Experiencing Grace and Graceful Moments: In-Between Spaces in Teaching and Learning

Abstract: Teacher education’s dominant narrative is often one that accentuates sure-fire methods in the attainment of curriculum goals and objectives. We offer grace as an orientation that could serve to accentuate the profoundly relational generative space of teaching and learning, and to afford opportunities for taking time and making space in the classroom for inquiry into the living disciplines as a means to further understandings of self, other and curriculum matter. In this paper we explore and interpret Richard Wagamese’s essay “On the wings of eagles” as a portrayal of moments of grace and put it into conversation with our own experiences in teacher education and curriculum theory. Although it is not in the nature of this project to conclude or profess definitive results or methods, our aim is to keep open questions of what it means to be graceful, and to act gracefully in relation to our students and to subject matters. We believe that grace is a way to be in the world that could be transformational for current pedagogical practices.