Under/standing Relational Pedagogy as a Practice of Democratic Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 57
  In Roundtable Session: Making Meaning Together: Unraveling the Research Value of Thinking Through Art Making

Abstract

The main emphasis of this paper is the notion of dialogue and place-based education in democratic relational pedagogy. The relational democratic dialogue is not hierarchical but communally based among members of the community. Teachers and students generate together questions and answers, towards mutual quest for development (Hecht, 2011). Thus, pedagogy of relation puts forward the notion of democratic relations (Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004) in a place-based education discourse. Given that education and democracy are largely interconnected (Goodlad, 1997), schools are expected to be places where teachers and students experience democratic processes. However, at present, the vast majority of schools do not reflect the structure, values, and ideals often espoused as democratic, thus failing to provide a learning environment that emphasizes mutual understanding and fosters community (Dewey, 1944; Ross, 2000). As a result, relational pedagogy becomes an obstacle in this atmosphere of high-stake testing and accountability. Yet, at the same time, relational pedagogy could nurture teaching since it “requires teachers. . . to share their learning in response to the expressed needs of students. This mutual benefit – enhanced learning for both teacher and student [and] is an important product of relational pedagogy.” (Noddings, 2004, p. viii). This paper offers an artistic arching bridge, through an ethnographic educational movie, between the essential need of humans being to communicate dialogically (Bakhtin, 1973), and the non-democratic school structure.

Author

• Ofira Roll, The University of British Columbia