Beginnings of CLUes with being-doing-knowing

In the early 2000s, John Quay had his head buried in many books, searching for ways to understand experience.

This was not an easy undertaking, as it required an engagement with philosophical ideas that were openly described as difficult. The search began with the philosophy of John Dewey, known for the connections made between experience and education, and widely identified with pragmatism. It extended into the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, whose earlier work explicitly employed the notion of experience and which engaged with phenomenology. Drawing these two philosophies into conversation was that of Charles Peirce, whose philosophy involved both phenomenology and pragmatism. The connection, but not conflation, of phenomenology and pragmatism was central to John’s search for what Dewey, in his 1938 book Experience and Education, called “a coherent theory of experience” (p. XX). Much of this work John described in a book:

Quay, J. (2013). Education, experience and existence: Engaging Dewey, Peirce and Heidegger. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203538159

Being-doing-knowing is an expression of this coherent theory of experience. It is the theoretical frame that supports Creative Learning Units.

While the arrangements of Creative PE provided a pedagogical frame for CLUes, being-doing-knowing provided the theoretical frame.