The audacity of hope: Towards poorer pedagogies

This paper critically examines popular discourses of pedagogy circulating in adult education theory and practice: pedagogy as (heroic or nurturing) person, as prescriptive strategy, as political purpose, and as situated practices. I argue that problematic conceptions and desires can be identified across these discourses that lead to orientations of control and discipline, animated by moral essentialism, in the teaching-learning relation. In an effort to conceptualise more open, generative and compassionate orientations, two interconnected forms of pedagogical relations are explored: ethical and ecological. Ethical relations are examined as ongoing coping: appropriate responsiveness in the immediate, reminiscent of Levinas' “caring encounter.” Ecological relations have to do with attunement to biological as well as social, political and cultural interconnectivity: the ongoing co-specification of elements improvised in complex systems. The concluding implications for educators encourage a movement to less grand and totalising, more local and contingent orientations—“poorer” pedagogies. The paper is theory driven, drawing from complexity theory and pedagogical writers aligned with local, ecological conceptions of teaching and learning.