Reshaping Teacher Education in a Knowledge Society: Chaos and Collingwood

There is a widely held belief that we have entered a new age – an age defined by terms such as the global economy, the global village, and the information age. As the political and business world act and react to this new age, these sectors seek to influence higher education by demanding positivistic and pragmatic approaches to planning, pedagogy, and curriculum development. As institutions of higher education respond to the demands arising from the knowledge society and as the uncritical use of new technologies multiplies, it is incumbent upon teacher educators to clarify their purposes and procedures. The authors argue that exhilarating and empowering ways of thinking and doing in teacher education could arise out of the convergence of the metaphorical application of chaos theory and the type of historical thinking proposed by Robin George Collingwood. To demonstrate how these ways of thinking might come together to counteract the dominant mythologies of positivism, they provide brief outlines of the salient features of chaos theory and of Collingwoodian thought and then explore how these ways of thinking could be utilized to shape teacher education.