Document Type
Article
Abstract
This paper explores the phenomenological possibility of transcending the impoverished ontological state of contemporary "standardized" education (social efficiency), which forecloses original ways of Being-and-learning. Focused on the notion of phenomenological self-hood, I elucidate a fundamental educational theory, which holds the potential of inspiring a renewed conception of curriculum design and praxis. Envisioning a reconceived notion of world and human being, I look to the realm of "absorbed coping," a mode of Being-in-the-world that antedates both practical comportment and theoretical comportment. It is a mode of existence wherein we literally "learn" to respond to the "address" of world and others. Building hermeneutically on this analysis, a fundamental theory of education emerges, which is grounded ontologically in the "lived experience" of "pre-theoretical" comportment. Ultimately, I reveal the essential aim of education for thematic analysis, which is the human's primordial search for meaning. This, I claim, is an original form of Being-educated, and beyond, it is the essential ontological-meaning-structure giving form to all instances of learning and the theoretical manifestation thereof.
Repository Citation
Magrini, James M.. "A 'Fundamental Theory' of Education Grounded in Ontology? A Phenomenological Rejoinder." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 14, no. 2, 2014, pp. 1–24. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol14/iss2/3