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TransformativeLearningand the Belief that Teachingis a SpiritualJourney
Transform Learn Believe Teach Spirit Journey
John Dewey, Elliot Eisner, and P. Bruce Uhrmacher
What do these scholars have in common? Their belief that aesthetic learning is transformative. I'd like to one day add my own name to this list and extend the work by saying that the transformative nature of aesthetic learning and education touches the spiritual side of us, which is not to say the
religious side. Spiritual, rather, in a Derridian sense. Singular and secret, a space of non-space, of absence that precedes all that enters our sensory experience. It is through the sensory experience, the imagination, and through the idea of risk that this transformative occurs. In P. Bruce Uhrmacher’s words, the place where the “wow factor” occurs. In my interpretation of Derrida, I’d say this wow factor is where deconstruction hits an aporia—a logical impasse—the incalculable. The learner who has followed this journey, has participated through sensory experience and perceptivity in the art of learning. It transforms standards and benchmarks and grades and even individual expectations. It takes us to a place where we couldn’t have conceived of prior to having undergone the experience and it leaves, relying again on Derridian language, a trace in us.
The Tattered Cover
All students carry traces of aesthetic experiences in them. To illustrate, I’ll briefly share one of my own. I had to have been in second or third grade at the time. Our school and the public library had some kind of collaborative agreement between them. I remember many field trips to the library, but on one occasion, the teachers and librarians had laid out a table of tattered and worn juvenile books. They told us the books were sad—no boys or girls wanted to read them anymore, to check them out, because they didn’t look nice. I distinctly remember running my hands against the fabric textured covers with their titles obscured and their corners dog-eared. I felt bad for the books. My emotions got me hooked into the experience to come. We were asked to choose one of these lonely, sad books and to read it—but not only read it, read it and create a brand new, exciting book jacket for it. I no longer remember the title of the book, but I do remember the picture I created on the new jacket. The main character was a dog, and I spent hours illustrating that dog so the dear lonely book would start getting checked out again. What an incredible feeling. The book jacket stayed on the book and was available to other children. That experience lives with me.
A CRISP Lens
Looking at it through the lens of CRISPA, the acronym Uhrmacher came up with, I see many elements that give validation to the theory. C stands for Connections, and there are multiple ways to connect learners to the experience. For me, it was the emotional link. Believing the books were sad caused me to feel connected and empowered me to take ownership of the experience so I could “help” the poor book. R is Risk-taking. Some educators call this the challenge balance. If an activity is too easy, there is no buy-in. If it is too difficult, students shut down. The risk can be tangible or intangible—embarrassment, discomfort, insecurity, etc. All these emotions can add to the feeling of risk, and if students push themselves through these feelings and succeed . . . the benefit is intrinsic as well as extrinsic. Having others judge my jacket cover was a risk—would it be good enough? Would people laugh at the drawing? When I returned to the library on my own, however, I always pulled the book off the shelf and held it in my hands. The pleasure was deep and intrinsic.
I—Imagination. Not only did I engage in my imagination while reading the book and creating the jacket, but also in personifying the book’s emotions. S stands for Sensory Experience, and in re-reading my above description of the memory, it is evident the texture of the aged book added to my experience. P is Perceptivity, and is perhaps the hardest to create for students. It means allowing and encouraging students to take a second, closer, look at something. I am not sure perceptivity was in this particular assignment, but perhaps the reason I remember the state of the book prior to having read it is because my teacher encouraged us to look closely at the book’s tattered state. If perceptivity was not intentional, it was conveyed nonetheless, and it’s important to remember that not every assignment will have all the elements. They are the goal in providing the most potential for aesthetic experience, but aesthetic experiences can also occur when only a few of the elements of CRISPA are present. And finally, A-Active Engagement. Read this passage—answer the questions that follow. Answer the following mathematic problems. Read this chapter in your science text—answer the questions that follow. Write an essay about what you’ve learned. Somehow, this has become the norm of schooling practice. Students anticipate a day filled with these kinds of activities, peppered with the break of recess or lunch—maybe even an assembly. Students are offered fewer and fewer opportunities to engage in learning. Sitting behind a desk all day is not the ideal, and most teachers know this, and yet we feel we are against the clock. We have to “give them practice” for that eventual test that is sure to come. We’ve known for decades, at least since the time of Dewey, and later Eisner, that without active engagement, the information goes in and comes right out after the moment of stress has passed. There is no link holding it in a learner’s awareness.
Other CRISPA Resources on the Web
To mirror my explanation to others’, you may want to visit these other sites.
In a talk given at DU, Elliot Eisner recaps Plato’s theory of forms in order to illustrate the way education as a whole is still reliant upon Plato’s view of enlightenment. For those unfamiliar with Plato’s theory of the forms, here is my own quick recap:
Analogy of the Divided Line
Plato tells us to imagine a vertical line. Divide the line into four equal parts.
The divided line is a hierarchy with imaginative thought on the very bottom. The reason, according to Socrates, as he explains it to Phaedrus in Plato’s Republic, is because it is twice removed from the enlightened state of mankind. We perceive real objects through our sensory lives—take a tree, for example. We see it, can touch, perhaps even smell and taste it. When we contemplate on the nature of the treeness, we are entering the state where reason resides. However, if we truly what to reach an understanding about how a tree comes to become to become a tree, we need to reach even higher into our abstract faculties. There must be a pure form of a tree in order for a singular tree to exist. All we see in our world are versions of this form, but a one true form must exist although unseen. A philosopher’s job is to try and reach this state of knowing. Most people, of course, never move beyond the state of reason. Some people, however, spend a good deal of their time drawing, painting, sculpting trees (objects) which means they live in a state of unrealness—a state of imaginary shadows. What they create are only representations of the phenomena, but even the phenomena that we see, hear, touch, taste, smell are not the “real” essence of themselves. This is why imagination lives on the bottom of the hierarchy of our human faculties in Plato’s view.
In The Republic, when Socrates struggles to explain his Allegory of the Divided Line, he turns to metaphor and creates the Cave Allegory to further explain. People are chained in a row facing a cave wall. Behind them is a roaring fire with people walking holding objects atop their heads on a walkway between those chained and the fire. The result is a cast of shadows on the wall in front of those chained. The chained people come to anticipate and name the shadows. This becomes their reality because they do not know anything else, but there are “real” objects casting those shadows. However, if one were unchained, he might make his way up out of the cave and realize that even the objects are representations of an even more “real” world that exists outside of the cave. Rather than fire, there is sun. Rather than the object of a rabbit that was being held on a man’s head, there could be seen a “real rabbit.”
Derrida, Eisner & Plato
This is Eisner’s “Ah-ha—gotcha” moment. Eisner says Plato had to rely upon imagination in order to explain the concept more fully. Derrida also takes issue with Plato’s theory of the forms, saying Plato essentially got it wrong because no one pure form could exist. Every replication in this world is singular. It “defers” to the context of the circumstances surrounding it. Derrida coined the term différance to make the point that no term, idea or even any “reality” within the state of human awareness remains pure and untouched by its surrounding contexts. Crucial to this understanding is the idea that part of each singular context is the immediate past of that particular experience or idea and the immediate future not yet unfolded. These are all tied up and make every experience or idea singular. I have written many texts before this one, but I couldn’t have conceived of writing this one prior to having participated in the experiences leading up to it, nor can I conceive of its eventual end or how its creation will lead to future writings. A “gap” exists in our prior to experiences. This was a concept Derrida played with throughout his writing career. Almost like a kind of blindness where I am aware of my aware state of mind—and yet cannot conceive of it. Like the term infinity, nothing exists in this world that we can point to and say, “there—that’s an example of infinity,” and yet we somehow “know” what the term implies. Is there a place prior to becoming? Prior to infinity? Sometimes Derrida calls this the “absence” and implies that the immediate past of each moment leave their traces which infect the yet to come.
Tying it Up
Because this introduction is meant to be an introduction, and not a full research text, I’ll attempt to wrap up these ideas now. My inkling is to suggest that it is in this “gap” that new ideas enter our knowing world. Derrida once participated in a panel discussion celebrating the inauguration of a new philosophy department, so he relied on the occasion to speak about the term inaugural. It means “new,” and yet, as he deconstructed the term for the audience, he demonstrated that the inauguration could not exist had it not been for all those who came before—and yet it was a changed, a singularly “new” department. Here is where I see the link to Eisner and even to Plato. Plato had imagination on the bottom, but what if we conceive of human understanding like more of a sphere:
What if, the reason “new” ideas enter our world is because of what Derrida refers to as the point of “breaching” or “breaking” where deconstruction takes a concept or idea back to its impassable boundary and the absence that lies just beyond that boundary (the place we are “blind” to is that gap where imagination, working with the aesthetic impulse in us, can become the conduit generator for the innovation? In other words, when I experience things in my daily life, like Eisner and Uhrmacher said, there is always that possibility hovering above it for an aesthetic “wow” moment. What if the “wow” factor emerges into this world through a kind of Derridian force of the aesthetic imagination? Derrida’s force, Eisner’s aesthetic representation, Uhrmacher’s “wow factor”, and Plato’s original conceptualization of human understanding could all be linked in this way. Maybe Plato wasn’t wrong—just incomplete . . .
For Example
Last year, my family and I were evacuated because of the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs. In a way, this experience was powerfully aesthetic, and yet a "negative" one. The ash was raining down on us as we packed our animals and belongings into two vehicles. Law enforcement was directing traffic at the end of our street, and there was a line of cars blocking our driveway. The smell of smoke was embedded into everything, including our hair, and the sun . . . the sun was beautifully eery. The smoke was acting like a screen, so there was just this bright pink ball hovering above us.
When it was over, the fire claimed 346 homes and two lives. Our home was still standing, but the return was bitter sweet, knowing some of those who had lost everything. The whole city rallied and first responders became heroes. Many families created thank you signs for them, and my own daughter, who was eight at the time, wanted to join in. She created the following:
This first impulse Connected her to her sensory experience. She felt grateful and wanted to express that emotion. Because of the fires, our city did not have any fireworks shows that year. Notice in the image that the sacrifice of not having something traditionally fun and exciting for children was freely given under the circumstances. As she began to process her experience a little more, she moved into a more cognitive connection as a result of our many discussions about the damage the fire had left:
A little less than a year later, the Black Forest Fire broke out just north of us. I was at work when the news coverage began rolling in. My oldest daughter was with my youngest, and they were out and about driving. My younger, now just having turned 10, daughter had her iPad with her. She began sending me images:
This time, the fire claimed 511 homes. Again, my daughter sought a means to process her feelings and understandings Imaginatively and aesthetically. The first respresentation is a digital image she created using a drawing ap on the iPad:
The second is a textual image where she first used marker, and then pasted on dry elements
of pine and seeds she picked up off the ground:
Both creations involve sensory experience as well as imagination, and are obviously an expression of her active engagement in the processing of the experience. However, Risk lives outside these representations. The sense of danger and fear that prompted them is a kind of force that initiated the innovation. What made her think to paste pine needles and seeds onto the picture? Would she have had a reason to do so prior to experiencing the sense of risk? Probably not. There are many images of the fire. Hundreds of pictures were uploaded to Facebook pages and all the news outlets had 24/7 coverage with countless images and video streaming into people's homes. Initially, my daughter's impulse was mimetic, in that she too took images, but later she moved into the imaginative "new" creation. On the news, there was a great deal of talk about the differences between the two fires. In the Waldo Canyon fire, the fire spread from house to house largely through the travel of embers to the rooftops. In the Black Forest Fire, the fire was fueled by the dry pine that covered the ground. Somehow, this information entered into my daughter's awareness, and was expressed in a "new" way.
Returning momentarily to Plato's Divided Line, he would place this image at the lowest stage of understanding--the imaging of something more real--the fire itself. That doesn't fit with what we know about the process, however, which is why it didn't sit well with either Derrida or Eisner. Instead it seems my daughter took a path from Capture, to Re-presentation, to Creation. The textual image is full of emotion. The lines are multi-directional, angry. The image of the sun found a way into the image as well, and then those darn needles which are not pasted orderly on the ground of the picture, but rather, are pasted all over it. If you ask her how she came up with the idea, she couldn't really tell you. This is the "flow" some theorists speak about, almost as though the artist becomes the conduit for the aesthetic force and the product produced is something that hasn't yet been done. There is no accounting for this in Plato's Line, but there is in Eisner's and Uhrmacher's epistemology of aesthetics:
Image Created by P. Bruce Uhrmacher.
Using this new epistemology, we can see that (place my daughter in the stick man's place) she interacted with the "real world" when we were evacuated and she heard/saw the devastation left behind. Hovering above this experience, was the possibility for an aesthetic experience, and it's safe to assume she had one. This entered her mind in a way that, mixed with emotions and cognitive reasoning, became the impulse for the invention. This journey moved her from one place to another, so presumably, she traveled to a higher and higher place--perhaps even the space of non-space (Plato's forms and Derrida's absence). Then, as she brought that force with her back into the seen world, it came out in the form of an expression that held both realist and abstract qualities to it. Hence, the sphere rather than the line or the stick man alone.
Spiritual Journey
This is what I love about teaching. Even though, in this instance, I was not my daughter's teacher directing the possibility of this occurrence, I have been in that role on other occasions and with other students as well as my daughter. The journey she took touches the spiritual, and the truly grateful feeling I have in being able to watch another human take this journey touches my own spirit. It makes me hopeful.
No Dreams Deferred
(presented at an 8th Annual Diversity Summit on Inclusive Excellence, May 1st, 2009)
More dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that,
at some point, we may not be able to reverse.
—Obama’s speech on
"American Recovery and Reinvestment"Jan. 2009
What you have just viewed is a snapshot into the history that preceded my decision to pursue education up through the doctoral level. Both born in Mexico, my father’s parents arrived to the US in their youth. They found their way to Pueblo, Colorado following the lure of its railroad and steel mill. As young adults, they met, married, and started a family in Eden, Colorado—a railroad shanty town. My father doesn’t remember much about his first home, describing it only as a “shack.” He, John Steven Berumen, was born May of 1941. By September that same year, his father had passed away from tuberculosis. My grandmother, Phyllis, Olivas-Berumen, an uneducated Mexican national was left to raise two small children on her own. She hitched a ride with her former brother-in-law, Hilbert, to Fresco, California where she and her two small children (ages 5 and 10 at the time) joined the hundreds (possibly thousands) of migrant workers. They slept in make-shift tents on location, suffered both the elements and perpetual poverty—earning $1.00 - $3.00 a day. They were only supposed to stay for one season of harvest, but my grandmother couldn’t turn down a job offered at a local restaurant, given the hope that it brought for a better life. But her children were homesick. With what I can only imagine as a heavy heart, she relented—and sent them back to her mother in Pueblo. She joined them within a year.
My Aunt and father were born in the United States. They are Americana. Chicano. Mexican-American. This makes me only second generation American on my father’s side. I am the first within my immediate family to earn a four-year degree. While a few of my extended cousins have also earned degrees, I have never had the luxury of hearing their narrative struggles of obtaining an education in a country that even today treats us as though we don’t belong. I am happy to say at [this university], people are overwhelmingly inclusive—and well meaning. However, even here, I have experienced awkwardness because of my heritage—one person complimented me on my English. With the best of intentions, this fellow student assumed I was a second language citizen. My father, who was hit with rulers in school when he spoke the language of his home, the only language his grandmother and co-guardian knew, never taught my sister and I, thinking it would give us an advantage he hadn’t had. And when I shared my story about the way in which I sometimes feel as though no one in my family can fully understand or appreciate my choice to pursue a doctoral degree, a second fellow student responded by saying, “I can just see it—a friend of mine is Mexican, and I can just see her mother saying, ‘No-no, hijita, no más’.” My mother, however, is German.
These examples, and my singular history, are meant only as catalysts for dialogue. They are offered in the spirit of what makes [this university] so progressive. They are a place to begin. There is no logical reason for me to be here today. I graduated from high school—just barely. Graduation wasn’t a necessary goal in my life. I didn’t have high school counselors seeking me out to talk about filling out college applications—I didn’t even know what the ACT was. I met my husband my junior year of high school and graduated early to begin work as a legal secretary for a local attorney. Most of my family and my husband’s family thought I had stumbled into the most fortunate job imaginable—and leaving to begin a family and pursue a higher education was seen as a foolish, even a selfish, choice. It was idol daydreaming that would get me no where. After earning my BA in English from the city where my grandmother took root, Pueblo, Colorado, I went on to pursue a Master of Fine Arts from LIU’s Southampton College in New York. And now, I stand before you as doctoral student in this community, showcasing how one small life can be rich with the history of ascension.
President Obama cannot succeed in his hopes for change without the help of America’s intelligentsia. The old way of politics was those who have, have all say. Obama is trying to do more than just clean house; he’s attempting to establish a new set of norms—finding the best minded individuals to serve in appropriate seats. Unfortunately, the state of the country’s economic troubles could close the deal before he even has a chance. Institutions such as [this one] need to recognize how vital their role is in cultivating and supporting the voices of those who can help support the mission of change in the very near future—graduate student voices especially, as they are the ones whose completed degrees will bring with them innate respect and unlock doors that may otherwise be closed because of race, gender, religion or disability.
In his “American Recovery and Reinvestment” speech, President Barack Obama called on us—those educated or diverse enough to recognize the allusion. What he was really asking was: How much longer are we willing to hesitate and watch what we know to be true unfold when a dream is deferred? Pleading with us to join him in putting an end to the festering, dried up fruitlessness of former inaction, Obama is reminding us that he is just one man—but WE are many, y sí se puede.
SoWh a t ?
Abstract
How powerful is narrative, and how often can we change our given story? Are there tools to enhance the story—deliver it more powerfully? Friesen, Alheit, and Usher address the issue of life practices and life courses which are sculpted within the context of an individual’s surroundings. Three key components demand contemplation: cultural diversity, the “quick-change” nature of modern life practices, and the potential of voice. This wiki brings the three components together in a shared place. With the use of modern technology, the intent is to utilize the author’s own biographicity to inspire analyzes of the contextual learning environments she has been influenced by and responded to, and to challenge its viewers/readers to engage in multisensory ways.
Introduction
This wiki was created in response to a graduate course final presentation assignment. The primary texts used in the course were: Back to the Basics of Teaching and Learning: "Thinking the World Together" by David W. Jardine, Patricia Clifford and Sharon Friesen; and Contemporary Theories of Learning: Learning theorists . . . in their own words edited by Knud Illeris. What follows are links to each of the three authors of focus--Sharon Friesen, Peter Alheit, and Robin Usher. While there is much to discuss concerning the work of each author, the purpose of this wiki project is to link these authors' thinking to the central ideas of narrative, multicultural inclusivity, and the rise and nature of information technology (IT).
As I move further along in my graduate studies, it becomes increasingly more difficult for me respond to new theories in isolation, and as doing so would likely defeat the purpose of Curriculum & Instruction's philosophical foundations, I have decided not to pick apart, come at things anew, or compartmentalize the new theorists and ideas I encounter, but rather have decided instead to continue this wiki and add onto it for as long as it appears fitting to do so. I am currently enrolled in a Sociology of Education course as well as an independent study, and will use this space to further reflect upon my own educational/multicultural experiences as they relate to course material. The following links will provide the focus for these thoughts.
My journey is nearing an end. This quarter, I a am taking three courses that are closely related to the topic I am most interested in--that of equitable schooling. There are many things that complicate our understanding of the term "equity." Some theorists believe making a "level playing field" means outlining a core set of standards so that everyone knows the rules of the game and has an equal shot at winning it.
Others argue there is no such thing as a "level playing field," and that promulgating the myth that a level playing field is attainable obscures the very real obstacles faced by many students as they attempt to obtain an education in this country.
Furthermore, our ideas about equality and fairness are increasingly crippled by our own efforts to achieve the ideal--the ideal being that all students can achieve the same results if they are just offered the same/fair/equal methods for achieving those results.
Consider the following short videos:
Common Core Standards "Regardless of background or where they live"
Differentiated Instruction- "Rather than a one size fits all"
Accomodations & Modifications - "All students have equal access to the curriculum"
This first impulse 
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