Understanding Heidegger's Ontological Education-A Narrative Inquiry Into Professional Learning Experiences

Education should not be regarded as a series of activities stipulated by curriculum specialists. Teaching is not to let students accept passively what others think of this world but to allow them inquire into the world themselves. Nowadays, education in China emphasizes too much on the acceptance of objectified knowledge but ignores the lived experience of human beings. Teachers are responsible for guiding students inquiring into this world with authentic souls to realize the goal of education- enriching people's lives. Traditional positivist education research has to a large extent snuffed the basic understanding towards authentic human beings.Heidegger's philosophy sheds much light on contemporary education. We are in the midst of education crises, so we need an alternative to our contemporary understanding of education, an alternative capable of favorably resolving our educational crisis by averting the technological dissolution of the historical essence of education. The most basic of Heidegger's innovations is his "reawakening" of the question of being. Heidegger seeks to show that the essence of pedagogy does not consist in merely pouring knowledge into the unprepared soul as if it were a container held out empty and waiting. On the contrary, real education lays hold of the soul itself and transforms it in its entirety by most of all leading us to the place of our essential being and accustoming us to it.This paper attempts to understand Heidegger's pervasive and basic ontological education from two aspects, Being-in-the-world and authenticity. Being-in-the-world intends to reflect the fundamental ontological interdependence of human beings and the world in which their existence can be interpreted in terms of the holistic relationship. Authenticity requires inner truthfulness towards oneself. It goes against enframing, the way of disclosing the world that resources are available solely for the purposes of regulation, measurement, and control. This paper challenges traditional way of educational research and uses narrative inquiry to conduct the research. Narrative inquiry is very helpful in constructing an open, reflecting curriculum. Through the inquiry into professional learning experience, a new understanding of education based on relatedness, understanding and authenticity is constructed...