Cultivating Connected Knowing in the Classroom

After briefly summarizing Blythe Clinchy's account of connected knowing as a knowing procedure distinguishable from separate knowing and subjectivism, I draw comparisons between it and certain features of Polanyi's epistemology. Connected knowing and Polanyi's indwelling have much in common. Polanyian destructive analysis compares favorably with separate knowing, and they concur in the detrimental restriction of knowledge to that procedure. Neither indwelling nor connected knowing should be gender- specific, though their de facto gender- specificity may be challenged along with all the other false dichotomies which are the fall- out of an overweening objectivist ideal. My own experience of drawing on Polanyi's insights to shape my own teaching practices confirm and help to elucidate the implications of revised epistemology for the classroom. Also, my own work developing covenant epistemology underscores and develops the idea of connected knowing. I give practical examples of personal classroom practices. Finally, I offer further comments in response to Clinchy's collection of quotations regarding the college classroom.