Educator8

This platform recognises that popular ways of engaging with education—its discussions, policies, and practices—will come and go. Education is aware of this cyclical nature and often frames its mechanisms as such. Regardless the human as a living and learning being stays. This site centralises the human and asks what is being and how might one live as we become something? It asks what words, ideas and stories define us?

Here we recognise that education and its teaching and learning processes have existed since the dawn. Education is an inherent human desire and capacity.

• We are social beings.
• We learn together.
• We desire to learn.
• We motivate each other to learn collectively, influenced by the world.
• We seek to understand that world by interacting with it—a process that shapes our social nature, habits, dispositions, and symbols.

As new ideas come and go within the world of education what we are doing is recognising and valuing qualities inherent to education today—locating, recentering, and re-introducing the essences of teaching and learning that have always been and that have always been known. New concepts and constructs can help us to explore these known qualities in different ways.

In other words, good teaching has always been good teaching and the learner is always eager to learn. What makes it new is the culture and context within which it occurs and is lived and the priorities that define today. This perceived newness is useful, it healthily propels the cycle.

The “8”, then in educator8, is infinity turned on its head. It symbolises the ongoing, continuous nature of teaching and learning in a world of perceived uncertainty and neoliberal aims. In today’s world we must actively continue to discuss and refine what education means in light of the new world we find ourselves in as we navigate complexity and change.

If the “8” were written as it sounds “ate,” it would invoke words like create, provocate, satiate, passionate, and even educate. The suffix “-ate” suggests being full of something. As educators and learners, we strive to be full of hope and excitement for the future of education. This platform recognises the educator as both a teacher and a learner, deeply embedded in the ongoing cycles of learning and being.

When written, the word educator8 represents the symbolic aims of our education system as both letters and numbers. If explored through a more imaginative and playful lens as if it were a drawing, the 8 looks like a body and a mind. When spoken the 8 takes on a different flavour. It sounds like educator-great, which as educators we are.

As people passionate about teaching and learning (in schools, communities, the work place, in homes, with family and friends) we know that new buzzwords and ideas will always emerge, and we will integrate them into our professional and informal toolkits—engaging with them when necessary, exploring them when enjoyable, and assimilating or discarding them in our practice, only to face a new set of ideas in years to come. Yet we know that, while these ideas might be presented in a new way, they are not inherently new. This does not diminish their value. Many of these ideas are useful and worthwhile. By introducing new ideas and terminology, we can explore the cultural issues of our time in a way that promotes mutual reflection.

In summary, in today’s world, we no longer live in a sequential, chronological reality. Instead, we navigate a network of information, dipping in and out of different histories and cultures, creating our webs of understanding. Science, art and philosophy can be explored in the same way. Scientific, artistic and philosophically orientated discussion offers a space where different viewpoints are not labelled as right or wrong but instead distinct and different perspectives. Philosophically framed discussions are useful for discussing contemporary issues without taking sides. It is essential for supporting the symbolic learning and inquiry-based systems working well in many schools.

So, where do we begin?

We start by demystifying words and ideas that seem too complex and difficult but upon investigation are not so tricky for the intellectual public. Tracing history’s reveals that diverse terminology is not as strange or intimidating as it first appears—it’s simply a narrative that helps us explore the human condition of being and becoming. Philosophy in combination with science and the arts helps to re-think the stories we choose to tell and why we tell them. Through this education and educational discussions becomes, like all art forms, a way to explore the artistry of our being—curious, unique, and driven by a desire for knowledge, learning, and connection. Information becomes more than just facts; it becomes the connections between those facts.

Aesthetic education and aesthetic theory, as a lens of focus here, also allows us to focus on themes such as connectivity, community, democracy, humanism, naturalism, temporality, creativity, biography, being and becoming—key concepts that help us navigate evolving change. Forming complex connections is the central premise of aesthetic education.

Welcome as we build this platform together, idea by idea, word by word, story by story.

Until next time,

Mon x