Simple, Dark, and Deep: Photographic Theorizations of As-Yet Schools

Abstract

Within the space of this collective image/text article, 18 photographic imagemakers and 4 respondents consider deeply and dialogically a quote from William Ayers' 2016 book Teaching with Conscience in an Imperfect World: An Invitation. The resulting constellation of images and words (1) realizes a space within which works of art, specifically photographs, operate as centers of meaning to generate educational implications, and (2) theorizes a pedagogy that resists unilateral prescriptions and is instead anchored around openness, expansion, and individualization. The paper begins with a few short pieces from Sarah Pfohl, including an overview of Ayers' book and ideas from writings on progressive education, object-based teaching and learning, and close/slow looking to position works of art as sites of rich meaning. While contemporary schooling often drives toward monolithic, numerical representations of the learners in its care, the article employs postdigital gestures to argue that learners have more in common with works of art than numbers, and thus, attention to artworks can open valuable implications for teaching and learning. The diverse group of images that follow offer an emerging portrait of teaching practice as a set of constantly shifting constellations moving across deep time and space from the intensely specific to the wide. Four texts think more about schools, education, and art. Finally, there is a postscript from Bill Ayers himself.

Feminist Postdigital Inquiry in the Ruins of Pandemic Universities

“…It conceptualises Arab women students' practices in the postdigital condition and how Arab women have responded to the rapid technological shift to online delivery of education. Importantly, it extends visual theorising (Mirzoeff 2006;Pfohl et al 2021). Inquiry into scopic regimes builds on the spirit of earlier feminisms, such as the pragmatism of Jane Addams or Julia Haywood Cooper and salvaging of Seigfried (1996).…”

“…The questions of the theoretical study ask, how can we conceptualise Arab women students' practices in the postdigital condition and how have Arab women responded to the rapid technological shift to online delivery of education? The mashrabiyya feminist postdigital framework develops visual inquiry (Pfohl et al 2021). However, this is not simplistically representational but reflexive of the challenges of interpretation, pixilation and flickers of knowledge.…”

“…Fourth, to address the first research question and consider how this icon relates to Arab women's practices in the postdigital condition, the icon of the model is a double object-subject. This emerges through specifically postdigital visual theorising (Pfohl et al 2021). It suggests the avatar is both classic Hollywood starlet and chic, cosmopolitan Muslimah (Baulch and Pramiyanti 2018).…”

“…Alternatively, mashrabiyya geometry mediates the gaze through cosmic patterns of light, concealing the observer and screening them off within the private realm (Belting 2011b). Pfohl et al (2021) image/text article develops a postdigital 'pedagogy of pedagogy that resists unilateral prescriptions and is instead anchored around openness, expansion and individualisation'. Pfohl and the collective of imagemakers and authors explore how learners have more in common with works of art than numbers while asserting that aesthetics opens theorising of learning and teaching.…”

“…Pfohl and the collective of imagemakers and authors explore how learners have more in common with works of art than numbers while asserting that aesthetics opens theorising of learning and teaching. Pfohl et al (2021) visual article develops the citing of images as central to postdigital educational theorising. Critical pedagogist Giroux ( 2004) also has a strong belief in visual culture's potential to rupture traditional education's orthodoxies and rules.…”