of religion seem to have done similar things by finding invariant heuristics (darwin machines as some call them) expressed or not expressed in religious vs. a-religious populations. Is a dynamical study of education reform resistance destined for the the cognitive science heuristic approach?  Probably, but for the moment I'm content to find some plausible physics that constrain the problem.




NOTES
*1.   Multi-level selection is a non-functionlist theory.  As such, it does not frame things in terms of attractors.  This assumes intent, and D.S. Wilson, the creator of multi-level selection theory, isn't philosophically naive.  Genes are not "attracted" to groupish states or non-groupish states.  They are mind-blind.  Operationally, genes serve as a unit of measure: is a specific gene present/expressed or not.  Different levels can be analyzed, but any level reduces down to the genes.

When exploring functionalistic forces for individual-ishness vs. group-ishness the chances are pretty good that you'll wind up in cognitive psychology or evolutionary psychology land looking for cognitive preference and tendencies.  While this landscape is really, really interesting, I suspect you'll wind up doing cognitive science work for a lot of necessary but not sufficient causes.  You may even be tempted to do some agent modelling to filter plausible causes based upon observed dynamical properties.  Like I say, this sounds pretty fun.  The results, like those emerging from the cognitive sci and evolutionary psych folks doing science of religion work, may even be groundbreaking. However, it just seems like stamp collecting to me…

In his foundational book "In God's we Trust", Scott Atran outlines a bunch of cognitive preferences and heuristics which lead to religious group formation and religious beliefs.

Rationalizing Norm Variation Tolerance in Education-as-an-adaptive-group Theory

Last post I gave some cursory background on the freeloader punishment problem in education.  The basic gist was that:

• adaptive groups shouldn't survive unless they have adequate freeloader detection and punishment ,
• education as an institution has a demonstrated history of remarkable coherence,
• education, generally, doesn't punish freeloaders much nor punish them very overtly.

The conundrum is obvious.  Either:

1. education (as an institution) doesn't function as an adaptive level group (which is entirely possible) or,
2. it has some unique hidden norm/freeloader punishment strategies or,
3. it leverages routine norm variation to strengthen its primary moral mission.

LEVERAGING ROUTINE NORM VARIATION

Anyone familiar with complexity theory should remember Bar-Yam's famous quip about wicked problems; "making the problem your solution is the problem."  

For instance Abrahamic faiths and their sub-denominations, have appropriated the problem-of-evil to varying degrees of success.  Mormonism is one denomination (qua-world religion) that successfully leverages the problem of evil for its moral mission.  Evil is necessary for good's emergence: it, like matter, is a fundamental trait of the universe. It is neither a spandrel a useful byproduct, nor a an absence of good.  Contact with evil is necessary for choice to exist.  Choosing good over evil increases one's strength.

So while evil fosters moments of personal decline, on average, it results in personal increase.  This latter result is summed up in the quip, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."  Mormonism leverages norm variation (evil) to strengthen its moral mission (leveraging the presence of evil for growth experiences).

So, in terms of general phrasing, does education use (to some extent) freeloaders to strengthen its moral mission?  In terms of specific phrasing, does education use its toleration of weak teachers and weak students to strengthen its moral mission?

TOLERATION OF THOSE THAT BRING DOWN THE MEAN

(Sorry, I just couldn't resist all the opportunities for obscure, obfuscating, puns in the heading….  there were just too many good ones to choose from)

A major argument against the "business model" of teacher regulation is that the conditions necessary to get rid of bad teachers result in a counter-intuitive decreases in actual educational effectiveness.  Thus tolerating some bad apples generally works out best.  This seems to be true in fields, like education, that rely on very high levels of intrinsic motivation.

Standard reasoning is that decrease in motivation that occurs when perceived levels of freedom and risk tolerance is decreased. The research backing this explanation is strong (even though, as far as I know, it still hasn't teased out the limitations associated with "perception" effects)*1.  I don't think there is any doubt that this explanation is correct.  Does it fully explain the causative effect? Probably.  Does it fully explain teachers' resistance? Perhaps in rational choice theory's ivory tower.  In the messy world of human dynamics, I highly doubt it suffices.

My suspicion is that educators respond to a sense that strategies which weed out weak adaptive-group members counter the stability/function of the adaptive-group as a whole.  Now you certainly could have an adaptive-group which functions best when the herd is purged.  Education, however, doesn't have that dynamic.  Instead, it tolerates group members who theoretically lower group effectiveness.

Instead of proof-texting things from the literature, I'll reference my experience as a teacher, teacher trainer, teacher leader, and systemic change designer.  In their broad (n=892) survey of teacher satisfiers/dis-satisifers, Dinham & Scott (2000) found teacher satisfiers usually move from the class level onto the school level and then, in some cases, onto the education-in-general level.  I've found many teachers who operate beyond the class level, rationalize the existence of varied teaching abilities in terms of the-greater-good.  Like teacher reform literature suggests, the teachers I've worked with and studied tend to suggest that discovering bad teaching is, in all but a few extreme cases, extremely subjective, highly complicated, labour intensive, and highly dependent upon the evaluator and frighteningly contingent on the reform flavour of the month (today's awful practice is tomorrow's cutting edge).  However, many of these teachers also suggest teacher variation (including weak performers) resonates with education's larger mission to prepare students for life-in-the-real-world.  Rationalization involves things such as having a bad teacher for a year:

• forces students to figure out how learn how to learn themselves
• makes students appreciate effective teachers so their motivation to glean what they can while they can increases
• forces them to learn how to work with people of varied abilities
• forces them to respect hierarchy/the-system even when your "boss" is an idiot
• gives students with different learning styles an increases chance for resonance with a like-minded teacher (that awful PE/math teacher who failed calculus actually works well for some math students!)
• prevents the school from becoming too obsessive about flavour-of-the-month reforms
• encourages teachers to explore the "hidden curriculum"(implicit expectations and outcomes)
• encourages teacher balance by not letting test prep mania overshadow the value of life-lessons and sustainable rhythms.

In sum, these rationalizations suggest, rather counter-intuitively, that education's hyperactivity level/focus toward curricular outcomes, and hence its larger organizational culture, is mediated by toleration of weak group members.  In effect, having weak teachers and weak students, prevents education from becomes streamlined, stratified and subject to splinter group competition.  This strengthens its role as a societal coherer, and hence as an adaptive-level-group.

As an illustrative example, religions tend to exert significant out-group pressure on splinter groups (break-away sects). This drives shadow system competition.  Education on the other hand exerts little out-group pressure on splinter groups (such as a charter schools). As a result, the competition level between schools is much less severe than that between religious sects.*2

CONCLUSION

If education functions as an adaptive-level-group, then, for it to be sustainable it needs a way to handle the freeloader problem.  Because education doesn't appear to punish freeloaders very much (teachers and students), there's a chance that a decent amount of freeloading can be accepted provided it feeds back into education's moral mission.  While ineffective teaching may be a corollary of fully leveraging highly intrinsically motivated employees, it may also serve to keep education grounded in sustainable practice and focussed on larger-life lessons and its role as a societal coherer.




NOTE:

*1.  While supporting research for the counter-productive effects of business model teacher regulation is  very strong, it is very hard to get around confounding variables related to reform resistance.  The result is a highly contentious, rationally resistive debate.

*2.  The States' current surge in charter schools may be an artifact of people's preferences for those of similar social backgrounds more than it is a sign of emergent competition between competing educational models.  I'd also suspect we're seeing evidence of an imminent educational phase change following education's established 50 year phase change cycle.

References

Dinham S, Scott, C. (2000). Teachers’ work and the growing influence of societal expectations and pressures. Eric Document No. 446 068

Rule of Law or Education facilitated coherence

In his exceptional book "Big Gods", Norenzayan not only explains the causal arrow between the evolution of religion and the evolution of society/civilization, he also correlates rise in the rule of law with decrease in the practice of religion.  As he suggests, an effective rule of law is likely to fulfill many adaptive function of religion.  This includes:

• norm enforcement which maintains group (national) coherence
• guaranteed norm enforcement ('freeloader') punishment
• commonly understood norms
• a potential moral 'Big Brother' (for those whose existential views require one)

While this makes sense to me, some points are weaker than others.  For instance, would a permeant welfare recipient be considered a freeloader? They get individual benefit without always putting much into the group, and they aren't criminalized like those who directly take things from others.  Or would they fall into the same category as little children or the aged: part of the group despite minimal immediate group contributions?

Norenzayan's inferred intent is to suggest that rule of law acts as a norm creator & enforcer.  This frees people up from relying on religion to create and enforce norms necessary for societal stability/emergence.  

When I look back at history it appears that at some point hard and soft norms were distinguished: civil society tended to take over clear cut negative norms (you killed, you stole, etc) and religion tended to take over fuzzy negative norms (you weren't nice, etc.) and positive norms (be nice, virtuous, etc). Religion kept the moral 'Big Brother'.  However, in the last few decades people in many rule of law states either no longer require religion's moral Big Brother or no longer require religion.  Here are some possible reasons off the top of my head.

1. Trust in the rule of law's longevity has become strong enough to obviate the need for a moral 'Big Brother'
2. A sufficiently strong moral Big Brother has emerged (at the individual level) in other institutions or social groups.  i.e. the Democrat party is my moral Big Brother.
3. Moral Big Brother's role has diffused (for individuals) between multiple institutions and social groups. i.e. I get some morals from my online minecraft group, some morals from my friends, and some from my political party, etc.

The evolutionary need for a Moral Big brother hasn't been established.  While it is certainly critical in religion and quasi-religion formation/sustenance, this doesn't mean it is an evolutionary proximate cause, nor an evolutionary tendency.  It certainly may be, but research has yet to reach this question.  (My suspicion is that given a normal distribution of people, we'd expect some to fall in case 1, some in case 2 and most in case 3.  However, I wouldn't be surprised if case 2 ended up as the mode rather than case 3).

My study of education as an adaptive moralized (sometimes even transcendental) group mean, at least for me, cases 2 and 3 are the most interesting.  In this vein, I wonder if the 'r' between atheism and education as a reform resistant institution would be similar to Norenzayan's 'r' between atheism and the rule of law? If so, Norenzayan's expectation of causation may be unfounded: education's role as a societal coherer, which manifests itself through adaptive level group characteristics such as reform resistance, may be what enables societal stability without religion.  If this is the case then a moral Big Brother may take second seat to institutionalized coherence creation.... Or it may not….

The Freeloader Punishment Problem in Education-as-an-adaptive-group Theory

If a societal level group, like the institution of education, functions as an adaptive group, then multi-level selection theory suggests adequate freeloader detection and punishment is required for long-term group survival/coherence.

While it is unlikely that education is a strong grouping (compared to religion, political party, family, etc.), I certainly take the view, that the institution of education functions at the level of an adaptive group.  As such it is subject to:

• cultural evolution,
• individual vs. group strange attractor dynamics, 
• group maintenance processes (at the proximate cause level) and 
• complex growth/decay dynamics.

Because the institution of education has survived remarkably well as a societal level group, examining possible ways the freeloader problem is handled is important.  

SHADOW SYSTEM CONTEXT

Without freeloader detection and punishment, one would expect to see swamping by disruptive shadow systems.  On this point a few facts provide context.

• For the last 150 to 200 years education tends to follow a 50 year disruptive (phase change) cycle (Tyack & Cuban, 1995).
• Despite clear phase changes every 50 years or so, education's coherence with larger societal shifts and limited population focus (ages 5-25) minimize the severity with which the general population perceives major disruptions (Tyack & Cuban, 1995).  In other words, the growing bifurcation is only noticed by a few 'long-in-the-tooth' teachers who've had feet in both paradigms.
• Charter schools, online/blended schools, and home schools represent significant shadow systems to education's traditional institutionalization (Christensen, 2014; Basham, 2001; Bielect, Changler, Broughman, 2002).
• Teacher regulation is a perennial issue in North America.

My reading and perspectives here seem to mirror Larry Cuban's: education has a significant tendency to hybridize reforms.  Other institutions like various religious denominations and moral based social groups rarely hybridize their splinter groups.

Off-the-cuff thinking suggests many religious denominations and moral based social group tend toward balkanization.  One plausible explanation for balkanization and splinter-group vs. main group competition is a steep gradient for norm variation punishment.  In other words, you leave a religion or moral social group with a fair bit of momentum.  i.e you're punted out the door.

Education seems to have a softer gradient for norm variants.  While you can still get punted out, there seems to be significant liberalness with regard to orthodoxy and certainly tremendous tolerance with regard to orthopraxy.  This suggests adaptive level groups such as religion and moral based social groups have stronger 'freeloader' punishment tendencies than education (as an adaptive level institutionalized group does).  Why?

EDUCATION'S WEAK FREELOADER / NORM VARIATION PUNISHMENT

Universalist religions tend to have well developed systems to teach and encourage norm compliance.  Often a hard-to-fake show of intent submission is a good enough group entry point (Evangelicals = public redeemer confessions, Mormon = gaining a testimony, etc.).  Novel offshoot splinter groups tend to be much more concerned about current, rather than future, norm adherence.

I've already done a bit of speculation about norm variation punishment in education (online courses  & homeschooling ). For a more grounded perspective, Izhak Berkovich's research on teacher reform resistance in the 64 day 2007 Israeli teacher strike.  His work reveals teacher attempts to combat  the 'freeloader' perception problem.

This attempt to undermine the public’s perception of teachers as "freeloaders" enjoying public funds for little work was found to be a central theme in teachers' rational appeals. (pp. 13)

 Analysis also reveals teacher attempts to frame 'freeloader' issues in terms of group member (education's direct participants) benefits.

The analysis reveals a tendency to tie the present struggle and resistance to reform with a broader struggle over public recognition of the importance of education. The teachers continued to claim that the struggle was not only about teachers' salaries and work conditions, but that they are fighting against the reform because it did not answer to the real needs of students or the problems of the educational system. (pp. 14)

In making these arguments it was found that many educators employed an in-group vs. out-group strategy.  The following example from a school website framing the argument for the public is illustrative:

This reform does not center around education and pupil welfare. This is an economically driven reform and so budgetary efficiency is at the center. More teaching work hours means less expenses, but more students per teacher, less time to invest in any of the children and advance a significant educational process. The teachers also want reform! But first and foremost a pedagogically driven one that will promote the public education. (pp. 14)

So freeloader concerns certainly crop up in education.  In-group binding within education seems to centre on an orthodoxical attitudes concerning students' best interests.  (the dynamics of short-term vs. long-term interests will have to be delayed for another post).  But how are freeloaders punished?

FREELOADER / NORM VARIATION PUNISHMENT

I think there are at least two insightful ways of looking at the freeloader problem in education:

1. Dig into punishment moderators (in religion, the repentant sinner problem)
2. Rationalize norm variant toleration  (in religion, the uber-classic problem of evil)

Largely because I'm biased toward the dynamics that can emerge from tolerance-intolerance, I favour the second approach, and will expand on that in my next post….


Part 2: Rationalizing Norm Variation Tolerance in Education-as-an-adaptive-group Theory

REFRENCES

Berkovich, I. (2011). No we won't! Teachers' resistance to educational reform. Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 49(5), 563 - 578.

Basham, P. (2001). Home-schooling: From the extreme to the mainstream. Public Policy Sources, 51, 3-18.
Bielick, S., Chandler, K., & Broughman, S. P. (2002). Homeschooling in the United States: 1999. Education Statistics Quarterly, 1-12.