This reading course is an ongoing series of reflections while reading and using mental strategies for dealing with the conflict that emerges during these moments of reflection in an effort to build curiosity for wanting to resolve the conflict that move meaninglessness to meaningfulness. “As Dewey defines it, reflection is a particular way of thinking and cannot be equated with mere haphazard “mulling over” something. Such thinking in contrast to reflection, is, in a word, undisciplined” It is the bridge of meaning that connects one experience to the next that gives direction and impetus to growth. The process of refection, Dewey claims, moves the learner from a disturbing state of perplexity (also referred by him as disequilibrium) to a harmonious state of settledness (equilibrium). Perplexity is created when an individual encounters a situation whose “whole character is not yet determined.) That is the meaning is not yet established. The internal experience for the learner is one of disequilibrium an unsettledness. It is the yearning for balance that in turn drives the learner to doing something to resolve it - namely, to start the process of inquiry, or reflection” (Rodgers). Education and competence learning are the same thing. Today we define learning as growing new dendrites when the learner’s new information interconnects with the learner’s prior knowledge. Let’s take a look at John Dewey’s definition of “education”, “that reconstruction and reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases [one’s] ability to direct the course of subsequent experience.” Dewey’s definition of education is no different than
the modern work of John Bransford’s on developing competence in an area of inquiry. Dewey goes past passive learning when he insists that that learned is a “reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience.” Dewey anticipated the conformation of the physical nature of leaning in the brain a hundred years before MRIs - an external reflection of an internal process. What make his definition of education (learning) even more prophetic is the anticipation of the works of researchers such as John Bransford on human learning. The second part of Dewey’s definition of education (learning), “and which increases [one’s] ability to direct the course of subsequent experience”, even predates Flavell’s insights into metacognition and is actually a definition of metacognition. John Bransford’s research on human learning concluded in “On Human Learning” that in order to develop competence in an area of inquiry, the learner needs to (parenthesis below parallel with Dewey’s definition of education): • Develop a deep foundation of factual knowledge (the need for a vast and deep reservoir of factual knowledge in which “reconstruction and reorganization of experience adds meaning to experience”) • Understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework ( this “increases on’s ability to direct the course of subsequent experience”)
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