Foucault's Theory of Technologies of the Self

Abstract: The technical rationality of teaching has always becoming increasingly prominent, which regards teaching as a methodology of how to transfer objective knowledge efficiently. Technological rationality causes teaching to lose its own academic character and value implication, and also dispels the ontological significance of teaching to children. In order to get out of this dilemma, we can re-understand the teaching process with the perspective of Michael Polanyi's "tacit cognition", a new field of knowledge acquisition. In this view, teaching goes beyond the transmission mechanism of objective and explicit knowledge, but is a process of the development of tacit cognition in-dwelling. During this process, tacit cognition constantly enhances the function of its secret cognitive frame through the ongoing process of assimilation and adaptation. Tacit cognition is the mutual recognition and construction between the individual and the situation, in which the individual resides, and is a passionate life experience. Tacit cognition has the process of social and historical development; it not only frames people's cognition, but also is reconstructed by people's cognition in different historical periods. Tacit cognition can not only endow people's thinking, but also empower people's thinking. It is a secret mechanism to realize the transformation of human knowledge into wisdom.

Keywords: Michael Polanyi; tacit cognition; technical rationality; value rationality; transform knowledge into wisdom