Enaction Toward a Zen Mind

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ENACTION



BOLD VISIONS IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

Volume 14

Series Editors

Kenneth Tobin

The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA

Joe Kincheloe

McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Editorial Board

Heinz Sunker, Universität Wuppertal, Germany

Peter McLaren, University of California at Los Angeles, USA

Kiwan Sung, Woosong University, South Korea

Angela Calabrese Barton, Teachers College, New York, USA

Margery Osborne, Centre for Research on Pedagogy and Practice Nanyang

Technical University, Singapore

W.-M. Roth, University of Victoria, Canada

Scope

Bold Visions in Educational Research is international in scope and includes books from twoareas: teaching and learning to teach and research methods in education. Each area contains

multi-authored handbooks of approximately 200,000 words and monographs (authored and edited collections) of approximately 130,000 words. All books are scholarly, written to

engage specified readers and catalyze changes in policies and practices.

Defining characteristics of books in the series are their explicit uses of theory and associated methodologies to address important problems. We invite books from across a theoretical and

methodological spectrum from scholars employing quantitative, statistical, experimental,ethnographic, semiotic, hermeneutic, historical, ethnomethodological, phenomenological,

case studies, action, cultural studies, content analysis, rhetorical, deconstructive, critical,literary, aesthetic and other research methods.

Books on teaching and learning to teach focus on any of the curriculum areas (e.g., literacy,science, mathematics, social science), in and out of school settings, and points along the agecontinuum (pre K to adult). The purpose of books on research methods in education is not

to present generalized and abstract procedures but to show how research is undertaken,highlighting the particulars that pertain to a study. Each book brings to the foreground those

details that must be considered at every step on the way to doing a good study. The goal isnot to show how generalizable methods are but to present rich descriptions to show how

research is enacted. The books focus on methodology, within a context of substantive resultsso that methods, theory, and the processes leading to empirical analyses and outcomes are

juxtaposed. In this way method is not reified, but is explored within well-described contextsand the emergent research outcomes. Three illustrative examples of books are those that

allow proponents of particular perspectives to interact and debate, comprehensivehandbooks where leading scholars explore particular genres of inquiry in detail, and

introductory texts to particular educational research methods/issues of interest. to noviceresearchers.



Enaction

Toward a Zen Mind in Learning and Teaching

By

Domenico Masciotra

ORE, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada

W.-M. Roth

Applied Cognitive Science, University of Victoria, Canada

and

Denise Morel

English Montreal School Board, Canada

SENSE PUBLISHERS

ROTTERDAM / TAIPEI



A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 90-8790-033-3 (paperback)

ISBN 90-8790-034-1 (hardback)

Published by: Sense Publishers,

P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands

http://www.sensepublishers.com

Printed on acid-free paper

All rights reserved © 2007 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or trans-

mitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Pub-

lisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purposeof being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the

purchaser of the work.



v

CONTENTS

Preface vii

A. TOWARD A THEORY OF ENACTION 1

1 Enactive Being in Situation to . . . 7

2 On Networks and Spielraum 35

3 Relationality 53

4 Intelligent Enaction 79

B. ENACTION-DO 103

5 A Way to Deep Interiority 107

6 Becoming One with Nature 127

C. ENACTIVE EDUCATION 151

7 Enactive Practitioner 155

8 Toward an Enactive Curriculum 173

9 Enactive Teaching and Learning to Teach 195

References 213

Index 215

About the Authors 221





vii

PREFACE

A learner, a teacher or any other professional is construed as a being in situation todo something: they function by acting in situation. To be in a situation to . . . refersto the situating|situated dialectic: A person becomes actively situating by engagingher possibilities; and she is situated by virtue of the constraints as well as the re-sources inherent in the circumstances she finds herself in. Enaction expresses theinextricable and interdependent links between the two opposite poles of the situat-ing|situated dialectic.

*

*** Everything happens in a person’s head! one might say. But is this really the case?As far back as the 16th century, Montaigne drew a distinction between a well-filled head and a well-made head and argued that it was preferable for a teacher to have awell-made head and to educate her students with that same goal in mind. Tradi-tionally, the school’s mission has been to transmit knowledge, and as a result it waslimited to developing well-filled heads. Nothing much has really changed sincethen. Throughout the world, the mission of formal schooling remains the transmis-sion of knowledge, and the emergence of the knowledge society in contemporarylife has only served to reinforce this conviction. While the current curriculum re-

form movements indicate a shift toward the well-made head—or at least that iswhat proponents of the competency-based approach and its constructivist orienta-tions seem to suggest—in fact, except for a surface change in vocabulary, the newcurricula remain organized around hierarchically embedded items of knowledge to be imparted to the learners This situation threatens to persist as long as the contentand organization of learning, despite successive attempts at reform, continue to belimited to the head and to knowledge conceived as external to the person. Aboveand beyond these reforms, education is in need of a genuine paradigm shift, be-cause nothing is ever only in the head. A total turnabout is called for: to paraphraseKarl Marx (1977), we could say that current educational systems place people on

their head; it is time to put them back on their feet and stand them firmly in theworld. In fact, we could look long and hard in someone’s head and still not find that

little homunculus who memorizes and retains knowledge, who represents things inthe form of images, who reflects and manipulates the strings of his marionette- body, and who functions by removing himself from the world. The mind is not acerebral homunculus imprisoned in the brain. The notion of ‘brain’ refers to theentire nervous system and it is not limited to the encephalon, which is, of course,an important part of it. The brain is ramified, through its nervous circuits, in thewhole organism. It inhabits the organism, which constitutes its global biological

structure. Education must therefore develop the embodied mind. To educate is to



PREFACE

viii

intentionalize the acting body, to give it sense and direction. The more the body isintentionalized, the more it is transformed from a mere living organism into anenminded living body. Nothing, therefore, is only in the head! Cognition is distrib-uted throughout the whole body. But that is not all.

The enminded body cannot operate detached from the world: it is always a func-

tion of a person in action and in situation, of a being in situation to . . .. As phe-nomenology insists, being a person means being-in-the-world . The purpose of edu-cation is to create those conditions that best favor the emergence and growth of this being-in-the-world in all its totality and oneness. The realization of Being’s full potential depends on the simultaneous transformation of Being, the world and thein. The being is the person, the world is the person’s reality, and the in is the rela-tionship between them, or what we refer to as relationality. For example, a person becomes a competent teacher by developing her whole being-in-the-classroom.

Teacher training, however, is not typically conceived in this way. Most of its ef-forts are focused on the being-outside-of-the-classroom: courses on child psychol-

ogy, on the philosophy and history of education, on subject-matter pedagogy and methods abound, expressly designed to fill the heads of novice teachers with every-thing they need to know before they take their first step into the classroom. It is asif one were to train an actor by having him learn the lines of his script and once thisis done, saying, “Okay, go ahead, there’s the stage, the audience is waiting!”Teacher education is often characterized by this kind of training, which is then rep-licated in her own interventions in the classroom: She teaches her students decon-textualized disciplinary knowledge—really, she teaches how to regurgitate verbalformulae—that has little to do with their life and experience, and at the end of the process, tells them, “Now you are ready for real life! You know everything you

need to know! The world of work awaits you!” This way of proceeding ignoreswhat is truly essential in learning, namely that it is only by acting in situation and reflecting on one’s actions and their results that a person becomes an actor-on-stage or a teacher-in-the-classroom. This is the only way that a person can learn to play a role or to fulfill a function. Disciplinary knowledge is not the same as expe-riential knowledge and bears little in common with the wealth of lived experienceon the stage, in the classroom, or in life. Should not teacher education be moreconcerned with promoting this experience, with developing the teacher’s cogni-tion-in-action that emerges in classroom situations, and with fostering the evolvingrelationality between the teacher and her students? Should not the goal of teacher education be to create the best conditions for nurturing the teacher-teaching-in-the-world-of-the-classroom in all that she is and can become?

Nothing therefore is only in the head or in its extension, the enminded body.Intelligence, cognition, emotion and action are all part of the global structure of a being-in-the-world, or in enaction, a term that highlights the inseparable union of a being and the world, or what we alternatively refer to as the situating|situated be-

ing or the being in situation to . . .. Enaction incorporates and at the same time transcends other perspectives, par-

ticularly those of constructivism, social constructivism, situated cognition, and distributed intelligence. From the perspective of enaction, the teacher—or any



PREFACE

ix

other professional—is an enactive practitioner who functions by acting in situation,that is, in the situating|situated dynamic. The enactive practitioner displays situ-ational intelligence: She knows, according to the situation she finds herself in, howto engage her best dispositions, how to position herself strategically and how totransform the situation to her advantage. She knows when it is time to act and

when it is time to reflect; and she thereby distinguishes herself from the reflective practitioner , who assigns primary importance to reflection.

Beyond its implications for classroom practice, enaction provides a new visionof education and the curriculum: The aims and goals that guide them and the pro-grams of study that they include. In order to develop our theory of enaction, weintroduce several new concepts and take a critical look at others. The most impor-tant new concepts are those of network of virtual actions, spielraum, relationality,maai, and availability.

The concept of network of virtual actions refers to the action possibilities that a person enacts to situate herself, position herself and transform the situation in

which she finds herself, or to reflect on it. A chess master, for example, engagesmore possibilities and does so more effectively than a novice chess player. In thesituating|situated dialectic, the network of virtual actions corresponds to the situat-ing pole of this dialectic.

The concept of spielraum (room to maneuver) concerns the physical and socialenvironment as the situating|situated person comprehends it, that is, appropriates itto herself, and renders it her field of action. This concept constitutes an alternativeto that of representation: a person in situation and action does not represent theworld to herself; rather, she presents it enactively to herself by transforming it intoa spielraum, that is a spatiotemporal field of action. This concept throws light on

the notion that cognition is not confined to the head but is distributed in aspielraum, including the material and human resources that it comprises. In thesituating|situated dialectic, the spielraum corresponds to the situated pole.

The concept of relationality refers to the dialectical subject-object relationship:the subject is the being who enacts a network of virtual actions and the object is theworld transformed into a spielraum. Relationality expresses, for example, therelationship between a teacher’s (a being’s) network of possibilities and her class(the world) that constitutes her field of action, her spielraum. The concept of relationality highlights the fact that neither the subject nor the object has priority:The two emerge concomitantly in a process that evolves from symbiosis (wherethere is neither a “me” nor a world) to exteriority (a “me” confronted with theworld) and finally to interiority (a “me” in harmony with the world). The conceptof relationality provides an alternative to the rationalist hypothesis that posits amind confined to disembodied logical structures that would allow a person tocogitate in her head outside of any context.

The concept of maai refers to the spatiotemporal interval that separates two or more objects or persons (MA) and the harmony in the encounter between objects or persons (AI). It is a key concept for understanding the evolution of relationality. For example, the evolution of the gardener–garden relationship from symbiosis to exte-riority and to interiority can be expressed in terms of the presence or absence of



PREFACE

x

MAAI —distance (MA) and harmony (AI). In symbiosis there is no MA and no AI because the person is not yet a gardener and the terrain is not yet a garden. In exte-riority, there is a gardener and a garden: there is a MA between them, but there isnot yet an AI. Finally, in interiority there is a gardener/garden oneness and thisoneness is a MAAI. A MAAI is distancing|not-distancing: it is a perfect operational

situating|situated interval.The concept of availability refers to the full presence of an enminded body in

the hear-and-now. The idea for this concept was presented to Domenico Masciotra by Manuel Monzon, the founder of the Manuel A. Monzon International Society

for Mind-Body Development . (Domenico Masciotra expresses his sincere apprecia-tion to M. Monzon for his profound and inspired teaching on this subject.) A highlevel of presence corresponds to what we refer to as the Zen mind, which is whatallows a teacher, for example, to achieve deep interiority and unity with her class.The Zen mind corresponds to the highest level of professional practice.

The interconnections among these five key concepts and others explored in this

book constitute the essential components of a theory of enaction and offer a newvision of educational practice.



PART A

TOWARD A THEORY OF ENACTION





3

In the field of education, it is common to hear the claim that the learner must beactive in order to learn. There seems to be a general consensus about this matter.However, if we ask, “What does it mean to be active?,” the answers vary consid-erably, and as soon as we consider the subtle details, the consensus dissolves. For some, “active” refers strictly to the act of learning and not to the benefit gained (that is, not to what is learned), which is considered to be static, imprinted on the brain in an inert form, as if what is gained did not involve a change in the livingembodied being. In this view, learning is understood to be like eating: When I eat,

I am active, but what I eat are nutrients, which are inactive. Thus, I memorize somecontent, I imitate a behavior, I select certain information, I analyze a text, I recite a poem, and so on. In other words, I undertake certain activities that help me to learna particular subject matter. However, if learning requires me to be active, what Ilearn is conserved in my memory in a fixed form, like a written document thatsupposedly “contains” knowledge. Furthermore, according to this widespread in-terpretation, the act of learning operates on knowledge understood as information.Being active is thus a matter of processing and organizing information in the head,which results in knowledge, and not a matter of functioning in a situation. In short,it is assumed that being active does not involve being situated.

In this first section, we develop a theory of enaction as an alternative to thisobsolete interpretation of what it means to be an active being. In chapter 1, thelearner—as well as the teacher, or any other professional—is understood as a per-

son in action and in situation (PAS). The PAS is an integrated whole: A person ischaracterized by a power for action. This power is manifested in the person’s ac-tion, and this action cannot be understood apart from the circumstances (the situa-tion) in which the person finds herself. Where then is knowledge? It is in the wholePAS. The example of a swimmer at an intermediate level in a learning situationillustrates how knowledge is located at once in the person, in her action and in thesituation. The person: I engage all the resources (motivation, capacity for concen-

tration, strength, and physical dexterity, and prior swimming experience) at mydisposal to improve my crawl. The action: I swim, following the instructions and with the encouragement of the coach. The situation: At the moment, I am taking aswimming course that is given at a lake and the teacher believes that I am capableof crossing the lake using the crawl as long as I follow her instructions and sheaccompanies me in her dinghy to ensure my safety.

The theory of enaction that we explore in this book explains and clarifies howknowledge can only be understood within the framework of a PAS. Several newconcepts are introduced in this first section: enaction, being in situation to . . ., the

situating|situated dialectic, network of virtual actions, spielraum, relationality, and



PART A

4

enactive intelligence. Each of these concepts contributes a piece to the puzzle of understanding knowing and knowledgeability in ways other than a substance thatresides somewhere between the ears and that can be recalled whenever required inwhatever situation (in a supermarket, isolated in an examination room) and bywhatever means (written test, multiple-choice test, interview).

In chapter 1, the PAS is explained in terms of being in a situation to . . .. Theexpression being in a situation to . . . means that I am in a situation insofar as thissituation emerges from the transaction between personal conditions and the envi-ronmental conditions confronting me. Even identity, who I am, is a result of thistransaction. In other words, the situation emerges from the situating|situated dialec-tic. My personal conditions are the personal resources that I engage in order tosituate myself in an adaptive manner. This situating endeavor represents my owncontribution to the emerging situation and my capacity to enact it adaptively. Theenvironmental conditions concern all the circumstances—including the physicaland human resources—by means of which I am situated. These circumstances rep-

resent the situated part of the situating|situated dialectic and constitute the externalconditions for the situation to emerge.

According to this perspective, knowledge always refers to active experience thatunfolds and develops within the dynamic situating|situated process. Knowledge isexperienced in action and is situating as much as it is situated. It is also distributed,as the above example of a swimmer in a learning situation indicates. The term en-

action translates this structural coupling of situating|situated.But how is all of this possible? How can we explain the situating and the situ-

ated as well as their dialectical relationship? How can knowledge be distributed?Three key concepts are invoked to throw light on the situating|situated dialectical

process in and by means of which I learn, develop and enact my reality: The con-cept of network of virtual actions refers to the possibilities that I enact in my activeexperience of the situation; the concept of spielraum (room to maneuver) concernsthe physical and social environment as I comprehend it, that is, appropriate it tomyself, and render it my field of action; and finally, the concept of relationalityrefers to the inextricable links between my network of virtual actions and my

spielraum. The concepts of network of virtual actions and spielraum are explored in chapter 2, whereas chapter 3 is devoted to the concept of relationality.

Relationality refers to the “in” of a being in the world. Developing my ownways of being-in-the-world implies transformations of the “being,” the “world,” aswell as the “in.” As a being, I become, for instance, a teacher, a soccer player, a postman, a gardener, an actor, a physicist, a biologist, an economist, a psycholo-gist, a logician, or a musician. The concept of networks of virtual actions applies tothe development of the knowing subject understood as a situating-knower-in-action. The “world” may become the reality of transportation, professional sports, postal services, banking, theatre, pharmacy, biology, economics, psychology,logic, music, or the classroom (or school). In a particular situation, these realitiesare expressed in terms of spielraum, or room to maneuver, and constitute the situ-ated part of a being-in-the world. The “in” expresses a subject’s rapport with theworld or with his or her own spielraum. We use the term relationality to designate



TOWARD A THEORY OF ENACTION

this rapport. In real situations, relationality may take one of three forms: fusionwith the world, separation from the world, or union with it. This means that theevolution of a being-in-the-world implies concomitantly self-development (as anactor, teacher, skier, or soccer player), the “cutting up” of the world into differentrealities (the reality of theatre, of school, etc.), and the construction of relationality.

The concept of enactive intelligence does not refer to some “substance” located in the head: It is the property of a being in a situation to do something, for example, to teach, to ski, to act, to cook. It refers to a person’s adaptive capacity withrespect to self-mastery and the mastery of situations. Enactive intelligence is adap-tive, emotional, rational, cognitive, distributed, ontogenetic, and multidimensional.These characteristics, which are not exhaustive, are outlined in chapter 4 to situatethe notion of intelligence within an enactive perspective. We suggest that accord-ing to an enactive perspective there are at least three forms of intelligence: disposi-tional, positional, and gestural. Dispositional intelligence concerns self-mastery, positional intelligence pertains to the mastery of situations, and gestural intelli-

gence refers to the real actions one enacts in a situation.

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Enaction Toward a Zen Mind