Higher Education Reconceived: A Geography of Change

Chapter Six. Changing Ideas about Communities of Learning

Changing Ideas about Communities of Learning C H A P T E R S I X 57 This medieval octagonal design with bastions seems to have existed only on the floor of the cathedral in Reims, France. Courtesy Jeff Saward, photographer. 58 H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N R E C O N C E I V E D Caring Relationships I n healthy families adults assume a teaching role within the context of the family relationships, making these adults the first and arguably the most important teachers that the child experiences. Certainly, a child learns a great deal in a relatively brief period of time. This relationship is rooted in what Nel Noddings argues is the fundamental ontological relationship, in which “we recognize that human encounter and affective response is a basic fact of human existence.”1 Max van Manen similarly argues for the relationship, which he calls pedagogical thoughtfulness, a fundamental teaching relationship. He says, “The child is in a real sense the agent of his or her own destiny—at both the individual and the social level. So a new pedagogy of the theory and practice of living with children must know how to stand in a relationship of thoughtfulness and openness to children and young people.”2 This fundamental pedagogical relationship is the historical root of teaching. Noddings describes a caring teacher as follows: Suppose, for example, that I am a teacher who loves mathematics. I encounter a student who is doing poorly, and I decide to have a talk with him. He tells me that he hates mathematics. Aha, I think. Here is the problem. I must help this poor boy to love mathematics, and then he will do better at it. What am I doing when I proceed in this way? I am not trying to grasp the reality of the other as a possibility for myself. I have not even asked: How would it feel to hate mathematics? Instead, I project my own reality onto my student and say, You will be just fine if only you learn to love mathematics. And I have ‘data’ to support me. There is evidence that intrinsic motivation is associated with higher achievement . . . so my student becomes an object of study and manipulation for me. . . . Bringing him to love mathematics is seen as a noble aim. And so it is, if it is held out to him as a possibility that he glimpses by observing me and others; but then I shall not be disappointed in him, or in myself, if he remains indifferent to mathematics. It is a possibility that may not be actualized. What matters to me, if I care, is that he find some reason, acceptable in his inner self, for learning the mathematics required of him or that he reject it boldly and honestly. How would it feel to hate mathematics? What reasons could “Because life in a complex and changing society is confusing, the temptation is to stand still and wait for things to clear up, to wash out, to become right again. But that is not patience; that is indifference.” Joan Chittister (Becoming Fully Human, 80) C H A P T E R S I X C H A N G I N G I D E A S A B O U T C O M M U N I T I E S O F L E A R N I N G 59 I find for learning it? When I think this way, I refuse to cast about for rewards that might pull him along. He must find his rewards. I do not begin with dazzling performances designed to intrigue him or to change his attitude. I begin, as nearly as I can, with the view from his eyes: Mathematics is bleak, jumbled, scary, boring, boring, boring. . . . What in the world could induce me to engage in it? From that point on, we struggle together with it.3 One element of caring, according to Noddings, is engrossment, a feeling with “the other.” “I do not ‘put myself in the other’s shoes,’ so to speak, by analyzing his reality as objective data and then asking, ‘How would I feel in such a situation?’ On the contrary, I set aside my temptation to analyze and to plan, I do not project; I receive the other into myself, and...