Exploring ECT and Freedom to Make Sense: Prof. Schoeller's workshops at University of Virginia
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In November 2024, Professor Donata Schoeller introduced the Embodied Critical Thinking and Freedom to Make Sense approaches in several workshops attended by an interdisciplinary group of graduate students and faculty members from the University of Virginia and the University of Toronto. She was invited by Professor Dorothe Bach, the Associate Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia, and by Professor Jeanne Watson, the former Associate Dean of Applied Psychology and Human Development at the University of Toronto.
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The invitation to the workshops:
Embodied Critical Thinking
"Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding" (ECTU) is an approach, research, and training initiative developed by a team of researchers at the University of Iceland. Over the years, it has evolved into a European Erasmus program and an international research project. The presentation will focus on some fundamental philosophical considerations underlying this approach.
ECTU acknowledges the complexity of lived and situated experience as the basis of human thinking, which always again needs processes of clarification and in-depth- understanding. This experiential characteristic of thinking calls for methods and practices that carefully open up a binding complexity, the intricacy of a point, of a crux, of a problem. Such understanding is not downloadable. Clarification and in-depth understanding often enough are the results of an unpredictable process. Acknowledging that human thinking always requires processes of clarification and realization harmonizes well with Kant's three core questions of the Enlightenment: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? In a time of polarization, turmoil, and inflammable discourses, practices of embodied thinking and understanding strive to offer teachable and practicable methods to enhance listening skills and the capacity to handle complexity and vulnerability.
Embodied Critical Thinking
"Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding" (ECTU) is an approach, research, and training initiative developed by a team of researchers at the University of Iceland. Over the years, it has evolved into a European Erasmus program and an international research project. The presentation will focus on some fundamental philosophical considerations underlying this approach.
ECTU acknowledges the complexity of lived and situated experience as the basis of human thinking, which always again needs processes of clarification and in-depth- understanding. This experiential characteristic of thinking calls for methods and practices that carefully open up a binding complexity, the intricacy of a point, of a crux, of a problem. Such understanding is not downloadable. Clarification and in-depth understanding often enough are the results of an unpredictable process. Acknowledging that human thinking always requires processes of clarification and realization harmonizes well with Kant's three core questions of the Enlightenment: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? In a time of polarization, turmoil, and inflammable discourses, practices of embodied thinking and understanding strive to offer teachable and practicable methods to enhance listening skills and the capacity to handle complexity and vulnerability.
At the University of Virginia, faculty members and graduate students were asked to provide feedback after the workshops. You can read them here: