O'Donnell, Aislinn (2017) The Matter of Thinking: Material Thinking and the Natural History of Humankind. Studier i Pædagogisk Filosofi, 6 (1). pp. 39-54. ISSN 2244-9140

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Abstract

Contemporary educational policies have recently prioritised the development of generic, core, and transferable skills. This essay reflects on this tendency in the context of the ‘algorithmic condition’ and those discourses that tend toward an image of education that privileges dematerialised skills, practices, and knowledge. It argues that this turn towards dematerialisation is resonant with shifts in a number of diff erent domains, including work, and explores some of the implications of this shift. Instead I suggest an approach to education that understands it as turning towards the world, loving the world, and creating a common world. In order to understanding thinking and knowing as material practices, the concept of ‘material thinking’ is developed that refuses binaries of theory and practice, but that instead understands thinking, particularly in educational contexts, as material and a practice of thinking with something, and a turning towards the world. I draw upon the work of Susan Oyama, Elizabeth Grosz, Tim Ingold and Isabelle Stengers, and explore the example of Barbara McClintock’s research as a cytogeneticist researching maize. Here I am particularly interested in the importance of deep engagement with a subject matter in terms of developing the skilfulness that is associated with what I am calling ‘material thinking’. This allows us to think about education in a way that pays attention to the plurality of practices of material thinking that engage with the natural history of humankind, and the story of the world.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Generic Skills; Material Thinking; Algorithm; Education; Arendt; Oyama;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Education
Item ID:	11739
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.7146/spf.v6i1.103189
Depositing User:	Prof Aislinn O'Donnell
Date Deposited:	18 Nov 2019 14:38
Journal or Publication Title:	Studier i Pædagogisk Filosofi
Publisher:	Pædagogisk Filosofisk Forening
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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