Beyond Control and Rationality: Dewey, Aesthetics, Motivation, and Educative Experiences

By D. Wong. Teachers College Record, 2007

110 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Contemporary perspectives in psychology and education characterize ideal students as rational and in control of their thinking and actions. The good student is often described as intentional, cognitive, metacognitive, critical, and reflective. I begin with a brief history of control and rationality to establish how “The Tradition” is deeply rooted in philosophy, religion, and, in general, the story of Western civilization. Although these qualities are indeed important, I suggest that powerful educative experiences can neither be fully explained nor evoked if learners exercise only logical reasoning and self-control. I call on the aesthetic philosophy of Dewey and others to propose that transformative, compelling experiences require not only the rational, intentional processes of acting on the world, but also the non-rational, receptive process of undergoing. Dewey's aesthetic experience, as described in “Art as Experience,” integrates both the rational and non-rational, and self-control and its opposite. In the implications section, I propose that anticipation—the imaginative sensing of possibility—as an important new motivation construct because it captures the aesthetic qualities of engaging educative experiences. I also discuss conditions that could support these kinds of experiences in the classroom. I conclude with a few provocative ideas: a new view of autonomy, the essential role of faith in education, value without work, suffering is passion, and responsibility redefined.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Education, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/99b092ce50996bad41df11d988205a8eaf13e0c2

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Citations in the corpus

Project-based-learning on critical reading course to enhance critical thinking skills (2021, background): “They are one of the human elements in educational activities who are able to understand the basis and direction of goals as well as education policy (Wong, 2007).”
Towards a Theory of Experience (2014, background): “There is therefore a need to theorize experience in terms that do not assume “control and rationality” as the “sine qua non” of learning (Wong, 2007, p. 192).”
Design thinking and the practicing teacher: addressing problems of practice in teacher education (2018, background): “Wong (2007) notes that genuine educative experiences occur on a trajectory, such that The experience becomes educative as we grasp the relationship between doing and undergoing.”
Critical thinking: Essence for teaching mathematics and mathematics problem solving skills (2012, background): “Instructional strategies that employ students’ higher order thinking skills lead to improved critical thinking skills (Duplass and Ziedler, 2002; Hemming, 2000; Wong, 2007).”
Teaching Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills (2008, background): “Barriers to critical thinking Several researchers (Landsman & Gorski, 2007; Sandholtz, Ogawa, & Scribner, 2004; Sheldon & Biddle, 1998; Wong, 2007) suggest that the current educational trend to standardize curricula and focus on test scores undermines instructors’ ability to address critical thinkin”
HEAD, HEART AND HANDS MODEL FOR TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING: PLACE AS CONTEXT FOR CHANGING SUSTAINABILITY VALUES (2015, background): “The construct of transformative experience that will be foundational to the model being presented is based on Dewey’s pragmatic aesthetics and application of learning to the everyday life and experience of the learner (Parrish, 2010, Puge & Girod, 2007, Wong, 2007).”