Page 116 - To know things we have to have the world inside us

Professional Leaning as Relations.

Chris Celada and Margo Hobba

It has been close to 15 months since we (Chris and Margo) last met with the
teacher~researchers in New Zealand. Re-acquainting ourselves with the documentation from the
project has been seductive. Images have awoken memories, interestingly different for each of us.
We have re-lived many occasions, "seeing" them again, discovering hidden facets and ties.

Loris Malaguzzi reminds us that “heads and hearts and hands have been separated by
the school and the culture” (1996). For both REANZ and for us, the contradictions between these
values and the dominant epistemology that underpins professional learning for teachers has
raised serious questions. How might it be possible to create a context where educators can

experience the ‘head, heart, hand’ pedagogy of relations, seeking a deeper understanding, as a way
to change practice? This disconnect became a challenge, a gateway to possibilities.

We made a deliberate choice to place relations at the heart of this project: a choice
grounded on/in our growing awareness of the interconnected nature of our world and the
multiple and interrelated ways in which we respond to, interpret and create it.

In seeking to become more sensitive to the understanding that “the human species does
not exist without relationships; words do not exist, performances do not exist, sensations do not
exist nor thought and interpretations. Things and subjects exist not because of their
relationship to one another but because they are a relationship”, (Hoyuelos 2013, 152) we offered
a professional learning experience which attempted to hold the material and non-material, mind
and body, theory and practice, imagination, emotion and rationality together.

We wondered what contexts we could create that would have the potential to hold many
points of view and many life experiences; to incorporate and make visible different learning
strategies; to generate new ways of seeing; and to engender a different attitude to
things~objects~materials and ourselves - “a relational sensitivity that is fed by empthy”
(Vecchi 2010, 34).

We decided to start by coming~to~know ‘found materials’…

This choice was founded on our conviction that professional learning about the pedagogy of
relations must be relational in nature. It must involve the hands and body, things themselves and
our perceptions of and experiences with them.

The choice to place relations at the heart of the project did not turn out to be a limitation.
Nor did our choice to propose to begin the research by coming~to~know
something as ‘common’ as found materials. For some time, we have been astounded by our

growing awareness, both from our own hands on research and through our reading, that when
we begin by noticing small, with the intention of coming~to~know, of building relationships, we
discover other connections which are sometimes surprising. This phenomenon has been
acknowledged by many great thinkers. The Scottish American naturalist John Muir (1838 -
1914) wrote “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything in the

universe.” And the English poet William Blake (1757 - 1827) wrote “To see a World in a Grain of
Sand…” Gregory Bateson described this pattern of patterns as a metapattern.

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