Epistemology of education, science-society-ethics relationship in the social emergencies of the present (interculture and marginality)

Short description of the research team

Thematic fields of interest/research areas: 

INTRODUCTION. The principal director of my studies starts from the belief that a "narrative" competence (more precisely: the structure and dynamics of languages, models and procedures) helps to "know knowledge"; that is: to understand how thinking works when it builds knowledge and, consequently, helps us to prepare techniques and strategies for elaboration, organization and dissemination that are effective in critically orienting ourselves in the present.
CONTENTS. My research unravels within the epistemology of education and its approaches to ethics. In the last 15 years, I have explored the processes of building knowledge as they are structured in the frontier territories, both in a purely scientific and disciplinary sense (multimedia, nanosciences, neurobiology), and ethnographic (ancestral knowledge among indigenous communities in different countries from Latin America: Mexico, (in the following states: Chiapas, Oaxaca, Sonora, Campeche, Queretaro) Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Amazonia. In both areas, I tried to make an analysis of the logical structure of the processes through which, in those contexts, that particular type of heuristics, training and, more generally, knowledge was built.
TARGETS. The aim of my studies is to explore their possible repercussions both on training in general, and on that aimed at new researchers, and, finally, on strategies for optimizing teaching and learning.
EPISTEMOLOGICAL BACKGROUND. The structure of my research refers to the hermeneutic perspective. In my studies, I interpreted training, latu sensu, as a relationship between differences, in the light of the intercultural paradigm, as its main work tool. This means that, in my activities, I have always referred to a pedagogical reflexivity that has strong repercussions on the pragmatics of action and educational planning, in a circular theory-practice trend without solution of continuity. Finally, I tried to study the link between ethics and epistemology by investigating, in both contexts, the notion of value in their mutual coherence.
METHODOLOGY. My approach enhances the ethnographic gaze because, in my opinion, this gaze helps us to grasp the heuristic value of difference, of everyday life, of the contiguous, as well as of familiarity, of the extraordinary, of the distant. Furthermore, since a focus of ethnography is the study of the relationship with otherness, both as an individual and as a society, with the frontier both in a geographical, cultural or disciplinary sense, it is essential to use its tools to better highlight the devices of a relational, multifactorial, multidirectional phenomenon such as education. From a methodological and procedural point of view, I followed this criterion: attention to specific detail, the singularity and peculiarity of the narratives and the specific elements they contain, with an inductive trend aimed at formulating and reformulating interpretations for successive approximations . I have tried to implement hermeneutic practices applied to educational research, for the purpose of an analysis of training epistemology. In short, I tried to interpret the data of my research, trying to grasp their symbolic meaning, in a systemic perspective.
SEARCH REPORTS. In our intentions, therefore, the research reports, as the publications testify, are animated by an epistemological tension that is reflected not only in theoretical speculation, but also in empirical research as well as in the operative proposal.

Manager/head of the team: Prof. Anita Gramigna

Team members: Giorgio Poletti, Giovanni Ganino, Yolanda Estrada Ramos ( Guatemala) Maria del Carmen Ramirez ( Ecuador), Manuele De Conti, Jean Grondin, OC, MSRC, Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università di Montréal (Canada); Antonio Viñao, Università di Murcia (Spagna); Inés Dussel, CINVESTAV-IPN, (México); ; Agustin Escolano Benito, Università di Valladolid, CEINCE (Centro Internazionale di Ricerca sulla Cultura Scolastica) (Spagna); Thomas Popkewitz, School of Education, Università Wisconsin-Madison, (Stati Uniti); Myriam Southwell, Università FALACSO, Buenos Aires, (Argentina), Fernando Sancen (Mexico), Andrea Civico (Spagna), Miguel Beas (Spagna), Artemis Torres (Guatemala), Milton Torres (Guatemala), Carlo Rosa (Messico), Gloria Giammaria (Colombia)

 

Research infrastructures:

  • EURESIS Training Epistemology Laboratory (Department of Humanities)

 

Prerequisites of the trainee researcher:

Level of education: Master Degree, “Marie Curie Individual Fellowship” Action requirements

Research experience: Having carried out studies and research (also at a specialist degree level) in one of the thematic fields indicated or having attended a Master or PhD.

Required working language: Italian or one of the following languages: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese

Further required requisites: Basic knowledge of IT tools and research aid software (such as statistical tools)

 

Contacts: Giorgio Poletti

 

Further useful information: It is a trans and interdisciplinary research group that focuses its studies in the field of Epistemology and Interculture

 

Topics:

  • Sociology, social anthropology
  • Communication
  • Philosophy
  • Education