The Power of Affect in Teacher Activism

• In Event: Educational Advocacy: Motivations, Strategies, and Outcomes

Abstract

"Impacted by global neoliberal ideology, teachers and their unions are called upon to respond to market-driven education policies explicitly or implicitly intended to undermine public education. This study explored how teacher activists in Saskatchewan, Canada enact educational advocacy to counter these oppressive hegemonic discourses.

The following research questions guided this inquiry to explore the multifaceted dynamics of teacher activism: How and why do teacher activists enact educational advocacy through various networks? What forces impact teacher activists’ commitment to advocacy efforts?

Harding et al.’s (2018) theoretical framework of alliances, assemblages and affects was used to understand social movements enacted by teacher activists allowing for critical and creative thought to reimagine social structures. Alliances refer to teacher collectives such as unions or grassroots activist groups in which teachers demonstrate a critically collective teacher voice (Navarro, 1992). Assemblages indicate “the process of arranging, organizing, and fitting together parts” (Harding et al., 2018, p. 9) and while assemblages examine meanings and actions, they move beyond individual or human participants to include non-human entities. And affect, according to Massumi (1995), is an intersection of “mind and body, … volition and cognition, at least two orders of language, expectation and suspense, body depth and epidermis, past and future, action and reaction...” (p. 94). Thus, this study explored how teacher alliances intra-act with and as part of a political assemblage imbued with affect allowing for a circuitry of newness - always becoming.

Case study methodology was utilized to allow for “an in-depth description and analysis” of a bounded system (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015) with the bounded system defined as ‘Saskatchewan teacher activists who enact activism within and beyond their federation.’ The study was approved by the University of Regina Research Ethics Board and sources included semi-structured interviews, narrative vignettes, and documentation. Four known teacher activists were contacted directly to participate as trust and confidentiality is essential for advocacy teacher professionals. Using Saldana’s (2021) eclectic coding, data was analyzed through codeweaving by piecing together versus, in vivo, emotions, and values codes into narrative vignettes to characterize authentic teacher voice.

Affect as an intra-action of emotions, attitudes, beliefs and values was a predominant theme; that is, imbued affective energies moved teachers to enact activism despite challenges and risks. Teacher activists communicated positive intellectual aspects of their involvement as well as social or emotional benefits or “deliberation beyond deliberation” (Rice, 2008, p. 211). Teacher activists initially became involved in social movements because they were passionate about political affairs yet affective energies created an additional bond resulting in coherence and adherence (Ahmed, 2004) to a collective.

Through narrative vignettes which prioritize authentic teacher voice, this study shows how committed teacher activists seek individual and collective approaches to advocacy. Exploring affect and how teachers get something from deliberation beyond deliberation provides for a novel understanding of what motivates teachers to join social movements and remain engaged over time to advocate for equitable high-quality public education.
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Author

• Trudy Lynn Keil, University of Regina