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International Journal of Learning, Vol 16, 2009

Unfolding Being-with-Environment Through Creative Problem

Solving in Environmental Education

Pierre-Yves Barbier, Diane Pruneau, Monique Langis

Abstract: This paper presents a phenomenological-hermeneutical

analysis of research findings gathered in an Environmental Education

Research Project focused on documenting the appplication of a Creative

Problem Solving Approach to Environmental Education. This Research

Project took place among a Third Grade Class from Blanche Bourgeois

School, Cocagne, New-Brunswick. The students explored, from January

to June 2007, a sedimentation problem related to the Cocagne River

through eleven (11) pedagogical sessions. The primary Research

objectives were to document and describe:1- How students understood the

sedimentation problem as to its actors, causes, impacts and connections.

2- How students arrived at solutions when helped by creative heuristics. 3-

How they would commit themselves to bring about solutions. After the first

analysis focused on Research findings related to these objectives, we

proceeded to a second analysis (phenomenological-hermeneutical). With

this second analysis, we argue that such a Creative Problem Solving

Approach provides a window to observe how, in such a context, a vision of

Being-with-Environment unfolds through the expression of Tacit knowing.

We then draw the pedagogical implications for this particular aspect of

environmental education concerned by the transformation of students’

protective relation to nature and environment.

Introduction

To facilitate full participation in the sustainable development of their community,

young people need to progressively develop knowledge and certain skills:

Evaluating the local environment, predicting and managing risks, solving

environmental problems, making sustainable decisions and planning for the future

(Pruneau, Freiman, Lirette-Pitre & Cormier, 2007). Full participation is in fact

one of the goals of environmental education which “aims at developing a

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knowing-how-to-be allowing for: 1) The emergence of an optimal relationship

between the person and its environment; 2) For knowledge to be acquired and 3)

for a desire to act that leads to commitment towards preservation, restoration or

improvement of environment” (Sauvé, 1994, p.52).

This article is based on an action-research project performed by our research

team. (Littoral et Vie) This project documented how creative thinking tools such

as heuristics influence problem-solving skills among a group of third graders

(eight to nine year olds). The goal of this article is to use the pedagogical

experience outline in this action-research project as a window to capture and

understand the emergence of their knowing-how-to-be-with-the-environment

(savoir-être environmental). This will be done through a phenomenological-

hermeneutical analysis which leads to an understanding of existence (Lamarre,

2008). Although Environmental Education addresses differently the issues of

problem solving and of relation to environment, we consider that it is also

relevant to examine a pedagogical experience not from its goals, processes and

results but from the underlying existential assumptions it carries.

From Hermeneutics to the Phenomena of Experiencing Environment

Hermeneutics as a field of understanding ways of understanding has historically

consisted of four main channels or four traditions: Whether it focuses on

deconstructing the subject’s conceptual framework; whether it reconstructs the

object in the light of its biographical, cultural and historical context; whether it

unveils the distortion and manipulation of power upon subject and object; or

whether it strives to strike a balance between the inherent conceptual

underpinning of the object and the creative understanding of the subject-

interpreter (Gallagher, 1992, pp. 9-11).

Our perspective is situated in this fourth channel and borrows from Heidegger

(1985) and Gadamer (1996) as interpreted by Lamarre (2008). As to the

phenomenological dimension, it is rooted in Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics

seminal advice to prevent interpretation from becoming an illusion: To explain

more in order to understand better (Amalric, 2005, p.38). The explanation, for

our purpose, stems from the data collected during the action-research project and

analysed according to its objectives and methods. The understanding comes from

the reading and interpretation of this body of analysed data out of a theory of

existence.

The foundation of this theory is based on the fundamental structure of existence

laid out by Heidegger (Lamarre, 2008, pp. 66-73). It consists of four existentials

or four conditions of universal existence found in living and understanding: space,

time, body and relation. In other words, being-human (Dasein) means to be-

there, be-in-the-world, within a natural light of understanding which unveils the

way it becomes or relates to biography, culture and history (time), relates to

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geography, objects and environments of all sorts (space), relates to the living,

embodiment within self and tradition (body), relates to self, other selves and all

matters of existence (relation). The focus is on the way the equation of these

existentials shows itself in a given situation. Therefore, for our purposes, it is the

way of being-with-environment that is of concern.

We argue that unveiling the Way through understanding could provide orientation

for educational practice. This article has a practice focus. Obviously, the meaning

of practice varies whether we view educational goals as a primary means to either

improve socialization, foster excellence and competence or in assisting the whole

development of the student (Egan, 1997, pp. 9-32). In our perspective, we are

attempting to draw an existential view of a learning situation and examine the

practice from there.

Hermeneutics in Education

From a hermeneutical perspective applied to education, we find in Egan (1997) a

challenging view about the layers of understanding based on recapitulation theory.

He suggests that children repeat stages of cultural development within their own

development according to the following sequence: somatic, mythic, romantic,

philosophic and ironic forms of understanding. Using the story model, he urges

educators to frame teaching within the learning cognitive tools that carry these

forms of understanding. Thus, “the contribution of Ironic understanding is to keep

constantly to the fore the inadequacy of the categories and their characterizations

to the reality they try to represent, and the contribution of Philosophic

understanding is to attempt constantly to capture as much of the compexity of that

reality as possible within some coherent general scheme” (Egan, 1997, p. 157).

Moreover, “Somatic understanding..., which is rooted in intentional pre-linguistic

communication, mimesis and imitation (p.162-170), provides to Ironic

understanding something beyond language, something foundational to all later

unerstanding...something below language that our language can strive to be true

to” (p.169-170).

Symbolic tools on the other hand, which preceded conceptual tools, were fairly

well suited to explore and express other previous forms of understanding where

selfhood and world mingle and are less differentiated. As such they allow a more

vivid contact with the world and call for a fuller relationship of selfhood and

world (Wunenburger, 2002, p.64). Symbolic tools are tools of Orality and of

Mythic understanding, present in early childhood and beginning elementary,

encompasses capacities such as, “forming binary oppositions and mediating

them,...,metaphor, rhythm and narrative, images, stories and affective meaning,

humor... These capacities might be seen as organs of the imagination... This

poetic world –emotional, imaginative, metaphoric- is the foundation of our

cultural life, as a species and individually” (Egan, 1997, p.69).

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The surest way to prevent the kind of experience of a more vivid contact with the

world from occurring would be to subdue symbolic logic and promote rational

logic (Chevalier and Gheerbrant, 1973, p. XLIII). Paul Ricoeur was going in the

same direction when he advocated (Amalric, 2005, pp.38-39) a post-modern

hermeneutics through a form of understanding which he referred to as a Second

Naivety: Thinking from the symbol meaning to be guided by the symbolic logic

towards ontology, the phenomena of Beingness. Put otherwise, it sugggests to

recapitulate the sequence of forms of understandings, from Mythic to Ironic

without being stuck in the Philosophic. That Beingness, meaning also Humaness,

is actually highlighted by Egan’s Romantic understanding (pp.71-103) which “is

lively, energetic, less concerned with systematic sructures than with unexpected

connections and the delight they can bring”( p.102). It frames knowledge within

human contexts with a sense for reality’s limits and, in response, calls for the

heroic autonomous will to transcend reality’s boundaries.

The First Naivety was to think in the symbol, that is intellectualizing the symbolic

logic. However understanding from the symbol, the Second Naivety, is a

necessary condition to the living experience (expérience vive) which means a truly

meaningful encounter and which implies recognition that the object of knowing is

as real as the subject of knowing (attestation). Living experience would indeed

represent the fulfilment of educational experience from the perspective of

hermeneutics and lead to inner power (Gallagher, 1992, pp.348-350).

Action-Research’s Evolution of Focus

The action-research part of this article presents a portrait of the development of

students’ environmental problem-solving skills when involved in a socio-

constructivist learning situation consisting of 11 lessons. It follows in the tracks

of a previous (2005-2006) action-research project conducted by our research team

which focussed on how grade three students posed the problem of sedimentation

in the Cocagne River, New Brunswick, Canada. Both projects took place in

schools situated in Acadian-French linguistic minority areas. Other projects of our

research team involved extensive use of symbolic cognitive tools using drama

integrated with conceptual and scientific ones.

Chawla (2002) and Hart (1997) report that children of different ages propose

some effective solutions to local problems when they are involved in

environmental projects. We thought that, with the help of creative tools as

heuristics, we could create a vehicle for progressive correction of students’

unscientific concepts, for observation of detail and relationships and for

transformation of their tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.

This is how our team was led to focus its research objectives (2006-2007) on the

way another group of grade three students creatively solved, with the help of

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heuristics, the sedimentation problem, after having studied the problem as to its

actors, causes, impacts and connections.

Theoretical Framework of Action-Research Project

Problem-solving consists of looking for a way to reduce the gap between a non-

satisfactory situation and a desired situation (Proulx, 1999). The cyclic process of

problem-solving usually consists of eight steps: Finding a problem, posing a

problem, finding solutions, assessing and choosing solutions, planning the action,

acting and evaluating the action (Higgins, 1994).

Problem solving is presented as a cyclic process involving constant back and forth

movement between the problem space, the solution space and the action space.

One perceives the presence of a problem, explores, reflects, investigates and

formulates the problem in its different dimensions These are sources, causes,

players, places, impacts, time, obstacles to action and desired situation. The whole

process happens in a metacognitive space, as the individual constantly monitors

and adjusts his or her way of working on the problem. The success of the process

empowers the individual to solve more problems and transfer the skills to other

contexts. Finally, the ideal problem-solving process occurs when there is

collaborative work between many people who form a learning community in

which individuals help each other plan and execute various operations. Of a

particular interest for our analysis is the definition of empowement that borrows

from Bandura theory of collective Self-efficacy (2003): a belief shared by a group

as to its capacities to organize and perform up to a desired level (p.708).

The figure below illustrates how our research team sees the problem-solving

process.

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Methodology

The research project took place in a third grade class from Blanche Bourgeois

School, Cocagne, New Brunswick, Canada. The focus was the sedimentation

problem in the Cocagne River. Seven introductory lessons took place in the fall of

2006. Eleven pedagogical lessons followed from January to June 2007. The

research data and first analysis stem from these 2007 lessons. These lessons were

designed from a socio-constructivism perspective. That is, they favoured frequent

interactions among students in order to build shared understanding of the problem

at hand and they called for a high involvement from the students to foster critical

thinking, co-operation and autonomy. Adults, teachers and guests had more of a

facilitating role (Vienneau, 2005, p.63). Specific to this project, creative thinking

activities were performed, as it was believed they could help with the problem

solving process (Pruneau and Al, 2007).

Sedimentation consists of soil elements and plant debris which move by water and

wind into the water stream. Several causes enhanced the sedimentation problem in

the study area: Clear cutting, the use of ATVs (all-terrain vehicles) in the river

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and unpaved roads near the watershed. Sedimentation has many negative impacts

on fish and invertebrates.

In lessons one to six, students were given opportunities to understand the

sedimentation problem as to its actors, causes, impacts and connections through

presentations, pictures of sedimented and non-sedimented rivers, drawings, three-

dimensional model making, on-site observation, success stories and visits from

experts. During lesson five, individual questionnaires were answered and personal

pre-test interviews were carried out.

Beginning with lesson 7, heuristics were used to generate new ideas about solving

the sedimentation problem and to be creative about it. Using the why? why? why?

technique they were told to let their fantasies flow freely and regardless of what

they came up with to work in small groups with this question: ATVs cross the

river and bring soil in the water. For each response they came up with, they had

to ask again the question why?

In lesson eight, another heuristic was used: the word sedimentation was written in

different ways on the blackboard. Students were asked to find new ways to write

the word and to pay attention to any ideas or images related to people, causes, or

impacts connected with the problem of sedimentation. The research assistant then

displayed the 127 solutions found so far and invited students to generate,

individually or in small groups, even more solutions.

During lesson nine, solutions were chosen randomly one by one and critical

thinking was applied based on the following questions: 1) What does this

particular solution means? 2) What benefit can we draw from it? 3) How do we

have to change this particular solution that it becomes achievable? 4) How can

we phrase it to be more precise and achievable?

In lesson 10 the complete list of solutions was presented and students proceeded

to evaluate them according to two criteria: Originality and achievability. When

four solutions were chosen, the guest scientists helped students to sift through

them with the help of the following questions: 1) Does the proposed solution

improve the resolution of the sedimentation problem of the Cocagne River? 2) Is

it a creative and original solution and why? 3) How should we transform this

solution so it becomes more achievable? 4) Who could help us in applying our

chosen solution? Students then voted and agreed on a course of action. They

decided to create and send an educational DVD on the sedimentation of the

Cocagne River to local ATV clubs and to ask them to distribute to members the

sticker they were going to make which said: I am not driving into the river.

In lesson 11 students answered individually a post-test questionnaire and

participated in individual interviews.

The data was collected through two sets of questionnaires and interviews (pre and

post), the students’ journals and the research assistant’s journal. Reliability was

achieved through this triangulation of data which provided verbal as well as visual

input from students at different moments of the process. Moreover, the research

assistant’s journal added important insights about the pedagogical experience and

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allowed some distancing from the lessons themselves. The data was analysed by

two members of our research team using the qualitative thematic approach mainly

in the light of two themes: fluidity, which means the capacity to generate ideas,

and originality, meaning the capacity to generate statistically rare achievable

ideas. Validity of the action-research project analysis was built on their agreement

about emerging codes and how they address these theoretical themes.

Action-Research Relevant Results for Our Analysis

On the side of fluidity, we noted that the number of solutions ranged from 8 to

19 during the first 6 lessons. However, in Lesson 7, thirty seven (37) solutions

were found while fifty (50) were proposed during Lesson 8. It went down to

twenty four (24) in Lesson 9 but went up to thirty six (36) at the last and eleventh

lesson. As to originality, which covered new and original ideas, we observed a

similar but not an identical pattern: no more than seven (7) new solutions up to

Lesson 6, but up to thirty three (33) in Lesson 7, forty two (42) in Lesson 8, down

to sixteen (16) in Lesson 9 and twelve (12) in Lesson 11. Only two (2) original

ideas, which means new ideas that hadn’t been mentionned before, were brought

forward by the end of Lesson 6, but twenty seven (27) in Lesson 7, thirty nine

(39) in Lesson 8, then down to sixteen in Lesson 9 and ten (10) in Lesson 11.

If it can be said that the use of heuristics was successful in generating

significantly more, new and original ideas, the new and original ones declined in

numbers as the evaluation phase towards realism started, in Lesson 9. The use of

heuristics made also a crucial difference: it opened the field of Fantasy. The

Power to act is a result of the eleven lessons, as well.

At the conclusion of the last and eleventh lesson, the research assistant made this

interesting comment in her journal: Despite the fact that students had chosen and

were about to act upon their solution to the sedimentation problem, they didn’t

feel, in her view, empowered. They had to be questioned a number of times to

finally acknowledge that they too could make a difference to improve the problem.

This did not come as a spontaneous perception gained through their involvement

in the lessons.

This is particularly challenging in reference to our model. It could be argued that,

in many ways, we have fulfilled the requirements of our model: problem, solution

and action spaces and their internal processes have been addressed from the

cognitive perspective. Community, reflection and metacognition were also

present. According to this model, the course of action elected and implemented,

which is akin to Bandura’s (2003) four steps to achieve collective Self-Efficacy,

should bring about a feeling of empowerment. How come this is not so? Perhaps

objective empowerment has been achieved through the focus on problem-solving

skills but not so for subjective empowerment, which may have needed another

focus. Without subjective empowerment however, it is doubtful that the transfer

of skills to other contexts would happen, objective empowerment being bound to

the contexts they emerge from.

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Phenomenological-Hermeneutical Analysis

We followed three imperatives (Lamarre, 2008, pp. 78-84): 1) A detailed

phenomenological description provided by triangulation of data including

accounts of the students’ relational living with the process and insightful

observations by the research assistant about the educational experience; 2) A self-

critical and distancing stance as outlined in the limits of the study; and 3) An

hermeneutical circular approach which enlightens the whole with the parts and the

parts with the whole, which brought about the themes.

Themes

1. The Idea of Purity

Sedimentation has been seen as deposits of dirt, sand, mud, stones and

even pollution which disturb the river. Without these, the water would be

pure, clear, natural and healthy. The deposit of sediment in the riverbed is

not seen as possible nutrients for plant and animal life but as interference

with natural life and the flow of water. Therefore, these ideas suggest to

leave the water untouched and that the river needs to be protected from

unwanted agents. Because the river’s water is worth caring for and

because the caring takes the form of non-interference, the students will

devise a means to leave it alone, that is, in the hands of nature.

Sedimentation is not seen as a natural process that nourishes and shapes

geography in the course of time but as an idea close to pollution.

Furthermore, the presence of the river, its impact and grandeur on the

landscape, the way it flows, its contribution to the sustainability of human

beings and other life are not really part of their vision, even in a small

way. The river as such is more an abstraction for them, only the water is

real.

This view suggests that relation to space is limited to the living sensation

that the river’s water provides and does not grab the body of the water, the

flow of the river. The long and eventful history of the river (time) is

therefore flattened to the present time. Not factoring in history prevents

understanding the dirty yet, in time, nutritive ways of nature and inserts a

gap between nature and humans, between pure and impure: This is a

fundamental aspect of being-with-environment.

2. Focus on All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs)

The human interference that attracted the most attention was the impact of

ATVs on the river bed and on the water. By disturbing the sediments

already present and by adding outside elements to the water, it is

understood that they contribute heavily to the sedimentation. Other human

factors, such as farming or building too close to the river, were identified

but none stimulated the students’ imagination like those machines, which

provide an extension of the body. The freedom of motion that ATVs

suggest and the power of overcoming land obstacles, makes the vastness

of space accessible and manageable for pleasure, meaning that time is

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now.

Its adventurous appeal made the ATVs claim of supremacy of human

beings over nature (relation), the symbolic figure of what was wrong with

the river’s water. In choosing ATVs as the main culprit of sedimentation,

students followed a widely accepted perspective that technology is the root

cause of pollution and therefore of impurity. That kind of being-with-

environment is therefore the problem.

3. Protecting the River’s Water

As mentioned, protecting and caring for the river (body) and its purity is

by non-interference. Therefore, action strategies focused on ways to

prevent ATVs from entering the water and depositing outside soil.

Interestingly, the impact of ATVs was not seen as disturbing the sediment

in and around the riverbed but focused instead on the import of deposits

brought in by the ATV tires. What is impure is not coming from inside

but is brought from outside (space)! Nature is less a web of forces that

shapes and enlivens everything including humans, but more a space

outside human freedom which is symbolized by the ATV. Protecting,

simply means keeping ATVs off the river’s water (relation).

During their fantasy exploration process, students came up with dozens of

ways to get ATVs across the river, such as building bridges, laying down

leaves or securing the help of giants. Other options were to fence the river

or to scare away ATV drivers. In other words, the idea of protection and

caring was thought of in terms of isolating the river from unwanted human

activity and by restraining the scope of its use in the future (time). Being-

with-environment is seen as caring by protecting and isolating the

relationship.

4. Reality and Fantasy

During lessons seven and eight, the reality imperative was lifted and

fantasy was encouraged. Consequently, the number, newness and

originality of solutions sharply increased. On the wings of fantasy,

students could freely express (relation to self) how in the future (time)

magic could possibly solve the sedimentation problem whether it was by

improving ATVs technology and performance or by devising ways to keep

them away from the river. Besides the freeing experience this exercise

provided to the students (body), none of its content proved useful when

time came to bring reality back into the fold (space).

Was the fantasy detour worthwhile then? Is it not true that technology

partakes of the same fantasy, the dream of freedom in space, the problem

it tries desperately to solve? Why is fantasy about nature itself, so

abundant in oral traditions of many cultures, so absent? Is the river an

abstraction for the students because there is no imagining its presence and

beingness? Is the power stemming from imagining being-with-

environment devoid of inner strength yet full of outer excitement?

5. Towards Environmental Action: A Socially-Moral Identity Solution

Once the sense of reality was brought back into the picture, it was still

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clear that ATVs had to be prevented from going into the river. Somehow,

the idea shifted from ATVs as machines to ATVs as drivers and as

persons. An educational DVD on the sedimentation problem was to be

created and a sticker would be made (time) to be put on ATVs (body).

This sticker figuratively would proudly say: I am not driving into the river

(space) and would be sent, along with a letter and the DVD, to ATV clubs

across the province with the request to give it to members (relation to

others).

The solution to the impact of the machine on sedimentation, however

small or big, would lie ultimately in the hands of a community of alerted,

educated people who would act responsibly (relation to self). This

solution is not just about changing habits and patterns, it is also about an I

who acts out of values in a shared moral community to protect the

environment. Coming from the purity of children for the sake of the purity

of the earth, a voice of innocence was then given power for the

environment, being-with-environment.

Pedagogical Implications: The Feeling of Empowerment

Students were steered for months into situations for such a feeling to arise and

success was just about to reward their effort and yet, that feeling was absent. If

the socio-constructivism learning process that has been used, fosters social

identity more strongly than personal identity (Muchielli, 2003, pp.41-79), can we

expect the rise of a feeling of empowerment, provided this feeling lies within the

personal boundaries of identity?

The focus on social identity through the learning process is also suggested by

comments made by the research assistant during lessons two, three, seven and ten,

when she noted how students were deeply influenced in their ideas by their peers

and guests. The pre-eminence of social identity over personal identity for eight

and nine year olds appears to find some ground in educational psychology and

child development (Lievegoed, 2005). If so, achieving objective empowerment is

all that we can expect from eight and nine year olds and our model holds true.

After all, our definition of empowerment is action oriented and repeated actions

along the same cycle could very well provide the inner experience logically

expected from outer success. Until then, the problem of transfer of skills to other

contexts remains as it can be argued that personal identity is the vehicle for

transfer, because its living space is prior to and outside of objective contexts.

Therefore, is there anything in the way of being-with-environment that came out

of this educational experience that could lead to a feeling of empowerment? Is

there a connection between the themes: An abstract view of the river yet with a

focus on its water, a separation between nature and humans where purity needs

protection, a mechanized fantasy centred around power and freedom, a social

solution based on individual morals and a strange void of powerlessness in its

relation-to-self? These conceptual language tools perhaps gave all they could.

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Without symbolic language tools, the inwardness necessary to experience the

feeling of empowerment was lacking and so was the inwardness of experiencing

the river as an entity. Instead the focus was only about its water. The living

experience of the real encounter couldn’t therefore rise to the fore and influence

understanding.

Limits of the Study

The phenomenological/hermeneutical analysis was drawn from data compiled for

a research project, the objectives of which were to build an outline of student

competency in creative problem-solving. The phenomenological aspect of the

analysis didn’t come directly from field work with the students but from an

account of their experience. Could it be that students did get a feeling of

empowerment but it failed to show or wasn’t seen as such in the account?

Perhaps if a phenomenological approach to data collection had been applied in the

field, such feelings of empowerment would have been perceived and would have

been part of the account!

However, phenomenological research is not about how the content of one’s

consciousness coincides with the content of another consciousness or coincide

with a ‘reality’ outside (Giorgi, 1997). Moreover, the action-research model that

was used made it difficult to isolate the source of consciousness content, whether

it came from the students or from the research and teaching teams. Therefore, we

considered the data account on its own ground, as a representation of a social

educational experience. We found in this account sufficiently rich

phenomenological information, coming from triangulation of data, to develop our

second analysis.

However, if the epistemological foundation of the action-research analysis could

be framed within the dualism of what students achieved and what the teams did,

the phenomenological/hermeneutical analysis could only account for what was

retained and understood from the experience in the first place. It refers to what is

seen about the experience and therein lies its value.

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Conclusion

As we tried to picture being-with-environment from the educational experience of

the environmental creative problem-solving process, we have been gradually led

to consider the way it is shaped. We then understood that a dimension was

missing: an environment-with-being. What kind of symbolic representation would

lead to a river-with-being in this particular case? What kind of creative work,

besides the use of heuristics to foster fluidity and originality of ideas, needs to

occur to bring about a real encounter, an inward empowerment to transfer and

move applications inter-contextually are, obviously, the next pedagogical

questions?

Perhaps, the merit of our argument is to insist that, prior to science, was a

dimension of relationship that we suppose, acted as a source of inspiration for

many environmental educators: A direct, profound, true experience of nature that

stemmed from more than sense perception but was also embedded in symbolic-

imaginative representations and cognitive tools rooted in Egan’s Mythic

understanding. After all, for many past generations, sustainability was achieved

with the help of stories and myths which provided a sense of oneness with nature

(Knudtson and Suzuki, 1992, in O’Sullivan, 1999, p. 99).

Could this Way be helpful in assisting the next generation with its environmental

task? This Way leans more, as ot the questions of finding solutions and facilitating

empowerment are concerned, towards deepening the layers of understanding

through their proper cognitive tools, than to perform repetitive and retroactive

action within a narrower band of understanding. The idea of competence is

grounded on different assumptions which are by no means incompatible, just

different. In this respect, it is refreshing to remember that “autobiographical and

biographical findings on distinguished scientific geniuses demonstrate that their

mental functioning is determined in part by specific feelings, preferences, beliefs

and other phenomena....which can be referred to as ‘extracognitive phenomena’”

(Shavinina and Seeratan, 2004, p.73).

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