Category: Teaching

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.

Tech Trade-Off: III. Thinking Differently about Learning

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Click here to read Tech Trade-Off: II. Learning to Think Differently

III. Thinking Differently about Learning

Learning, the singular thing, is generally considered an accumulation of acquired knowledge. We also call it ‘information’, ‘content’, even ‘skill’ – think ‘learning’ as something contained, the only thing left but to bottle and sell it.

Sometimes, you’ll also hear the insipid head-shaker “learnings,” with that plural ‘s’ tacked on the end, which I gather means “lessons” or “wisdom.” I’ve also heard “teachings” used the same way. By this usages, we’re back to a gerunds being the-verbs-that-is-a-nouns, where “students can share their learning(s)” as they might share a refreshing cases of Pepsi-Cola.

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As for being a misconstrued process, someone might attribute to learning a ‘start’ and a ‘finish’, as if sitting down to learn were like sitting down to dine. On the grammar front, I’d simply note how this conception of learning likens the noun to another verb form: the infinitive, i.e. to learn.

Altogether, such a singular concept of learning differs from my own concept of learning… a bit like how apprehension differs from comprehension, where the one is a sense that something is the case while the other is some fuller knowledge about whatever we’re sensing. As the one is more immediate and discrete, at my fingertips, the other transcends and perdures, by contemplation.

For me, learning means something continual, if not continuous – and maybe this is just idiosyncratic to English, somebody let me know. My own conception of learning suggests dynamism, neither the stuff getting bottled nor the bottles themselves, nor even the process of getting stuff into bottles; indeed, the image of filling learners’ minds is a big no-no in education, as is delivering a lesson the way Amazon delivers packages.

How about this… after delivering my daughter to piano lessons, I enjoy a coffee at Tim Horton’s while she and her teacher share 52 keys for sixty minutes. Later on, at home, I enjoy listening while my daughter practises apart from her teacher. During all that time, though, my daughter is learning, each situation helping comprise her whole underway experience of ‘learning piano’.

In her case, that process continued over several years, and I could even imagine it might have ‘begun’, as it were, well before she ever actually sat down next to her teacher – some earlier moment when she felt that inner stirring about even ‘getting to take’ piano lessons. By contrast, once she had begun, at no point did some single ‘part-of-the-whole’ cap off ‘all-that-it-was’. That occurring dynamic, that underway-ness – that process – that, for me, is the gerund of learning.

Image Credits: Taken on Pixabay (Edited)
and Clker-Free-Vector-Images on Pixabay

The gerund, please remember, is the verb-that-is-a-noun, e.g. “Learning takes time and patience.” Yet the gerund can also be part of a predicate verb construction: “I’m still learning to play golf.” This is why Martin Hall keeps devising new and inventive props and drills for practising your golf swing… although, granted, it’s a poor example for those who’ve mastered all 18 holes.

Apart from mastery, the only way I can see to curb any learning process would be some intentional notion to cease learning that particular thing, like when my daughter decided to lift no-longer-willing fingers from the keyboard. Not long after no longer apprehending 52 keys, her comprehension was finding new things to contemplate. Yet, since then, as she’s decided to play piano a little more now and again, so also has her ‘learning piano’ experience re-commenced, albeit in a less formal way.

How about this… a teacher in a classroom steps away from these students over here to visit those students over there. Unlike the piano example, where a student visits the piano teacher, a classroom teacher is the one who circulates, doing their part before stepping away to another table. Yet each time I step away from these students over here to visit those students over there, I must admit, I tend to think I’m simply closing Part I’s laundry door: sure enough, after I step away, the students over here are still chugging along, now learning in my absence, as they were earlier learning in my presence, as they were learning before I arrived.

And in a class of two or three dozen students, plus me – one teacher – I must admit that I depend on learning to be a continuous process. At my best, what I’m really doing is shepherding a process. At my worst, students are left shepherding themselves… which is totally fine if you just want to enjoy playing, but not necessarily if you want to be learning, piano.

How about this… the Solar System is a singular thing, but as a dynamic ‘system’ underway, it has many components, all moving by way of their inter-action: the Sun, each planet, all those moons, all the asteroids and comets, cosmic dust, and even people – everything with mass affecting everything else with mass, all relating continuously, endlessly, while revolving around shared centres of gravity. What better analogy for a classroom full of students and their teacher?

Now you see why teachers bargain for smaller class sizes…
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The misleading conception of learning as a singular event is as if to say, “This is Learning. He’s a gerund.” I just don’t think learning is like this. You can’t save Learning a seat, you can’t buy Learning a green fee, you can’t play Learning a nocturne, and Learning won’t be pouring you a cup of coffee tomorrow morning. Learning isn’t born to live and die because learning isn’t singular or quantifiable or determinate. More importantly, the singular notion of learning as a thing is not only misleading, it’s contrary to education and any possible meaning we might ascribe to ‘the learning process’. Yet how often does any utterance of the word denote this nuance?

Recap:

(a) In apprehending surplus time, I fear we’ve misconstrued the significance of committed time, and I think the resultant surplus mind-set owes at least some debt of thanks to our tendency for shorthanding. And I fear we’re mistaken to dismiss old-man grousing about the way things used to be. The time that has passed, where we’ve come from – going back generations, lifetimes, centuries ago – has left us readied to continue with a frame-of-mind for reduction and abstraction. Even while it’s something we’re learning, I fear it’s something we’ve learned.

(b) As a picture is worth a thousand words, so a word is worth a thousand details, and if words really do matter, so actions are apparently louder still, even when that action is underway up between our ears. As we think, so we do.

So, with a pedantic hat tip to Parts of Speech, let me suggest that we curb our shorthanding and take greater care for ourselves, by way of our thinking. Let’s curb the shorthand notion of learning as a finite event and start recalling learning – like thinking – as an underway process.

And, to be fair, if process can even approach anything like a singular thing, maybe let’s imagine it as time-lapse photography, or those Cracker Jack holograms, where you had to tip the cardboard back-and-forth to move the picture – like CGI, just way more interactive.

As for anyone still arrogant enough to say, “I’m doing the laundry” – go beat your clothes in the creek with a rock.

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