Interconnectedness

of Thought & Practice 

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Introduction:

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Generative listening, as it is explored in this project, is the practice of being present and responsive when interacting with others.  One listens without agenda, to allow new understandings and pathways of inquiry to emerge. It is not listening for a predetermined outcome but holding space for others and, in the moment, responsively creating the conditions, for an unknown future to generate itself (Scharmer & Kaufer, 2013 ). It is an interconnected, co-emergence of possibilities from within the group and interactions of that group. As the leader, teachers are "mining the potential " and allowing creativity and innovation to surface (Crissinger, 2020). Teachers are not the trunk of the tree of knowledge with everything dependent upon a fixed, rooted stance (Aoki, 2005). Instead, teachers are the gardeners, creating the ideal conditions for growth and expansion of a complex rhizome (Scharmer, 2008). 

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Interconnected Elements, Contexts, and the Spaces Between Them: 

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Deleuze & Guatarri's metaphor of the rhizome in exploring the interconnectedness of disciplines and of the emergent nature of thought has been used extensively in educational practice and theory (1987; Aoki, 2005; Cormier, 2011; Murris, 2016). It suggests that all elements of life and learning are each distinct, yet each intertwined and interconnected (Deleuze & Guatarri, 1987, p.21). "A rhizome," they wrote, "ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles" (1987, p.21). A rhizomatic worldview will acknowledge disciplines and categories as having distinct traits, but will not treat them with as disconnected bodies that may exist in silos. Deleuze & Guatarri compares this to the metaphorical tree of western thought that has fixed roots, a predictable path, and a defined order (1987). Aoki, Canadian scholar and a father of Canadian phenomenology (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1995, p. 44) also distances himself from the 'Western" tree, embracing a more holistic, Eastern interaction with the world that considers all contexts, how each context affects that of the other, and the spaces between them where absence presents its own contextual meaning (Pinar, 2005). 

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Rhizomatic learning is fluid, with no beginning and no end. It is with a rhizomatic learning mindset that Ted Aoki refused to organize the compilation of his life's essays chronologically (Aoki, Pinar, & Irwin, 1955). 

[He] was “theming,” reflecting the gatherings that stimulated his thought, the clustering of concepts, the reconfiguring of melodies, creating new sounds of dissonance and difference out of juxtapositions a simple chronology would have silenced. (Pinar, 2005)

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While linear approaches are limited in scope, they are used widely in contemporary schools (Aoki, Pinar, & Irwin, 1955). Rhizomatic thinking is in direct contrast with the organization of many of our lived school and curricular contexts, where subjects and ways of being are compartmentalized into a topic, specific blocks, and intellectual capabilities that rarely intertwine. Aoki criticizes this linear, fixed, and compartmentalized system for "suffocating" learning and limiting potential (Pinar, 2005).

A rhizomatic off-shot into the BC context: 

In British Columbia's public education system, this "suffocating" systemic and social organization is a self-fulfilling prophecy (Biggs, 2013) and a manifestation of the phenomenological "they" (Heidegger, 1962, p.165) as it is not a written policy or authoritative expectation. In British Columbia, the provincial, curricular documents do not state directives for how schools organize, nor the methods in which the curriculum is delivered; it does, though, offer cross-curricular suggestions (BC Ministry of Education, 2015). In the BC public school system, teachers have "individual autonomy in determining the methods of instruction, and the planning and presentation of course materials in the classes of pupils to which they are assigned" (BCPSEA 2019). 

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There is no "they", humans all have the capacity to choose "authenticity" instead: 

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In Heidegger's phenomenology (the process of letting things manifest themselves), "they" is the "nobody" to whom people have surrendered (Heidegger, 1962, p.165). It's the force of unidentifiable source of pressure for our conformity to societal pressures to obey, save, marry, follow... (1962, p. 164-165). The influence of allowing this "they" to influence our behaviour is described by Heidegger as "fallenness" (165). Fallenness is one of three interconnected aspects of our human "being" (verb: a way of being) that causes us to fall away from our deeper destinies. This way of being in comparison and making ourselves smaller out of fear of judgment is explored by  Brené Brown as living in an "internal condition of scarcity" (2012). Both Brown (2012, p. 218) and Heidegger point to "authenticity" as a practice for "letting oneself be summoned out of ones' lostness in the 'they'" (Heidegger, 1962, p. 345). Authenticity, instead of simply meaning honesty or sincere, refers to the consistency between one's actualities and one's possibilities (162, p. 343-345; Brown, 2010, p. 49-54). Discussing Aoki's ideas in "A Lingering Note", Pinar quotes the word "suffocating" to describe "inauthentic schools... regulated by bureaucratic protocols" (Pinar, 2005). "Suffocating" is the gerund (Aoki avoided language that separated the subject from the object) extended to the Western focus on the disconnected, independent individual (2005). 

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Aoki, like Deleuze & Guatarri, sees education in the phenomenological unity of the subject (experience) and object (world) (Aoki 2005; Deleuze & Guatarri, 1987; Leiden University, 2017 ). There is no world apart from our experience, and no experience apart from the world. We do not exist separate from our contexts and our contexts do not exist without us. In that reciprocity of relationships, one gives the other meaning. Knowledge is negotiated, co-created between contexts and in the spaces between those contexts (Aoki, 1995; Cormier, 2011). These pathways of connections are bridges on which we are invited to linger: “I understand conversation as a bridging of two worlds by a bridge, which is not a bridge (Aoki, 2005). Context changes meaning to the extent that meaning cannot remain static. This is the essence of the Hermeneutic circle. Hermeneutics is a philosophy of inquiry that resists clear definition; it is focused on the interpretation of meaning by focussing on symbols, details, and what is not made obvious (Gadamer, 1989; Grondin, 1995; Rosfort, 2019. It is a practice that is self-aware in that the act of how we derive meaning, adds to the interpretation of the meaning. The process is a "mutual effect'' (Smith, 1991) where the act of interpreting alters the present reality as it forms new knowledge, therefore the original state of the subject changes in each instance in it interacted with, which gives cause for further study: the hermeneutic circle. This recursion is generative, mutual affecting between the whole and its parts (Maturana & Varela, 1992).

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Gregory Bateson, rooted in hermeneutics, complained that scientists caused problems by seeking ways to solve narrow human difficulties(Watras, 2015). A better approach was for science to use metaphors to help people expand their thinking and illuminate the connections among various parts of the universe (2015). The use of metaphor is also a practice associated with critical pedagogists who reject absolute, fixed interpretations of the nature of learning (Apple, 2014; Giroux, 2014). They argue against a banking model of education where knowledge is transferred in favour of a constructive process of building one's own understandings in context and with critical awareness (Freire, 1970/2005; Giroux, 2013). One process used by critical pedagogists in building understanding, is a conceptual metaphor which uses the analysis of multiple surface metaphors in exploring a topic (Gibbs, 2014). Both Dewey and Vygotsky's constructivist approaches paralleled this method (Dewey,1897; Vygotsky,1934). As a branch of cognitive linguistics, (Masden, 2016) conceptual metaphor is commonly utilized in dialogic situations, such as Karen Murris's work using storybooks as a metaphor in teaching your learners through philosophy (2016).

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