How do children understand themselves as learners? Towards a learner‐centred understanding of pedagogy

Abstract

This paper challenges notions that pedagogy is predominantly rational, conscious and deliberate. Drawing on two research projects about experiences of learning in primary and secondary schools, the paper explores pedagogic relationships and the ways these structure and enable different kinds of learning and knowledge creation. The data are read with (Felman, 1987 Felman, S. 1987. Jacques Lacan and the adventure of insight: Psychoanalysis in contemporary culture, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]) the psychoanalytic writings of Wilfred Bion to investigate the ways in which knowing and learning are bound up in the unconscious emotional flows of classroom relationships. A learner‐centred understanding of pedagogy is tentatively and critically developed. The desirability and some simultaneous difficulties of working with such notions of pedagogy are discussed.