ICS Seminar Series – Megan Watkins
Date: Thursday 2 June 2016
Time: 11.30am–1pm
Venue: EB.2.02, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus
Megan Watkins
(Institute for Culture and Society)
Can Space Teach? Pedagogies of Social Order
Abstract
Space, and it various permutations, affects bodies but to what extent does it teach? This paper explores the pedagogic dimensions of space. Engaging critically with phenomenological accounts of body/space relations, it examines how certain aspects of space – what here are termed non-human didactics – equip the body with skills that have application in terms of a broad notion of social order requisite for cohabitation and the sharing of social space. As Theodore Schatzki (2002, 1) points out, 'Order is a basic dimension of any domain of entities'. He foregrounds the notion of Zusammenhang or 'hanging together' as a crucial element of social life. Such 'hanging together', however, does not just happen; it involves individuals acquiring certain ways of being, to navigate social space and to operate as part of a larger whole. Importantly, this process of acquisition is not just a matter of learning, it also involves teaching but understood in broad terms as pertaining to the many ways in which, as Raymond Williams (1966, 15) explains, 'the whole environment, its institutions and relationships, actively and profoundly teaches'. This paper explores these processes. It focuses on the neglect of pedagogy within theorisations of space and draws on examples from within the institutional space of the school to exemplify their role in the spatial formation of social order.
Biography
Megan Watkins is Associate Professor in the School of Education and a member of Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. Her research interests lie in the cultural analysis of education and the formation of human subjectivities. In particular, her work engages with issues of pedagogy, embodiment, discipline and affect and the interrelation of these to human agency. These interests mesh with her exploration of the impact of cultural diversity on education and the ways in which different cultural practices can engender divergent habits and dispositions to learning. Megan's recent books include: Discipline and Learn: Bodies, Pedagogy and Writing (2012), Disposed to Learn: Schooling, Ethnicity and the Scholarly Habitus with Greg Noble (2013) and with Greg Noble and Catherine Driscoll (eds), Cultural Pedagogies and Human Conduct (2015).
