“Throwing Ourselves into the Water”: Teacher Learning in Precarity in Guatemala

• In Event: Formando docentes en situaciones de vulnerabilidad

Abstract

For educators working in communities plagued by chronic violence and encumbered by a fragile state system, the task of teaching the past and providing young people with the knowledge and skills needed to confront the myriad problems before them can make for a treacherous endeavor. Indeed, educators in Guatemala are being asked to take up the precarious task of traversing the tattered landscape of the past in ways that build the attitudes, skills and behaviors necessary for cultivating sustainable peace in the present and future. However, the use of education as a tool for building democratic social relations and preventing violence places enormous pressures on teachers who often lack sufficient or appropriate training in how to pedagogically address with the controversies of how violent histories map into present-day conflicts. The paper examines how teachers take up, resist, and/or deflect the task of discussing and teaching controversial issues within the context of an in-service teacher education program for social studies teachers. It pays attention to teachers’ stories of living and teaching in precarity and how they narrate the tensions around grappling with controversial issues and contested histories. The analysis focuses on moments when teachers are hesitant, reluctant and/or resistant to moves towards a rights-based approach to education and expose their vulnerability as educators and citizens. I argue for formal engagement with teacher narratives of vulnerability during processes of teacher learning as part of a strategy for acknowledging and mediating the discomforts and risks of grappling with difficult histories.

Author

• Charlotte J Haynes, Teachers College