week 2

1. EDBE 8P15 –
Week 2
Creating Insight

2. Class Agenda
• Attendance and Questions
• Presentations:
• Towards a Worldview of Teaching Examine
worldview/schemata
• Consider Dewey’s experience
• Implications for students of our worldview
• Narrative Inquiry in Teacher Education
• Connelly and Clandinin
– 3 Commonplaces of Narrative Inquiry
• Looking Ahead 

3. Housekeeping
• Presentation schedules and Triad Groupings posted on
Sakai under Resources and also under Week 2 tab.
• Letters – please address group members by name
• Questions, Concerns, Clarifications?

4. Oral Chronicle Presentations
• Following each oral chronicle, please take a
moment to provide the presenter with written
feedback on their presentation.
• This assignment is personal and the
feedback should follow the
THINK guidelines: Only share comments
that are
True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary and/or
Kind.

5. 10 minutes, please

6. Towards a Worldview of Teaching
• What is schemata/worldview?
• Read Aloud Activity: The Important Book, by Margaret
Wise Brown
• How do we determine our personal schemata?
• Why is it important to learners that teachers do?
• What are some traditional teaching methods that would
enable a teacher to determine the worldview of their
students?
• Discussion Activity: Read statement, then in a group
discuss how this “worldview” might influence a teacher’s
relationship with other learners. Report back to large
group.

7. Think-Pair-Share
• How would the following statements
influence a teacher’s relationship with
students if she/he thinks this way about
life and teaching?
• “It’s either my way or the highway.”
• “Those kinds of kids will never learn how to
read and write anyway, what’s the use?”
• “You gotta take chances in life.”
• “Every experience I live is a gift of life.”
• Think of your favourite teacher; how could
you describe their worldview, as you saw it?

8. Activity
• What kinds of quotes
or phrases reflect
your schema or
worldview of life?
• Whole class sharing
Graffiti Wall

9. Dewey

10. • Chapter 3
• Dewey believed “that democratic social arrangements promote a
better quality of human experience, one which is more widely
accessible and enjoyed, than do non-democratic and anti-
democratic forms of social life”
• “The basic characteristic of habit is that every experience enacted
and undergone modifies the one who acts and undergoes, while this
modification affects, whether we wish it or not, the quality of
subsequent experiences”
• “From this point of view, the principle of continuity of experience
means that every experience both takes up something from those
which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of
those which come after.”

11. • “Growth, or growing as developing, not only physically but
intellectually and morally, is one exemplification of the principle of
continuity.”
• “every experience affects for better or worse the attitudes which help
decide the quality of further experiences, by setting up certain
preference and aversion, and making it easier or harder to act for
this or that end.”
• “every experience influences in some degree the objective
conditions under which further experiences are had”
• Example “If a person decides to become a teacher, lawyer,
physician, or stock-broker, when he executes his intention he
thereby necessarily determines to some extent the environment in
which he will act in the future. He has rendered himself more
sensitive and responsive to certain conditions, and relatively
immune to those things about him that would have been stimuli if he
had made another choice.”

12. • “The difference between civilization and savagery, to take an example on a
large scale, is found in the degree in which previous experiences have
changed the objective conditions under which subsequent experiences
take place. The existence of roads, of means of rapid movement and
transportation, tools, implements, furniture, electric light and power, are
illustrations. Destroy the external conditions of present civilized
experience, and for a time our experience would relapse into that of
barbaric peoples. “
• “The environment, in other words, is whatever conditions interact with
personal needs, desires, purposes, and capacities to create the
experience which is had.”
• “Continuity and interaction in their active union with each other
provide the measure of the educative significance and value of an
experience.”
•
• “Accordingly, upon them (Educator) devolves the responsibility for
instituting the conditions for the kind of present experience which has a
favorable effect upon the future. Education as growth or maturity should be
an ever-present process.”

13. Experience and Education
John Dewey
• Traditional vs. Progressive Education
• Theory of Experience
• How is Dewey’s theory of experience
relevant in education today?

14. Dewey
• Traditional vs. Progressive Education
• Dewey believed that school should be a microcosm of the
community or the society – of the real world.
• Reflective thinking and experiential methods in school and
society mark him as one of the greatest educational philosophers
in the world.
• By age 19, he expressed his worldview as: “If you lose faith in
yourself, you lose faith in humankind.” He believed that the
purpose of philosophy was that of addressing and solving the
problems and conflicts of human life.
• Dewey emphasized a student-centered, activity-oriented
curriculum with the focal point being the promotion of reflective
thinking. He also believed that the teacher should provide
problems or situations that would not only be interesting and
challenging, but also would be worthwhile in promoting social
growth

15. Dewey’s Criteria of Experience
• A Theory of Experience was needed if education was to be
intelligently conducted on its basis
• Category of Continuity or The Experiential Continuum
– Shaping environmental experiences that lead to growth
– Used to determine whether or not experiences are worthwhile,
educationally
– Since we discriminate between values of experiences, we need to
establish criterion for discrimination for experiences to ensure the
principle of continuity
• The principle of Continuity of Experience means “that every
experience both takes up something from those [experiences]
which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of
those [experiences] which come after.” (p.13)
• Can you think of any examples?
• Growth means growing or developing intellectually, physically
and morally. Growth as education and education as growth.

16. The Educator’s Responsibility
• Continuity becomes a criterion to determine
whether experiences are educative or
miseducative. Every experience is a moving
force…the mature educator has the
responsibility to evaluate each experience of
the young in a way in which the one having
the less mature experience cannot do…the
educator’s business is to see in what direction
the experience is heading…failure to take the
moving force of an experience into account so
as to judge and direct it …means the
educator is being disloyal to the principle of
experience itself.
• A primary responsibility of
educators is that they not only be
aware of the general principle of
the shaping of the actual
experience by envisioning
conditions, but that they also
recognize surroundings that are
conducive to having experiences
that lead to growth. Above all, they
should know how to utilize the
surroundings, physical and social,
that exist so as to extract from
them.
• Adult influence is more than just
exercising external control over
experiences, it requires a
sympathetic understanding, or
empathy, over what individual
students may be experiencing.

17. Interactions
• The principle of Continuity of
Experience is used as a criterion
for determining the value of an
experience.
• The second chief principle for
determining the educational
function and force of an experience
is Interaction
• Interaction assigns equal rights to
both factors in experience:
objective and internal conditions.
•Objective and internal
conditions, combined,
form a Situation, which
becomes the basis for the
experience.
•Life is a series of
situations through which
we are all interacting with
others in our environment.
•The environment is
whatever conditions
interact with us to create

18. Interactions
• The principle of Continuity of Experience
is used as a criterion for determining the
value of an experience.
• The second chief principle for determining
the educational function and force of an
experience is Interaction
• Interaction assigns equal rights to both
factors in experience: objective and
internal conditions.
•Objective and internal
conditions, combined, form
a Situation, which becomes
the basis for the
experience.
•Life is a series of
situations through which
we are all interacting with
others in our environment.
•The environment is
whatever conditions
interact with us to create
the experiences we have.

19. Educators must adapt to their
students
• If educators are going to be selecting and constructing
objective conditions, they must do so for the specific
students they are teaching; teachers must know and
understand their students’ needs and capacities.
• Failing to adapt materials to students’ needs and capacities
may cause an experience to be non-educative.
• Continuity, with respect to education, means that the future
has to be considered at every stage of the process.
• For learning and knowledge to be relevant and useful, the
subject matter can’t be learned in isolation; students must be
able to generalize their learning.

20. Educators must adapt to their
students
• If educators are going to be selecting and constructing
objective conditions, they must do so for the specific students
they are teaching; teachers must know and understand their
students’ needs and capacities.
• Failing to adapt materials to students’ needs and capacities
may cause an experience to be non-educative.
• Continuity, with respect to education, means that the future has
to be considered at every stage of the process.
• For learning and knowledge to be relevant and useful, the
subject matter can’t be learned in isolation; students must be
able to generalize their learning.

21. What’s Most Important,
according to Dewey
• Fostering a positive attitude toward learning is critical
• The most important attitude that can be formed is that of a desire to
go on learning
• The present affects the future, so maximize your moments and be
present
• Maturity brings understanding and perspective; those who have
reached maturity are responsible for creating favourable conditions
for present experiences that will positively affect future experiences

22. Dewey’s Criteria of Experience
• Continuity of experience
• Shaping environmental experiences that
lead to growth
• Interaction
• Situation
• Continuity and interaction intercept and
unite

23. Constructivism
• An approach to learning and teaching that
encourages learners to take an active role in
their learning
• The learner constructs new knowledge on prior
knowledge, building understanding and making
sense of new information
• Students experience successful learning when
they are actively engaged in: constructing
knowledge for themselves; reflect on their views
and views of others; arrive at new
understandings that expand their worldview

24. From Theory to Practice
One of the cornerstones of Dewey’s
philosophy, with respect to schools,
is that education is not a preparation
for life; education is life.
Lock eyes with a person across the
room and partner up:
Discuss this ideological perspective
and the explore the relevance of this
belief in relation to classroom
teaching today.

25. Narrative Inquiry in
Teacher Education
Readings so far:
• How can narrative inquiry be useful in
teaching? (Ciuffetelli Parker, 2010, 2011)
• Why is story important? (Connelly &
Clandinin, 2006)
• Why is experience important? (Dewey,
1938)

26. Connelly & Clandinin (2006)
Narrative Inquiry is a
way of
understanding
experiences
as lived,
and as told through
stories.

27. Narrative Inquiry
Narrative Inquiry is a way of
understanding experiences as lived,
and as told through stories

28. Dewey
Connelly & Clandinin

29. 3 Commonplaces of Narrative Inquiry
(Connelly & Clandinin)
Temporality
• Events under study are in temporal transition, so we describe them in terms of past,
present and future
• We paint a temporal picture of how we see things transitioning
• “To give a narrative explanation, one needs to know the temporal history.” (p.5)
• Temporality is the main dimension that distinguishes a telling inquiry from a living
inquiry
Sociality
Place

30. Activity - Temporality
Think of a classroom happening
1) Describe the happening
2) Thinking narratively, ask yourself what
else you need to know to give a temporal
feeling to that story

31. Temporality distinguishes…
• To give a narrative explanation one needs
to know the temporal history (i.e. what
happened the day before, the month
before, and so on)
• Temporality is the main dimension that
distinguishes a telling inquiry from a living
inquiry

32. Sociality – Conditions that
influence experiences
• Social conditions and personal conditions that form the
individual’s context
• Social conditions = existential conditions; environment,
factors and forces that influence experiences
• Personal conditions = feelings, hopes, desires…
Imagine the same classroom happening.
1) Only focus on the teacher (feelings, morality,
responses to happening, etc).
2) Now only focus on the teacher’s social
conditions (i.e. the context including
administration, policy, community, etc) that
shape the happening and the teacher’s part in
it.

33. Activity - Place
Think back to the classroom happening
1) Describe what happened in abstract
form, in general term
2) Now describe the classroom (the
place) in its context and full detail,
thinking through the impact of this
particular place on the happening
Physical place, or sequence of places, where experiences occur
For Narrative Inquiry, the specificity of place is crucial; every
place has an impact/influence.

34. 3 Commonplaces* of Narrative Inquiry
(Connelly & Clandinin)
Temporality
Sociality
Place
* The study of one or a combination of these
might find its place in other forms of
qualitative research, but what makes a
narrative inquiry is the simultaneous
exploration of all 3

35. Looking ahead…
• Next week’s readings: Schwab (1973);
Dewey, Chapter 4 & 5
• Narrative Presentations
• Letter 2 is due next week!

36. Thank you for another great
class! 
• We covered a lot today.
• Thank you for your active participation in
our activities and learning today.
• Have a great weekend!