Magic Learning Pill: Ontological and Instrumental Learning in Order to Speed Up Education

2021

Self Cite

Education is often viewed as formalized learning. I argue that the relationship between education and formalized learning is more complex and profound. In this conceptual essay, I examine the relationship between education and learning. Specifically, I discuss the cases when learning is not education and education is not learning. I argue that learning becomes educational when the person, the learner themselves, appreciates their learning. When learning is not appreciated by the learner, it does not constitute that person’s education. Thus, education is an ephemeral subjective construct, prone to appear and disappear as the person’s attitude to their learning changes. Also, education can be non-learning-based when it involves insights – abrupt, discontinuous changes of the person’s subjectivity – which are not caused by and rooted in the person’s experiences. Like learning, for an insight to be educational, it has to be perceived and appreciated by the person. I argue that human life consists of the flow of learning and insight. Noticing learning and insight by the person involves discontinuity of the person’s subjectivity, participation in activities, and other people that is recognized by others and the person. I discuss diverse forms of the person’s appreciation of learning and insights that constitute education. These forms vary from the behaviorist appreciation, as its lowest form, to the critical appreciation through critical dialogue as its highest form. Finally, I consider the consequences of defining education through a person’s appreciation of the transformation of their subjectivity for dialogic pedagogy.

Section: E5supporting

confidence: 69%

Section: E5mentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between education and learning and its consequences for dialogic pedagogy

2021

Self Cite

“…We asked them to envision areas of their past education for which they might take the Magic Learning Pill, if at all, and for which they might not, if not at all, and why. Our results show that almost all participants experienced and valued both instrumental education of taking MLP for some of their important learning and intrinsic education of rejecting MLP for some other important learning of theirs (Matusov, Baker, Fan, Choi, & Hampel, 2017). Intrinsic education is less valued by modern society because it is a form of leisure, which often is viewed as frivolous in our necessities-based civilization (Matusov, 2020b).…”

Section: My Replymentioning

confidence: 81%

A student’s and a teacher's right to freedom of education

2020

Self Cite

This conceptual essay, which opens the special issue, examines why a student’s right to freedom of education – the right for a student to define their own education – is so crucial for the education itself. Four diverse educational approaches are considered: training, closed socialization, open socialization, and critical examination, along with the Bakhtinian dialogic pedagogy to reveal the need for freedom of education within each of the approaches and the pedagogy. The eight aspects of the right to freedom are explicated. Three major objections against the right are considered and rebuked: 1) the Kantian paradox of autonomy and paternalism in education, 2) the paradox of learning and ignorance, and 3) fear of non-participation in education without coercion. The legitimate limitations of the right are discussed. Finally, the two major pathways to the right – radical and gradual – are analyzed. I sent the earlier draft of the paper to the Dialogic Pedagogy journal community, asking for critical commentaries. Many people submitted their critical commentaries involving their agreements, disagreements, associative readings, extensions, evaluations, and so on. My paper, their commentaries constitute this special, and my reply constitutes this special issue. Three people – David Kirshner, Belkacem TAIEB, and Jim Rietmulder – chose to provide commentaries on the margins. I included most of their comments on the margins as a new genre to promote a critical dialogue in our readers. Also, Belkacem TAIEB and Matthew Shumski submitted short commentaries that I included, below, at the end of this article as Appendix I and II. Jim Cresswell shared the manuscript with his undergraduate psychology students, and one student volunteered to add her commentary. Shelly Price-Jones shared it with her international undergraduate students studying English at a South Korean university. Twenty-one of them chose to provide a video reply. I selected a few of them that attracted my attention. Finally, I chose to address some of the issues brought in the presented critical commentaries either as my reply on the margins or at the end of this special issue. This should not be taken as “the final word” in the debate, but rather a dialogic response inviting other responses in the authors and in the audience.

“…transformations" (Matusov, Baker, Fan, Choi, & Hampel, 2017). Probably, even more extreme cases of foisted education for awakening are the stories of some Holocaust survivors who reported about their educational experiences in Nazi concentration camps.…”

Section: Sf111mentioning

confidence: 99%

A student's right to freedom of education and a teacher's fiduciary obligation to support it

2020

Self Cite

I feel honored to receive so many deep, critical, supportive, expanding, and thought-provoking commentaries on my original paper “A student’s right to freedom of education” from undergraduate university students, educators, and educational researchers. These commentaries involve different genres: on-the-margin contextual comments, theoretical essays, ethnographies of their pedagogical practices, reflective sharing of good and bad personal educational experiences, personal authorial opinions, critiques, students’ course evaluations, analysis of science-fiction literature, investigation of Bakhtin’s biography, video replies, a list of questions, and so on. Once Socrates complained about the print text that it is impossible to ask the text new questions – the text won’t reply to these questions. In this special essay, we tried to overcome this problem by involving each other in address-reply commentaries on each other’s texts. We want to invite the readers of this special issue to join us in our dialogues of agreement and disagreement. In my reply to the commentaries, I want to focus on the issues raised by the commentators that most touched me. This focus is on the relationship between a student’s authorial education and a teacher’s authorial teaching, where “teacher” is understood on a range between an individual educator and the entire society. I want to apologize in advance if I left out important concerns that some of the commentators wanted me to address (feel free to raise it again on the margin) if I severely misinterpreted their idea or point (please correct me on the margin). Here I focused on the following six major issues raised by the commentators. The first issue is raised by several undergraduate students from Canada, Russia, and South Korea about the possibility (and reality) of some students actively rejecting their freedom of education. Isn’t it a case for rejection of my call for a student’s right to freedom of education? The second issue raised by many commentators is about imaginary and real cases when foisted education is effective and even, arguably, more effective than student-owned education. Do these cases defeat my overall argument that student’s freedom of education is required by education itself? The third issue was introduced by my colleague and a proponent of self-directed learning Kevin Currie-Knight when he asked a deceptively simple question of what I mean by “student.” Usually, the role of a student is defined either by the institution or by the teacher, which implicitly goes against the spirit of my claim for a student’s right to freedom of education. The fourth issue eloquently raised by an Ecuadorian undergraduate exchange student, Juan Francisco Poveda, studying at the Kyung Hee University in Seoul, about whether education must be subordinated to the needs of the society. Fifth, I consider the relationship between the education-for-myself and the education-for-the-other, the new terms introduced by my Russian colleagues. My overall vista in considering this relationship is authorship: the student’s educational authorship or the teacher’s pedagogical authorship. In a disagreement with some commentators and in an agreement with some other commentators, I argue that the teacher’s pedagogical authorship must be subordinated to the student’s educational authorship through the teacher’s pedagogical fiduciary obligation. Finally, I will revisit the Kantian educational paternalism by considering the two, arguably, most powerful and extreme cases for foisted education: foisted education for the survival of the society and foisted education for a student’s agency awakening. In my conclusion, I will summarize the presented reasons for why a student’s freedom is needed for education and briefly discuss how to test my claims.