Re/claiming Our Senses: Re/imagining Teacher Education and Professional Growth

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 1:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Educational Collaborations to (Re)Imagine Critical Studies in Education: Working Towards New Visions for Education Research

Abstract

As faculty in Schools of Education wrestle with the pernicious constraints connected to the work of preparing teachers to navigate oppressive and authoritarian violence, this participatory action research project explores structure and scale in one faculty member’s work with teachers in shared community. Centered are the ways in which we move against status quo, centering land, place, cultural and community knowledge, and marginalized histories to re/claim schools as places of authentic teaching and learning. Structurally, we iteratively unforget the troubling foundation of Schools of Education—their very formation in the late-19th century evolved from the creation of the common schools, an “apparatus of the emerging US settler nation-state. To refer to teaching as a ‘public trust’ is to refer to a public only made possible through the forced removal of Indigenous peoples and the subjugation of Black people" (Gorlewski and Tuck, 2019, p. 92). In terms of scale, we refuse “bigger is better” extractive, market-based logics undergirding the teaching profession. Instead, to transform our respective classrooms, we are guided by earth systems and eco-philosophical frameworks that affirm somatic awareness, deep sensory and relational awareness to self, others, and nature, and learning situated in interconnected with complex ecological and cultural systems.

Author

• T. Francene Watson, Washington State University