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Teaching and learning to co-create

I am happy to announce that a book I co-edited and collaborated on, Teaching and Learning to Co-create, (Eds.) Filipović, J., Goetz, G. & Jovanović, A. is now available from Springer and Palgrave. The intended audience is students and teachers participating in constructivist networked learning projects that develop language for specific purposes, including academic writing.

From the introduction:
The papers in this volume, written by teachers as well as students, demonstrate an attempt to create a community of practice (Lave & Wenger) in which members are free to make “meaning of the tools, concepts, and processes that co-construct and cultivate the practice” (Jimenez-Silva & Olson) … In more localized terms, this volume is a transdisciplinary sketch of the place of the non-native English speaking individual in the networked academic community (there are only two native speakers’ voices in this volume). From an epistemological orientation that combines transdisciplinary, participatory, and collaborative approaches we explore the most constructive ways forward for a networked constructivist pedagogy.

The book evolved out of the experience of several international multi-lingual networked projects conducted from a less constructivist teaching milieu. Both students’ and teachers’ voices are included in this volume, sharing specific lessons and frameworks drawing from the practical experience of the constructivist approach, articulating with fresh eyes the difficulties of getting there. A critical look at pedagogy itself is taken to explore the means through which to achieve more dynamic co-creation.

It is a significant book because, while it would appear that the world is now level, we are still dealing with the equity problems Freire so notably recognized. The volume includes a chapter by Brazilian author and scholar Rosa Riolfi that discusses this problems in terms of Bachelardian desacrilization of how fascination with the oppressor can lead to mutism (Freire). More generally, the book asks what it is that we learn if our purpose is to learn how to bring out the best in each other’s voices and collaborative action.

But it can be a challenge to form a self – to find a voice – at the busy crossroads of not just theory and practice but also engagement with others. Support for meeting this challenge can be derived from a heterarchical environment.
We were lucky to have the opportunity to co-create this book. This was made possible through the leadership of Jelena Filipović. It was further bolstered through collegial support, so I would also like to thank Ana Jovanović. Thanks to those experiences, which began five years ago, new spaces for growth and creativity have continued to emerge.

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