Diffractions

Abstract

This chapter forms the empirical core of the book. It presents the majority of the inquiry with co-researchers – i.e. methods and outcomes – as it took shape around the premise of entanglement. Throughout the chapter, a diffractive approach to narrative research, based on a process of collaborative script-writing and rewriting, is developed.

In this chapter, I present the remainder of my collaboration with teachers as co-researchers. The initial inquiry presented in Chap. 2 generated 12 rich narratives in which various exemplary teaching experiences of co-researchers are described. These narratives have helped focus the inquiry on what I henceforth refer to as pedagogy of entanglement. The central argument behind this move has been that as long as our pedagogies approach the student first and foremost as someone to be prepared for and/or introduced into the world, we shall fail to illuminate and embrace the complexity of life and life’s challenges. We shall fail, more precisely, to educate that part of the student that is touched by the challenges of world-in-motion and has a hand in their ongoing evolution in a here-and-now sense (i.e. we shall fail to have a pedagogical response to students’ entangledness). Having come to this point, inquiry with co-researchers has to turn to the articulation of axiological and praxeological perspectives that can help teachers to engage with their students’ entangledness meaningfully. Within the dimension of axiology, the question becomes: what is it that we, as teachers, wish to do to the entangledness of our students, and why? Within the dimension of praxeology, the question becomes: what can we, as teachers, do to help bring about those learning processes that we aspire to? I refer back to Chap. 1 to restate that I seek to contribute to answering these questions by generating interpretative, hermeneutic lenses through which teachers can inquire within the specific practices they are immersed in, so that situated insights and possibilities can emerge. The 12 biographical narratives hint toward numerous axiological and praxeological perspectives of this kind. How, then, are we (i.e. my co-researchers and I) to transform these initial biographical narratives into a set of helpful pedagogical perspectives?

A Diffractive Approach

To develop a proper strategy at this point, I considered it important to be aware that the inquiry with co-researchers can itself be understood as a process of learning in and from entanglement. After all, my co-researchers are teachers who resonate with the aims, teaching experiences, and considerations that drive my research (i.e. they are entangled with it in a particular way), and I attempt to enable a collaborative inquiry through which we can create perspectives that help not only other teachers but, also, ourselves. This insight – the insight that we are entangled researchers – is, in fact, an important methodological concern in complexity thinking (Davis and Sumara 2006). The entangled researcher theorizes not by looking at things from a distance but by ‘dwelling in them’ (Polanyi 2009, p. 18) and not by intervening from outside but by ‘intra-acting, from within, and as part of, the phenomena produced’ (Barad 2007, p. 56). This approach is a fundamental move away from how theorizing is often understood, namely as an external act of measurement and explanation (Barad 2007; Bozalek and Zembylas 2017; Gergen 2014; Haraway 1997). This move is, indeed, identical to the move from an ontology of individualism – ‘the belief that the world is populated with individual things with their own independent sets of determinate properties’ (Barad 2007, p. 19) – to a relational one.

From this point of view, there is an important remark to make about the status of the biographical narratives that the initial inquiry with co-researchers produced and, consequently, about what is needed in moving forward from this point onward. The biographical accounts of co-researchers are interpretations of past experiences. Apart from focusing co-researchers’ attention on specific types of experiences, I have attempted to position myself as neutral as possible, encouraging co-researchers to find their own words for and interpretations of past experiences. I have encouraged them, in other words, to take a reflective step, to look back at the past and re-articulate it. In Chap. 1 I already stated that these biographical accounts cannot be understood as factual descriptions of what happened, but rather are to be seen as proof for how co-researchers interpret past experiences. I also argued that these interpretations are to be understood as co-constructions, for had I framed my questions differently other elements would have been foregrounded in co-researchers’ narrations. I can now add, to these statements, an additional consideration: as co-researchers are themselves entangled in the phenomena of inquiry, their interpretation is unavoidably incomplete and dynamic (Barad 2007; Polanyi 2009); inevitably co-researchers are at every moment in time blind to certain other potentially helpful interpretations and once the particular way in which a co-researcher is entangled transforms so does his/her interpretation of past experiences. The biographical accounts illustrate, first and foremost, through what kind of lenses co-researchers ascribe meaning to their practice at the point in time and space of narration. The aim of this book is, however, not to identify these lenses as such, but to articulate helpful perspectives that can inspire teachers. My reasoning has been, following these considerations, that my co-researchers and I are more likely to end up with rich, helpful perspectives if we challenge and transform initial biographical accounts than if we take them for granted and reflect the insights articulated in them. Reflection, to quote Haraway (1997, p. 16), ‘only displaces the same elsewhere’, and to reach our aims we should thus avoid this fallacy of representationalism (Barad 2007) and opt for a creative engagement with data through which – yet invisible – patterns of insight can emerge.

The more common, representationalist thing to do at this point of the inquiry would be to perform a content analysis (Denzin and Lincoln 2000; Elo and Kyngäs 2008), a procedure in which a coding scheme is derived from the data to describe the qualitatively different statements they contain. Such an approach, we can now see, would not serve my aims in this chapter. An alternative approach is needed to enable a creative process in which my co-researchers and I move and act with the data, so that insights can emerge that bring us a step further than merely representing what we already know. For this purpose, I have found inspiration in the notion of diffraction (Barad 2007; Bozalek and Zembylas 2017; Haraway 1997). The metaphor of diffraction contrasts that of reflection, and the difference can perhaps most easily be understood by explaining them as optical metaphors. The metaphor of reflection is illustrated by a mirror, which presents us with an image of what we position in front of it (e.g. performing a content analysis on qualitative data). The metaphor of diffraction, on the other hand, has everything to do with patterns of difference that emerge through material engagement, and refers to ‘the way waves combine when they overlap and the apparent bending and spreading of waves that occurs when waves encounter an obstruction’ (Barad 2007, p. 74). As Barad summarizes (p. 71): ‘both are optical phenomena, but whereas the metaphor of reflection reflects the themes of mirroring and sameness, diffraction is marked by patterns of difference’. To utilize this metaphor in my collaboration with co-researchers, the diffractive methodology of Van de Putte et al. (2020) proved particularly useful to me. The interesting part of their methodology, for my current purposes, is that they too start with the biographical narration of past experiences and, from that point onward, develop an approach based on what they call diffractive scripts. Rather than static descriptions of the past – dead, in a sense –, diffractive scripts are dynamic explorations in the here-and-now – very much alive – that transform and gain meaning through a collaborative engagement of the researchers. The obstructions that facilitate the iterative development of diffractive scripts are constituted by the particular ways in which this collaborative engagement is intentionally organized, and the reasoning behind these choices needs to be transparent (for this, as well, an excellent example is provided by Van de Putte et al. 2020). In a general sense, these obstructions always invite reading one narrative through another to arrive at more creative insights (Bozalek and Zembylas 2017). In the remainder of this chapter, I present the steps through which the diffractive inquiry with co-researchers took shape. For each step, I describe how it was informed by previous steps, how it was designed as a diffractive tool, and which patterns of insight it produced.

Step 1.1: Creating Diffractive Scripts

Inspired by the work of Van de Putte et al. (2020), I designed a plan to transform the 12 initial biographical narratives of individual co-researchers into 3 diffractive scripts. Unfortunately, one co-researcher (i.e. Anika) decided to leave the inquiry, for finding herself in a particularly stressful period she considered participation too time-consuming. Proceeding with 11 co-researchers, I decided to bring them together in two groups of four and one group of three and to organize a session with each group. As I did not want to predict what the outcomes of the inquiry were going to be, I decided to form groups based on the availability of co-researchers and diversity in terms of school type (i.e. primary school, high school, applied university).

As these group sessions were to mark the start of a new phase of the inquiry, and for some co-researchers, a considerable amount of time had passed since their narrative-biographical interview session, I decided to be very concise in inviting them. Especially important, herein, was to present how our mutual inquiry, in its interweaving with literature study and autoethnography, had moved me to articulate the premise of entanglement as a hermeneutic lens for further inquiry. To create the opportunity for discussion on this matter, I organized a phone call of approximately 30 min with each co-researcher individually. In these conversations, I gave a transparent overview of how the three modes of inquiry had interwoven in the initial inquiry (as presented in Chap. 2). Also, I took a moment to explore, together, how students’ entangledness is revealed in the biographical narrative that we had constructed together in the initial inquiry. These conversations were inspiring and provocative, and all teachers agreed that the premise of entanglement summarized and illuminated an important insight from the initial inquiry, and provides a promising lens for further inquiry. In these phone calls, I also provided an update of the steps I intended to take in the next phase of the inquiry. I described, in short, that I intended to facilitate a diffractive inquiry based on working with diffractive scripts. On several occasions, discussing this approach considerably helped me in fine-tuning the plan. I especially remember my talk with Ronald who, being experienced as a writer and director of theater performances, offered me valuable advice about how to provide the right amount of structure and freedom for collaborative script-writing. Following these phone calls, I sent an email to my co-researchers to ask for their availability for a group session. Attached to this email, I also sent them an informative letter, which once more summarized the process and outcome of the initial inquiry, and my plans for further inquiry. Based on co-researchers’ availability, I then formed the three groups and scheduled the group sessions. The first group consisted of Pien, Ronald, and Sandra, the second group of Jacob, Astrid, Jens, and Kasper, and the third group of Aafke, Steven, Irene, and Elmarie.

Due to COVID-19 regulations, each group’s session had to be organized as an online video call, using Microsoft Teams. In each group session, I first asked co-researchers to read each other’s biographical narratives (i.e. of the other group members) and highlight so-called hotspots (Bozalek and Zembylas 2017), elements or sections that attract attention as they are, for instance, particularly provocative, disturbing, new, or recognizable. After this, I asked co-researchers to engage in a creative dialogue with each other based on a simple, yet in practice highly challenging, assignment:

Formulate, as a group, one challenging yet realistic educational situation in which students’ entangledness is brought to the foreground and, subsequently, develop and write down several scenes that describe how this situation develops in interaction with you as their teacher. In doing so, carry the narratives that you just read of each other with you as inspirational material.

For this assignment, I gave the group about 1.5 h at most. To develop a diffractive script online, we worked with Padlet, a tool that allowed us to work simultaneously in a mind-map-like online environment. I took on the role of facilitator, which in practice meant that I would if needed bring the group back to the assignment (i.e. develop scenes, write them down), and provide them with structure (e.g. with such a comment as ‘let’s slowly work toward the last scene of this script, let’s say we have max 2 scenes left’). Also, co-researchers would naturally end up exploring and discussing various considerations and emotions that inform certain specific teacher decisions, and in such situations, I would encourage them to include such considerations into their scripts.

The diffractive strategies deployed in this assignment are: (1) starting with highlighting hotspots in each other’s narratives, and encouraging co-researchers to utilize these in the process of script-writing, enables a creative reading of narratives through one another, (2) the assignment to formulate, first of all, a challenging yet realistic starting scene invites co-researchers to connect the script-writing process to what is currently hot in society and their recent personal teaching experiences, and (3) the challenge to formulate scenes as a group, rather than individually, works as an obstruction, forcing co-researchers’ perspectives to enter into creative dialogue. I now move on to present the three diffractive scripts that were created in these sessions one by one.

Diffractive Script 1 – The Multicultural Classroom – Pien, Ronald, and Sandra

• Scene 1: A multicultural group of fourth-grade secondary school students in the Netherlands has an English class. During a presentation of a newspaper article about criminality, student A shouts out: ‘I bet those f*cking Moroccans did it!’. The teacher doubts if A only means to joke, or if A is serious as well. Student A is from a non-Moroccan background, but there are Moroccan students present as well.

• Scene 2: The other students remain passive, apart from some repressed laughter and some students looking furtively at each other. The Moroccan students in the classroom don’t respond, as if they don’t care. Students are waiting to see how the teacher will react. The teacher sees and feels that things are not quite right...

• Scene 3: The teacher has a dilemma: continue the class as planned or engage with A’s statement. The teacher knows that A’s statement touches upon a recurrent theme. Also, the teacher feels personally uncomfortable, for as a teacher s/he wants to avoid discrimination and prejudice, but on the other hand, s/he also recognizes the thought that the criminal is likely Moroccan. The teacher decides, therefore, not to let the moment slip, and to try to open a conversation.

• Scene 4: The teacher says the following to the students: ‘I am not sure how you feel right now, but what A just said, as a joke or out of anger, affected me. It makes me feel uncomfortable and I feel that I cannot just continue as if nothing happened. Do you feel something similar?’

• Scene 5: One student responds by saying: ‘don’t make it such a big deal, can’t we just continue?’

• Scene 6: The teacher responds that s/he indeed finds this a big deal and that that’s why s/he wants to talk about it. And that s/he is curious if others experience this as a difficult topic as well.

• Scene 7: The classroom becomes noisier and several students start talking to the teacher and each other. Several students express that they found A’s comment stupid.

• Scene 8: The teacher tries to ask some follow-up questions, to get more specific comments from students; ‘what do you mean by stupid?’, ‘how does this affect you?’, ‘what would you like to say to A in response?’.

• Scene 9: Meanwhile, the teacher notices that class ends in 5 min and that the conversation needs to be brought to a good end or needs to be continued later. The teacher says: ‘this class is almost over so unfortunately, we cannot end this conversation today. I would like to continue this conversation though, and I notice that it triggered you as well. I’ll think about how we can come back to it next time.’

Diffractive Script 2 – The Sustainable School – Jacob, Astrid, Jens, and Kasper

• Scene 1: Two students in a secondary school in the Netherlands send a message to their physics teacher stating that they want to start a sustainability committee at the school. The students decided to seek the help of this teacher specifically for s/he is known to be strongly interested in sustainability. Although the students’ question is not primarily focused on physics, the teacher wants to utilize their interest.

• Scene 2: The teacher wants to speak to the students as soon as possible and, to have enough time for them, invites them to drop by at the end of the school day. In this meeting, the teacher starts by asking the students what their intentions are. They explain why they care about sustainability, and in the eyes of the teacher, they appear quite dedicated to their cause. The teacher shares his/her enthusiasm and, getting a bit carried away, together they envision all kinds of initial ideas for a sustainability committee.

• Scene 3: That night at home the teacher starts thinking about how to follow up on today’s meeting, and what his/her role as a teacher can be. Multiple considerations enter his/her mind... ‘Do I stay as close as possible to the interests and goals of these students and/or shall I connect it to certain specific educational goals? Should I try to connect this project to the learning objectives of physics? How do I attune myself to these specific students? I see that one of them has a lot of talent but lost his/her motivation for school whilst the other is more motivated in class, do I take this into account? How do I retain their enthusiasm? How can I stimulate a critical attitude in this project, around questions such as: what is sustainability exactly, and what are other perspectives than yours? To what degree do I foreground my values in my role as a teacher? Can the fact that I am pro-sustainability prevent the students from taking a critical stance and, on the other hand, can my enthusiasm encourage and energize them?’

• Scene 4: The teacher decides to stay close to the enthusiasm of the students and the next day offers to help them set up a sustainability committee at school. The teacher does, however, formulate three intentions that s/he shares with the students... ‘Let’s try to make this interesting for as many students as possible and to include them, for instance by seeking opportunities to connect to the curricula and other students’ interests. Also, let’s try to get the school management on board, for which you should articulate and justify your plans. Lastly, let’s act, let’s make sure we make small concrete steps on short notice, whether successful or not, to get the ball rolling.’

• Scene 5: It is 3 months later and it’s the end of the academic year. A lot has happened over the past 3 months, including both experiences of success and frustration. To wrap up the initiative for this year, a meeting is organized for interested students and teachers. In this meeting, there is an open stage for sharing and performances. As part of this, the two students and the teacher challenge each other to each share, in a self-chosen way, some reflections around such questions as: did you notice any change in your interaction with teachers and students? Have you come to appreciate certain school subjects and their relation differently? What have you achieved? What went well and what do you want to learn or improve? What has surprised you and do you see certain things differently?

Diffractive Script 3 – Mock and Prejudice – Aafke, Steven, Irene, and Elmarie

• Scene 1: A group of fifth-grade secondary school students at an International Boarding School in the Netherlands has a Dutch class in which speeches of various American presidents are watched. The students come from all over the world and about half of them live at the school dormitory. The students are in the middle of an assignment to analyze and compare political speeches. At some point, the teacher shows two mocking cartoons about (at that time) sitting president Donald Trump and expresses his/her disapproval of Trump. This triggers a student with an American background, who says to be a follower of Trump. The student does so politely, which is typical for an International Boarding School.

• Scene 2: The student moves on to share his/her opinion and provides two arguments. Firstly, so s/he argues, America has historically made itself very dependent on international politics whilst job availability on the internal labor market is problematically low. Trump prioritizes this job availability. Secondly, the student suggests, Dutch media is very negatively biased toward Trump.

• Scene 3: The teacher listens to the student and as a consequence feels confronted with his/her own Western European “bubble”. S/he experiences a blind spot. This triggers all sorts of questions and considerations on behalf of the teacher… ‘Do I create space to zoom in on this, or do I come back to it sometime later? If so, how much time and space do I create, and for what exactly? Do I focus on content or process, emotion or reason? How does this affect the goal of this class?’ In that moment, the teacher decides to create space to try to have a group interaction about having prejudices or blind spots, and about diversity in perspectives. The teacher is aware that students may not so easily be open and vulnerable about this topic.

• Scene 4: The teacher decides to show vulnerability and acknowledges, in front of the students, that the student’s comment makes him/her aware that s/he taught in line with his/her convictions. To trigger conversation, and allow students to think for themselves, the teacher gives them some time to individually reflect and write some thoughts down. To facilitate this, the teacher gives the following questions to the students: do you recognize the experience of having a certain blind-spot or one-sidedness in your thinking? Do you think this is a bad thing? What influences how you view things and how could you open yourself to other points of view? Do you have an example of an occasion in which you opened yourself to another view than your own?

• Scene 5: Meanwhile, the teacher notices that there is only a little time left for interaction. S/he decides to follow up on this theme during the next class later the same week. S/he tells the students that in that class they will engage in dialogue in rotating pairs of two, and s/he asks them to prepare by writing down some thoughts about a topic on which they have a strong, one-sided opinion.

Step 1.2: Mapping Initial Insights

To harvest pedagogical insights triggered by co-constructing a diffractive script, I followed up on the assignment of step 1.1 with a group discussion of approximately 1 h. Initially, my idea was to have this discussion directly after constructing the diffractive script, but as step 1.1 was both time- and energy-intensive – especially in an online environment – two of the three groups decided to delay this discussion to a later day the same week. My idea behind this harvesting process, was twofold: (1) to attempt, as a group, to recognize what kind of patterns of insight emerged from transforming the initial biographical narratives into one diffractive script, and (2) to map these insights in such a way that they could, in turn, be engaged with in subsequent diffractive steps aimed at bringing the inquiry yet further. Therefore, I asked co-researchers to not only share insights but to map them into a web of insights. To facilitate this, we kept working with Padlet, and the assignment was as follows:

Share, with each other, what kind of insights regarding the question of how you can work meaningfully with the entangledness of students emerge from co-constructing the diffractive script and map these insights into a mind-map structure in Padlet.

At the beginning of this assignment, I proposed one important diffractive principle to the group, namely: tensions, for instance in the form of contradictions, paradoxes, or dilemmas, are allowed. The aim, namely, was not to come to some sort of agreement with each other in which all tensions are resolved, but rather to map emerging insights in their diversity and richness, and it is exactly at the point where tension emerges that further diffractive inquiry can be most fruitful.

My role in this harvesting process was, again, that of a facilitator. I illustrated how to create a mind-map structure in Padlet and I invited the group to assign someone to create the mind-map structure or to share this task. During the process, I tried to assure that shared insights indeed got written down in the mind-map, and on occasion helped to summarize insights harvested thus far. Sometimes, groups asked me to help write the insights down, as it was quite challenging for them to combine discussing insights and writing them down. On such occasions, I made sure to write things down in the words of co-researchers and always checked if I formulated it correctly, and if the insight was located at the proper location in the mind-map. Sometimes, the group would conclude that the mind-map needed to be somewhat reorganized, to group certain insights together, or connect them to other insights in a particular way. Furthermore, I asked facilitating questions such as ‘does anyone have a different insight, which has not been shared thus far’, or ‘does anyone recognize, perhaps in a slightly different way, the insight shared by co-researcher X’?

After a harvesting session was finished, I always took a moment to make the mind-map a bit neater, by correcting grammar mistakes and visually clarifying the structure created (e.g. by dragging grouped insights closer to each other). After this, I sent both the diffractive script and the mind-map to the group by email and invited them to check if they felt that something accidentally got left out or framed wrongly, and to share this in a reply-to-all email. For each group, only a few small corrections were gathered through this communicative validation step, which I subsequently processed. Figures 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 present the three mappings of initial insights that were created through this process.

Fig. 3.1

Mapping of initial insights of group 1

Fig. 3.2

Mapping of initial insights of group 2

Fig. 3.3

Mapping of initial insights of group 3

Step 2.1: Transforming Diffractive Scripts

The results of steps 1.1 and 1.2 provide three exemplary scripts of what pedagogy of entanglement might look like and rich mind-maps of associated pedagogical insights. Yet, there is still a lot that inquiry with co-researchers can contribute to my aims, especially since the mind-maps reveal certain tensions that invite further inquiry. Such tensions have to do, for instance, with the degree to which you, as a teacher, (1) share with students and/or keep to yourself how you are entangled with educational content, (2) follow students’ initiative and/or resist them, or (3) follow curricular plans and/or deviate from them. There often appears to be a sort of balance to be found or a paradox to embrace, in the sense that in such tensions both sides have their value. It can well be argued that such paradoxes are what provide the educational process with creative potential, and should not be sought to overcome but rather to embrace (see Palmer 2017). Also, in reading the diffractive scripts you may get the feeling, as do I, that the scenes do not describe the only possible scenario, nor necessarily the best scenario. Rather, they are honest attempts, informed by experience and insight, but inevitably imperfect and unfinished. It would be interesting, therefore, to imagine alternative turns that these diffractive scripts could take, and doing so can further illuminate the tensions that are at work. For these reasons, I decided to continue the inquiry with another diffractive step, which I shall again present in two sub-steps.

For this next phase of the inquiry, I decided to do another round of 1-on-1 research sessions with each co-researcher. I decided to meet them individually for two reasons. Most importantly, as co-constructing one coherent diffractive script is quite a challenging assignment, in which collaborative choices have to be made, I was curious to hear what co-researchers would change about the scripts if they were free to decide for themselves. As different co-researchers are likely to make different choices, this would likely illuminate certain tensions in the scripts. Also, now that patterns of pedagogical insight were starting to become clear, I was hoping to enrich them further by reconnecting to biographical teaching concerns and experiences of individual co-researchers. My intention at this point was, thus, to facilitate a re-reading of diffractive scripts through the narratives of individual co-researchers. To do so, I scheduled a 2-h session with each co-researcher. I was able to do 5 of these sessions offline, yet due to COVID-19 restrictions, 6 of them took place as an online video call through Microsoft Teams. In these sessions, I translated my intentions into several sub-assignments building on each other, in the following order:

• 1. Reread the diffractive scripts and scan the mind-maps of all three groups with the following questions in mind: what attracts your attention in particular, and are there certain things that you would do differently?

• 2. Now focus on the script of your group. Rereading it, can you tell me what attracts your attention and if there is something that you would like to suggest as an alternative or addition to the script?

• 3. Now focus on the script of one of the other two groups, can you tell me what attracts your attention in their script and if there is something that you would like to suggest as an alternative or addition to the script?

• 4. Looking at what has attracted you in rereading the scripts and mind-maps, and at the suggestions that you have made, can you identify a certain pedagogical tension (i.e. balancing, or choosing between, A and B) that is at play here and that attracts you particularly? How would you frame this tension?

• 5. If you extrapolate this particular tension to your own recent or current teaching experiences, which exemplary experience comes to your mind? Can you tell me about that experience?

Apart from posing these questions, I took on two roles in this phase of the inquiry. First of all, I tried to listen carefully and ask open questions, encouraging co-researchers to elaborate. Secondly, inspired by the work of Freire (1972) and by my experiences in steps 1.1 and 1.2, I took on the role of summarizer. That means: I repeatedly, and especially at the end of each sub-assignment, tried to summarize insights followed by the question: is that an accurate summary of insights, or did I miss something? In Freire’s work, feeding such summaries back to co-learners is of crucial importance, as it enables them to become (more) aware of their current position and, if needed, move beyond it through critical engagement. I did, indeed, notice that once I provided such a summary to a co-researcher it would often trigger an additional insight or a further clarification. For my purposes, taking on this summarizing role furthermore assured that I would come to a mutual understanding with a co-researcher, rather than misinterpreting him or her. It assured, thus, communicative validity. As I recorded each session and made notes of summaries, this enabled me to provide an overview of outcomes. In what follows next, I present the alternative and additional choices that co-researchers suggested for the three diffractive scripts. Subsequently, I provide an overview of the tensions co-researchers zoomed in on and the resonating exemplary experiences they narrated. It is worth mentioning, that the experiences narrated by Astrid and Sandra are re-readings of earlier experiences that were also narrated in the narrative biographical interview conducted for the initial inquiry presented in Chap. 2. For all other co-researchers, the narrated experiences refer to experiences that they had after the initial narrative biographical interview session.

Additions and Alternatives to Diffractive Script 1 – The Multicultural Classroom

• Extra steps in-between scenes 3 and 4:

  • The teacher first asks the student: ‘are you serious or are you making a joke?’

  • The teacher first focuses group conversation on the facts: ‘what are the crime statistics of the Netherlands?’

  • Before having a group conversation the teacher first talks to the student 1-to-1: ‘do you have certain personal experiences that made you say this? If not, what else made you say this?’

  • Before possibly entering into group discussion, the teacher first draws a clear line, stating that s/he does not accept such a comment: ‘you are entitled to your own opinions, but you can’t say it this way, for that does not belong to the kind of open, respectful discussion that we strive for here.’

• Addition to scene 4:

  • The teacher tries to be very specific in sharing that s/he feels affected, so that this contributes to the content of the discussion: ‘I have a close group of friends with three Moroccan guys in it, and we often talk about this topic. They told me how striking they find it that whenever such a comment is made, no one stands up to say that he or she finds this comment not OK.’

• Alternatives to scene 4:

  • The teacher gives a provocative response, saying ‘I bet you’re one of those rich kids who gets everything from daddy’. This results in a sort of “huh, what did the teacher just say- moment”, which takes the edge of the situation and creates space for a conversation. The teacher tries to use the momentum to collect more prejudices from the group and to explore, together, where prejudices come from and how we experience them.

  • The teacher decides to facilitate discussion and to take a clear lead so that it doesn’t become too messy/vague. S/he says: ‘I can imagine that this comment is funny, but also that some of you feel affected. I want to ask you to spend 5 min in small groups to discuss if you find it acceptable to say such things and why. After that, we’ll share opinions in the large group.’ The teacher creates the groups randomly by giving numbers to students and walks around to help subgroups if needed.

  • The teacher decides not to enter into discussion with the group at this moment, but mentions, instead, that s/he intends to come back to it on a later occasion.

• Addition to scene 6:

  • The teacher tries to be very specific in explaining why s/he finds this a big deal and wants to talk about it.

Additions and Alternatives to Diffractive Script 2 – The Sustainable School

• Additions to scene 2:

  • Before meeting the students, the teacher thinks about what his/her role and intentions can be in this initiative, and how much time and energy s/he wants to invest.

  • The teacher openly discusses with the students where they can best pursue their interest in sustainability, and in doing so also asks for options outside of school.

  • The teacher and students associate about different scenarios for how this initiative can potentially develop, and try to create an image of the path the students want to pursue.

• Additional consideration and decision in scene 3:

  • ‘How can I use this initiative to help the student who lost his/her motivation to have experiences of success, and how can I connect this to the school subjects s/he is currently struggling with?’ The teacher decides to have a 1-to-1 conversation with this student about this, and if the student agrees, to talk with some of his/her teachers to see if certain curricular content can be connected to this initiative.

• Additions to scene 4:

  • The teacher challenges the students to gather as much knowledge/theory about sustainability as they can, both from sustainability advocates and sustainability adversaries. The teacher intends to have a critical conversation with the students after they do this, asking such questions as ‘how do you know this is true?’ and ‘what are your sources?’.

  • The teacher decides to have a conversation with the students about the question of what they would do in the case of encountering someone who denies climate change.

  • The teacher formulates an additional intention: let’s try to get a diverse group of students into the committee, representative of the different perspectives on sustainability within the school.

  • The teacher weakens his/her intention about getting the school management on board, by explaining that it is not something that has to be done necessarily or immediately in his/her opinion, but that if they really want to achieve something in the school it is important to take into consideration.

• Addition to scene 5:

  • The teacher takes the initiative to invite potentially interested people from the local community and his network to the meeting so that they can watch students’ presentations and meet each other.

Additions and Alternatives to Diffractive Script 3 – Mock and Prejudice

• Alternative preparation before scene 1:

  • In preparing for this class, the teacher visualizes how students might react to the mocking cartoons and based on that decides to show more diverse cartoons, for instance one of Trump and one of Obama. S/he also decides to refrain from sharing his/her own opinion of Trump, unless s/he finds it needed to “tickle” the students a bit, to elicit a reaction/discussion.

• Extra step in between scenes 3 and 4:

  • The teacher takes a moment to acknowledge that there are different points of view on Trump and that it is very valuable when someone shines a light on another point of view so that we can understand why such a big group of people feels unseen/unheard.

• Alternatives to scene 4:

  • The teacher asks a follow-up question to the student: ‘how do you feel if something valuable to you is degraded?’. The teacher decides to continue on this topic in the next class, and later on designs a class circling the question ‘what is holy to you?’

  • The teacher decides to enter into dialogue with the students about the question ‘do you think I, as your teacher, am entitled to have such a conviction, and if so how?’ The teacher first asks students to talk about this question in duos and then facilitates a group discussion. The teacher also shares his/her position: ‘I may have a personal conviction as a teacher, but I should always provide enough space for other points of view’.

  • The teacher decides to stay as close as possible to the disagreement at hand, emphasizes how cool it is that we found a topic on which we don’t all share the same opinion, and then zooms in by asking: ‘let’s hear it, what are the different opinions amongst us?’.

  • The teacher decides to focus the conversation on the function of mocking cartoons, and on what it takes to accept or embrace mock even if it affects your own beliefs.

Astrid – The Tension Between Stepping Back and Interfering

Astrid is part of a group of teachers that wants to make it easier for students to make the transition from primary school to secondary school. She developed the idea that it could help to let fourth-grade students be buddies for new students, and that this could be an interesting project for her current third-grade students. She decided to share her plan with them and proposed that they could be buddies next year. Students reacted with enthusiasm. From this point onward, Astrid decides to step back and support students from the sideline. She says to her students: ‘if you’re ready with chapter 4 I’ll give you my keys so that you can go to a separate room to develop a plan’. Astrid resists the urge to go to these students and direct them, thinking to herself: ‘if I want them to take responsibility for this project, and not just do it for me, I have to step back and trust them’. Students come up with first plans and are currently developing them further with a great deal of motivation. Astrid keeps herself somewhat at the sideline, only occasionally stepping in to brainstorm with students, give them suggestions, and, especially, ask them questions to help them think for themselves.

Aafke – The Tension Between Zooming Out and Zooming In

Aafkes Fashion-academy students joined a seminar about racism. Afterward, in class, one of the students reacts rather emotionally. At the seminar, she had felt excluded as a white woman due to a response she had received when she asked a question to a panel. As she shows her emotion in class, Aafke sees other students “freeze”. Aafke decides to zoom in on the incident and asks the student what happened exactly. After she describes it, Aafke also asks other students how they’d experienced the incident. Other students also found the reaction of the panel aggressive, and also felt excluded. At this point, Aafke suspects that the students are not fully aware of the systemic level on which racism had been discussed in this seminar. Therefore, she decides to zoom out, to situate the seminar in its context and facilitate a conversation about ‘what’s going on in terms of racism in the world right now?’. In this conversation, different students, with different ethnic backgrounds, share their knowledge and experience. Aafke also shares her experience with racism as a Dutch person from an Indonesian background. After this, Aafke decides to zoom in on the incident in the seminar again, and asks the student: ‘if you look at what happened again now, what do you see?’. The student’s initially strong emotions have faded away, and she is now able to look at what happened from different perspectives.

Elmarie – The Tension Between Following a Student’s Initiative and Sticking to the Plan

At the beginning of Dutch class, one of Elmarie’s students says out loud ‘I hope we’ll have a talking class today’. Elmarie would like to respond to this invitation, but Elmarie decides to inhibit herself. She remembers that this particular student failed to finish reading a book for his aural exam last week, and thinks to herself ‘I’m not gonna give him what he wants, this is gonna be my class’. Forty minutes later, after Elmarie finishes her prepared plans for this class and students have worked well, there are 10 min left and an off-topic group conversation starts developing. At that point, Elmarie makes contact with the student, and says to him ‘aah, now we’ll still have the talking class you hoped for!’

Irene – The Tension Between Moderating and Spectating

In Irene’s Life-Orientation class, students start asking a lot of questions to a very religious student and in Irene’s eyes, these questions appear quite offensive. Irene is ready to intervene, to moderate the interaction, but she notices that the student stays very calm and can manage the conversation and express herself clearly. Irene decides to remain a spectator to the interaction between students and afterward has a short chat with the student about how she experienced it.

Jacob – The Tension Between Showing and Concealing Your Own Entanglement

In his physics class, Jacob has arrived at the chapter on astronomy. Astronomy was one of the topics that Jacob did not choose to focus on when he was studying physics, for he was more interested in other topics. Yet, if he thinks about it now, he can identify certain questions about astronomy that fascinate him, like: ‘what is the Sun made of?’, ‘how long will the Earth live?’, and ‘how do we know these things?’. How cool, Jacob thinks to himself, that we can determine what the sun is made of by looking at it from afar! Jacob realizes that the chapter is not really organized around such questions, yet that they do cover its content. To make matters more interesting for himself and his students, Jacob decides to share his fascination for these specific questions and organize the chapter around exploring them together. He conceals, however, that astronomy is a topic he has been less interested in throughout his studies and career.

Jens – The Tension Between Prioritizing Students’ Enthusiasm and Conforming to Priorities of the School/System

Jens supervises law students in their bachelor end-projects. In supervising and grading students’ performance, Jens has to use a rubric, but he finds this rubric very limited. In his opinion, it doesn’t quite measure what he finds important and he seriously questions the very possibility of an objective grading procedure. Furthermore, he experiences that a strong focus on the rubric in the supervision process tends to decrease both his own and his students’ motivation. Jens has decided, therefore, to let the rubric come second, and to prioritize students’ enthusiasm. After an end-project is done, he determines based on his intuition and experience which grade he deems appropriate, and he then fills the rubric in such a way that it ends up with the grade he has in mind.

Kasper – The Attempt to Find the Right Degree of Opening Yourself Up to Your Students

In his microbiology course, Kasper starts every lecture with what he calls ‘microbiology is everywhere’. He shares a personal fascination or something he experienced or saw that week with his students. His most recent sharings are a fragment from a South Park episode about the COVID-19 pandemic, some pictures from mushrooms he found on a hike in the forest, pictures of himself and his children joining a vaccination campaign, and a video on the importance of vaccination. Kasper experiences that “microbiology is everywhere” creates a connection between himself and his students, and to microbiology as the subject of study. Sometimes, for instance, a student he crosses paths with in the hallway shouts out something like ‘Hi Kasper, microbiology is everywhere!’

Pien – The Tension Between Creating Space to Inquire into a Certain Entanglement and Moving On

Next to her work in a primary school, Pien works 4-h a week for a so-called rebound center, where students come who cannot be in their secondary school for a while due to problems/conflicts. The goal is to help students to become able to go back to their school or to find them a more suitable school. Pien has a meeting scheduled with a student who is in the last phase of secondary school. She has an autistic background, has bad grades, and has serious problems at home. The aim is that she will do half of her exams this year and finish the remaining subjects next year. She enters Pien’s office, Pien says ‘good morning’, and she looks at Pien with a depressed face. Pien says ‘isn’t it a good morning?’. She says ‘well, I’m still alive’. Pien’s intention for this meeting is to make a plan for the upcoming period so that the student will be able to do her exams as intended. Yet, at this moment she feels that she cannot just move on to doing so, and instead decides to inquire further. Pien decides to create the space and time to talk with the student about how she feels and to show her support. At some point, the student says ‘I think I’ll only do my English exam this year, and delay the rest to next year’. Pien takes this moment as her signal to move on to the matter of making a plan, and says to the student ‘that’s not what we’re gonna do here, it’s four subjects, together we can do it. Come, let’s work on a plan!’.

Ronald – The Tension Between Not-Knowing/Vulnerability and Control

Ronald, currently working as a teacher educator, receives an email from one of his students about her internship at a secondary school. Due to COVID-19, her internship includes a lot of online teaching, and she is frustrated with her performance and seeks Ronald’s help. Instead of just giving suggestions for a solution, saying ‘you can do this or that’, Ronald decides to share his own frustration and struggle. He says: ‘I also struggle... Sometimes teaching online really makes me unhappy and I find it very difficult, I am also still learning...’. The student replies that she really appreciates Ronald’s answer and that it helps her to keep going.

Steven – The Tension Between Encouraging Students’ Self-Expression and Being Critical

Steven’s students are in the middle of an art project. One of his students comes to him for support. With strong conviction, she shares her belief in certain conspiracy theories with Steven, such as ‘the elite drinks the blood of children’, and asks Steven for advice on how to manifest this in her artwork. Steven feels overwhelmed, and finds himself caught up in an internal struggle; ‘do I do something with the fact that she bases herself on information that I find highly questionable, or do I just help her to manifest a belief that she is entitled to have?’. At that moment, Steven decides not to criticize her, for he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings, but later on a feeling of regret slowly grows on him. He wishes he would have said something like ‘girl, where do you get these ideas?!’.

Sandra – The Attempt to Find the Right Degree of Showing Vulnerability to Your Students

In a marketing course that Sandra is teaching, she experiences a struggle. There is a new teaching method that she is expected to follow, but she feels uncomfortable with the method and notices that her students have issues with it as well. She decides, therefore, to share her discomfort and to use it as an opening for a group conversation around the question: ‘how can we fine-tune this course together?’. Her question opens up a lively conversation, and together they fine-tune the course along the way.

Step 2.2: Patterns of Insight

After finishing step 2.1, the need arised to harvest insights once more. My aim, this time, was to recognize which patterns of insight emerged from rereading diffractive scripts through the narratives of individual co-researchers. Therefore, I collected insights 1-to-1 with each co-researcher in the remainder of the session described in step 2.1. To do so, I gave every co-researcher two additional sub-assignments, being:

• 6. If you look at how this creative tension is at work in the diffractive script, and how it resonates in your own teaching experience, what do you now realize about what it takes to work with this tension?

• 7. Now focus on the script of your group again, and connect with the opening scene it begins with. Having developed and altered a script departing from this scene, and having explicated and confronted creative tensions herein, how would you now summarize the pedagogical goal or intention that drives the teacher’s efforts?

In this part of the inquiry, I took on the same role as in step 2.1 (i.e. asking open questions, and summarizing and communicatively validating insights). It was, for me, interesting to notice how on the one hand every teacher emphasized certain insights and formulated them in their own words, whilst on the other hand very similar patterns of insight emerged across all sessions. After finishing this procedure with every co-researcher, I, therefore, decided to attempt to make and share with all co-researchers one summary of insights, in which these patterns are emphasized and every individual insight is included. I shared this summary with all co-researchers in the form of a recorded PowerPoint presentation, and – for purposes of communicative validity – asked them to share with me if they missed something in the summary. I received, through this procedure, a few small corrections, which I then added to the summary. I now move on to summarize the praxeological insights harvested concerning what co-researchers realized about what it takes to work with a specific pedagogical tension. Subsequently, I present a summary of the axiological insights harvested per diffractive script.

What It Takes to Work with Tensions that Emerge in Pedagogy of Entanglement

• Perceptiveness: trying to perceive (also referred to as sense, scan, signal, feel, read and notice), both in preparing for a class and during a class itself, what is happening in the moment. Especially:

  • 1. What do you perceive in individual students?

    • What kind of attitudes do students have?

    • Do I notice or suspect any strong emotions or convictions concerning the themes we are working on?

  • 2. What do you perceive in the group as a whole?

    • How much safety and trust is there?

    • Which tensions or differences are there?

    • How ‘hot’ are the themes we are working on for the group?

  • 3. What do you perceive in yourself?

    • How do I feel right now and what are my impulses?

    • What is my own relation to the themes we are working on?

    • Where lies my passion and strength in this moment?

  • 4. What do you perceive in society?

    • How are the themes we’re working on reflected by ongoing dynamics in society?

    • Which different stakes and parties are involved?

  • 5. Which curricular constraints and opportunities do you perceive?

    • How much time and space do we have right now?

    • Is there a deadline upon us?

    • Is there a link with another subject/project?

• Commitment: trying to have a clear, embodied pedagogical goal/intention and trying to be congruent in basing your actions hereon.

• Authentic style: trying to stay close to your own passions and to ways of working that work for you, as also experienced by your students.

• Professional realism: trying not to cross your own limits (e.g. emotionally, physically, idealistically) and to put your role into a realistic perspective which neither underestimates what you can give to students due to your life experience nor overestimates the reach of your influence, knowledge, and responsibility.

• Constructive self-awareness: trying to be aware of your own entangledness with thematics at hand and the interventions you tend to enact as a matter of habit or reflex and to utilize this awareness in a way that serves the educational process.

• Collegial support: trying to keep critically questioning and developing your pedagogical views and actions together with colleagues and other educational professionals.

• Professional independence: trying to nurture the courage, calmth, and flexibility to make and justify your own choices in the moment, even if these diverge from initial plans and expectations.

Summary of Axiological Insights for Diffractive Script 1 – The Multicultural Classroom

• By Pien, Ronald, and Sandra

• We aim for:

• Awareness of:

  • what makes someone say what s/he says.

  • the effect of stereotyping statements on ourselves, others, and society as a whole, and our role and responsibility in this.

  • the insight that we all belong in this world and deserve to be included in society, to exist and live together.

  • the necessity of certain rules, norms, and values about how we communicate with each other.

  • the insight that freedom of speech goes hand in hand with the responsibility to speak considerately and that you are responsible for the choices you make.

• Safety and openness, that is:

  • the openness to share what we feel, think and believe with each other, and the safety of doing so peacefully, in a humane way that does not exclude people but allows everyone to exist and live together.

• Constructive action, that is:

  • the practice to make your own, humane choices, and to take responsibility for your actions.

  • the feeling and experience that you can solve a conflict and deal with challenges/differences constructively.

Summary of Axiological Insights for Diffractive Script 2 – The Sustainable School

• By Jacob, Astrid, Jens, and Kasper

• We aim for:

• Awareness of:

  • the importance and complexity of sustainability, of how everything seems to flow into each other and keeps changing.

  • the trends and bubbles in society, and their relation to each other.

  • the distinction between opinions, facts, and fake news.

  • what you think about sustainability, why you think that, and the shortcomings in your own thinking.

  • the role you play with regard to sustainability and the role you want to play.

• Respect, openness, and critical thinking, that is:

  • the respect and openness for differences, for other viewpoints, yet without losing the capacity to criticize viewpoints and to resist the equation of fake news and science.

• Co-shaping society, that is:

  • learning to express yourself; forming your own critical opinion and being able to argue for it qualitatively.

  • exploring and deepening your interests and enthusiasm, and turning this into action.

  • the attempt to transcend “bubbles of sameness” and to grow toward more realistic and sustainable perspectives together.

Summary of Axiological Insights for Diffractive Script 3 – Mock and Prejudice

• By Aafke, Steven, Irene, and Elmarie

• We aim for:

• Awareness of:

  • what is holy/valuable for you, and how it affects you if this is threatened. Of how you identify yourself, where your identifications “solidified”, and if you might perhaps benefit from “loosening” certain identifications.

  • what is holy/valuable for others and why large groups of Trump supporters feel unseen/unheard.

  • how manipulation/framing works (e.g. social media, news, cartoons) and what the “message behind the message” is.

  • how your thinking and political beliefs are co-shaped by the environment you grew up in. That as a human being you are always part of groups and that personal identity and group identity are interwoven.

  • what your actions/statements trigger in others?

• Living together in a group, that is:

  • being able to express your feelings, experiences, and thoughts. Being able to stand for something based on your background/authenticity.

  • striving toward “light/positive” entanglements with each other rather than “dark/negative” ones.

  • learning to pause and stand still for a moment.

  • learning to listen to and respect what others have to say, to relate to their position and value their otherness, and to simultaneously continue to critically question both yourself and others.

Moving Forward

Through diffractive inquiry with co-researchers, as presented in this chapter, helpful axiological and praxeological perspectives for a pedagogy of entanglement have started emerging. To develop these further, I need to attempt integration with my other modes of inquiry, that is to say: I need to bring both axiological and praxeological outcomes into a generative conversation with state-of-the-art complexity thinking and with triggering experiences of my own within the process of inquiry. I take on this task in the three chapters that follow next.