Abstract
Introduction
Nearly 2 years ago, still heavy with the weight of the shooting deaths of 14 of their classmates and three school officials, high school students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, flanked by peers across the country, walked out of school and into the streets to protest gun violence and to advocate for increased mental health services in schools. Today, Black Lives Matter banners swing between the hands of students of all ages as they take to the streets in protest of the seemingly unending racial violence and racial inequities that play out across our country. Student nonviolent protests are not new. They hearken back in particular to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Like then, school and the streets continue to be separated by invisible lines. School continues to be a place of seatwork, textbooks, and exams. Streets, in contrast, pulse with palpable energy. Here is where students engage the world.
The three of us work in the field of teacher education. Combined, we share more than 50 years of experience in K–12 and university contexts. During our time in various classrooms, as students, as teachers, as supervisors of soon-to-be teachers, and as researchers, we have experienced the pendulum swing many times over from progressive pedagogies to banking methodologies (Freire, 1970), and everything in between. More recently, in our work with preservice and inservice teachers, we have grappled with how to prepare future teachers and support current teachers in bringing community into classrooms and classrooms into communities, particularly when the breath of standardized exams and scripted curriculum is warm on the backs of teachers and omnipresent in the schools within which they teach.
We believe experiential pedagogies matter, that these pedagogies have the potential to bridge the gap between schools and streets, that they are the means by which all our students can be both challenged and supported, be seen and heard, and be leaders and world changers. However, while experiential education has the transformative potential, how it gets taken up in schools and classrooms at the K–12 and teacher education levels is often lackluster. There are too few examples of what transformative experiential education looks like when centered in K–12 classrooms and the preparation of teachers. In this special issue, we sought studies that defied the “Disneyfication” of experiential education, studies that reflected teachers and students engaging experiential education as a “deeper pedagogy” (Roberts, 2005) that moved far beyond the “techno-rational” whereby experiential education is simply a tool bound by time, place, and function.
Many of the articles in this issue coalesce around a consideration of the potential of experiential education as a way to surface and center voice: that of teachers, of students, and of community members. In an effort to elevate the significance of voice, we shift in this editorial to a conversation between the three of us that reflects our individual and collective voices as we consider what the articles prompted us to consider as educators working in this space. Here we discuss central themes of equity, voice, and stillness and consider implications for the future of experiential education in schools and classrooms.
Centering Equity in Experiential Education
I wanted to start out by saying that one of the things I appreciate about this set of articles is that they really remind us to move beyond business as usual—to consider new and critical forms of experiential education—to consider who and what gets centered, and who and what too often gets left out. The authors prompt us to ask questions: of ourselves, of our practices. For example, Ohito, Lyiscott, Green and Wilcox’s article This Moment is the Curriculum: Equity, Inclusion, and Collectivist Critical Curriculum Mapping for Study Abroad in the COVID-19 Era and Yomantas’ article, New Possibilities for Culturally Responsive Experiential Education in Teacher Education, both focus on study abroad programs (SAP) as experiential education. Both articles include a critical examination of the traditions of SAP, reflecting some of the ideas raised in the article by Grain et al. (2019) in this journal on international service learning initiatives in particular. Ohito et al. here ask us to consider what it would mean to move SAPs into equitable and inclusive spaces, to unsettle these practices in ways that really and truly shift understandings of privilege and race and equity. That’s a question I want us to consider across all experiential education work more broadly: what does it mean for EE to be critical and equitable and inclusive? What is the potential for individuals? For communities? For the world?
Jocelyn, you are so right about these articles prompting us to step out of the worn paths that we’ve walked along for so many years. We’re having this conversation in December 2020, a time in which business is not “as usual” for schools or many other aspects of our lives. We’ve had a lot of zoom meetings to prepare this issue. In just about each of our meetings, we’ve talked about this notion of centering equity within the field of experiential education. I feel like this centering of equity is really at the core of what ignites our passion for doing this work. Right? This centering of equity is a thread that weaves throughout each of the articles in this issue. Take for example, Ricks, Meerts-Brandsma, and Sibthorp’s article, Experiential Education and Self-Authorship: An Examination of Students Enrolled in Immersion High Schools. From experiences in the semester school, the teens in the study realized their own untested voices that prompted them towards self-authorship. Their work speaks back to the conversations we’ve had over the years about experiential education helping individuals find their internal compass.
I agree, Cheryl, that experiential learning has great potential to support learners to find that internal guide which is a critical first step to imagining a different world. I also see the articles in this issue highlighting experiential learning as a catalyst for living into Dewey’s (1916) vision of school as a living community that prepares students for active citizenship. Sara Gartland’s article, Exploring Elementary Student Perceptions of Experiential Learning within Critical Service-Learning, examines how critical service-learning not only supports greater self-efficacy in elementary aged students but also elevates a sense of community within the classroom. The classroom community serves as the space to critically examine and also experience how to incorporate the voices and perspectives of others in a pluralistic society. Dewey’s dream of school serving as a democratic testing ground feels as urgent as ever.
Centering Voice
I think we’ve come to see that this centering of equity may potentially lead to fore-fronting, or centering, the concept of voice. The pieces in this issue prompt me to consider not just the voices that are often the loudest or the voices that are often silenced, but how I use my own voice. In particular, Ohito et al’s article shares how they listened to their own voices to center the voices of “others” from their work theorizing curriculum mapping for study abroad during the Covid-19 era. Similarly, Gartland’s article is a powerful demonstration of when student voices are amplified, they can be heard more “deeply” both in the classroom and in published research. So, what is it about experiential education that leads to this centering of voice?
When I think about experiential education, I think about how often the focus is on the “doing,” the physicality of the experience. But I wonder now about whether (or how?) voice in and of itself is experiential. I think of the power of voice–and oral storytelling, for example, which is briefly mentioned in Yomantas’ article. My inclination is to see voice as a stepping stone, as a first step to action. But what if voice is action in and of itself, where “dialogues about social change” (Warren, 2019) become dialogues as change. Sayings like “use your voice” and “speak up” are running through my head right now. I know the articles do not articulate that voice, in and of itself, is enough but I wonder how, if or when voice could be. I guess the question is enough for what, or to what end. What would it mean if we consider voice–using voice–as experiential as, say, engaging in an Outward Bound trip? Hmm . . . is an Outward Bound experience an expression and instantiation of voice? Is all experiential education essentially voice: voice in the traditional sense, or rather embodied voice? Just thinking aloud here. What I appreciate is that the authors’ incorporation of voice has really inspired—and complicated—my thinking in this area!
Jocelyn, the disequilibrium, or maybe it’s a disquieting (Breunig, 2019), that you describe is exactly what has inspired me too about this collection of articles. Your description of an embodied voice connects with what Williams explores in the article, Horses Preparing Superintendent Candidates for the Leadership Arena, on equine assisted learning as an avenue for leadership development for aspiring superintendents. In this study the candidates are offered a unique opportunity to experiment with an embodied voice as they communicate with horses that are deeply attuned to both verbal and non-verbal cues. Williams describes how equine assisted learning offers immediate feedback to participants including the awareness of any incongruence between thought and action. I am reminded that merely using one’s voice is not the ultimate goal but serves as a crucial component of developing self-awareness on the pathway toward critical consciousness. This reminds me of Friere’s (1970) insistence that speaking and living truth are inseparable: “There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus to speak a true word is to transform the world” (p. 87).
Centering the Stillness
Can I shift the conversation slightly to another side of the coin, so to speak: the concept of silence and stillness? Like many, I’ve experienced more silence during this time of COVID-19 isolation than I have in a long time. I’ll often go for walks around dusk and notice how quiet the streets are, for example, when usually they are buzzing with rush hour traffic. I remember seeing many photographs on social media early in the pandemic of the empty streets of New York, for example. That silence—quiet, stillness–reminds me of the reflective element of experiential education that too often gets overlooked, again subsumed by the sexiness of the “action,” the doing. And yet, as we all know, reflection, like Dewey (1938) reminds us, is a central part of the learning process.
I so appreciate that the articles in this issue bring us back to that reflective space. Yomantas, for example, shares a story of one of her participants who realizes in and through the EE experience the importance of “waiting to be invited, standing back, and learning from others in the process.” Similarly, Ohito et al. talk about the learning that they experienced in and through their reflection on SAP. They write, “thus, I invited our group to utilize stillness to activate transcendence and spirituality. To do this is to rely on the movement of the moment.” It seems to me a similar reflectiveness gets activated by the participants in Willams’ article. The horses with whom the participants interact with in the equine assisted learning opportunity act as the inspiration for the participants’ “pause.” The educational leaders involved in the experience were required to stop and consider their enactment of leadership as they struggled to “lead” the horses. They had to step back, literally and figuratively, in the arena. That stepping back, that stillness, that pause, is far from simple. Often, it’s quite uncomfortable.
I have an increasing awareness that this uncomfortable pause seems to be a significant part of a justice orientation. It is interesting that experiential learning and social justice primarily evoke images of action and yet, these articles highlight the value of stepping back and taking time for silence. The pandemic created an unparalleled global pause that curtailed the actions of so many but also simultaneously spurred unprecedented social action. These articles speak to me, as a white person, about the need to pause, listen and step back before jumping into action. This realization is theoretically disruptive as it does not align with Kolb’s (1984) model of placing action as the starting point for learning. It is also uncomfortable personally as I am primed to take action given the great needs that I am increasingly aware of around me. Ohito and her colleagues calls for the decentering of Euro/American worldviews in the curriculum. Perhaps this decentering is initiated not with action but through the conscious act of stillness.
Jocelyn, I’ve heard you consider the idea of critical experiential education. Do you think that’s what we’re talking about here? We know there is a depth of work around critical service learning. But, what about critical experiential education? I feel like that’s what we’ve been circling around through the preparation of this issue and the topic that Breunig (2005) engaged many years ago when she sought to bring experiential theory and critical pedagogy into conversation with one another. Each of the articles in this issue speak to some element of what critical experiential education looks like in schools and schools of education.
If we shift to a notion of critical experiential education, stillness seems to be at the center of it. It’s as if the stillness is what grounds us. To me, this stillness speaks to the soulful nature of experiential education that points back into our inner selves. Itin’s (1999) work talks about the ways experiential education challenges and engages the individual. He argues that this happens in overlapping ways: “intellectually, emotionally, socially, politically, spiritually, and physically.” So, is it here in the stillness that we find the space to engages our spiritual core and undergo inner engagement? This seems to go beyond trite reflection and engage the whole being in ways that make a difference. Might this inner engagement lead to that grand passion being inside each of us that Hahn talks about (James, 1980)?
Final Thoughts/Steps Forward
We write this piece as school buildings across our nation are still. Students are home, learning remotely. When we are on the other side of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are going to be presented with a new landscape for teaching and learning. This new landscape holds the potential for us to traverse new grounds in education instead of falling back into the business as usual. The articles in this special issue offer voice and perspective that could help map our steps forward.
As we coedited this issue, our discussions offered an opportunity to experience the critical reflection called for by the authors. Our unfolding dialog allowed us to hear a central message. The authors point, in different ways, to the need for an intentional balance of action and reflection. hooks (1994) speaks to just this balance in the assertion that an engaged pedagogy verifies in practice what we know in consciousness. Centering voice and the intentional practice of stillness illustrate how acting and reflecting, when grounded in a critical stance, are inseparable experiences on the journey to an equity and justice orientation. Our collaborative work highlighted the reality that a social justice orientation in experiential education practice is not an outcome to achieve but an ongoing unearthing through a lived reflective experience in the world. Tervalon and Murray-Garcia’s (1998) concept of cultural humility captures the kind of active engagement and lifelong self-evaluation required of a critical stance.
Through this collection of articles, we are implored to see that the moment is now to make this critical shift. This unique moment must be engaged and critically reflected upon. Parker Palmer’s (2011) description of a tragic gap in Healing the Heart of Democracy feels as salient as ever. Palmer names the tragic gap as what separates the hard realities around us from what we know is possible. These articles signal a way forward and reveal foundational pieces of the bridge across this gap if we can truly listen. The uncomfortable pause and dissonance we are experiencing in this moment offer an unprecedented awareness as well as an exceptional opportunity. We encourage readers to listen to the voices herein and perhaps respond first with stillness as a critically courageous way forward.