Learning: Interrogating the Consensual Nature of a Knowing Acting-Perceiving

Knowledge is usually understood as a thing which poses didactic and epistemological problems. To address these problems in our training courses, we adopt an enactive approach, conceptualizing knowledge as a knowing acting-perceiving (or knowing as a “perceptually guided action” in the words of Varela et al. (1991). This article explains our approach and presents the theoretical resources supporting such an approach to education, with the aim of enabling our students to question the consensuality of the knowing acting-perceiving. We adopt the theoretical framework of languaging developed by Maturana (1978) to approach the knowing acting-perceiving as both a doing (knowing) and an object (knowledge). We define the concept of consensuality in order to clarify the extent to which it is possible to investigate, from the learner's point of view, the consensuality of a knowing acting-perceiving. We briefly present a phenomenological approach aimed at promoting awareness and potential transformation of experience corresponding to 1st, 2nd and 3rd person points of view. Finally, we outline a relational approach to desubstantiate knowledge and specify the nature of the consensuality of the knowing acting-perceiving