Theory of knowledge or knowledge of the child? Challenging the epistemological assumptions of the curriculum debate on geography from an alternative viewpoint

Abstract

Recent academic debates on the geography curriculum for schools have highlighted the need for more focus on how knowledge is socially produced. While this may help to bridge the gap between the school curriculum and epistemological developments in academia, it is unclear how such theoretical frameworks can improve pupils' learning about the world. In this paper theoretical approaches to knowledge are challenged by considering, from an alternative viewpoint, how pupils themselves act as knowledge producers. Drawing on the holistic educational philosophy informing the Steiner-Waldorf approach to curriculum knowledge and pedagogy, it is argued that subject knowledge needs to suit the way pupils' thinking naturally evolves, giving particular attention to the role that imagination and sense of wonder play in both the cognitive process and pupil engagement. The epistemological status of the pupil in geography education can therefore be enhanced by considering approaches to education that operate outside normal scientific and rational paradigms. This has relevance for the wider debate on more flexible, post-industrial forms of learning.

Keywords:

• geography
• curriculum
• child-centred
• Steiner education

Notes

1. There are currently over 1000 schools worldwide that follow Rudolf Steiner’s educational philosophy. For more information see: http://www.steinerwaldorf.org

2. It is important to note that whereas social constructivism and social realism operate within different epistemological frameworks, from the child-centred viewpoint presented here they both work from the assumption that curriculum knowledge is best formulated on an abstract, theory-driven level. As such, many of the comments made here on the importance of imagination in knowledge production could apply to both schools of thought.

3. This view of knowledge closely follows Goethe’s phenomenology, in which understanding of phenomena is achieved through a combination of perception and imagination, what Goethe called ‘imaginative perception’. This is one approach to knowledge production used in Steiner schools. While the scope for direct perception of geographical phenomena in the classroom is obviously limited, ideas can still be generated from visual and descriptive information (e.g. slides, teacher narrative etc.).

4. It should be stressed that building knowledge from observation, although this will require a conceptual framework to link perceptual information and build up a rational understanding of the ‘whole’, allows knowledge to develop in close relation to the objects themselves. Such a contextual form of knowledge also recognises that objects in space do not exist, nor can they be understood, as discrete entities.

5. The practical application of Steiner’s esoteric knowledge in different fields (education, medicine, agriculture etc.) has depended on his clear articulation of how spiritual processes work in the physical realm. Regarding child development, for example, we can observe the proportions of the head, at birth, in relation to the rest of the body and the way the child’s physical body appears to grow downwards into the torso and limbs. Considering the inner realm of the psyche or consciousness (which Steiner associated with spirit), however, we can observe how much the infant is awake (at least subconsciously) in its limbs, and how consciousness then gradually ‘moves up’ the body towards the head as the child develops. Picturing these movements we can imagine how, during the middle stage of child development (i.e. 7 to 13 years) the chest region, including the heart and lungs, might dominate both physical growth processes and the child’s (feeling embedded) thought life (see Steiner, 1995).

6. In Steiner schools formal conceptual learning is generally withheld until after the second dentition (6 to 7 years), which is considered a new phase in the child’s mental development (Steiner, 1995). Geography begins in the ninth year, which Steiner associated with the deepening of the pupil’s sense of self and therefore separation from the world: the crossing of the Rubicon. Spatial concepts are then taught but developed in close relation to pupils’ lived experiences and imagination.

7. As with the second dentition, Steiner viewed puberty as both a physiological and spiritual (or mental) transformation. Thinking becomes more detached from the (bodily) realm of feelings, which now work on a more subtle level in the newly emerging capacity for independent, rational judgement.

8. Here, again, I work with Steiner’s spiritual epistemology which identifies two dominant polarities (what he terms ‘soul forces’) in the thinking process: ‘sympathy’ and ‘antipathy’. Sympathy draws the thinker towards the object, as in phenomenological description and its corresponding mental image. Antipathy, on the other hand, draws the thinker away from the world to the inner realm of mental abstraction, as in theoretical and conceptual frameworks (see Steiner, 1990 and Welburn, 2004 for details of the metaphysical ideas informing this model of cognition). Ideally, knowledge production should be based on a dialectical process involving both modes of thinking.

9. The capacity of nature’s aesthetic to generate both wonder and critical ecological questions is captured very powerfully by film. I am reminded, for example, of Werner Herzog’s Lessons of darkness (1992) and, more recently, Encounters at the end of the world (2007).

10. Steiner pedagogy works with a three day rhythm. Mental images generated narratively on one day are recalled and transformed into clearly formed ideas or concepts on the next (the narrative also continues daily). This allows for knowledge to be digested and individualised during sleep (Smit, 1992). On the third day ideas are normally applied in writing and drawing. This holistic approach engages pupils’ feelings (through imagination), thinking (through recall) and will (through application) during each lesson. Geography, like many other subjects, is taught over three to four week intensive blocks.

11. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the limitations of an imaginative or phenomenological approach to geography. However, a key question to consider is: can themes in human geography (settlement, migration etc.) be developed using such an approach? I suggest that to truly ‘humanise’ geography normal definitions of subject boundaries need to be revised. We could begin to build knowledge, for example, by focusing on the objects of human geography that can be observed or, in a wider ecological sense, by considering how they are related to the natural world.