Shifting the Abject: Changing Teachers’ Conceptions of Adolescence and Corruptibility

• In Event: Becoming Teaching Selves Within Shifting Sociohistorical Terrain

Abstract

This paper argues for a Lacanian “ethics of the Real” in teacher conceptions of adolescence as a means of opening curriculum to the needs of minoritized youth. Developmentalist conceptions of adolescence have been shown to rely upon raced, sexist, and classed ideas of adolescence that exclude the lives of minority youth. Yet, efforts to trouble developmentalist views of adolescence in teachers meet resistance because denaturalized views of adolescence seemingly endorse behaviors that threaten to abject young people. Only when teachers see the role that stereotyped conceptions of adolescence play in abjecting already disenfranchised youth—especially youth in their own classrooms—do shifts in thinking about adolescence become more possible. Data and implications from a seventh-month professional development study shared.

Author

• Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides, Westfield State University