This paper addresses two challenges in educational receptions and interpretations of Hartmut Rosa’s (2019) theory of resonance. First, it discusses the importance of not underemphasizing the productive role of dissonance. Although Rosa emphasizes that dissonance is integral to resonance, he does not elaborate on it in great length. Second, the paper discusses the empirical difficulty of creating ‘resonant spaces’ in schools and classrooms in democratic troubling times. Drawing on Rosa’s (2019) sociology of resonance and feminist theories of attunement (Felski 2020), the paper aims to explore the affective, relational, and embodied dimensions of teaching as a distinctly pedagogical practice located somewhere between harmony and disharmony. To this end, the paper unfolds as a philosophical argument in two parts. In the first, we argue that resonance theory, while offering a rich framework for understanding relationality and engagement, tends to neglect the pedagogical potential of dissonance. Dissonance —moments of tension, disruption, and unresolved chords—constitutes a vital condition for meaningful educational encounters with our surrounding world as well as in our classrooms. In the second part, we show how the creation of resonant spaces has become increasingly difficult in a world marked by alienation and social acceleration (Rosa). As a counter image, we introduce the reimagining of teaching as an active practice of crafting an ‘acoustic space’ (Kaltenecker 2020) — a relational and affective classroom environment where pedagogical relations can unfold as lived-through and embodied experiences in times of democratic crises. Teaching as the creation of an acoustic space, we suggest, allows resonance and dissonance to coexist dynamically, enabling students and teachers to engage not only with what may address and speak to them, but with what disrupts, unsettles, and rearranges in new and transformative ways. By way of conclusion, we argue that teaching, as the creation of an acoustic space, becomes a practice that transforms the classroom into a ‘resonant relationscape’ of affective and embodied encounters where dissonance plays an important part. By introducing the notion of an acoustic space into the lexical of educational theory, the paper highlights the vibrational and resonant qualities of teaching as an embodied and worldly practice, where anticipation, rhythm, and the interplay of harmony and dissonance shape pedagogical experiences; teaching as a specific form of spacing/pacing. As such, we suggest, teaching becomes an active intervention in a seemingly ‘mute’ and disconnected world that aims to resist alienation and indifference and to foster meaningful connections and engagements.

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