Norm Friesen
NORM FRIESEN, Professor at the College of Education, Boise State University, specializes in pedagogy, educational technology and qualitative research. He has worked as a visiting researcher at the Humboldt University (Berlin), the University of Vienna, the University of Göttingen, the University of British Columbia (Canada), and held a Canada Research Chair position at Thompson Rivers University. Besides earning a degree in Information Studies at the University of Alberta and undertaking Postdoctoral work in Science and Technology Studies at Simon Fraser University, Friesen studied German and philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University and is the translator of two German monographs as well as of multiple articles and chapters. He has published 9 books (3 solo-authored monographs) and over 100 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. His work has been translated into German, Chinese and Spanish.
Phone: +1 604 754 1856
Phone: +1 604 754 1856
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Videos by Norm Friesen
Addresses the following questions:
- What is Pedagogy?
- How is it Related to Phenomenology?
- Pedagogical Experiences of Space and Time
- “Dignity of Practice” and its Relation to Theory
Books by Norm Friesen
"there remains a remarkable gap between research from the English-speaking world and scholarship from the European continent, particularly from Germany. This book is one of the very first texts that intervenes in the current state of affairs by making key publications from German scholars available to an English-speaking readership. This is, in itself, is a major step forward... The focus on tact and the pedagogical relationship provides strong thematic coherence, which ensures that this book is not just a historical document but also a meaningful contribution
to contemporary discussions.” -Gert Biesta, U of Edinburgh
The Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy was written in September 2016 and first presented at Liverpool Hope University on 17th October 2016. At that launch event, we heard a keynote response from Tyson Lewis and further invited responses from Geert Thyssen and Olga Ververi. From the outset, having made the Manifesto available online in open access, we were encouraged by the enthusiastic response and the genuine interest shown by colleagues internationally. We therefore chose to invite further responses, to broaden the conversation, but did so specifically from early- to mid-career scholars. Hence, we also include here responses from Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen, and Stefan Ramaekers.
We provide no commentary here on the Manifesto itself, or the responses that follow it in this book, other than to say that, as a manifesto it is intended to be short and to contain no references. The responses are more academic in style but still adopt a more conversational tone than a regular text, and they vary in length. The conversation form is taken up more fully in the final chapter in which we seek to address some of the questions they raise in ways that, we hope, provide further provocation and keep the conversation open.
Introduction: The Geopolitics of Media Studies
Papers by Norm Friesen
Addresses the following questions:
- What is Pedagogy?
- How is it Related to Phenomenology?
- Pedagogical Experiences of Space and Time
- “Dignity of Practice” and its Relation to Theory
"there remains a remarkable gap between research from the English-speaking world and scholarship from the European continent, particularly from Germany. This book is one of the very first texts that intervenes in the current state of affairs by making key publications from German scholars available to an English-speaking readership. This is, in itself, is a major step forward... The focus on tact and the pedagogical relationship provides strong thematic coherence, which ensures that this book is not just a historical document but also a meaningful contribution
to contemporary discussions.” -Gert Biesta, U of Edinburgh
The Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy was written in September 2016 and first presented at Liverpool Hope University on 17th October 2016. At that launch event, we heard a keynote response from Tyson Lewis and further invited responses from Geert Thyssen and Olga Ververi. From the outset, having made the Manifesto available online in open access, we were encouraged by the enthusiastic response and the genuine interest shown by colleagues internationally. We therefore chose to invite further responses, to broaden the conversation, but did so specifically from early- to mid-career scholars. Hence, we also include here responses from Oren Ergas, Norm Friesen, and Stefan Ramaekers.
We provide no commentary here on the Manifesto itself, or the responses that follow it in this book, other than to say that, as a manifesto it is intended to be short and to contain no references. The responses are more academic in style but still adopt a more conversational tone than a regular text, and they vary in length. The conversation form is taken up more fully in the final chapter in which we seek to address some of the questions they raise in ways that, we hope, provide further provocation and keep the conversation open.
Introduction: The Geopolitics of Media Studies
This introduction begins by revisiting the origin of the notion of pedagogical tact and the beginnings of the pedagogical tradition with which it is associated. Then, it traces some of the ways that pedagogical tact has more recently been interpreted and configured. Significantly, concern with tact and pedagogical tact is closely tied with social and political change and upheaval. These concepts emerge around the time of the French and American revolutions, and they are preserved—without being significantly changed or developed—for over 100 years. Only by the 20th century, specifically in the wake of the two World Wars, are tact and pedagogical tact both substantially renewed and revised—a renewal necessitated by further changes in the social order. The final phase in the story of pedagogical tact is its contemporary renaissance, marked by significant publications in French, German, and English.
"The school is the middle sphere which leads the human being from the family circle into the world, from the natural relationship of feeling and inclination into the element of matter. In school, the child's activity begins to take on a serious and essential meaning, so that it is no longer subject to arbitrariness and chance, to the desire and inclination of the moment; he learns to determine his actions according to a purpose and according to rules; he ceases to be considered for the sake of his immediate person and begins to be considered according to what he achieves and to earn merit."
This represents and early contribution to "theory of the school," a topic of ongoing philosophical interest in both France (e.g. Kambouchner) and Germany (Klafki).
If one thinks in this attitude about the relation between action and theory, one ends up with an indispensably important and fundamental task for all pedagogical research and scholarship, one for which I would like to adopt the name "descriptive pedagogy"... I consider it necessary, in the present time, with the strongly practical-reformist tendencies directed to education as a task, to refer to a pure pedagogical theory that serves disinterested knowledge as far as possible.
In this presentation, Dr. Norm Friesen (Boise State University) discusses a number of core themes that emerge from this effort for Mollenhauer. These include Mollenhauer’s understanding of Bildung as a biographical and experiential “way of the self” that is marked by a particular “pathlessness.” Referencing Wittgenstein in ways unconventional for education, Mollenhauer shows how this path or pathlessness is characterized not so much by success and triumph as by loss and renunciation. These themes also include the recovery of a concrete, even indexical language for education, rather than one abstract and generalizing. Finally, Dr. Friesen will suggest with Mollenhauer that the broader task of remembrance, and thus of education itself, is as much one of difficulty and paradox as it is one of recuperation and clarification.
Pedagogical tact has been a topic of significant international interest in educational discourse since it was introduced by J.F. Herbart in 1802—specifically as a “quick judgment and decision” able to address “the true requirements of the individual case.” This paper begins by tracing the conceptual roots of pedagogical tact back to Kant’s description of “logical tact” from 1789. Then, through reference to Merleau-Ponty and his German student Bernhard Waldenfels, it explores manifestations of tact in terms of body’s own doublings and aporias. These include its simultaneity as Leib and Körper, its status as a “visible seer,” as “hearing and heard, touching and touched, moving and moved.” Significantly since the time of Friedrich Schleiermacher—and going back further to Kant—pedagogical practice itself has similarly been seen as structured through a series of antimonies and paradoxes, including those of present and future, support and constraint (Unterstüzung und Gegenwirkung), as well as freedom and restraint (Freiheit und Zwang). By reflecting on an example of pedagogical engagement from a short video clip, this paper develops the conclusion that the double nature of the body can play an important role in negotiating these pedagogical antimonies and paradoxes.
I extend Nohl’s account by turning to a contemporary discussion of the child as alien. The alterity and heterogeneity of this alienness that children confront us with, I argue, is not characterized by the broad symmetry of the self and other (perhaps familiar from Levinas). Instead, it constituted through an act of exclusion and disappearance that is intrinsically involved in what Husserl calls our “sphere of ownness.” Our relation to this alien is thus not characterized by a logic or language that both share. Instead, it is manifest through pathos that is lived in an immanent indexical field of experience. It is here where we are addressed by the child, and it is here where we respond to that in the child which withdraws when we would try to assimilate it to our own selves and understandings.
So what exactly makes educational content educational? It’s not so much that it’s interactive, incorporates multiple media or is designed by an expert. A resource is educational insofar as it works through the art of the example. Its educational character is its exemplarity.