Session Information
13 SES 02, Attunement, Education and Teaching
Long Paper Session
Contribution
This paper explores an approach to education based on attunement. The concept of attunement exists in a broad spectrum of fields including philosophy, psychology and psycholinguistics. Its origins are musical; to bring something into tune, more commonly to bring something into harmony or accord. A concept based on listening, as opposed to seeing, offers an alternative to the preeminent ocularcentric view of the world, a perspective fundamentally shaped by the 'hegemony of vision' (Levin 1993). From an onto-genetic perspective, the dominance of vision is a striking reversal of early development: our sense of hearing is developed long before our sense of vision and it is our innate capabilities of attunement to language that present the basis of language acquisition.
The paradigmatic nature of therapeutic relationships in which listening becomes the primary sensory modality will be discussed, drawing on examples from the works of Oliver Sacks and Carl Rogers. The role of silence as an essential prerequisite of attunement will be considered in conjunction with the writings of Max Picard. This underlying connection between silence and attunement will then be discussed in the context of the hermeneutic approach to foreign language learning which Hans Hunfeld developed in South Tyrol. The teacher's capabilities of attunement will be viewed as a crucial form of embodied knowledge, the kind of 'knowledge in action', which Max von Manen has argued is decisive for success in teaching (von Manen 1995, 48). The fluidity and artistry which characterizes expert teaching depends on such forms of tacit knowledge, based on embodied capabilities and not on pre-learned teaching techniques.
A characteristic gesture of attunement is the violinist's fine tuning of her instrument while playing; a highly attentive form of listening, co-occurring with the corresponding minute adjustments made by touching the string. This contrasts with the far more common gestures of seeing and grasping. Ted Aoki has argued that it is this crucial distinction between touching and grasping that underlies the difference between the ideal of striving for attunement in teaching, as opposed to those goals of efficiency which dominate educational thinking today. He offers a vision of a classroom based on the attunement of a teacher to her pupils, “attuned to the place where care dwells, a place of in-gathering and belonging, where the indwelling of teachers and students is made possible by the presence of care that each has for the other.” (Aoki 2004, 190-191)
These two different visions of teaching reflect, on a deeper level, two fundamentally different ways of experiencing the world. Horst Rumpf has characterized these ways as Weltumgang I and Weltumgang II. The first of these ways is focused on achieving stability and control and is the source, for example, of technological progress. The second way is based on a direct sensory experience of the world which “allows itself to meet with, be wounded by, irritated and fascinated by the radiance of appearances, of the world as appearance.” (Rumpf 2004, 55) [my translation] Whereas the first perspective leads most directly to general and utilizable forms of knowledge, the second view accepts and lives with the potential ambiguities of the unknown. Rumpf argues for the necessity of both forms of experience in education.
In place of the dominant vision of the classroom as an efficient workplace with teacher and pupils following straight lines to achieve clearly defined goals, an alternative vision of teaching and learning based on attunement and occurring within the hermeneutic circle is proposed. David Michael Levin has argued that the hermeneutic circle represents the paradigmatic gesture of culture, exemplifying humility, deference and tact (Levin 1985, 163-164). Teacher education, teaching and empirical research based on each of these visions will invariably have fundamtentally different goals and methods.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
References Aoki, Ted T. “Layered Vocies of Teaching” Chap 8 in Curriculum in a New Key: The Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki. Mahweh NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. Boss, Medard. Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology. New York: Jason Aronson, 1970. Debiasi, Verena and Dorothea Gasser. Werkstatt als hermenutischer Dialog: Ein Bericht. Meran: Alpha Beta, 2004 ---”Werkstatt als dialogisches Lernen im Beruf.” Babylonia 1 (2005): 16-21. Dewey, John. The Public and its Problems. New York: Henry Holt, 1927. --- Experience and Nature. (New York: Dover, 1958) Hattie, John. Visible Learning for Teaching. London: Routledge, 2012. Heidegger, Martin. Einführung in die Metaphysik. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1998. Hunfeld, Hans. Fremdheit als Lernimpuls: Sektpsiche Hermeneutik – Normatlität des Fremden – Fremdsprache Literatur. Meran: Alpha-Beta, 2004. --- ”Der hermeneutische Ansatz im Fremdsprachenunterricht: Ruckblick und Ausblick: Ein Interview mit Hans Hunfeld," Babylonia 1 (2005): 46. Levin, David Michael. The Listening Self. London: Routledge, 1989 Levin, David Michael (Ed.). Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Luria, A.R.. The Man with a Shattered World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. Luria, A.R.. The Mind of a Mnemonist. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. Manen, Max von. “On the Epistemology of Reflective Pracitce” Teachers and Teaching Theory and Practice. Vol 1., no. 1 (1995) Novalis. Werke und Briefe in einem Band. Ed. Alfred Kelletat, Munich: Winkler, 1962. Picard, Max. Die Welt des Schweigens. Erlenbach-Zürich: Eugen Rentsch Verlag, 1950). Polanyi,Michael. The Tacit Dimension. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1983 Rogers, Carl. Freedom to Learn. Columbus Oh: Merrill, 1969. Rumpf, Horst. Diesseits der Belehrungswut: Pädagogische Aufmerksamkeiten. (Weinheim: Juventa, 2004) Sacks, Oliver. The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. New York: Harper Perennial, 1990. Sacks, Oliver. An Anthropologist on Mars. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1995. Sacks, Oliver. “The Fully Immersive Mind of Oliver Sacks” Steve Silberman, Wired 10-04, April, 2002. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.04/sacks_pr.html (last accessed 8/24/2013) Sacks, Oliver Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. New York: Knopf, 2007 Sacks, Oliver. The Mind's Eye. London, Picador, 2010. Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes, New York: Washington Square Press, 1966) Tomatis, Alfred. Der Klang des Lebens: Vorgeburtliche Kommunikation- die Anfänge der seelischen Entwicklung. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1987.
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