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ｌｅａｒｎｉｎｇ & ｓｅｒｖｉｃｅ  

ｗｏｒｋｓｈｏｐｓ   

ｃｏｎｔａｃｔ ｍｅ

░a░b░o░u░t░

𝗔𝗿𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗧𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗙𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀:

𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴

𝗯𝘆 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝗶𝗲 𝗚𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗻

https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p089282

In Transformations: Womanist, Feminist, Indigenous Studies

University of Illinois Press

How can learning at the threshold change us and our world?

A radical approach to a contemporary movement in education.

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            This book is organized in five parts sequenced to disclose the process reality through which learners integrate threshold concept knowledge and may attain meta-aware comprehension of existence itself as finding.

EXCERPT from Chapter 1:

Philosophical pragmatists in the tradition of William James, John Dewey, and Charles Peirce share many goals and concerns with learners who experience threshold comprehensions independent of the ideologi­cally charted-out future. Jamesean, Deweyan, and Peircean pragmatists advance:

  • philosophical psychology,
  • epistemic comprehensiveness,
  • action-oriented theorizing,
  • the integration of science and religion,
  • evolutionary metaphysics,
  • and social emancipation (Schwartz and Esbjörn-Hargens 2019, 38).

But threshold learners bring a new dimension to this pragmatism. Two kinds of longing organize their inner processes: one, the mystical aspiration for illumina­tion or intuitive spiritual knowledge; the other, the this-world (or quasi-material) relationship-oriented quest for union, through which wisdom manifests or lit­eralizes itself, in cultural life and relationships. Studying threshold learning’s relation to search and to the life drives therefore adds to pragmatism a womanist component—one that can probe our relationship to the unseen and introduce spirituality into social change movement that otherwise lacks any consciously spiritual dimension (Maparyan 2012).

We cannot separate womanism’s “animating impulse” from the relational worldview and the desire for emotional rationality. Africana studies scholar Layli Maparyan notes how that impulse enlivens pragmatism’s spirit and thus can con­jure the meaningful connections needed to coordinate differing elements (2006). From such observations, we can conclude that womanism participates in both the mystical desires and the relationship-oriented quests of Wisdom, or Sophia from Ecclesiastes. Those desires and quests may sound ethereal, but the Sophianic mani­fests in inherently pragmatic ways. Countless historical narratives document how, when the wisdom-loving communal imagination matures, it generates “creativity, ingenuity, [and] improvisationality” in response to wicked problems (2012, xv). Distinguished by its three functions—the polar, the creative and noetic, and the reconciling and linking—Sophianic consciousness expresses the common desires “to know, love and ultimately, be united and whole” through which humanity may strive toward integral resolutions of conflict, ones that do not resort to oppression as a means of control (Austin 1992, 235).

Key Words:

social ethical creativity, thresholds, resilience, value pluralism, reciprocity, value transformations, Harlem Renaissance, spirit of friendship, global ethics, systemic rationality, Sophia, spiritual architecture, creative moral power