Joint Pursuit with/in Communities & Classrooms: Transformative Pedagogy Across Time & Space

Abstract

This dissertation examines a transformative pedagogical framework—joint pursuit—developed with/in an urban public university program for undergraduate students in Education. Often learning in schools is separated from people’s everyday lives beyond classroom walls. With this separation, what counts as learning is bounded to contexts which obscure and even erase diverse ways of knowing and being vital for emergence and adaptation with/in constantly changing worlds. The goal of this project was to blur the lines between formal and informal learning spaces as a way to transform students’ perceptions about the purpose of learning with and for our communities. Findings highlight how site visits, or trips across and with/in places around the city, scaffolded undergraduates as they moved back and forth between classroom and community spaces. Specifically, they were able to sequentially recognize, reframe, redefine, and reassemble how learning happens with a purpose for interdependence and problem-solving, beyond a prolepsis of neoliberal determinism. From this work, design implications for teaching on the move emerged, a broader praxis for continued research in teaching and learning.