Ethical Reflections on Intercultural interchanges

• The purpose of this symposium is to present a range of studies which use Dewey’s transactional perspective on meaning-making and practical epistemologies of education. In his influential work Democracy and Education (1916) John Dewey states that the basic role of education is to introduce the new generation to the knowledge and customs of previous members of a society. But a society consists of many practices and since different practices are based on different purposes, values and interests, the ideas that are held as true and good and the justified ways of making meaning differ between practices (Rorty 1991). To be a competent member of a society thus means being able to understand and make meanings in relation to a number of different practical epistemologies but also being capable of being critical of such epistemologies.  The research group SMED (Studies of Meaning-making in Educational Discourses) has been engaged in the development of a methodology for analysing meaning-making processes where people are introduced to different practical epistemologies in educational settings. The methodology builds on John Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy and especially his concept of transaction (Dewey & Bentley 1949/1991). This perspective overcomes the methodological problems connected with the dualistic tendencies that trouble many other approaches to learning and classroom interactions. Within this approach meaning is not treated as something that exists within things themselves or in the minds of human beings, but is seen as the relations to the environment that is created in the processes of doing and undergoing the consequences of action. Such coordination is not restricted to knowledge but also involves ethical and aesthetical relations to the environment. Learning can thus be investigated in terms of actions, within a set of different practical epistemologies. 

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

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

Nyckelord

Didactics

didaktik

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