Intra-generational education: Imagining a post-age pedagogy

Abstract

This article discusses the idea of intra-generational education. Drawing on Braidotti's nomadic subject and Barad's conception of agency we consider what intra-generational education might look like ontologically, in the light of critical posthumanism, in terms of natureculture world, nomadism and a vibrant indeterminacy of knowing subjects. In order to explore the idea of intra-generationalism and its pedagogical implications we introduce four concepts: homelessness, agelessness, playfulness and wakefulness. These may appear improbable in the context of education policy making today, but they are born of theorising our practices in the age-transgressive field of Philosophy with Children. We argue that these concepts help to re-configure intra-generational relations, ways of being and becoming. They express the longing, corporeality and visionary epistemology of nomadic enquiry. These inventions express a non-hierarchical philosophy of immanence. We draw some tentative conclusions about educational practices more generally.

Towards a post-age picturebook pedagogy

“…Of crucial importance to reformulating the picturebook pedagogy in light of its widening readerships is how to conceptualise child and adult. A post-age pedagogy is to challenge and even subvert a linear understanding of life and rigid age categorisations (Burman, 2008 ; Haynes and Murris, 2017 ; Lee and Motzkau, 2011 ). However, age is much more than a label.…”

“…The various uses that picturebooks can be put to in child education aside, this narrative form is also attracting widening readerships that include adults. Haynes and Murris note that “contemporary picturebook artists have long since breached the confinement of picturebooks to a particular age group and the genre has become increasingly sophisticated and taken more seriously” ( 2017 , p. 3). Beckett devotes a monograph to the discussion of what she calls “crossover picturebooks”, by which she means those picturebooks that transcend the boundaries between traditional children’s literature and adult literature ( 2012 ).…”

“…Thus, the conflict between ageism and age-transgressive practices may become more intensified in the area of picturebooks compared with other forms of children’s literature. Following the step of Joanna Haynes and Karin Murris who envision a post-age pedagogy as a thought experiment to loosen the boundaries of age-based expectation ( 2017 ), this project aims to provide some tentative thoughts that may allow a post-age picturebook pedagogy to take shape through a case study of child and adult readers’ responses to picturebooks.…”

Taking Age Out of Play: Children's Animistic Philosophising Through a Picturebook

“…Picturebooks are central to this enquiry and as post-age, philosophical texts have brought these ideas and experiences into being. 25 They can constitute a kind of curriculum for intragenerational education. In humans, play is most often associated with the early part of life, with being childlike.…”

“…38 Elsewhere, we explore Massumi's fascinating exploration of play and how it involves putting the human back on the animal continuum, without erasing difference between human animals and nonhuman animals, but resisting prioritising identity. 39 For example, it is often argued that what children like to do "naturally" is to immerse in fantasy play which imitates the "real" adult world. Children often transgress boundaries between animate and inanimate, and thereforeclaim cognitive developmentalists -they are not yet sufficiently developed.…”