Education and Society © 2016 James Nicholas Publishers Vol. 34, No. 1, 2016 pp. 23-37 ISSN 0726-2655 (print) / 2201-0610 (online) http://dx.doi.org/10.7459/es/34.1.03 The Space of Pedagogic Imaginary: The Interstice of Teacher’s Intent and Students’ Learning Neriko Musha Doerr Ramapo College of New Jersey Abstract How do we make of students learning something their teacher did not in- tend to teach? Researchers suggest it unnecessary extras, learning of im- plicit rules of the game, or keys to understand power structure. Based on an ethnographic fieldwork of a college alternative break trip to learn about poverty through simulation, this article suggests such learning of the unintended—students stealing during the simulation thinking it to be a lesson to understand what the poverty-stricken sometimes goes through – points to what I call ‘space of pedagogic imaginary’ that indexes societal values, which then should become an object of students investi- gation. Keywords: alternative break trip, discourse, experiential learning, sim- ulation, U.S.A. ‘These [stolen] potatoes are about global hunger.’ —A student participant Introduction: Reading the teacher’s mind What happens when students learn something the teacher did not intend to teach? Should it be treated as miscommunication and cor- rected? Or as an unexpected ‘extra’? Is it even worthy of concern? This article explores these questions by analyzing a case in which college students learned something their teachers did not intend to teach. Rather than dismissing such learning as miscommunication or an extra, this article suggests examining it as an indicator of the potential lessons circulating in the particular sociocultural environment and how we interpret them through our specific subject positions. I argue that