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

Session Type: Working Group Roundtable

Abstract

Most of us have evoked the concept of “a vibe,” but what is it really? In this session, scholars spanning five universities work to demystify the colloquial understanding of “vibes.” Papers explore vibes in several ways: as raw spaces of conjecture and intuition, not firm determinations or fixed judgments; as informed by axiological and onto-epistemological positionings of individuals; as co-constructed and involving labor; as simultaneously embodied, relational, social, spatial, and temporal; as resources for interpreting the in-motion meanings and feelings of a context; and as emergent entities impacted by power and subjectivity. We urge the field to dig deeper and consider the undefinable, the sacred and ethereal as vital aspects of learning, especially as we work toward remedy and repair.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Learning Sciences

Chairs

• Kailea Saplan, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Jorge Eduardo Garcia, Stanford University

Papers

• Theorizing Vibes; Labor and Legibility Provocations - Jorge Eduardo Garcia, Stanford University

• Attuning to the Vibes of Learning Ecologies: Toward Developing Intuitive Educators - Meg Elena Escudé, University of California - Berkeley; Edward Rivero, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Do You Know the Vibes?: A Case for Vibes as Invisibilized Care - Wendy Barrales, New York University; Olivia Ortiz, New York University

• A Need for Something New: Building “Vibes” into a Novel Assessment for Hands-On Library Programs - Kailea Saplan, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Sacred Vibes: Unraveling and Protecting that which is Sacred in Learning - Aukeem A. Ballard, University of California - Berkeley; Nallely Beulah Aceves Romero, Stanford University