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Practice, the Body and Pedagogy: Attuning as a Basis for Pedagogies of the Unknown

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Practice Theory Perspectives on Pedagogy and Education

Abstract

This chapter articulates a distinctive connection between practice, the body and pedagogy. Linking these is the idea of attuning, conceived as relational, corporeal and enacted. In this way, binaries between mind and body, knowing and doing, self and other, teacher and learner are disrupted. The account of embodied pedagogy also explores how such work is done when it is not clear at the outset what is to be learned, and where knowledge informing what to do is unstable, incomplete and fragile. This is framed in terms of ‘pedagogy of the unknown’, conceptualised here as emergent, consistent with practice theoretical and sociomaterial approaches. The analysis draws on an ethnographic study of professional practices in a parent education service supporting families with young children deemed to be at risk. The pedagogic role in these practices has been intensified through changing relations between professionals and clients, referred to here as partnership . Theorising pedagogic work in practices not traditionally regarded as educational in nature casts new light on the demands placed on professionals through contemporary shifts in the relational basis of professional work, referred to more broadly in terms of coproduction .

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I wish to acknowledge, explicitly, the partial approach to ‘the body’ that I take in this chapter. I anticipate that many readers will notice the absence of reference to bodies as gendered, raced, aged, (dis)abled, and so on. I do not dispute the importance of these aspects, nor do I suggest they are irrelevant to the argument presented here. There are already a number of new ideas and connections to grapple with, and so for reasons of conceptual economy and parsimony, I feel the present focus is warranted. I expect that the practice theoretical concept of attuning and the understanding of its links to questions of pedagogy and the body would be advanced and enriched by analyses that pay deliberate attention to gender, race, age, ability and other issues that remain lacunae in the present discussion.

  2. 2.

    The phrase ‘pedagogies of the unknown’ is used by Benadusi (2014) to describe pedagogies of resilience in disaster risk education . My use of the phrase carries some meanings forward (particularly around flexibility and dynamism) but inflects the idea with particular and new meaning through its folding into a wider practice theoretical framework.

  3. 3.

    In connection with the first endnote: the argument is not that bodies can ever be completely backgrounded. There are many occasions when one’s embodiment is far from something that can be ignored, for example when the body performing a practice deviates from norms of gender, age, race, ability (etc.) that are associated with that practice. However the point remains that there are aspects of the body that are backgrounded—however conspicuous the body is.

  4. 4.

    All names used are pseudonyms.

  5. 5.

    In Hopwood (2016b) I refer to these as ‘nanopedagogies’. However, for the purposes of the present chapter I have chosen not to work with the ‘nano’ metaphor. To do so would require further explanation, when the crucial arguments are better made directly with reference to the concepts of practice, body and attuning that are already elaborated in this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, Australia

    Nick Hopwood

  2. Department of Curriculum Studies, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Nick Hopwood

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  1. Nick Hopwood
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  1. School of Education and Professional, Griffith University School of Education and Professional, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

    Peter Grootenboer

  2. Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia

    Christine Edwards-Groves

  3. Griffith University, Mt Gravatt, Queensland, Australia

    Sarojni Choy

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Hopwood, N. (2017). Practice, the Body and Pedagogy: Attuning as a Basis for Pedagogies of the Unknown. In: Grootenboer, P., Edwards-Groves, C., Choy, S. (eds) Practice Theory Perspectives on Pedagogy and Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3130-4_5

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