Epiphanic Pedagogy
Epiphanic Pedagogy (EP) is a self-reflective theoretical framework created by educator and academic writer, Kathryn Endler. Within EP, Kathryn examines her personal experiences with food anxiety and body negativity to articulate a theoretical framework that demonstrates the narrative of pedagogical thought in the making. While existing literature provides some practices for educator self-reflection, frameworks including emotional and spiritual elements are limited in academia. Thus, Epiphanic Pedagogy explores the entanglement of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual discourses with the multiple dimensions of social identity through six major tenets: 1) Pedagogical Epiphanies, 2) Emotional Honesty, 3) Soul Excavation, 4) The Embodiment of Discomfort, 5) Relational Soulhood and 6) The Audacity to Hope. Epiphanic Pedagogy asks you to treat your soul as an archaeological site of discovery in order to excavate the lost fragmented parts of your self through the process of pedagogical epiphanies—critical realizations that allow you to gain hidden knowledge about yourself, about others, or about the relationship of the two. In doing so, we better understand our own inner worlds and deepen our relationships within our communities.
Six Major Tenets
1) Pedagogical Epiphanies:
“Transformative moments” (McCormack, 2015, p. 76) that often emerge from challenging experiences, but shift a level of understanding either within oneself, others, or the relationship between the two.
2) Emotional Honesty:
The ability to be emotionally vulnerable, while also reveling in the notion that emotional expression and reflection demonstrates strength, not weakness.
3) Soul Excavation:
The process of actively trying to excavate the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual aspects of your selfhood
4) Embodiment of Discomfort:
A practice that is dedicated to welcoming ambiguity and cultivating self-love, by sitting with your own discomfort, someone else’s comfort, and relating to it genuinely without hostility (Rusu, 2017)
5) Relational Soulhood:
An in-between space of the self and other (Ellsworth, 2005) and a willingness to relate to others around you while combining interpersonal and intrapersonal dimensions (Sandage, Crabtree, & Schweer, 2014), and 6) The Audacity to Hope: the willingness to engage in critical hope (Freire, 1992) by obtaining the courage to walk the painful path of reality and share others’ suffering (Duncan-Andrade, 2009).