Trust in the unreliable ways
I ended the last blog wondering about the idea of unreliable ways of working in education. This got me thinking about the mapmaking that has been at the heart of my PhD research project and I decided to think with this idea of unreliableness for a talk I was going to give about my work. This blog shares the talk, which was hosted by the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol.
The current measurement-focussed education system puts pressure on teachers and educators to develop methods for teaching and learning that increasingly feel more reliable, more trusted and more able to produce expected and consistent results. The problem my research engages with is how such tools and practices fall short of fostering young people’s capacity to engage with, and participate in the transformation of, a world that is complex, dynamic and impossible to be certain of.
I use the talk to think with the notion of unreliable pedagogies. To do this, I revisit three moments in the mapmaking residency I made with a group of 17-year-old learners to explore mapmaking techniques. What emerges through the talk is a deeper and more nuanced understanding of mapmaking as a mode of engagement with the world that: 1) can’t be trusted to produce what you expect; 2) might not produce something recognizable as ‘good’; and 3) offers different results when repeated. What mapmaking seems to make possible is an expression and transformation of the students’ sense of self and of the world around them. The key ideas I share in the talk suggest the potential of mapmaking as an unreliable tool that fosters:
Engagement and sensemaking of a complex, dynamic world
Simultaneous expression and transformation of ideas that don’t rely on language alone
A critical engagement with what matters to young people
Curiosity
An ethical sensibility to coexisting differences; a form of kinship
The full talk can be watched here or on YouTube.
Thanks to the Pervasive Media Studio, Clare Reddington and Watershed for offering me a space explore and share these ideas. Thanks to everyone who came to the talk and for the thoughtful quesitons. The Pervasive Media Studio hold regular lunchtime talks that are really worth checking out on their YouTube channel.
Sincere thanks to the students from North Bristol Post-16 Centre at Cotham for allowing me to share their generous and thoughtful contributions to the research.
I begin the talk with a photograph that is used with kind permission of my good friend the photographer Andrew Paynter.
Some things I’ve mentioned and some things I’ve been reading
Atkinson, D. 2018. Art, disobedience, and ethics: the adventure of pedagogy, Springer International Publishing.
Bergson, H., 2004. Time and free will: An essay on the immediate data of consciousness, Taylor & Francis Group.
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Deleuze, G., 1994. Difference and repetition, Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F., 1988. A thousand plateaus, Bloomsbury.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. 1994. What is philosophy?, Verso.
Dewey, J., 1963. Experience and education, Collier Books.
Dodge, M., Kitchin, R. & Perkins, C. 2009. Rethinking maps: New frontiers in cartographic theory, Taylor & Francis Group.
Eno, B. & Schmidt, P., 1979. Oblique strategies: Over one hundred worthwhile dilemmas, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt.
Freire, P., 1970. Pedagogy of the oppressed, Penguin Classics.
Hoffman, J., 2020. In the meantime: Speculations on art, curating and exhibitions, Sternberg Press.
Ingold, T. 2021. Introduction: Knowing from the inside. In: Ingold, T. (ed.) Knowing from the inside: cross- disciplinary experiments with matters of pedagogy. Bloomsbury Academic.
Louis, M., 1959–1960. Untitled. The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Lynch, K. 1960. The image of the city, MIT Press.
Massey, D. 2005. For space, SAGE Publications.
Miles, J. & Springgay, S. 2020. The indeterminate influence of Fluxus on contemporary curriculum and pedagogy. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 33, 1007-1021.
Phillips, T. 2016. Tom Phillips on A Humument: A treated victorian novel. Hudson, T. (ed.). YouTube.
Springgay, S. & Truman, S. E. 2017. On the need for methods beyond proceduralism: Speculative middles, (in)tensions, and response-ability in research. Qualitative Inquiry, 24, 203-214.