Pedagogies of Difference: Refusing a Negative Construction of Difference in Elementary Behavior Intervention

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 11:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: Communities of Practice to Center Justice-Centered Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Negative constructions of difference at work in school behavior intervention theory-practices harm young children who diverge from a specific set of Eurocentric, patriarchal, capitalist norms. Negative difference has built a historical framework of Sameness in the ways students and teachers are expected—and, thus, rewarded, disciplined, and punished—to behave in school. This feminist posthuman inquiry traces the critical perspectives incited in a teacher-researcher’s personal narrative of an elementary disciplinary committee meeting and the behavioral intervention practices that she both took up and refused in her Kindergarten classroom. By arguing for a pedagogical turn from conformity to becoming, this paper contributes to critical perspectives in early childhood education that are creating and affirming more loving ways to engage with bodies in schools.

Author

• Lindsey Aleeta Lush, Augusta University