Pooling Thoughts

^[1] Curriculum Theory: Autobiographical and Biographical Influences

The essential nature of autobiography and its connection to curriculum then is that our pedagogical practice is informed by four things: voice, community, gender, and place. These are the critical ingredients to the autobiographer (McComas, p. 4).

Grumet describes voices, particularly female voices, as self-affirming (Pinar, et al., 2006). She adds, however, the critical point that woman’s voice can change; depending upon whose gaze is upon the woman (McComas, p. 5).

Autobiographical research is a search for the inner experience (Pinar, et al., 2006). Pinar describes four steps to autobiographical research and these provide insight into how the autobiographical orientation conceives of teaching and learning (as cited in Pinar, et al., 2006). These steps are (McComas, p. 10):

1. Regressive: This step relies upon lived experience as a source of data for the autobiographical research. The purpose of this step is to “…recall the past, and enlarge – and thereby transform 0 one’s memory…” (p. 520). In doing so, one brings the past to bear on the present.
2. Progressive: In contrast to the first step, the progressive step looks forward, not backward. It is Pinar’s belief that the “…future – like the past – inhabits the present…” (p. 520). Here, possible futures are generated in the imagination.
3. Analytical: in this step, distance between the individual and the past and present is created.
4. Synthetical: This final step is the place where the individual puts the parts studied in the analytical step back together to understand the meaning of the present.

^[2] Dewey – Constructivism

p. 4: According to him [Dewey], skills that are acquired without thinking are not useable skills. Likewise, information acquired without thinking is not useable information.

p. 4: Dewey believes that people learn by thinking in very particular ways: they interact with information, manipulate information or knowledge in experientially meaningful ways, and then reflect upon those experiences (Smith, 2001).

• Principles of learning:
  • development
  • dissonance
  • reflection
  • discourse
  • constructions
• Thinking is the method!
  • experience
  • problem
  • ideas
  • solutions
  • evaluation

1. Taken from a paper written in CI 702. [↩]
2. Taken from a paper written in CI 703. [↩]