The focus of this book is on building on current liberal understandings of democratic education as espoused in the ideas of SeylaBenhabib, Eamonnn Callan, Martha Nussbaum, Iris Marion Young and Amy Gutmann, and then examines its implications for pedagogical encounters, more specifically teaching and learning. In other words, pedagogical encounters premised on the idea of iterations (talking back) and reasonable and compassionate action are not enough to engender forms of human engagement that can open up new possibilities and perspectives. Drawing on the works of poststructuralist theorists, in particular the seminal thoughts of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Stanley Cavell, Maxine Greene, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Judith Butler, it is argued that a democratic education in becoming has the potential to rupture pedagogical encounters towards new beginnings on the basis that teachers and students can never know with certainty and completeness. Consequently, it is argued that teaching and learning ought to be associated with pedagogical activities in the making, more specifically a pedagogy out of bounds, in terms of which speech and action would remain positively free, sceptically critical, and responsibly vigilant – a matter of making teaching and learning more authentic so that students and teachers are provoked to see things as they could be otherwise through an enhanced form of ethical and political imagination. It is through pedagogical encounters out of bounds that relations between teachers and students stand a better chance of dealing with the strangeness and mysteries of unexpected, unfamiliar, and improbable action.

This book is one English professor's assessment of university life in the early 21st century. From rising mental health concerns and trigger warnings to learning management systems and the COVID pandemic, Christopher Schaberg reflects on the rapidly evolving landscape of higher education. Adopting an interdisciplinary public humanities approach, Schaberg considers the frequently exhausting and depressing realities of college today. Yet in these meditations he also finds hope: collaboration, mentoring, less grading, surface reading, and other pedagogical strategies open up opportunities to reinvigorate teaching and learning in the current turbulent decade.

Through a unique combination of critical, posthumanist, and educational theories, the authors engage in a surreal journey into the worlds of feral children, alien reptoids, and faery faiths in order to understand how social movements are renegotiating the boundaries of community.

What is the role of politics in the classroom? How does the desire of the teacher shape the pedagogical process? Is teaching possible? Is learning possible? Pedagogy as Encounter engages with such larger issues. The majority of discussions, workshops, conference panels, articles, and books avoid meta-pedagogical issues by focusing on technique. Such “technique talk” examines schemes, methods, and procedures that do and do not work in the classroom. It answers the “how” question at the cost of ignoring these bigger queries. Pedagogy as Encounter consists of 120 vignettes arranged in eight chapters. Most of these are first person autobiographical stories that describe encounters with students and colleagues. They portray a teacher whose classroom disappointments lead him to radical experimentation. But there are also a few theoretical sections, as well as segments that are epigrammatic in nature. All of it is grounded in a Lacanian political psychology and in a critical global political economy. The theory, however, remains largely implicit and is confined to the footnotes. The body of the text is free of jargon and presented in a conversational voice.

This book explores important questions about the relationship between professional practice and learning, and implications of this for how we understand professional expertise. Focusing on work accomplished through partnerships between practitioners and parents with young children, the book explores how connectedness in action is a fluid, evolving accomplishment, with four essential dimensions: times, spaces, bodies, and things. Within a broader sociomaterial perspective, the analysis draws on practice theory and philosophy, bringing different schools of thought into productive contact, including the work of Schatzki, Gherardi, and recent developments in cultural historical activity theory. The book takes a bold view, suggesting practices and learning are entwined but distinctive phenomena. A clear and novel framework is developed, based on this idea. The argument goes further by demonstrating how new, coproductive relationships between professionals and clients can intensify the pedagogic nature of professional work, and showing how professionals can support others’ learning when the knowledge they are working with, and sense of what is to be learned, are uncertain, incomplete, and fragile.

Packed full with case studies from multi disciplines and with a helpful appendix of tools and resources, this book is an essential guide to effective design and implementation of sound e-learning activities.