Enacting
A Space of Possibility in Education
Johnna
Haskell
Independent Scholar, Maine
|
Warren
Linds
Concordia University, Montreal |
Enactive space and human experience
are
like two legs without which we cannot
walk
—inspired by Francisco Varela,
et al., The Embodied Mind
The
Enactive is an approach to cognition, or a way of experiencing
within a reality that is not pre-given. Francisco Varela
(1999) speaks of a world that is enacted as inseparable
from how we act in it. Our knowing emerges through our
bodyminds interacting with/in the world, rather than being
something we try to control and represent. This interplay
exists throughout embodied actions, and our educated perceptions
of possibility and impossibility, within the world. Even
impossibilities unfold the possible if we can “see”
or “flow” within our world—the educational
world.
Our journey began by entering a space
where we put together a mix of voices around the enactive
with/in education for BodyMind: Holistic Explorations
of Cognition, Action, and Interaction in Education, a conference we organized along with Brent Hocking at UBC in 1999. A
publication of a collection of works resulted in a book,
Unfolding bodymind: Exploring possibility through education (Holistic Education Press) in 2001. We saw in this process
an emerging scholarship with/in the enactive “space”
and wanted to further explore this landscape. Our call
for papers through Educational Insights provided an opportunity
to enlarge our own perceptions of the “enactive
space.”
Exploring the Space
Our daily lives are based on a framework
of assumptions. “Draw a different frame around the
same set of circumstances and new pathways come into view”
(Zander and Zander, 2000, 1). When we encounter a framework
that seems to ‘fit’ our exploration, "extraordinary
accomplishment becomes an everyday experience" [1].
Within each of the following texts,
we have connected with bits and pieces of language that
highlight and help unfold the enactive. We are conscious
that the use of language means that often theories are
seen to be fixed and not flexible or adaptable. A temptation is also to do this with the enactive approach
by reifying it as yet another theory.
However, we see the enactive as not
a thing, nor as an ‘ism,’ but, rather, as
an approach to cognition that enables us to experience
the unfolding of the possible. Thus we view these papers
as providing us with a “glimpse of something else”
(Rosch) that opens a space for us as editors to leave
the “paper” so to speak, Image-ining possibility.
An interplay of knowing and experiencing while reading
or writing on-line opened a movement toward learning the
unfamiliar—“a space of possibility”
outside the everyday and into an emerging contemplation,
or bodymind experience. Such a journey arose out of theories
that authors draw upon such as hermeneutics, ritual, holistic
education, aesthetic contemplation, complexity theory,
pedagogy, and phenomenology. Between, and amongst, the
interplay, and overlapping, and sliding between all these
diverse theories is a fertile space where contrasting
concepts interact and where knowing flourishes, awakening
us to the enactive possibilities all around us with/in
the world of education.
One way to explain this dynamic tension
between theories is through the Hua-yen Buddhist tradition
of Indra's net (Cook 1997). This net has a crystal at
every knot, stretching multi-dimensionally, through all
space and time. If you arbitrarily select one of these
jewels for inspection and look closely at it, you will
discover that in its polished surface there are reflected
all the other jewels in the web, infinite in number. Not
only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one
jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that
there is an "infinite reflecting process occurring"
(Loy 1993, 481).
By exploring these papers in such a
process we begin to see ways of interacting in the flux
and flow of the connection between jewels. Each one reflects
and connects to another, as our knowing continually unfolds.
This is a relationship of “mutual
identity and mutual inter-causation” (Cook 1979,
2), iteration and re-iteration. The immense universe of
cognition is taken as a given. There is no fixed centre
of space or, perhaps, if there is one, it is everywhere.
Mirroring jewels reflect and trace other mirrors. Each
section of this journey contains traces of the others.
Some of these threads are taken up again with a view of
the theme from another angle; sometimes this other angle
mirrors a new theme. Placing them with/in the themes as
outlined is only one possibility of how the articles spoke
to us.
Thus, our educational worlds are filled
with enacting and possibility. It is our ways of being
and living with/in a world, trying to grasp and control
experience that lead us to living embodied spaces unable
to “see” the enactive “spaces”
all around us, much like air particles interacting with
us in these spaces. Do we “see” such interacting,
or sense such spaces rich with possibility? An enactive
approach is the perceptual act of embodying such “senses”
within the constantly shifting space or groundless world.
For example, we base this approach on the Buddhist philosophy
of grasping. If we can only stop searching for answers,
we can enact such “sensing” or “spaces
of possibility”? How might we allow these moments
to be integral to educational learning?
Enactive and emergent approaches
to pedagogy
How do educational opportunities
close or open spaces of possibility?
Think of something solid in an absolute
sense, that is, something that has no spaces within it
[set aside for a moment your knowledge of kinetic molecular
theory]. Now see if there would be any change, or action,
or, for the solid, any interaction with the environment.
Try and imagine it happening. Do you find it can't happen
because, without space, there is no interaction, no motion,
no possibility? Even for passive change like the rusting
of metal, there must be spaces which allow for interaction
and change.
Francisco Varela (in an interview in
Brockman 1995), outlines how his study of the human brain
enabled him to see emergence as the transition from principles
of interaction between individual components to global
principles encompassing the entire collective of components.
Knowledge is circulated and exchanged, allowing a new
order in terms of insights, new or different understandings
or even discovery or “seeing” as new relationships
unfold. It is in this journey between the individual and
the collective “where” spaces of possibility
emerge.
Looking at education through the lens
of the enactive enlarges the potential of the space or
the in-between as embodied and dynamic. This “space”
is informed by, and respectful of, a complex world, and
it helps those interacting with/in it to discover different,
unknown, and unrecognized spaces about their world, bodies,
or community. Rather than treat these spaces as places
to be grasped intellectually, we need to experience them
as vibrant, living, creative spaces providing opportunities
for dialogue and growth.
Articles by Laidlaw, Linds, and Haskell open pedagogical
approaches where they see this experience happening:
explores the complex living
system of a school community and how small changes create
subtle, but important, changes in pedagogy and relationships
between teacher, administrators, students, families and
the landscape of learning.
Schools are also places to explore the unfolding
of community through drama. journeys into the role of the teacher/facilitator
as one who enables a space to emerge through a process
of negotiation and dialogue between educator, students
and a community-in-the making.
adds
still another perspective to pedagogy through her notion
of freefall, attending to how the unexpected can inform,
and shift, ways of being. These moments, as well as through
interaction with the article, provide opportunities for
learning that take us into the world of which we are always
a part.
These
moments, as well as through interaction with the individual
articles, provide opportunities for learning that take
us into the world of which we are always a part, open
pedagogical approaches where they see such enactive and
emergent opportunities.
Embodied knowing
The enactive view puts into question
the relevance of space as an object to be grasped. Because
every situation changes as a result of our enacting with
it, space unfolds in different patterns. Thus the space
is embodied (and not only including the bodies in the
space), but all the relevant social history attached so
to speak. Knowing is fully embodied. Such embodied knowing
has many dynamics which occur all at once. Thus, knowing
is co-emergent; it is neither caused by the world nor
does it simply emerge from the structure of the person.
So, by “embodiment,” we mean the integration
of the physical or biological body and the phenomenal
or experiential body [Varela, 1991). This approach implies
that knowing emerges collectively through engagement in
shared action. Embodied action brings forth an awareness
which is not attached to any one event or concept but
is, rather, an un-grounding, as knowing is shaped by our
actions with/in the world. Groundlessness is an exciting
“space” where possibility arises for how we
think about knowledge, cognition, and experience.
John Dewey (1929), in Experience
and Nature,
indicates that the shift in emphasis from what is experienced
to the embodied relational ways of experiencing opens
capacities for perceiving “unattained possibilities”
(151) and promoting respect for the potentialities of
human experience (36). He argues that the process of experiencing,
such as breathing, which includes an interaction of both
air and function of the lungs, cannot be separated (13).
It is this notion of object-subject separation that we
come to believe and accept in education through tradition
and habits. Dewey's theory of experiencing attempts to
bring this into question so that we may welcome the unknown,
invisible, and ineffable of experiencing. If knowledge
and learning are not located in a body, but in the shifting
movement of experiencing, new possibilities emerge for
how educators, perceive, interpret, research, and interact
within the world. Thus, embodiment suggests a seamless,
though often elusive matrix of bodymindworld, a web that
integrates thinking, being, doing, and interacting with/in
a world we are part of. How this seamlessness emerges
in education and under what conditions it flourishes are
critical questions.
In other words, an embodied way of
knowing guides actions or choices to bring forth a capacity
for interacting with the unknown. If we remain open minded,
open to views, interactions and intuitive choices, then
doing and knowing emerge through the “flow”
of actions (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975).
Kendal Bennie, Alison Pryer,
and David Jardine and Jennifer Batycky explore engagements
as another sense of embodied knowing:
unfolds awareness as teacher in drama education, learning,
through the metaphor of surfing. Bennie struggles as we
all do to find a language to express embodied knowing.
further links such a pedagogy of bodymind experience
to the shifting of bodily ritual, place and connection.
enrich the notion of embodiment as teacher, learner and
researchers. They question the idea of an external world
that we enter into in pedagogy, in research, in research
texts, and suggest that ‘things’ exist for
themselves as well as for us, but also require something
of us in the process...asking us questions and opening
up possibilities for engaged interpretation. Such engagements
lend insights into possibility as another sense of embodied
knowing.
Experiencing possibility
We are often unaware of what actually
is possible. It is almost that we take for granted living
with/in the moment, blending past, future and current.
We live largely as though things are as they are and that,
furthermore, we have little to say and do about what is
going on. That is a misnomer. We have all our bodyminds
to bring possibility into being because the future unfolds
through our ‘living and being’ within a world.
Brian
Wattchow, Ardra Cole and Maura McIntyre , Sharon Abbey,
and Martha Zacharias introduce possibility through particular
approaches to pedagogy:
seeks an enactive interpretation of
adventure education and river experience using hermeneutic
text and phenomenology to enter into an experiential dialogue.
Such dialogues open our understanding of the natural world
and our interpretation of such outdoor classrooms.
explore the notion of qualitative
research as an aesthetic experience where meaning emerges
through a contemplative process that links art and viewer.
Such views open researchers to experiencing possibility.
engages in a philosophical
exploration of curriculum and consciousness theories through
literary text and how it relates to philosophies of cognition
that explore the enactive.
Practices within education are explored
through application for holistic classrooms. Abbey enlarges
a space for opening the distinction between embodied knowing
as content and engaged knowing as process to disappear.
The terms embodiment, engagement, and experiencing are
used interchangeably. Such mindful practices open opportunities
toward a holistic perception of enactive spaces to learning
and interacting within the world.
The diversity of perspectives in this
issue are exciting as each of the authors engage in experiencing
the unarticulated possibilities that we continue to explore.
We are excited that the authors have begun an enactive
journey and that they struggled to find the language as
well as the path to enter into spaces of possibility.
Entering the Space of Possibility
We met artist Andrew Campbell via the
internet. We had encountered Andrew on an email listserv
exploring Maturana and Varela’s concept of ‘autopoiesis.’
He had acquired Unfolding bodymind
(2001), the book we had edited and expressed interest
in our work. He sent us a link to an online journal where
he had done artwork responding to an interview with Francisco
Varela before his death. Here is Andrew’s response
to our invitation to create artwork for this issue of
Educational Insights.
A great artist of the twentieth century,
de Kooning spoke of ‘slipping glimpses’ coming
from the practice of art. So, I liked it very much when
I read something Eleanor Rosch wrote in an online article
about art describing humans as “a part of inexpressible,
unthinkable openness and sacredness,” but that when
cognitive scientists and embodied practitioners turn to
face this reality and “actively pursue the ground
of the mind, what you see is something else.” She
thinks the arts can “slip it to us sideways.”
There is something frail, delicate
and above all deeply loving about the work I was sent
for this edition of Educational Insights
and in the entire project it is part of. I believe in
the tumult of our world, a world full of gathering storms
and that there are new forces arising and emergent, from
with-in people and among diverse peoples. This artwork
tries to capture the essence of all creation and creativity
as set out by Lucretius, and much quoted by the so called
complexity scientists. “At uncertain times and places,
the eternal, universal fall of atoms is disturbed by a
very slight deviation—the clinamen. The resulting
vortex gives rise to the world, to all natural things.”
A ‘slipping glimpse’ is such a clinamen.
These two-dimensional images represent my effort to
slip it to you sideways. If they succeed, you may glimpse
some other dimensions.
Entering this diversity of “seeing”
with the wonders of our contributing authors and artists
has opened us to experience. We continue our own journey
to enacting with/in academia and our unfolding of expressing
the flow of experiencing in the enactive space.
Our mental processes and experiences
are closer to a maze than a motorway, every turning yields
another turning, not symmetrical, not obvious when we
enter (Winterson 1996,
xiii).
According to astronomy theories (NASA
2003), the solar system is wrapped in a bubble that is
constantly pulsating, expanding, and retracting. Since
the categorization of a “space” cannot be
linear, but actually more like a soap bubble that pulsates
as the space enlarges, the publication of these articles
in Educational Insights opens another space of possibility
as you read and interact.
Entering such a space of possibility
requires us to work with both legs, a co-emergence of
enactive space and human experience which is not a fixed,
predelineated domain. Instead, it is changeable and fluid….All
we have is experience at its own level of examination,
and depending on the kinds of efforts and methods brought
into play. It moves and changes, and its exploration is
already part of human life (Varela and Shear 1999,14).
As scholars we would like to acknowledge
those who opened the space of possibility. In particular,
Brent Davis and Karen Meyer who introduced us to enactive
knowing through two graduate courses at UBC, David Abram
and David Jardine who had profound influence on other
interpretations of the enactive, Carol Fulton, who assisted
us in working with authors, and Lynn Fels, co-ordinating
editor of this journal and her approach to performative
writing and research.
Through
invitation and encouragement, we feel we have opened a
space for authors to explore possibility with/in education.
We hope this on-line dialogue will continue to open such
spaces for readers. We want to thank all those that sent
proposals and encourage them to continue their journey
to articulate possibilities for the enactive view of cognition,
pedagogy, and learning. The ten articles that follow extend
our understanding of emergent approaches to education,
pedagogy, experience, curriculum, and research. More specifically,
an enactive view continues to arise through your engagement
with this on-line text, enabling insights to emerge through
sharing with all those choosing to interact with the articles.
Please engage in these articles, as
we have, to explore for yourself walking on two legs within
the enactive space. The experiences of these educators,
struggling with/in the spaces of possibility occasioned
by their writing and this journal, are the unfolding of
your journey to enacting a space of possibility with/in
education.
References
Cook, Francis H. (1977). Hua-yen
Buddhism. The Jewel net of Indra. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Cook, Theodore A. (1979). The curves
of life. New
York: Dover Publications.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1995). Beyond
boredom and anxiety. The experience of play in work and
games. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Dewey, John. (1929). Experience
and nature.
New York: Open Court.
Brockman, John. (1995). The third
culture: Beyond the scientific revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Loy, David. (1993). Indra's postmodern
net. Philosophy East and West, 43 (3), July, 481 510.
NASA. (2003). What Does the Edge
of the Solar System Look Like? Ask Voyager.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/voyager_heliosphere.html
Rosch, Eleanor. "If You Depict
a Bird, Give It Space to Fly": On Mind, Meditation,
and Art. http://www.artandbuddhism.org/papers/wp1_er.html,
November 11, 2004.
Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson,
and Eleanor Rosch. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive
science and human experience.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Varela, Francisco J. (1999). Ethical
know-how: Science, wisdom and cognition. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Varela, Francisco and Jonathan Shear.
(1999). First person accounts: Why, what, how. In Francisco
Varela and Jonathan Shear (Eds.), The view from within.
First-person approaches to the study of consciousness. Thorverton: Imprint Academic.
Winterson, Jeanette. (1996). Oranges
Are Not The Only Fruit. London: Vintage Press.
Zander, Rosamund Stone and Benjamin
Zander. (2000). The Art of Possibility. New York: Penguin.
