#flatlessness

A few weeks ago, we had the awesome pleasure of hearing Nick speak at Miami University (OH) and then visiting with him afterward. It was wonderful to be in his presence, catch up, and chat about all sorts of things. Plus, crashing the conference was fun, too! 

Before the winter break and during the end of the semester hustle and bustle, we received word that our ICQI proposal was accepted. Now the real work begins. Our full abstract is below. We’ll keep you posted on process. Hope to see you there! AOL

While our proposal was not accepted for AERA, we await word on whether or not we’ll be presenting at ICQI. For the ICQI proposal, we focused on one of the “findings” from our AERA proposal--the way in which the team reading of Unflattened caused us to question, dismantle, rebuild, and (again) destabilize our individual educational philosophies. I’ve been thinking about this since I first started reading the book. I’ve been asking: Where do educational philosophies come from? How do we know what we think we know about teaching and learning? Is every educational idea simply a remix? My sense is we’ll keep chasing these questions, as the answers are elusive. Anyways, our ICQI proposal is titled: A Trioethnographic Methods Derive: Educational Philosophies Indelibly Unflattening. I like words, as my flatlessness “teammates” like to say. Can’t you tell?

So, the AERA reviewers were split in their receptions of the work. Two loved it; two didn’t love it. It’s always fascinating and frustrating to “read” the feedback. By “read” I mean look underneath the words and imagine the framings influencing the reviewers’ positions on the work. The take away? Our methods are sound (which is interesting because we’ve been kind of aimlessly wandering around all of the ideas), and the work is important in advancing what we know about trioethnography, but we must situate the process and the findings against/inside the broader cultural landscapes within which are are working (and thinking). I think we’re up for it. 

The prospect of presenting at ICQI has been energy-giving. If accepted, we plan to make a comic (handout), write a paper (paper), and engage in some kind of theatrical reading of that paper (presentation). It won’t be boring, we promise. 

As of right now, we’re actively doing nothing. Well, we’re just not doing things on purpose. Any “work” that happens is random. The co/team-reading persists. My pleasure reading has consisted of tagging along with my “teammates.” For example, this, this, this, this, and this. And I’ve also tried to keep up with what Nick’s class is reading (e.g., this and this). It’s been marvelous. All of these works are poignant for different reasons. And if I look closely, I can see a lineage stemming from Unflattening (topic) and our experiences of team reading it (method). It feels like a class I’m taking, and enjoying a lot. That the team reading persists has “finding”-like qualities, which I think we might be able to situate in observations/literature/extant knowledge about the “pull” of such a thing/phenomenon/community/sensation/intellectual endeavor within a certain cultural context. Like a book club? A thought club? We’ll see what happens.