Integral Education: New Directions for Higher Learning

Written in “Three Voices”A Turn Toward Integral Higher Education

Written in “Three Voices” A Turn Toward Integral Higher Education Irene E. Karpiak The Voice of the “Scientist:” Introduction and Rationale Scholarly academic writing has traditionally identified with standards of objectivity, logic, and rationality, aptly depicted by the white lab coat of the researcher. Most course syllabi and course assignments similarly affirm the perspective of the objective , rational, and analytical approach. And, student works are generally assessed on the basis of evidence from scholarly references, typically avoiding comments about personal points of view, biases, and ways of knowing. As students become socialized into academe, they come to accept and emulate this orientation as consonant with its culture. They have become participants in what Wilber (1996, 1997, 2000a,b) has described as the reduction of the personal and the philosophical mode of knowing into that of the scientific—the paradigm of the empirical-natural sciences, and its “cornering the market on truth” (1997, p. 23). Yet, growing interest in integral consciousness is making inroads into adult and higher education, as educators incorporate personal, social, cultural, philosophical , and spiritual ways of knowing, that, in turn, are charting avenues for the emergence of an integral focus in adult and higher education. For example, Esbjörn-Hargens (2006, current volume), Gunnlaugson (2005), and Astin (2000), have explored various dimensions of integral consciousness as possible frameworks for curriculum theorizing and pedagogical practice. These and other educators are reaching beyond the impersonal/objective to include the personal/subjective and the collective/intersubjective, and asserting that it is problematic to separate the knower from the known and ignore the process of knowing. For the purpose of exploring the pedagogical significance of integrating the objective, subjective, and intersubjective dimensions for integral education and 215 216 Irene E. Karpiak development, I reflect on my work of incorporating features of Wilber’s (2000) Integral model in my graduate teaching in adult and higher education. I describe my practice of having students approach their inquiry, in accordance with Wilber’s model, through various “voices” and ways of knowing, structured through an assignment of course-related writing in “three voices.” Finally, I analyze the online postings of students’ written work from a recent semester, with respect to their significant features according to Wilber’s Integral framework. The Voice of the “Artist:” My Discovery of Wilber My association with integral education and the “three voices” began as a doctoral student of adult education, when my advisor, Dr. Howard Williams (whose own work centered on “the ways of knowing and curriculum”), introduced me to the works of integral philosopher, Ken Wilber. On reading Wilber’s (1977) The Spectrum of Consciousness, I had the experience not unlike that once described by playwright, Arthur Miller, on reading Henri Bergson’s Creative Evolution—“moving day for the soul.” Wilber’s work had a profound influence on my own orientation and development as an adult educator. It represented for me, as a student of adult education, an evolutionary, transformative perspective and framework that spoke to my own life and growth. My subsequent dissertation dealt with the life changes and psychological development of professionals at midlife and drew abundantly on Wilber’s (1977) “full-spectrum” model of consciousness development to distinguish development’s complementary processes. The Voice of the “Scientist:” A Rationale for Writing in “Three Voices” Since the publication of his initial volume over 30 years ago, Wilber has continued to explore, develop, and articulate his Integral Theory. In building a rationale for the more recent version of his theory, Wilber (1996) presents an historical account of the evolution of knowledge in Western society. He heralds the initial success of the Enlightenment period to differentiate what had previously been the “embedded ” disciplines of Science, Art, and Morals or the “Big Three,” noting also the substantial discoveries in each domain that arose from this differentiation. He also points to the less desirable consequences arising from the dissociation or separation of these three domains into distinct domains, each pursuing its own logic and standard of validity in isolation from the other. A further consequence was the diminution of the subjective and moral domains of art and philosophy, and their subsequent “collapse” or reduction into the domains of science. As a way to challenge this incorporation and to provide new ways to meet and resolve the complex demands and problems of postmodernity, Wilber (1996) 217 Written in “Three Voices” argues for the...