Ronald Barnett:
A Will to Learn
Anxiety
‘A pedagogical task of higher education lies in helping students to understand that anxiety is a condition of being a student’
‘A pedagogical achievement of higher education is that – on the student’s part – of coming to live purposefully with anxiety.’
(page 36)
‘the epistemological anxiety is that of framing something orderly, something grounded, out of the chaos of entities – terms, concepts, theories, procedures – that are swirling in his mind. The ontological anxiety is that of the student’s being protesting this call to declare itself, to stand in the world…The student, in any circumstance, has to haul himself out of himself and come into a new space that he himself creates.’
(Page 36)
You need other people to find your own way
‘Coming at things in one’s ‘own way’ is not to be achieved in isolation form other voices, but on the contrary, in their company. It lies not in personal ‘detachment’ but in a ‘modification’ of those voices.’
‘Critical Dialogue’ with voices, texts and conversations but also to ‘stand alone’
(page 43)
Student voice narrative that would suit our BA course narrative
Student voice ‘uncovered, recovered, discovered’
(Denise Batchelor, page 55)
‘Each implies a latent potentiality, not fully realized: each looks to a process of becoming, in which a voice is realized over time.’
(Page 55)
Self-Faith
‘Self-Faith is belief in oneself and is a necessary condition of the kind of prolonged learning demanded by a higher education’
(Page 57)
Confusion Thickets
‘the situation of impenetrable thickets, namely the possibility that the challenges being put the student’s way are just too demanding either intellectually or practically.’
(Page 71)
‘the situation of overly dense thickets…the student may feel not so much that the proliferation of ideas or experience is such that she is in a state of some confusion, and is unable to see a way forward into a clear space. She is stuck fast in a wilderness.’
(Page 71)
Nature of student journey
It is not a rootless wandering, but a bounded voyage of discovery.’
(Page 71)
Hospitality and Community renewing enchantment
‘Pedagogies of hospitality encouraged her to persist, to maintain her will to learn and go on. These pedagogies included the formation of the student cohort into ‘learning communities’, where students extended hospitality to each other. Energies were sustained. Enchantment in the new, in the strange, was continually renewed.’
(Page 77)
Gift-giving
‘Acknowledge the space and higher education as a whole as a ‘site of gift-giving’ using an appropriate language that ‘acknowledges that the work emerges from the student, has the imprint of the student in it, and is presented to others for their consideration.’
(Page 81)
Student needing to be seen as people
‘They wish to be taken seriously as persons, not just as designers or economists in the making.’
Unless the student feels herself to be affirmed as a person – and something of her challenges acknowledged – there is little likelihood of her giving herself to the challenges of the situation in which she is placed’
(Page 96)
Inspiration
‘Pedagogy for inspiration is not a pedagogy of inspiration: there are: we have said, no rules or techniques that can be followed to bring it off. A pedagogy for inspiration requires an unceasing drive to bring the student to a succession of places where he or she is likely to be inspired.’
(Page 118)
‘The process of being inspired does not happen in a vacuum. It occurs in a context.’ This can take a variety of forms: personal characteristics of a tutor or set of tutors, curriculum, linking to other sources of meaning in life.’
‘Some sets of connections has to be made
‘She identifies with them’ – educational experiences
(Page 121)
‘A pedagogy for inspiration is important at the present time because the contemporary world threatens to deny air, spirit and inspiration. In higher education, the bureaucratic structures – in for instance, their insistence that learning outcomes be stated in advance – implicitly repudiate spirit.’
(Page 125)
Teacher
An enthusiasm for subject
A care for students and determination for them to come to issues in their own way
Communicate ‘to some effect’ the effect is ‘permitting space’ to come into experience authentically
(Page 122)
‘The teacher who is wanting her students to develop a will to learn will also want to inspire them, for through their being inspired, they are likely to develop such a will to learn; and then also in turn develop a pedagogical being for itself and, ultimately, a state of authenticity in that pedagogical being.’
(Page 123)
Nature of teaching for uncertain times
‘Pedagogy for uncertain times’
‘it is open, it is daring, it is risky, it is, itself, unpredictable’
(Page 137)
‘Here is spontaneity’ however ‘This spontaneity is not blind. It has its own principles…embedded in the disciplines and fields to hand.’
(Page 138)
Over Teaching
Making sure I don’t limit risk and thereby limit the space necessary for learning
‘Curricula are stuffed with teaching, so reducing students intellectual and practical spaces; and pedagogies are driven forward in a didactic manner, so limiting students’ space to stretch their own pedagogical beings into a new place.’
Page 144