The learning teacher: role of ambiguity in education

• Authors: Gilbert S. Suzawa
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Life is full of ambiguities, but as teachers we generally try to teach our students in a manner that sanitizes knowledge of all of its ambiguities. In doing so, we create an educational environment which forces students to learn in a rather meaningless fashion and this in turn leads to a lack of vitality and relevance within the academy. This need not be the case. As teachers, we should reflect on the epistemological foundations of our theories of learning and teaching and to closely examine how our teaching devices and techniques adhere to our theories. Furthermore, we need to be receptive to making any changes in our theories and teaching practice that may be warranted by the critical and creative thinking process that we apply to our professional activities. This paper attempts to guide readers through such a reflexive thinking process by trying to loosely establish a relationship between the deep concept of ambiguity (uncertainty) and some of our theories of learning via the acceptance of the view that the ultimate foundation of all human knowledge is ambiguity. We create and establish the meaning of all of our knowledge via a process of self-referencing logos. An implication of the application of self-referencing logic is the notion that a teacher can simultaneously learn and teach (“the learning teacher”). Thus, this can serve as the basis for developing the model of the “reflexive practitioner” in the teaching profession.

Keywords

EN

ambiguity; self-referencing logic; reflexive practitioner

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Journal of Pedagogy
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 220-236

Dates

published

2013-12-01

online

2013-12-31

Contributors

author

Gilbert S. Suzawa

• Professor Emeritus of Economics University of Rhode Island Department of Economics Kingston RI 02881 USA

References

• Arrow, K. J. (1992). I know a hawk from a handsaw. In M. Szenberg (ed.), Eminent economists: Their life philosophies. (pp. 42-50). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bacon, F. (1620/1878). Novum organum. Philadelphia: Parry & MacMillan.
• Bartley III, W. W. (1990). Unfathomed knowledge, unmeasured wealth: On universities and the wealth of nations. La Salle, IL: Open Court.
• Bereiter, C. (2002). Education and mind in the knowledge age. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
• Brown, R. H. (1995). Postmodern representation, postmodern affirmation. In R. H.
• Brown (ed.), Postmodern representations. (pp. 1-19). Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
• Dewey, J. (1899). The school and society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• How we think. (1910). Boston: D.C. Heath & Co. (Unabridged republication by Dover Publications, Inc. 1997) A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. (1933).Boston: D. C. Heath.
• Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Grudin, R. (1996). On dialogue: An essay on free thought. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
• Langer, S. K. (1988). Mind: An essay on human feeling. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Nicolescu, B. (2001). Manifesto of transdisciplinary. New York: SUNY Press.
• Popper, K. R. (1979). Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. London: Oxford University Press.
• Searle, J. R. (1983). Intentionality: An Essay in the philosophy of mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Solomon D. L. (2000). Philosophy and the learning ecology. Paper presented at the Presidential Session on In Search of the meaning of learning at the International Conference of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, Denver, CO, October 25-28, 2000.
• Sperry, R. W. (1995). The impact and promise of the cognitive revolution. In R. L.
• Solso, & D. W. Massaro (eds.), The science of the mind: 2001 and beyond. (pp. 35-49). New York: Oxford University Press. (This article is an abridgement of a Distinguished Centennial Address presented at the 99th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA, August 1991.) Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1995). Defying thecCrowd: Cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity. New York: The Free Press.
• Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Towards a sociocultural practice and theory of education. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Wheeler, J. A. (1981). Bohr, Einstein, and the strange lesson of the quantum. In R. Q. Elvee (ed.), Mind in nature. (pp. 1-30). New York: Harper and Row.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/jped-2013-0012