Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

712 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
Wozu) of equipment. For example, the shoe that is to be produced is for wearing, the clock is
for telling the time, and so on. Heidegger is quite clear about this priority: “The kind of dealing
which is closest to us is ...not a bare perceptual cognition, but rather that kind of concern which
manipulates things and puts them to use.” As this pragmatic orientation is so immediate, we may
tend to overlook it. If, however, the hammer were to break, we would become very conscious of
the importance of the “ready to hand” dimension.
In a way that almost seems to recall parallel observations in Wittgenstein, Heidegger admits
that our relationship of practical concern toward a thing may escape our awareness or notice
because of its very familiarity and everyday character. For example, we may take for granted the
significance of a hammer as a piece of practical equipment that is “ready-to-hand,” that when
we consciously consider it we look at it “objectively.” But as soon as the hammer becomes
broken, we see all too clearly what “hammer” really means to us as something ready-to-hand.
More especially, “when something ready-to-hand is found missing, though its everyday presence
(Zugegensein) has been so obvious that we have never taken any notice of it, this makes a
break in those referential emptiness, and now sees for the first time what the missing article was
ready-to-hand with, and what it was ready-to-hand for.”
Dasein is thrown into the world in that Dasein is “always ready” in a specific situation that
determines the possibilities that are available to it, with the mood or “state of mind” that reveals
its throwness. Dasein is “thrown possibility, through and through.” Such a notion of Being and
the situated-ness of being thrown-into-the-world are central to situated cognition. In this sense,
learning translates into Being (that is, the whole person as a character or identity) and Being is
thrown into actions in the world until “breakdowns” occur of which reflection is then interposed.
In this sense, the world that is before us is the current world authentically ready-to-hand (soon to
be realized) or present-at-hand (already realized as current). In Heidegger’s view the world is an
environment (Umwelt) to which man has a practical relationship of concern.
If Dasein is our way of being in the world, then our understanding of the world is through
and constrained by Daisen. Thus, to be situated means to be situated within Daisen or our within
our experience of the world. Situated cognition must be considered as experiential. When we say
cognition is situated, we mean that it is situated in the flow of experience that comprises Being.
Understanding and Interpretation
As understanding is apriori, Heidegger views it as prior to cognition. This is because understanding
is rooted in possibility, in Dasein’s ability-to-be or “potentially-for-Being” (Seinkonnen).
Dasein has possibilities before it knows possibilities. Understanding projects Dasein’s Being both
upon its “for-the-sake- of-which” and upon significance, as the worldhood of its current world.
At the deepest level, understanding involves not seeing actual objects or situations so much as
seeing the possible use, possible contexts, and possible ways of service. We return to the notion of
“potentially-for-Being” (Seinkonnen). Congruent to Wittgenstein’s thought in his later writings, it
is forms of life and “life” which determines meaning and potentials for subsequent understanding.
It is life which determines logical grammar, and not the other way around.
Interpretation, to Heidegger, is working out the possibilities projected in understanding. The
interpretative function of understanding is not some “additional something” which is different
from understanding itself, but rather an explication or elucidation of it. Understanding operates
through a projection of possibilities; interpretation constitutes a working out of this projection,
which makes explicit what was already given through human awareness. What is explicitly
understood “has the structure of something as something.” We “see” something as a table, a door,
or a bridge. This relates closely to what has been said earlier about “in order to” (Um-zu)or“for
the sake of what” (Worumwillen). We see a pen for the purpose of writing and communicating; or