Immunitas and (un)desirable teacher knowledge in teacher education

Abstract

Since the latter half of the 20th century many political efforts and initiatives have been launched to ensure that teacher education provides teachers with a positive (orderly) knowledge base. This includes things like professional teacher standards and notions like ‘best practices’ and ‘evidence‐based practice’. Building on the work of Esposito and with inspiration from psychoanalytic theory, we argue that today's educational policy can be seen as an attempt to immunise (teacher) education from risks associated with negativity ‐ disorderly, disruptive and ‘destructive’ matters that can problematise and question the normal order of things within political debates and policy‐based reforms. Drawing on examples from England and Denmark – contexts in which the authors work – we demonstrate how a dichotomy between desirable sound/healthy knowledge and undesirable unsound/unhealthy knowledge exist within teacher education. We examine how this produces epistemic injustice in that negative modes of thought and practice are rendered invisible, unthinkable and illegitimate. Being able to traverse such injustice, teachers must be encouraged to approach any and all sources of influence on their professional knowledge base with a sort of agonistic pragmatism, which may allow them to be faithful to the ethico‐political situation they are engaged in. What we suggest in this regard is that teacher education must provide time and space for (student) teachers to engage with plurality, contingency and absence because such negative ‘stumbling blocks’ (always) play a vital part in education, preventing control, stability and harmony.

(Re)considering Nature of Science Education in the Face of Socio-scientific Challenges and Injustices

“…This scenario can be positioned within a larger global movement of neoliberal educational policymaking that privileges performativity and metrification through large-scale testing, one-size-fits-all curricula, national and international standardisation and compliance-driven school inspections (Apple, 2007;Ball et al, 2012;Gandolfi & Mills, 2023), instead of an education grounded on notions such as social justice, critical thinking, emancipation, participation, etc. As argued by other colleagues in the wider field of education and policymaking, this landscape is intertwined with authoritarian and neoconservative policy discourses (Clarke, 2023;Unsworth et al, 2023)-as recently seen for instance, in Brazil, 3 England and the USA 4 -which have been pushing the nature of curricular and pedagogical practices across the world against the kind socio-political and social-justice informed thinking and practices I have been arguing for here. For instance, in England, where I write from, we have recently seen the emergence of 'political impartiality' policies around curricular and pedagogical practices, culminating in the publication of a policy guidance on Political impartiality in schools in 2022 by the Department for Education (DfE, 2022).…”

“…If we also consider the widely known absence of political education across many teacher education programmes across the world, both at initial and continuous development levels (cf., Picower, 2013;Avelar & Ball, 2019;Unsworth et al, 2023), it is then understandable that schools, and the science teaching community in particular both at school and teacher education levels, will opt out from engaging with such complex political entanglements within their own subjects. That is, science education initiatives are encouraged to stay focused on Vision I or, at best, on a technical-instrumental and individualistic approach to Vision II.…”