Pursuing Questions
Welcome to Pursuing Questions: Imprints of inquiry, possibilities for play, and provocations for living. This is a podcast, formerly known as The Playful Podcast, is for those cultivating an ethos towards mutual flourishing, healing, learning and living well throughout the human experience; and that is the vision for this space. Guided by 5 values and 3 intentions, what might be encounter?
Intentions:
Imprints of inquiry: I wish to capture traces of my journey, because I believe it is worthy of being studied. critiqued, and expanded upon. I aim to cultivate my own awareness, reflection, and empowerment in moving my practice. What I say here is a landmark in time; not meant to be absolute truth, rather, to be interpreted within the context discussed. Podcasting is a tool for collecting and archiving pedagogical moments, thought, decisions, and practice.
Possibilities for play: I strive to expand the potential of parallel practices, by "going public" with incomplete ideas to seek feedback, to embrace questioning and being questioned, and to practice sharing knowledge generously. I believe that through knowledge sharing we are nudged towards improvising and playing with new ideas. Much of what I share is in a light-hearted spirit of saying "yes" to what is offered my way, and responding as best I can from a playful place.
Provocations for living: I take up long-term inquiries about fostering playful dispositions, pursuing human and more-than-human well-being, mutual flourishing, reflecting on practice as a facilitator, broadening relationships with knowledge, highlighting the value to revisiting experiences, playing with ideas, and unraveling pedagogy to inspect its ideals, protagonists, and assumptions. What I share is meant to be generative, to activate possibility and life itself by provoking, expanding, and spiralling that which is most compelling within a pursuit.
Values:
Curiousity: curiousity is my compass. I ask questions and work from a place of pursuing curiosity over compliance, normalcy, or or acceptance. I believe in living the questions, now.
Interconnection: Although I often prefer the term interdependence, my value of interconnection is what guides me towards pursuing connection, always, and lead through connection. I value serendipity, linking ideas, relationships, knowing that we are all connected in multitudes.
Reciprocity: I believe in sharing knowledge generously, making thinking available and accessible, and aiming to live in a world where we receive and give openly. I believe in modelling the kind of offerings I hope others to generate as well.
Wisdom: I believe in entering into embodied relationship with wisdom, as lived, rather than consuming and producing facts or information. I consider lived experience and generational knowledge to be as valued as reliable data, and as such, this podcast is not trying to elevate my work to a hard science; rather, declare its legitimacy as living wisdom and insight.
Upwards Spirals: Joy. Flow. Play. Revisiting. Repetition. Deepening. "Again"....I believe in pursuing the paths towards, and ingredients that, sustain upwards spirals of flourishing, passion, pursuit, and drive. Our nervous systems are hard-wired to detect threat and our instinct is to survive, and as a society we have put so many resources into correcting the undesirable. To compensate for some of these patterns, I believe we need intentional rituals of gratitude and generativity, and a practice of studying what "works". To do so, I believe in starting from a place of what "is," which is so often what "was" and what "will be": the patterns in our thought, behaviour, and emotion that cause us to wonder, repeat, and pursue. Noticing and attuning to our own spirals can support deepened intention, awareness, and joyful pursuit grounded in what we already know, value, and have affinity for.
Pursuing Questions
Where are the foreclosures of research and the openings of pedagogy?
In this episode, I capture an ah-ha moment where I challenge the all-knowing assumptions of research by claiming its limitations, and instead leaning into the potential of pedagogical inquiry. I reflect on the constraints I sense as a researcher, and the freedom I can embrace within pedagogy. I briefly reflect on my graduate school research to highlight how research feels close-ended, contained and methodological (in order to be reliable and reproducible) whereas pedagogy, while still being as transparent as possible, feels more open-ended and liberating while still generating knowledge.Join me if you're up for feeling empowered as an educator-as-researcher!
Welcome to pursuing questions.
Imprints of inquiry,
possibilities for play, and
provocations for living. This
podcast is for those cultivating
an ethos towards mutual
flourishing, healing, learning,
and living well throughout the
human experience.
Here we linger at the
intersections of reflection and
revisiting in hopes of nudging
ourselves into intentional,
innovative, and reclaimed ways
of being, thinking and imagining
within our lifelong learning
journeys. I'm your host, Kim
Barton, and I am living, loving,
learning, and playing in Guelph
ON the city known as Two Rivers
and the lands traditionally
governed by the Dish with One
Spoon Covenant. Join me in the
quest within the questions I'm
excited to wonder, wonder,
marvel, and play alongside you.
Huh.
So I just had a little aha
moment about this idea of.
Revisiting and unraveling the
word pedagogy, I've noticed
that.
In educational spaces, sometimes
research and academia is really.
Kind of positioned in this
hierarchical way where like
research is like the ultimate
source of knowledge and anyone
who has like a reputation in
research or is a researcher or
is an academic seems to like
hold more.
Like their findings or ideas
hold more like merit or value
than those who are educators.
And what I love about how does
learning happen is that it talks
about educators researcher and I
think that that idea is also
really present in Reggio Emilia.
Pedagogies taken up as this sort
of constant questioning wherein
if a question can be asked about
it, then it's pedagogical. And
so that means that that's
everything. Not just sort of
like the content that is being
learned or the approaches to
teaching, but everything within
relationships that can be
questioned and that allows us to
pursue inquiries of some kind.
And what I find so interesting
about this is that I've fallen
into this idea for sure of sort
of the researcher being the
ultimate knowledge producer or
knowledge holder, where as if
like educators are positioned
as.
Like these pedagogical pursuers,
then I actually think that like
they become the ones, they are
the ones who actually.
Generate knowledge.
Based on literal like relational
learning experiences, not just
circumstances that are created
in sort of laboratory settings
or even like in qualitative
research where it's sort of one
time interview type scenarios
that's very different than
educator and learner
relationships that sustain for.
Everywhere from a number of
weeks and months to years and
lifetimes.
So back to my aha moment. I was
thinking about some of the
research that I was doing for my
masters thesis and how I was
privileged enough to conduct my
research in an interdisciplinary
department. I started the
journey of my current topic from
a very different theoretical and
epistemological position than
where I ended up at the end of
it. And I actually came kind of
like full circle to my beliefs
and values around the concept of
years ago.
And that I was able to kind of
find my way back to, which again
signals the importance of sort
of spiralized experiences and
insights and this idea of
returning and being too wise to
know that learning is ever
complete. So in this revisiting
I.
I realized sort of the limits of
research and kind of challenged
this idea of like the researcher
being the ultimate knowledge
keeper or holder or producer
because it was actually my
knowledge of pedagogy. That
allowed me to move the research
in a way that I felt most
aligned with.
What educators were telling me
in my interviews.
Um.
Yeah. So without going into it
too much, I just want to
highlight the fact that like.
This research kind of um, it
didn't follow a linear path by
any means.
What I'm about to say is just
coming from a place of I'm about
to do my defence and I'm feeling
like I might be questioned on
sort of my I'm can't think of
the right word but like my sort
of looseness when it comes to
following like pre established
research protocols. But my
response to that is that I asked
a question that had never been
asked before that I had
certainly never been asked in
this way or to this population
or at this sort of moment in
time or in this context. So
therefore how can I claim to
know what form the answer will
take where the process.
Generating this knowledge might
take me or move me.
If anything, my program in
interdisciplinary research and
sciences has taught me that it's
when you think interdisciplinary
and when you transcend the
boundaries of disciplines in
academia, you also push against
the boundaries of methodology
and theory and ideal and
ideology and and and even
existing, of course existing
policies and sort of processes
both within research and beyond.
And so you you could, as I did,
end up moving through processes
that have never been done
before, that aren't comfortable,
that aren't linear, and that
aren't necessarily aligned
ontologically when you're kind
of intersecting. For me it's
intersecting the world of
working within early learning
and childcare and adult
Those ideas may not be
inherently aligned, even
epistemologically so.
How can I claim to know at the
beginning of my research what
conducting it might actually
look like? And if I were to
remain true to the plan that I
had in the 1st place, what would
have been lost?
Oh, and I guess like the other
layer to that is that because I
conducted qualitative research
and I was the human being behind
the analysis. I conducted the
analysis from my, you know, from
my knowledge of being a
researcher and using utilizing
methods. But also I can't help
but bring my pedagogical leader
knowledge to that as well. And
so this made me realize that
what I think is limiting about
research is that it contains us
to this predetermined plan, this
question that we asked months or
years ago and this proposal that
we've had.
Approved long before we're
actually implementing it. But
what I find so empowering about
pedagogy is that it's moved me
to believe that when we take up
an inquiry, we don't know where
we're going to go. We don't know
where it's going to lead us to,
what it's going to feel like,
what new knowledge might be
generated.
And what new ways of of?
Viewing the process or
understanding reality or values
that are held may become
unearthed.
So.
Pedagogy and research are not
just necessarily the reiteration
of existing knowledge, but they
are both processes by which
knowledge is generated and
subjects are formed. So in
saying that, I was initially
trained in sort of.
Psychological Science and Kind
of Objective Reality Positivism,
if you Know these terms.
Great. And if not, they
basically just mean typically
what we think about when we when
it comes to research, is it
being able to be like sort of
like generalizable to other
populations, recreatable, valid
and reliable I think.
Now as I've moved more towards
becoming sort of qualitative in
nature and thinking relationally
and you know seeing the world
from this sort of more.
Critical realism or even sort of
like subjective reality type
place. Um.
I really view research more. I
care more about the
trustworthiness and conceptual
depth of research than I do
about following a predetermined
procedure.
I find it interesting that we,
like uphold laboratory studies
which don't allow us to take up
exploratory inquiries. In my
case, I explored a question.
And aim to convey my
transparency around the process
by which I pursued the answer,
even if I didn't find the answer
through having very reflexive.
Descriptions claiming my
position on this subject matter,
bringing forth and making
visible all of the decisions I
made along the way and then kind
of entangling my findings or my
conclusions with with previous
research and lack of previous
research. And I think that's the
essence of pedagogy too. We are,
sort of.
Taking up an inquiry or a
question and making visible or
available are thinking our
wonderings are questions, our
uncertainties and not
necessarily like I guess
pursuing the question not so
much to find the answer but to
kind of.
Stay with the lack of closure
that allows us to remain curious
about a topic even when we think
we're getting closer to what is
most meaningful or valuable
about a specific topic.
The essence of this is that as
educators, we should feel
empowered to not just constantly
introduce existing knowledge to
whomever we're learning with who
we're in a learning relationship
with.
We should feel empowered that we
are actually knowledge
generators all the time, and
that we are curious not only
about the content that we're
exploring together or the
concepts, but also the processes
by which all humans learn and
what it means to attempt to
teach or attempt to create the
conditions where learning is
possible and comfortable.
I guess my final thought is that
the bigger question that aligns
educators, pedagogical leaders,
researchers is that we're all
curious about what's possible,
what is possible when we gather
AS.
Communities to learn together
and to pursue, you know that
sense of community together,
in the context of being in
relationship together and what
do we learn along the way?
I guess this is a short and
sweet episode, just sort of a
random snippet in time where it
had a little aha moment. I'm so
curious, as always, to see how
this lands with you. Please feel
invited to reach out to me on
social media at Playful
Pedagogies, and in the meantime
stay playful and always ask
questions.