Abstract
What is ontological engagement of the students? We analyze practices described in the teaching cases looking for the meaning of ontological engagement. We found that kindling and nurturing students’ ontological engagement is an omnipresent pedagogical desire of all Bakhtinian educators we have interviewed as well as a schoolteacher of Russian, Mikhail Bakhtin himself (Bakhtin, Journal of Russian & East European Psychology, 42, 12–49, 2004). This pedagogical desire is to overcome alienated learning—learning which is prevalent in contemporary conventional schooling based on instrumental, technological assumptions. In this chapter we explore the diverse instances and meanings of students’ ontological engagement in the curriculum. We define students’ ontological engagement in education as when the students’ lives outside the classroom, as well as the students’ lives in the moment, become a crucial part of education itself. We explore different types of ontological engagement: extrinsic, intrinsic, eventful, and through self-selection. At the end of the chapter we discuss diverse issues of ontological engagement: pseudo-ontological engagement and exploitation of ontological engagement.
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Notes
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A commandment based on the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Luke 6:31). The Mosaic law contains a parallel commandment: “Whatever is hurtful to you, do not do to any other person” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbath 31a). This Golden Rule has been articulated in many ancient religions, traditions, and cultures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule)
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Probably after the Axial Age (about sixth–fifth centuries BC) a “man is the measure of all things” (Protagoras, ca. 490–ca. 420 BC) including all people (Graeber, 2014).
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There are many versions of “Teremok”; see an English translation of one version, different from Iryna’s, here http://russiaonline-xenia.blogspot.com/2011/01/fairy-tale-wooden-house-in-english.html
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Our idea was inspired by Bakhtin’s characterization of Dostoevsky’s characters in his early stories as Gogol’s characters who read Gogol’s stories mocking them (Bakhtin, 1999).
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Jigsaw was designed by Aronson: https://www.jigsaw.org
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In Russian, this word can be positive and negative or a bit of both in its connotations. “Азартные игры” as a Russian legal term banned in the Soviet Union should be translated as “addictive or intoxicating games.” We use the translation “addictively fascinating” because Alexander Lobok seems to imply that children will want to return to playing these educational games of their interest again and again. They will become addicted to their feeling of fascination with these games.
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For the classical rules of the Scrabble game see: https://scrabble.hasbro.com/en-us/rules
- 10.
This is questionable as the English word “exit” comes from the Greek compound word “exodus”—a way (odus, cf. odyssey) out (ex-).
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Matusov, E., Marjanovic-Shane, A., Gradovski, M. (2019). Chapter 2.2: Ontological Engagement. In: Dialogic Pedagogy and Polyphonic Research Art. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58057-3_5
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