Curious?
Are you a curious person? If so, does this help you learn more? Do you think it is a blessing or a burden? How can you harness it to educate yourself, in the fullest sense of the word. What is learning?
These questions and more are examined in the learning biography I’ve just submitted to Sussex University’s Institute of Innovation in Education towards an MA in Person-Centred Education.
The language is somewhat academic, but there are lots of poetic moments. That’s integration for you!
It was a transformative process of deep learning, and testimony to the benefits of person-centred education, despite the university’s inevitable challenges in embracing the whole person.
Here’s the first page and the full .pdf
Towards Integrated Learner Curiosity
We need to create a culture that leaves room for the constant “contamination” of a hundred subjective and objective experiences, in an atmosphere of reciprocal help and socialisation. Implicit in this thesis is a decisive response to a child’s need to feel whole.
Feeling whole is a biological and cultural necessity for the child (and also for the adult). It is a vital state of well-being (Malaguzzi in Reggio Children 1996, p 34).
Synopsis
This learning biography uses narrative to explore personal knowledge being formed about the cause, nature and function of curiosity and its relationship to learning, within a cycle of inquiry into spirituality.
Looking closely at pedagogues Paulo Freire and within the Reggio Children project, along with psychologists and philosophers such as Carl Rodgers and John Macmurray, it begins to articulate a vision of integrated learner curiosity and a personal expression of an ancient way of looking at knowledge.
It also critiques a university’s early beginnings in practicing emerging theories of person-centred education and challenges academia to embrace the potential of the Reggio “hundred languages” in understanding adult learning.
…………………..
Having lived a life rich with curiosity and learning, I am now curious about curiosity. From my earliest memories, I engaged deeply with the world around me. I have been highly motivated to learn through being curious. I have felt great joy and great sadness through this trait and state, and have come to embrace it – and consciously, carefully harness this Promethean flame.
More…
Learning Biography
April 24th, 2007 at 4:14 am
When you click on Learning Biography pdf, a message comes up on the Barking Owl web-site saying page is not available - very frustrating!
April 24th, 2007 at 6:33 am
It’s fixed. Thanks for letting me know.
April 25th, 2007 at 8:22 am
I love the way you’ve integrated your personal narrative into academic discourse so seamlessly and with such integrity to your own learning. You might like to follow this up by looking at the work of Roz Ivanic at Lancaster University, in particular in a book “Writing and Identity”, Chapter 10, ‘Multiple possibilities for self-hood in academic discourse’ - maybe possibilities of the hundred languages!
April 25th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Thanks Jenny. Here is a link to Roz’ home page http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/roz/roz.htm
Will look out for the book.
June 14th, 2007 at 12:45 am
thanks lib, I love your creative use of language and will forward this to Sam. The children’s poem I will keep forever!! I would like to add in reference to pages 22-23 that it was very much like that for me too. The only difference is I didn’t enjoy a freedom from fear always! Dealing with these demons has allowed me to move on and celebrate all the fantastic stuff that surrounded me growing up, with such an abundance of everything! My memoir of Pam is coming along and after a couple of days with Susie at Rottnest, I am now adding more fibre. We talked for hours, laughing, crying with such warmth and humour. So much I didn’t know.
Keep up the great work, the way you are sharing it is wonderful. Thank you!
Love
Kate (Aunt/Godmother)
November 20th, 2007 at 11:40 am
[…] As one of the world’s most evolved and influential educators Paolo Freire has stated: I believe in the pedagogy of curiosity… the pedagogy of the question and not of the answer (Freire in Papert, late 1980s). […]
January 31st, 2008 at 5:45 pm
[…] 2. Inviting time, space, stimulation, reflection, dialogue to motivate my curiosity for how we learn and create […]
February 8th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
[…] Reminds me of the Alan Watts quote and Taosit poem at the centre of my paper on curiosity and learning - Towards integrated learner curiosity. “In sum, then, te is the unthinkable ingenuity and creative power of man’s spontaneous and natural functioning – a power which is blocked when one tries to master it in terms of formal methods and techniques. It is like the centipede’s skill in using a hundred legs at once. […]
February 15th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
[…] I grew up with The Whole Earth Catalog (then Whole Earth Review > now Magazine). I was young, but it was ever so formative, as were the joints and conversations around the table of that expansive, bohemian childhood. It was THERE, everyhere. As ubiquitous and omnipotent as the bible, more so (hey Steve, you stole my line). I am having an epiphany right now just thinking about it. Must find out if Tim Berners-Lee read it before he invented the http://WWW. […]