JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF EDUCATION, VOL. 49

BEYOND THINKING: A GLIMPSE INTO REVELATORY TEACHING

L. Keith Carreiro

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

To discover the mind of another human being or one's own requires the risk of opening oneself up to the unfamiliar, the unexpected, which is often felt to be threatening. In the process something breaks and gives way: an eggshell. That is the price of birth and growth.

-- Walter Kaufmann¹

Sometimes there is an understanding, or a realization and a certitude born, regarding the experience of learning that translates into a transcendence² of being toward which this discussion strives to capture. That is, there are times when the flow³ of events in learning help bring deep levels of knowing into cognizance, or bring unexpected degrees of awareness into view. These discoveries are tapped by the release of the imagination⁴ by the teaching moment, by the power of will, by the passion to learn, or even by serendipity. It is axiomatic to this author that there is a sacrality, or sacred grounding,⁵ upon and through which this degree, or phenomena, of learning occurs. It is sacred because the bond that must be established between learner and teacher, teacher and subject, and with the greater scholarly communities throughout which the act of learning occurs, is a promise of intellectual potential⁶ being released. Such a promise is implicitly held between instructor and student and it rests upon the heart of revelation itself.

Revelatory processes, and other epistemological dynamics and ontological approaches, when purposefully and intentionally engaged by a teacher help lead student and teacher toward richer levels of intellectual unfoldment and spiritual development,⁷ both of which lead one into a fulfillment of professional potential and personal realization. The wealth of content and the equal abundance of reflective⁸ processes to tap into knowledge are so plentiful that even the mere deliberational⁹ act of dwelling pedagogically in such a value laden understanding brings forth metacognitive strength, greater awareness about what one is doing, and reflective sensitivity. Deliberative¹⁰ instructional practice, whether or not it serves an individual's autodidactic purpose, helping another to learn, or is used in group learning, when suffused with the aesthetic qualities mentioned here cannot but help, then, to ignite the mind¹¹ and enrich consciousness. Not to strive for such a virtue in one's teaching is to settle for less than superior learning. In this understanding, evaluation about one's teaching and learning becomes more than a meaningless rote, or a merely automatic, process;¹² it does not become mindless itemization, similar to quickly checking a recipe for accuracy. It is not another method of cognitive reductionism.¹³ Rather, it becomes more closely aligned with an inspired outline in which play, creativity, imagination¹⁴ and artistic thought¹⁵ may be released and combined practically¹⁶ with elemental knowledge and technical facility of the subject being studied, as well as with the students engaged in the teaching and learning process with the instructor.

Traditionally, from an epistemological sense, and in western philosophy, revelation is considered to be one of the ways individuals receive knowledge, or insight. Such revelation and revelatory experiences can metaphysically occur through a variety of spiritual, cognitive, and affective insights and realizations. The critically connective tissue that teaching can provide is to create an environment in which such linkage with revelatory material¹⁷ can occur. To bring insight, awareness, realization and understanding into being implies that illuminatory understanding upon the teacher's behalf must enter into play.¹⁸ This understanding centers at the mastery and deft craftsmanship of pedagogical and andragogical brilliance. Thus, techniques and methods used are subsumed under the connoisseurship¹⁹ and the heightened teaching sensitivity of a fully cognizant teacher.²⁰

The teacher must get out of the way of the student. This shift away from a teacher controlling a student's thinking processes to that of the student not having their power taken away from them by the instructor is very important to consider.²¹ To paraphrase Rogers (1969), do not assume that it is the teacher who gives the student power, it simply means that the teacher has not taken the student's power away. The teacher does not provide the student with the teacher's perceptions or self-assumed realities of knowledge management. Thought being controlled by instructional methods is routinization²² of awareness. If the focus of the teaching learning interaction is maintained from an instructor's locus of power, the subtle dynamics and processes involved in invoking imaginative and critical awareness by the student is unduly limited. Consequently, unconditional positive regard²³ for the axiological realm of human awareness must be in place for an individual to be able to grasp unconditional forms of knowledge that will be revealed to them. This revelation may appear in a variety of degrees and over a span of time, from an instant nanosecond of feeling to a lifetime of struggle for percipience, from a nudge of an idea, or a brief opaque glimpse of understanding, to a fully conceived realization or speculation.

For transcendent²⁴ thought to occur, transformational teaching must take place for the student and teacher to experience. This notion, conceptually alluded to by Roszak (1970) as rhapsodic intellect and by Polanyi (1967) as tacit knowing, may be likened to two jazz musicians interacting with one another on a musical level. The contextual relationship within which these two players dwell is a metaphorical reality wherein they are actively collaborating with one another. They also are fluidly interchanging between the rôles of teacher and student. The overt musical interaction going on is in a nondiscursive realm, and the representative structure of their activity may be construed as follows in the visual schematic provided the reader in Table 1.

Table 1 depicts an enhanced learning environment in which a variety of elements, processes, dynamics, characteristics and teaching factors are brought together, or suffused into one another, by a teacher who incorporates the labeled areas into the teaching and learning interaction. Likening this moment of instruction to a moment in time when the composition the two jazz players alluded to above is being performed between them, the teacher and student now engage in a similarly structured occasion. Although a musical composition may not be what is occurring between them, an intellectual one, nevertheless, is initiated, nurtured and sustained. The depth of the realization of knowledge that is released and realized by the players depends upon the abilities of the teacher and the student and their willingness to sound, if you will, the instrumentality of their states of being. Thus, if the two of them strike a resonance within one another, a discussion and transference of teaching and learning materials can occur. By employing the student's background awareness, the teacher can help make this peripheral awareness become explicit by engaging him or her in conversation. Such a discussion is conducted through the judicious use of applying the philosophical realms of inquiry we know as the metaphysical, epistemological and axiological dimensions. The acute and sensitive application of this philosophical focusing is dependent upon the liquid degree and fluency of thought the teacher brings to this moment. Consequently, the teacher's sense of instructional literacy, of subject expertise and his or her technical facility in coaching higher level awareness into a cognitively held space for deeper reflection can now be held.

When does an example of this phenomena of revelatory teaching happen? It often occurs when the following statement is placed on a college classroom chalkboard:

Deeply Seated Enjoyment = Profound Learning

The instructor, in this case, the author of this paper, is of the opinion that true learning only takes place when the masks²⁵ of artificiality and false ceremony are lifted away from us. That which is superficial to us, and that which does not go to our core sense of the what and the when of valid experience and awareness, will be resisted and rejected by our sense of proportional evaluation. We value and hold dear to us those elements we cherish. They guide us, enthrall our temporal moments, sustain our levels of energy and provide us in being resilient. Consequently, when teaching at the beginning of a semester, or during an initial course meeting, questions given to students echo the preceding sentiment expressed above as follows:

1.What excites you about learning?

2. When do you find yourself losing your normal sense of time, and when do you find yourself becoming enraptured in what you are doing?

3. What do you enjoy doing the most in your life?

Many students do not equate learning in school with moments of rapture. Neither do most of them associate schooling with pure enjoyment, nor do they view themselves in pleasurable and timeless awareness²⁶ when so engaged in schoolwork. So the questions about peak moments of experience²⁷ are moved from school into searching using questions to help search and sift through their memories and sense of selves and realities about their lives away from schooling and schools.

This shifting and refocusing away from school experiences to overall life experiences usually brings answers that center upon issues that rest closer to their hearts. The love of family and being with friends, the outdoors, of food, of sports and avocations holding deeper meaning to their individual identities now surfaces. After generating conversations about these matters, another question is asked, "What do you find is beautiful about what you have shared with us?" At this point, discussions about beauty and the nature of beauty begin. If there is enough instructional time, the realm of aesthetics is broached, because the teleological aim here is to link the students' awareness of beauty, aesthetics, enjoyment, and love of life with their sensing similar qualities about the nature of true learning and that of a deeply-satisfactory education.

Frequently, the understanding gained about beauty in life does not extend to any idea about what is beautiful about school.²⁸ This contradiction, or oppositional tension, is now examined. Another round of questions is asked:

Why cannot school be beautiful? Can a school be one where beauty is known? What is a beautiful school? What constitutes a beautiful curriculum, and what is beautiful about knowledge? Hence, what is a beautiful teacher, a beautiful student? To echo the spiritual understanding of the Navajo in this matter, how does one walk in beauty while in school?

While these questions create further reflective power, their use is to break through the seeming paradox of beauty and schooling as being totally separable from one another.²⁹ When the question, "What can I study that seems to have the most value and worth to me?" is asked, many students give a two-part response:(1) (a) "No one's ever asked us."

(b) "Why haven't I ever been asked such questions before?"

It is at this moment, when questions become student generated, that conversations between students begin to flow more equitably and are less centered between them and the instructor. Instead of the instructor having to go from direct to indirect instruction, s/he can now facilitate the conversations being held. If the class is a research class, or a writing-intensive class, the instructional aim is to help students examine relevant areas and critical issues that they wish to explore. The revelation is that examining a surface paradox may lead students to realizing and discerning, heretofore, hidden levels of meaning about which they have never fully explored.

Beyond thinking means neither the absence of thought, nor thought left in abeyance of rational control. On the contrary, it represents a thoughtfulness that is permeated with the complete presence of one's mind. It is an awareness that seeks to prepare itself for cognitive, ontological, and aesthetic information in the learning environment. Such intelligence, or sentience, if you will, senses, searches for, and discerns latent ideas in order to develop them into relational structures of thought for further consideration. This intentionality is held not only within the power of a teacher's mind, but by the teacher's transferring his or her instructional powers into creating a highly cognitive³⁰ learning environment that is pleasurable,³¹ inspiring, and empathic.³² To do so means not only has one designed a caring³³ and nurturing place for students to experience learning, but a thoroughly professional commitment to the development of human potential is now being released into the temporality of the teaching and learning moment.

END NOTES

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