Abstract
Within the space of this collective image/text article, 18 photographic imagemakers and 4 respondents consider deeply and dialogically a quote from William Ayers’ 2016 book Teaching with Conscience in an Imperfect World: An Invitation. The resulting constellation of images and words (1) realizes a space within which works of art, specifically photographs, operate as centers of meaning to generate educational implications, and (2) theorizes a pedagogy that resists unilateral prescriptions and is instead anchored around openness, expansion, and individualization. The paper begins with a few short pieces from Sarah Pfohl, including an overview of Ayers’ book and ideas from writings on progressive education, object-based teaching and learning, and close/slow looking to position works of art as sites of rich meaning. While contemporary schooling often drives toward monolithic, numerical representations of the learners in its care, the article employs postdigital gestures to argue that learners have more in common with works of art than numbers, and thus, attention to artworks can open valuable implications for teaching and learning. The diverse group of images that follow offer an emerging portrait of teaching practice as a set of constantly shifting constellations moving across deep time and space from the intensely specific to the wide. Four texts think more about schools, education, and art. Finally, there is a postscript from Bill Ayers himself.
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Notes
For a thorough analysis of one example through the lens of ability see Collins, K. M. (2003). Ability profiling and school failure: One child’s struggle to be seen as competent. New York: Routledge.
It is important to note here that alternative educational movements historically and today (e.g. work by Beuys, Antiuniversity Now, the Unschooling Movement to name only a few) embody these values and the educational values articulated across this paper as do educational approaches adopted by teachers connected to a wide variety of more traditional or mainstream educational environments, like public schooling. Two examples of the latter are the growing presence of educational approaches like Expeditionary Learning or Reggio-inspired approaches present in public, P-12 schooling environments. The author (Sarah Pfohl) does firmly resist the idea that more ethical, humane approaches to teaching and learning can or do only exist separate from existing educational structures.
See https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/crisis-little-rock. Accessed 15 March 2021.
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Pfohl, S., Ayers, B., Turner, A.R. et al. Simple, Dark, and Deep: Photographic Theorizations of As-Yet Schools. Postdigit Sci Educ 3, 793–830 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00233-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00233-9