“I just get a different feeling in this class”: Affective Belonging in Student-Teacher Encounters at a Dutch Urban Secondary School

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Thursday 4:15pm
  In Poster Session: Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender Poster Session

Abstract

This article draws on critical feminist insights on affect to analyze how teachers' practices structure the conditions for belonging of racialized youth in pedagogical spaces in an urban school. We employed qualitative interviews with 16 racialized Dutch students, exploring the ways classroom atmospheres and affective teacher practices enable or undermine possibilities for belonging to emerge. The findings highlight the potential of teacher praxis in both undermining and generating humanizing connections that enable students’ bodies to feel at ease and engage in transformative learning experiences. The paper offers important insights, such as the need for critical emotional praxis in teacher education.

Author

• Zehra Colak, Utrecht University