Learning in the twenty-first century operates not merely as a cognitive process but as an ethical, cultural, and political praxis. This conceptual paper advances contrapuntal learning as an analytic framework for understanding how educators and learners make sense of knowledge, ethics, and agency within systems of ideological constraint. Drawing on Said’s (1993) notion of contrapuntal reading and its adaptation by Philip and Sengupta (2021), the framework reinterprets learning as an act of ethical sensemaking amid contradictions produced by censorship and surveillance. Tracing the genealogy of learning theories from behaviorism through constructivism, sociocultural theory, and decolonial critique, the paper situates contrapuntal learning as a bridge between decolonial thought and the learning sciences. It applies this framework to Florida’s anti-CRT and book-ban context to show how teachers engage in interpretive triage—the moral sorting and negotiation of conflicting institutional demands. Ultimately, contrapuntal learning illuminates how contradiction becomes the generative core of cognition, transforming learning into an act of moral world-making that resists reduction to compliance or control.

Authors:
John Issahaku, Drexel University, United States

About the Presenter(s)
John Issahaku is a PhD student in Education Policy at Drexel University. His research examines teacher sensemaking under policy overload. He leads the IGSA Interdisciplinary Book Project and works on his dissertation Overloaded and Under Siege.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-issahaku-3b1463274/

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