Only in Melbourne can you have a top of 44 degrees with a cool change and a massive drop in temperature so quickly.
Well – of course this phenomena is not restricted to Melbourne but there is a strong narrative about ‘4 seasons in one day’ here. I’ve grown up with it and I love it. In fact, I’m mindful of the fact that I love it – so in case I’m tempted to complain, a thought gets triggered about how much I love the ironic predictability of unpredictable weather. I kind of take that for granted now.
How then did this become to be the case? Not the weather – I’ve no idea about that. Rather, the idea that I can develop beliefs that inform the value of my lived experiences? Which came first – my subjective experience of the phenomena or my posture towards experiencing it?
And really – why should you care about my subjective experiences in the first place?
‘Position-Practices’ are referred to by Edwards (P 52) describing the epiphenomena of structures in a school. There is some discussion around Giddens use of the term and alternative views put forth.
For my purposes, I’m going to co-opt what I felt Gideon’s was alluding to – that is, structures can only exist as lived experiences. There may well be artifeacts as evidence of past actions rooted in codified structures – but structurisation can only exist as a social activity. Meta narratives that come to exist through interaction with social artefacts over time may well inform structures and agency – but only when enacted in a social context, laying dormant otherwise.
So in a school that wants to develop learner agency, the theory of structurisation is crucial.
For a system then, the implications are terrifying. Schools need to be social sites where structure and agency are emergent affordances of the site specific learning ecology.
From a system wide perspective – how does ‘the system’ develop actions which co-design learning ecologies which in turn afford the social construction of structures and agency?
The point of all of this of course is to give our kids the power to shape their world. So how does this as a vision for education gain currency in the national / state narrative around the project of state education in the first place? Or is it possible that such an enacted belief about education may well hold subversive qualities in and of itself?