Learning to "Sit in the Messiness": Leveraging Critical and Queer Pedagogies in Teacher Educator Development

• In Event: Making Teacher Education a Site for Transformation by Empowering Teacher Educators

Abstract

Purpose. This paper explores the contributions of a doctoral course, grounded in critical and queer pedagogies and practitioner inquiry, to novice teacher educators’ (NTEs) learning to transform teacher education. Two questions guided the study:
How did doctoral students/NTEs take up critical and queer framings in their practioner inquiry projects?
How did these framings help NTEs make sense of and/or trouble their understandings of transforming/disrupting oppression in teacher education?

Perspective(s). We begin from two premises, that: 1) teacher education often perpetuates racism and other forms of oppression (Ohito, 2020; Sleeter, 2017); and 2) teacher educator development is an essential lever for transforming teacher education from a status quo-perpetuating enterprise to a status quo-disrupting one (Stillman & Beltramo, 2019). We thus anchor our facilitation and explorations of NTE development in two complementary, liberatory theories that foster transformative learning: critical pedagogy and queer perspectives. Aimed at “desocializing” learners from the status quo (Shor, 1987), critical pedagogy views learning as a collective process whereby learners expand their consciousness of the socio-political context through dialogic exchanges and reflective action grounded in lived experience (Freire, 1970). Queer perspectives, meanwhile, underscore how discomfort, vulnerability, resistance, and emotional crisis mediate the problem-posing, reflective, dialogic, praxis-oriented work of critical pedagogy (Kumashiro, 2002; Luhmann, 1998). Paired with “inquiry as stance” (Cochran-Smith, 2003), these theories can press NTEs toward critical interrogations of their own learning and practice.

Methods. Because of our commitments to embodying a critical stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2008), and our understanding “that at the core of expert practice is not the strict implementation of evidence-based practices, but the need to make subtle judgments in unique situations” (Korthagen, 2020, p. 333), we (two professors and three NTEs) engaged in collaborative self-study.

Data sources and analysis. Data include course artifacts: teaching materials, NTEs’ written reflections and completed coursework, and instructor/researcher memos. Anchored in critical (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2011) and queer (Talburt & Rasmussen, 2010) traditions, analysis involved a dialogical process of sensemaking that also valued data’s emotional resonance (Cahnmann-Taylor, Wooten, Souto-Manning, & Dice, 2009).

Findings. Four themes capture how NTEs took up critical and queer framings. NTEs tended to: 1) explore the emotionality and 2) “unknowability” (Kumashiro, 2000) of disrupting oppression in teacher education; 3) implicate themselves and their identities in that work; and 4) name and grapple with tensions rooted in practice. NTEs described disrupting oppression in teacher education as vulnerable, uncomfortable work, and were challenged by a shared desire to know how to do and get it “right.” Through three illustrative cases, the paper unpacks how critical and queer framings supported NTEs to “sit in the messiness” of not knowing, as one NTE put it; to acknowledge the partiality of their knowledge; and to reframe tensions experienced in learning as generative.

Scholarly significance of the study. This study furthers the case for attending to teacher educator development as a lever for transforming teacher education while advancing understandings about the contributions of specific learning experiences to the development of equity- and justice-oriented teacher educators.

Authors

• Jamy Stillman, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Presenting Author

• Sara Staley, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Tetu, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Non-Presenting Author

• Erica Caasi, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Non-Presenting Author

• Devon Hedrick-Shaw, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Non-Presenting Author