Theorizing Vibes; Labor and Legibility Provocations

• In Event: It’s a Whole Vibe!: Exploring Agency, Labor, and Power in the Felt Dimensions of Learning

Abstract

This roundtable emerged from a lively conversation at an education conference poster session where some members of this roundtable were discussing the difficulty of both attuning to manifestations of care and tracing affect in learning contexts. “We are trying to quantify vibes!” I exclaimed. Following this meeting, we organized a series of meetings with the members of this roundtable to examine “vibes” more closely. What was this elusive and felt feature of learning spaces that we all had a hard time articulating? Had attuning to “vibes” offered us any utility as researchers or educators in the past? What might attuning to vibes offer educators and researchers alike for analyzing systems of power, and how might this attunement offer pathways towards repair and remedy? A limited literature review informed us that researchers have identified vibes-adjacent phenomena, but none fully captured the breadth of our discussion.

Our discussion engaged concepts of affect, Anzaldúa’s theorization of nepantla, intuition, indigenous concepts of relationality, Samoan concepts of Teu le Va, and Vygotsky’s perezhivanie, amongst others. What was clear was that vibes are an emergent entity (Jorba & Rodó-Zárate, 2019), and, similar to Ahmed’s conceptualizations of affect (Ahmed, 2004), vibes circulate around, through, and with people, objects and symbols, having material impact for all sharing space, time and activities.

Notions and concepts derived from our vibes theorizing informed a preliminary coding of our heavily annotated meeting notes. Emergent components of “vibes” from discussions, readings, and coding of our notes include: interpretive, relational and other forms of labor, relational or social (safety, belonging, care) aspects, place, material and/or physical aspects, temporal aspects, elements of refusal and the sacred, and literacies and/or legibilities functioning on cultural, neurodiverse, or political planes. These themes were then brought into discussion again; to make meaning of them and to refine our understanding further. The codes were then re-considered and nested where appropriate, making room for emergence of new codes.

Our preliminary coding draws attention to the idea that vibes don’t just happen spontaneously in learning contexts; there is often labor, by educators, to set a context for learning. However, what might be less obvious is the labor performed by students to interpret context, including relational and power dynamics before even getting to the academic material. Additionally, coding suggested refusal could be read as student agency, moves toward co-construction of learning spaces, invitations to educators to recalibrate, adjust, make more space or materials more legible and therefore accessible to students of diversity.

How might educators attuning to this labor dynamic, ease student emotional and cognitive load when designing learning experiences? This easing of student interpretive load can have profound equity implications as well; are educator materials, manipulatives, activities and lesson ephemera legible and accessible to students of cultural, gender, class and neurological divergence? As educators and researchers alike consider better meeting student needs anew, attuning to these elements of vibes offer a pathway towards remedy and repair of past and present previously unconsidered vectors of harm in the in-between spaces.

Author

• Jorge Eduardo Garcia, Stanford University