Beyond Thinking - Revelatory Teaching
IDEATIONAL FLUENCY
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Ideational
Fluency
is the capacity to fluidly weave ideas throughout the thought process.
It is also considered to be an integral part
of how the mind processes information, therefore it includes emotional
cognitive elements to form a unique dynamic in how we dwell within ourselves
and within the environments we enter on a daily basis.
Ideational
Fluency
embraces the following bulleted areas of our being:
• awareness
• conceptualization
• creativity
• critical
thinking
• innovation
• insight
• inquiry
• mind / dream
weaving
• personal / professional
development
• problem finding
/ solving
• revelation
This original poem
below, first composed in the summer of 1992, is a poetic example of ideational
fluency. It represents the incept, or the spark, of an idea about living
in our present age of technology, as well as the figurative attempt of the poet
to describe the spirit of our time as the world turned toward the year 2000.
The poem attempts to illustrate the creative process, from its origin to final
result, and hopefully exhibits the eleven bulleted areas above that describe
ideational fluency.
as a gecko
I tell you
I struggle to feel the
pulse of this land
occluded by greed’s fungus
besmirched with the scorch of pride
as a kestrel
I see people sway
crowds swirl
lightning flash
reverberating
in slow echoes
the bite of technology
thumping
in the crunch of air
as a man
I feel the
taint of progress
like a lizard
rapidly scuttling
across the brain pan of awareness
dancing
in systolic rhythm
in the
press of paradise
in counterpose
blooming in a riot of color
spoonbilled hope
an oleander spray of wishes
an ibis of
diastolic flamboyance
spills into the media of our time
a statice
of a people’s mood
empurpled with desire
whitened
within a
vellumed fragrance
armed
envenomed
yellowing
in the
lambent
eyes of cameras
lush with power
pot–bound in false dreams
blinking
A. Keith Carreiro © 1992 —
INQUIRY THAT INCITES INSIGHT
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By
examining this form of inquiry–posing instruction, the practice of helping
students attain greater discernment becomes not only more palpable, but it also
embraces and embodies a practice involving a hunger for discernment, a passion
for learning and a great cognitive joy amidst the labor for meaning (p.10).
William James once said
that we learn to
swim
in the winter and to skate in the summer.
— Rollo May (1985,
p. 45)
— The
courage to create
incite [MF inciter, fr. L incitare, fr. in- in- + citare to put in
movement, summon — more at cite]
1 : to move to a
course of action
: stir up
: spur on
: urge
on <inciting the people to
rebel> <incited to further effects
by his mother’s enthusiasm>
2 : to bring into
being
: induce to exist or
occur <such behavior is likely to
incite inspiration>
syn instigate | foment | abet
: incite may also indicate both an initiating, a calling into being or action, and also
a degree of prompting, furthering,
encouraging, or nurturing of activity
To
invoke the potential of our senses, beliefs, awareness, dreams and goals for
living better lives,
we may evoke and awaken
the age long virtue in sharing the greatness of the human spirit with one
another (p.
2).
To
flower fully in one’s abilities to express his or her own intellectual self
means that the passion to explore ideas, to critically assess an individual’s
state of being, and to release the imagination into a quest for meaning,
requires a truly democratic learning environment be established (p. 4).
Intuition,
emotion and cognition are merged into a process wherein ideas are sought,
broached, investigated and sifted more explicitly from self–determination,
interest and knowledge with those expressions of the scholarly, professional
and technical communities around us (p. 5).
Carreiro, A. K. (2003). Inquiry that incites insight. In George Noblit
& Beth Hatt–Echeverria (Eds.) The Future of Educational Studies.
CRITICO – CREATIVE PROCESS
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Conceptually
speaking, there are five fundamental areas that this form of teaching holds and
heuristically employs in a wide variety of reflective teaching strategies:
(1) existential critique
self–examining key
questions
(2) phenomenological depiction portraying their fundamental essence
(3) hermeneutical interpretation determining their symbolic meaning
(4) reflective evaluation analyzing their potential
values
(5) anagogical synaesthesia unifying their literal, moral,
allegorical & spiritual fields
While the terms used above are not those, for
the most part, that are familiar with the general reader’s daily use, they do serve
to depict aspects of key principles, processes, dynamics, sensitivities and
understandings of inquiry that help align a teacher’s relational approach to
the individuals in his or her classes.
This teaching/learning approach also is viewed by the author as being a
synthesis of critico–creative processes (Carreiro, 1991). Equally, this philosophical outline centers
the teacher upon certain existential and phenomenological perspectives, as well
as being centered in process philosophy, that encourage temporal analysis of
self–awareness and one’s conscious appraisal of reality, knowledge and value
notions.
This appraisal is done individually and it extends in a complementary
fashion to one’s professional concerns as well.
Vigorous study into all of these facets of being, personal and
professional, continuously occurs, such that a baseline of understanding and
familiarity with these experiences and phenomena of living explicitly is
revealed by this reflection. Using
philosophical language to describe this inquiry experience and to frame the
teacher’s situational orientation further, it can be stated that the teacher
dwells within the phenomenon of a proleptic
ontology.
This
dwelling permeates inquiry, ideation, research and discussion with an
understanding of reverence. Its
grounding was described by Alfred North Whitehead (1929, p.14) as follows
below:
.
. . the foundation of reverence is this perception,
that the present
holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards
and
forwards, that whole amplitude of time which is eternity.
BEYOND THINKING - REVELATORY TEACHING
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A Glimpse into Revelatory Teaching:
Beyond Thinking is based on the
philosophical concept that teaching is not only centered on a rational science,
but that it is also one firmly rooted in the rich soil of the heart of the
teacher, students, administration and staff, as well as parents, citizens and
the surrounding communities. It is
governed by grounded research, reflective practice and in the profound care
dedicated professionals throughout the centuries have so selflessly given to
their respective students, colleagues, academic discipline and nations.
Sometimes there is an understanding, or a
realization and a certitude born, regarding the experience of learning that
translates into a transcendence of being toward which this discussion strives
to capture. That is, there are times
when the flow of events in learning help bring deep levels of knowing into
cognizance, or bring unexpected degrees of awareness into view. These discoveries are tapped by the release
of the imagination by the teaching moment, by the power of will, by the passion
to learn, or even by serendipity. It is axiomatic to this author that there is
a sacrality, or sacred grounding, upon and through
which this degree, or phenomena, of learning occurs. It is sacred because the bond that must be
established between learner and teacher, teacher and subject, and with the
greater scholarly communities throughout which the act of learning occurs, is a
promise of intellectual potential being released. Such a promise is implicitly held between
instructor and student and it rests upon the heart of revelation itself.
Beyond thinking means neither the
absence of thought, nor thought left in abeyance of rational control. On the contrary, it represents a
thoughtfulness that is permeated with the complete presence of one’s mind. It is an awareness that seeks to prepare
itself for cognitive, ontological, and aesthetic information in the learning
environment. Such intelligence, or
sentience, if you will, senses, searches for, and discerns latent ideas in
order to develop them into relational structures of thought for further
consideration. This intentionality is
held not only within the power of a teacher’s mind, but by the teacher’s transferring
his or her instructional powers into creating a highly cognitive learning
environment that is pleasurable, inspiring, and empathic. To do so means not only has one designed a
caring and nurturing place for students to experience learning, but a
thoroughly professional commitment to the development of human potential is now
being released into the temporality and instrumentality of the teaching and
learning moment.
The two paragraphs above are excerpts taken from an article
written by Dr. Carreiro (1999) on this subject. This article was first
published in the Journal of Philosophy and History of Education (Vol. 49) by
the Society of Philosophy and History of Education (pp. 1; 6 & 7).