Pastoral Relationship with People with Intellectual ... - Theses

172This maturity is better reflected by thinking of the process in terms of a spiral. AsForrester states,… if you move around a circle you come again and again to thepoint from which you started. It is rather a spiral, in the process ofwhich we ascend to higher levels of understanding and moreappropriate and faithful practice through a constantly movingprocess of radical questioning. 4685.5 Reflection–in-ActionNonetheless, in one broad sense, the starting point always returns tofamiliar territory, although always viewed through the lens of new understanding.The day-to-day reality of the pastoral context, its storied structures, behavioursand activities always remain the basis for reinterpretation and new understanding.As TeSelle points out, “[l]anguage and belief are hammered out in action; theyarise from and must return to the social and political worlds in which we findourselves.” 469 This means that the ongoing search for new understanding, andthus new practice, means an ongoing commitment to people with intellectualdisability who live in the institutional context. It is this type of liberatory andpastoral orientation that is required for the pastoral practitioner to gain anappropriate understanding of context.5.5.1 A Balancing of Epistemological PerspectivesThe disability institutions under consideration are structured around anepistemological model that educator Donald Schon refers to as TechnicalRationality. 470 From a European perspective this model can be traced back to therise of technology since the Reformation, and thus to an understanding that truetechnical knowledge was primarily and normatively derived from the theoriesand techniques of basic and applied science. It was this rationalistic belief thatshaped prevailing socio-political thinking through the Industrial Revolution andthe Age of Reason, 471 and was influential in the development of asylums for themad and institutions for the feeble-minded. The last couple of generations have468 Forrester, Duncan. Truthful Action: Explorations in Practical Theology. (Edinburgh: T &T Clark Ltd, 2000), 28.469 TeSelle, Speaking in Parables, 175.470 Schon, Donald. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. (NewYork: Basic Books, Inc., 1983), 27-50.Schon, Educating the Reflective Practitioner, 36.471 Schon, The Reflective Practitioner, 31-35.