2023/04/18 by Jais Brohinsky · 1 voice · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Psychology · #Digital Education and Society #Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism #Psychological and Educational Research Studies
paper · doi:10.1177/20965311231167190
openalex publication_date 2023/04/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Purpose If education is the movement from dark to light, what does it mean for the light to go out? Following this question, this paper examines how conceptions of ignorance inform and are embedded in ideas of learning and pedagogy. Design/Approach/Methods Through historical and contemporary examples, I ask how an understanding of ignorance as absence frames some forms of teaching and learning, how ignorance might be understood differently, and how a different formulation of ignorance creates possibilities for imagining teaching and learning otherwise. Findings The framing of ignorance as absence articulates a distance between knowing and not knowing that defines what I call explicatory spacetime . This arrangement positions ignorance as a social problem and schooling as a solution aimed at closing the gap. I point to ways this framing persists today in research and practices that posit the acquisition of positive knowledge and the eradication of negative ignorance as a foremost educational responsibility. Originality/Value Engaging work across science and technology studies, psychoanalysis, and the philosophy of education, I argue that alternative conceptions of ignorance often maintain associations with absence. Building from this scholarship, I ask how reframing ignorance through multiplicity, that is, within a field of possibility out of which a thing called knowledge can cohere, offers a different framework and pedagogical arrangements. Finally, I explore how reframing ignorance in a spacetime of multiplicity opens possibilities for understanding and enacting pedagogical encounters.