Our paper written from the Soil Camp project received an Outstanding Paper Award at the meeting of International Society of the Learning Sciences 2024. The paper is available here as:
Takeuchi, M., Thraya, S., & Mambo, T. (2024). Learning to see beyond anthropocentric views on bodies through transdisciplinary soil-centered pedagogy. In R. Lindgren, T. I. Asino, E. Kyza, C. Looi, D. T. Keifert, & E. Suárez, E. (Eds.), The 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2024 proceedings (pp. 987–990). Buffalo, NY: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
We illustrated our designed transdisciplinary learning spaces and how facilitators and children were co-learning on the land the interconnectedness between human bodies and more-than-human bodies such as mushroom’s bodies and the soil’s bodies. We question canonical notions of body, through our learning with Blackfoot Elder and Knowledge Keepers on their ways of seeing body, beyond human superiority. We also learn from literatures we listed in the paper and beyond on decolonial ways of seeing the body.
This nomination was a big surprise, and I did not know how to react when the news was announced during the closing ceremony at the conference. I read and heard many great and inspiring presentations during the conference. I feel a fundamental dissonance with the award culture that rewards a small group of contributors, and I know the culture of competition does not lead to the maturity of scholarly discourse.
At the same time, I felt a sense of affirmation from the community, which filled me with gratitude. Affirmation toward challenging canonical knowledge to open up liberatory scholarly discourse. Affirmation toward the huge amount of behind-the-scenes works to design a program together with various community partners. These include time for relationship building and immediate support to the communities we work with, beyond scholarly contributions. Affirmation of our aspiration for ethical and moral commitment to children, families, and each other in our team, beyond research purposes. As a principal investigator, this short paper was the first one I could lead in writing after three years of leading the program design. Running the program and offering mentorship to early-career scholars in the team, while coping with a critical illness, took most of my time and energy in the past three years. Witnessing ongoing violence and the mass destruction of human and more-than-human bodies by militaristic forces, I often questioned the meaning in our role as a scholar. In the midst of darkness, I often found hope in conversing with my team members, including Sophia and Tatenda who are co-authors of this paper, grounding me in the significance of alternative space-making.
I was also filled with a sense of gratitude to reviewers. Reviewing is such an important service to sustain a scholarly community, yet its labour is often unnamed and underappreciated. Since 2017, I have constantly taken on 1-3 journal articles to review per month, among many other types of review, and often felt exhausted. Until recently, I had never had a conversation with colleagues about a reasonable commitment to review. The labour of review is highly obscured – and because it is not explicitly and widely discussed, this labour negotiation can perpetuate ongoing -isms. So, I do know how much of a labour it is to review, and I feel a sense of gratitude for those who have been taking on this labour for our collective scholarly community.
Then…. I found typos in the published paper! I felt acid reflex in my stomach when I saw these typos. It may sound like an over-exaggeration; perhaps I was overreacting. But over the past years, I have received numerous editorial comments questioning my English language proficiency, even with professional copy-edited manuscripts. As someone with the name “Miwa Aoki Takeuchi,” I know even the smallest typos could be immediately associated with a lack of my “sophisticated” English language proficiency. Because of these lived scars from English imperialism, I sent this paper to a professional copy editor. Yet, the paper contained typos.
As I went for a walk to process my reaction, I gradually came to see these typos as a surprising gift to me. They are teaching me many things. They certainly helped me face with my desire to be “flawless,” an inclination I struggle, especially as I still suffer from many side effects from the surgery and treatments I underwent. Having typos is not desirable. However, they are not indications of my ability or the quality of our scholarly and design work. Sometimes, superficial mistakes result from medical conditions such as brain fog and physical exhaustion that we as writers experience. This lesson is important for me as a teacher who is obligated to offer “assessment” of students’ scholarly work. I also took this event as another opportunity to confront the pain of being consistently judged for my English language proficiency, which is closely entangled with racism. Unless I unlearn the visceral reaction that I have toward the languages that I embody, I will likely perpetuate the harmful relationships between language and race.
Embracing “imperfection” can help create a more breathable and liberating space, and I need to start this journey with my own unlearning.
Miwa Aoki Takeuchi, PhD 