‘Walking yourself around as a teacher’: gender and embodiment in student teachers’ working lives

This paper considers the psychic and social dynamics reported by student teachers when learning to embody their teacher persona in the secondary school environment. Focusing on gender dimensions of embodiment and drawing on qualitative interview data from a UK study of postgraduate teacher‐training students, teaching is examined as a physical experience. The paper conceptualises findings under two related headings: the appropriately gendered body, signified by heteronormative readings of gender and sexuality; and the gendered authoritative body, conceptualised as male. The ‘teacher body’ emerges as an important element of student teachers’ stories of trying to fit with the new professional environment and the paper concludes by arguing for a consideration of gender and body politics in the practice and training of teachers, thus challenging the assumption that professional occupations are essentially ‘disembodied’ and gender neutral.     

Global economies of fear: affect,politics and pedagogical implications

This article seeks to explore the importance of the affective politics of fear in education and to discuss the implications for educational policy, theory and practice. The aim is to explore how discourses of fear work in some educational contexts and draw significant boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ through the structuring of curriculum and pedagogy. This analysis is done through argumentation and research evidence from the author's ethnographic work in the United States and Cyprus. Based on this analysis, the author draws out pedagogical openings that emerge from such efforts, and extends the space in which pedagogues might move to induce a critical interrogation of the affective politics of fear. It is argued that if educators are committed to inspire individual and social change – a change that would eventually problematise the symbolic violence exerted by the affective politics of fear – then much work needs to be done at the affective level.     

The Pedagogy of the Body: Affect and collective individuation in the classroom and on the dancefloor

Abstract

Much recent work in the study of popular culture has emphasized the extent to which it is not only a site of signifying practices, myths, meanings and identifications, but also an arena of intensities, of affective flows and corporeal state-changes. From this perspective, many areas of popular culture (from calisthenics to social dance to video gaming) can be seen as sites at which rich and complex—if sometimes dangerous—processes of embodied learning/teaching take place. By comparison, the world of formal education can seem hopelessly clumsy in its inattention to such issues. From a personal perspective, I can attest that nothing surprises my students more than when I try to get them to think about the ergonomics of studying, or advise them that getting some exercise and cutting down on sugar will probably improve their work as much as further studying will, or when I advise graduate students that their mood and physical state will make as much difference to the quality of their lectures as will their level of formal preparation; and yet experience has convinced me of the accuracy of these assertions. I would aver that I have learned more about successful lecturing—in particular about the improvisational skill of ‘reading’ a room, and adjusting an affective–informational flow accordingly—from DJing in dance clubs than from any formal training in pedagogy that I have received. What conclusions could be drawn from these observations, and how do they relate to existing strands of pedagogic theory? These are the questions which this article will ultimately seek to address.     

Affect: a tool to support pedagogical change

In the early childhood education field, the way children are conceptualised has substantially shifted in recent times. Child development theory has been unsettled as the single canon of early childhood practice. This has in turn challenged constructions of educators as keepers of a universal knowledge base, and as apolitical, non-interventionist facilitators of the natural unfolding development of individuals. While reconceptualising the early childhood knowledge base has oriented theorists and activists towards equity, unsettling educator subjectivities requires careful consideration in a feminised profession such as early childhood education. There is a need for greater discussion about how educators experience the uncertainties that accompany profound changes in teaching practice and identities and how educators can harness these uncertainties in ways that strengthen the profession. In this paper, I offer excerpts from teacher research that show how theories of affect support practitioners to engage productively the reflexivity needed to reconceptualise their roles as educators. I use affect theory to consider how the intra- and inter-personal dimensions of critically reflective practice can bolster the democratic and collectivist orientations in the teaching profession.     

Lifelong learning,policy and desire

Recent lifelong learning policies have been criticised for creating an illusion of freedom whilst simultaneously reducing choice. The concept of desire permits engagement with the conscious and unconscious drives that underpin individual decision‐making, which direct the life course. Utilising the ideas of Hume and Spinoza, the present article articulates the interrelated nature of desire and learning. Evidence is drawn from Learning Lives, a Teaching and Learning Research Programme‐funded research project that uses the life history method to explore themes of agency, identity and learning across the life course. Boltanski and Thevenot’s sociology of critical capacity is used as a heuristic tool that illuminates the mechanics of desire as described by eight contributors. Their stories provide a basis from which to critique policies for lifelong learning that appear limited in relation to the multiple desires that drive their life choices.     

Learning to be affected: Matters of pedagogy in the artists’ soup kitchen

Expanding on the robust contributions by feminist new materialist scholars this essay focuses on two concepts—affect and rhythm—in order to elaborate on matters of pedagogy and a politics of attunement. If one of the key challenges that arises from feminist new materialism is that the human can no longer be taken for granted, then this prompts us to open ourselves to other ways of thinking, knowing, and doing. Being attuned to the agency of all matter offers a way of looking at how pedagogy is constituted as material, affective, and in rhythm, and this attention to the mechanisms of pedagogy can in turn affect a politics of attunement. In order to problematize an affective pedagogy we turn to a socially enagaged performance called The Artists’ Soup Kitchen.     

The Black Women’s Gathering Place: reconceptualising a curriculum of place/space

ABSTRACT

This article de-centres imperialist, capitalist, patriarchal traditions of critical approaches in Curriculum Studies via an examination of experiences shared at The Black Women’s Gathering Place (BWGP), a non-traditional space where a diverse, intergenerational group of Black women engage with each other through the sharing of stories. In the BWGP, we enact components of Pinar’s [2004. What is Curriculum Theory? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum] concept of currere, simultaneously re-entering our collective and individual pasts and re-imagining our futures in an effort to reconcile our public and private selves. Taking up tenets of Black feminist theory, theoretical framings of hidden curriculum, and components of Ng-A-Fook’s [2007. An Indigenous Curriculum of Place: The United Houma Nation’s Contentious Relationship with Louisiana’s Educational Institutions. New York, NY: Peter Lang] ‘Curriculum of Place,’ we reconceptualise a curriculum of place/space that negotiates dominant norms expressed in social environments. In this space, we validate traditional knowledges upheld in communities of Black women across the Diaspora. The BWGP allows us to argue for a re-presentation of extant knowledge by and about Black women.