Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

218 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
fragmenting bits of information from the past and present, and manages instead to keep all of the
information together. Needless to say, as Maxine Greene (1995) implies in Releasing the Imagination,
critical consciousness propels the race discussion to “open up lived worlds to reflection
and transformation” (p. 59).
Further relating to critical constructivism, Maturana and Varela’s (1980) cognitive theory of
enactivism involves a critical change as well. Enactivism proposes that individuals have the
ability to transport select schema or inner knowledges to different spontaneous situations in order
to construct or create individual experiences. The power to do so, Maturana and Varela argue,
lies within, stemming from multiple relationships. Tatum exemplifies how the use of schema
aids in the construction of race identity as she projects the possibility that black kids might be
able to mobilize themselves for change if they would begin to see themselves as complete and
not fragmented by life’s varied experiences. This thought process, however, demands a critical
mind that knows, or has the ability to distinguish, myth from reality as well as the ability to
appropriately use that knowledge under varying circumstances at any given time. Therefore, it is
our social responsibility to nurture and stimulate more critical minds so that in turn, schema may
be implemented differently from the past and eventually used as a tool for change.
The possibility of black kids using critical schema to carve out a new existence from the “what
is” lived world, incorporating an enactivist psychological perspective, would ultimately be up to
the individual. Therefore, how they internalize their collective past and present life relationships,
and the responses and interactions engendered by the larger society would be a consideration
in the change process. In this manner, the individual would then see his or her self as capable
of taking control of spontaneous as well as long-standing situations with the “self” as the main
component. According to Varela’s autopoiesis, self-organization or self-production, individuals
are allowed to be in a lifelong marathon with self-(re)construction. Tatum proposes multiple
ways, which were previously mentioned to engage in that reality. In other words, the essence of
this theory gives individuals power to create a world, which then affords, as Kincheloe espouses,
a new era of immanence, or “what could be” in our web of reality. Ultimately, in our ZPDs, in our
relationship with others, the web of reality is open to what we can conceive and then construct
and/or reconstruct.
Critical immanence helps us to see possibilities buried deep within our minds that we lost access
to or misinterpreted because of lack of perspective or insight, social positioning, or inability to
change the “what is.” Regrettably, it seems that individuals often struggle and sometimes respond
without challenge to life’s moment-by-moment encounters in inappropriate or self-damaging
ways. Through Tatum, we discover that problems with race might have internal origins but they
ultimately go beyond the “self.” Consequently, the “self” is a good starting place, but by far not
the only stop on the continuum of hope. If one can digest reality and possibly feel the frightening
fury that exists in racist acts and through this process, recognize how racism has spiraled out of
control over time, then it might be possible to get its damaging presence into perspective.
It might be possible to imagine the “real” meaning of the fluidity of change and the existence
of limitless possibilities by extricating ourselves from the devaluing and demeaning stories,
both past and present, of racism and realigning our lived order by first, critically deconstructing
the negative and, then, critically reconstructing something new. It is the use of criticality that
seeks to change this perspective. Tatum’s honest and revealing conversations, which encourage
awareness of the interconnected nature of life, along with the understanding and awareness of
the psychological roots of racial identity and its formation, provide a working format for the
beginning of transformative change about race relations and the long-standing effects of racism.
As stated in Kincheloe’s introduction to this encyclopedia, knowledge can never stand alone or
be complete in and of itself and, thus, the context of meaning in Tatum’s scholarly works comes
from the heated conversations about race, the socialization process, embedded implicit and/or