The End or a New Beginning: A Parallel Look at the COVID19 Pandemic and Wholetheme Education

Abstract

This short paper draws a parallel between the COVID19 pandemic and wholetheme education and asks which direction education should take after the pandemic. Using a figure adapted from a 1994 comparison of piecemeal and whole-theme approaches to learning and teaching, it contrasts two possible routes for the coming academic year. The first is the default of reopening schools and continuing business-as-usual education, described as piecemeal second- and third-person knowledge acquisition in which young people learn from knowledgeable others through textbooks, following a slow input-transformation-output process aimed at internalising knowledge and returning it through examinations. The second is wholetheme development of first-person understanding through biofunctional understanding spirals, in which knowing by revelation, or insight, arises from resisting the usual and becomes understanding through reflection, and in which the teacher's role changes from knowledge provider to guide. The author presents the pandemic as the closest existing example of such a wholetheme movement and calls for a shift in education at least as large and all-encompassing as the one the world experienced during the pandemic. Reflecting on social distancing, the paper concludes that second- and third-person education, with teacher-controlled classrooms and passive learners, is outdated and should be replaced by insight-provoking, understanding-inducing first-person education.

Abstract prepared by the editorial office from the full text of the article; the authors did not supply one.