Approaching Vagueness: Teaching Critical Thinking With Sustainability as Metaphor

Abstract

Students need to be prepared for a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world. This paper is situated at the intersection of heuristics and pedagogy to answer the pressing question of how to teach in light of definitional vagueness. We build on Searle’s (1986) Open-ended Metaphorical Utterance Model and demonstrate through a systemic expert analysis that linguistic sense-making is derived via fuzzy logic. We discuss how metaphor can be a tool to teach critical thinking in the class room and apply the sustainability concept as metaphor. We conclude with a discussion for approaching vagueness in the classroom through teaching critical thinking with metaphor.