Affect(ing) the Representational Logics of Teacher Education: Getting “Stuck” in Social Justice

• In Event: More-Than-Human Matterings and Curricular Troublings, (Re)Centerings, and Noticings

Abstract

This post-qualitative study attends to student teachers’ “stuck moments,” or emotional moments of crisis, in social justice-oriented teacher education. Drawing on posthumanist theories of affect, we problematize the prevailing tendency to view stuck moments as symptomatic of the theory-practice gap. Instead, this work challenges the representational logic that undergirds conventional notions of “stuckness”, conceptualizing stuck moments as assemblages of discursive, affective, and material forces. Of interest is our finding that the pressure on student teachers to achieve teaching mastery and participants’ desire to have an impact on their students, constitute the stuck moment assemblage. These elements illuminate the infiltration of “learning discourses” in stuckness, and, with their focus on mastery and measurable outcomes, conflict with the uncertainty of social justice.

Authors

• Erica Eva Colmenares, San Jose State University

• Scott Jarvie, San Jose State University