Actively Choosing Love: Preservice Teachers and the Art of Building Restorative Classroom Communities

• In Event: Critical Issues Regarding Classroom Management and Discipline

Abstract

Often, preservice teachers identify classroom management and teaching diverse learners as their biggest needs as new teachers. While teacher preparation programs increasingly take equity-oriented stances, preparation regarding classroom management often maintains undertones of compliance and control. This perpetuates an understanding of equity as being applied only to specific content rather than as a holistic way of being. This case study examines how preservice teachers established pedagogies and actions of justice through a semester-long inquiry to disrupt compliance oriented and oppressive perspectives of classroom management in their practice and ultimately rename the university course. Drawing on frameworks of critical love and Transformative Activist Stance analysis uncovered how preservice teachers established visions and actions of actively choosing love.

Author

• Erica Holyoke, Keene State College