Metaphors for Constructivism: An Exploration of the Aesthetic and Empathetic Dimensions of Constructivist Teaching Capacities

• In Event: Deleuze, Guattari, and Art Education

Abstract

Objectives
The objective of this paper is to reconsider the capacities required by the contemporary constructivist teacher in terms of aesthetic empathy. The classroom in this sense can then be re-imagined as a composition that the teacher “feels with”. We derive metaphors for teaching based on this account of aesthetic empathy (Koss, 2006), and propose strategies for developing teaching capacities based on this concept.
Constructivism asks us to teach in a manner that facilitates the co-construction of learning. The authors of this paper develop visual and conceptual metaphors, which prompt teachers to envision what constructivist teaching calls for in terms of their comportment and capacities as teachers. What capacities do constructivist teachers need to cultivate in themselves and within their learning environments, or within themselves as elements of their learning environments? By approaching this question, the authors elucidate the significant workings of empathy in teaching. In doing so, they explore the contributions of aesthetics to educational theory, looking beyond the domain of art education and into the roots of aesthetic sensibility which lie in capacities for perception, affection and experience. The metaphors developed in this paper demonstrate how Spinoza’s question, what can a body do?, is central to constructivist teaching where capacities for empathy and aesthetic sensitivity are core.
Theoretical framework
Drawing on the works of Deleuze and Guattari (1991), this account of empathy suggests that the significance of teaching is not between one subject and another, but the bundles of affects with which learning situations are composed (O’Sullivan, 2001). It is this form of empathy, we argue, that can help us to understand certain nuances of teaching that are overlooked by the other accounts. Certainly cognitive forms of empathy are important in teaching, but they cannot acknowledge the complex affective dynamics within which teaching both enters and is composed with. Teaching is certainly an intervention into affective situations and directs or conducts affects in situations, but it is significantly composed with those situations. In other words, the act of teaching is itself composed by the affects of teaching situations. This kind of complexity can be understood better by developing an aesthetic concept of composition.
Mode of Inquiry
This is a theoretical paper, informed by autoethnographic teaching experience.
Data
Teaching journals and sketchbooks.
Arguments
Constructivist theories do not address the capacities required to cultivate in oneself in order to teach in such an environment. This paper addresses this need.
Significance
This paper addresses a gap in pre-service teacher training in constructivist teaching environments.

Authors

• Renee Jackson, Concordia University - Montreal

• Suzanne McCullagh, Concordia University