Noticing Noise, Noisy Noticings: Sound as the Content and Context for Learning

Busy cafeterias, hushed auditoriums, quiet libraries—learning spaces have familiar soundscapes, but how often do we notice the noise, or lack of it?

In his fieldwork, Professor Jon M. Wargo has studied sound as the content and context for learning.

From queer youth navigating the sounds and silences of homophobia to the sounds of embodied learning in a Pre-K STEAM unit to the social interactions of undergraduates engaged in an immersive escape room game, Wargo invites us to notice sound as a material and a design resource for learning and to explore the cultural politics of noise.

Jon M. Wargo (Associate Professor of Educational Studies, University of Michigan) is a teacher, educator, learning scientist, and qualitative researcher. Building on a decade of fieldwork, Wargo’s scholarship addresses the role of media and technology as it intersects with literacy learning, examines how ingenuity is interpreted in schools and classrooms, and leverages young peoples’ differences as a way to understand human sense-making. Fueled by his experiences as a queer, multi-ethnic, first-generation college graduate and elementary educator, teaching in urban multilingual schools, Wargo’s work is informed by longstanding commitments to educational equity, racial justice, the arts, and community activism.

Presented by the Syracuse University School of Education’s Harry S. and Elva K. Ganders Memorial Fund Lecture. Co-sponsored by the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Kappa Delta Pi (Alpha Delta Iota Chapter), School of Architecture, and Syracuse University Humanities Center.