Inward Transcendence and Teacher Education in East/West Perspective

• In Event: 43.059 - The Philosophy of Listening in Intercultural Perspective

Abstract

Inward Transcendence and Teacher Education in East West Perspective

Objectives
This paper aims to (1) reveal the relationship between “inward transcendence” and listening ontology; (2) to explore the characteristics of teacher development and (3) reconstruct teacher education for the digital age in the 21st century based on listening ontology.

Theoretical Framework
The main Chinese wisdom traditions - Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism - are the core sources for “inward transcendence”. Confucianism is the main source for the study of teacher development, as all Confucians were teachers in Ancient China (Zhang & Pinar, 2015). The wisdom traditions in Greece are frequently compared as embodying “external transcendence”. The philosophical hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer are used to interpret and recreate wisdom tradition texts.

Methods
This study uses the paradigm of East/West inquiry, constituted by two intertwined methods: 1) East/West philosophical inquiry on the conceptions of listening ontology and teacher education; 2) East/West historical inquiry on the origins and development of listening ontology and teacher education.

Data
The main materials are from the classic texts focus on listening and teacher education from the wisdom traditions of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Resources from other wisdom traditions are also cited. Gadamer‘s and Dewey’s works sources for justifying the vision of teacher education grounded on listening ontology.

Results
A main characteristic of Chinese culture is “inward transcendence,” which means moral persons should reflect on their minds to seek the highest inward morality (Yu, 2005). Through “inward transcendence”, Chinese culture realizes the integration between “this world” and “the other world”(Fung, 2013). To attain transcendence, people should make self-cultivation their life-work. Listening to others and the world is the way to cultivate oneself. When people realize the spirit of “inward transcendence”, they attain the standards to change the world. Listening thus has ontological import in Chinese culture, in comparison with Western demarcation between this world and the other world.
Listening ontology and “inward transcendence” offer specific aims for education. The Confucian The Great Learning states, “What the great learning teaches, is to renovate the people; to rest in the highest excellence.” A flourishing person attains “sageliness within kingliness without.” Self-cultivation, family-regulation, state-governing, and world peace-making work together.

Conclusions
The paper concludes that teacher development and education are grounded in different wisdom traditions in different cultures. These traditions also provide the ground for constructing new visions for teacher education. China’s tradition of “inward transcendence” and listening ontology forms the uniqueness of the “teacher image”, the teacher as a unique kind of public intellectual (Zhang, 2015).

Significance
In the age of “big data”, the problem of teacher education might be viewed in terms of the expansion technical rationality. The investigation of Asian wisdom traditions is helpful in countering this tendency. Sometimes the future is in the past.

Author

• Hua Zhang, Hangzhou Normal University