Session Information
13 SES 02 A, Educational Arts and Seeing Connections
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper explores questions of meaning and context with reference to the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein. This is shown to be of pertinence to the theme of transition, both in terms of changes intercultural relationships and contexts, and with reference to the acquisition of language and the nature of learning. The nature of the seeing of connections needs to be understood in contrast to taxonomical ways of identifying similarities and distrinctions precisely because of the more mobile nature of thought that it requires. To see connections is not to become "wired" or simply to extend networks, electronic or personal. It requires a laying of ideas alongside one another in order to see similarities and differences. Wittgenstein thematises important aspects of this in terms of the seeing of aspects, and he ponders the consequences that may arise where people are or become aspect-blind. The seeing of connections has the potential to effect transitions in thought, of the kinds envisaged in the statement of the conference theme. This is the case because it is the nature of language and thought itself, understood correctly, to progress in this way. There are retrograde tendencies in our educational practice, forms of social organisation, and habits of self-understanding that militate against the realisation of this potential The paper attempts to open educational thought better to a conceptualisation that would restore these possibilities.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Peters, M. (2012) Educational Research and the Philosophy of Context, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44.8, pp. 793-800. Wittgenstein, L. (1993) Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, in: Philosophical Occasions, 1912-1951, ed. J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company). Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford, Blackwell).
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