Spaces of Resistance: Heterotopias in Arts-Based Elementary Education

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Embracing Well-Being and Joy to Advance Equity and Justice in Early Childhood Education (Table 41)

Abstract

As teacher educators recalibrate and rethink education in the wake of a global pandemic, what alternatives have become more visible? We find Foucault’s (1986) heterotopia a valuable concept for thinking about transformative teacher education. For Foucault, Heterotopia neutralizes or inverts the designated set of relations mirrored or reflected. We borrow from MacRae’s (2011) notion of heterotopic spaces in early years classrooms as places that “exist within the cultural order, and yet at the same remain outside it” (p. 104) and locate parallels in an elementary education course on arts-based pedagogies. We theorize arts-based, material practices (art-work) as heterotopic sites of resistance and disruption.

Authors

• Leslie Rech Penn, University of Georgia

• Shin Ae Han, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa