The Matter We Teach With Matters: Teaching With Theory, Theorizing With (Textbook) Bodies

• In Event: What Pedagogies Produce: Teaching Responsible/Response(able) Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose
What might teaching/learning in the context of more-than-human become? We focus on three textbooks chosen for an introductory qualitative inquiry (QI) course and what was produced. Textbooks (and other assigned readings) are bodies that instructors labor over/with in making decisions about what students will read. We consider their mutually constitutive nature—where not only does theory produce people (St. Pierre, 2011) and bodies, but people (bodies) produce theories; we focus on the entanglement—textbooks in relation to/with humans. Humans matter. Textbooks matter. It matters what matter makes pedagogy and what pedagogy makes matter.

Theories & Modes of Inquiry
We philosophically attempted to teach an introductory QI course with intra-active pedagogy in mind. Intra-active pedagogy is a way to (re)think this allusion of the theory/practice divide with relational ontology perspectives (Lenz Taguchi, 2010). While we often added art materials to our QI courses, the intra-active pedagogy is much more than that; it is not simply about adding art supplies (Authors, 2018). Theory produces (what count as) bodies, and bodies produce theories; theory creation is not a human-centric occurrence. It is in the entanglement of all types of bodies that something new comes into being (Barad, 2007).

Data
Data comes from a large study on pedagogies of QI; we narrow this paper to data from a spring 2016 course (e.g., teaching notes, audio recordings from the class, students’ written assignments) and transcripts from focus groups with students. We are inspired by MacLure’s (2013) notion of ‘data glowing’. The data from conversations with students about the three required textbooks for the course stuck with us. We weave transcripts of conversations with students with analytical/theoretical writing on intra-active pedagogies inspired by post-theories.

Insights & Significance
The contents of the books for this course do not stay localized in the brain, the bodies of these books touch all the other parts of our bodies—affectual, ontological, and alive. That’s because it is not only our brains (or heads) that are doing the learning; rather, our entire be(com)ing is involved in the learning.

The contents of the books are not just for epistemological knowledge-transfer, but rather, these books talk, breathe, scream, soothe, and seep into and out of each other. These readings were reading each other as much as the students were reading them, producing ideas/knowledge(s)/feelings/affect together that they could not have produced alone. The three books are/were lively with each other, an ontological matter. When we make reading lists on syllabi, we think of what knowledge students need to know in order to meet standards and/or objectives. But what if textbook selection is not (only) about knowledge? But rather an attention to ethico-onto-epistemological be(com)ings? Knowing through/with/in becoming relations of other bodies (all bodies). Our response-ability as teachers are in the inten(t/s)ional decisions made when planning even though we cannot predict what will happen in the intra-actions of teaching/learning as all bodies are making agential cuts.

Authors

• Candace Ross Kuby, University of Missouri - Columbia

• Rebecca C. Christ, Florida International University