A Practice Approach to Attachment and Autonomy In Site Based Educational Development

Date
2017-07
Authors
Runnalls, Glenn Stuart
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Publisher
Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina
Abstract

My dissertation engages the familiar trope that when the full development of the human personality is directed toward the autonomous individual, a form of neo-colonialism emerges that pathologizes students who come from families or cultures that do not practice the autonomous individual as full development of the person. I show 1) that obligatory education and autonomous individualism are strongly coupled, and related 2) that despite stated intentions otherwise, many of the practices of obligatory education tend to exacerbate rather than ameliorate for problems like compulsive consumerism and neo-colonialism. My overall concern is to show that there are ways for educators to take up “the full development of the human personality” (UDHR, 1948, 26.2a) without entailing autonomous individualism. I do this by elaborating a practice approach to organization and development of the person and persons in light of the twenty-first century re-turn to practice. The practice perspective regards practices as the keystone to the formation of social structures and persons. In working with practice, I both commend a practice approach to development of the student and take a practice approach to reading existing theoretical research projects. My dissertation is a conceptual and descriptive piece that works with three peripheral research projects in organizational studies, sociology, and psychology. While the primary concern is to re-frame what it is for educators to contribute to the development of the person, my dissertation illuminates research and shows connections that are not commonly found in North American educational discourse. This involves ii taking up Gherardi’s ecologies of practices approach in order to explore the developing person in two different environments: the primal attachment relationship and as student in obligatory education. For the latter, I draw on Meyer’s neo-institutional research. In so doing, I rehearse a history of obligatory education and its association with the autonomous individual. To explore the primal attachment relationship, I review Sroufe’s organizational perspective on the development of the person, showing that such a perspective should be considered as a theory of practice. As such, it could fill a gap in social theories of practice that under-theorize the person. Combining psychosocial and sociomaterial approaches to organization and development, I argue that educating for the full development of the person includes identifying and training students in skills that give people the capacity to enact agency. Such skills are predicated on practices associated with secure attachment and not on repudiation of family and culture of origin. Taking such an approach means that teachers and educational experts learn to practice a poetic science that is always situated, accountable, and responsible. Educators who follow such a science will help students to perform and persist as they learn to navigate and negotiate between multiple levels of responsibility: to oneself, to one’s family and community of origin, to one’s fellow learners, to the environment, and to general human flourishing.

Description
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education, University of Regina. xi, 238 p.
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