Empirical Philosophical Investigations in Education and Embodied Experience

• Chapter 1 This chapter explores some of the most interesting intersections between the philosophy of John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein. Practical epistemological analysis (PEA), Situated Epistemic Relations (SER), and Situated Artistic Relations (SAR) examine learning primarily as a sociolinguistic practice. Since it is a sociolinguistic practice, much of both the product and the process of learning are plainly visible to sophisticated methodological observation. This chapter emphasizes the primacy of practice in comprehending linguistic meaning (i.e., forms of life, language-games, meaning as use, etc.), the rejection of a private language, antifoundationalism, and epistemological contextualism, action, and antirepresentationalism. It establishes the philosophical framework for our analytical method developed in Chap. 3  and assumed in Chap. 4 .

• Chapter 2In this chapter, we exposit ideas found in Dewey that are either underdeveloped or entirely unexplored by Wittgenstein. Nonetheless, the Deweyan ideas we consider are generally commensurable with most of Wittgenstein. This chapter discusses such aspects of Dewey’s philosophy as the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, creative action, embodiment and especially nonlinguistic embodied immanent meaning, aesthetically expressive meaning, and how mind and meaning distribute to wherever they occur throughout a world without withins. All of these will contribute to the collection of data and the analytical models developed in Chaps. 3  and 4.

• Chapter 3This chapter introduces the SER model and PEA method as elaborated tools to empirically answer three paradigmatic questions about learning: (a) how learning is connected to continuity and change, (b) what constitutes learning, and (c) what influences learning. The SER model draws on Dewey’s theory of inquiry and the distinctions between anoetic experience, significant and immanent meaning while the first-person perspective and transactionalism is used to provide a primarily transactional understanding of PEA. This framework is then applied to the mobility practice of dinghy sailing and an empirical analysis that explains the process and content of learning the body technique of roller-tacking is employed. In so doing, the SER model provides descriptions and explanations regarding learning processes and products from data collected using PEA.

• Chapter 4While Chap. 3  emphasizes the empirical investigation of learning an embodied langauge-game in a mobility practice, this chapter explores how Dewey’s aesthetics can further our methodology by investigating sculptural expression in a production practice. Against the background of the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, creative action, aesthetic appreciation, and especially the creation of artistically expressive meanings, this chapter develops the analytical model of SAR. The SAR model and the PEA method are used to analyze sculptural expression in school sloyd. Since sloyd is approached as an embodied production practice, the analyses enable explorations of learning as it moves from an instrumental learning of  a body technique to an artistic expression through  a body technique and through  the material worked with. Thus, the connection between the learning of body techniques and artistic expressions and the formation and transformation of the self are investigated.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion -- Filosofi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion -- Philosophy (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Education

Pedagogik

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

bok (subject category)