Reflexivity Spiral
Bruner's Spiral Curriculum
In 1960, psychologist Jerome Bruner put forth the idea of a ‘spiral curriculum,’ which was a curriculum for the learner to deepen his or her knowledge of a curriculum subject through reiterative learning.
For example, Bruner states that tragedy can be taught to children from ‘an earliest appropriate age’ but ‘in a manner that illuminates but does not threaten’ (1960, 53).
Once children are familiarized to the topic of tragedy through simpler stories that illustrate it, then teachers may introduce literature or other teaching materials that elaborate on the complexities of tragedy.
The idea behind Bruner’s spiral curriculum is that children are directed to gradually develop more complex understandings of a subject by revisiting the same topic but at a deeper level each time and in accordance with the level of their cognitive development and learning progression.
Making the Spiral Reflexive
My suggestion is to turn Bruner’s spiral curriculum on its head so the learner’s reflexive learning and becoming serve as the foundation of curriculum development.
That is to say that it’s not the teachers who determine the curriculum, but the learners. But, you might ask, how will the learners know how to think or go about designing a curriculum in a coherent and systematic order?
Learners may not know all the things they have yet to learn, but they’re the expert on who they are or have become. They might also have an idea of who and/or how they want to become.
Making the spiral reflexive means to shift the focus from the subject learned to the shutai who learns. Learners can still learn the same subjects if they are in school, but the focus is slightly shifted towards the who rather than the what of learning.
Reflexive Learning and Becoming in Spirals
Shutai may be cultivated both inside and outside the school walls by making Bruner’s spiral curriculum reflexive – a reflexive learning and becoming in spirals.
This spiral includes 3 stages: 1) learners’ self-constitution through linguistically mediated noetic acts; 2) teachers’ pedagogical interventions to help learners cultivate key noematic experiences; and 3) developing a transformative praxis that engages in 4 modalities of becoming which are the phenomenological corollaries to Bhaskar’s 4 degrees of Dialectical Critical Realism.
More on the noetic, noematic, and praxis dimensions of the reflexivity spiral may be found on the pages dedicated for each.