An inquiry into the question of Being in teaching: World, Attunement, and the danger of Enframing

Heidegger argued that modern human beings have forgotten a more fundamental and originary understanding of the meaning of Being. This forgetting of Being is not limited to lived experience but permeates the history of philosophy and metaphysics. Put simply, modern philosophy (and, for Heidegger, metaphysics) presupposes a reductive understanding of Being as an entity, or an entity with enduring presence, that ultimately limits the possibilities of human thinking and existence. Educational practice and scholarship also operates from this comportment of a forgetting of Being. The following inquiry raises the question of Being in teaching by phenomenologically engaging with three key distinctions from Heidegger’s thinking as each bears upon educational practice. World and attunement, the first two distinctions, are most accessible in Heidegger’s thinking from his magnum opus Being and Time. The third distinction represents a theme from Heidegger’s later thinking on technology, the danger of Enframing. While not exhaustive, each concept interrogates the many-sided question of Being in order to illuminate new possibilities for teaching. The inquiry does not offer solutions but rather traces a path that opens and keeps in tension the question of Being in teaching in order to support further study.