{"id":1326,"date":"2015-11-24T12:22:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-24T12:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learnhub.aucegypt.edu\/cltnewsletter\/?p=1326"},"modified":"2024-03-24T08:47:15","modified_gmt":"2024-03-24T08:47:15","slug":"learning-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learnhub.aucegypt.edu\/cltnewsletter\/?p=1326","title":{"rendered":"Learning Together"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In early November I spent a wonderful three days in the Centre for Learning and
Teaching. The highlights of my visit were my conversations with colleagues, a
cross-disciplinary seminar on post-graduate supervision and a full-day
symposium on innovation in teaching and learning. Throughout, I was on a steep
learning curve and gained so much from colleagues within AUC. I am very
grateful for the hospitality and for the opportunity to share ideas. I was also given
a tour of your splendid Rare Books Library, its exhibitions and its archive. The
latter is a hugely important resource beautifully curated by its staff. Thank you all
very much. The following is a brief summary of the talk I gave at the symposium.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Almost all the problems we now face are collective problems: bigger-than-self-problems that
require both collective and global understanding: global warming; decent trade regulations;
the protection of the environment and animal species; the future of nuclear energy and the
dangers of nuclear weapons; the movement of labour and the establishment of decent labour
standards; the protection of children from trafficking, sexual abuse, and forced labour. Such
problems can only truly be addressed through multilateral discussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Globalisation, in other words, presents us not only with economic, political and social
challenges, but with a huge hermeneutical challenge: a challenge, that is, to our
understanding. How, in a world of seemingly incommensurable difference, are we to engage
in conversations that are both constitutive of, and conditional upon, shared understanding?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the kind of question that the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer was
seeking to address. Gadamer\u2019s life spanned the long 20th century. Born in 1900 he lived till
2004, thereby surviving WWI, the rise of Nazism, WWII and the Cold War. His 1960
magnum opus \u2013 Truth and Method \u2013 reshaped the way in which we conceive of
understanding and established hermeneutics as a major philosophical field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three big but beautifully simple ideas shaped his thinking: the idea of ‘the fusion of horizons’ – how understanding always entails an element of mutuality and reciprocity; the notion of
what he calls ‘the power of prejudice’ – how we import ourselves into any attempt at
understanding; and the idea that understanding is always ‘beyond method’ – that it involves
what he called ‘the hermeneutical imagination’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Threading through these ideas is his insistence on what he calls ‘the primacy of the question’:
an emphasis that takes us beyond ‘the Socratic method’ as a pedagogical tool and towards a
theory of learning that places ‘the learner as questioner’ at the heart of the educational project.
Understanding, he argues, lies in the formulation and articulation of the question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would higher education look like if it were framed on Gadamerian principles?<\/p>\n\n\n\n