Thirdspace in Teacher Education: Let Us Meet There

• In Event: Agency and Implicatedness in Postcolonial, Global Contexts of Education: Interrogating Race, Language, Policy, and Practice

Abstract

In response to pressures to better prepare teachers for urban classrooms, teacher education programs across the U.S. have initiated various iterations of school­university collaborations ­­ including teacher residency programs and alternative certification pathways ­­ to bridge the gap between theory and practice (Zeichner, 2012). As both a liaison at an urban high school partnering with a major research university and a graduate student, I experience first­hand the tensions of navigating the “thirdspace” (Soja, 1996) of the shifting borders between schools, teacher education programs, and universities. According to Soja, thirdspace works at the edges of the real-­and­-imagined, and reconstitutes what is possible, nurturing resistance to multiple forms of oppression. In thirdspace, dualistic thinking is abandoned and boundaries of us-­them are crossed. Thirdspace allows for multiple subjectivities across experiences and identities to be “practiced in conjunction” with each other, resulting in “inclusion rather than exclusion” (Soja, 1996, p. 99). Constantly changing, shifting and renewed, thirdspace in teacher education involves the emergence of new, alternate conceptions, locations, and ways of becoming a teacher, such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (e.g., theory and practice, school and university).
In this paper I draw on postcolonial theories (Anzaldúa, 1987; Bhabha, 1994; Soja, 1996) as well as self-reflexive analyses of my own experiences in thirdspace as a school-­university liaison in the teacher education context of a diverse, urban high school and a large, public, research-intensive university. My location afforded me insights into intersecting relations of power at various levels (school, local, regional, state, and national) that shape school­university relations as well as educational discourse and practice. Like Anzaldúa’s (1987) mestiza, I often found myself in two worlds at once, navigating the fluidities, contradictions, and complexities of partnership work. For instance, a mismatched pairing of a teacher candidate and cooperating teacher resulted in a near termination of the partnership within the first year. I found myself positioned as both “us” and “them,” with school and university faculty alike suggesting that I “choose sides” – when indeed my assigned role was to bridge the two. Furthermore, this study also addresses a lacuna in extant literature by shedding light on the complexities of engaging partnership work in a racially, linguistically and culturally diverse urban high school with students of various nationalities (Breault & Breault, 2012). I conclude by discussing the challenges, possibilities, and future directions of such partnerships – of meeting in thirdspace – and the related implications in terms of theory, research, and practice in a global context.

Author

• Jehanne Beaton, University of Minnesota