Acting at a Point in the Web of Knowledge

A Philosophy Of Education Conceptual Framework

      In my conceptual framework for my philosophy of education, the world, full of humans, other animals, plants, lands, waters, cultures, ideas, geological forces, the universe, etc., is represented by a brain. Each individual node, or neuron, represents one individual human, one animal, one plant, one rock, or any other actor or idea. In a brain, each neuron is connected to as many as 10,000 other neurons through up to 1,000 trillion connection points. The interconnectedness is endless. While groups of related neurons may live close together, they are still connected to all other parts of the brain in some way, and each neuron plays an important role in transmitting information from one to the next. At connection points, called synapses, one end of a neuron lives adjacent to the beginning of a different neuron. If we take one neuron to be the role of an educator, that neuron synapses with another neuron, the learner. At this point, the neuron passes on information through electrical pulses triggered by the release of neurotransmitters, tiny molecules that represent knowledge, ideas, and information that they have obtained from all their connections to the web. At this synapse point, learning happens.

         With neurons, any of their connections can interfere with how that knowledge can or will be used. These other synapse points represent cultural mediators; learners carry their own identities, backgrounds, expertise, and repertoires of knowledge they’ve learned by interacting with the world around them, and all these influence how new ideas and knowledge can be contextualized into their lives and produced into ways of knowing. When new information is placed in context and connected to other ideas a learner already knows, that learning takes on meaning to the individual. At the same time, learning environments are of course co-created and shaped by the learners. Represented by synapses from the learner neuron back onto the educator neuron, the system of individuals works together to relate one another and ideas back into the world. Through this process, we all engage in sensemaking.

          Importantly, learners have agency over their own learning and in how they position themselves in the web of the world. When educators can provide the material, relational, and ideational resources, learners have the freedom to use education and learning as a tool to connect themselves back into the web of the world in the ways that make sense for them and are true to how they see themselves as an essential part of it. In neurons, pathways between neurons that are used often grow stronger, and the flexibility of neurons to grow new synapses at connection points used often and prune connections that are less important represents a learner's ability to use their agency gained from this educational framework as liberation from the confines of a positionality that may or may not suit them. Here, learners are free to be future dreamers, to imagine themselves as important actors making a real and true difference in the world through the pathways they see as most important.