“Reviewing” Educational Relations: “Knowing” as Agents: Macmurray and the Complexity of Being “Persons-in-Relation”

• In Event: Roundtable Session 41
  In Roundtable Session: Complexity and Education

Abstract

If the purpose of educational research is to make education better and serve the public good, then this paper responds to AERA’s call that ‘knowing is not enough’. ‘Knowing’ from a standpoint whereby the thinker is an isolated self reflecting on the ‘other’ to be known only as an ‘object’ simply cannot be enough. Educational knowing, has to be ‘knowing’ within the immediacy of lived experience with others – the kind of research that places values of care and connection (Gilligan, 1982) and ethical responsibility (Macmurray, 1957, 1961) foremost in recognising all persons as being embedded in a complicated nexus of human relationships created and sustained by the attention and response of ‘agents in action’ rather than ‘thinkers in thought’.

Author

• Linda Craig, The University of Aberdeen