The pedagogical power of "messiness" Staying with the joy and entanglement of a more participatory art teaching practice

Abstract

When we teach we have also the possibility to practice a personal philosophy of life. My belief in equality and the democratic production of knowledge has steered me towards the view that pedagogy is an entanglement. In practicing an entangled pedagogy, participation is to me the natural choice. In times of rapid change, fear of difference, social injustice, technical advances and non-­‐sustainable lifestyles it matters how we see issues of student autonomy, engagement, the production of knowledge, aesthetics and the role of the teacher. I believe that we need to talk more about how to be teachers who enable participation. We need to talk about what participation is and how we can create a more engaged pedagogy for our students and ourselves. By entangling ideas from postmodernist feminism of knowledge production, sociocultural theories of learning and phenomenological theories of embodied knowing this paper argues for a participatory art teaching practice whereby teachers and students alike have and take responsibility for progresses, quality and outcomes of the process. It argues for a participatory art teaching practice that dares to stay with the trouble of living in a world that is complicated and contradictory. Participatory art is used as a model for thinking about what participatory art teaching can look like. The three concepts of Entanglement, Engagement and Sensibility help to identify what kinds conditions need to be in place for genuine participation in art teaching settings to occur.