| My masters Thesis, A Chronicle of Stumbles: The Nature of Nature in the Learning Game, explored heuristic knowledge patterns and promoted a constructivist approach to curriculum development. My doctoral dissertation investigates motives for learning and develops a theory of education based partially on Popper and Campbell's concept of Evolutionary Epistemology (the biological nature of complex adaptive systems) through a series of personal, practical, and pedagogical examples. The theory, which I call autopoietic1 education, extrapolates advances in quantum physics that view the world as a self-manifesting organism. 2 The consequence for education is a realignment of educational paradigms towards, local, contested, democratic, vertically integrated practices that are student initiated and nature-framed. The style of the dissertation is polymorphic and literary. Chapters 1 to 3 begin with a dialogue of co-mingled voices of poetry and academic prose, resolve with insights into the educational relevance of quantum theory, and extend into a defense of multiple literacies. This sets the conceptual stage for Chapters 4 to 7 detailing practical explorations into the synthesis of arts and science in theme-based curriculum, investigations into practical examples of autopoietic education in a variety of learning institutions, and a summary of principles of autopoietic education supported by the works of John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, David Booth, Jack Miller, David Selby, David Bohm, and a host of illustrious others. The Primary Title of this dissertation: The Universe is a Horse, is consciously transgressive3 of conventional standards and positions personal mythology as root of the learning impulse.;1H. Maturana & F. Varela, The Tree of Knowledge (Boston: Shambhala, 1988). 2Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems (New York: Doubleday, 1996). 3bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994). |
