Unpacking a Liturgical Framing of Desire for the Purposes of Educational Research

Abstract

Much of the public discourse on education arguably reinforces the assumption that most stakeholders share the same desires for teaching and learning—desires reflecting a liberal paradigm that stresses individualism, control, and efficiency. But there are other desires, and additional empirical research informed by a Vygotskian sociocultural theory of learning could enrich this discourse. In my view, such research could benefit from a framework of desire compatible with the theory's central assumptions of learning as socially situated in cultural practices, teleological, and transformational. To this purpose, I offer a liturgical framing of desire put forth by James K. A. Smith, which treats humans as essentially desiring beings and defines desire as a potent force formed through participation in communal practices that orient practitioners' hearts (eros) toward particular futures (telos). I show how this framing satisfies key features of sociocultural theory and highlight two examples of how desire has been qualitatively examined and where the framing might enrich further examinations of education settings.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Dan Liston, Jennie Whitcomb, Vicki Hand, Erin Furtak, Joe Polman, and Deborah Whitehead for their guidance and input on earlier drafts of this text. I am also deeply indebted to Father Jeff Godecker for bringing Smith's work to my attention and to my parents—Nancy Parker and Jim Renga—for encouraging me as a bridge builder. Finally, I thank the editors and reviewers for their helpful comments and insights.

Notes

1. Some readers may note the absence of certain influential scholars (i.e., Jim Greeno, Paul Cobb) in my definition of sociocultural theory. This is not intended to discount their contributions; rather, it reflects my preferences and a rather sizable sociocultural tent.

2. It also strikes me as underappreciating the pain of desiring something that is, in fact, lacking in one's life. Fiction is replete with compelling examples of this pain and the lessons therein. In her beautiful novel of two adult siblings, wounded by life, returning to their childhood home in rural Iowa, Marilynne Robinson (2008) conjectures, “In destitution, even of feeling or purpose, a human being is more hauntingly human and vulnerable to kindness because there is the sense that things should be otherwise, and then the thought of what is wanting and what alleviation would be, and how the soul could be put at ease, restored” (p. 282).

3. A point of conceptual clarification is warranted. Desire (singular) here is used to refer to the feeling or sense of yearning or longing for something; desires (plural) acknowledges the multitude of things, or objects, that an individual or community can long to realize.

4. Smith tends to use “practice” and “ritual” interchangeably, which reflects his definition of practices as having a ritualizing effect on the practitioner. In fact, he insists that a clear demarcation between rituals and practices gives a false impression that seemingly mundane, everyday practices lack the capacity to inform and direct the heart.

5. Jerome Bruner (1991) similarly suggests that coherent cultural narratives are rarely linear or obvious, emerging instead from a “cobbling together of stories” (p. 18).

6. Taylor (2002) refers to these prevailing storylines as a social imaginary, which he defines as “the way ordinary people ‘imagine’ their social surroundings, and this is often not expressed in theoretical terms; it is carried in images, stories, and legends” (p. 106).

7. This line of questioning bears resemblance to investigations of a hidden curriculum of school that purportedly trains students for working-class labor under the auspices of providing a liberal education (Anyon, 1980; LeCompte, 1978). More recently, some have deduced a Judeo-Christian imprint in the curricular narrative of U.S. public education (Burke & Segall, 2015).

8. Such negotiation has been a concern in the learning sciences, with challenges to the linear progression from peripheral to full participation implied in Lave and Wenger's (1991) initial framing starting to give way to an interest in liminal participation across and between communities (O'Connor & Allen, 2010; Penuel & O'Connor, 2010).

9. Similar to an action-oriented understanding of desire, grit theorizes a connection between how individuals coordinate their present actions with their prospective futures, with those futures typically reflecting success in the face of long odds. This makes it an attractive concept for educators in low performing schools serving the most disadvantaged students. I find it problematic that advocates of grit base their claims on a dubious assumption that a consensus exists over the objectives, ideals, and visions for education.