REFLEXIVE PAPER: WEEK TWO

HGED 615C: Reflexive Paper

Week Two

Laura Bestler-Wilcox
Iowa State University

January 24, 2008

Summarization

· Assimilating individuals to regurgitate information does not mean it is knowledge learned. It is instead an egotistical way to promote the facilitator’s personal viewpoint.

· Giving students an authentic voice in the learning process.

· Educators learning from the dialogue in and out of the classroom.

· The current practice with the dominant culture based educational system (hegemony), does not meet the needs of all people due to the unequal power relations found within the system.

· The current educational process in the United States biased in respect to the knowledge.

· Dialetical thinking involves the student within the problem solving process in education, and their existence within the world.

· Knowledge is gained from the relations between people and the surrounding environment.

· Knowledge is based on much more than just the written curriculum; it is the interactions between people within the educational experience.

· Learning from the entire experience rather than learning about the experience.

· In with the new out with the old, taking what we have learned from education and transforming it into a shared experience.

· The interactions between people within a classroom are powerful, and can help change the world if warranted to do the act of change.

· Being afraid of hearing another person’s point of view will not allow the process of knowledge to occur within the classroom, instead it only intensifies the mundane awareness of existence.

· Being comfortable by understanding the need for incompletion will transform the masses and thus attribute a new form of education.

Reflection

The readings from week two verified my feelings and experiences within the educational process. Only when I had a teacher who challenged me to think outside of the boundaries did I actually gain knowledge. Being a creative and visual learner, the routine discussions and curriculum did not engage me as a student.

In second grade (1976), Mrs. Hanson had me step out of the classroom and join a special program that utilized computers as its learning tool. Whether or not she recognized that my learning was excelled with the use of a different resource than other students that I do not know. I do know that I learned better by seeing, doing and interacting with the very small group of students within the excelled program. She knew that the “banking” form of education did not help me prosper and learn from the courses. They continued me within the program until seventh grade, and then I was thrust back into the repetitive regurgitation of information.

From a social justice perspective, I recognize from my experiences that I have lived a privileged life. My knowledge has been gained from an educational system based upon the dominant culture. While at my undergraduate institution, I learned that my perspectives were not those of others. I consistently needed to challenge the status quo to remember everyone and not just themselves (dominant culture).

Finding your voice and having the opportunity to use it to help make things change within the environment is a challenge. No easy task for an educator to take on the status quo. Being a university administrator, you are consistently challenged on the fine line of what is good for the students, and the way it is done on campus. Although, one would think they are the same thing, often times it is not the case. Being forthright in your own system of values and k
nowing the process to get them heard is half of the battle.

· Antipathy == Antipathy is dislike for something or somebody, the opposite of sympathy. While antipathy may be induced by previous experience, it sometimes exists without a rational cause-and-effect explanation being present to the individuals involved (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipathy).

· Assimilationist politics == a person who advocates a policy of assimilating differing racial or cultural groups (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimilationist)

· Commonsensical == sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/commonsensical)

· Conscientizacao == refers to a type of learning which is focused on perceiving and exposing social and political contradictions. Conscientization also includes taking action against oppressive elements in one’s life as part of that learning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientization).

· Dialectical == is controversy, that is, the exchange of arguments and counter-arguments respectively advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical).

· Discursive practices, then, refer to the rules by which discourses are formed, rules that govern what can be said and what must remain unsaid, who can speak with authority and who must listen.

· Emancipatory knowledge helps us understand how social relationships are distorted and manipulated by relations of power and privilege.

· Epistemic == theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy which is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemic).

· Hegemony refers to the maintenance of domination not by the sheer exercise of force but primarily through consensual social practices, social forms, and social structures produced in specific sites such as the church, the state, the school, the mass media, the political system, and the family (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony).

· Necrophilic – it attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power.

· Ontology is a study of conceptions of reality and the nature of being. In philosophy, ontology (from the Greek nominative ὤν: being, genitive ὄντος: of being (participle of εἶναι: to be) and -λογία: science, study, theory) is the study of being or existence and forms the basic subject matter of metaphysics. It seeks to describe or posit the basic categories and relationships of being or existence to define entities and types of entities within its framework. It is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of the objects, properties and relations in every area of reality. [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology).

· Pedagogy == /ˈpɛdəgoʊdʒi/), or paedagogy: the art or science of being a teacher. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction.[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy)

· Praxis == Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted or practiced (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_%28process%29).

· Tacit = tacit knowing comes from scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi. It is important to understand that he wrote about a process (hence tacit knowing) and not a form of knowledge. However, his phrase has been taken up to name a form of knowledge that is apparently wholly or partly inexplica
ble (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit).