Time we do not have: The challenges of silence in an emancipatory, conversation-oriented curriculum

Abstract

In this article, I explore my own classroom practices as a teacher of a university course on curriculum in order to investigate the potential emancipatory significance of a Rancierean conversation-oriented curriculum. To provide a lived account of how emancipatory education with the premise of equality can be embraced, albeit not without challenges, in actual classroom practices, I focus on my most unsuccessful teaching experience-one in which I was routinely confronted by unusually prolonged periods of silence from my students. I first explore how I responded to the challenges which emerged from my commitment to positioning myself and my students as intellectual equals. Then, I attempt to articulate the emancipatory significances of inviting my students to aesthetically attend to the curricular materials, class conversations, and the silence itself. I also reveal how a Rancierean reading of my practice exposed my own deep ties to an institutionalized distribution of time and helped me to re-imagine the meanings of success and failure in an emancipatory education.