Do-It-Yourself Education as Pedagogical/Curricular Catalyst

• In Event: Getting to Bedrock: Diverse Perspectives on Emergence, Nonlinearity, and Relationality in Education

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore DIY education (e.g. MIT World, Ted Talks, Kahn Academy, You Tube, Wikipedia) as a pedagogical/curricular catalyst for reshaping, rethinking and reconceptualizing possibilities for schooling and embodied learning with/in/outside of institutions of higher education. Through analysis of my personal memoirs concerning my work as a curriculum theorist and as an instructional designer, I consider what it means to work with technologies that have the potential to change our understandings of schooling and embodied learning, what it means to question universals, and what it means to get mired in complexities, multiplicities, and difference (Springgay & Freedman, 2007). This exploration is theoretically grounded in Kristeva’s notions of revolt, as well as John Dewey’s notions of trans-formation.
I read my experiences through a Kristevian lens of revolt. As Kelly Oliver explains, “By revolt, Kristeva points to a challenge to authority and tradition, analogous to political revolt, that takes place within an individual and is essential to psychic development” (Oliver, 2005, p.77). This type of revolt is not mired in politics, but is situated with/in the psyche—focused on change, mutation, questions, and transformations (Bach, 2010; Oliver, 2005). However, this type of revolt, while intimate and interior, still “enables us to live as individuals connected to others” (Oliver, 2005, p. 77).
Hongyu Wang (2010) further explains that “[t]here is no revolt without a certain sense of the limit” (p. 380). She goes on to clarify that “The interrogation of the limit does not mean overthrowing the limit once and for all, but bringing more variety and flexibility to the limit” (p. 380). She argues that this type of revolt, this type of public politics allows for a pedagogy that provides for freedom within limits rather than constraint.
Moreover, Kristeva (2002) understands “revolt as permanent anxiety” (p. 104). She explains that this type of anxiety is not pathological, rather this type of anxiety causes one to explore identities, incessantly ask questions, and plunge into sensations. For me, this type of anxiety connects with Dewey’s understanding of inquiry as trans-formation. Dewey (as cited in Garrison, 1999) understood inquiry as an intimate relationship, a relationship in which experience (based on happenings and possibilities within our environment—DIY education) and education become entangled in an effort to move the learner, and in this case the university, beyond what was previously understood. Dewey wrote, “The resolution of a problematic situation may involve transforming the inquirer, the environment, and often both. The emphasis is on trans-formation” (p. 11).
My conclusions focus on possibilities for universities, on possibilities of/for trans-formation, on possibilities of moving beyond taken for granted customs, traditions, institutions, and policies.

Author

• Debra M. Freedman, University of Waterloo