Pedagogical Encounters

The Editors: Bronwyn Davies is a Professorial Fellow at Melbourne University, Australia. She holds an Honorary Doctorate from Uppsala University, Sweden.Susanne Gannon lectures in education at the University of Western Sydney.

«‘Pedagogical Encounters’ breaks completely new ground. It begins where most critiques of education under neoliberalism end: in the recognition that the perfection of uniformity (of teaching practice), standardisation (of tests) and regulation (of teachers and students) ultimately defeats the purposes of education. With their passion for creating authentic learning encounters, the authors demonstrate how new spaces of learning can be opened up, drawing on three conceptual influences: the philosophy and practice of collective biography, the Deleuzian spatial turn in poststructuralist theorizing; and the philosophy and practices of Reggio Emilia schooling. The result is a stunning and intellectual journey through a series of pedagogical encounters. In settings across different institutions (state schools and private institutions) and different countries (Australia, Sweden, and the Czech Republic) the authors show how material and intellectual space are intimately connected. New educational ideas are explored through a focus on the architecture of learning as an emergent, interactive relationship between people and place. This book sets out to break through the known, defined spaces of education into new learning spaces in which learners are immersed in the present moment, escaping the clichéd codes that constrain the existing order, with surprising results that are moving, humorous, and at times distressing. All who are interested in teaching and learning will find both inspiration and courage in this book.» (Johanna Wyn, Melbourne University)«‘Pedagogical Encounters’ is a wholly absorbing work. It is bursting with fresh and exciting ideas that leap from the text into the classroom, and indeed, into daily life. The contributors draw inspiration from the work of philosopher Gilles Deleuze, but in their hands issues of relationality, art, indeterminacy, difference, and co-creation take on new significance. We see them brought to life in wide-ranging classroom practices and gain from these expositions a new compass for enriching educational practice.» (Kenneth J. Gergen, Swarthmore College)«In brilliant and unforeseen ways, ‘Pedagogical Encounters’ enables us to re-live the embodied experiences of relationality in pedagogical spaces – in ways that will dramatically change our understandings of learning and becoming in such spaces.» (Hillevi Lenz Taguchi, Stockholm University)«In Deleuzian fashion, the authors of this text undo our received notions of schooling and schools. They enter the space between the over-coded striations of much current schooling and the smooth spaces that present the possibility of the not-yet-known, working between standard pedagogy and new possibilities, in settings from preschool to higher education. They bring together a philosophizing of what education might be, when approached from a Deleuzian perspective. Through the telling of ‘stories of pedagogical encounters’ they present ways for educators to begin to think the possibility of spaces in which students and teachers transform each other and transform themselves in an ongoing process of becoming.» (Lisa A. Mazzei, Associate Professor of Leadership Studies, Gonzaga University, USA)

• Contents: Bronwyn Davies: Introduction – Bronwyn Davies: Difference and Differenciation – Constance Ellwood: Listening to Homeless Young People: A Strategy of Attention – Catherine Camden Pratt: Relationality and the Art of Becoming – Susanne Gannon: Difference as Ethical Encounter – Constance Ellwood/Catherine Camden Pratt: Becoming Blossom, Becoming Oddbod: Clowning as Transformational Process – Bronwyn Davies/Katerina Zabrodska/Susanne Gannon/Peter Bansel/Catherine Camden Pratt: Reflections on a Day in the Art Class – Bronwyn Davies/Catherine Camden Pratt/Constance Ellwood/Susanne Gannon/Katerina Zabrodska/Peter Bansel: Second Skin: The Architecture of Pedagogical Encounters.