Television Teachers and Possible Selves: The Specter of Phantomic Ontologies in Practice-Based Teacher Education "Reform"

• In Event: Roundtable Session 47
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Experiences: Curriculum, Ontologies, and Governmentality

Abstract

This paper considers 1950’s and 1960’s research-related texts about the “television teacher” along with more recent research-related calls for practice-based teacher education reform (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 2010). The teacher-as-subject is explored as a “phantomic ontology” (Schrader, 2010) that may invite alternative possibilities to the binary and paradoxical reasoning used to justify systemic practice-based teacher education reforms. These possibilities include making visible the logics of transformations promising to make more “regular” people into “competent” and “professional” teachers (e.g., Ball & Forzani, 2011). Such transformations attempt to minimize uncertainty and “risk” for children through faith in performances and practices that may include enacting inauthentic practices, resisting feared possible selves, and commodifying children (e.g., Ball & Forzani, 2011; Darling-Hammond, 2006; Ronfeldt & Grossman, 2008).

Author

• Ryan Ziols, University of Wisconsin - Madison