AISC 2024

This provocative session challenges the foundations of traditional pedagogy by asking: "What if the role of a teacher is not to explain, but to emancipate?" Drawing on Jacques Rancière's radical concept of intellectual emancipation, we explore the creation of "Educational Agoras" - spaces that dismantle hierarchies and foster true intellectual partnerships. The session will explore the types of “thinking partners” that leaders and teachers draw on, from reading and engaging with educational theory and research to literature and art to colleagues and students. This will lead to a thought-provoking discussion of how explicit, sustained, purposeful engagement with “thinking partners” can lead to the emergence of educational agoras where the role of the teacher is to emancipate thinking rather than to assist in the production and reproduction of knowledge. This approach has significant implications for education systems in a time of considerable ecological, geopolitical, economic, and technological change.

In the first part of the session, we will engage with Jacques Rancière's provocative classic text "The Ignorant Schoolmaster" as a way of unpacking the notions of intellectual emancipation and equality of intelligence. This will lead to an exploration of how to reimagine (that is, not to rethink, but to imagine once again) educational relationships as a dialogue of emancipation. We will then apply Guattari's notion of three ecologies (explored at AISC 2023) to consider how an emancipatory approach also nurtures the creation of holistic learning environments. This applies as much to the classroom as to contexts of professional learning, and we will consider how an emancipatory, ecological approach may revolutionize professional learning and development by shifting practice from knowledge transmission and technical expertise to emancipatory practice. The session will conclude with an engaging discussion and interactive design activity focused on nurturing emancipatory educational agoras in participants’ own settings.

Expected Outcomes:
• A provocation to think differently about understanding teacher-student dynamics and the role of the teacher
• Strategies for implementing intellectual emancipation in diverse educational contexts
• Innovative approaches to professional learning that prioritize authenticity and emancipation
• Practical designs for creating spaces that foster intellectual wellbeing and critical thinking
• A call to action for educators to become catalysts for intellectual emancipation