Abstract
Asking after the self in the process of learning without a definitive endpoint or prescribed path to creating that knowledge presents a way to consider a self that is distinct from assumptions of what constitutes an ideal learner. Thinking of the space and self in motion, rather than as inert and passive, allows the exploration of pedagogical implications. In this paper, I revisit a moment of self-provocation during preparation for a class. Reflecting and critically engaging with this memory presents a vignette to work through the possibilities of transitional space, the sensation of the becoming, learning self, and how the act of “catching myself” enables the reconsideration of engaging with pedagogy and assumptions made about education. Conceptualizing the learning self as becoming and in motion—rather than being, was, is, or to be—loosens the grasp of fixed educational assumptions that guide the discourse of education, in how it is conceived and acted out. This “loosening” has reverberations within the politics of how things are taught, considered, and learned, as it calls into question hierarchical valuations of what constitute “accepted” ways of knowing and being.
Introduction
While I prepared for the start of a class unit focused on reading through Elizabeth Ellsworth’s (2005) book Places of Learning: Media, Architecture, Pedagogy, a moment of awareness provoked an encounter with my learning self. By learning self, I mean the conscious attentiveness to a self open to the moment of knowing something she didn’t know before.
Sifting through the text, I developed a specific set of concepts I wanted the students to understand and a defined plan to reach that goal. In the midst of developing this plan, I paused. In this pause, I experienced what Ellsworth called a pivoting, a pedagogical hinging. Surrounded by notes and various texts—although not a specifically designed transitional space—“activate[d] the instability of the binary self/other” (Ellsworth, 2005: 37). The specific plan I was creating for the class discussion was antithetical to the ideas communicated by the text itself. Within the moment, this transitional space of encounter, I came to see how and why I could not implement a highly structured plan, especially in consideration of the text we were reading. The hinging provoked a pedagogical repositioning. There was an uncanny feeling of encountering my learning self in a space of transition. How often do I let myself, and do we let ourselves, become open to this encounter? This engagement? This confrontation? The hinging became a teaching moment for myself, and in that moment, I experienced my becoming, learning self.
If the learning self is imbued with a dynamic potential of becoming, how does this complicate pedagogical interactions with space? Furthermore, what meaning does this shift in perspective hold for the self, for the space in which the learning occurs, and for challenging educational assumptions that dictate “acceptable” ways of generating knowledge? Through an examination of the transitional space as defined by D.W. Winnicott (1971/2005) and further elucidated by Ellsworth (2005), this paper critically reflects on the potential of the dynamic space of pedagogical becoming.
First, I will begin with a discussion of how I utilize “pedagogy’s hinge” (Ellsworth, 2005) to frame my analysis. Then, I will explore how the moment of “catching myself” while preparing for the class session provided a vignette through which to consider transitional space, pedagogical becoming, and the implications this holds for encountering educational assumptions.
Pedagogical hinging
The inspiration for this paper draws heavily from the ideas explored in previous work that examined how an artwork, Real Pictures #11, by Nic Nicosia operated as a catalyst for a personal interaction with Ellsworth’s concept of pedagogy’s hinge or pivot place. Engaging with the pedagogical pivot place induced by the interaction with Real Pictures #11 enabled me to then explore the conceptualizations of contemporary educational assumptions. Artworks by their nature may evoke a transitional space, for they navigate an interpretive space. The aesthetic experience more overtly conjures the sensation of the learning self, but what if the transitional space itself is examined separately from specifically aesthetic, design-oriented experiences? What more can the transitional space communicate about the possibilities of evoking interactions with and awareness of learning selves?
When exploring how space and the becoming, learning self can be considered dynamic, a framework that operates within unfixed conceptualizations provides language and structure to examine abstract components. Ellsworth’s (2005) concept of pedagogical hinges provides this guidance. “Pedagogy’s hinge” (p. 37) or the “pedagogical pivot place” (p. 38) described the “hinging” moment wherein an individual experienced their own learning or living knowledge (p. 1); that is, they generated knowledge from their own experiences as opposed to passively accepting knowledge that has been preemptively decided as being necessary to know (p. 5). Pedagogy’s hinge can be thought of as the pivoting moment when one learns something one didn’t know before, but not knowledge as a thing made; the pivoting moment speaks to the becoming, learning self, the self in movement and in relation to the outside not-me. Through several examples, Ellsworth points out the pedagogical pivot places that occur in designed spaces or within aesthetic experiences. One of the things that is helpful to remember is that hinging engages with difference and outside-of-me relationality: Upon encountering something outside herself and her own ways of thinking, she is giving up thoughts she previously held as known and as a consequence she is parting with a bit of her known self. The look of the learning self that concerns me here gives form to the sensation of simultaneously being with oneself and being in relation to things, people, or ideas outside oneself (p. 16).
The pedagogical hinge operates in two ways in this paper: as a perspective guiding the exploration of the questions and also as a mode of inquiry. The hinging imbues movement, encouraging the asker to contemplate other positions and approaches to thinking and considering. In order to frame the questions that guide this paper and the answers that may come from it in the perspective of pedagogical hinges, it becomes necessary to let go of assumptions of what it means to learn and teach.
Methods and objects of inquiry
The subsequent interpretive and reflective inquiry draws upon literature from educational theory and philosophy (Biesta, 2006; Dewey, 1916/1944, 1938; Ellsworth, 2005), media studies (Ellsworth, 2005; Lusted, 1986), as well as psychoanalysis and philosophy (Guattari, 1989/2013; Winnicott, 1971/2005) to navigate through the theoretical aspects of approaching the pedagogical space in motion and the implications this holds for educational research and practice. Seeking answers through interdisciplinary perspectives is a purposeful choice in my paper and work because it reflects the multifaceted process of the educational question itself: what education does, whom education is for, and what purpose education serves.
The conversation between the various texts and experiences as objects of inquiry provides opportunities for contemplating the possibilities presented by slightly turning askew how education is thought of. It seeks the instability of the hinging moment, the transitional space between the “me” and “not-me.” How do the ways in which the literature approaches similar questions and perspectives on the learning self speak to each other? Additionally, the experience highlighted at the beginning of the chapter, which occurred during a co-teaching course required as part of the PhD program, will provide scenes leading us to the question of what provokes or enables the possibility of the becoming, pedagogical self. Preparation for the session in question involved revisiting the text, sifting through concepts and passages that might stick or provoke, keeping a journal, and finding ways to bring the current text back to the other texts we read so that students could see processes of learning as conversations between time and space rather than discrete and bounded discussions of readings. Additionally, one or two students led a discussion during class regarding that session’s assigned readings; it was up to the students to decide the manner in which they would do so. Instead of an encounter with an artwork acting as a catalyst, the experience of catching myself while preparing for a class session offered an intimate way to unravel assumptions held about the learning self/selves and their relation to the space and sensation of learning.
The reflective component of this inquiry is approached from a particular stance. As a continual sticking point, I was unsure how to articulate the hiccup of “catching myself” in a way that acknowledged the usefulness of engaging with past and current selves and actions yet did not presuppose a finality of recognition of some form of self or idealized self, especially in consideration of the transitional space. Sometimes this approach, when done in a particular manner, can express a utilitarian form of reflection (e.g., I did this, therefore now I will do that instead). Does one solution to these issues always exist? I do not believe so, and consequently do not think that reflection can begin solely with a piece of writing or that it essentially ends with the conclusion of that written reflection. In the discussion of the issues of using communicative dialogue as a pedagogical activity, Ellsworth (1997) drew upon Shoshana Felman’s critique that communicative dialogue’s goal of “transformation of the self through self-reflection” (p. 94) is misleading. Felman “rejects this notion because self-reflection is always in danger of becoming just that—a reflection of the prior, same self” (p. 94). Ellsworth later on reiterates, “The only ‘instructive’ form of self-reflection doesn’t reflect the self at all. It returns to the self but does not meet self; it’s self-subversive (Felman, 1987: 60)” (p. 139). Recognition of the inability to return to past selves in the motion of “making” opened up a space to think of the possibility of multiple selves and interactions with the many different moments and transitional spaces encountered during the course. Sometimes, self-reflections can be framed by assumptions that one can figuratively return to a particular past self. But I can’t. I am not composed of discrete, static selves, resting on the coordinates of learning (Ellsworth, 2005). And if I return to a past, fixed self, where is the change? How does it keep from being circular, constantly returning and stuck in the same motion (Ellsworth, 1997)?
Transitional space
Transitional space is characterized as personal and temporary, in the sense that the space is not a fixed or tangible entity persisting in the world. The transitional space and object deal with experience and sensation; they do not have duration or an objective permanence, and are relational to the subject. The transitional space allows possibility, creativity, and experimenting—concrete answers are expressly discouraged. It instead encourages encounters with difference: “This intermediate area of experience, unchallenged in respect of its belonging to inner or external (shared) reality, constitutes the greater part of the infant’s experience, and through life is retained in the intense experiencing that belongs to the arts and to religion and to imaginative living, and to creative scientific work” (Winnicott, 1971/2005: 19). In Playing and Reality, Winnicott does not speak directly of a transitional space, but rather, of transitional objects and phenomena, particularly in relation to the psychological development of children. However, his working through of the impact and affect/effect, the relationship of transitional objects and phenomena, also speaks to the idea of transitional space. Winnicott observes, “It is assumed here that the task of reality-acceptance is never completed, that no human being is free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality, and that relief from this strain is provided by an intermediate area of experience (cf. Riviere, 1936) which is not challenged (arts, religion, etc.)” (Winnicott, 1971/2005: 18). The “personal intermediate area of experience” is subjective. Winnicott posited that adults can “enjoy” this space of experience and the overlapping areas of others’ experiences if they are able to do so without “making claims”; I take this as an expression of difference instead of only seeking the similar, and exploring where there are areas to weave through instead of outright rejection.
Since the transitional space engages through experiences as experiences rather than experiences as discrete and tangible events, it speaks to the self’s way of engaging with environments and sensations. Regarding experience, it is helpful to reflect on Ellsworth’s (2005) observation, “When we think of experience as a question of sensation, we remind ourselves that we do not have experiences. We are experiences” (p. 26). Winnicott stated, “Transitional objects and transitional phenomena belong to the realm of illusion which is at the basis of initiation of experience” (Winnicott, 1971/2005: 19). The transitional object or phenomena has a specific relationship with the self, and that self is in control of that relationship. By control, I refer to the ability of the self, not others, to develop the meaning of the relationship to the object or the phenomenon, and the fact that the self controls the meaning if it should change (Winnicott, 1971/2005: 7): “The transitional object is never under magical control like the internal object, nor is it outside control as the real mother is” (Winnicott, 1971/2005: 13). The self navigates the relationship, though it is provoked, informed, and affected by the relationship to the transitional object or phenomena. The focus is not so much on the object itself as on the individual’s relationship to that object. This subjective, rather than objective, focus highlights the individual’s interpretation, bringing in their own experiences, and also loosens the grasp of a stable object or the perception of the stability of the object, instead opting for the ability of interpretation to change according to the individual’s relationship to it. However, the transitional object continues to have meaning in the relationship with the learning self.
The concept of transitional space incorporates time and environment, in that it offers a setting for that relationship and learning to occur. For Ellsworth, the transitional space acts as an extension of the object or phenomena, instead becoming situated in an environmental rather than a singular objective or phenomenal consideration. The setting itself evokes the sense of incompleteness, not as a deficit, but as a mode to offer a space in which the learning selves are able to initiate their own relationships. Discussing the design of Frank Gehry’s Strata building, Ellsworth (2005) remarked on this lack of finitude as a positive rather than a negative quality: Stepping inside, we find ourselves in an unfinished (and, as it is hoped, an unfinishable) environment that invites its own temporary, transitional, never-ending completions. Such an environment holds us not as a container would, not as a passive receptacle of what we already are; rather, it holds us in passage and accompanies us from one emergent space to another (Grosz & Eisenman, 2001: 120) (p. 72).
In classroom spaces where the answer is given and expected, this can create that false sense of resolution and “organization” (Winnicott, 1971/2005: 19). Infusing pedagogical spaces with liminal qualities may allow the exploration of the self’s own way of coming into its learning. Ellsworth (2005) uses these characteristics to develop further the implications of transitional spaces in architecture and design, and refers to these spaces as areas that resist habitual tendencies (p. 64). Though “paradox accepted can have positive value” (Winnicott, 1971/2005: 19), the attempt to solve the paradox leads to illusion and falsity. This calls for the acceptance of the in-between state, the recognition of the value in discomfort, irresolution, and instability. It engages the paradox almost for the sake of paradox, to refuse prescriptive attitudes of how to learn, think, act, and feel. It is an opening to flux and relationality rather than limitations. The “pedagogical problem” (Ellsworth, 2005: 100), in which there are only “misunderstandings” (Ellsworth, 2005. 100; Felman, 1995), asks: can you accept (not refuse) the risk and vulnerability of engaging with pedagogy in this manner? A pedagogy open to the liminal spaces? A pedagogy that does not prescribe a foreseen answer? The transitional space is also an area to reconnect with the sensation of the body, in motion as it is teaching and learning, not consecutively but simultaneously—the constant reach and pull at the same time. The learning self becoming enacts the paradox of pedagogy.
Experience and pedagogical becoming
Affect, as Félix Guattari identified (1989/2013), is a “pre-personal category” (p. 203), meaning that it exists, or can exist, within potentialities, not fixed limitations (pp. 203–205). As a dynamic process, affect relates to interactions and possible becomings: “Affect remains fuzzy, atmospheric, and yet is perfectly apprehendable, in so far as it is characterized by the existence of thresholds of passage and of reversals of polarity” (p. 203). Furthermore, it is not possible to control or measure affect, or preemptively (as well as consistently) produce particular becomings. It is within the transitional space that the becoming self emerges, and as Colebrook’s (2002) discussion of Gilles Deleuze suggested, the continual change of the self as becoming: “Each movement is not just a change of place within a whole but a becoming in which the movement is a transformation of the body which moves, a body being nothing other than its movements” (p. 45). These movements and transformations, informed by a welcomed unpredictability, present another way of considering the learning self. Significantly, it is within the transitional space that the possibility of a becoming, learning self emerges. As a dynamic process (Colebrook, 2002), becoming relates to interactions and affect (Guattari, 1989/2013).
Ellsworth (2005) places the aspect of becoming within a pedagogical context. I find it helpful in this context to draw upon Ellsworth’s interpretation of Deleuze’s approach to becoming, as it speaks specifically to the implications held by becoming in the pedagogical context: “By becoming, I suggest the interaction within the transitional space that embraces motion, “the experience of being in motion across the porous boundaries between self and other in ways that reconfigure and rewrite their meanings” (Ellsworth, p. 65)” (Sojot, 2014: 3). A hesitation persists in saying that this offers a “new” way of looking at things; instead, it is the hope that engaging in this endeavor enables or pushes for a shift in opening what the “authentic” learning self looks and acts like, and how it should act and be. The hinging moment, as experienced in the transitional space, elucidates the sense of pedagogical becoming: it occurs in the relationship of experiencing the learning self and of the growing awareness of the learning self through its interaction with the environment or object. There is an element of letting go (Ellsworth, 2005: 16) and the recognition of the inability to control the outcome or affect of an environment or object presupposed as an educational tool. Conceivably, the being is becoming pedagogically through the affect of calling attention to its own learning self.
The pedagogical becoming’s emphasis on sensation and experience recalls John Dewey’s focus on experience as a key component of education. Through experience, the individual encounters possibilities for his or her own learning growth. Furthermore, for Dewey, the pursuit of a fair democracy aligned with the education of individuals. In order for individuals to be active and productive citizens, they must have access to an education focused on experience. In a way, this presents an open-ended approach to education. As long as the individual was engaged in productive learning, whether occurring in a school or elsewhere, then growth and learning could occur. The emphasis is on the learner: “New education emphasizes the freedom of the learner” (Dewey, 1938: 22). Dewey’s educational approach, dedicated to an individual’s meaning-making process through his or her own experiences, called into question the validity of promoting pedagogy dependent upon the façade of authority and devoid of critical thought, or, to put it in other terms, a pedagogy unreflective of its own assumptions. Embracing the agency of the individual in his or her own meaning making, it eliminates binary oppositions harmful to the acquisition of genuine knowledge and allows the individual to beneficially participate as an equal in democratic society. This process implies that the education of an individual can arise from conscious, self-directed learning. It is insular to the individual because it depends on the individual’s experience. The individual experiences growth and learning: when all individuals are supported in this manner, then democratic involvement is improved.
Predicated on the individual’s own generation or non-generation of knowledge rather than the imposition of non-living knowledge—that knowledge which was previously determined as necessary to knowing (Ellsworth, 2005: 1)—this approach really opens up a space to explore the different meanings held by different conceptualizations of experience in relation to the self or individual. Dewey supports the individual through adherence to a conscious method of experience. Ellsworth suggests that knowledge generation is dynamic and occurs in the individual—or not. The possibility of the “or not” complicates the space and assumed purposes of educating, schooling, and learning. Each of these scholars approaches the learner’s educational agency in different ways. The epistemological source originates in the individual for Dewey, and for Ellsworth, rests in the dynamic potential of becoming. Yet, each one of these conceptualizations approaches learning in different ways and by different means, though they may be interrelated through a focus on anti-totalitarian pedagogical frameworks.
Though Ellsworth’s use of experience in relation to the pedagogical hinge and transitional space and Dewey’s notion of the individual’s educational experience are complementary, it would be disingenuous to posit that one follows the other. Pedagogy’s hinge, as a way to consider one’s generation of knowledge, challenges the assumption of authoritarianism (Ellsworth, 2005: 94) and fixed democratic conceptualization (Ellsworth, 2005: 97) through the possibility of a dynamic, learning self. The intent is for the self to become into its own pedagogy as opposed to opening learning to the experiences of the self for the express purpose of democratic endeavors; this complicates the interpretation of the “individual” and “self.”
This exploration does not seek to delineate a specific path, because as discussed, the hinging is a moment of encounter with the learning self, the becoming pedagogical self. To paraphrase Ellsworth’s reflection on experiences, it is the encountering, not just the encounter, with the transitional space and the self that provokes a hinging. Within this hinging occurs the condition of possibilities for the engagement of the learning self to become aware. Not only has the self learned something that it did not know before, but also it has faced the awareness of that learning self, the recognition of the learning self, the encounter with a self who may not be the self that person was completely earlier. The becoming being changes and is in dynamic processes of learning, broadly conceived, whether these glimpses of learning occur in spaces formally considered for learning (e.g., the classroom) or in informal spaces where pedagogical purpose is not presumed as a primary function.
By incorporating the sensation of experience (Ellsworth, 2005: 17) into how we approach learning and pedagogy, we enable the encounters with our becoming selves in the process of learning ideas, things, and ways of being that we may not have known before. The experience of learning is continuously exceeding itself in the moment of the pedagogical hinge. Focusing on the continual change loosens preconceived ideas—or assumptions—of what it means to be a learner and educator. In an educational environment so preoccupied with assessment and a particular ideology by which to measure progress, with a focus on measurable outcomes with beginnings and endpoints, what happens when the focus shifts to the possibilities disclosed by interacting with the dynamic, becoming, learning self?
Additionally, is there then a unique, learning self, or is it more how that self interacts with the transitional space? This is where Winnicott’s concept of transitional object, phenomena, and space assists in this conceptualization, because it is not the object itself but the relationship to the object that can change, alter, adapt, not happen, and so on. The transitional space and its flexibility echo the mutability of Ellsworth’s pedagogical pivots and hinges. For the learning experience in the hinge, it is the moment, not the thing itself.
Pedagogical hiccups
Of the transitional space, Ellsworth writes, “Transitional space opens up the space and time between an experience and our habitual response to it. It gives us time and space to come up with some other way of being in relation at that moment. It introduces a stutter, a hesitation. It jams the binary logics that keep self/other, inner/outer, individual/social locked in face-to-face opposition” (p. 64). It is this “stutter” that interests me most here about the transitional space: a space that beckons a hiccup, a catching of one’s self in the moment and motion, not a reflection but a reminder to revisit the action, thought, or thing. My notes and journal entries in preparation for this class section and my thoughts and observations after continuously dealing with a struggle of wanting to “teach” the book, when in fact, the entirety of the book is about acknowledging and encouraging spaces for the learning self conspicuously devoid of the instrumentalized and prescriptive manner of transmitting what is assumed to be needed to be known.
An obvious struggle is present in my writings, which also speaks to the insidious nature of that “habitual response” that is so simple to unintentionally fall back into. This is seen in my reflections on the task and the attempts to work through the acknowledged tension. Navigating the preparation for a session that could be very fluid and not ordered in a specific fashion seems to be a paradoxical endeavor. It is a “letting go,” to use Ellsworth’s term again. “I want to be able to allow for a space or spaces that let students encounter the ‘letting go’ of assumptions that may be held about what constitutes legitimate learning, knowledge, being”—I wrote this in preparation for the class, a glimpse of the recognized tension. It shows the struggle, frustration, and discomfort of intentionally welcoming and engaging with the transitional space.
Unfixing personal assumptions in education requires “letting go” and vulnerability. A journal entry written during preparation for the session reflects on this tension: “It’s easier to tell someone what to do and how to do it, but is it allowing that person to encounter their own learning? No. It seems best to enable an environment that allows for the possibility for that to happen, yet it’s difficult!” It seems contradictory—to attempt to intentionally enable a space that, in turn, may or may not provoke these hiccups, “stutters,” and “pivots.” The pacing of the class itself becomes important as well, even though it is done with the acknowledgment that the winding paths the discussion takes cannot be predicted. It is the recognition of the sensation of learning something not prescribed in advance to become known or intended. It appears as a loss of pedagogical control, if that control was ever present in the first place. The transitional space encourages a space of, and for, knowledge in the making rather than a place for instruction and instrumentalized learning.
Educational assumptions
By looking at pedagogical becoming and considering the transitional space with the learning self, it disrupts or, more broadly, has the potentiality to disrupt educational assumptions, to call those assumptions into question, and to encourage a critical reconsideration of them: Within the experience of pedagogy’s hinge, I am becoming unstable. My whole preconception of what it means to learn, to know, to be a student, to be a teacher, is purposefully flipped—and not for the sole purpose of destruction, but rather to awaken my kinetic epistemological and ontological self into the possibilities of the moving sense of knowing. This idea of turning, of moving—but not according to the linear path espoused by accepted notions of being—frees the subject from the structural restraints operated by the educational assumptions (Sojot, 2014 33).
The responsibility not to foreclose the opportunity for the students to explore the different ways in which frameworks can speak to each other and ideas, the letting go of my assumed perception of how a teacher should communicate knowledge, and the realization of my self encountering other selves shifted my modes and attitude towards preparing for other class sessions. Giving the answer before the question foreclosed the students’ own possibility of engaging with their learning selves and preemptively disengaged a transitional space. Recognition of the non-neutrality of the process of teaching and learning (Lusted, 1986: 3) enables a transitional space and pedagogical becoming: “Instead, it foregrounds exchange between and over the categories, it recognizes the productivity of the relations, and it renders the parties within them as active, changing and changeable agencies” (Lusted, 1986: 3).
The impact this has on educational assumptions reflects the constant asking after the question of the purpose or purposes of education. The purpose of education is focused less on civic duty and social responsibility and more on the advent of efficient, economically inclined students (Carpenter and Hughes, 2011). This shift towards economic efficiency as a motivating factor to shape education is also echoed in Wendy Brown’s observations of the impact of the neoliberal rationality. Contemporary educational practices (Ellsworth, 2005; Sojot, 2014) and policies that focus on economic efficiency (Apple, 2006; Brown, 2015) as driving educational purpose rather than social or civic responsibility (Carpenter and Hughes, 2011) do not attend to the potential held by transitional spaces. The shift of education to an objective of career readiness frames the purpose of education and learning in an identity based upon one’s contribution to the labor market. The unraveling of previous motivations for education and subsequent restructuring through neoliberal ideology instigate a possibility where educational possibilities are narrowed.
These contemporary educational assumptions may not always expressly prohibit other ways of being and thinking about learning, but at the very least, they passively engulf these educational spaces (physical and discourse) to the point where it becomes difficult or even near impossible to articulate other ways of knowing and being in the spaces; the possibilities are narrowed. For example, “valid” forms of educational research conform to positivist and empirical methods. Benjamin Baez and Deron Boyles (2009) cited the “narrow scientism” (p. 10) reinforced by government initiatives and standards as privileging a limited way of knowing and researching. The uncritical collection and evaluation of data by these federally supported standards encourages the privatization of education (Baez and Boyles, 2009: 185), creates funding paradoxes with public research and external grant money (p. 168), strongly differentiates between the inclusion and exclusion of other epistemologies through an unquestioned allegiance to what constitutes objectivity (p. 127), and encourages the narrow use of specific dataset types for governance (p. 150).
Here, the implications of engaging with a transitional space and allowing the possibility of becoming arise. Conceptualizing the learning self as becoming and in motion—rather than being, was, is, or to be—loosens the grasp of fixed educational assumptions that guide the discourse of education, in how it is conceived and acted out. This “loosening” has reverberations within the politics of how things are taught, considered, and learned, as it calls into question hierarchical valuations of what constitute “accepted” ways of knowing and being. In the contemporary environment influenced by a neoliberal rationality (Brown, 2015) that seeks to shape, fix, and legitimize particular educational assumptions, it becomes crucial to consider other spaces that resist these efforts to foreclose other ways of approaching education. If a goal of educational practice is to encourage diverse democratic present(s) and futures, then considering the educational assumptions that permeate our pedagogical spaces can contextualize the productive promise and normative limitations in this pursuit.
Summary
Though contradictory at times, the transitional space and the becoming, learning self enable encounters with difference and flux rather than seeking assimilation within one way of knowing and being. This provides a way to frame developing views and philosophy of teaching and approaching education. It asks about the how before the what. This emphasis on process and sensation being necessary for a thorough understanding of content holds significance, because focusing only on communicating content does not speak to the multiple ways in which we come to encounter and engage with things, ourselves, and others (Biesta, 2006; Ellsworth, 2005). This approach seeks to engage with difference and not to narrow possibilities. Enabling the transitional space and becoming self is consequently significant in opening the space for difference in education. And by difference, I follow Biesta’s (2006) usage, in that “Difference requires a different attitude toward plurality and otherness, one in which the idea of responsibility is more appropriate than the idea of knowledge, one in which ethics is more important than epistemology” (p. 103). Attending to the possibility of the transitional space in pedagogical frameworks offers a way to encounter movement and unfixed learning selves. Not didactic, it does not shy away from the exposure to difference. On the contrary, one might say that it encourages headfirst interaction with difference, a difference between the self and other that “productively frays” (Ellsworth, 2005: 85).
A further point of significance for the inclusion of transitional space in the context of pedagogy is that this space is dynamic rather than fixed. The plasticity of the transitional space has implications for the ability or inability to respond to a world constantly in flux. It presents a setting where it is possible to critically reflect on how truly receptive we are as educators to other ways of knowing and other ways of being. As the in-between area, the transitional space throws askew ideas previously held as known, but in a helpful manner. It reiterates the process rather than the product of the act of learning. The transitional space calls attention to the how during the dynamic moment of learning, from the unknown to the knowing. There is a self-awareness of the space itself in which and through which learning occurs. There are moments throughout the day to experience the transitional space and the becoming learning self if one is open to it; some of these spaces are more intent in purpose to instigate a transitional quality, but that does not preclude other spaces and interactions from precipitating and encouraging a moment slightly askew in which the self is made aware of itself changing, learning, and becoming.
Considering the transitional space in this manner requires a different approach to pedagogy and what the learning, becoming self means. If we think of pedagogy as how knowledge or knowing is taught and communicated, then what possibilities emerge if it is approached experimentally and as a process rather than an object (Ellsworth, 2005: 125)? When considered in this way, pedagogy engages movement, sensation, and importantly, self-awareness of its own limitations. Furthermore, “The capacity of pedagogy to access and acknowledge our sensations of being in relation is crucial to efforts to teach about and across social and cultural difference” (Ellsworth, 2005: 135). Paying attention to this “capacity of pedagogy” and freeing considerations of what constitutes the space and self can support an “open and contestable signification of democracy” (Brown, 2015: 20) in learning, which seeks out rather than contains difference. Ellsworth (1997) wrote, “There is an undecidability to teaching. The good teacher is the one who gives what s/he doesn’t have: the future as undecidable, possibility as indeterminable” (p. 173). Engaging with the transitional space and the becoming, learning self embraces this flux and instability brought by encountering difference in education.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting (April 8, 2016, Washington, DC). I appreciate and am thankful for the comments and discussion.