Paper short abstract:

Contrasting the didactic attention-directing devices of experts to the free-roaming and 'poor pedagogies' (Masschelein 2010) of discovery and open attentiveness among curious local explorers, this paper affirms the value of the education of attention in holistic and transformative learning

Paper long abstract:

The caves in Fuerteventura (Canary Islands) have been frequented for different purposes: as a refuge, a place to keep livestock, for parties and feasts, as a ritual space and for recreation and exploration by children and youth. These experiences have fostered an intimate knowledge of caves, fauna and geology as well as their ancestral traces enabling casual archaeological finds. This knowledge and experience is juxtaposed to that of undergraduate students, undertaking research-led interuniversity fieldwork in archaeology and anthropology, introduced to caves and archaeological and heritage sites in the process. This paper details the embodied knowledge of Majoreros who 'notice' caves and discusses how life experience and lay understandings of heritage and patrimony are shaped by local government and scientific activity, including this encounter with research-led teaching. Here we contrast didactic attention-directing devices of experts to the free-roaming and 'poor pedagogies' (Masschelein 2010: 283) of discovery and open attentiveness that act as more generic "exercises of an ethos or attitude" among curious local explorers. These implicit pedagogies are unveiled to critically evaluate the means and ends that make unfamiliar landscapes familiar and how they shape persons in the process. The paper affirms the value of the education of attention (Ingold 2001; 2017) in holistic and transformative learning and explores the potential of participative approaches for research aimed at meaningful place-making.