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Paul Grobstein's picture

looping brains/minds in inquiry/education

Rich opening conversation this morning.  Some thoughts to mull further ...

On "science mind"/"english mind": "science mind" is more "analytically cold," "english mind" is more "creative." "Science mind" is "studying what is there", "deconstructing" whereas "english mind" is more "about producing," "constructing." 

Interesting connection to construction, deconstruction, reconstruction as a brain activity.  Makes sense, along these lines, that it is empowering to have both a "science mind" and an "english mind," to make use of both construction and deconstruction, to loop between them.

But there's probably another dimension to this as well, a preference by the "english mind" for the "human" and for the "science mind" for the "inhuman" (see More on loops/conflict/education).   Here too it is perhaps advantageous to loop between two minds rather than assert the primacy of either over the other.  Perhaps "english minds" overestimate the "the potency of bribery, sweet talk, logic, and well-meaningness" and "science minds" underestimate the significance of such things?  

Interesting connection as well to the essential role that social dynamics plays in inquiry.  People with "science minds" tend to discount "english minds" in themselves as will as to challenge the usefulness of others they identify as having "english minds" and vice versa.  What is needed is not to get people with either kind of mind to replace it with the other but rather to help people see the existence in themselves of both kinds of minds and the benefits that accrue from intersecting them.  One needs to get over an implicit feeling that different is challenging and think instead of difference as generative, both individually and collectively.

And so here (and elsewhere) an experiment in open-ended transactional inquiry, in co-construction of not only the products of an inquiry but of the specific objectives of the inquiry as well.   Start with a group of people with related interests, let the idiosyncratic expression of those interests itself define the immediate objectives of construction, deconstruct and reconstruct with confidence that new stories and new questions, both individual and collective, will emerge.  Very much looking forward to seeing how it plays out.  And how relevant it might (or might not) turn out to be for educational (and inquiry) contexts in general. 

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