Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Foundations of Reconceptualized Teaching and Learning 447
of the human experience. Knowledge mediated by emotion is valued as much as knowledge that
is mediated by reason in the context of a postformally aware educational environment.
A postformal understanding of contextualization also includes an understanding of how power
arrangements shape our lives. What we know, what we are expected to know, who we are,
and who we are to become are all meanings that are informed and mediated by how power
is arranged within the place that we live. As previously discussed, reconceptualized teaching
and learning is inherently critical in nature. This criticality is also foundational to postformal
thinking. When examining context to uncover hidden patterns of social activity, postformalists
seek to understand how power is arranged within a place, and consequently how that arrangement
empowers, silences, or oppresses those in that place. In any place, whether it be a city, a school,
or a classroom, the arrangement of power is a context that needs to be critically interrogated. One
aspect of this interrogation involves an examination of the educational psychology, which is the
foundation of what happens in the educational setting. Postformalists recognize that traditional
educational practice and its psychological foundation promotes specific power arrangements that
seek to establish or perpetuate hierarchies of control. A reconceptualized educational psychology
utilizes postformal strategies to critically interrogate educational practice and its psychological
foundation with the explicit intent to promote a socially just and caring educational experience,
and to facilitate the development of critically aware individuals who will participate in the
promotion of a democratic society. This outcome cannot occur without an ongoing attention to
the context of power.
Related to the postformal attention to context is recognition of the necessity to explore the
origins of the meanings that we hold. In a postformally aware educational environment, individuals
understand the necessity to critically probe the origins of what we know, the process of our
knowing, our attitudes, and our values. Postformalists understand that social and historical forces
mediate all our personal knowledge and the collective patterns of which we are a part. Simply,
these social and historical forces are a significant contribution to our construction of the present.
An understanding of the origins of what we believe occurs through processes of critical reflection
and reflexion. An understanding of the connections of the past, present, and future is the outcome
of our critical thinking about why the things that are around us and influence us are the way that
they are. In addition, critical reflexion is when we turn our critical gaze inward and interrogate
the origins of our own beliefs, actions, and the thought processes that we use. An essential aspect
of this etymological inquiry is the ability to ask questions—questions that will uncover problems
and aspects of problems that are undetectable without this critical interrogation.
A final way in which postformal thinking differs from formal thinking is in the inquiry process.
Formal thinking requires adherence to the scientific method, which is too often narrowly defined as
quantitative research. The insistence of postformal thinkers to continuously expand the complexity
of a situation through the exploration of origins, context, and patterns requires the use of any
research epistemology or methodology that can lead to a better understanding of the complexity
of a situation. Because of this purpose, postformal inquiry utilizes an eclectic array of research
knowledge and methods. Poststructural and postmodern methods are situationally applicable
along with both quantitative and qualitative strategies. As postformal researchers, individuals
function as bricoleurs who utilize these diverse methods and strategies to creatively uncover the
contexts and patterns that are necessary to engage the complexity of educational phenomenon.
Unlike formal researchers who focus on the acquisition and analysis of knowledge within the
constraints of the rules of positivistic research, postformal researchers use their creativity in
the employment of individual research methods and in the mixing of methodologies to enhance
the potential of the inquiry process. In addition, this allows the postformal researcher to go beyond
a simplistic cause-and-effect understanding of a phenomenon, and to allow this research process
to synergistically construct more complex meaning.