Creating reflective space in the classroom

Abstract

In education, many of the discussions about tolerance, respect for diversity, and difference are based on information and explanations about “the different.” The tension concerning strangeness, uncanniness, and otherness circulating in classroom is taken as a matter of intellectual uncertainty. However, the tension results from the fact that the uncanny is the category of frightening, which remits to what is known, old, long familiar, and not something that is unknown. Therefore, information and explanation mean little when attempting to overcome the uncanniness. For the school to be significant for the child, it must be able to promote three basic feelings: welcome, recognition, and belonging (Villela & Archangelo, 2014, pp. 41–47). By suggesting five levels for the presence of the teacher in the promotion of the experience of being, this chapter extends the discussion to include how these basic feelings can be promoted and to delineate paths by which reflective space can be created in the classroom as a space for experimentation, psychic integration, and growth, rather than for rationalization or moralization. The five levels are described and illustrated with a vignette. Level 1: Regularly offer “significant emptiness” – space just to be in the company of an adult inside the classroom. Level 2: Actively offer a psychic presence even though silently. Level 3: Offer a mind capable of containing and processing the conflict without rationalizing it and moralizing the atmosphere. Level 4: Offer the option of parroting. Level 5: Offer one’s own capacity to create worlds. The child needs the presence of significant others to help maintain contact with the uncanny circulating in the classroom and to develop his/her mental space. If there is no stable presence, the possibilities for the development of tolerance and respect of the different will have been lost.