Radical Vulnerability as Remedy to Teacher Performativity: A Collective Memory Study of Inheritance and Interruption

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Radical Participation in Healing and Being (Table 8)

Abstract

Grounded in feminist theories of performativity, vulnerability, and embodiment, this paper challenges conceptions of teacher identity that force educators to compartmentalize the personal, political, and professional in a simultaneously personal and political profession. Furthermore, intersectionality informs analysis around the authors’ shared experiences as women while compelling the authors to investigate their differences to highlight the particular harms women teachers of color face in school spaces. The authors utilized Collective Memory Work, proposing that radical vulnerability can combat the harmful practice of teacher performativity to work toward a self-reflective and -realizing practice. Preliminary results revealed that vulnerability and a strong connection to one’s emotions work toward repairing teachers’ authenticity and remedying teacher performativity.

Authors

• Melissa Surrette, University of Minnesota

• Ngan Nguyen, University of Minnesota

• Leyla Suleiman, University of Minnesota

• Keitha-Gail Martin-Kerr, University of Minnesota

• Amy Lyga, University of Minnesota