Seeing our Way into Learning

Abstract

Recent developments in physics and neurobiology help explain recursive interactions between peripheral images and higher cortical centres that process symbolic representation. Seeing with focused attention to colour, line, depth and form, for example, gains meaning and understanding through this recursive process. Art as representation of constant, essential features of the external extends functions of the 'visual brain' to centres that bring perception to meaning and understanding that are interdependent with aesthetic sensibilities. Collaborative work through art enables verbal explication and explanation about details, abstractions and process that lead to theory building dependent on propositional, procedural and dispositional knowledge. The swirl of verbal, visual and gestural interactions that proceed out of engagement with multiple modes of representation ensures development of abilities to focus, strategise, discern and explicate components and integrate possibilities through future scenarios. The future curriculum needs to integrate visual, verbal and other representational modes as schools move closer in goals and process to non-school learning communities and organisations. Proposed here are ways to create an infrastructure for just such an ecology of learning environments that will link tightly with the information base of the new economy and the communicational needs of a civil society.