Domenico Masciotra

Becoming-in-the-classroom: a case study of teacher development through coteaching

Abstract Although Schons reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action have been important advances in understanding teaching, they do not capture important, tacit dimensions of the experience of teaching and being-in-the-classroom. These tacit dimensions of teaching cannot be acquired through didactic methods, but have to be enacted in lived experience. Teacher development can therefore be viewed as a becoming-in-the-classroom. In this paper, we show how coteaching provides a context in which novice teachers can come to embody this dimension of teaching which is essential to mastery.

Spielraum and Teaching

Abstract In recent years, reflection-in-action has been a major concept for taking account of the craft and practical aspects of teaching. Yet in the everyday teaching praxis, reflection is largely absent. In this paper, we argue that this absence is due to the fact that reflection requires objects of thought that have to be constructed. Both the construction and manipulation of these objects requires “time out” from acting in real time. Taking time out is frequently impossible in the praxis of teaching, unless we want to miss the “teachable moments.” We propose Spielraum, room to maneuver, as a concept that describes the reality of teaching much better than reflection-in-action, especially when there is no time out for reflection. We use two extended classroom episodes to exemplify situations that are better described by the notion of Spielraum than by reflection-in-action.

From thing to sign and natural object: Toward a genetic phenomenology of graph interpretation

This study was designed to find out what scientists and science students actually do when they are reading familiar and unfamiliar graphs. This study provides rich details of the subtle changes in the ontologies (ensemble of elements perceptually available) of scientists and science students as they engage in the reading tasks assigned to them. In the course of the readers’ interpretation work, initially unspecified marks on paper (“ its ”) are turned into objects with particular topologies that are said to correspond to specific features in the world. We theorize this interpretive work as a transition of graphs from things to signs that come to stand for natural objects. Especially among physicists and theoretical ecologists, graphs enter new relations and become natural objects in their own right.

“Maai”: The Art of Distancing in Karate-Do Mutual Attunement in Close Encounters

Human development implies an evolution of the individuals physical spielraum (room to maneuver) as an adaptively changing dialectical Self-Other relationship, which is achieved through appropriate distancing. In the Japanese culture, distancing is maai (ma, spatiotemporal interval + ai, harmony). Maai integrates space, time, and rhythm, dimensions of being that are deeply rooted in all human actions and relations. Maai is the art of relating and communicating within constructed space-time intervals in and through which people interact.The purpose of the present study is to elaborate a phenomenological and genetic understanding of highly developed forms of distancing, that is, of our understanding of mastery in maai. Although there exist several good descriptions of distancing in everyday life, little is known about how it operates in experts. As a case in point, we analyze maai in the martial arts (karate), where distancing is taught, mastered, and conceptualized to various degrees by teachers and students, and therefore rises to the level of consciousness.