This article explores the concept of interiority as it relates to education and contemplation. Primarily, four general dimensions of consciousness related to learning are examined: presence, clarity, detachment, and resilience. The direct experience of these states and processes are described and explored in light of contemporary research on the neuro-physiologic correlates of various contemplative practices. This neurophenomenological approach considers the evidence and argument for the value of contemplation in education.

Excerpt: The argument of this chapter is a simple one: the success of direct instructional guidance approaches in well-structured domains (WSDs) cannot extend to ill-structured domains (ISDs), in principle, because of the very nature of those domains. That which would be directly instructed and explicitly guided does not exist in ill-structured domains – hence the claim that it is not a coincidence that direct instructional guidance approaches lack a corpus of supporting data in ISDs like they have in WSDs. Given that the debate between these approaches is unsettled on empirical grounds for ISDs, this chapter aims to provide some conceptual clarification of key issues of learning and instruction in such domains. The hope is that such clarification would contribute toward forming a basis for empirical work that would directly address the debated issues of this volume.

This article explores how distinct epistemological assumptions in constructivism and phenomenology influence pedagogical approaches in counselor education. Ideological parallels akin to the humanist tradition are drawn, as are irreconcilable distinctions. Practical implications of each are discussed in relation to 3 important counselor training areas: theoretical orientation, psychological concepts, and self-awareness.

Key words: constructivism, phenomenology, pedagogy.

Excerpt: The design of effective learning environments is taking on increasing importance with the growing dissatisfaction with our education systems at both the pre-K–12 and the post-secondary levels. There have been wide fluctuations in strategies at both levels, but over the past two decades arguably the dominant approaches to the design of instruction have been driven by the conceptual frameworks and theories called “constructivism.” The purpose of this book is to discuss the present status of constructivism, applied to teaching and the development of instructional materials.

Excerpt: Phenomenology was a European philosophy that was a parallel development to American pragmatism. It will be argued that personal construct psychology may fruitfully be seen as a phenomenological approach to the person and that its methods for investigating the experience of individuals mirror and indeed extend phenomenology’s reach. It will also be contended that personal construct psychology is enriched by the insights of other phenomenologists, in particular, those of Merleau-Ponty (1962/1945).

Excerpt: This chapter contains a review of the main themes in the literature on policy instruments. It is interesting to note that theories on policy instruments and strategies for using them are surprisingly underdeveloped areas in policy analysis. This seems to be particularly marked in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The German and the Dutch traditions contain more relevant insights. The main explanation for this phenomenon may be that vital elements of the Dutch and German public administration system stem from a judicial tradition, suggesting a familiarity with the concept of the policy instrument. This situation implies that the concepts presented here will be derived from German-Dutch public administration. Special attention will be given to the problems which arise because of the autopoietic character of the target groups which are to be steered.

This article offers an introduction to Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems as it pertains to public administration and policy, as a first step towards both a critique and its empirical application to empirical reality. It reconstructs Luhmann’s early writings on bureaucracy and policy-making and shows how this early, more empirical work grounded his abtract theory of social systems in general and the political system in particular. The article also introduces some central concepts of Luhmann’ s more recent work on the autopoietic nature of social systems and considers the latter’s consequences for bureaucratic adaptiveness and governmental steering in the welfare state. One of the main benefits of applying Luhmann’s theory to public administration, the article concludes, is that it conceptualizes the central concerns of public administration within a complex picture of society as a whole, in which both the agency that issues decisions and the realm affected by these decisions are included.

Excerpt: In the first part of the paper we consider the evidence base upon which claims about the effectiveness of teaching sequences are made. We argue that researchers tend to attribute improvements in students’ learning to the effectiveness of the sequence of teaching activities, giving little explicit attention to the teacher’s role in staging those teaching activities, in the social context of the classroom. In the second part of the paper we present a social constructivist perspective on learning, which we use as a basis for identifying the essential elements which constitute a teaching sequence. The concept of learning demand is then introduced and developed as a tool for informing the design of teaching sequences. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the similarities and differences between this approach and other research into the design and evaluation of teaching sequences.

Review of The Content of Science. A Constructivist Approach to its Teaching and Learning, edited by Peter Fensham, Richard Gunstone and Richard White, Farmer Press, London, 1994.

The validity and reliability of the evidence from children’s ideas is analyzed from a constructivist viewpoint, and a guiding set of methodological principles for the generation and evaluation of evidence is proposed. The principles seek to accent child and researcher “frames of reference” and so distinguish between the grounds on which interpretations are made. Drawing on the findings of a recent longitudinal study, the guiding principles are used to make a critical analysis of some well‐known research studies in the field of chemistry.