Researching the Impossible?
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Transcript Researching the Impossible?
Negotiating Aporias
in Teacher Education:
Researching the Impossible?
Bill Green
Charles Sturt University, Australia
Bergen, 2014
Researching the impossible?
teaching as “the art of the impossible” (Taubman, 2014)
education as an “impossible profession” (Freud, Britzman)
teaching the impossible profession?
Teaching the Impossible Profession: Alexander Mackie and the
Project of Teacher Education
The battle for teacher education; or,
Struggling for the soul?
increasing regulation & control
distrust of teachers & teacher education, bordering on
contempt
a enduring problem of governmentality
populational rationality, etc.
a ‘mass’ profession vs a ‘quality’ profession?
organic professionalism vs bureaucratic professionalism
Struggling for the soul of teacher education?
the ‘subject’ of teacher education
or rather, the body-subject
its very character – its soul…
i.e ethical/moral & intellectual formation
hence, a matter of ethical & political import
Re-thinking ‘practice’
professional practice, learning &education
practice theory & philosophy
the ‘primacy of practice’ thesis
a long philosophical heritage
philosophical-empirical inquiry
Practice theory – “… a ‘family of theories’ that challenge individualist
and cognitivist understandings of practice as the application of theory
with understandings of practice as material, embodied and
orchestrated arrangements of ‘doings and sayings’ […], complexly
located in space and time […].” (Lee & Dunstone, 2011: 485)
“Professional practice … consists of speech (what people say) plus the
activity of the body, or bodies, in interaction (what people do, more
often than not together) – a play of voices and bodies. In this view,
practice is inherently dialogical, an orchestrated interplay, and indeed a
matter of co-production.” (Green, 2009: 43)
A (different) practice turn?
The ‘Primacy of Practice’ Thesis
PHRONESIS
PRAXIS
APORIA
A reformulation?
knowledge
action
decision
The ‘Primacy of Practice’ Thesis
PHRONESIS
PRAXIS
APORIA
Thinking aporia
Note: this “old, worn-out Greek word … this
tired word of philosophy and logic” (Derrida,
1993: 12)
“… aporia, the undecideable moments in
which the teaching subject is faced with an
irreconcilable yet urgent decision” (Janzen,
2013: 382)
“… the ghost of undecidability haunts every
responsible decision.” (Wang, 2005: 51)
Related concepts
impossibility
undecidability
decision
responsibility
“… it is because responsibility is infinite that the decision is
always undecidable.” (Critchley, 1999: 108)
Related concepts
impossibility
undecidability
decision
responsibility
“… it is because responsibility is infinite that the decision is
always undecidable.” (Critchley, 1999: 108)
“You are obliged ceaselessly to act” (Anna Freud,
[1930] 1974: 74).
“There is no way out of aporia, but in this impasse,
active engagement with the impossible becomes
imperative for creating new forms of life.” (Wang,
2005: 47)
The ‘impossibility’ of teacher education
“Since school is an institution that is constantly
reformed, the teaching profession is a profession
characterized by an almost constant discontent with
teachers. The ‘desirable’ teachers are always different
from existing teachers.”
(Ingrid Carlgren, 1998: 317)
“… the inherent impossibility of education—we can
never know or predict what someone knows or thinks—
and it turns that impossibility into an invitation to
study.”
(Peter Taubman, 2014: : 16)
Thinking (about) teacher education
“… an unresolvable paradox at the heart of the
project of teacher education – something that is,
indeed, constitutive of that project, that
enterprise, that undertaking.” (Green & Reid,
2010/2015 – in preparation)
“With problem one knows what to do; there is a
method for working out the puzzle. Aporia,
however, Derrida defined as ‘the point at which
the problematic task becomes impossible’…”
(Gregory Ulmer, 2012: 310 )
Conclusion
researching (im)possibility
negotiating aporias
teaching & teacher education
A theoretical & philosophical challenge?
Selected References
Deborah Britzman (2014) “The Other Scene of Pedagogy: A
Psychoanalytic Narrative”, Changing English, Vol 21, No 2, pp 122-130.
Ingrid Carlgren (1988) “Where Did Blackboard Writing Go?”, Journal of
Curriculum Studies, Vol 30, No 6, 613-617.
Jacques Derrida (1993) Aporias, Stanford, California: Sanford University
Press.
Simon Critchley (1999) Ethics–Politics–Subjectivity, London & New York:
Verso.
Melanie D. Janzen (2013) “The Aporia of Undecidability and the
Responsibility of Teacher”, Teaching Education, Vol. 24, No. 4, 381–394.
Peter Taubman (2014) “The Art of the Impossible” Professional Study
and the Making of Teachers”, English Journal, Vol 103, No 6, pp 14-19.
Gregory Ulmer (2012) Avatar Emergency, Parlor Press.
Hongyu Wang (2005) “Aporias, Responsibility, and the Im/Possibility of
Teaching Multicultural Education”, Educational Theory, Volume 55,
Number 1, pp 45-59.