Open towards the future. A reinvigoration of practical wisdom in teaching with a view to subjectification

ABSTRACT

The daily contingent and ambiguous praxis of teaching raises various issues that are related to the multidimensional question of the purpose: what to do and how to act with a view to what is considered to be educationally desirable? Despite the revival of interest for practical wisdom as quality of teachers to judge what is to be done, literature is still scarce on practically wise teaching as a coherent entity of strategies to act and on a way to activate these strategies in the course of teaching. This article presents an elaboration of practically wise teaching with a view to the subject-ness of students and that involves four consecutive strategies: to sense difference, to allocate meaning, to deliberate with others, and to decide how to act. Practically wise teaching is characterised by a listening, receptive attitude to engage with the openness to the future in order to actualise the internal goods of teaching regarding students’ subject-ness.

KEYWORDS:

• Practical wisdom
• teaching strategies
• subjectification
• ambiguity and contingency

1. Introduction

Even teachers with great experience can be puzzled when confronted with a situation in the classroom that appeals for a response but cannot be solved in a simple way. While teachers attempt to help each individual student in an appropriate way and to promote learning and development that is attuned to his or her individual situation and context, pedagogical situations and incidents are often not unequivocal nor unconditional. For example, a primary school teacher doesn’t know how to address a student who is entangled in a situation of maladjusted behaviour, social exclusion and systematic underachievement. Another example is that of teachers of a successful secondary school who appear not to be able to appeal to students and motivate them to engage despite a full range of challenging learning activities and topics. Dealing with these and other situations, teachers come across a large amount of considerations as educational goals, pedagogical aims, institutional concerns, and school specific cultures and customs. Because education is not unequivocal, pedagogical situations can be ambiguous, may cause confusion, and continuously ask for interpretation and judgment. How should teachers act?

Recently, attention has been drawn to practical wisdom as a quality of professionals to deal with situations of ambiguity (Bondi et al., 2011; Kinsella & Pitman, 2012). The concept of practical wisdom is also used in the educational context and refers to the capacity to deal wisely with particular situations in the course of teaching (Birmingham, 2004; Furman, 2018; Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2009; Smith, 1999). The revival of interest has evoked a broad and sometimes divergent theoretical field involving various conceptualisations, interpretations and terminologies. In this article we elaborate practical wise teaching as a coherent entity of strategies firstly and secondly we present a design to activate these strategies in the course of teaching with a view to one of the core purposes of education, namely subjectification. This purpose is related to responsiveness and responsibility in which the students’ freedom as human beings and the freedom to act or to refrain from action are at stake (Biesta, 2017; Biesta, 2013).

The design of the article is as follows. First, we present the present issue of teachers that concerns the sensing of and dealing with contingencies and ambiguities of classroom situations with a view to strive for the subject-ness of students. Practical wisdom is then introduced as a quality of teaching to navigate through these situations by sensing and being aware of the essentials of a specific situation, reflecting on it, judging, and acting. It is, however, hardly known which strategies teachers should consecutively use in order to act practically wise with a view to engage with the responsiveness and responsibility of each single student and their freedom to act or to refrain from action. Besides, it is barely known how to activate these strategies in the course of teaching. This article intends to fill in both gaps of knowledge.

2. Purposeful teaching in a daily praxis of contingency and ambiguity

The daily praxis of teaching is ambiguous and contingent (Colnerud, 2015; Fenwick, 1998). On a daily basis teachers have to deal with various situations that can be interpreted in numerous ways: a turbulent class, a troubled student, a discontented parent or an unexpected event. It has been shown, however, that teachers consider these situations of great immediacy and encounter a lack of time and opportunity to reflect and to judge from a certain distance (van Manen, 2008). Many situations are considered to be interruptions of the expected or desired reality. By interrupting, they put the course in parentheses and call for reflection and judgment. The situations occur not necessarily so, but could happen otherwise or not at all. The contingency of the daily praxis can cause confusion, stress or darkness with teachers. It raises various questions which cannot be answered immediately and then leaves them with empty hands. What was considered to be a possibility, is now actualised.

Because they interrupt the expected or desired reality, situations open up what otherwise would have remained enclosed. In the ambiguous, contingent situations the actualisation of pedagogical aims are at stake that are understood to be the highest strivings in education, and are defined as broadly stated educational purposes. They cannot be aimed for or measured directly, but they reflect broad values, and remind us of our most profound ideals—for example, autonomy, justice and happiness (Noddings, 2003). Pedagogical situations, however, can be interpreted in numerous ways and may therefore cause confusion. Although these situations are considered as points of engagement for pedagogical reflection, it is often not clear which aims or purposes are at stake.

Dealing with the variety of ambiguous and contingent pedagogical situations very much appeals to the reflective and judging ability of teachers. The answer to the question how to deal with it cannot be found on the trail of the ‘what’ or ‘how’ only, but also on that of the ‘why’ of education. In education, the question of purpose is a multi-dimensional question (Biesta, 2010). There are three domains of educational purpose: education is concerned with the transmission and acquisition of knowledge and skills, with the initiation of students into existing traditions, cultures and ways of doing, and with the coming into the world as an individual subject. Teaching therefore involves a judgment on the purpose of educational arrangements and activities, on the forms of these, and on the possibilities of synergy between the three domains. Teachers should not only consider the possibilities for educating students, but also judge what is educationally desirable.

The impatient quest of society for learning outcomes, performance and accountability has driven teachers in the arms of a technical and instrumental rationality (Biesta, 2016; Buchanan, 2015; Biesta, 2010; Sachs, 2016). Following this rationality, the teaching praxis is scrutinised with the eyes of statistics and performance data. The failure of a perfect match between input and output should be fixed and overcome by the application of strong, secure and predictable methods and procedures. The exclusive use of a technical rationality and of strong methods, however, is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what education is about. First of all, the daily praxis of education is a more unpredictable and ambiguous enterprise than the technical rationality causes us to believe (Biesta, 2013). It appeals far more to a basic attitude of patience, letting go, trial and error, and an openness to other methods and approaches than solely strong, secure and predictable ones. Secondly, reflecting on, judging, and professional acting in education cannot be reduced to the application of technical principles and regulations or to the detachment of third-person procedures. Teachers themselves are appealed in first-person experiences of various situations they are confronted with, requested to judge them and to act (Birmingham, 2004; Dunne, 2011; Sherman, 2004).

In short, the daily contingent and ambiguous praxis of teaching raises various issues that are related to the multidimensional question of the purpose: what to do and how to act with a view to what is considered to be educationally desirable? In order to deal with these issues properly, teachers should be able to navigate through their daily praxis in such a way that does justice to the contingent nature of education and to the first-person appeal of various situations they are confronted with.

3. Subjectification as of fundamental concern for the educational enterprise

Recently, Biesta (2020) revisited his thinking and writing on the three domains of educational purpose, and suggested that his initial suggestion that the relationship between the three domains of educational purpose could be depicted as a Venn-diagram with the three domains that partially overlap could be replaced by a model that visualises the relationship as three concentric circles, where subjectification ‘is either at the centre, because it is “core”, or it is the outer “ring”, because it encompasses the other two domains’ (Biesta, 2020, p. 102). The educational task involves enabling to exist as a subject is at the core of education or as an all-encompassing ring. The centring of subjectification is therefore not of a didactical or instrumental nature, but of fundamental concern for the educational enterprise.

What is at stake in the pedagogical praxis of education, is the existential question regarding the possibility to come into the world in relationship with what and who is other (Biesta, 2017, 2020). How am I to exist in and with world? It is the question that directs education to the grown-up ways of existing, which is a dynamic process that unfolds in the life that is lived and by which people may change and develop. It’s about being a self, being a subject of your own life. It’s about the freedom to act in and with the world in a grown-up way.

The grown-up way of acting asks for a deliberate disruption of our egocentrism. Biesta (2017, p. 56) says:

“ … the event of teaching (…) calls forth the subject-ness of the student by interrupting its egocentrism, its being-with-itself and for-itself. This is not only a teaching that puts us very differently in the world. We could even say that this teaching puts us in the world in the first place. It is (a) teaching that draws us out of ourselves, as it interrupts our “needs”, to use Levinas’s term, or, (…) as it interrupts our desires, and in this sense frees us from the ways in which we are bound to or even determined by our desires. It does so by introducing the question of whether what we desire is actually desirable, both for ourselves and for the life we live with what and who is other.”

While the domain of socialisation is about participating at existing traditions, cultures and ways of doing, that of subjectification is about distinguishing oneself from these traditions and refers to the notion of uniqueness. The idea of subject-ness is related to the notion of uniqueness in a twofold way. The event of the subject-ness gives each single student not only the opportunity to see and understand that he is different from others, but also addresses him in an existential way: that is, to realise when he is irreplaceable in his freedom to act or to refrain from action. Their uniqueness matters in situations in which they cannot be replaced by someone else because it matters that they are present and act, and not another person. The scaffolding of the subject-ness is therefore oriented at hearing and understanding the appeal. In short, subjectification concerns responsiveness and responsibility: students develop themselves as being responsive to the appeal from others and the world and as being responsible for their acting (Biesta, 2013; Meirieu, 2007).

Subjectification is not an easy enterprise because it involves a continuous sequence of succeeding and failing. It therefore involves a risk—students can succeed, but can also fail or something in between. However, only by acting in the world with its plurality and diversity students are able to realise their responsiveness and responsibility. Teaching with a view to the subject-ness of students involves also a risk, because it cannot be enforced or controlled. How students respond to the appeal and actualise their subject-ness remains an open question. It cannot be enforced or managed completely, but it is relatively easy to nip subjectification in the bud by preventing students to come into contact with otherness or diversity (Biesta, 2010). There are parts of teaching which exist outside the heads and hands of teachers and that they may apprehend and influence, but that are not subject to control by them. This seems to be case in the domain of subjectification especially. It is here that teachers reach the point where they even risk themselves as educators (Biesta, 2020).

Because of the contingent nature of subjectification, its actualisation calls for a pedagogics that understands subject-ness as something that can emerge and for an education that contributes to the occurrence of the event of subject-ness. Teachers are therefore invited to open up and to keep things open so that the event may arise and to act ‘albeit in the weak, existential sense in which being is brought into life—a life shared with others in responsiveness and responsibility’ (Biesta, 2013, p. 24). With a view to the actualisation of subject-ness, teachers are invited to educate from the angle of its weakness. They not only need knowledge about how to do things, but also the ability to judge what is to be done with a view to the emergence of the responsiveness and responsibility as possibility to act or to refrain from action in order to live well with and for others.

4. Practical wisdom in education and teaching

When confronted with ambiguous and contingent pedagogical situations, even teachers with profound theoretical knowledge and great experience in teaching do not automatically know what to do with a view to the actualisation of subjectification. They have to make ‘holistic judgements of high quality, i.e. to deal wisely with particular situations in the course of teaching’ (Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2009, p. 226). Practical wisdom is perceived as the capacity to make such judgements.

Practical wisdom is a contemporary translation of the Aristotle’s phronesis (φρόνησις) and has lately been enjoying a remarkable renaissance as the conceptualisation of the compass to navigate through the present-day professional praxis. The revival of interest has evoked a broad and sometimes divergent theoretical field involving various conceptualisations, interpretations and terminologies (Bondi et al., 2011; Kinsella & Pitman, 2012; Schwartz & Sharpe, 2010; Smith, 1999). Practical wisdom has also found espousal in the professional praxis of teaching as the compass to navigate through pedagogical situations or incidents (Birmingham, 2004; Cooke & Carr, 2014; Dunne, 2011; Biesta, 2013; Higgins, 2011; Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2009; Noel, 1999). Practical wisdom in teaching is conceived as ‘the ability to respond effectively and ethically to the unpredictable challenges that emerge in practice’ (Furman, 2018, p. 559). This revival of interest meets the longing of teachers for a counterbalance to a far too technical and instrumental rationality in education.

While (neo) Aristotelean scholars opt for a rationalistic interpretation of practical wisdom, contemporary scholars advocate a more multimoded interpretation that includes attentiveness, receptivity, emotions, and embodiment (Biesta, 2015; Jenkins et al., 2019; Kinsella & Pitman, 2012). Practical wisdom refers to a multimoded reflection and deliberation that is oriented to the good in a specific situation. The good cannot be traced by rational reflection only, but is to be discovered receptively as something that can emerge or not. In a specific situation, teachers will not so much have to enact the good, but to ask themselves how the good is about to emerge and then to decide how to act to let it emerge. In the judgment of a situation a teacher has to endure the tension between the specific in the situation and the good that transcends the specific. The emergence of the good, for example, involves patience and perception to make place for the students coming to insights into themselves and the world (Higgins, 2011). The good refers to that what in this situation for these students is the best to strive for and is intrinsically oriented towards the internal goods of education (telos) and also to the ultimate good of the student (bonum). Practical wisdom evaluates the possibilities, pervades the professional endeavour with the good, and attunes the things that are mutually involved. Therefore, the question what practical wisdom is good for cannot be dealt with in terms of responding to a range of ambiguous and contingent pedagogical situations only, but should also include terms as striving for the good and sustaining and developing the internal goods of education (Dunne, 2011; Higgins, 2011).

The capacity to deal wisely and purposefully with ambiguous and contingent pedagogical situations in the course of teaching consists of various strategies. Some scholars emphasise the perceptive aspect of practical wisdom by pointing at strategies as being sensitive for and aware of the essentials of a pedagogical situation that emerges (Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2009), perceiving what is relevant in particular circumstances (Furman, 2018), being sensitively attuned (Smith, 1999), or being attentive receptive (Dunne, 2011). Others indicate that practical wisdom is to be seen as a reflective strategy mainly (Birmingham, 2004; Kinsella, 2012). In the concept of pedagogical sensitivity van Manen (2008) combines perceptive and reflective strategies of practical wisdom by describing them in terms of thoughtfulness and tact, embodied and pathic understanding. Other scholars emphasise strategies to judge in order to act (Shulman, 2007), to make deliberative pedagogical choices in terms of the situations they encounter and the actions they must take (Stenberg & Maaranen, 2020), and to make pragmatic and principled judgements on what is most desirable for these students in this situation (Biesta, 2015). Although some scholars hint at a coherence of the various strategies (Dunne, 2011), a design for interrelated strategies of practical wise teaching hasn’t been provided yet.

Research has been done how practical wisdom can be cultivated or promoted in the context of teacher education and teaching (Biesta, 2015; Furman, 2016; Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2009; Phelan, 2005; Stenberg & Maaranen, 2020). The development of practical wisdom is something that comes with age and through experience. Aristotle (2009) suggests ‘We must attend to the undemonstrated remarks and beliefs of experienced and older people or of prudent people, no less than their demonstrations’ (as cited in Furman, 2018, p. 560). Wisdom of practice can be considered as an entity of incorporated knowledge that is acquired in and through experience. It can be, therefore, perceived as a form of tacit knowledge, that is carried along silently, partly subconscious. Reflective laboratories on the basis of cases are meaningful in order to cultivate the wisdom of practice (Shulman, 2004). Lunenberg and Korthagen (2009) suggest that teachers and student teachers should go through the triangle of wisdom, theory and experience in order to develop practical wisdom. What’s hardly known, however, is how teachers in the course of their teaching can activate teaching strategies in order to deal wisely and purposefully with particular situations.

5. A coherent entity of interrelated strategies of practical wise teaching

Teaching can be considered as a teleological practice, that is, a practice constituted by the telos to actualise the internal goods of education (Higgins, 2011; Biesta, 2010). With a view to strive for the internal goods teachers use various strategies in the course of teaching. In order to find out what practical wise teaching means in terms of a coherent entity of strategies, we will now deepen our understanding by relating practical wisdom to discernment practices. By relating it to these practices, we aim to fill the gap in knowledge on coherence by finding out how to move from perception via reflection to judgment in order to act wisely and purposefully. The tradition of Christian spirituality includes various agogics’ practices how to live well with and for others with a view to the ultimate good. In this tradition discernment is the paradigm of receptive and critical reflection, deliberation, and judgment in a specific situation in order to actualise the ultimate good. Based on the academic study of the Christian spirituality, we deepen and broaden our understanding of practical wise teaching by orienting them to the four core characteristics of discernment practices (Hermans, 2021; Melé, 2010; Waaijman, 2002).

5.1 To sense difference

Firstly, practically wise teaching includes perception. Perception is aimed at sensing difference, that is: one becomes sensitive to different positions, experiences and perspectives and is able to wonder referring to the event in which the good emerges. To sense difference, a situation should be enabled to manifest itself and to address the appeal (Willis, 1999). Practical wise teaching is therefore characterised by a listening attitude. It involves attentive receptivity, openness for what emerges, letting cast the eye at it, and wondering about it. The listening, receptive attitude enables ‘to return to the beginnings, to the things themselves as they give themselves in lived through experience—not as externally real or eternally existent, but as an openness that invites us to see them as if for the first time’ (van Manen, 2014, p. 43).

The listening, receptive attitude enables a multidimensional observation: not only seeing and hearing, but also feeling and sensing. Put differently, one is receptive to sources that otherwise would remain closed, such as emotions and feelings (Bontemps-Hommen et al., 2019). This includes the risk to be emotionally affected by the things that are said and done. These things affect because they are related to what is considered to be of value and meaning. Both the listening, receptive attitude and multidimensional observation are therefore needed to get below the surface of the situation and to sense difference (van Manen, 2014, pp. 240–296).

In order to see an incident not as something that randomly happens but falls to them, teachers should move beyond the pure perception. The shift from perception to discernment requires a more finely tuned grasp of the features of an incident instead of just perceiving what is present. From the academic study of Christian spirituality, it is known that in order to see an incident as something that appeals for a response, teachers should be able to read it (Waaijman, 2002). By reading the incident, it gets the character of an event: something is brought forth what is not simply a re-enactment of the past but the realisation of something unique and new. By reading it as an event, the teacher can make sense of the situation but is also oriented through it (Ricoeur, 1992, pp. 140–168). By being oriented, teachers become aware that the incident brings forth something what they didn’t know yet. They are able to sense difference and wonder indeed.

5.2 To allocate meaning

Secondly, practically wise teaching includes reflection. Teachers’ reflection is informed by the situations in a receptive way and enables the good to appear ‘allowing—or being available to—what needs to happen or to emerge’ (Dunne, 2011, p. 19). Reflection is needed to interpret the situation to discover which internal goods are at stake or are about to emerge. Receptive, critical and analytical modes of reflection should interact in order to find out whether internal goods of education are included and how (Kinsella, 2012). To interpret situations, practically wise teaching should include a multimoded reflection to discover whether and how in a specific event the goods are involved. Reflection is not oriented to evaluate the planned curriculum, but to find out what can be done to let internal goods of education emerge. Which goods are at stake? What do they mean? Who only observes, cannot discover meaning. To discover meaning, the direction is from the specifics of the situation to the internal goods: in the specific the goods manifest themselves (Aristoteles, EN, VI 12, 1143b, 4–5).

The academic study of Christian spirituality provides hermeneutical approaches to develop the multimoded reflection that is oriented to acting (Waaijman, 2002). By taking a critical distance, the teacher is able to resume the event little by little and to consider it again. By letting the story emerge, a bridge is created between reading the event and the allocation of meaning. The teacher takes another look at the behaviour of the student, ruminates it, and asks herself what is shown. The event evokes emotions that are based on cognitive appraisals of the values or goods at stake (Lazarus, 1999). A reflection on affective aspects leads to an awareness of the event at a deeper level, that is: to which values or goods are at stake. Then, a dialogical dynamics can emerge: the teacher as observer of the event now becomes an interlocutor of the internal goods that are manifested or disguised. This dialogical reflection leads to an awareness of the event in which the teacher herself is involved and appealed to as first-person. The hermeneutical moment moves beyond the pure observation of the student’s behaviour to a dialogue on the deeper level of internal goods in order to allocate meaning.

5.3 To deliberate with others

Thirdly, practically wise teaching includes deliberation. Teaching is perceived as a collective practice of teachers through which internal goods of education can be actualised. Teachers share their teaching with other teachers and are invited to share with them their experiences, beliefs, and considerations to discover possibilities to actualise educational goods in specific situations and contexts in which specific students are involved. While these possibilities always involve a risk of happening, not happening or something in between, teachers are also invited to share their vulnerability in this respect. To discover possibilities and to deal with the contingent nature of them, practically wise teaching should include deliberation.

To discover possibilities to actualise the internal goods, practically wise teaching practices involve a genuine deliberation with practically wise people (Kemmis, 2005). Genuine deliberation is not about the transfer of knowledge from one person to another nor about a debate, but is generative and creative (Gunnlaugson, 2006, 2011). The quest for internal goods and for the possibilities to realise them is not a rational consideration and weighing of efficiency or effectiveness, but an awareness of the good that emerges and presents itself. By slowing down, sensing and listening together, teachers become aware of the internal goods and the possibilities to realise them. New insights and ideas emerge from an open and creative dialogue. Genuine deliberation involves an openness to contradiction and friction and allows for refinement, correction and rejection. Deliberation is on the look-out for variance, not for a mean or median (Shulman, 2007). It is in a dialogue that various divergent and convergent insights, beliefs and ideas come to the floor in an open space and can generate new, unexpected possibilities to actualise the internal goods in an educational way.

The academic study of Christian spirituality indicates that possibilities to realise the internal goods are oriented to an openness to the future (Waaijman, 2002). This openness to the future means that the internal goods are and cannot be realised fully, but are always open to a realisation to the full. The realisation holds the balance between ‘what is’ and ‘what is not yet’. It is not mere a temporal ‘not yet’ (i.c. tomorrow it can be), but can even more understood as a qualitative ‘not yet’ (i.c. the fulness transcends the current actualisation). This asks for a weak rationality. Weak means receptive, patient, creative. By sensing and reflecting on the basis of a weak rationality the internal goods and their possibilities for a constant transcending actualisation can be discovered. It also reminds us of the weakness of education. How educational arrangements and activities turn out for these students in these contexts cannot be foreseen totally. The beautiful risk of education is not only worthwhile but also needed to be taken at the risk of restricting the subject-ness of students Biesta, 2017; Biesta, 2013).

5.4 To decide what to do

Fourthly, practically wise teaching includes judgment. Possibilities to actualise internal goods can be manyfold. To scaffold students’ learning and development, teachers are invited to engage with an openness towards the future that is radical, but not endless. The opening up of the future of possibilities and keeping it open involves a judgment with a view to what is actually desirable, both for ourselves and for the life we live with what and who is other. The opening up comes first, the judgment is second (Biesta, 2013). Next, the unique work of practical wisdom is about to start: how to realise the possibilities (Aristoteles, EN, VI 13, 1144a, 7–9)? Possibilities should be judged well in a twofold way. This means firstly that practically wise practices involve a principled judgement not so much with a view to solve the situation or incident as a problem, but to act in an educationally way, that is: with a view to desirable internal goods of subjectification. Are the possibilities wise with a view to the aims of responsiveness and responsibility? In every single teaching situation judgements secondly need to be pragmatic. A pragmatic judgment involves a choice for the most desirable option for these students in this situation. Are the possibilities smart with a view to help each individual student in an appropriate way and to promote learning and development that is attuned to his individual situation and context? By judging and acting accordingly things can be situationally closed, but are always kept open with a view to the ongoing realisation of the internal goods. The realisation of these goods is after all related to the well-being or flourishing of students, that is: the possibility of leading a worthy, meaningful human life, and will therefore never be finished completely (Biesta, 2015).

The academic study of Christian spirituality indicates that the discovery and judgement of the possibilities to realise internal goods can have the character of a breakthrough (Waaijman, 2002). Teachers can enhance a breakthrough by imagining as if the internal goods already emerge for the student concerned. In the example of the troubled student, the teacher can address him as being responsive and responsible by inviting him without condemning to discover motives for his behaviour, to reflect on his connection to the world outside and to give himself wholeheartedly to the longing to act (or not to act). Which option is preferable, should be judged. By imagining as if responsiveness and responsibility already emerge, the teacher judges what for this student in this situation is the most desirable in a principled and pragmatic sense. Her judgment then has to pass the test of justice and fairness: is the desired option rightful and just and doesn’t it cause harm to him and other students (Ricoeur, 1992, pp. 203–239)? Thereafter, courage is needed to put the desired rightful and just option into action (Ricoeur, 1992, pp. 240–296).

Based on these considerations, we propose that practical wise teaching consists of

A coherent entity of consecutive strategies to be used in specific situations in the course of teaching and involves (1) sensing difference, (2) allocating meaning, (3) genuinely deliberating with others and (4) deciding what to do, and that orients the situation towards a rightful and just actualisation of internal goods of education for each single student on the basis of the available constraints and opportunities.

Undoubtably, cultural, structural and material circumstances will constrain the realisation of internal goods and others will obstruct these (Priestley et al., 2016, pp. 127–150; Bontemps-Hommen et al., 2019). Teachers can perceive a lack of time to reflect and deliberate, the professional culture can stand in the way of a genuine deliberation, and the hierarchical structure of the school organisation can prohibit a receptive attention to the subject-ness of students, for example. It is therefore also from a pragmatic point of view necessary to develop collective practically wise teaching practices by which teachers, other staff, principals and board members can act well for every single student. Practically wise teaching practices after all have the capacity to generate new aims and purposes and new conceptions of them, and to rediscover the richness and stubbornness of what have degenerated into meaningless slogans (Higgins, 2011, pp. 47–83).

6. Reflective questions to activate strategies of practical wise teaching

In the course of teaching teachers use various sorts of knowledge (Shulman, 1986, 2004). Much of their knowledge is embodied in their acting, quite implicitly. In order to act wisely, teachers should be able to activate or wake their wisdom of practice. By using their ability to reflect-on-action, teachers become aware of their tacit wisdom of practice and make it explicit. By using their ability to reflect-to-action, they should be able to activate their wisdom prospectively and act. Because reflection in detail appear to be extremely good to the development of practical wisdom (Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2009), it can be stated that concretising reflective questions on the specifics of a situation and on teacher’s thoughts, feelings, needs and actions are crucial to activate the consecutive strategies of practical wise teaching. Following the CIMO-logic (Denyer et al., 2008), our design proposition is as follows: when confronted with ambiguous and contingent pedagogical situations in the classroom (Context), teachers are able to act wisely (Outcome) by using concretising reflective questions (Intervention) that really activate their practical wise teaching strategies (Mechanism).

Based on the requirement that practical wise teaching strategies should be activated indeed and on the proposition that concretising reflective questions can activate them efficaciously, we elaborate a design of questions below and believe that it is an effective manifestation in order to act wisely in a specific situation with a view to strive for the educational purpose of subjectification (Table 1).

Table 1. Reflective questions to activate strategies of practical wise teaching.

Strategy of practical wise teaching	Reflective questions to activate the strategy
To sense difference become sensitive to different positions, experiences and perspectives being able to wonder referring to the event in which the good emerges	What does the teacher observe of what the student shows? How is she taken or oriented by his behaviour? How can his behaviour be observed from another perspective? What does she sense in the behaviour: a well or not convenient interruption? What does she sense of what emerges in him?
To allocate meaning become an interlocutor of the internal goods of education	Which emotions are evoked? On which appraisals of the values or goods of education at stake are they based? Are responsiveness or responsibility at stake? In what sense? How is the teacher to reach out to the goods? Is she able to entrust herself to these goods?
To deliberate with others discover possibilities to actualise the internal goods	How do practically wise teachers sense and interpret the incident? What do they like to contribute to the case? What is revealed to them as a possibility to actualise responsiveness and responsibility that are open to a constant transcendence of the current ones? How do the possibilities converge with the school’s educational aims and purpose?
To decide what to do make a pragmatic and principled judgment pass the test of justice and fairness come to action	As if being responsive and responsible already emerges in the student, what would the teacher then do or would she refrain from action? Which possibility to act is judged as the most desirable option for this student in this situation? Are the possibilities just and righteous with a view to help not only this student, but each individual student in an appropriate way and to promote learning and development? Does the teacher have the courage to come into action? What’s even more needed to act?

The design is to be further elaborated and made appropriate to concrete cultural, structural and material circumstances of teaching in a school. Teachers can develop their practical wise teaching by using it as a tool for individual reflection or supervision, and as a tool to deliberate in the context of an intervision group. For these and other purposes the design should be converted to a prototype ready for use (McKenney & Reeves, 2018, pp. 126–160).

7. Conclusion and discussion

In this article we understood teaching as a teleological practice, that is, a practice constituted by the telos to actualise the internal goods of education (Higgins, 2011; Biesta, 2010). In order to actualise internal goods for each single student on the basis of the available constraints and opportunities, teachers constantly make judgements in their daily dynamic, ambiguous and contingent teaching praxis. All kinds of judgements. Principled and pragmatic judgements are severely needed with a view to the multi-dimensional purposes of education, that is: judgements that decide what to do in and through concrete contexts-for-action with a view to desirable internal goods of education (Biesta, 2015). While a revival of interest for practical wisdom as quality of teachers to judge what is to be done has evoked a broad and sometimes divergent theoretical field, literature on practically wise teaching practices with a view to the subjectification of students is still scarce. In this article we made an attempt to fill the gap in knowledge on two important aspects: the coherence of the various strategies to act wisely and the way how to activate the strategies.

The contribution of this article to the theory formation on practical wisdom in teaching is specifically aimed at the domain of the responsiveness and responsibility in order to come into the world in a grown-up way (Biesta, 2020; Biesta, 2013). Because internal goods—in contrast to goals or results—go beyond what can be controlled or enforced, actualisation of internal goods always involves finding a balance between a temporal as well as qualitative yet and not-yet. Practically wise teaching practices therefore imply an openness towards the future. There is, however, another, even more important reason for this openness which is related to the contingent nature of the internal goods of subjectification. When education is genuinely interested in the ways in which new beginnings and new beginners can come into the world, it will be about how to scaffold students to engage responsive and responsible with the world (Biesta, 2013). This requests an alertness to what is announced or emerges. Actualisation of internal goods involves a respectful attitude towards the considerations, choices and actions of students as subject, in short: their freedom to act in and with the world. Practically wise teaching practices therefore involve the creation of possibilities firstly and only subsequently a judgment.

Our description of practical wise teaching involves exactly this. By making an appeal to the academic spirituality research on discernment, we presented practically wise teaching as a coherent entity that includes four consecutive strategies: to sense difference, to allocate meaning, to deliberate with others, and to decide what to do. These strategies are characterised by a listening, receptive attitude to engage with the openness to the future in order to actualise the internal goods of subjectification.

Thereafter, we developed a design of reflective questions in order to reflect-to-action. The design of reflective questions to activate the strategies of practical wise teaching is an important step to bridge theory and practice in order to cultivate practical wisdom (Lunenberg & Korthagen, 2009; Mälkki & Lindblom-Ylänne, 2012).

Further research is needed to find out whether and how attentive receptivity and weak rationality can be traced and also enhanced in the actual praxis of teachers and schools. A qualitative, holistic and heuristic research can use various sources of information, of which case narratives of teachers appear to be an important one as being articulations of practice and of practical knowledge (Furman, 2018; Tyson, 2018). Then, the question arises how to enhance practically wise teaching practices in the educational praxis of present-day schools. Educational design research could provide evidence not only how to convert a design of reflective questions into a prototype ready for use but also how the institutional setting of the school can promote the emergence of practical wise teaching practices with a view to the subject-ness of students (McKenney & Reeves, 2018, pp. 199–234).

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Theo van der Zee

Theo van der Zee is researcher at the Titus Brandsma Institute at the Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and co-editor of the Book Series Research on Religious and Spiritual Education (Waxmann Publishers). Prior to this, he was a secondary school teacher and teacher educator. His research focuses on leadership in education, teaching and spirituality.