While not underestimating the value of useful knowledge and skills, it is suggested that education should also develop the subjective self of the learner. A distinction is drawn between an ‘additive’ view of education which simply furnishes the individual with knowledge and skills and a ‘transformative’ concept which concerns itself with changes to more central parts of the learner's self. In developing a concept of the subjective self, reference is made to the Enlightenment notion of the autonomous rational self and (...) the interpersonal or cultural self of the Symbolic Interactionists and Communitarians. Particular attention, however, is given to Heidegger's three categories of entities experienced by the phenomenological self: the ‘present at hand’, the ‘ready to hand’ and those entities with whom we share the experience of ‘being with’. An attempt is made to interpret important aspects of education in terms of the development of learners' growing knowledge and deepening understanding of these three kinds of entity and the relation in which they stand to them. (shrink)

This article analyses the nature of an educational experience by taking as its starting point Dewey's Art as Experience in order to identify what it is that counts as a significant or worthwhile experience. Dewey suggests that an experience needs to have an integral character in which the different phases of the experience are related and which tends towards a conclusion. Furthermore, an experience also needs to have the character of what Dewey calls an ‘undergoing’, an engagement with content which (...) may be difficult or painful. It is suggested that this kind of experience may be seen in terms of a ‘light’ pedagogy in which content is allowed to unfold. This is contrasted with educational experiences that are ‘teacher-driven’ or ‘learner-driven’. (shrink)