Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 5 seconds
Some days I am in a rush but I also want to capture some of the things I enjoyed reading over the past couple of days – particularly quotable parts or ideas i want to keep… So I put them on my blog. There is no theme here, sorry!
I am a huge fan of Adam Heidebrink-Bruno’s writing, particularly when you can feel his heart and soul in it. Here’s the part I loved the most in his latest post:
one cannot care for a datapoint the way one cares for another person and one cannot implement a loving, inclusive pedagogy while simultaneously segregating and excluding entire ethnicities and cultures.
In Ann Gagne’s latest post, she writes about mindfulness, wholeness and an ethics of care, and here she quotes Maurice Hammington:
“For the sake of my analysis, habits can be divided into three categories: acaring, noncaring, and caring. An acaring habit is a morally neutral pattern the body uses to navigate its environment […] Noncaring habits are those that harm another embodied being; examples include spousal abuse, child molestations, and acting out road rage. Caring habits are those that exhibit a regard for the growth, flourishing, and well-being of another.” (Hamington 57) [1]
She also talks later about the importance of participating outside classroom spaces, which reminded me of another quotable part of an earlier post:
I believe we all have a responsibility to be activists for the creation of communities of knowledge (which is necessarily the foundation of education).
She also said something about fun which reminded me of a post by Sandra Sinfield in which she talks about her own practice:
It also allowed us to shape something that fosters belonging and human connections between the students – it allows the space and time to foster creativity and fun and play – as well as criticality and dialogue… and we hope that the processes involved also allows the module to act as a tool or lens for participants to use to critique their previous educational experiences – in ways that critically inform their own future practice.
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The goal of a module like ‘Becoming’ on paper could be that we re-territorialise (D&G) these perhaps ‘un-inducted’ students – that we tame them – fix them – and get them all set up for their education deposits; what we hope is that the passion and the play of the module and their blogs and the spaces created – enables the students to narrate themselves as they become ‘academic’ on their own terms.>
Sarah Honeychurch posted a really cool one about caring about students, with a sarcastic undertone, and an earlier one about why it’s important to take out the weeds in order to nurture the flowers:
Teaching and learning is a bit like tending a garden. We provide a suitable environment (or do the best with the one we find ourselves in), we prepare the ground, plant the seeds and do our best to nurture them as they grow. We try to stop the weeds from choking them and the slugs from eating them, especially when they are tiny, and we provide some structure for them to grow into
I love how some people are connecting critical pedagogy to Deleuze and Guattari (yeah we rhizo14 ppl will make everything rhizomatic!), so for example Simon Ensor and Keith Hamon. This is all particularly interesting because postmodernism is generally opposed to grand narratives such as that of emancipation that is central to critical pedagogy; and yet, one needs to have some postmodern tendencies in order to see the complexity of applying grand narratives such as Freire’s in real life… Again something Ellsworth talks about and bell hooks talks about – and relates again to the idea of teachers and learners as whole people.
From another post of Simon’s I liked this:
‘Education’, if that is what we may call it, occupies as it colonises their time.
And finally, this by Nick Bowskill:
When we think of ourselves less at that individual level, and begin to understand our membership of social groups, then we may be ACTUALISED, but only as members. The common ground, as the socially shared norms, tell us what to do in different social settings. They ‘actualise’ us all as a group and individually as members of it. We are not autonomous. We are located within social groups. Recogntion of this helps us to understand the ‘post-autonomous’ era.
Of course, we should recognise that we each have personal interests and aims. They may be different to those of others. It is reasonable to think of self-actualisation in that way. At the same time, those interests belong in different social groups. It may be we develop our personal project and become self-actualised through membership of multiple social groups.
That’s a really useful thought to take with me as i give a workshop on becoming a connected educator this afternoon! I have to go to that conference now…