Diffractions from a sensory-aesthetic learning space: an exploration of performative//Bildung- centered collaboration

ABSTRACT PROPOSAL SUBMITTED IN ADVANCE: Research topic/aim In this paper we explore the multidisciplinary collaborative process of developing new perspectives on aesthetic learning processes in Norwegian teacher education. The paper builds on a recent pilot with fifth year teacher students, where we transformed a classroom into a sensory-aesthetic space. Exploring this process, we seek to contribute to new perspectives addressing the Norwegian curriculum’s emphasis on aesthetic learning processes (Minestry of Education and Research, 2017). Theoretical framework Our common outset for this project is our shared wish to follow the call of Alexander Baumgarten (1750) to take the aesthetic seriously. For us, this means viewing the aesthetic as a language available to all, offering possibilities to experience, process and communicate the personal, emotional, sensory, complex and diverse (Austring & Sørensen, 2019). The sensory-aesthetic space was created out of the diffractions occurring between the authors, our disciplinary and theoretical outsets, the room, the different materials and the overarching theme of the student’s pedagogy subject, school in a pluralistic society. One theoretical impulse was the idea of performativity (Schechner, 2013) where learning is seen as «participation in art events which are constructed in situations of interaction» (Aure, 2013, our translation). It is a shared process of being-knowing (Lenz- Taguchi, 2012) in and with the world (Biesta, 2018, in Østern & Knudsen, 2019, p. 5) where all participants are «prepared to try out, stay open, participate, change direction» (Østern & Knudsen, 2019, p. 2). Another impulse was Bildung-centered general didactics (Willbergh, 2021), where education is viewed through Didaktike teche; the art of showing what cannot immediately show itself (Künzli, 2000). Thus, the educational situation is seen as a process of showing/representing the world, with the intention of opening both the world and the student to each other (Klafki, 2001). This is understood to require a reflective teacher (Westbury et al., 2000) who assumes responsibility for the world (Arendt, 1961/2006). Methodological design To explore our multidisciplinary collaborative process, we draw on the diffractive analysis of Karen Barad (2007; 2014) and a/r/tography (Irwin et al., 2008), seeing ourselves as artists, researchers and teachers intertwined with the work and material of the process. We stay open to both aesthetic and discursive languages (Austring & Sørensen, 2019) exploring different diffractions occurring as intra-actions (Barad, 2007; 2014) – as pictures, shapes, poetic texts and fragments. In this paper we draw attention to these diffractions, with a special interest in the ‘new patterns’ appearing in the space between the theoretical impulses brought into the project. Expected conclusions/findings We expect that our impulses, through diffraction, will create new patterns, challenging our conceptions and theoretical tensions and widening our perspectives on aesthetic learning processes. One preliminary result is the idea of teaching as invitation, both showing (representing) and being in the world together through the aesthetic. Relevance to Nordic educational research Seeking diffractions between our theoretical impulses in a sensory-aesthetic space, we aim to contribute to new perspectives in the field(s) of research addressing the Norwegian curriculum’s emphasis on both aesthetic learning processes and “all- round development” (Bildung) of all pupils (Minestry of Education and Research, 2017).