Egan’s Understanding Set

Planning Frameworks

Pre-linguistic understanding of the world around us.

Begins at birth and goes to approx. age two, literacy begins to develop.

Infant discovers body for self, uses body to connect with world through actions and reactions. Body now has a purpose

Exploratory mode allows infant to gain notion of time, causality, effort and response. Also sensation and feeling, pain and comfort; hunger and satiety

Discovery of social nature via communi-cation, care and affection shaped into cultural patterns.

Mythic
Beginning of literacy, making sense of the world. Ages two to eight.

Important/significant and moving notion of topic.

Engaging element of topic.

Binary concepts and affective importance.

Organizing content into story form.
a) content that most
dramatically illustrates binary concepts. Access point to topic. Image that captures content and dramatic content.
b) content that best articulates topic into clear story form.

Best way to resolve con- flict in binary concepts. Degree of mediation? Degree of explicity?

Evaluation – Engagement/understand-ing with topic, its’ importance grasped &
content learned

Romantic
Expansion of literacy, ages eight to fifteen.

Transcendent qualities.
Evocation of images and wonder within topic.

Organizing topic into narrative
a) extremes of reality or experience, can an image capture this aspect?
b) content to articulate
topic into a narrative of whole topic.
c) humanizing content. Hopes/fears & emotions to create sense of wonder. Ideals & revolts against convention.
d) details that can be pursued.

Resolution & closure to story line of topic, conclusion.

Evaluation –
Engagement/understand-ing with topic, engagement and stimulation of imagination.

Philosophic
Formation of theories, ideologies, metaphysical schemes & m.narratives.
Age fifteen plus.

Organizing content into general scheme.
a) how can scheme be made vivid?
b) what content exposes power to organize topic?
c) what are most clear, powerful & relevant theories ideologies etc.

Introducing anomalies.
What content is anomalous? Begin with minor anomalies
gradually build to sensitive challenges.

Presenting alternative general schemes. What
alternatives can now organize content?
Which can be used to expose contingency?

Conclusion – Expose possible utility of variety of schemes. Work with disillusionment & alienation.
Evaluation – Content learned/understood. General scheme building.
Ironic
High degree of reflexiveness on own thinking & constraints.

No specific age suggestion.

More than literal statements. Balanced use of literacy.

Insight into emancipation of self.

Balance between alienating irony (AI) and sophisticated irony (SI).
SI preserves charac-
teristics of other understandings.

Pamela Hagen- IERG- 2003