Playful Engagement With Difference

• In Event: 30.047 - Echoes of God's Laughter: Entertaining the Generative and Generous Gifts of William E. Doll, Jr.

Abstract

In the field of education, “play” as a notion is usually associated with early childhood and elementary education in which hands-on activities are emphasized more than other levels of educational institutions. The notion of “difference” is often associated with social and cultural differences. But in William Doll’s curriculum and pedagogical theory and practice, both “play” and “difference” is beyond the commonsense understanding. In this presentation, drawing upon his work and the presenters’ pedagogical life history study, Doll’s complicated play with difference is discussed at multi-dimensional levels: Intellectually, socially and spiritually.

Playful Engagement with Intellectual Difference

For Doll (2012), difference plays an essential role in students’ (and instructors’) intellectual growth. As a teacher and as a teacher educator, he likes to ask his students a simple question during the discussion: “Can anybody look at the issue in another way?” Looking at something in another way introduces difference and perturbation, which are not always welcome. But Doll’s theorizing and practicing of nonlinear teaching is dependent on approaching intellectual difference as a positive factor. For Doll, one needs to recognize difference, work with it, and play with it, so he guides students to play with differences in various teaching situations.

Playful Engagement with Social-Relational Differences

Social and cultural difference and its meanings for education has been explored for decades in the field of education, in which race, ethnicity, gender, class, or sexuality are the markers of differences. Resisting identity politics and refusing to see a person through one particular lens, Doll nevertheless emphasizes the importance or playing with relations. In his articulation of curriculum, whether in 4R’s, 5C’s, or 3S’s, playful engagement with relations is an important component, as reflected in Relation in 4R’s, Community in 5C’s, or the relational quality of Story in 3S’s. Relationality in Doll’s theory and practice is both educational/pedagogical/curricular and cultural/social/ethical, and his teaching in the classroom is distinguished by the rich relationships that students establish with text, with one another, with the instructor, and with the outside world (Author, 2016). Doll’s engagement with China with a radically different culture and with Chinese educators who hold different worldviews is an exemplar of his approach to learning from the other and playing with relations.

Playful Engagement with Spiritual Differences

Doll calls himself a “heretical Catholic”: He is committed to the Catholic’s symbolism of interconnectedness but he is not attached to its restraining doctrines. A spiritual journey is a journey to seek the wholeness of being, and in this journey, one must be open to difference. Spirituality is not a fixed ideal, but emergent, cosmological, and ecological. This open-ended sense of spirituality is connected with ethical engagement with difference. His struggle with spirituality is also playful.
William Doll’s curriculum theory and practice challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions and asks us to rethink about the meanings of play, engagement, and difference in keeping knowledge alive and enabling personal growth. As a major curriculum thinker worldwide, Doll’s contribution is significant for all of us to learn from.

Author

• Hongyu Wang, Oklahoma State University - Tulsa