Dwelling in liminal spaces: twin moments of the same reality

Abstract

PurposeThis paper is a thinking piece that examines, from the viewpoint of a Canadian pracademic, working through two definitions of pracademic, a collaborative relationship between academics and practitioners and a person engaged as a practitioner and researcher. Two aspects of a pracademics scholarship is discussed, wide awakeness and praxis. The purpose of the paper is to make the case that it is pracademics who are well suited and attuned to questioning, challenging, and disrupting the ordinariness of the everyday, to envision new possibilities, and who take responsibility for mobilizing the educational community to undertake meaningful social change within an education system. A case is provided to illustrate wide-awakeness and praxis in practice. A case is provide to illustrate how wide-awakeness and praxis present themselves in practice.Design/methodology/approachThis paper considers the work of pracademics from Galileo Educational Network, located within a research-intensive university, who research and lead design-based professional learning. Drawing upon a design-based approach to guide design-based professional learning and design-based research, I highlight the ways in which wide-awakeness and praxis work themselves out in practice.FindingsDrawing upon the two aspects of wide-awakeness and praxis, creates a liminal space for pracademics to engage with practitioners to undertake stubborn and persistent problems of practice to create important educational improvements. A key to engaging in transformational change through collaborative professionalism is to engage in sustained design-based professional learning led by pracademics.Originality/valueThis thinking piece offers the perspective of one Canadian pracademic who shows how pracademics are uniquely positioned to take on the work of transformation, agency, and social change.

Exploring design discourses and liminality as features of professional learning in an elementary makerspace

“…We suggest the makerspace promoted in Riley a “wide-awake[ness], to challenge the taken-for-grantedness of practice” (Friesen, 2021, p. 2). In occupying this liminal space, Riley became more wide-awake (Friesen, 2021; Greene, 1978), more reflective, more open to the possibilities inherent in curriculum and the big ideas underpinning human knowledge.…”

“…We suggest the makerspace promoted in Riley a “wide-awake[ness], to challenge the taken-for-grantedness of practice” (Friesen, 2021, p. 2). In occupying this liminal space, Riley became more wide-awake (Friesen, 2021; Greene, 1978), more reflective, more open to the possibilities inherent in curriculum and the big ideas underpinning human knowledge. Implementing design discourses within the makerspace became a way for Riley to come to know more about the nature of knowledge and knowledge within disciplines, the meaning of curriculum and her own students and herself as learners.…”

Afterward? Moving onwards for developing pracademia and pracademics in education

“…The emphasis on collaboration and networks in social capital is important throughout several of the articles. Building on the notion that pracademics lead and engage in professional learning, Friesen's (2021) example of the Galileo Educational Network provides an informative description and analyses of the work of pracademics using "Design-based professional learning is collaboratively designed with teachers and/or school and district leaders." In this example:…”

“…Practicing wide-awakeness, the pracademics supporting the professional learning are attuned to the ways in which taken-for-grantedness reveal themselves in problems of practice and in dialogue about practice (Friesen, 2021).…”

“…Liminal from Latin meaning threshold, it is the intermediate space between-between theory and practice, and between the academy and the profession. It is in this liminal space that pracademics are not only situated, but it is also here that they engage in praxis by embracing both theory and practice, not as dichotomous entities, but as twin moments of the same reality (Friesen, 2021) [1]. Hollweck et al suggest that the rise of the term pracademic has gained traction recently in education through discussions at conferences, on social media and in recent publicationsincluding by the three guest editors.…”