Résumés
Abstract
A basic premise of teacher education is the value of teacher agency, that is, the teacher’s capacity to take responsibility for one’s knowledge, beliefs, judgements, and relationships. How can teacher educators sustain a commitment to agency in light of critiques of western modernity, specifically in relation to the existence of a rational autonomous subject, the erasure of history, and the opacity of language? Drawing on existentialism, ethics, and psychoanalysis, we discuss three practicum vignettes to illustrate what we are calling “the chiastic complexity” of agency within the field of teacher education. We argue that admission of the limits of teacher agency may be the source of ethical insight, educational opportunity, and political resistance for student teachers and teacher educators.
Résumé
Un principe fondamental de la formation des enseignants est la valeur de l’agentivité de l’enseignant, c’est-à-dire, la capacité de l’enseignant d’assumer la responsabilité de sa connaissance, ses croyances et ses jugements, ainsi que de ses rapports éducatifs. Cependant, comment les formateurs d’enseignants peuvent-ils affirmer et soutenir un engagement aussi fondamental à l’égard de l’agentivité, compte tenu des critiques de la modernité occidentale, particulièrement par rapport à l’existence du sujet rationnel et autonome, l’effacement de l’histoire, et l’opacité de la langue? En s’appuyant sur les domaines de l’existentialisme, l’éthique, et la psychanalyse, nous analysons trois vignettes fondées sur les expériences d’un stage (practicum) pour illustrer ce que nous appelons « la complexité chiastique » de l’agentivité dans le domaine de la formation des enseignants. Pour cette raison, nous soutenons que la reconnaissance des limites de l’agentivité de l’enseignant peut être la source d’une perspicacité éthique, des possibilités d’éducation, et de la résistance politique non seulement des futurs enseignants, mais des formateurs des enseignants.
Parties annexes
Bibliography
- Agamben, G. (2011). Nudities. (Trans. D. Kishik, & S. Pedatella). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
- Badiou, A. (2014). Infinite thought: Truth and the return to philosophy. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic.
- Ball, S. J. (2008). The education debate. Bristol, United Kingdom: Bristol University Press.
- Bibby, T. (2011). Education – An ‘impossible’ profession? Psychoanalytical explorations of learning and classrooms. London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
- Biesta, G., Priestley, M., & Robinson, S. (2015). The role of beliefs in teacher agency. Teachers and Teaching,21(6), 624-640.
- Biesta, G., & Tedder, M. (2006). How is agency possible? Towards an ecological understanding of agency-as achievement. Learning lives: Learning, identity, and agency in the life course. Working Paper Five. Exeter, United Kingdom: Teaching and Learning Research Programme.
- Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
- Britzman, D. (2007). Teacher education as uneven development: Toward a psychology of uncertainty. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 10(1), 1-12.
- Britzman, D. (2009). The poetics of supervision: A psychoanalytic thought experiment for teacher education. Changing English, 16(4), 385-396.
- Brown, T., Atkinson, D., & England, J. (2006). Regulatory discourses in education. A Lacanian perspective. Bern: Peter Lang.
- Buchanan, R. (2015). Teacher identity and agency in an era of accountability. Teachers and Teaching, 21(6), 700-719.
- Butler, J. (2004). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. London, United Kingdom: Verso.
- Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war: When is life grievable? London, United Kingdom: Verso.
- Chinnery, A. (2001). Levinas and ethical agency: Toward a reconsideration of moral education. In L. Stone (Ed.), Philosophy of education 2000 (pp. 67-74). Urbana-Champaign, IL: Philosophy of Education Society.
- Clarke, M., & Phelan, A. (2017). Teacher education and the political: The power of negative thinking. London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
- Conle, C. (1999). Why narrative? Which narrative? Struggling with time and place in life and research. Curriculum Inquiry, 29(1), 7-32.
- Courtney, S. J., & H. M. Gunter (2015). Get off my bus! School leaders, vision work and the elimination of teachers. International Journal of Leadership in Education,18(4), 395-417.
- Derrida, J. D. (2007). Learning to live finally: The last interview (P.-A. Brault & M. Naas, Trans.). Hoboken, NJ: Melville House.
- Edwards, A. (2015). Recognising and realising teachers’ professional agency. Teachers and Teaching,21(6), 779-784.
- Foucault, M. (1997). The ethics of the concern for self as a practice of freedom. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics, subjectivity and truth: Essential works of Foucault 1954-1984 (Vol. 1). New York, NY: The New Press.
- Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press.
- Greene, M. (2004). Curriculum and consciousness. In D. Flinders & S. Thornton (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (pp. 135-148). New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.
- Greene, M. (1973). Teacher as stranger: Educational philosophy for the modern age (1st ed.). New York, NY: Wadsworth.
- Hopmann, S. T. (2008). No child, no school, no state left behind: Schooling in the age of accountability. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(4), 417-456.
- Hudson, A. (2004). Educating the people. In D. Hays (Eds.), The Routledge guide to key debates in education (pp.18-22). London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
- Jaspers, K. (1986). Basic philosophical writings: Selections (E. Ehrlich, L. H. Ehrlich, & G. B. Petter, Eds. & Trans.). Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
- Lacan, J. (2007). Ecrits. A selection (B. Fink, Trans.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
- Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
- Levinas, E. (1996). Peace and proximity. In A. T. Peperzak, S. Critchley, & R. Bernasconi (Eds.), Emmanuel Levinasbasic philosophical writings (pp. 161-169). Bloomington, ID: Indiana University Press.
- Levinas, E., & Kearney, R. (1986). Dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas. In R. A. Cohen (Ed.), Face to face with Levinas (pp. 13 -33). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
- Loveless, D. J., Beverly, C. L., Bodle, A., Dredger K. S., Foucar-Szocki, D., Harris, T., … Wishon, P. (2016). The vulnerability of teaching and learning in a selfie society. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.
- Masschelein, J., & Simons, M. (2013). In defence of the school: A public issue. Leuven, The Netherlands: Education, Culture & Society Publishers.
- McMillan, C. (2015). Pedagogy of the impossible: Zizek in the classroom. Educational Theory, (65)5, 545-562.
- Parker, I. (1997). Discourse analysis and psycho-analysis. British Journal of Social Psychology, 36(4), 479-495.
- Ruddick, S. (1995). Maternal thinking: Toward a politics of peace. New York, NY: Beacon Press
- Ruti, M. (2010). Winnicott with Lacan: Living creatively in a postmodern world. American Imago,67(3), 353-374.
- Rüsselbaek Hansen, D., Phelan, A., & Qvortrup, A. (2015). Teacher education in Canada and Denmark in an era of neutrality. Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 12(1), 40-55.
- Rüsselbaek Hansen, D., & Frederiksen, L. F. (2017). The ‘crucified’ leader: Cynicism, fantasies and paradoxes in education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 36(4), 425-441.
- Scalia, J., & Scalia, L. (2011). Ideological critique and ethical leadership. Philosophical Studies in Education, 42, 55-64.
- Schiff, J. L. (2014). Burdens of political responsibility: Narrative and cultivation of responsiveness. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
- Taubman, P. M. (2009). Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education. New York, NY: Routledge.
- Taylor, C. (1977). What is human agency? In T. Mischel (Ed.), The self: Psychological and philosophical issues (pp. 103-135). Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
- Thayer-Bacon, B. (2017). Relational ontologies. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
- Thornhill, C., & Miron, R. (2017). “Karl Jaspers.” In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Winter 2017 ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/jaspers/
- Toom, A., Pyshalto, K., & O’Connor Rust, F. (2015). Teachers’ professional agency in contradictory times. Teachers and Teaching,21(6), 625-624.
- Vidovich, L. (2009). “You don’t fatten the pig by weighing it”: Contradictory tensions in the “policy pandemic of accountability infecting education.” In M. Simons, M. Olssen, & M. Peters (Eds.), Re-reading education policies: A handbook studying the policy agenda of the 21st century (pp. 549-567). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.
- White, S. (2000). Sustaining affirmation: The strengths of weak ontology in political theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Zizek, S. (2006). How to read Lacan. London, United Kingdom: Granta Books.
- Zizek, S. (2008a). The plague of fantasies. New York, NY: Verso.
- Zizek, S. (2008b). The sublime object of ideology. New York, NY: Verso
- Zizek, S. (2014). Event: Philosophy in transit. London, United Kingdom: Penguin Books.