Time we do not have: The challenges of silence in an emancipatory, conversation-oriented curriculum

Abstract

In this article, I explore my own classroom practices as a teacher of a university course on curriculum in order to investigate the potential emancipatory significance of a Rancièrean conversation-oriented curriculum. To provide a lived account of how emancipatory education with the premise of equality can be embraced, albeit not without challenges, in actual classroom practices, I focus on my most unsuccessful teaching experience—one in which I was routinely confronted by unusually prolonged periods of silence from my students. I first explore how I responded to the challenges which emerged from my commitment to positioning myself and my students as intellectual equals. Then, I attempt to articulate the emancipatory significances of inviting my students to aesthetically attend to the curricular materials, class conversations, and the silence itself. I also reveal how a Rancièrean reading of my practice exposed my own deep ties to an institutionalized distribution of time and helped me to re-imagine the meanings of success and failure in an emancipatory education.

Keywords:

• Emancipatory curriculum
• silence
• Jacques Rancière
• class conversation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Those studies range from ones theorizing emancipatory pedagogies (Anwaruddin, 2015; Biesta, 2010a, 2010b; Chambers, 2013) by comparing/contrasting Rancière’s thoughts with/against other emancipatory educators such as Freire (see Biesta, 2013, 2017; Galloway, 2012; Lewis, 2012a; Vlieghe, 2018) and from a perspective of democratic education (Bastrup-Birk & Wildemeersch, 2013) to those theorizing Rancièrean understanding of emancipation as woven through the close relationships among education, aesthetics, and politics (Lewis, 2012b; Ruitenberg, 2011).

2 I want to note that this course took place in South Korea, where public school teaching is regarded as a highly desirable profession because it provides both respectable social status and economic stability. Aspiring public school teachers first need to earn their teaching certificates by completing an undergraduate or graduate-level teacher education program. Upon successful completion of a program, the students take a high-stakes, highly competitive, standardized national teacher employment exam. Those who pass the national exam begin the final selection process held by the Metropolitan and Provincial Offices of Education. While this centralized recruitment process ensures the overall quality of the teachers and preserves the equity of public education in Korea (see Kang & Hong, 2008), it also pressures teacher educators to teach their students in ways that will prepare them—directly or not—for the national employment exam.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A5B5A07084366).

Notes on contributors

Soon Ye Hwang

Soon Ye Hwang teaches curriculum studies in Korea. She is interested in empowering pre- and in-service teachers to participate in theorizing their curricular and pedagogical experiences through philosophical, aesthetic, and autobiographical conversations. Soon Ye has published on topics including creativity as present in expression, arts-mediated curriculum, and curriculum as collective improvisation and as rhythmic attunement.