We live in a world that is dominated by the language of science and objective rationality. Today, in our reaction to the worldwide pandemic, this becomes even more manifest. The contemporary discourse about education as described by Gert Biesta (2012) and Roger Standaert (2014) fits seamlessly into the language used during this crisis. Increasingly, this discourse is fixed on the ideas of measurability and evidence-based expertise. It predominantly uses words as “efficiency”, “control”, “learning outcomes”, “input-output”, “performativity”. This view on education resonates strongly with the prevailing image of what it means to be a human being nowadays, namely to be the competent manager of one’s own life and happiness.

Both Biesta and Standaert point out that there are limits to this educational ‘empiricism’ and ‘technocratic thinking’. The question is not whether this is an erratic way of speaking about education. The question is rather, is it the only way to talk about it? What remains unsighted and unsaid if we restrict ourselves to the diet of this dominant discourse?

Within pedagogical thinking itself, voices arise challenging this way of thinking. Not only Biesta (2015;2018), but also educational experts like Martha Nussbaum (2011), Geert Kelchtermans (2003/4), Maarten Simons and Jan Masschelein (2008;2012) claim that the essence of education must be found in entirely different terms. They use words such as “vulnerability", "ethos", "disruption", "attentiveness", "meditation", "trust"; “imagination”. A different image of mankind appears in their writings. Here, human beings are not experts in control, but vulnerable creatures. Pedagogical moments seem to happen upon us instead of us being able to make them happen. People and the world itself appear not so much as manageable projects but as fundamentally transcendent to us. Real connection is established in moments of interruption of our "selves” (our plans, preset goals, fixed judgments) and meditation is a way to bring harmony between what we say and do as teachers. The language they use seems to bear more likeliness to poetry and religion than to that of so-called objective science.

It triggers us to explore what happens when we use entirely other languages to talk and think about education. We do not intend to do research on this matter on an academical level. In that respect, we ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’. Many have seen parallels between the communicative and hermeneutical character of arts and education. We add biblical stories to the puzzle, insofar as they have their hermeneutical character in common with works of art. Our objective is to stick close to the here and now, to listen and look attentively to the very particular, real, bodily experience of teaching. We take up the challenge: is it possible to portray a particular teacher in a work of art andat the same time evoke something meaningful about the pedagogical dimension of teaching? Is it possible that in this portrait the pedagogical language converges with that of the arts (poetry, songs, paintings) and religion? How can artworks and biblical stories contribute to the conversation of mankind about education? Does the inclusion of the language of arts and religion enhance our pedagogical understanding and open up new perspectives? These are fascinating questions, which today are marginal to the educational debate and therefore all the more deserving of our attention, time and again.

Suddenly we find ourselves talking about the essence of education in the words of Kae Tempest in their poem Hold your own (2019, track 7):

'Ask your hands to know the things they hold.'

A different, disruptive, refreshing and at the same time century-old perspective to think about education unfolds.

The original outline was to submerge ourselves as post-graduate teachers and researchers thoroughly into the world of the teachers involved by a kind of residency in their respective workplaces, as inspired by the contemporary idea of the artist-in-residence. The Covid-19-pandemic barred that route. Instead, we conducted in-depth interviews with them. The way in which we have represented what they told us in these interviews bears resemblance to the methodology of ethnofiction. We wanted to stay as close as possible to the words of the interviewees, rendering their story as they themselves told it, not as we interpreted or understood it. At the same time, readability and imaginability of the story was important. So, as in ethnofiction “the tale is developed using information gathered directly through contact with the participants. Direct lines of quotation are used whenever possible” and there is at the same time “a playing with events in such a way as to present a seamless tale” (St. Pierre, 2014, p. 341-343). We had difficulties finding the right description for the way we handled research from there on, until we came across texts giving words to inquiry in the shape of a/r/tography, as a “Living Inquiry Through Art and Text” (Springgay, Irwin, & Wilson Kind, 2005). Along with the disruptive character of the contents of our research regarding the dominant discourse about education nowadays, this way of doing research constitutes the other side of the coin. Instead of being a research method following the straight-lined course of objective rationality, like most traditional modes of qualitative research, a/r/tography refers to an enacted living inquiry through a process of art making and writing. Following Rogoff “it is a process of double imaging that includes the creation of art and words that are not separate or illustrative of each other but instead, are interconnected and woven through each other to create additional meanings” (Springgay et al., 2005, p.899). This is exactly how we proceeded. We took the whole of our embodied identities as a researcher, teacher, philosopher, theologist and artist into the bath of this inquiry (in one drawing even literally). Gradually, through the ongoing interaction of these identities, we saw the emergence of meanings that resulted in the creation of a drawing and a text for each of the teachers we interviewed.

The outcome of our research are four drawn pictures of four teachers in different educational institutions, respectively Kindergarten, Primary School, Secondary School and Teacher Education. These portraits are inspired by the interference between other works of art, biblical texts and pedagogical concepts. For example, the portrait of “juf Liesbeth” resulted from confrontation with Biesta’s pedagogical notion of ‘interruption’, Levinas’ thinking of the relationship between Self and Other, Leonard Cohen’s song ‘Anthem’, Kae Tempests poem ‘Hold your own’ and the biblical story of the Good Samaritan (Lc 10, 31-37). With these portraits and texts we do not pretend to have created new, absolute, definitive, fully present meanings. Here we follow a post-modern understanding of pedagogy and the views on the emerging of meaning and truth by philosophers like Derrida and Merleau-Ponty. “Rendering is not simply about art or text that “stands for” a particular concept of research finding; rather, it is a possibility of creating meaning, a possibility of what it is, is not, and what it might be. Thus, renderings are not simply static images or words captured on a page; they are visual, aesthetic and textual performance that dance and play alongside each other” (Springgay et al., 2005, p. 908). As such, they are “a making strange” (Springgay et al., 2005, p. 903), a re-writing and re-creating of what education means. They leave room for encounters between ourselves as artists/researchers/teachers and the reader/viewer. They are an evocation in which absence calls out for the answers of the spectators and thus await new meaning making, “adding layers of inter/textual dwelling” (Springgay et al., 2005, p. 900) in the continuing hermeneutical conversation of mankind.

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