Abstract
In this reflective paper, I respond to Dr. Matusov’s (2020) eloquent philosophical exploration of “students’ right to freedom of education. In doing so, I pursue a narrative inquiry (Bruner, 1987; Clandinin, Murphy, Huber, & Orr, 2010; Clandinin, 2013; Hong, Falter, & Fecho, 2017) to explore my students’ self-generated meanings of their educational freedom in our teacher education classroom. I wonder whether freedom of education can be presented as a transcendental concept of self-examination and taught as the student’s right for it without a critical deconstruction of the tentious and fictitious materiality of freedom. Also, I wonder what my students think when they are provoked to claim their right to freedom of education. This reflection reveals that students’ right of freedom is not necessarily about their own self-examination, freedom is a creative force of self-expression. More specifically, freedom is the self-conscious act of discovery of itself (i.e., freedom) in everything my students do as a part of their classroom learning and education. All in all, freedom does not have any meaning at all since meaning emerges in the act of freedom itself, or rather in the creative act of being free.
Highlights
In this reflective paper, I respond to Dr Matusov’s (2020) eloquent philosophical exploration of “students’ right to freedom of education
Since 2015, Olga has been teaching as a sessional and distance course instructor in the Faculty of Arts and Education at the University of Manitoba. She has developed a keen interest in dialogic pedagogy in teacher education and interdisciplinary learning environments
Her current research focus is on innovative, creative dialogic pedagogy of freedom and education as art
Summary
I agree with Matusov (in press) that “students must have the exclusive right to freely define their own education” The concept of freedom in education is usually utilized only as a discursive tool to render tensions invisible and to silence original ideas, thoughts, and creative expressions In this light, my argument becomes a call for all teachers and educational institutions not to enframe freedom of education in a predetermined theoretical framework of controversy and compulsory tension-free monological teaching environment, but to develop their courses within the dialogic tension-based pedagogical context for freedom as the fundamental right of education, so that all students can define their own freedom, claim it, and practice it in the classroom, as well as reflect on this self-created concept of freedom as their education, as their learning experience. Without this critical ontology of tentious education, the concept and discourse of freedom is an oxymoron in teacher education
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