Some Reflections on Working-Class Ontology and Epistemology — or Why Teaching in Higher Education Needs to Be More Concrete

Abstract

Based on my own experiences with having one foot in academia and the other in construction, I reflect on how the tendential form of work among the working class affects their ontology and epistemology, and discuss what this may mean for teaching and learning in higher education. I attempt to write from both a working-class and middle-class perspective. This I do because it was the clashing of my working-class and middle-class experiences that caused me to reflect on forms of work in relation to ontology and epistemology; I need to present both perspectives to make sense of the argument.