Sean Legnini

Beyond the Human Core: AI and a Pedagogy of Dwelling A response to Stefan Bauschard's "AI is the Cognitive Layer"

I read Stefan Bauschard’s piece “AI is the Cognitive Layer” last week and his mention of retaining the human core in the conversation of AI and education sparked this writing: #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Education

@schooldaves.bsky.social brought me right back to 701! (This is from Prolegomena to Any Future Phenomenological Ecology by Llewelyn)… hope you’re doing well at Seton Hall!

Unpacking Modes of Experience — The PEXE Lab When we started this series on modes of experience, we were grappling with how a foundation of phenomenological understanding can help us slow down and carefully work through what we mean by firsthan...

pexelab.org/brackets-fie... #education #phenomenology #ExperientialEducation

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You can take a look at our final blog post where we form some conclusions after this conversation. While you're there, please take a look at our previous posts where we work through different modes of experience.

As Husserl might tell us, let's get back to the thing itself - let's really think about it what it means to be a student, to ontologically evolve, to form identity, and to make meaning of our world... how to experience and become experienced.

Experience, in our view at the PEXE Lab, is not a supplement to education or a big fuzzy buzz word, rather it is the ground of education itself.

How our students experience education is something we don't *really* consider that often. What this experiment revealed to us is that we're on the right track by tapping into phenomenology when we think about experience in education.

By writing to each other via blog post, we were forced to sit and linger with the language of experience in a way that hadn't before. Something about writing for an audience instead of talking it through out loud brought out some great phenomenological insights for us.

Over the past few weeks, Matthew and I have been writing back and forth about modes of experience, asking the question what does it mean to experience something firsthand, secondhand, and thirdhand? The process itself has been a fruitful experiment.

Grand Designs: the loss of American freedom Exactly seven months into Trump's second term, we have reached 1000 authoritarian actions. Here I lay out the enormity of what has happened.

Reading this and trying to take in the full enormity of what is happening. The scale of it. open.substack.com/pub/christin...

Basically, the small lobsters can very easily get in and out of the traps so they can regularly feed on the bait. It isn’t until they’re much bigger that they get stuck. He sees empty and bait less traps as a well placed habitat and a well fed little lobsters, not a miss or a loss. #Maine

Went around with a lobsterman today and enjoyed how he talks about his craft. He sees it less like hunting or fishing and more like husbandry. I asked if the lobsters just treat the bait and traps as habitat at this point and he said he calls the traps “barn stalls” and the water “the farm.”

Basically the small lobsters very easily get in the traps, chow down on the bait, and leave. It’s not until they’ve grown that they have trouble getting out. Each empty and bait-less trap is just another habitat and well fed young lobster in his eyes. #Maine

I would love to know more… if you have suggestions for people writing / thinking about phenomenology and indigenous metaphysics please share!
#Philosopy #Decolonize

Book cover for Power and Place: Indian Education in America by Vine Deloria Jr and Daniel Wildcat.

My scholarship in #phenomenology so far has created a pretty strong relationship between Maurice Merleau-Ponty and I. That’s my guy. But reading Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous and now Deloria Jr & Wildcat’s Power and Place, the connection between phenomenology and indigenous metaphysics is so strong…

Toward a Pedagogy of Dwelling A little preview of an ongoing project to create a framework that ontologically shifts our students toward being-with-the-world.

Here’s a short write up of one of the ways that I use phenomenology (and ecophenomenology specifically) as a way of thinking about how we educate. Consider it a preview of some of the larger scale and more academic research that I’m currently embarking on.

I like this take, and I think it reinforces the idea that AI can be a powerful tool *for the competent*. Less a learning tool, more a productivity and organization tool (as many of the teachers in the article are using it for). I still think fear of AI is going to really harm our students, though.

Uh oh...

Sharing the Garden Notes from a garden where the harvest is not the point

I'm starting an informal writing practice - a space for more reflection, noticing, and thinking about place, the more-than-human world, and connections to education. First up: a meditation on what it means to host rather than harvest. #phenomenology #ecophenomenology #dwelling #education #pedagogy

Grappling with Modes of Experience — The PEXE Lab Phenomenology offers experience as a means of analysis, a way of seeing and understanding the world through the body and its interactions. Phenomenology, or the study of lived experience as it is live...

New post from PEXE Lab! We're grappling with modes of experience, meaning we're thinking about different kinds of experiences in learning. It's less "here's a solution" and more "what is this thing..." Join us as we figure this one out: pexelab.org/brackets-fie... #Phenomenology #Education

Hope you’ll take a look, ask some questions, dwell with us, and follow along!

Beyond the Learning Machine: Reclaiming Experience in Experiential Education — The PEXE Lab Originally published in 1984, David Kolb’s experiential learning theory offered an account of experiential education that, even if misunderstood and underappreciated, continues to hold sway as a frame...

“Beyond the Learning Machine” pushes back on this trend and reclaims experience as something real, felt, and formative.
Read here: pexelab.org/brackets-fie...
#ExperientialEd #PhilosophyOfEducation #CriticalPedagogy #TeacherAgency #LivedExperience

Our second piece asks a hard question: What happens when schools reduce experience to just another instructional tool?

Education as Experience, Experience as World-Making — The PEXE Lab Experience Matters The earliest thinkers in education tell us that experience matters. From Plato’s “turn the soul toward the light” and Rousseau’s argument that direct interaction is how children t...

We reflect on Dewey, Heidegger, and what it means to teach in ways that cultivate meaning.
Read: pexelab.org/brackets-fie...
#ExperientialLearning #Phenomenology #EducationalPhilosophy #TeacherThinking #PlaceBasedEd

Our first blog posts are live!
“Education as Experience, Experience as World-Making” looks at how experience isn’t just a vehicle for learning—it’s how we come to dwell in the world.

We study how experience shapes meaning, identity, and purpose in learning. Drawing from phenomenology, narrative, and psychological distance, we’re rethinking what it means to design truly lived education

The PEXE Lab

My advisor, Matthew Kruger-Ross, and I launched the PEXE Lab—Phenomenology and Experiential Education Lab—at West Chester University!
Explore the work: pexelab.org
#ExperientialEducation #Phenomenology #EdTheory #MeaningMaking #EducationRes

Went solar 2 years ago here in the Philadelphia suburbs. It's a beautiful thing, basically haven't paid for electricity in that time save for a few short/dark days. We used Exact Solar - highly recommend if you're looking for panels!