Pedagogy as gifting : (re)conceptualising the anglophonic

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Adams, Paul (2025) Pedagogy as gifting : (re)conceptualising the anglophonic. In: Nordic Educational Research Association Annual Conference, 2025-03-05 - 2025-03-07, University of Helsinki.

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Abstract

In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) discusses how strawberry gathering signals ‘... a world full of gifts simply scattered at your feet’ (p. 23). For her, such conceptualisations necessitate togetherness; gifts, ‘…from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate’ (25). Clearly, here the marker of reciprocity and personal connection is through the removal of exchange as transaction to be replaced by gifting; that which establishes a ‘…feeling bond between two people’ (Hyde, quoted in Kimmerer, 2013: 26) that increases with their passage through and by sharing. In this presentation, I shall challenge the idea of pedagogy as ‘the methods and practices of teaching’ (after Adams, 2022) a seemingly thoroughly Anglophonic position based on an individualising reduction of pedagogy to teaching as meaningful and accountable teacher activities. While such a position may not elide a place for beliefs and ideologies, these cannot eschew overweening neoliberal posturing as to the place, form, function, and ends of and for education that give succour to continued segregation and oppression. The counter I offer draws on indigenous methodologies. I seek to position pedagogy as gifting: connected, reciprocal actions based in and acting on the world, done with and for others. I show how re-thinking the basis for pedagogy from methods to such methodology connected to ontological, epistemological and axiological deliberation through shifts in language, tenor and intent offers significant scope for enacting pedagogy in ways connected to community belief systems that seek to reframe the world and our place therein. Located, as I am, in a colonised land which both retreats from and returns to the sanctity of the colonial mind-set, I propose this (re)focus as an attempt to resist, amend and subvert hegemonic positioning, and thus challenge mainstream thinking by more than the allure of ‘the exotic’. The position I propose resonates with Northern/Arctic pedagogies that require more than simple rearticulation of teaching activities. The political and cultural often frame such regions as ‘rural’ and ‘remote’, defined more by their ‘absences’ than their ‘presence’. Hence, pedagogy, if it is to challenge such dominant forces must convey more than educational uplift: it must rupture and forge anew. Keywords Pedagogy; Gifting; Indigenous Knowledge References Adams, P. (2022). Scotland and Pedagogy: Moving from the Anglophone Towards the Continental?. Nordic Studies in Education, 42(1), 105–121. https://doi.org/10.23865/nse.v42.3770. Wall Kimmerer, R. (2020). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Penguin Books.

ORCID iDs

Adams, Paul ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8527-9212;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)