Toward an Understanding of Attunement as an Autobiographical Theory of Education

Abstract

I explore the concept of attunement in this paper. Informed by my own story and other scholarly work, attunement in this paper is employed to describe an autobiographical theory of education. In such an autobiographical theory of education learning becomes situated not only in the school-subject and specific prior knowledge, but also in one’s subjective sense of intellectual labor. Basically, this paper comprises two sections. In the first I elucidate my understanding of the concept of attunement. Attunement, in this paper, refers to learning guided and experienced by oneself subjectively striving for deeper understanding, during which one searches for meaning as well as begets one’s engagement with the world. In the second, I describe that attunement has three elements: contingency, boundary and sensitivity. Contingency emphasizes the particularity of experience, identified from one’s own perspective; boundary refers to the challenges and difficulties experienced by oneself; sensitivity underscores how one can go beyond one’s boundary subjectively, thus being attuned to new forms of understanding or thinking. Key-words: attunement, contingency, sensitivity, awakening inwardness