Getting Stuck in Social Justice: Affect(ing) the Theory-Practice Gap in Social Justice Teacher Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Complexity Theories in Education SIG Roundtable (Table 7)

Abstract

This post-qualitative study attends to student teachers’ “stuck moments,” or emotional moments of crisis, in a social justice-oriented teacher education program. It problematizes the tendency of viewing stuck moments as symptomatic of the theory-practice gap. Challenging the representational logic that undergirds notions of stuckness, this work conceptualizes stuck moments as an assemblage of discursive, affective, and material forces. Informed by theories of affect, I argue that the pressure on student teachers to achieve teaching mastery, and participants’ desire to make an impact on their students, constitute the stuck moment assemblage. These elements illuminate the infiltration of “learning discourses” in stuckness. These discourses, with their focus on mastery, competition, and measurable outcomes, collide with the uncertainty of social justice work.

Authors

• Erica Eva Colmenares, San Jose State University

• Roy Danovitch, Kehillah Jewish High School