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Virginia Tech

An Experimental Hope: The Case for Emergent Pedagogy

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

This dissertation will make the case that education at the post-secondary level must be reimagined. Rather than being organized around abstract bodies of information, it must be centered on moments of transformation out of which teaching, learning, knowing and -- in fact -- democratic individuals emerge. This reconstruction of education takes place through two primary moves. First, I make the case that contemporary schooling is grounded in a flawed model of knowing, which draws together mistakes in thinking about the nature of the self, of knowledge, and of the world, which are contained in the epistemological proposition: "S knows that p." In doing so, I argue that the German conception of Bildung must replace "S knows that p" as the guiding paradigm of knowing within educational practice. In doing so, I develop a theory of creative inquiry in order to claim that knowledge emerges from embodied, social action and is a form of artistic practice. Second, I develop a pedagogy, which I call emergent pedagogy, based on the theory of inquiry articulated in the first half. Here, I argue that post-secondary pedagogy must emerge out of the contexts, situations, and communities in which students and faculty are embedded. In this way, pedagogy must be considered a kind of artistic practice in which methods are adapted to and intuited from unique problems experienced by the university community. Ultimately, I show that pedagogy must shift from being viewed as a kind of telling and hearing to a form of participatory making.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Ph. D.
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought
Department dc:contributor.department
Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2013

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Stoller, Aaron
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Sax, Benjamin E.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Brunsma, David L.
  • Garrison, James W.
  • Watson, Ronda J.

Subjects

dc:subject × 6

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:1597
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/51952

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Stoller, Aaron. An Experimental Hope: The Case for Emergent Pedagogy. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/51952