Generating disruptive pedagogy in informal spaces: learning with both the head and the heart.

Abstract

The author's positionality and situatedness is that of a scholar-activist, interested both in the generation/production of knowledge, and the application of knowledge, especially towards social justice and equality. The author also writes from a de-colonial perspective in challenging ways of knowing and ways of being; to generate what has been called “epistemologies of the South” (Sousa Santos, 2014). In using Global Youth Work (GYW) as a pedagogic approach and conceptual framework, the author will illustrate how participatory spaces for the deconstruction and reconstruction of ways of knowing and being, can be generated; how the classroom can be taken into the real world and how the real world can be brought into the classroom. Using a range of places and spaces, spanning the classroom, real-life situations, within communities, and across the streets and museums, the author will share how participatory learning methodologies are constantly employed to generate curiosity, maintain curriculum currency and make learning transformative. Drawing on his writing, teaching, practice and research over the last twenty years, across a number of countries and continents, the author will position participatory approaches and methodologies of learning as disruptive and a panacea to aspire to, as learning and teaching then becomes deeper, rather than surface; and transformative (Freire, 1972) instead of “banking”.