Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Education as a deliberate activity and purposive process necessarily involves mediation, in the sense that the educator mediates between the child and the world. This can take different forms: the educator may function as a guide who initiates children into particular practices and domains and their modes of thinking and perceiving; or act as a filter, selecting what of the world the child encounters and how; or meet the child as representative of the adult world. I look at these types of mediation (or aspects of the mediating role of the educator) at the hand of the work of John Dewey, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Richard Peters. The purpose of this paper is to explore the bearing that the mediating role of the educator—as interpreted by these authors—has on the role wonder may play in the educational process. I suggest that initiation highlights the familiarizing function of wonder, and is most readily associated with inquisitive wonder; representation draws attention to the defamiliarizing role of (in particular contemplative) wonder, as well as to its world-affirming role; and selection (the educator as ‘filter’) foregrounds the distinction between momentary and dispositional wonder.
Author: Anders Schinkel
Institution: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,690
Funder: John Templeton Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W2987014742