I believe that human understanding is quintessentially holistic in orientation and trajectory, in the sense that it always endeavours to see patterns in a field of view, or discern relationships among fragmented data. Understanding integrates. However I also believe that it is important when we think about holistic understanding that we don’t simply consign understanding to a bucket labelled Cognitive domain. This label is useful to educational theorists and practitioners who believe that the achievement of understanding can be studied apart from the setting in life (Sitz im Leben) of the meaning maker doing the work. However, as in the field of textual interpretation, so when making sense of a learner’s sense making challenge, everything is context. An individual’s pursuit of holistic understanding is a never ending journey because the question of context remains forever open. While a pedagogy of learning to understand a discreet concept can usefully be considered as a cognitive domain challenge, every learning achievement is also part of a deeper, wider process. Understanding some particular thing is part of one’s life-long, life-wide quest for holistic understanding, a state that spans what education theorists categorise into psycho-motor, cognitive and affective domains, but which, beyond these labels, can be recognised as a quest for ‘an ever more complex, comprehensive and coherent sense of self in the world’ (McKenzie 2014, p. 2). Defining growth in understanding in terms of shifts in self–world awareness in real time – in the continuous present – may be surprising, may seem outlandish to old school educators at first glance, but for my money this definition gives proper recognition to the central importance of meaning making in human experience. From a holistic perspective, meaning making as human lifework encompasses making meaning (making sense of things: cognitive domain) and finding meaning (self-realisation: personal ontology). When we consider the tensions that confront us in so many arenas of living in the twenty-first century, we may wonder whether humankind has the capacity and humility to see and do things so differently that terminal disintegration of the global order may be averted. The stakes are high enough for us to urgently consider reconfiguring the educational challenge of the twenty-first century.
The rabbit in the hat
We're all the same, we passers-by we trains in the night, we all hump our particular yesterdays we all herald our particular tomorrows. (McKenzie, 1996a)
One’s sense of self in the world resides in the continuous present like a pinpoint of light, informed, colourised by one’s particular and unique past. We take our past with us everywhere. My meaning making past, my acquired, habitual meaning making manoeuvres, predispose me to use the same routines again and again. We are comfortable going down the tracks we’ve been down before. On the other hand, the x factor that provides for novelty of thought and action in the face of such predisposition is one’s human creativity:
A creative surge of thought is my reply to a problem – a multi-dextrous, nimble, agile, counter-foil sleight of hand. Don't assume how I shall respond to these tired re-runs of problems The primary characteristic of creativity is that it keeps producing surprises So, you forces of mediocrity, fragmentation, dissipation, entropy ... be warned! (After McKenzie, 1996b)
The boundless context of my continuously present sense of self
The pursuit of holistic understanding is a never ending journey because the question of context remains forever open: there is always more that can be said about the why of things beyond what has already been acknowledged. According to philosophical hermeneutic thought, the pursuit of understanding follows a trajectory called the hermeneutic circle. As I have noted previously (McKenzie, 2016), I approach a work with an innate appreciation of the part/whole relationships in its constitution. I have an expectation that as I make sense of the particularities of the work, my conception of the whole takes clearer form. In turn, my enhanced conception of the whole gives me a stronger vantage point as I continue to interpret the nature and purpose of the parts. This switching back and forth between the elements and the whole operates in all human meaning making, which is why there is value in thinking of a human life as a hermeneutic journey and story.
For Ronald Bontekoe, the hermeneutic circle implies that the quest for understanding knows no bounds:
"Given that the hermeneutic circle involves the constant bringing to bear of new information into increasingly adequate interpretations of the object, hermeneutical inquiry has no natural resting place, no point at which it can suspend its operations with a sense of the job well and thoroughly done, short of an understanding of the entire world, and of the entire world, moreover, as an integrated world. Thus we find Hans-Georg Gadamer, for example, remarking at times upon what he calls an ‘ultimate need of reason: to be able to preserve a unity within the totality of what is’ (Gadamer, 1983, p. 2)" (Bontekoe, 2000, p. 10).
Nicholas Davey has a somewhat different emphasis:
"Unlike reason, understanding does not seek wholeness or completeness but ever-new interpretative relations. It is precisely upon the generation of new interpretative tensions which understanding's resistance to nihilism's entropy depends" (Davey, 2006, p. 183).
For philosophical hermeneutics, the hermeneutic circle is both the price of and prize for being human. Aspiring to hermeneutic consciousness involves more than head work: it can be thought of as an attitude to life that values the fostering of ever more complex, comprehensive and coherent relations between the self and the myriad imaginable contexts in which the self exists.
Being a meaning maker is not only a never ending journey, as I seek to integrate, make sense of my interior life (thoughts, feelings, intentions) within the context of my corporeal existence; it is also a never ending story. As a social being, every human not only has a unique story to tell, but also a self-realising incentive to give that history of experience some form of expression, to seek common ground with like-minded travellers. I owe it to myself to make an impression on humankind/others. We all have stories to tell, just as we all have a contribution to make:
"Wheels within wheels within wheels. Any assessment of my relationship with the world must recognise within my deep identity a making-whole behaviour reminiscent of the healing processes of biological and ecological systems" (McKenzie, 1996b).
Educators are in a prime position to cultivate an appreciation of a ‘life as a hermeneutic journey and story’ ethos in their learners.
References
Bontekoe, R. (2000). Dimensions of the hermeneutic circle. New York: Humanity Books.
Davey, N. (2006). Unquiet understanding: Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
McKenzie, A. (1996a). Sherd 900725. Included in Shapes taking form – the creative domain of the human spirit. Appendix 5, Improving the effectiveness of distance education for farmers, Unpublished masters thesis, University of Western Sydney, Richmond, NSW. Available here
McKenzie, A. (1996b). Photogenic angles – a personal reflection on creativity. Included in Shapes taking form – the creative domain of the human spirit. Appendix 5, Improving the effectiveness of distance education for farmers, Unpublished masters thesis, University of Western Sydney, Richmond, NSW. Available here
McKenzie, A. (2014). Meaning making: A university curriculum framework for the twenty-first century. Saarbrucken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. ISBN 978-3-659-52667-1. Available here.
McKenzie, A. (2016, 10 May). Lived hermeneutics: Teaching as if becoming rounded and grounded through growth in global understanding is the ultimate human goal [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://bit.ly/1rSW4Dc.
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