FORM8830 · Education

Anthropology of Formative Experience

Lynch School of Education & Human Development

Reframing education as formation helps us look beyond two prevlant myths about education: that learning happens mainly in schools and what is learned is always quotable "knowledge." Perhaps no discipline is more powerful in freeing us from these myths than anthropology. The formative frame centers questions of meaning; anthropology studies how human beings create, inhabit, and transform it. Formation is inevitably value-laden; anthropology seeks to unpack the rich variety of lived responses to the question of what matters and why. The formative frame decenters schools; the ethnographic ideal impels us to enter every setting-from courtrooms to pickle ball courts-alive to the possibility that here too we can bear witness to human beings exploring and enacting their many-sided natures. FORM8830 is doctoral level introduction to the field of anthropology and its affordances for the study of formative experience. By reading classic and comtemporary texts, listening to more informal conversations on Podcasts and YouTube videos, and pursuing their own questions in anthopological terms, students will learn about the tools, people, debates, and ideals that define this rich tradition of inquiry. Required for Ph.D. students in Formative Education; other doctoral students with a special interest in the topic may contact the instructor for permission.