Knowledge In-(ter)-action: Responsive learning as knowledge building

I would like to tell you about my journey and my fondness for understanding what learning entails. While still a student at the lower retail trade school, I wrote in the school magazine that learning could be different and more democratic. My fondness was heightened at the Social Academy by my interest in philosophy and in particular phenomenology and existentialism. Even as an adolescent, I felt the attraction of Nietzsche’s hammer. Thanks perhaps to his incisive psychological outlook, and the knowledge that I had to earn a living, I became immersed in cognitive psychology and the psychology of learning. That foundation, my research as an academic and my work in the semi-public sector, has led me to the understanding that knowledge emerges in action. A friend expressed this splendidly, in my opinion, during a dialogue about learning: Asking questions of others; listening to the response you get (opinions, ideas), that’s what I learn from .... it helps me to form my own opinions and ideas. ADVANCE ORGANIZERS • In the first part of this lecture, I will talk about the conceptualisation of ‘knowledge emerges in action’ and in particular in in-(ter)-action with the other and with the world. • In the second part, I will take you on a journey of discovery through the semantic analysis of student in-(ter)-action in order to ‘un-cover’ the role that knowledge plays in the conceptual development of students. • In the third part, I will concretise the resulting ‘un-covering’ that this generates for students and teachers as knowledge for in-(ter)-action. Published By Aeres Hogeschool Wageningen In collaboration with the Open University, Heerlen the Netherlands