Guest editorial: Methodology in the field of public pedagogy

Citation

Charman, K. (2024), "Guest editorial: Methodology in the field of public pedagogy", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-01-2024-163

This special edition of Qualitative Research Journal addresses methodology in the field of public pedagogy. There have been multiple calls for attention in public pedagogy research to move from the strategies used by the professional pedagogue to attention to the learner. Research in the field of public pedagogy has focussed on making “knowledge” available to the public. This ongoing collapse of public pedagogy and public curriculum requires a critical analysis of why the focus on the public curriculum subsumes pedagogy. This collapse has largely been undertaken by the research done by critical theorists in the area of public pedagogy. This work is important, but it maintains the focus on public curriculum to the extent that the public itself recedes in significance in this pedagogical encounter.

My research work in public pedagogy is shaped by a strong recognition of the merit of a pedagogical reading. Such a reading is centred on the pedagogical encounter between learner, knowledge and place. Each of these is a dynamic element in the encounter. The dynamic public as a learner shifts their position from spectator to audience. I share with Gaztambide-Fernandez (2013) an emphasis on the relational, but I diverge from their definition as I see the pedagogical encounter as initially between learner, knowledge and place. The teacher may not be present. The singular emphasis on the teacher, or in the case of public pedagogy, on the pedagogue, negates the agency of the learner. Not only that, it fails to acknowledge that there is no direct causal and certain relationship between learning and teaching.

This public pedagogical encounter demands a methodological approach that entails a readiness to engage the complexity, the nuanced nature, and the ongoing vibrancy of “public pedagogy.” The constant, dynamic interactions of knowledge, the public as learner and sometimes pedagogue and place forestall opportunities/inclinations to define it within a limited discipline. In this work, we look to the work of St. Pierre in her argument against logical empiricism in the social sciences (2019). I recognise the dynamic interaction of the theorising of the simmering concept of public pedagogy, the methods of knowing public pedagogy and the events and encounters of public pedagogy. From inside our engagements with public pedagogical encounters, MacLure (2021) has informed the shaping of my writing of these encounters and the methods of knowing these encounters through following the specific grain and contour of the complexity, the bespoke nature, and the generative nature of these learning encounters.

Each of the articles in this edition addresses the richness of the methodological field of public pedagogy. The emphasis is on the public-pedagogical encounter with knowledge. Samantha Cooms' and Vicki Saunder’s article, “Poetic Inquiry: A tool for decolonising qualitative research” offers poetics as both an iteration of decolonisation research practices and of public pedagogy. As the authors point out poetry as a representational form is non-linear and, as such, has the possibility of presenting the intersectionality of experience. In turn, this form brings to the fore the diversity of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. In her article “Disrupting the rhetoric of Education: separating the spin of teaching and learning from the reality,” Ligia Pelosi highlights the generative space of Instagram, where teachers can momentarily step outside of the constrained space of the Australian institutions of primary and secondary school teaching. The methodology employed in Pelosi’s project was ethnographic and narrative-based, representing stories of teachers and teaching. Ethnography as embodiment contributes to an evocative portrayal of the participants' experiences, as does the public space, whereby narratives not mediated by the formal schooling system can emerge. In a sense, the teachers become the learners. In “Ethics of care: Pedagogical encounters from Oceania,” the authors, Belinda Mary MacGill, Sangeeta Jattan, Dropati Lal, Babra Narain, Bec Neill, Teupola Nayaca, Alexandra Diamond and Ufemia Camaitoga, address the context of how public pedagogies are enacted within the Indo-Fijian and iTaukei communities. This article, the result of collaboration between four Fijian academics and three Australian academics, reveals the methodological and pedagogical entanglements when working in diverse community contexts in Fiji. Making connections and the capacity for knowledge generation are evident in Iffat Khatoon’s article on an inter-generational map project as an enactment of public pedagogy. The interactions by the participants in the programme were pedagogical, and this article theorises this project as an instance of pedagogical performance that brings insights into the pedagogical potential of these public performances. Bronwyn Sutton’s article “Towards and Understanding of How School Climate Strikes work as Public Pedagogy” explores how school climate strikes work as more-than-human public pedagogies. Sutton does this by considering the imperative of post-humanism and offering a different way of engaging public pedagogy through diffractive reading. Lastly, in “Knowledge in the Public Realm: The Educative Agent,” I look to re-orient where knowledge circulates and who is recognised as taking carriage of it. This is the crux of the work of the Public Pedagogies Institute’s Knowledge Project and Pop-up School. After successive iterations of this project, theorisation of these projects leads to the identification of the educative agent.

Lastly, to return to pedagogy and how learning occurs, as we read each of these articles, our position as the learner is engaged, and through this public-pedagogical methodology, it is re-thought anew. I hope you find this special issue engaging and, above all, thought provoking.