Category: Relationships

Conceptualising the In-Between: IV. Interest

Click here to read Part III. Relationships

In between the student-teacher relationship (STR) is “a multiplicity of betweens” (p. 207) in which each contributes by taking interest in other. So what is interest?

interest: mid-15c., “legal claim or right; a concern; a benefit, advantage, a being concerned or affected (advantageously),” from Old French interest “damage, loss, harm” (Modern French intérêt), from noun use of Latin interest “it is of importance, it makes a difference,” third person singular present of interresse “to concern, make a difference, be of importance,” literally “to be between,” from inter “between” (see inter-) + esse “to be” (from PIE root *es- “to be”)

For each person whose interest is to be in between – interresse – with another, that person potentially influences and contributes to the other: each/other. With shared trust and mutual intention, such interest describes a healthy STR, which grows with the passing of time.

Irwin’s analogy is apt, by which education, for Aoki, is inherently bilingual, as it were, occupying “spaces between [a mother-tongue] and additional languages” (p. 41) – between what is known and what is new. Between now and the-yet-to-come, what is new becomes what is known, and so it goes,[1] this course to run, this ambiguity in which to dwell with others, presently, to make a difference for the meantime – to grapple and grow in the interest of each/other.

Curricular interest has its own particular culture and way of being, Irwin continues, sometimes uncomfortable, often challenging, not needfully intimidating. It resists the assimilation or dominance of either “language” and prefers to forge some composite: the outcome, as compared to ‘someone trained’, is ‘more than one educated’.

Moreover, what is known can inform what is new. According to Liu Baergen, the central theme in Aoki’s work is how “lived experiences often contributes [sic] to one’s inner attitudes” (p. 173). I agree and add, from Aoki himself, that we ought “to be mindful of how others help us to open ourselves to who we are…” because it is “others [who] help us in our own self-understanding” (p. 382), who help us to learn from what is known about ourselves something new. It is others with whom we share lived experiences, whose voices join in chorus with ours. Aoki’s claim, taken from Deleuze, seems unmistakable: “‘Every multiplicity grows in the middle’” (p. 205). We are nothing new without each/other.

Aoki describes IB in two ways. First, IB is an abstract ‘place’, a locus of activity, characterised by dialogue and tension. Imagine a furnace in which you and I forge my identity while, simultaneously, you and I forge your identity. In this concerted way, this locus of two coming together, we forge both our identities as well as a shared understanding: we help forge each/other, which I take as Aoki’s description of “belonging together” (p. 396). IB is “the many [as] a unity mediated by synthesis,” e.g. the IB dynamic occurring in between, where “what are related assumes priority over the notion of relation” (p. 396), e.g. a trusted teacher discerning a willing student’s needs.

Also to be found in between is a characterisation of the time spent together, where each step taken is that ‘place’ where we are ‘now’. This is Aoki’s second description: IB as a kind of bridge, characterized by mutuality and journeying, that we mount and cross together. This Aoki describes as “belonging together,” that moment-by-moment amalgamation as each step taken is felt and lived. Where we stood earlier we each might call the ground-of-who-I-am-and-what-I-understand-right-now, i.e. that was you and me then, with that ‘present’ understanding.

Where we alight from the bridge now, as it lands us on the other side, having crossed together, we might call the ground-of-who-I-am-and-what-you-have-helped-me-understand-thanks-to-having-crossed-together. But that’s much too long, so maybe let’s just call it our present ground. By the same turn, let’s call that earlier our prior ground – and “ground” because hey, we all have to stand somewhere… metaphors – like bridges – are only meant to go so far.

More to the point is the duration of time spent crossing the span of that bridge, as if to look back upon the experience and say, “Ah yes, how that was! – that time spent crossing the bridge together,” which might have been worst or best or, more likely, something in between. This is that sense of IB not as ‘place’ but as an experience of ‘places’, a remembrance of what it was like during some time spent together: what we thought, how we felt, how we nudged and provoked each other, how we reacted – all memories now, really – as well as anything we might have decided to take from the encounter – good or bad or otherwise. And as there’s surely more to add, let’s be wary of nostalgia… meanwhile, I think the point is clear. Dwelling in the IB space affords a kind of mediation, a negotiation between us that permits truth or knowledge or learning to be found somewhere along through the middle.

I’m reminded here, as elsewhere, of the wisdom of Dr. King: one more great thinker and teacher who called our attention to the locus in between. As we are all, he claimed, paradoxically yet beautifully this makes us one. We ought to pay heed.

[1] I have a reading and writing exercise for students in which we parse one sentence’s subject and object – respectively, what is known and what is new – as a way to comprehend or predict a sentence that follows. In that subsequent sentence, the previous object is the new subject, and what was new is now what is known. So the cycle rolls – a bit formulaic, or else novel, depending on your perspective. As we create cohesive paragraphs and essays, so we interact with each/other.

Conceptualising the In-Between: III. Relationships

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Click here to read Part II. Logos

If the engine or dynamic force of the In-Between (IB) is purpose, the fuel is surely motive. Together, purpose and motive suggest more about the IB dynamic than mere cause-and-effect, which is a fitting place to refocus upon students and teachers.

For instance, a student’s ownership of their learning and a teacher’s duty to help students learn are overlapping facets of their joint relationship, e.g. “Finding myself involved with [this other person], what is the situation asking [e.g. of me, of them, of us]?” What a teacher purposes alongside a student[1] Aoki characterises not as “instrumental action” but as “situational praxis” (p. 40).[2] From a “bureaucratic device,” he reconceives curriculum enactment as “a form of communicative action and reflection set within a community of professionals” (p. 40) and, I would add, students too. And he recasts discrete instruction of mandated Curriculum, e.g. ‘covering Chapter 9’ or ‘going over the Study Questions’, as something holistic and shared, e.g. interpreting the relevance for each student of a History text, a Math equation, a Science lab, or a Shakespearean play.

The work that students do alongside teachers, typically (but not solely) daily and face-to-face, is a dynamic that occurs in the shared IB space. The ensuing dynamic interaction of that student-teacher relationship (STR) I conceptualise as relational curriculum, the dynamics of which are pedagogical: lessons planned, activities tried, questions asked, decisions made, and a buzz that enlivens the classroom. Aoki describes students and teachers as travelling back and forth across a “bridge” (Irwin, p. 41) that spans a gap between two ‘places’: curriculum-as-planned and curriculum-as-lived, or as I alternatively label them, mandated Curriculum-as-designed and relational curricula-as-occurring.

While crossing that bridge, it falls to the teacher to decide how best to guide a student, to know whether, when, and from which angle in the clearing they might cast any shadow and obscure a student’s light. So while they cross that bridge, how much better that a student and teacher have come to know their together selves before deciding upon some purpose or destination, i.e. some assessment outcome? This is the gist of relational curriculum.

The relational notion of ‘curricula-as-occurring’ can apply as well within the classroom as the world beyond, making the IB space a temporal concept as much as a spatial one. Teaching, then – inclusive of the past, motivated by the future – is presently both once. Teaching is Aoki’s multiplicitous curricular landscape (Irwin, p. 41, added emphasis) that helps students to reconsider ‘what has been’ in order to renovate ‘what now is’ into ‘what may be’:

… entering back… in full reciprocity by re-including [what has been] once again as active participant in [what now is].

(Aoki, p. 409)

In this way, the IB dynamic can bear influence upon our very identity – not by reaching for it to grasp hold but by reaching out to grapple and grow.

For one as for all, identity comprises coinciding constituents: the past-present-future of one’s been-being-becoming and, simultaneously, the suffusion upon oneself of others’ influences. Identity is an endless chorus by which we share ever more constituencies: this-or-that ‘other’ plus however many ‘others’ besides. To grapple with such concerted complexity, Irwin denotes concurrent possibilities by way of Aoki’s graphic slash symbol [ / ]: a giving-way of the simplistic false dichotomy, either/or, to more intricate “transformative possibilities” (Aoki, p. 406) that weave and intertwine between us: and/not and.

Being “neither strictly vertical nor strictly horizontal” (p. 420), a place both to the left and to the right, the slash symbolises an angle or perspective that is somehow in between. And/not and is a scope in which we might find connection/opposition, concurrence/challenge, or cooperation/competition. The range of what is possible in between is plausible, negotiable, and available to the imaginative decision-making of those involved, e.g. to teachers and students. In between [ / ] is choice, x/not x. However, the qualification that relational curriculum poses an ethical choice between desirable alternatives makes curricular enactment an empowering decision.

So let’s understand relational curriculum as a scope and scale not in the negative, x/not x, but rather in the positive, x/y. In this way, each or both alternatives make possible something new, something more, something different.

In between, we help each other to make decisions, choose directions, and set courses to uncharted places. In a shared IB space, where students and teachers reciprocate, the prescription-paralysis of either/or dualism can give way to the reconciliatory presence/absence of x/y dialogue:

… not in the sense of a verbal exchange, but to denote a process in which there are interacting parties and where what is ‘at stake’ is for all parties to ‘appear’.

(Biesta, p. 43)

Rather than the instrumentality of Curricular implementation as some coarse techno-logicality, IB is conversational process in a ‘place’ where what it means to dwell “in between” is compellingly inclusive. IB is dialogue with those present and with those tangibly absent; it is listening to voices heard and not heard.

In the back-and-forth of x/y dialogue, the more-than-one constitutes one: in a word, a ‘unit’ or ‘united’. Dialogue sustains the past, to keep it alive and well and with us each present moment. Fuelled not simply by what just happened but also by what could happen, by what could be, IB is a compelling imperative for people to listen and respond, not just as joint actors but as contributors.

With respect to others, with respect for others, we can reiterate, disagree, misunderstand, or absorb in muted silence, or we can contribute and propel others from this present moment into the next, and the next, and the next thereafter. Remembering the past in the present dresses the future for its arrival.

Click here for Part IV. Interest

[1] Note the syntax and structure of the sentence describing the dynamic of the STR: “What a teacher purposes alongside the student… .” To have written “What a teacher purposes between themselves and the student…” would betray teacher-centered bias, ill suited to IB. Moreover, although the sentence as-is takes a teacher’s perspective, it remains honest since I am a teacher and cannot assume a student perspective. What I can do is empathise and respect the student perspective; if I have earned any genuine respect from students, then – hopefully! – they will empathise and respect my perspective in return.

[2] Praxis is “the aspect which ‘resides in’ the knowledgeable actor or knowing subject” (Carr & Kemmis, p. 44), an “‘informed, committed action’” (Robertson, p. 14) that feeds the dynamic of joint action, like fuel to an engine.

Learning As Renovation

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I have already offered an analogy for learning as a kind of renovation. It’s no perfect comparison – no “analogy” is meant to be – so feel free to use your imagination. What I like is the suggestion of integrity and the potential for improvement: something original remains, upon which we build and rebuild.

From that earlier post:

“Renovation also happens to suit a constructivist perspective on learning, i.e. learning as an active process during which someone integrates new experiences with what they already know. Yet this distinction between ‘what is known’ and ‘what is new’ has also been an avenue for critiquing constructivism’s overwhelming predominance, as has the general notion that active learners mean passive teachers, as has the nuance of what ‘active’ even means – thinking about stuff or doing stuff. Other nuances distinguish something learned from something experienced and something internal or uniquely derived from something external or belatedly accepted as consensus.”

With all that said, what statement about learning is credible without some thought afforded to teaching – I began sketching that out, too, at the time. So… Take 2: ‘learning as renovation’ means what for teaching? What exactly is teaching?

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For me, these questions just prompt more questions. One, well known to educators for being contentious, asks ‘What is worth teaching?’ As compared to the die-hard habits of so-called traditional teaching, our 21st century constructi-verse might hone a laudibly more nuanced sensitivity for whichever teaching better suits the thing being learned. But since education today seems wholly fixed upon the future, we might better proceed from ‘What is worth teaching?’ to the deeper complication that Pinar carves inside the politics of curriculum: ‘What knowledge is of most worth?’ By this, of course, I take him really to be asking, ‘Whose knowledge…?’ and on it goes, that contention.

Of course, values change, even as change takes decades or more. But what these particular questions implicate – or, rather, who they implicate – seems to be haves and have-nots as the future sends the past on its way. Put another way, the general response to ‘Whose knowledge is of most worth?’ seems to be one more clarification: ‘At which moment in history do you mean?’ which prompts questions further still, such as those arising more recently about Truth and Reconciliation and how educators might most appropriately respond, given the unknowable future.

In my doctoral work, I conceptualise curriculum as relational, i.e. an interpretive process underway between and among each student-teacher pairing, such that each person involved is contributing to every other by sincerity of their shared interests, i.e. “whose interests…?” Of course, since everyone has a backstory that no one else can know completely, peoples’ lives are more complex than first glance can suggest. That means any assumption made is a leap to conclusion, which is true, for instance, of even our closest relationships, much less between students and teachers.

Less commonly posed than ‘What knowledge is of most worth?’ is a question that seems to reach a likelier core of contention: ‘Whose knowledge… ?’

Likewise, as each teacher has a unique perspective on learning – like this reflection of mine – a teacher in the classroom is bound to know their school and its students in a way the rest of us never could and, thus, that teacher will apply their perspective in ways the rest of us never would. This, too, is true of us all in relation to each other, and any constructive way forward would seem to rest upon a sincere and joint interaction.

In that way, as teachers are able to grant each student’s unique perspective and backstory, they are also obliged to acknowledge each student’s needs, then offer a curricular experience that informs and persuades while still leaving space for each student, i.e. “whose needs, whose space…?” in order that each might make more meaningful sense of their own learning.

By analogy, then, this would seem to make teaching a kind of renovation plan, loose yet backed by at least two key factors: (i) sound foresight, which translates to careful, informed planning that aims for some defined vision, i.e. “whose vision…?” and (ii) a set of reliable tools, which is really to say the resourcefulness, compassion, and patience required to apply each tool in the most suitable way at the most appropriate time.

… that ‘Toolkit’ you hear so much about? For me, no, in fact… not exactly
Photo Credit: Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash

Of course, all this as metaphor sounds ideal whereas, in practice, nothing is guaranteed; renovation is seldom so tidy a business. More famously, it tends to get more complicated and even turns out some rather untimely outcomes.

Classrooms, by comparison, while complex can also be the most enjoyable places, and unlike renovations as we typically know them, I’m not sure learning needs to get more complicated than respecting the dignity of everyone involved. Beyond that, the rest is up to us as teachers and learners, albeit in distinctive roles, as we nonetheless learn and teach each other in ways that leave space where everyone is able to build and rebuild.