Alternative | Education – serie

Knowledge comes from thinking with, from and through things, not just about them. We get to know the world around us from the inside of our being in it. Drawing on the fields of anthropology, art, architecture and education, this book addresses what knowing from the inside means for practices of teaching and learning. If knowledge is not transmitted ready-made, independently of its application in the world, but grows from the crucible of our engagements with people, places and materials, then how can there be such a thing as a curriculum? What forms could it take? And what could it mean to place such disciplines as anthropology, art and architecture at the heart of the curriculum rather than – as at present – on the margins? In addressing these questions, the fifteen distinguished contributors to this volume challenge mainstream thinking about education and the curriculum, and suggest experimental ways to overcome the stultifying effects of current pedagogic practice.

Knowledge comes from thinking with, from and through things, not just about them. We get to know the world around us from the inside of our being in it. Drawing on the fields of anthropology, art, architecture and education, this book addresses what knowing from the inside means for practices of teaching and learning. If knowledge is not transmitted ready-made, independently of its application in the world, but grows from the crucible of our engagements with people, places and materials, then how can there be such a thing as a curriculum? What forms could it take? And what could it mean to place such disciplines as anthropology, art and architecture at the heart of the curriculum rather than – as at present – on the margins? In addressing these questions, the fifteen distinguished contributors to this volume challenge mainstream thinking about education and the curriculum, and suggest experimental ways to overcome the stultifying effects of current pedagogic practice.

Knowledge comes from thinking with, from and through things, not just about them. We get to know the world around us from the inside of our being in it. Drawing on the fields of anthropology, art, architecture and education, this book addresses what knowing from the inside means for practices of teaching and learning. If knowledge is not transmitted ready-made, independently of its application in the world, but grows from the crucible of our engagements with people, places and materials, then how can there be such a thing as a curriculum? What forms could it take? And what could it mean to place such disciplines as anthropology, art and architecture at the heart of the curriculum rather than – as at present – on the margins? In addressing these questions, the fifteen distinguished contributors to this volume challenge mainstream thinking about education and the curriculum, and suggest experimental ways to overcome the stultifying effects of current pedagogic practice.

Knowledge comes from thinking with, from and through things, not just about them. We get to know the world around us from the inside of our being in it. Drawing on the fields of anthropology, art, architecture and education, this book addresses what knowing from the inside means for practices of teaching and learning. If knowledge is not transmitted ready-made, independently of its application in the world, but grows from the crucible of our engagements with people, places and materials, then how can there be such a thing as a curriculum? What forms could it take? And what could it mean to place such disciplines as anthropology, art and architecture at the heart of the curriculum rather than – as at present – on the margins? In addressing these questions, the fifteen distinguished contributors to this volume challenge mainstream thinking about education and the curriculum, and suggest experimental ways to overcome the stultifying effects of current pedagogic practice.

Particularly for the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, for which writing is their lifeblood, the crisis in academic writing has become existential. It is not hard to diagnose the disease, and its causes. This book showcases what we desperately need: radical alternatives, experiments we can try out, ways of writing that don’t just tweak the system but plot a different course altogether. This isn’t just about finding new genres, for these only change the surface appearance without altering the underlying dynamic. Rather, the editor and contributors focus on finding new ways to join thinking both with writing and the things of which, and with which, we write. Each chapter brims with the kind of liveliness, outspokenness and urgency that their theme demands. Far from tiptoeing around the edifice of academia they are intent on stirring things up, reigniting their scholarship with a fuse of activism, in the hope of setting off an explosion that could send ripples throughout the academy.

Particularly for the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, for which writing is their lifeblood, the crisis in academic writing has become existential. It is not hard to diagnose the disease, and its causes. This book showcases what we desperately need: radical alternatives, experiments we can try out, ways of writing that don’t just tweak the system but plot a different course altogether. This isn’t just about finding new genres, for these only change the surface appearance without altering the underlying dynamic. Rather, the editor and contributors focus on finding new ways to join thinking both with writing and the things of which, and with which, we write. Each chapter brims with the kind of liveliness, outspokenness and urgency that their theme demands. Far from tiptoeing around the edifice of academia they are intent on stirring things up, reigniting their scholarship with a fuse of activism, in the hope of setting off an explosion that could send ripples throughout the academy.

Particularly for the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, for which writing is their lifeblood, the crisis in academic writing has become existential. It is not hard to diagnose the disease, and its causes. This book showcases what we desperately need: radical alternatives, experiments we can try out, ways of writing that don''t just tweak the system but plot a different course altogether. This isn''t just about finding new genres, for these only change the surface appearance without altering the underlying dynamic. Rather, the editor and contributors focus on finding new ways to join thinking both with writing and the things of which, and with which, we write. Each chapter brims with the kind of liveliness, outspokenness and urgency that their theme demands. Far from tiptoeing around the edifice of academia they are intent on stirring things up, reigniting their scholarship with a fuse of activism, in the hope of setting off an explosion that could send ripples throughout the academy.

Particularly for the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, for which writing is their lifeblood, the crisis in academic writing has become existential. It is not hard to diagnose the disease, and its causes. This book showcases what we desperately need: radical alternatives, experiments we can try out, ways of writing that don''t just tweak the system but plot a different course altogether. This isn''t just about finding new genres, for these only change the surface appearance without altering the underlying dynamic. Rather, the editor and contributors focus on finding new ways to join thinking both with writing and the things of which, and with which, we write. Each chapter brims with the kind of liveliness, outspokenness and urgency that their theme demands. Far from tiptoeing around the edifice of academia they are intent on stirring things up, reigniting their scholarship with a fuse of activism, in the hope of setting off an explosion that could send ripples throughout the academy.

This book explores space, time and encounter in an interdisciplinary higher education classroom during a typical academic year, considering how they might present as protagonists of authenticity. In this ethnography, the author is both the researcher and the teacher, delivering highly interactive and student centred modules for undergraduate students at a leading science and engineering university in the UK. Chasing the spirit of authenticity throughout the writing, the book demonstrates a remarkable alignment between the design and aspirations of the teaching, the experiences within the classroom, and the conduct of the research. Revealing the inner thoughts and inspirations of the researcher, the book includes insights from philosophy, anthropology, education, neuroscience, music, architecture, photography and popular culture. This examination of both the classroom experiences and the research itself reveals the messy, uncertain, imperfect – and yet fascinating nature of these very human experiences with an engaging richness. This book supports the reader to find their own version of ‘authentic’, evoked by being immersed in the story world of this research and the classrooms contained within. Readers are invited to reflect along with the researcher, and apply the insights revealed to their own teaching, learning or life experiences and take the spirit of authentic encounter into their own future.

This book explores space, time and encounter in an interdisciplinary higher education classroom during a typical academic year, considering how they might present as protagonists of authenticity. In this ethnography, the author is both the researcher and the teacher, delivering highly interactive and student centred modules for undergraduate students at a leading science and engineering university in the UK. Chasing the spirit of authenticity throughout the writing, the book demonstrates a remarkable alignment between the design and aspirations of the teaching, the experiences within the classroom, and the conduct of the research. Revealing the inner thoughts and inspirations of the researcher, the book includes insights from philosophy, anthropology, education, neuroscience, music, architecture, photography and popular culture. This examination of both the classroom experiences and the research itself reveals the messy, uncertain, imperfect and yet fascinating nature of these very human experiences with an engaging richness. This book supports the reader to find their own version of 'authentic', evoked by being immersed in the story world of this research and the classrooms contained within. Readers are invited to reflect along with the researcher, and apply the insights revealed to their own teaching, learning or life experiences and take the spirit of authentic encounter into their own future.

This book explores space, time and encounter in an interdisciplinary higher education classroom during a typical academic year, considering how they might present as protagonists of authenticity. In this ethnography, the author is both the researcher and the teacher, delivering highly interactive and student centred modules for undergraduate students at a leading science and engineering university in the UK. Chasing the spirit of authenticity throughout the writing, the book demonstrates a remarkable alignment between the design and aspirations of the teaching, the experiences within the classroom, and the conduct of the research. Revealing the inner thoughts and inspirations of the researcher, the book includes insights from philosophy, anthropology, education, neuroscience, music, architecture, photography and popular culture. This examination of both the classroom experiences and the research itself reveals the messy, uncertain, imperfect and yet fascinating nature of these very human experiences with an engaging richness. This book supports the reader to find their own version of 'authentic', evoked by being immersed in the story world of this research and the classrooms contained within. Readers are invited to reflect along with the researcher, and apply the insights revealed to their own teaching, learning or life experiences and take the spirit of authentic encounter into their own future.

This volume stages a series of radical provocations that seek to reorient the very conditions under which learning becomes thinkable. Refusing the redemptive pull of schooling as a salvageable public good, the collection foregrounds the necessity of undisciplining education, dislodging it from its colonial grammars, disciplinary enclosures, and anthropocentric imaginaries.Schools, far from neutral spaces of knowledge transmission, are infrastructural technologies of late capitalist governance: disciplining bodies, managing time, and sustaining the ongoing occupation of Indigenous lands under the guise of progress and order. Drawing from grotesque materialisms, Indigenous epistemologies, and speculative philosophies, the volume positions pluriversal indeterminacy as a generative ontological condition, contesting the closure-driven logics of Western educational taxonomy. If schools operate as entropy-displacement machines, maintaining systemic stability through the externalization of collapse, then what is required is not critique alone, but a methodological insurgency capable of abolishing education’s epistemic foundations. To this end, contributors—traversing anthropology, architecture, mathematics, biology, Indigenous studies, art, philosophy, and literature—articulate a constellation of non-disciplined pedagogical experiments that emerge from the current unraveling of education itself. Through deliberate acts of epistemic undoing, authors inhabit a space where fixed categories, such as human/nonhuman, past/future, knowledge/ignorance are rendered inoperative, making room for learning that reconfigures the possible.

This volume stages a series of radical provocations that seek to reorient the very conditions under which learning becomes thinkable. Refusing the redemptive pull of schooling as a salvageable public good, the collection foregrounds the necessity of undisciplining education, dislodging it from its colonial grammars, disciplinary enclosures, and anthropocentric imaginaries. Schools, far from neutral spaces of knowledge transmission, are infrastructural technologies of late capitalist governance: disciplining bodies, managing time, and sustaining the ongoing occupation of Indigenous lands under the guise of progress and order. Drawing from grotesque materialisms, Indigenous epistemologies, and speculative philosophies, the volume positions pluriversal indeterminacy as a generative ontological condition, contesting the closure-driven logics of Western educational taxonomy. If schools operate as entropy-displacement machines, maintaining systemic stability through the externalization of collapse, then what is required is not critique alone, but a methodological insurgency capable of abolishing education's epistemic foundations. To this end, contributors-traversing anthropology, architecture, mathematics, biology, Indigenous studies, art, philosophy, and literature-articulate a constellation of non-disciplined pedagogical experiments that emerge from the current unraveling of education itself. Through deliberate acts of epistemic undoing, authors inhabit a space where fixed categories, such as human/nonhuman, past/future, knowledge/ignorance are rendered inoperative, making room for learning that reconfigures the possible.