Alexander Technique as an auto-ethological mode of differing inquiry

In practice, the work of F.M Alexander can sometimes facilitate, enliven or accentuate embodied experience and awareness (Dimon, 2015; Jones, 1976). It can also provide a means whereby the ‘psycho-physical instrument of self’ becomes more readily co-ordinated within its own system of organisation and simultaneously, in relation to whatever it encounters in the world. McCormack’s (2013) reading of Dewey’s “ethology of experience” is salient here, where experience is conceptualised as open-ended, affective, and ‘radically experimental’. Our interest lies in the subtle, barely-perceptible difference/s that sometimes emerge/s when we contemplate/engage a thought, an object, a connection, or an encounter with a freshly-attuned, embodied instrument. Experiencing these differences might also point to some unexplored ways of being in, and coming-to-know, the worlds we inhabit and inquire into.

Coming to Know and Knowing Differently: Implications of Educational Leadership

Our paper will examine the question of counter-hegemonic knowledge production in the Western academy and the responsibilities of the Racialized scholar coming to know and producing knowing to challenge the particularity of Western science knowledge that masquerades as universal knowledge in academia. We engage the topic from a stance examining the coloniality of knowledge in educational leadership by centering Indigenous knowledge systems in the academy as a means to disrupt Euro-colonial hegemonic knowledging. We ask: How do we challenge the “grammar of coloniality” of Western knowledge and affirm the possibilities of a reimagining of “new geographies” and cartographies of knowledge as varied and intersecting ontologies and epistemologies that inform our human condition as “learning experiences, research, and knowledge generation” practices? The paper highlights epistemic possibilities of multicentricity, that is, multiple ways of knowledge as critical to understanding the complete history of ideas and events that have shaped and continue to shape human growth and development. The paper highlights Indigeneity as a salient entry point to producing counter-hegemonic knowing. The paper concludes pointing to implications for educational “re-search” and African educational futurity.

Cosmology and Anankê in the Timaeus and Our Knowledge of the Forms

At Tm. 47e, Timaeus steps back from his discussion of what came about through noûs and turns toward an account of what came about through anankê. Broadie, 2012, Nature and Divinity in Plato’s Timaeus, sketches out two routes for the interpretation of this ‘new beginning.’ The ‘metaphysical’ approach uses perceptibles qua imitations of intelligibles in order to glimpse the intelligibles (just as we look at our reflection in a mirror in order to view ourselves). The ‘cosmological’ reading assumes we use the perceptible part of the cosmos in order to come to know the entire cosmos. Broadie openly favors the cosmological reading for understanding the Timeaus as a whole. However, she confines its utility to the Timaeus and does not recommend it for other dialogues. I use Broadie’s ‘cosmological reading’ to better understand what Plato distinguishes as anankê in his second beginning. This sets the stage for my argument that Broadie’s cosmological reading is a promising means for understanding the metaphysics and epistemology of the Forms. By making some comparisons to Sophist (251c–256a), I show that a refined understanding of anankê in the second beginning of the Timaeus clarifies what Plato thinks is involved in coming to know a Form. I argue that a close look at what was available to the Demiurge for cosmic creation by means of noûs yields three distinct ways in which his construction of the cosmos was limited by anankê. Clarifying these three ways in which anankê operates shows that the Demiurge’s manipulation of the foundational elements yields a perceptible world that brings out some potential relationships among Forms while suppressing others. In particular, the Demiurge’s geometricization of the elements leads him to make compromises concerning how Forms can combine in the Receptacle. These choices produce nomological relationships among the Forms with respect to where they can overlap in the Receptacle. This produces the law-like and reliable, but unnecessary, behavior of the perceptible world. I argue that our understanding of these limitations and their translation into where the Receptacle can partake in more than one Form simultaneously, figures importantly in the estimating the potential for human knowledge of the Forms. I question the use of ‘necessity’ as a translation for ‘anankê’ in the Timaeus.

Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change: The Birth of a Journal

In this inaugural editorial, we tell the story of the emergence of the journal as a response to our current global context. We seek to exemplify the different ways of coming to know and different forms of knowledge that are required to bring about the deep systems change needed to address the divides of our time. We reveal the ways in which the very process of enacting different research paradigms is itself emancipatory and transformative: making these practices visible is the work of awareness-based systems change.

The Outcome, Criticisms and Legacy of Heidegger’s Comparative Examination

This chapter explores how, in the final stages of The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, Heidegger demonstrates the manner in which we can travel upstream from the metaphysical quagmire of our situation in order to access deeper and more essential knowledge of the human, metaphysics, and physis. To facilitate this move, Heidegger considers it necessary to review what has been garnered from the study of our contemporary situation and its expression through the media of Kulturphilosophie and biology. The chapter argues that Heidegger’s hope throughout the lecture course has been that, by coming to know the essential distinctions that arise in these fields in all their superficiality, we will enable ourselves to go deeper into the attunement of profound boredom, and eventually to replace the contemporary opposition between life and spirit with a more primordial understanding of the human and its status within physis.

Collaborative Autoethnography

This article presents an ongoing reflexive account of us as three collaborating academics undertaking research and writing a journal article in the field of management and leadership. Influenced by collaborative autoethnography, it draws on narratives written at the time, recorded conversations, and letter exchanges between us as we prepare our work for submission to a journal. Through the process we show how the quality of research improves. We do this by paying attention to the contradictions between the rational expectation of how research should occur and the messiness of what actually happens—and how difficult this was for us to pay attention to. This was achieved during a reflexive process of coming to know and learn about each other in a way that shone a new light on ourselves. We share the benefits of engaging in challenging dialogue and reflection that maintains a level of unsettlement within our collaboration. The contribution of our article is to demonstrate our use of collaborative autoethnography as a reflexive heuristic to enhance research practice in a multiple perspective context. This has enabled validity in action by making explicit learning and knowledge of the peripheral goings on of the collaborative process that might normally go unnoticed.

Exploring schemas in the Welsh curriculum: A coming to know for practitioners and children

This paper explores one child’s use of their schema to construct their knowledge and understanding within the early years curriculum for Wales – the Foundation Phase (FP). It considers how a knowledge of schemas can facilitate practitioners in supporting children along their learning continuum and inform classroom pedagogy. This paper explores and defines what schemas are and examines prior research into schemas. It examines FP practitioners’ lack of knowledge and understanding of schemas within the chosen setting, thus providing the rationale for the research. Lastly, it charts Harri’s learning journey over two terms and how a coming to know about Harri’s trajectory schema facilitated a different understanding of his actions by practitioners and helped shape classroom pedagogy. The paper highlights how an informed knowledge of schemas supported Harri’s engagement in tasks and fostered his collaboration with others. This paper is useful for policy makers, practitioners and researchers, particularly in Wales, in understanding how nurturing and nourishing a child’s schema supports knowledge construction within a play-based curriculum such as the Foundation phase.

Somaesthetic Experience and the Viewer in Medicean Florence

Viewers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were encouraged to forge connections between their physical and affective states when they experienced works of art. They believed that their bodies served a critical function in coming to know and make sense of the world around them, and intimately engaged themselves with works of art and architecture on a daily basis. This book examines how viewers in Medicean Florence were self-consciously cultivated to enhance their sensory appreciation of works of art and creatively self-fashion through somaesthetics. Mobilized as a technology for the production of knowledge with and through their bodies, viewers contributed to the essential meaning of Renaissance art and, in the process, bound themselves to others. By investigating the framework and practice of somaesthetic experience of works by Benozzo Gozzoli, Donatello, Benedetto Buglioni, Giorgio Vasari, and others in fifteenth- and sixteenth century Florence, the book approaches the viewer as a powerful tool that was used by patrons to shape identity and power in the Renaissance.