Aesthetic Transgressions in Learning to Teach for Social Justice and Equity

• In Event: Transformative Resistance: Learning to Teach for Social Justice and Equity

Abstract

Social justice and equity-oriented teacher education guides preservice teachers toward greater critical sociocultural knowledge, analytic skills, social responsibility, and commitment to serving the public good by providing all students with high quality educational experiences. This qualitative case study examines how engaging preservice teachers in arts-based inquiries can provide the necessary generative spaces for developing their capacities to teach for social justice and equity. Data were drawn from student interviews and reflective papers across four sections of a course employing collaborative, arts-based inquiry. Findings highlight the cumulative knowledge, pleasure, anxiety, confrontation with material and symbolic bodies, and critical self-transformations that can develop from aesthetic experiences and help preservice teachers to transgress common sense notions of teaching and learning.

Authors

• Amelia M. Kraehe, University of North Texas

• Keffrelyn D. Brown, The University of Texas - Austin