Subjectivities and Becomings in International Teacher Training Programs

• In Event: Making the learner, making the teacher, and their ambivalences

Proposal

International teacher training programs (ITTP) provide opportunities for educators across the globe to better understand their professional practices through a comparative lens (Crossley & Watson, 2003). ITTPs have been found to affirm teachers’ love of the profession; enhance teachers’ global perspectives; expose teachers to new methodologies; and generate critical reflection of teacher’s political and ideological perspectives (Alfaro & Quezada, 2010). This study sought to better understand teacher’s ideological perspectives as ITTP participants. Alfaro & Quezada (2010) note that as teachers in ITTPs re-examine their own beliefs and values, they often struggle to make sense of them in relation to their international experiences. In this study, teacher’s ideological “subjectivities” were explored through a participant driven photo storytelling project that was adapted from the photovoice methodology (Wang & Burris, 1997; Weedon, 1987, p. 32). Photovoice is an iterative and participatory visual methodology where participants select a theme as a focus for capturing photos. After participants share their photos with each other they determine subsequent themes for photo capture in an iterative ongoing process (Wang & Burris, 1997). Adapting the photovoice process allowed for “specific material reconfigurings of the world that do not merely emerge in time but iteratively reconfigure spacetimematter as part of the dynamics of becoming,” (Barad, 2007, p. 142). By paying attention to these material-discursive practices or in other words, the material reconfiguring of teachers worlds, we explored the “differences that our knowledge-making practices make and the effects they have on the world,” (Barad, 2007, p. 72).
Data Sources and Method of Inquiry
For this study, 16 international teachers (6 men and 10 women from eight countries) enrolled in a 5-month teacher residency and professional development program in the United States. During the residency, the international teachers and program faculty engaged in a photo storytelling project to document and explore their engagement in the program. The data collection process and participant agreement to participate in the research study were approved by an Institutional Review Board.
At the conclusion of the photo storytelling project each participant submitted a final photo that represented who they were “becoming” after participation in this program (Deluze & Guttari, 1987). Becoming was defined as how the teachers conceptualized newness or a new state of being from participation in the ITTP (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012). The photos, photo elicitations and participant analysis not only created a stratified visual and narrative data set (Rose, 2001), they also served as each participant’s refrain, or ontological force of territorialization and deterritorialization (Deluze & Guttari, 1987). The participant’s refrains documented how s/he centered her/himself within the chaos of an international program; how s/he was marking a territory; and provided insight into new assemblages of participant ideologies after participation in the program. Participant refrains were explored through a diffractive analysis (Barad, 2007; Mazzei, 2011) where becomings were shared and analyzed as visual and narrative representations. These material-discursive assemblages then provided insight into how participants were “ontologically a being and becoming” (Barad, 2007; Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017, p. 115-116; Jackson & Mazzei, 2012).
Subjectivities and Becomings: Steven
Steven (pseudonym) expressed that he had always seen his role as a teacher in a very defined perspective. He shared that he had always had strong beliefs that his role as an educator was to prepare students to pass national exams, to establish discipline in students and to closely follow the structures of the educational system. After participation in the ITTP, Steven was challenging his prior ideological beliefs about education. He shared that he now sees a teacher as “One who is older. One who is more imaginative and I want to be more creative so that at the end of the day, I could bring the passion of learning to my students.” In the photo elicitation, Steven shared that he is moving between his prior beliefs about education and new perspectives. His photographs exhibited an extension of this becoming. His refrain included photos of his children painting and exploring their world through art. The children were painting with their hands, and Steven captured their images from above. Steven himself noted how he was playing with creativity as he captured the photos, “…it was definitely close up and like what you correctly pointed out, it was like a short angle downwards. I was playing with zooming.” He also described the photos “it was supposed to be messy. And it’s very exploratory.”
(Due to space limitations for conference submissions and the nature of the analysis we have included one participant’s “results” in the submission and will expand upon other participant’s “results” for conference presentation.)
Entanglements (Discussion)
In the preceding example, Steven provided insight into how he is in process of “being and becoming.” From his prior ideologies about teaching, his refrain brings forth his passion for success; how he is linking to new pathways for learning; and how he now measures those successes through the lens of creativity. Steven, at this time is expressing a joy for teaching and an interest in experimenting with new pedagogies as he explores new areas of interest (Alfaro & Quezada, 2010). Within this, Steven is also signaling how his ideologies about teaching have changed. He sees a path forward for himself as an educator who inspires others and is less restricted by formal or prescribed definitions of educational success. This reflects an ideological shift of what Steven has determined as meaningful and is a marker of his becoming.
As the conference theme guides us to engage more social responsibility and if we are to re-imagine our field, we must seek methodologies that allow us to understand the gaps between educators within the development community and the corporate philanthropy worlds. This study demonstrates that the design, implementation and support of participants in ITTP programs benefit from better understanding participants’ becomings. It is in the mileu of their becomings where participants make sense of their experiences and provides clues in how to better support ITTP participants as they re-engage with their local contexts.

Author

• Ann Walker Nielsen, Center for Advanced Studies in Global Education, Arizona State University