Affective-Relational Practices for Facilitating First-Year, Justice-Oriented Teacher Learning

• In Event: Innovative Pathways in Education: Collaborative Learning and Affective Practices for Equity and Justice

Abstract

The First-Year Teacher Learning Group (FYTLG) sought to support First-Year, Justice-Oriented Teachers to both become skilled at learning from their teaching and to sustain or strengthen their commitments to educational and social justice. Drawing on critical pedagogy and Edwards’ (2005, 2010, 2012, 2017) work on relationality in professional problem-solving, I analyze two of what I call the affective-relational practices that FYTLG participants adopted: validating and commiserating. These practices helped to bolster teachers’ political clarity (Bartolomé, 1994) as justice-oriented teachers and helped FYTLG members to engage together in pedagogical reasoning (Loughran, 2019) about persistent dilemmas of practice. Findings suggest that developing normalizing responses (Little & Horn, 2007) to the affective dimensions of teaching can open up space for collaborative problem solving.

Author

• Elizabeth Tetu, University of Colorado - Boulder