Nomadic Pedagogies

HERAS MONNER SANS, ANA INÉS

Montreal

Congreso; 35TH INTERNATIONAL VISUAL SOCIOLOGY CONFERENCE; 2017

International Visual Sociology Association IVSA

Title. Nomadic Pedagogies. Learning to see, becoming seen.In this presentation I elaborate on a framework constructed around the notion of nomadic pedagogies to analyze several different educational experiences in Argentina geared towards children and adolescents who live in or confront with difficult situations, e.g., precarious housing or schooling conditions; homelessness; economic hardship; cultural violence against their ways of acting, believing and perceiving. Our team performed both the role of educators and researchers in several different contexts that, yet, what they have in common is that children and adolescents´ participation is not systematic and sometimes it takes place in settings where it is not that easy to develop educational activities.Photography, audiovisual and visual arts become media through which the activities are carried on, thus, providing tools for participants to learn to see, to learn to narrate, and to learn to objectify these ways of seeing and narrating in a product (e.g., an illustrated book, a short film, or a combination of both). Additionally, visuals (and also written notes) are used to document what takes place, helping to support the construction an ongoing, live memory of what takes place. Thus, all participants are able to reflect on their learning process.We conclude that there are specific traits that can be identified when teaching and learning in contexts such as the ones we describe, and that visuals are an important component, both in learning to see and in becoming seen. We also conclude that what counts as nomadic pedagogy is not only the fact that it is a pedagogy thought about with and for participants who may sustain nomadic practices as a way of life, but it is also a way of conceptualizing a perspective on teaching and learning that can make room for the diverse, for living patterns extended in space and for ways of coming and going that bring perspectives from unsuspected, not usually visible sides.