Justice Through Shimmers, Quivers, and Clings in Teacher Learning: Critical Affect Theory Toward Politically Engaged Teaching

• In Event: Attending to the Political and Ethical Dimensions of Teacher Learning

Abstract

Purpose: Our poster examines the question: What does critical affect theory offer in movements toward politically, ethically engaged teaching and teacher learning? Affect theory provides lenses for exploring the feeling dimensions of social worlds—the sensations, intensities, and atmospheres that human and non-human bodies and objects move through in consequential ways. We display concepts from affect theory scholarship that hold implications for justice (what we term "critical affect theory”) and point to examples of stances and pedagogies that support movement toward political and ethical necessities in the work of teacher learning in both preservice and K-12 classrooms.
Perspectives: Our consideration of affect as a generative conceptual and pedagogical realm for justice-centered teaching grows from the influential “affective turn” in cultural studies, the humanities, and the social sciences. Drawing on germinal texts in cultural studies (e.g., Ahmed, 2013; Berlant, 2011; Massumi, 2002; Stewart, 2007) and the burgeoning affect scholarship in literacy studies (e.g., Authors; Johnson & Vasudevan, 2012; Leander & Ehret, 2019), we highlight concepts and metaphors from critical affect theory that hold positive potential for enriching the field’s conversations around justice, pedagogy, and “practice” in teacher and teacher educator learning.
Arguments/Points of View: We highlight three concepts from affect theory and illustrate each with examples from our studies of K-12 and preservice classrooms and professional development.
1. Pausing in the pre-linguistic: Affect urges us to allow the visceral to remain uncapturable, even as sensations inevitably move to the structure of language. Attuning to affect allows for suspension in the sensations of teaching and “slowing the quick jump” (Stewart, 2007) from the visceral to the tangible. We show how intentional use of these metaphors as pedagogy supports a teaching practice of pausing and re-routing stakes-filled responses to students.
2. Process as goal: Affect theory supports an emphasis on process as the goal of striving toward justice in classrooms. We describe and illustrate process as a pedagogical stance that supports complexity in teacher learning, avoids myths of utopian ideals, and centers striving toward justice as a never-completed process of continuous movement.
3. Attuning to stickiness: Ahmed’s (2010) concept of stickiness in felt dimensions of experience points to the justice potential in attuning to what clings to teachers and teacher educators in unfolding moments of moving through processes of learning. We illustrate how attending to this idea as intentional practice in teacher learning led to asset-centered reframing of children in classrooms.
Significance: Material and symbolic violence and the ongoing histories of injustice they reflect exist as part of schooling (period. full stop.) and hold very different consequences for those under threat and those who benefit from the systems they uphold. We examine critical affect theory as an example of the field’s need for expansive theories to confront the oppressions that are in and around us as scholars invested in how to support teachers and hold ourselves accountable as teacher educators to attend to justice in fiercely committed, compassionate, ethical ways.

Authors

• Elizabeth Dutro, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Ashley Cartun, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Erica Caasi, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Francisco Luis Torres