This proposal draws on the narrative of cartographic exercises developed in 2015 and 2016 in a university in the context of preservice teacher education in Brasil (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro).

Our aim is to explore different possibilities of thinking and teaching in higher education, especially concerning preservice teacher education. We will focus on both the relation between teaching and knowledge and the practice of collaborative teaching in higher education.

We will be dealing with the following questions:

Does an exercise of collective experimentation generate possibilities for living higher education? What are the inventions emerging in these contexts?

The work consisted on collective practices of four professors who taught four different undergraduate courses and the respective classes mashed in a unique group with approximately 80 students.

We proposed a walking experience in which each student should walk freely departing from any public square he/she chose in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. We expected them to answer the question “what does the walking experience produce on you about education?” according to their different walking paths. Diverse experiences emerged from the common walking exercise, creating multiple and dynamic maps that make explicit the multiplicity of senses created by these subjects in response to the initial question.

The cartographic exercise is inspired by the work of Kastrup (2008), Masschelein (2008) and Larrosa (2015) and consists on an invitation to read, walk and register in order to think education; an exercise of awareness that implies openness to the world, exposure and affection.

Cartographic studies, based on the work by Deleuze and Guattari (1995), take as their object the relations between subject and that which can be taken as their exterior on research context, mapping practices and their movement of subjectivities construction. Cartography is a research design to be experienced and not to be applied, “that follows and constitutes itself simultaneously with the landscape’s transformation movements” (Rolnik, 1987, p. 206).

One of the basic elements in cartographic exercises is awareness which, according to Kastrup (2008), is simultaneously concentrated and dispersed. This pendular movement allows to receive the worldly affections selected through experience. Also for Masschelein (2008), it implies openness to the world and self-transformation, creating a space of practical freedom, an education of the gaze that makes critical research possible. Critical research is understood as a liberation of one’s look to oneself in the present.

Another central idea for this work is Larrosa’s (2015) concept of experience, understood as “what happen to us, what touches us [...]. Not what happens, what touches [...]. Each day lots of things happen, but at the same time almost nothing happen to us” (Larrosa, 2015, p. 18-19). As for the authors referred above, experience is understood as an event that implies an interruption, that allows attention to the way we are constituting ourselves in our existence, suspending will, judgement and automatic action, creating a space and time for affecting and being affected, allowing the experience to transform oneself. 

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1995). Mil Platôs. Rio de Janeiro: Ed. 34 Letras. Kastrup, V. (2008). O lado de dentro da experiência: atenção a si mesmo e produção de subjetividade numa oficina de cerâmica para pessoas com deficiência visual adquirida. Psicol. cienc. prof., 28 (1), p. 186-199. Larrosa, J. (2015). Tremores: escritos sobre experiência. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora. Masschelein, J. (2008). E-ducando o olhar: a necessidade de uma pedagogia pobre. Educação e Realidade, 33 (1), p. 35-48, jan./jun. Passos, E. & Barros, RB. (2009) A cartografia como método de pesquisa-intervenção. In: Passos, E. et al (Orgs.). Pistas do método da cartografia: pesquisa-intervenção e produção de subjetividade. Porto Alegre: Sulina, p. 17-31. Rolnik, S. (1987) Cartografia ou de como pensar com o corpo vibrátil. Núcleo de Estudos e Pesquisas da Subjetividade da PUC/SP. Retrieved from: http://www.pucsp.br/nucleodesubjetividade/Textos/SUELY/pensarvibratil.pdf. Accessed on 15 jan 2015.