What Visual Metaphor Symbolizes Teaching, Learning and Knowing For Me? !

What Visual Metaphor Symbolizes Teaching, Learning and Knowing For Me? Lucy E Denton University of Calgary

What Visual Metaphor Symbolizes Teaching, Learning and Knowing For Me? !

My visual metaphor for teaching, learning and knowing is a fern blowing in the wind.
I am using this visual metaphor to symbolize teaching as the wind; challenging, interrupting, perturbating experience. Learning is growth; recursive elaboration, expanding the space possible. Knowing is the Black Spleenwort fern itself; 360 million years of embodied understanding and internal coherence (http://en.wikipedia.ord/wiki/ fern). To illustrate and elaborate why this metaphor has such relevance to my understanding of teaching, learning and knowing I will draw heavily upon the coherence theory of consructivism/construetivism to illustrate how personal understandings arise.

What Visual Metaphor Symbolizes Teaching, Learning and Knowing For Me? !

It is no accident that I chose a metaphor that exists in the natural world. Rationalism and empiricism and the other correspondence theories tried to instruct, train, inform and condition our perceptions of the world. They sought to separate mind from body, selves from others, individuals from collectives, knowers from knowledge and the human world from the non human world (Davis, Sumara, Luce-Kapler 2008 p.98). By employing the metaphors of the fern and the wind I am seeking to illustrate the balance and connectedness between these fallacious dichotomies, smooth walls and modern conveniences present only an illusion of separation from nature(Davis et al., 2008 p. 13). ! Dr Davis introduced us to more that 500 words and many metaphors that attempt

to illustrate and dene the term teaching. It is a widely contested concept and one that changes and has different meanings culturally, socially and historically. Correspondence theories argued teaching was a way to convey knowledge from the keeper of knowledge; the teacher, to the empty vessel; the students. Knowledge was nite and xed. Successful teaching led to correspondence between subjective, internal models with objective, external realities (Davis et al., 2008 p. 92). ! In stark contrast to this idea stands my metaphor for teaching, wind.

Wind has been dened as a - breeze or the movement in the air(http://www.your dicionary.com/wind). The online dictionary goes on to give the following example of wind, the way the air moves and makes tree branches rustle. Can this be a metaphor for teaching? Yes, I believe it can. Constructivist theory is about understanding how personal understandings arise in the face of external agitation, like the wind. As a result the theory is more focused on how systems maintain this internal coherence, than on a

What Visual Metaphor Symbolizes Teaching, Learning and Knowing For Me? !

detailed teaching strategy. But, as complex not complicated systems they rely on operating far-from-equalibrium to facilitate the constant restructuring of the internal relations in order to maintain system coherence (Davis et al., 2008 p. 80). The wind as teaching in my metaphor interrupts understanding in the system or fern or the students and challenges them to restructure their networks of association. ! In order for systems or students to grow and to learn they need to be challenged,

interrupted, perturbated. ! Perturbating is dened as a small change in a physical system, a cause of disturbance or upset, a small change in the physical system, most often in a physical system at equilibrium that is disturbed from the outside(the free dictionary http://www.the free dictionary .com/perturbating). Disturbing, upsetting, challenging, causing a system to perpetuate a state of far-from-equilibrium and to realign itself to maintain internal coherence is what teaching is in constructvist theory, and in my metaphor. This metaphor presses the understanding that teaching is not about lling students up with empirical knowledge. As teachers it is our job to inquire with our students to uncover information together that will challenge understandings and give rise to new understandings while respecting each students individual journey. ! I am using the growth of the fern as a metaphor for learning. For ferns, growth,

the process of growing, full development, maturity, an increase in size, number, value or strength is a constant process, a fern never stops growing in its lifetime, and this growth or learning expands the space of the possible for each system (http://www. the free dictionary.com/growth). Similarly in constructivist theory, learning is constant and also recursive. Learning or growth is an individual journey for each system and with recursion being constant, each system expands the space of the possible for itself with

What Visual Metaphor Symbolizes Teaching, Learning and Knowing For Me? !

each elaboration. There are no limitations on this elaboration, they system is free to expand into whatever space it needs to. This idea of recursion does differ from the dictionary denition of growth. Outside of constructivist theory growth is taken as a incremental building process, much like building a house. You build the basement, then the ground oor, then the second oor and so on, with each level you add to the house or the system. ! In construnctivist theory, recursive elaboration is used to illustrate how knowledge

is gathered and synthesized. Instead of each new piece of information building on what already exists, the process of recursive elaboration gives rise to a whole new structure whenever new information is received, this process also gives rise to fractal forms like ferns. Systems, or our brains/bodies and selves makes sense of new information in relation to what we already know, or what is already embodied within is. When we are presented with new information it is ltered through the existing system to give rise to a new embodied understanding, and a new system. I believe my metaphor presses the implication that if we look at our students in relation to this process of recursive elaboration, no two students (fractals) will learn the same thing from a lesson because they all bring their own embodied histories into the classroom. Any new information provided will give rise to each student learning (growing) by recursively elaborating their own embodied histories. ! This idea of embodied history or embodied knowing informed my choice of the

visual metaphor I chose for knowing, a Black Spleenwort fern. I could have chosen any kind of tree or plant but I specically selected this fern for a few reasons. Firstly, some types of ferns have been on the planet for over 360 million years. That is a substantial

What Visual Metaphor Symbolizes Teaching, Learning and Knowing For Me? !

amount of time to embody ones history. Ferns are found all over the planet from African to Europe to Asia. They thrive in many climates, just like the students we nd in our classes. I selected the Black Spleenwort fern because it has the closest likeness to the Barnsley Fern fractal created by Michael Barnsley a British mathematician (http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Barnsley). He developed a fractal fern and designed it to look like the Black Spleenwrot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asplenium). This seemed appropriate to me. This fern is almost a perfect fractal occurring in nature, again like our students. What I really wanted to press with my metaphor for knowing is an understanding that as teachers we must respect and accept that our students bring into the classroom with them their own embodied histories. Their actions and understandings are rooted already in a coherent interpretive system. It is the system that learns, not just the one part of the system like the brain. Knowing is not a brain based event, but an ongoing process of embodying a systems own history. So system or body actions do not represent an internalized understanding, system/body action is knowing. When the student makes an error on the social level it is the teachers challenge not to correct it but to makes sense of why the student, given their web of associations would render the interpretation a sensible one (Davis et al., 2008, p.101). The teacher would then involve the student in new classroom experiences that would give the student the opportunity to construe more appropriate interpretations (Davis et al., 2008, p.101). ! My metaphor, a fern blowing in the wind has substantial meaning for me and how

I develop my own classroom pedagogical practice. I will challenge my students like the wind challenges the fern. I will respect their individual journeys, and understand that

What Visual Metaphor Symbolizes Teaching, Learning and Knowing For Me? !

they will elaborate their own embodied histories in a way that maintains their internal coherence.

What Visual Metaphor Symbolizes Teaching, Learning and Knowing For Me? !

References

Asplenium. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved December 12, 2012, from Wikipedia ! website:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asplenium.

Davis, B., Sumara, D., Luce-Kapl 2008), er, R.,Engaging Minds; Changing Teaching in Complex Times, New York, Routledge. Embody. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved December 12, 2012, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/ browse/embody.

Fern. (n.d). Wikipedia. Retrieved December 10, 2012 Wikipedia website: http:// en.wikipedia.ord/wiki/fern.

Growth. (n.d.). The Free Dictionary. Retrieved December 11, 2012, from The Free ! Dictionary.com website: http://www. the free dictionary.com/growth.

Michael Barnsley. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved December 12, 2012 from Wikipedia ! website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Barnsley.

Perturbating. (n.d.). The Free Dictionary. Retrieved December 12, 2012, the free ! dictionary.com website: http://www.the free dictionary .com/perturbating.

Wind. (n.d.). Your Dictionary. Retrieved December 10, 2012 from Your Dictionary.com ! website:http://www.your dicionary.com/wind.