Education can transform our cognitive world. Recent use of enactivist and enactivist-friendly work to propose understanding transformational learning in terms of affective reframing is a promising first step to understanding how we can have or inculcate transformational learning in different ways without relying on meta-cognition. Building on this work, I argue that to fully capture the kind of perspectival changes that occur in transformational learning we need to further distinguish between ways of reorienting one’s perspective, and I specify why different (...) ways are differently valuable. I propose that recent approaches to Confucian ritual provide a clue to what is missing in characterisations of perspective transformation and the resultant transformed perspective. I argue that focussing on ritualised interpersonal interactions provides a further clue as to what’s missing from a mere appeal to the ritual-based inculcation of new perspectives, namely the kind of lightness and flexibility that some ritualised interactions encourage participants to have, and the deepening of perspective associated with that lightness. I argue that a case study of a project implementing a highly ritualised philosophical practice with prisoners in Scotland shows how these constraints, seemingly paradoxically, function so as to actually deepen the perspectival spaces of those agents. This case study provides a proof of concept for the proposal that certain forms of ritual engagement can reliably bring about the kind of transformation of perspective that is the target phenomenon of transformative learning theory. (shrink)

The reconceptualisation of school placement (Teaching Council, 2013) poses a challenge to initial teacher education in Ireland. Some criticised the timing (Mulcahy and McSharry, 2013). Others considered it to be too great a professional leap (O’Grady, 2017). This study sought to explore if and how cooperating teachers could develop as mentors in the Irish context, through engagement in a ‘participatory action learning action research’ (PALAR) ‘mentoring community of practice’ (M-CoP). Qualitative data collection methods included: questionnaires with stimulus recall, pre-workshop questions, (...) workshop observation, workshop artefacts, reflective journals, learning journey plans, and extended focus group discussions. Data were analysed via constant comparison of codes and categories. CTs reported that their transformed practice as a mentor and a leader was achieved due to the multi-process, meta-pedagogical, meta-model design of the PALAR M-CoP. They indicated that the meta-model enhanced their fluency in the ‘language of critique’ enabling them to identify and become exercised about a range of complex barriers to growth. It also developed their fluency in the languages of ‘possibility’ and ‘leadership for change and empowerment’, which aided them to cope with, and overcome barriers to growth, resulting in the empowerment of themselves and other school placement partners. (shrink)

Maiese and Hanna (2019) argue that social institutions shape and transform our embodied minds, and that detrimental and harmful institutions can be reverted in order to promote mentally healthy, authentic, and fulfilling lives. This commentary aims to complement this proposal by understanding the role that narratives and narrative practices play in shaping our embodied minds, by highlighting narrativity’s (1) active, deliberative, and productive functions, and (2) its strong entanglement with embodiment. We will argue that this addition to Maiese and Hanna’s (...) account allows agents to assume a more active role within social institutions by engaging in conscious and deliberative self-narration. This is because, we contend, not only do we understand ourselves and others according to cultural narrative archetypes; we also, crucially, bring about concrete changes in our embodiment and behavior by narrative deliberation and intention formation. As such, self-narration is not only an intellectual endeavor, but can also have profound consequences for how we experience the world; in other words, narrative practices can purposefully alter our affective framing which, in Maiese and Hanna’s account, is fundamental in the process of changing detrimental institutions into constructive, enabling institutions. (shrink)

Skepticism about the limits of online learning is as old as online learning itself. As with other technologically-driven innovations in pedagogy, there are deep-seated worries that important educational goods might be effaced or obscured by the ways of teaching and learning that online methods allow. One family of such worries is inspired by reflections on the bodily basis of an important kind of understanding, and skepticism over whether this bodily basis can be inculcated in the absence of actual, flesh-and-blood, classroom (...) interactions. This paper focuses on the ways in which such worries arise in the influential work of Hubert Dreyfus. The negative conclusion for which I argue is that endorsing Dreyfus's Merleau-Pontian picture of the relationship between bodily skill and understanding does not commit us to his general pessimism concerning online learning—bodily, emotional, and interactive dimensions might be essential to learning, but we lack reasons to think that online learning necessarily lacks these dimensions. The negative argument motivates a positive claim: rather than giving up on online learning we should focus on designing courses and pedagogies that scaffold the bodily, affective and interactive dynamics constitutive of understanding in a particular domain. (shrink)

Recent models of wisdom in philosophy and psychology have converged on conceptualizing this intellectual virtue as involving metacognitive processes that enable us to know how to live well and act morally. However, these models have been critiqued by both philosophers and psychologists on the grounds that their conceptions of wisdom are redundant with other constructs, and so the concept of wisdom should be eliminated. In reply, I defend an account of wisdom that similarly conceptualizes wisdom as involving metacognitive processes, but (...) without being subject to the critique that wisdom is redundant. To isolate what’s unique about wisdom, I examine the self-regulatory processes that are relevant for being effective in striving to achieve our goals and draw further insights from the research on skill acquisition and expertise. This framework reveals that the unique contribution that wisdom can make beyond these other processes is in setting and revising our conceptions of living well and the constitutive virtues, and so the concept of wisdom is not redundant. In addition, this account can help to resolve two other areas of contention in wisdom research, which is accounting for the connection between wisdom and moral motivation, as well as the role of emotion in wisdom. A goal-oriented approach provides insight into factors influencing moral motivation due to distinctions in the ways goals are formulated, and for a better understanding of the connection between emotion and wisdom I endorse enactivist accounts that maintain that emotions are embodied appraisals connected to our deeply held cares and values. (shrink)

The paper presents a concise history of enactivism in education, especially in mathematics education. Cases described by Davis’s, Proulx and Simmt’s work showcase the idea that enactivism is a viable alternative to constructivism or to classical views both in terms of practical teaching and theoretical models related to the process of learning. The idea that the student should solve a fixed problem, discover the universally correct solution, and eventually store that correct solution to find many other universally correct solutions to (...) other fixed problems reduces the student to a very simple mechanism aimed at informational efficiency. This problem is met by the enactivistic tradition that began with Varela and Maturana’s work, now updated to the aforementioned researchers. Contra the classical perspective, enactivism proposes the idea that the student collaboratively produces the problem, being able to see multiple solutions, and eventually becoming a performer of knowledge. The article takes these ideas developed in mathematics education and finds their use in philosophical education. The article especially focuses on the student’s problem of being unable to link a new philosophical text discussed in class with their intuition. The last part of the article offers a lesson design example. The philosophical design focuses on making the students explore their own thinking regarding the topic about to be discussed by using a philosophy text before introducing the text. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.