In Favor of Ambiguity: Towards an Existentially Sensitive Pedagogy

Abstract

The paper offers an existential-dialogical perspective on the actual day-to-day experience of children and teachers. According to this worldview, a child’s development in school is dependent on the capacity to build relations of dialogue and love with the significant adults in their lives, and to gain a sense of meaning and confidence in the world. Such existential experience is achieved in relation to the child’s actual reality, and ability to face concrete challenges in their life. “Pedagogical praxis” such as this, I argue, is never a utopic or theoretical realm, free of dissonances between the child and the world, but rather is an “ambiguous space” replete with insecurities and tensions. Accordingly, the paper discusses the pedagogical implications that stem from this philosophical stance: the role of the teacher and the threats and challenges that our schools are currently facing in front of contemporary, instrumental social and economic trends.