A paper by UW–Madison’s John Baldacchino — focused on “the art of unlearning” — is included in the book “International Current Trends in Applied Linguistics and Pedagogy,” a multidimensional and multicultural collection of research in the fields.
Baldacchino is a professor of art and education within the School of Education’s Art Department.
The book includes a collection of engaging pieces of research and, Baldacchino says, reminds us that “education is a form of living and in this respect, it is a daily practice that resides between the spaces of phronesis and theoria.”
Baldacchino’s paper, titled “To Speak Something Out of Existence: Impossible Pedagogies and the Art of Unlearning,” presents readers “with a place of dispute,” notes the abstract, “where, as we haggle for educational conviviality through the possibilities of what we unlearn, we seek those opportunities in whose erratic and impossible manifestations we are lent with a way of moving beyond the linguistic and representational confines of common-held notions of ‘education.’ ”
Baldacchino originally presented the paper, in shorter form, at the international conference, “Language Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century: From Theory to Pedagogical Practice,” in Sept. 2020.
Learn more about the book here.
In addition, for more on Baldacchino’s work and the concept of unlearning, check out his recent lecture to the Royal Academy of Dance, “Unlearning in Arts Education,” which is available online via YouTube. In the lecture, Baldacchino speaks about arts pedagogy, the legacy of his mentor Sir Ken Robinson (1950-2020), and the value of (un)learning through art education.