---
title: 'Certainty and the threat of scepticism'
url: 'https://rethunk.englishup.me/certainty'
markdown: 'https://rethunk.englishup.me/certainty.md'
date: '2021-01-03'
description: 'Certainty and the threat of scepticism Russ Mayne has carried out a very interesting interview with Masatoshi Sato: "about what Evidence Based approaches mean to him, the gap between teachers and researchers and some of the problems with research." - interview. During the interview Masatoshi Sato…'
---

# Certainty and the threat of scepticism

Russ Mayne has carried out a very interesting interview with Masatoshi Sato:

> "about what Evidence Based approaches mean to him, the gap between teachers and researchers and some of the problems with research." - [interview](http://evidenceinformedelt.net/2021/01/03/interview-with-masatoshi-sato/).

During the interview Masatoshi Sato points out an asymmetry between researchers and teachers:

> "...so the directionality of knowledge is always from researchers to practitioners and I think this whole framework is problematic" [10:21](https://youtu.be/Q0Q8f1z5Lh8?t=621).

By contrast one symmetry to consider is that both researchers and teachers are looking for a kind of certainty - for researchers a theoretical certainty, for teachers a practical certainty. Yet such certainties have to cope with the threat of scepticism, where scepticism is that there are no absolute grounds for certainty in our knowledge about teaching and the threat arises when the absence of such certainty is seen as a deficiency (Lamb, 2014).

Pedagogy can be seen as the model context for the threat of scepticism - scepticism in teaching is the notion that it is impossible to make a student follow instructions. That any understanding a student may achieve cannot safeguard against the possibility of misunderstanding. The threat of scepticism arises when we see this as a deficiency rather than as a condition of teaching. The deficiency comes from a tacit comparison of a contingent uncertainty with an absolute certainty - an absolute certainty we may feel we are being denied from having in someway.

Consider that marking more often than not makes us confront the pedagogical gap between what we as teachers have been instructing and what students have been learning. And the immobility we often feel when it is time to mark arises partly from having to confront this gap that is seen as a lack or deficiency. We should rather be reminding ourselves that the threat of scepticism requires the pursuit of an illusory absolute certainty. Or as Lamb citing Stanley Cavell's reading of Wittgenstein puts it

> "scepticism becomes an insoluble problem only insofar as we would seek to solve it." (Lamb, 2014:18).

**References:**

Lamb, J. (2014). Rules of Use: Language and Instruction in Early Modern England. Bloomsbury Publishing.

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