Review of Engaging Minds: Learning and Teaching in a Complex World

Abstract

Engaging Minds: Learning and Teaching in a Complex World draws on recent social constructivist and sociocultural theories of learning, as well as recent theorizing about complex systems to provide a reflective introduction to key issues of pedagogy. This is a serious attempt to create a new hybrid form of text that provides an introduction to the field within an essay genre, largely omitting the predictable sketches of key theories and dot-point summaries of practical implications, and offering instead an integrated framework devised by the authors. The student or reader is required to engage in extended consideration of how learning occurs in a complex world and to reflect in some depth on the integrative framework offered by the authors.

The authors’ project is actually a very challenging one. They have endeavoured to provide a joint vision of a conceptual framework for teaching and learning that provokes engagement with ideas rather than acceptance of specific recipes for action. The text is presented in five chapters, dealing in turn with perception, cognition, ability, identity, and language. The choice of only five issues resonates with the belief that `less is more’, that it is better to reflect seriously on a few core concepts and their interrelationships than to cover a multitude of loosely related topics. Each chapter is divided into three sections - the first presents working ideas on conceptual matters related to the topic; the second draws upon the experience of the authors as university-based teachers in order to illustrate the way particular sensibilities can be enacted within existing educational institutions; the third section provides more specific recommendations on teaching approaches that are informed and practical.