Prophetic Visions for Professional Teachers: A Whiteheadian Perspective on Designing University Courses

Abstract

Besides learning transmitted content, university students develop learning patterns through pedagogical processes designed into the structure of their courses. Courses shaped within the assumptions of epistemologies and ontologies that only afford narrow learning patterns can eschew learning as valuing processes. However, university courses can be conceptualized and constructed within assumptions that allow students to respond to the lure for learning through the valuation of importance that makes freedom possible. This paper proposes the two Whiteheadian notions of learning as event and learning as achieving strength of beauty through which courses can be conceptualized to facilitate the lure for learning in the pursuit of truth. Then, the paper illustrates how university courses can be designed as learning events through which students create prophetic visions as a means of achieving strength of beauty.