What If? Wobbling in the Speculative Imaginary of Justice-Oriented Teacher Preparation

• In Event: Five Years of Justice-Based English Education: A Symposium on Speculative Research, Remedy, and Repair

Abstract

Title:
What If? Wobbling in the Speculative Imaginary of Justice-Oriented Teacher Preparation

Objectives:
This paper examines a critical case of nonintervention by the researcher-participant during an inquiry group discussion. Speculatively (re)imagining the wobble, I explore the moment’s possibilities and what those possibilities could mean for the group, group members, and me as a justice-oriented teacher educator.

Theoretical Framework:
Teaching and research are messy– full of ambiguity, uncertainty, and unpredictability (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). However, dominant discourses value knowing (Kumashiro, 2000). While justice-oriented educators can proactively develop poses, or stances, toward teaching, they inevitably wobble when something unexpected happens (Garcia & O’Donnell-Allen, 2015). Wobbling requires embracing the messy realities of teaching through sustained critical reflection and resisting binaries, which are central to the continuous process of humanizing pedagogy in teacher education (Carter Andrews et al., 2019). Speculatively (re)imagining (Garcia & Mirra, 2023), rooted in Afrofuturism, offers such a lens “to interpret, engage, design, or alter reality for the reimagination of the past, the contested present, and act as a catalyst for the future” (Otieno, 2018, as cited in Mirra & Garcia, 2020, p. 301).

Methods & Data:
Situating ELA PSTs as experts in their own practice (Pittard, 2015), I designed an inquiry group for ELA PSTs to discuss making curricular and pedagogical changes during student teaching as they worked “against the grain” (Cochran-Smith, 1991; Lane et al., 2003). Five white women (three undergraduates, two masters) ELA PSTs self-selected to participate. Data included recordings of pre/post interviews, eight group meetings where participants discussed problems of practice, and researcher memos.

While the research design called for researcher noninterference to center PSTs’ perspectives, I wobbled in my post-meeting memo concerning my noninterference during the group’s discussion about responding to a mentor teacher “stepping in” to discipline a student (Kavanagh et al., 2023). Treating the wobble moment as a critical case (Patton, 2015), I speculatively (re)imagined the wobble, (re)storying (Thomas & Stornauiolo, 2016) and (re)interpreting three interactional possibilities in collaboration with critical friends (Stenhouse, 1975). I situated these (re)imaginings within dominant Discourses (Gee, 2011) of education (e.g., whiteness, Picower, 2009; individualism, Lortie, 1975; noninterference, Little, 1990) and various counterdiscourses.

Results:
(Re)storying and analyzing three speculative interactional possibilities of noninterference, interference by challenge, and interference by modeling illustrated three key findings:

1. Speculative (re)imagining opened up a multitude of interactional possibilities.
2. Speculative (re)imagining allowed for deeper and more flexible poses as a justice-oriented educator.
3. Collectively speculating on and (re)storying (Thomas & Stournauiolo, 2016) wobbles contributed to and required interrupting norms of knowability (Kumashiro, 2000), individualism (DiAngelo, 2010; Lortie, 1975), and noninterference (Ghousseini et al., 2021; Little, 1990).

Significance:
These findings demonstrate how speculatively (re)imagining wobbles can contribute to more humanizing pedagogy and research for justice-oriented educators. Justice-oriented pedagogy requires near-constant working against the grain (Cochran-Smith, 1991). Collaboratively embracing the messy realities of justice-oriented teacher preparation across space and time can support (re)imagining what is by exploring what could be (Mirra & Garcia, 2020). In the speculative justice-oriented spaces we (re)imagine, we contain multitudes.

Author

• Christopher Kingsland, Towson University