Twenty-sixth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

“Contemporary society worships at the altar of functionalism. Concepts such as process, method, model and project have come to infiltrate our language and determine how we describe our relationships to the world.” This judgment is one starting point to investigate the Conference Theme, “Learning to Make a Social Difference”. Though learning occurs in all life circumstances, the principal social framework is found in the formal and informal processes of school and university education, and the explicit and implicit curricula (the latter hidden). The presentation, a communal act of discernment, will look at where we are and where we could be, mindful that education takes place within i) the context of a set of beliefs and values about the nature of the individual and his or her purposes and place in the universe, and ii) societal socio-economic, political, and cultural frames. It has been asked: “have we become abstractions to one another as citizens, living highly curated lives that minimize our chances of intersecting with anyone who differs from us?” This dilemma (in both secondary and tertiary education) will be first viewed through the lenses of Martin Buber’s “I-It / I Thou” modes of engaging community and the world, asking whether contemporary pressures (divorced from the common good) encourage an abandonment or at least a downgrading of “”I-Thou”. The presentation will finally look at dialogue and monologue, curricular imperatives, and their place in fostering personal and social transformation in the student-learner-citizen.