Replying to reviewers of their book “Towards on ontology of teaching” Vlieghe and Zamojski (2020) confirmed that the phrases “pointing”, or “extraordinary pointing” could indeed be seen as the most essential dimension of teaching:

"What makes pointing into a truly teacherly gesture is an exaggeration: pointing in a more than trivial sense (like when instructing someone where the post office is), pointing in an overdone way, extraordinary pointing" (s. 113-114).

The pointing gesture aims to draw the attention of the pupils, thus enabling a joint focus on a subject matter that the teacher wants to highlight. Here the word “Pointing” can also be viewed as a key metaphor for a teacher with episteme knowledge or a teacher with profound subject knowledge. In my presentation, I will discuss this metaphor in relation to the work of school-age educare teachers. School-age educare was included in the Swedish School law in 2010 and received its own section in the national curriculum in 2016, which includes core contents and abilities that the pupils are supposed to develop. At the same time, the curriculum states that teaching in school-age educare is to be based on “the pupils’ needs, interests and experiences, while ensuring that the pupils are continuously challenged, by inspiring them to make new discoveries” (p. 23).

What might this mean for the “pointing gestures” of teachers´ work? What other requirements or demands does a student-centered education place on school-age educare teachers, and what are the possible benefits for the pupils? Those are the preliminary research questions in an article in progress, that will be further elaborated on during the presentation. Through qualitative data analysis of teachers´ written reflections, findings contain descriptions of situations and moments where pupils´ curiosity or initiatives are being handled by the teachers. In short, tentative findings indicate that school-age educare teachers rather often notice pupils´ “pointing”, or pupils´ unexpected attention/curiosity during dynamic situations and moments. This form of pointing is then discussed in relation to the teacher´s attention and to the teacher as a listener and an interactor.

The findings are also related to the concept of “phronesis” (Aristotle, 2011), while the teachers´ attention gets a significant meaning through that concept. Moreover, the findings indicate that the conceptof “episteme” may need a more prominent meaning for school-age educare teachers and school-age educare teachers´ education. If the teachers focus on the pupils´ ”pointing” then the teachers may need a wide range of episteme knowledge in order to listen, interact with and elaborate the pupils´ curiosity within this form of student-centered education context (Shulman, 1987).