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Thought of the Week Archives
July 2002
July 1
I believe that we shall be able to interpret meanings and meaning-making
in a principled manner only in the degree to which we are able to specify
the struc-ture and coherence of the larger contexts in which specific
meaning are created and transmitted.
- Jerome Bruner
Acts of Meaning
Comment: Applied to the classroom, we cannot interpret a student's
act as meaning something until we know the whole context of the action,
and that context transcends our classroom. (R. Harris)
July 8
- Two quotes from George Isaac Brown's The Live Classroom:
Gestalt theory also tells us how ultimately we formulate our conceptions.
"We do not look at the world as though our eyes were the lenses of a photographic
camera. We select objects according to our interests, and these objects
appear as prominent figures against a dim background"(1) In other terms,
this mean that we have a whole body of prejudices and predilections that
somehow determine what we observe as the data of our experience. (Brown,
p. 54)
...Further, if an element is noticed, it is only because it is in accord
with our interests, which is to say that if we grant meaning to some thing
(i.e., if we take note of it) it is rele-vant to our interests. Now, if
we want to disregard the importance of affective elements, it necessarily
entails a denial of the existence of our operative educa-tional theory.
This is so because we would never have noticed these elements if we were
not operating out of a reference to a whole conception (a gestalt) which
itself rendered the elements meaningful. (Brown, 35)
Comment
Years ago I did an in-service presentation in which I mentioned that
we tend to get the journeys we need or are ready for. After the meeting,
a teacher approched me and told me that if I really believed that, I must
also believe in a God who arranges those journeys for us. How else would
we get the journey we're ready to take? There are a number of explanations,
but this view from gestalt theory is one of the best.
Based on the ideas Brown is explaining, when we reach a new level of
awareness, our gestalt grows, which opens to us greater experience or
awareness. Greater awareness creates the necessity to form a new gestalt
to incorporate the new awareness. When that awareness is complete, we
have a new gestalt which, when completed, opens still greater awareness,
and so on. Therefore, elements enter our awareness (become our journey)
because we are ready for them, our gestalten of self is ready to deal
with them. To ignor these elements is to stifle growth.
Perhaps more important is the truth that once we are aware of something
outside our understanding, we can't really ignor it. Once we have notice
it, it is part of our awareness and exposes our gestalt as incomplete.
We must deal with it in some way, which is the journey.
- Reg Harris
July 15
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