ULearn15 Abstract:
Re-imagining teaching with a narrative that privileges effort, learning and high expectations.
“I can’t help but dream about a kind of criticism that would not try to judge, but bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea-foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply, not judgments, but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes – all the better. All the better. Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I’d like a criticism of scintillating leaps of the imagination. It would not be a sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the lightning of possible storms.” Michel Foucault. (1997) [1980]. ‘The Masked Philosopher’. In J. Faubion (ed.). Tr. Robert Hurley and others. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. The Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954-1984. Volume One. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, Allen Lane, p. . [trans. mod]
The profession of teaching is attracting many re-interpretations (including digitally staged simulacra); each designed to address perceived failures in the ability of teachers’ existing practice to meet the learning needs of today’s students. Many of these attempts at contemporaneity are prefaced with claims to “modernity” as in “modern” learning environments and “modern” learning practice” Re-imagining teaching within a narrative of erasure or irrelevance of the past along with claims to technological modernity can lead to bad pedagogy, silly trends and can be an insult to the things that matter most in learning. What is often missing in these “re-interpretations” is any “scintillating leaps of pedagogical imagination” around teachers and what they do. This presentation will explore how re-imagining teaching with a narrative that privileges effort, learning and high expectations can create opportunities for a “scintillating leap” in what matters most when “learning about” and “learning how to”. It will look at how making learning visible with SOLO Taxonomy – and notions of consistency, closure, and cognitive overload – can allow us to look at what is familiar and effective in teaching in new ways. To re-interpret, re-think and re-create teaching though “scintillating leaps of pedagogical imagination”.
Why do I post this? I am starting to imagine the sea foam and the breeze … I have a great collection of teachers and thinkers attending my session at ULearn15 this year and will admit to being more than a little excited about where the sea foam may go.
