website under construction
Our mission is to compliment educational methodologies by re‑centering innate human perception above technological dependence, creating benefits that span the full learning spectrum — from foundational challenges to doctoral‑level inquiry.
Dissertation Proposal 2: Space, the Educational Frontier
or
The exaptation of exteroceptive and spatial deictic perceptions for educational purposes
systematic review of ...
h
The Three-Mountains Test, formally known as the Piaget and Inhelder three-mountain task, is a classic experiment in developmental psychology designed to assess a child’s ability to take the visual perspective of another person.
While such a test may augur idio-allocentric leanings and the ability to empathise, it also points to the beginings of "experience-taking" - the immersive and emotional experience beyond the mere analytical perspective. For example, we experience-take video games where first-person graphical perspectives allow us to inhabit the viewpoint of the on-screen avatar and savour, inter alia, excitement - from the deictic perspective of a player's character. Similarly, we conjure perspectives with our imagination when immersing our selves in any story be it a radio play, a good book or a dream - we imagine scenes being enacted from either ours or another's projected deictic centre and emotionally engage with the experience.
Similarly, Exteroception is any form of sensation that results from real world stimuli located outside our own body and is detected by exteroceptors, including vision, hearing, touch or pressure, heat, cold, pain, smell, and taste i.e. we are permantly immersed in multisensory environments so why should learning be any different?
Why do we not rely on these same exteroceptive and spatial deictic instincts more often when developing learning and teaching methodologies?
Spatial Perception Insights
Atomic physicists and medical researchers recognise the interstitial space that lies between atoms, and between blood vessels and cells, respectively
Sociologists see Simmel’s theory of space
Sociolinguists see ethnomethodological snapshots of interactional space
Evolutionary psychologists see dynamic spatiotemporal coordination that occurs within that which environmental psychologists see as an individual’s exposome space
Applied linguistics sees total physical response space
Psycholinguists see spatial language terms (L-space) and perceptual space (P-space)
Cognitive neuroscientists see peripersonal action space and interpersonal social space
Psychophysicists see interoceptive and exteroceptive spaces
Social psychologists see proximate construals of people in their environment spaces.
Spatial Deixis derives from Ancient Greek - δεῖξις (deîxis, “pointing, indicating, reference”) and δείκνυμι (deíknumi, “I show”) and forms an important part of linguistics and pragmatics, serving to interpret speech in a spatial context.
Even the mathematics we use today is due to the Indian contribution of zero - an idea that grew from philosophical concepts like śūnya (emptiness) in Hindu and Buddhist traditions.
Space is also one of the classic seven elements of art - an understanding and proactive use of space is exemplified in ancient and modern architecture by the Japanese concept of 'Ma'.