Thinking/Teaching in Multiple Tongues: The Interdisciplinary Imagination

Abstract

In this interpretive paper I reflect upon my experience of working on a pedagogical initiative several years back to cultivate in secondary fine art students predispositions and attunements in the teaching of  "second teachables." Beginning with the concept of fear I outline my and my students' pursuit to interpret and understand more deeply the strict and bounded nature of disciplinary subject areas and the imaginative and creative potential of interdisciplianarity. Captured by an incidental but evocative reference to multiple tongues, I describe the unanticipated places we found ourselves as we followed the historical, cultural and contemporary sense-making around multiple tongues. I consider what this might mean for our work in teacher education and our continued striving to have us think differently about curriculum and its always malleable borders.