Embodied Pedagogy: Biopower and Teacher Education

• In Event: Rethinking "Good Faith" Educational Practices Through Historical Discourses in International Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation discusses HIV/AIDS teacher training in Kenya to show how it fabricates the teacher’s ‘soul’ to produce role models who embody the norms and values they are expected to impart. I use the term soul to refer to training that seeks to transform the “sensitivities, disposition, and awareness” of the teacher (Popkewitz & Kirchgasler, 2014, p. 35). I draw on the concept of biopower, as discussed by Michele Foucault and his interlocutors, to understand the effects of relations of power in the teacher training process. As a “history of the present,” the presentation interrogates the concept of role model to show how HIV/AIDS education risks reinscribing various forms of inequalities when the concept is taken for granted. I argue that although the practices employed are geared toward cultivating teacher agency, they also limit autonomy since they are embedded in pre-established rules and standards, some of which are traceable to colonial governance practices that were racially and sexually differentiating.

Theoretical framework
The presentation considers the concept of HIV/AIDS education as an ensemble of rules, practices, procedures, and objects that make a particular governing of populations possible (see Foucault, 1991). I, therefore, draw on Foucault (1978) concept of biopower to understand how “power exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations” (p. 137). Biopower in HIV/AIDS education functions through curriculum practices that produce knowledge about who a child is and what they should be. Advocated strategies such as learner-centered pedagogy and reflective teaching construct the truth about a child’s subjectivity and expected behavior.
Data and Methods
To advance my argument, I employ the “history of the present” approach, which enables a “critical engagement with the present” (Garland, 2014, p. 337). This approach allows us to interrogate the conditions that made certain concepts and subjects of research possible in the first place (Foucault, 1972). The study analyzes contemporary curricular materials alongside colonial archives, including research, policy documents, and textbooks. By doing so, I aim to understand the concerns of colonial governance regarding health, the power relations that defined the colonial period, and how they have transformed over time.

Findings and Scholarly Significance
The analysis shows that the concept of role model positions teachers as biopolitical figures who promote responsible behavior and healthy lifestyles. The findings also challenge the view that HIV/AIDS teacher training fosters agency, as the practices used constrain autonomy through prescribed rules and standards defining an ‘effective’ teacher. The presentation prompts a rethinking of teacher education, exploring how efforts to create responsive teachers may inadvertently reinforce inequalities.

Author

• Cecilia Kyalo, University of Wisconsin - Madison