Aoki: In-Dwelling

Aoki’s concept of in-dwelling brings to mind a passage of Daniel Brooks’ The Road to Character where he contrasts “résumé virtues” - those professional competencies we develop in order to succeed in our education and career - and “eulogy virtues” - those parts of us that speak to who we are as people i.e. our character. Today, teachers need to have pedagogical, content, and, increasingly, technical knowledge (TPACK) to function in most teaching environments. In addition to this, as teaching involves interaction with people, they know that simply following the assigned curriculum will not meet the needs of their learners. As a result, teachers need to have the space to be flexible in their delivery of the content as not all learners are the same and their humanity and uniqueness needs to be taken into account in the educational process. Besides this, teachers need to be involved in the curriculum of the self, where they reflect on their practices and on the responsibilities they have as educators. The tensionality that Aioki outlines exists between the requirements of teachers to follow the curriculum (developing “résumé virtues”) while, at the same time, allowing for a holistic approach to teaching whereby they examine the value to the learners as people of what, in addition to the curriculum, they are teaching (encouraging “eulogy virtues”).


With regard to educational research, we can say that this involves the study of TPACK, but equally important, the larger questions of what knowledge is of most worth and how teaching is not simply the transfer of information but a larger issue of preparing learners to function as well-rounded citizens in the modern world. If curriculum planners regard teachers simply as “installers of the curriculum”, this reduces the role of teachers to that of a technician who, by following a set of instructions, can “install” knowledge into their learners. This is a rather dehumanizing view of the role of education and that of teachers, as it fails to take into account the human factor of teaching which cannot be codified, scripted, and bound together in a one-size-fits-all fix to education. Teaching as a “mode of being” recognizes the responsibility that teachers have, a calling that relies on the development of trust, rapport, and care between them and their students. It recognizes the “aliveness” of the classroom and the need to be attuned to their environment. This takes an emotional investment from the teachers as they recognize the uniqueness of each student and their journey. Similarly, teachers are also on a journey as they continuously seek to situate themselves in the tensionality between curriculum-as-planned and curriculum-as-lived. This is “a journey” as the teacher’s position is not static; it is a dwelling between the space of faceless curriculum outcomes and the very real faces of the individual learners in their care.


I wonder if the main challenge of teaching today is balancing the need to stick to the curriculum, which ensures legitimacy, while at the same time trying to reach out to students as people and ensure that their learning, at least in some way, encourages the development of character and integrity.