Aoki, Ted T.

Ted T. Aoki is well known for his powerful performative pedagogy that discloses his own struggles as a way of hermeneutically, phenomenologically, and poststructurally dwelling in the gaps between theory and practice. His career began as a teacher in the Alberta public school system (19 years) before joining the faculty of education at the University of Alberta (U of A). He later became the department head of secondary education (7 years) at the U of A. During his retirement, he became adjunct professor at the University of Victoria as well as at the University of British Columbia; he maintained his strong dedication to preservice and inservice education at each university. However, during his tenure at the U of A he worked with Max van Manen, a graduate student, who pushed the limits of writing a dissertation by writing a phenomenological study. This marked the beginning of a shift at the U of A under Aoki's leadership. Also during this same period, William F. Pinar began writing about currere as a form of movement in curriculum and pedagogy. Aoki joined Pinar (and others) in the reconceptualist movement within the field of curriculum studies. His work with these influential scholars explains why Aoki is known as a phenomenologist and poststructuralist; however, he is best known for dedicating his career to examining the theory/practice divide. In particular, his scholarship argues for de-centering ideas while not erasing prior conceptual understandings. These pursuits have led him to study the etymological meanings of words and the semiotics of language structures. Many believe his semiotic scholarship will become his legacy over time.

During his career, Aoki reconceptualized the traditionally understood notion of curriculum implementation as a bureaucratic device to be curriculum as a form of communicative action and reflection set within a community of professionals. Arguing against instrumental action, he discusses situational praxis as an alternative. Curriculum implementation becomes a way of bridging the gap between curriculum-as-plan and curriculum-as-lived.

Aoki is adept at bridging the theory/practice divide. Indeed, he also bridges the traditional and reconceptualized fields of curriculum studies. Aoki explores the in-between spaces between many practices, such as implementing technology and the language of the situation, and calls this in-between space a third space. To study this space, he advocates [Page 41]a mindfulness that allows individuals to listen to what the situation is asking. Aoki's point is not to overcome the tension between curriculum-as-plan and curriculum-as-lived, but rather, to dwell within it. Following a phenomenological ethics, his work often describes teaching as thoughtful-ness and teaching as watchfulness, urging teachers to reach into their autobiographical memory and lived experiences. He encourages educators to linger in the multiplicity that plays within the cur-ricular landscape, asking them to study the effect of their identities on our being and becoming. In doing so, he does not stress “either/or” but rather “and,” thereby legitimating thoughtful everyday narratives.

Working in second language education, Aoki understands bilingualism as a hermeneutic dialectic where education is inherently a bilingual matter occupying the lived and educational spaces between mother and additional languages, thus resisting cultural assimilation. Moving beyond binaries and dwelling in the “and,” Aoki cautions us to resist dualisms.

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