The Pedagogy of Recognition

        The desire for recognition appears to be a driving force behind many social phenomena as diverse as nationalism, ethnicity, multiculturalism, feminism, and minority-rights. In everyday life, too, many of our actions and preoccupations seem to be driven by a need for recognition: academics striving for scholarly renown, young children calling out for being "seen" by the parent, readers recognizing themselves in a powerful poem, students being struck by an epiphanic moment in class, teachers recognizing feelings of responsibility for children who are especially vulnerable.

For educators the importance of self-esteem in students sometimes leads to ambivalent behaviors of empty praise, shallow assessment, meaningless flattery, and non-demanding goal setting. Teachers understand the value of self-esteem and yet it often happens that they are caught in dilemmas of having to make choices between quality and equality, special needs and special status, human rights and personal rights. This research into recognition pushes beyond the easy equation of self-esteem with feeling good. An understanding of different modes of recognition may lead to increased tactfulness in teacher's relations and interactions with children. For example, the following four modes of recognition seem to make possible different pedagogical relations: (1) naming recognition-remembering and simple identifying of a student, (2) knowing recognition-being able to address a student in a personal manner, (3) respecting recognition-valuing and making a special place for a student, and (4) honoring recognition-special acknowledgement through celebrating uniqueness.

The concept of recognition is theoretically associated with identity and self-consciousness. Positive recognition and acknowledgement shapes our sense of self in directions of personal maturity, negative recognition (nonrecognition or misrecognition) may inflict harm on a person's mode of being, while critical recognition may bring us face to face with evil elements of the self. The need for recognition is probably one of the most powerful factors of human existence, yet in educational or pedagogical contexts recognition has not received systematic or thorough attention and research. In part this may be due to the fact that qualitative research methods have difficulty finding a language that does not only capture the cognitive and conceptual but also the expressive and moral meaning of the range of complex significations of recognition/acknowledgement. In philosophical sources-such as G.W.F. Hegel, Emmanuel Levinas, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and more recently Charles Taylor-the concept of recognition has received fundamental explications of pedagogical importance.

Project objectives include the exploration and the enhancement of discretionary reflective skills in parents, teachers and other childcare professionals. The research aims at thinking and working through the ways that we can use the phenomenon and power of recognition for positive results in educational growth and achievements.