Quotes

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

Featured Image Credit:Clker-Free-Vector-Images on Pixabay

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.

Conceptualising the In-Between: II. Logos

Featured Image by Mladifilozof & Aristeas: Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5957893

Click here to read Part I. Language

Something obvious, to start: our use of language directed to others and prompted by others is intended for others and received by others.[1] This is equally plain to see from the Rhetorical WHY’s foundation, the Rhetorical Model of Communication:

  • a message-as-conceived and -as-conveyed
  • a message-as-received and -as-interpreted
  • a message’s connotations and resonance
  • small-‘t’ “truth”

Small-‘t’ “truth”[2] at the center denotes the weight of responsibility we bear for our beliefs, the meanings we claim as “true” in the presence of everyone else doing the same thing. Language, then, seems as vital to our common well-being as the air we breathe and the water we drink.[3]

As to Gadamer’s Biblical comparison, introduced in Part I… from the Greek of the New Testament, “Word” translates as λóγος (logos), and language – logos, the Word – within us reflects the imago Dei of Creation. From this root issues a robust etymological lineage: word, speech, discourse, logic, reason, rational thinking – traits in the 21st century that seem so empirical, dependable, reliable, and antithetical to faith. Yet, for having language, we still have no supernatural facility to claim as our own – no omnipotent glory – that might make eternally creative use of it. We have but vaulting ambition – sinful pride – that frustrates our use of what feels somehow essential yet lies somewhere beyond our finite capability.

Thus we misconstrue our essence as instrumentality and our existence as authority… again that hazy distinction between essence and aim: imagine the world where hubris is surpassed only by vanity. We do in fact bicker endlessly over alternative facts, and our shared understanding – a shared estrangement – does in fact increase. And thus (again with added emphasis), in light of Heidegger – in light with Heidegger, in the clearing – I might read the opening verses of the Gospel of John as descriptive and readily spot both real and figurative IB:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness…

(John 1:1–5)

The darkness is an image also invoked by Taylor, certainly bearing a negative tone, to describe our bids at imposing our own light within Heidegger’s clearing. John counters the darkness with two essential claims: (i) God is logos, and not in some protean way but definitively, while (ii) the Word is the underlying source of ‘making’ and ‘made’, of light and life, with our goodwill or human essence being but an image of His.

One final detail from Arthos is worth adding to this spiritual aspect of IB, for two reasons: first, to credit Gadamer’s “fusion of horizons” as a way to describe IB, and second, to acknowledge Gadamer’s concept of “conversation” as something spontaneous, emergent, and unpredictable. Of the spiritual footing for Gadamer’s hermeneutical approach, Arthos says this:

For Gadamer, Christian incarnation “is strangely different from” the manifestations of pagan gods in human form (TM, 418/WM, 422). In Christology, the spirit made flesh is “not the kind of becoming in which something turns into something else” (TM, 420/WM, 424). This strong enigma places the credal[4] faith apart, and upends the normal relation of the spiritual and the material. The indivisible bond between the word and the person is a fuller ontological relation than simply the unity of the spiritual and material. The relation between word and person is no bloodless, conceptual abstraction. The constancy of the person in the word represents a concentration or fullness of meaning and an increase of being. We can see this, for instance, in the idea of a promise, in which a person stands behind the word that is given, since it is they as much as the word that is at stake, and the fulfillment of the promise strengthens the person who made it and the community it forms. The innovation of the doctrine of the word is to reverse the trend set in motion with the Greeks that the reasoning faculty distills the mind’s work from the accidents of the flesh. Logos is rather the fully embodied medium of human community.

(Arthos, 2009, p. 2)

Earlier in the chapter of Truth and Method that Arthos quotes, Gadamer explains that our diverse world of languages and their associated cultures have this in common: when speaking of the Word, none is able to express its true positive being:

The greater miracle of language lies not in the fact that the Word becomes flesh and emerges in external being, but that that which emerges and externalizes itself in utterance is always already a word.

(Gadamer, 2004, p. 419)

The Word “[being] always already a word” I liken to a simultaneous positive ‘freedom to…‘ and negative ‘freedom from…‘, an autonomy we can observe and describe but not impede or control. This “externality” oddly serves as a great equalizer across cultures, if we let it – that is, if we heed Taylor and seek not “to impose our light [in its place and] close ourselves off to [others]” (Taylor, 2005, p. 448). As compared to something in between us that enjoins, Gadamer describes something among us that joins.

To take all this spiritually, or else not, is up to each person – as apparently it must be. I can only express my words, here and now, for you to take or leave, as you will. Yet this much for all seems undeniable: each one of us might cast our self in this role of creator, as such: “If it were up to me… if I were the one in charge… if only we did things my way… .” Is it little wonder if the world and life and history seem defined by our multitudinous disagreements? And if saying so seems obvious, or pessimistic, consider too that Heidegger’s entire point seems to be an imperative to “Listen,” advice most infamously needed when it’s not happening.

One final analogy for IB departs from philosophy and the spiritual for natural science, which I include here on account of wonder. I take it from physicist Dr. Robbert Dijkgraaf during a 2015 appearance on PBS Nova:

“In this very simple formula, the whole geometry of the universe is hidden.… It’s also a signature formula for Einstein. The true mark of his genius is that he combines two elements that actually live in different universes. The left hand side lives in the world of geometry, of mathematics. The right-hand side lives in the world of physics, of matter and movement. And-- so perhaps the most powerful ingredient of the equation is this very symbol, equals sign, here: these two lines that actually are connecting the two worlds. And it’s quite appropriate they’re two lines because it’s two-way traffic: matter tells space-and-time to curve; space-and-time tells matter to move.
“You know, you have the huge universe, and it obeys certain laws of nature. But where in the universe are these laws actually discovered? Where are they studied? And then you go to this tiny planet, and there’s this one individual, Einstein, who captures it. And now there’s a small group of people walking in his footsteps and trying to push it further. And I often feel, Well, you know, there’s a small part of the universe that actually is reflecting upon itself, that tries to understand itself.”

I can imagine Dijkgraaf granting to Einstein a cosmic generosity, the goodwill to have made room in the clearing for others, e.g. a “small group of people walking in his footsteps.”

Some people get spiritual about cosmology, and physics too, so offering this analogy in the wake of Heidegger’s cosmic spirit seems more à propos than non sequitur. Personally, I think science and spirituality would find plenty to talk about together, if they would willingly join forces and listen to each other, and perceive expressions of interest, and develop some basis of shared understanding.

Besides its temporal implications, the second part of Dijkgraaf’s remark resembles a concept I have elsewhere called mirroring: briefly, an effect of interaction where the response provoked in Person ‘A’ by the prompt of Person ‘B’ serves as a reflection of Person ‘B’, as if Person ‘A’ were a mirror for Person ‘B’ to see themselves. Re-action reflecting action implicates both participants, and of course, the mirroring effect is simultaneously mutual, travelling both ways at once: between people, IB is a compelling imperative to listen and also respond – it suggests our joint interaction. By Dijkgraaf’s Einstein analogy, mirroring might also suggest that equals sign.

In all these concepts of mutual relatedness – philosophical, spiritual, cosmological – IB is a kind of setting, albeit not a literal physical location. Where ‘one’ thing ends and ‘another’ begins is an abstract third space between the two in relation. That said, IB is temporally present – each moment figuratively here and literally now, continuously underway and under continual renovation, forever in adjustment, always resembling, never quite remaining. This third space may overlap, such as when two people share something in common, or it may be a gap, such as when two people have nothing in common. Either way, it’s IB’s dynamic that is defining their relationship.

Click here for Part III. Relationships

[1] By “others,” we might also include “self,” in the more straightforward matter of defining the “audience.”

[2] Subsequently, any resultant small-‘t’ truth offers some capital-‘A’ Assurance, even if capital-‘T’ Truth remains beyond certainty or else relies on some kind of faith. Whether we even call this consensus the capital-‘T’ “Truth” would seem to depend on how well we get along together.

[3] Exactly how Heidegger came to understand language as this vital is the focus of Taylor’s essay although, admittedly, I am still pondering his overall discussion. But, again, I broaden “language” – as well as “text” – to comprise all our communicative efforts, and as I often said to students, “If it’s done by people, it’s rhetoric,” by which I meant, “it’s persuasive,” i.e. it’s something inherently communicative.

[4] An alternative definition for agenda is “things to be done,” originally theological, “matters of practice, as distinguished from belief or theory”; as opposed to credenda “things to be believed, matters of faith, propositions forming or belonging to a system” from which we derive creed. Thus I note with interest Arthos’s reference here to “credal faith.”