From power to authority.
The power of interruptive practice.
Education, in short, must prepare for the incalculable - Didier Cahen
Listen to the podcast segment of Ideology in Education (at 14:06) based on this blog post for the Teacher’s Education Review below 👇.
In this post, I seek to explore the power of interruptive pedagogy in the transformation of students. Through the use of a personal narrative of my own lived experience during my undergraduate teaching degree, I seek to illuminate the important educational work of interruption in contributing to the subjectivity of individuals.
A personal interruption.
A few years into my undergraduate degree in education to become a secondary school teacher, I enrolled in a few units on Mathematics curriculum studies.
As a secondary school student, I was always confident with my mathematical skill, happy to fly through the textbook exercises ahead of the class. I performed quite well in my final year of Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Mathematics classes. In the Mathematics units of my undergraduate degree, it was often my aim to complete the assignments during the pre-semester period, before classes had even begun.
I know what you’re thinking.
Nerd.
Probably so. But more than that, looking back I feel as though the values that surrounded my schooling had a great influence on how I saw education. For example, the desire to get things done as quickly as possible in order to allow more time for other things. Education is about being effective, quick and right. I preferred Mathematics over English as I couldn’t find a quick formula to apply to save my brain from having to think. Mathematics was something I could do quickly and accurately, so I refined my effectiveness for its procedural applications in a way that would allow me more time for other things. I now believe that as a young man I never really knew much about the Mathematics I completed in secondary school. I do not blame my teachers for this, I had excellent teachers. However, I think something can be said about the way the ideological understandings of Mathematics education can seek to undermine a more holistic approach to the discipline. In some ways I was shaped by the external forces speaking into what was important when it came to Mathematics, but I also made my own decisions about what I deemed valuable in my education.
Live and learn.
I entered the classes on Mathematics curriculum studies self-assured. But as the course continued, a thought began to spark that maybe I didn’t know so much about Mathematics, just knew how to do it. Or that maybe my knowledge of what Mathematics teaching comprised of was limited in some way.
Tutorial sessions were spent investigating various manipulation activities, open-ended Mathematical tasks and discussing the difference between instrumental and relational understandings of Mathematics. You know, the kind of teaching program that think tanks such as the Centre for Independent Studies have railed against as the cause of all of Australia’s educational problems. The prescribed text for the subject was Teaching Secondary School Mathematics, which for me opened up different ways of thinking when it came to teaching Mathematics. I think this is where I truly began to have an interest in the subject. I began to develop a deeper appreciation for number, calculus and a passion to attempt to shape that in my students.
But it wasn’t all easy.
I have the luxury now of looking back and romanticising the transformative impact of this class on my practice. But in reality, at the time it was a real struggle. In fact, I found the assessments, with all their apparent subjectiveness (at least that’s how I interpreted them at the time) very difficult to complete. This teaching came to me as an interruption, which required me to come to terms with the fact that I did not own Mathematics pedagogy. Interestingly enough, the subject not only challenged my thinking surrounding Mathematics education, but also my understanding of the nature and formation of knowledge. The teacher created a space that challenged the ideological assumptions I held in relation to what I believed it meant to be educated, which was both uncomfortable and frustrating as a pre-service teacher. After a few difficult semesters, from memory I wrote some pretty negative and unreasonable feedback (you know those “end-of-semester” type surveys?). I now regret the feedback that I gave for those subjects at the time because in actual fact, these difficult moments have come to transform my perspectives and pedagogy in ways that may not have happened otherwise.
From power to authority.
The educational philosopher, Gert Biesta, describes teaching as a beautiful risk, where the work of the teacher ‘always “arrives” with the student as an act of power, as an uninvited, unwanted and unwarranted “intervention”, even if the intervention is well-intended’ (Biesta, 2021, p. 56).
However, as teachers we may find that:
‘students will turn back to us and tell us that what we tried to give them was actually quite helpful, meaningful, even if, initially, it was difficult to receive. At that point we can say that the unidirectional exercise of power transforms into a relationship of authority, where what intervened from the outside is authorised by the student’ (ibid., p. 56, emphasis in original).
Years later, I ended up finding my Mathematics curriculum teacher’s contact details to let them know that although I did not appreciate it at the time, their teaching had a profound impact on the trajectory of my educational endeavours.
You never know.
It doesn’t always work out this way.
For many who experience frustrating and interruptive educational “interventions” there is no transformation. There can often be deep-seated hurt, disappointment and anger as a result of interruption. It is important to take time to consider the larger forces at play, along with the ideological perspectives that frame our educational experiences, but it’s also important to realise that teachers don’t always “get it right”.
As a passionate teacher attempting to do my work as faithfully as possible, I know that there will be students that may never appreciate my efforts to educate them. There will be those who blame me, shame my professionalism or just simply forget me. I will make mistakes and some with have to bear the consequences of those.
And that is okay.
On the other hand, students may:
‘only realise much later in their lives that what initially arrived as an interruption actually turned out to be meaningful, helpful, significant, and so on’ (Biesta, 2021, p. 57).
I hold to this possibility, if for no other reason than the way it has come to define my experience as a student.
As a teacher, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Till next time,
References
Biesta, G. (2021). World-centred education : A view for the present. Taylor & Francis Group.
So many layers of significance within this piece. Can’t wait to share and discuss!