A Lack of ‘Now’. Diversifying Time and Recovering the Present in Theories of Teaching

This paper draws connections between different conceptions of time and their respective ways of ‘knowing’ teaching. It discusses theories of teaching centred around preparation and reflection, which lack a meaningful notion of the ‘present’, i.e., a ‘present’ able to take influence on the educational trajectory. To ‘know’ teaching, following such ‘present-less’ approaches, means to reliably establish causality between what was planned and what occurred. To contrast such a one-dimensional and limiting understanding of teaching, this paper proposes a new concept of ‘present’ based on Dewey, Haraway, Emerson and Bergson, and develops a notion of teaching as the wisdom to navigate different kinds of time in the classroom – Chronos and Kairos – and their respective ways of ‘knowing’ teaching – intellectual and intuitive.