ABSTRACT
Whereas Chapter 11 focused on creating safe environments of trust, here we focus on the manner in which disillusioning elements are introduced so as to engender both capacity and meaning in learning. This exploration takes us back to the details of the model, this time considering how much dissonance a teacher introduces with each dialectic iteration, such that the learner is not overwhelmed but does indeed come to discern difference and sameness that matters. An area of research known as phenomenography, and within it variation theory, helps in understanding the way that introductions might unfold. The discussion returns us to nonconscious, unconscious, and conscious discernments and the relationship between these three as we come to make sense. To further develop an appreciation of what is at play in discernment, I return to autopoietic systems and to Vygotsky’s work in concept development and the idea of categories. The chapter builds to the way that thinking is organised and organises us, per language, according to categories and how this plays into the idea of inclusion and the self as a category. I close with two examples from mathematics education: the idea of number in the example of 24 and two contrasting approaches to the meaning of pi.
