Poignant Experiences and the Nonteleological Teachable Moment

This article focuses on the ‘teachable moment’ that occurs when teachers and students engage in meaningful inquiry regarding problematic situations involving themselves and the subject matter being taught. While the teachable moment is nearly always conceived teleologically, the authors here discuss the educative potential of nonteleological teachable moments which are not driven by predetermined curricular objectives but elicited by poignant experiences. They present empirical examples of three types of teachable moments and discuss these with the help of pragmatist didactic models. This shows a fourfold pedagogical value of nonteleological teachable moments: they trigger a strong intrinsic motivation to learn, they are subjectivating as they appeal to the participants as persons and not merely as students compliantly fulfilling tasks, they can give rise to collective inquiry and learning in which the object of the poignant experience becomes a shared matter of concern, and they are incubators for creativity.