Sunday, October 15, 2006

The transformative yearbook

I am continuing to debrief the making of an integral, soulful yearbook (see previous posts)... now I wish to unpeel the metpahors behind what we are doing...

When we are located in the curriculum metaphor - curriculum as content to be delivered - then the yearbook is likely to reflect achievement of gaining that content or skills.

When we are situated in the curriculum metaphor - curriculum as experience or currere - then the yearbook is an opportunity to reflect on where we have come from and where we are going - a more personal as well as collective journey.... with more emphasis on process rather than product... and a greater emphasis on who we have become as a result of that process, rather than what we have done.

So what are the transformational aspects and opportunities of the yearbook? Transformation can refer to changes in cognitive frameworks or changes in ego or other development lines. Kegan (The Evolving Self: Problems and Process in Human Development, 1982) suggests that as we move from one ego stage to another, what owns us in the previous stage becomes something that we can see and name and disengage from. We are able to play with it and thus try on new roles in moving to the next ego stage.

So an example for our students in a socialised ego stage is that of mindlessly buying into student sub-cultures and being subject to peer pressure. Perhaps in moving out of this stage to more self-authoring one, where there is a sense of self-confidence in one's individuality, one needs to be able to name what has been "owning" one.

So part of a rite of passage is telling the stories of who we are/were, dis-identifying with them and thus being able to move on.

So the creation of the yearbook can be an opportunity for the participants to engage in this process, as well as something which might create praxis in others - help them be more playful about who they are and what they might be buying into. It could be something which allows students to both celebrate their journeys as well as shed some aspects of the self which took those journeys. It becomes then for the reader a cultural snapshot of that time when I "believed this" and "was this".

We produced a comic page called LOST which is all about identity crisis ... Who am I? Where do I belong? The main character tries on the different roles of student subcultures - nerds, jocks, musos, tenny-boopper plastics, goths... only to decide to be herself, realising that it might take a lifetime to work out what that is.

Was the very collaborative process of visioning this, photographing it and then coming up with the words a process of a transformation for my class? We had certainly talked about sub-cultures previously but I suspect that creating this product/performance about them embodies the learning... starts to speak to the deeper unconscious. It is more than just a critical analysis.

Will the readers experience something as well... will it sow seeds? Will they shrug it off because they have already been there, done that? Who knows, but hey it is fun thinking about the deeper potential of what we are doing as teachers.

And what could be in a yearbook that might illuminate the process of moving from the self-authoring stage to the next one which is more about plurality, care and meaning? Perhaps we already have exemplified this in the very process of creating it? Is it invisible to the reader and do we need to make it visible? Perhaps there is a role for The making of the yearbook which unpacks the dilemmas my students had to face and helps the reader to take this journey as well... but in our debriefing we are not quite there yet... perhaps part of transformation is not trying to take students through stages too quickly. We need to sit and live with what we have learnt for a while.

1 Comments:

At 11:11 AM, Blogger Heather Banks said...

Sue, your reflections are extremely enlightening and inspirational on both a personal and professional level. I love the educational rationale and pedagogy you have used with the Yearbook and believe your achievement validates your methodology. It is fantastic!! I was able to apply your processes and reasoning to a situation I am involved in - designing the structures and timetables for the PY10 Curriculum Framework and think your work exemplifies that if you want a result that reflects the present condition than you have to apply postmodern thinking to enable new and creative solutions. Thank you for sharing your journey. The students were very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with you on this project.

 

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