Abstract
Given that learner agency in making meaning from subjective learning experiences is central to constructivism, how can teachers provide structure without diminishing that agency? This paper comprises an a/r/tographic analysis of a practice-based research project situated outside formal education, which shares the teacher’s role across a community learning group. This group collectively chose and researched a new topic for each session, sharing this research in session and discussing the lesson this made. This model not only provides the basis for a consensual education, but also offers opportunity for empowerment through collectively taking ownership of learning, demonstrating that as engaged learners we can shape the structures through which we build learning agency. As education and culture shape each other, so learners emerge as critical citizens able to re/form community and culture for mutual benefit, open in turn to being re/formed by them.
 Understanding learning as a creative process, this paper juxtaposes Gert Biesta’s concept of creative practice as a dialogue with the world against the re-emergent concept of cultural democracy. Education re/produces cultural values; by not assuming control of learners’ education for them – by not inhabiting the role of teacher – we do not diminish the space for new, emergent structures to be realised. This paper seeks to show that by performing the teacher’s functions between us, we increase our intrinsic motivation for learning, also allowing for possibilities of new knowledge emerging. As will be shown, constructivism needs no singular teachers, only people to learn alongside and share the practice of learning with.
Highlights
Disrupting the Role of ‘Teacher’ The question of how to ‘conduct’ education is one that is unlikely to ever be conclusively answered
Constructivism suggests that through the experiential process of learning, learners construct subjective interpretations of an objective reality – learning is situated in the context of the learner and meaning is constructed anew by each person, each time it is learned (Armitage et al 2016)
Given teachers’ inputs can only be from their own subjective situation, how can they be sure their questions are relevant for the learners, and do not compromise this growing agency – what Rancière calls ‘stultification’ (1991)? And, given that many adults are put off lifelong learning by negative experiences of formal education (Fryer 1997; Tight 1998; Hammond 2004), what is constructivism’s effect on helping learners realise their potentials? As a recently qualified teacher who has struggled with how the educational ‘production line’ (Robinson 2008) is maintained, and has moved to less formal learning, I have found that learners can be offered more control over their learning
Summary
The concept of a collaborative community learning group emerged. ECC became a site for practical research whereby I could test my hypotheses using educational and a/r/tographic methodologies It was constructed around building a community in which all come as equals, drawing influence from another model of shared teaching and learning – School (Todd et al 2017-ongoing). 13 As my intended role was to be an equal co-participant, I aimed to form the group out of a larger community of which I was already a part This project aspired to support participants’ learning and creative abilities, but in hoping to reach those who were not already confident in these skills I tried not to overtly pitch it in those terms. I immediately faced a complication: I was inviting people into this project as its initiator This unavoidably created implicit assumptions of power, which I attempted to open out through the two introductory sessions. Given this was my first attempt at co-creation in the public realm – and the time pressures of the MA – I have tried to incorporate the participants’ views (as expressed at sessions and in interview) into this rendering of the project
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