About the Book
Philosophers of education are largely unaware of Dewey's concept of transactionalism, yet it is implicit in much of his philosophy, educational or otherwise from the late 1890s onwards. Written by scholars from Belgium, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the USA, this book shows how transactionalism can offer an entirely new way of understanding teaching and learning, the individual and sociocultural dimension of education, and educational research. The contributors show how the concept helps us to see beyond an array of false dualisms, such as mind versus body, self versus society, and organism versus environment, as well as an equally vast array of binaries, such as inside-outside, presence-absence, and male-female. They introduce the key critical ideas that transactionalism represents including emergence; living in a world without a within; the temporally and extensionally distributed nature of meaning, mind, and self. The use and elaboration of transactionalism is grounded in philosophical inquires and in empirical analyses of practices in formal and informal settings including values education, early childhood education, biology education, museum education, coding and computer science, Oceanographic and Atmospheric study, policy reform, play, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction, Jim Garrison (Virginia Tech, USA),Leif Östman (Uppsala University, Sweden) and Johan Öhman (Örebro University, Sweden)
2. Philosophers' Problems: Transaction in Philosophy and Life, Frank X. Ryan (Kent State University, USA)
3. Transactional Perspectivalism: The Emergence of Language, Minds, Selves and Temporal Sequence, Jim Garrison (Virginia Tech, USA)
4. Transactional Systems of Exploration and Learning: The Okeanos Explorer,William J. Clancey (Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition, USA)
5. Democracy, Education, and Transaction: The Importance of Play in Dewey's Thought, Andrea Fiore (Pontifical Salesian University, Italy)
6. Applications of Transactional Methodologies for Analyses of Teaching and Learning Processes, Pernilla Andersson (Uppsala University and Stockholm University, Sweden) and Johan Öhman (Örebro University, Sweden)
7.Analyzing Teachers' Functional Coordination of Teaching Habits in the Encounter with Policy Reforms, Malena Lidar (Uppsala University, Sweden) and Eva Lundqvist (Uppsala University, Sweden)
8. Learning Through Encounters with the Physical Environment, Susanne Klaar (University of Borås, Sweden) and Johan Öhman (Örebro University, Sweden)
9. The Dramaturgy of Facilitating Learning Processes: A Transactional Theory and Analytical Approach, Katrien Van Poeck (Ghent University, Belgium) and Leif Östman (Uppsala University, Sweden)
10. Transactants in Action: Examples from a Craft Remake School Project, Hanna Hofverberg (Malmö University, Sweden)
11. Sensing Together: Transaction in Handicraft Education, Joacim Andersson (Örebro University, Sweden) and Jonas Risberg (Uppsala University, Sweden)
12.The Museum as Transactional Exploration, Petra Hansson (University of Oslo, Norway) and Johan Öhman (Örebro University, Sweden)
13. Aesthetic Expression and Artistic Creation: A Transactional Analysis of Learning in Computer Programming, Michael Håkansson (Stockholm University, Sweden), LennartRolandsson (Uppsala University, Sweden) and Leif Östman (Uppsala University, Sweden)
14. A Transactional Perspective on Ethics and Morals, Louise Sund (Örebro University and Mälardalen University, Sweden) and Johan Öhman (Örebro University, Sweden)
15. Transactional Analyses of the Entanglement of the Aesthetical, Moral and Political in Learning Processes, Michael Håkansson (Stockholm University, Sweden) and Leif Östman (Uppsala University, Sweden)
16. Links Between Pandemics, Politics, and People,Ninitha Maivorsdotter (University of Skövde, Sweden) and Joacim Andersson (Örebro University, Sweden)
References
Index
About the Author :
Jim Garrison is Professor of Philosophy of Education at Virginia Tech, USA. He is a past-president of the John Dewey Society, the Philosophy of Education Society, and the Society of Professors of Education. He is co-author of Democracy and Education Reconsidered: Dewey After One Hundred Years (2016) and Empirical Philosophical Investigations In Education and Embodied Experience (2018).
Johan Öhman is a Professor of Education at Örebro University, Sweden. He is co-author, with of Sustainable Development Teaching (2019).
Leif Östman is Professor of Curriculum Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. He is co-author of Sustainable Development Teaching (2019) and Empirical Philosophical Investigations in Education and Embodied Experience (2018).
Review :
A milestone in the advance of transactionalist studies which explicates, develops and applies Dewey's most important work through a series of sophisticated theoretical and empirically rich studies.
Garrison, Öhman, and Östman offer a remarkable book on John Dewey's transactionalism. Not only does this work highlight Dewey's last book, On Knowing and the Known, with Arthur Bentley, it demonstrates the functional utility of philosophy applied to schooling. This outstanding addition to Dewey scholarship is a must-read book for anyone interested in moving 'schooling' away from mere training and toward engagement, enactment, and growth.
Deweyan Transactionalism in Education is an amazing example of what the editors call “applied philosophy”. Mobilizing Dewey's notion of transaction and applying it to multiple educational contexts, the authors design an epistemological framework which grounds a transactional understanding of educational processes and practices, according to a sustainable perspective.
