Toward a Critical Unschooling Praxis

This chapter outlines a process for queering and decolonising self-directed education (SDE). A critical unschooling praxis, or reflection followed by principled action, involves self-reflection, queering family structures, and working toward non-metaphorical decolonization. This chapter provides a theoretical outline for a lived commitment to decolonized SDE along with examples for doing so. It argues that unschooling is not decolonizing by default and that truly liberatory learning must be underpinned by a commitment to radical change.

Muraling the invisible strings: Collective memory work from an educator inquiry group

In this qualitative study of a year-long educator inquiry workshop, nine early childhood educators engaged in the process of collective memory work to critically reflect on how their past experiences as young learners relates to their current teaching practices. Through an iterative analysis of the participants’ discussions and writings, this paper highlights how a group of educators shifted their way of thinking about teaching from a series of damage-based memories of restrictive learning environments towards a focus on desire-based stories of transformational and expansive learning experiences. For this group of teachers, this shift became an essential component to identifying how they could begin to work to create liberatory learning experiences and spaces for all students.

“A Practice of Freedom”: Self-grading for Liberatory Learning

This essay offers readers a model for self-grading as a mechanism to catalyze liberatory learning. Drawing inspiration from the feminist and participatory pedagogical approaches of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Adrienne Rich, the author grounds this discussion within her disciplinary field and professional role, identifies key elements of the model and the teaching practice that surrounds it, and addresses the changed learning environment that has resulted from the implementation of this approach.

‘Locations of Possibility’: Critical perspectives on partnership

This article offers critical perspectives on collaborative partnerships and feminist teaching that revise paradigms of power, prioritize student agency, enrich curriculum and scholarship, and sustain empowered communities of learning that challenge institutional compartmentalization. The authors reflect on how co-created curriculum can catalyze new professional partnerships that in turn contribute to refreshed learning experiences and communities. This article presents evidence of how a partnership orientation effectively encompasses an ethic and practice of feminist teaching, posits a framework of feminist pedagogy and praxis into the discourse of partnership, and exemplifies possibilities of these practices as important steps towards a (re)vision of liberatory learning.

Researcher reflexivity: what it is and what it can be

Purpose Second-order cybernetics is explored here as a learning intervention strategy. Researcher reflexivity, both the student’s and the professor’s, that is asserted is crucial to achieving a liberatory learning experience. But as Lacan has revealed, the “symbolic” (written, represented and studied) has a complex relationship to the “real”, which needs the “imaginary” to be active and creative. The aim of this paper is to investigate the complexity of these relationships and their import for reflexive learning, as it is grounded in second-order cybernetics. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper, comparing second-order cybernetics to current insights into researcher reflexivity, especially as grounded in Lacan and as it has been translated into an intervention strategy by Zizek and applied by the author. Supervision of MBA theses is examined as an exemplar. Findings A theory of researcher reflexivity is outlined with practical potential, which was demonstrated at the ASC 2016 conference. Research limitations/implications Exemplary learning is demonstrated and guidelines of practical significance are indicated, but these are not here further empirically researched. Practical implications The complexity of the “imaginary–symbolic–real” model and its value for reflexive learning is investigated. The application value of the model to learning and second-order cybernetics is developed. Social/implications A reflexive intervention is demonstrated in how one sees student/professor supervision and interaction. Originality/value Building on Glanville, it is shown that multiple reflexivities are needed to be put into play for second-order cybernetics to productively inform university practice. A difference of differences is needed to complexify feedback processes for cybernetic interventions to (best) succeed. The import of current theoretical debates from Lacan and Zizek to cybernetics is indicated.

'A Practice of Freedom': Self-grading for Liberatory Learning

This essay offers readers a model for self-grading as a mechanism to catalyze liberatory learning. Drawing inspiration from the feminist and participatory pedagogical approaches of Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Adrienne Rich, the author grounds this discussion within her disciplinary field and professional role, identifies key elements of the model and the teaching practice that surrounds it, and addresses the changed learning environment that has resulted from the implementation of this approach.

Service learning as an alternative practicum experience in a pre-service education program

This paper presents research on the benefits of service learning for pre-service teachers in the final year of their concurrent education program. The purpose of the research was to determine whether liberatory learning (Chambers, 2009) occurred for those students during a four-week service learning placement in organizations other than schools. Liberatory learning involves transformational shifts in social consciousness and provides service of benefit to both the participant and the host organization. Seventeen pre-service teachers and service learning supervisors completed questionnaires. Results suggest that service learning has the potential to be liberatory for pre-service teachers, but learning may remain tacit rather than explicit unless substantial opportunities for reflection are included in the service learning experience. Debriefing activities following the experience may be a critical contributor to helping participants realize the nature and extent of their learning.