I read Mark Fettes’ article “Layers of Meaning: Rethinking the Link between Engagement and Learning”. He used landscape as a metaphor: calling the topography “emotional geography”.
Fettes critiques Egan’s goal which ultimately uses cognitive tools to keep students in the “uplands” for as much as possible. Fettes argues that the regular day-in-and-day-out of the classroom does not realistically allow for constant mountain peak experiences. Instead, he expands this metaphor to “include the lowlands of engagement”.
In his work, Fette found it helpful to “distinguish between four layers of meaning in this emotional geography”; including strategic meaning, substantive meaning, narrative meaning and transcendent meaning. Each of these levels asks a question about how learning is to be viewed. While reading through these four levels of imaginative meaning, I began to see a connection with the components of the redesigned curriculum. Starting with content knowledge and moving up to the bigger ideas and core capacities. These linked together very easily:
Transcendent meaning/ Understand
(Why is this worth learning?)
Narrative meaning/ Big Ideas
(What’s this all about?)
Substantive meaning Content/ Know
(What did we learn today?)
Strategic meaning Curricular Capacities/ Do
(What did we do today?)
In both cases (in the Tools of Imaginative Engagement and the redesigned curriculum), a greater importance/value – or mountain top experience is placed on the transcendent meaning/understanding, with the understanding that one also needs the doing and learning to undergird the mountain tops. The emphasis is that the higher levels help keep students engaged in and connected to learning opportunities.
Like Fette, I believe that it is impossible to engage our students one hundred percent of the time. I also believe that teaching content and skills is important within the context of meaning and the bigger picture. Perhaps thinking about these meanings in terms of levels isn’t useful. I like to think of them as being integrated and dependent on each other for making the most of every learning experience.