The wisdom of mindful gardening

‘Gently darling’ I coaxed my daughter, noticing her tiny fingers pressing the soil around the little marigold seedlings. ‘Beautiful…’ I added, proudly smiling at her, as she squinted her eyes, while looking up.

“Yes, loosen the soil, in the middle, place the plant and gently pat the soil around it’ I continued. She is certainly getting the knack of it, I smiled with the thought. 

With temperatures dipping to 9 degrees celsius in Delhi, my six year old Rebecca is a bundle of wool, as we climbed the steps to our terrace. For us, the Covid 19 Pandemic set of, the gardening bug. Our terrace, for the past year and half has become our garden. Plants, soil and leaf compost from Delhi’s Aurobindo Ashram now occupy a range of containers. Kitchen waste and recycled water regularly disappears into the containers. In our garden - spiders, caterpillars, butterflies, bumble bees, geckos, sparrows, bulbuls, raucous jungle babblers, iridescent pale-billed sicklebills, snails, slugs, earthworms, marauding monkeys, envious neighbours - are all fair play. I am yet to accurately decipher Rebecca’s shrieks, namely to match it with the creature she encounters in our garden. Her eagerness to clamber up the steps and talk to her creepy-crawly and winged 'friends' and plants, easily translates to dirty hands and soiled clothes - Reena’s torment. 

‘Why can’t you just wash up, on the terrace itself …?’ Reena shrugs, ‘coming in and spreading the mess all over the place…’ she admonishes. Rebecca glances at the finger on my lips as I gesticulate hiding behind Reena. Our code for, ‘just don’t say anything …let her scream for a while …’. Gosh, what am I teaching my daughter, I wonder. I am struck by how quickly she is learning. 

Children, I’ve heard, are like seeds. Planted in good soil they will bloom and flourish. Yet, there are those who claim children are raw uncut and unpolished gems, waiting to be discovered. Both perspectives include the stress and storms of life that are integral to the growth and development of children. But what if children, were to be viewed as a verdant plot land. Imagine the variety of flowers, fruits, vegetables, bushes, shrubs and trees that a plot of land could bring forth and the creatures they’d attract - a veritable eco-system. Easy to imagine the gems that could be lying deep inside some of these plots. A well tended plot of land stands in stark contrast to a neglected plot. How do we till and care for our ‘precious plots’ our children?

What do we choose to sow each season? Imagination and technology continue to defy and stretch traditional perspectives and boundaries of land use. Interestingly, the yield from fertile plots are always for 'the other'.

Imagine a classroom of multiple plots facing different directions. What are the north facing parts of a plot? What are the roles of teachers? Teachers as mature plots of land, seeking to pollinate virgin plots? The ravages to a mature plot and the wisdom of fallen leaves offer valuable lessons. The possibilities are fascinating. 

Placing her tiny palms into mine, I ask her, ‘what are you planning to plant after the marigolds?’ almost immediately her face lights up with her toothless grin, ‘some sadabahar, jasmine and rose? … she asks. ‘Why not …sure, we have to get some good mogra, this time …’ I reply. A more pressing question, though, What do I intend to sow … in the precious plot, now snuggly cuddled on my lap …  I begin to wonder.

COVID -19 and VUCA

VUCA, an acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, a combination of qualities that, taken together, characterize the nature of some difficult conditions and situations. 

COVID -19, could well be an acronym that stands for the adjectives: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous

Amid the VUCA and COVID-19, there has never been such an overwhelming universal longing for optimism and a renewal of Faith, Hope and Charity.

Post COVID 19, Will Faith, Hope and Charity characterise the resilience of the human race? or will our instinctive ‘dated attitude and language’ now embellished with new found ‘coping strategies’ hasten to consolidate all the ‘resources’ that are ‘essential’ to ‘mindless survival’? 

While leaders, administrators and quacks pledge and plead for optimism albeit with dated attitudes and language, the youth are seduced into the boiling frog syndrome. Ever imagined the Earth that we will bequeath to our chand ka tukda? 

Seek Forgiveness

More than exploiting the optimism and enthusiasm of our young hearts and minds, we as adults are called to fulfil a very grave responsibility - to seek FORGIVENESS - we need to step out of our smug comfort zones and and declare how we have mindlessly messed up the lives of the future generations ... 

The innocence and the good will of young hearts and minds have been trampled upon and we will never ever be able to repair the untold damage we have caused for generations to come.

Monochromatic or Multihued ?

The ‘warrior’  epithet in the recent past, particularly in India, is rather ubiquitous.  Proudly valorised, and one imagines weaponised, and enjoined on all walks of life. This valorization could well be a misguided and monochromatic view of life, reduced to a myopic ‘win or lose’ vision of life as a pursuit for mindless survival ...

LIFE

IF and LIE - rather curiously make up a fifty and seventy-five percent respectively of the word, LIFE! Life with all its ‘IFs and LIEs’ invites us to embrace the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous and journey on in a human and humane way of being and having.

Indigenous India and Climate Change: Techne or Phronesis?

Anthony Joseph, PhD

 

 

A lesson in how to practice recognizing the fundamental truth that every inch of India is Indigenous territory

 

Ki mai koe ki a au,

he aha te mea nui tenei ao:
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
 

If you should ask me what is

the greatest thing in the world,
the answer would be:
It’s people, it’s people, it’s people.
(Maori song)

 

David Attenborough, speaking on behalf of the UN's "people's seat" initiative to give ordinary people a voice, issued a stark warning to the world at the United Nations climate talks in Katowice, Poland, "If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon." We face immense challenges on our planet - from climate change to the development of artificial intelligence, fresh water accessibility, the growing threat of disease, and crop failure. Extreme hot weather is getting more common and cold weather more rare. Rising sea levels will soon necessitate mass migrations, and coastal cities aren’t doing enough. In the face of these challenges, mindless developmental agenda riding roughshod on politically motivated affirmative actions are alarmingly bereft of protection and sustainablility narratives.

 

The Dignity and Disaster of Modernity

 

Despair and uncertainty surround us: in the headlines, in our families, and in ourselves. What has led to so much poor performance in the public and private realms: that our schools cannot teach creativity, that our governments cannot predict the disasters that befall us, that our health system will not protect us from pandemics, that our politics will remain polarized, that our economy cannot avoid inequality, and that our industry cannot help but pollute the environment. Perhaps it has its origins in the aspects of pedagogical objectifying, gnostic knowledge and practice reduced to a technical or an intellectual endeavor centered around quantification, intellectual reasoning, and theorizing. As Pinar (2006) points out, “the academic field of education is so very reluctant to abandon social engineering” (p. 109). It also seems as if teachers themselves rely too heavily on the technical-instructional side of education where schools, educational policy, and curricula aim foremost at producing citizens who are ‘productive’ from a societal perspective.

 

 

The ‘dignity’ of modernity that heralded the developments and the differentiation in the exceedingly complex domains of knowledge - science, art and morality, set off in its wake postmodernity’s great disaster, the dis-integration of knowing, valuing and doing. Despite the dignity of these domains, through their specialized paths, have become dissociated from one another, raising questions particularly about indigenous ‘ways-of-knowing and ways-of-being’ - essentially an immersion in practice marked by a deep inseparability between knowledge, ethics and action. This inseparability draws on Aristotle and his concept of phronesis in which knowing, doing and valuing are inseparably intertwined and characteristic of adivasi/indigenous/tribal peoples’ ways of being and having.

 

Techne and Phronesis

 

Aristotle distinguished between the kind of deliberations that were appropriate for making things (techne) and those that were appropriate for acting in the human realm. He used the term ‘phronesis’ to mean a practical wisdom that can address a plurality of values. Considering the nature of ‘phronesis’ – the kind of knowledge that is already not separate from ethics and action, we posit adivasi/indigenous ‘ways-of-knowing and ways-of-being’ as a ‘seamless’ way of being, rather than an artificially induced integration of separate domains of knowledge, ethics and action. We argue for the promotion of such a way of knowing and being that draws on more contemplative directions, which open up creative, ‘unspecialized’ possibilities for feeling, thinking and doing. The term ‘unspecialized’ is developed in relation to Heidegger’s thought and expresses a fundamentally human way of being that cannot be objectified and as such is a deep source of creativity. This ‘creativity of unspecialization’ best flourished in their own domain, where adivasi/indigenous/tribal peoples had ownership of land and forests, which they protected prudently.  Rapacious extractivism developmental agendas demanding dams, industries or other infrastructure, persuaded by techne has colluded to displace not just the adivasi/indigenous/tribal but our very hope to grow and flourish – intellectually, emotionally, and socially.

 

 

The Adivasi/Indigenous

 

Many people learn about Adivasi/Indigenous communities only through the most controversial and confrontational news.  Adivasi/Indigenous peoples’ life projects are largely embroiled in turbulent encounters with extractivism, revealing loss and suffering.  Adivasi/Indigenous ‘ways-of-knowing and ways-of-being’ - ravaged by land rights violations, systemic denial and exclusion of political status, restricted freedoms and denigrated by cultural revitalization programmes - continue to be underrepresented and undervalued. The relevance and urgency of nuanced conversations with the time-honoured practices of indigenous self-determination and cultural renewal are now stifled by dominant narratives of efficiency, assessment, and productivity.

 

Mainstream privileged narratives’ scant regard - for the effects of early influences, significant others, challenges and opportunities, human agency, and personal and professional capital of the adivasi/indigenous - is consistent with the administrative policies that have constituted the ‘tribes’ and their traditions as distinct from Indian society in general and have thus played a major role in their marginalisation and deprivation.

 

 

 

The Adivasi/indigenous’ journey to make sense of his/her life and work through different layers of historical, societal, and institutional transformation situated at the intersection of history, culture, and society where the search for personal identity and political consciousness becomes a lifelong project recognizes both - the notion of knowledge is politicized by the dominant culture and the skewed paternalist welfare and development framework of India’s tribal policies.

 

Despite the aggressive conceptual imperialism and the imposition of exogenous categories of techne, the phronesis of the adivasi/indigenous/tribal is best demonstrated in the everyday ‘creativity of unspecialization’. Such a creativity celebrates a pathic understanding a language that is sensitive to the experiential, moral, emotional and personal dimensions of life. This fundamental human way of being recognizes and demonstrates how indigenous ecological knowledge contributes to our understanding of how we live in our world (our world views), and in turn, the ways in which humans adapt to climate change and forestall ‘the extinction of much of the natural world.’

 

Narrative Interpretation: Tacit and Explicit, Analogue and Digital

 

Swedish scholar, Oscar Öquist (1992), once complained that everything he loves about people appears to have gone awry. Adapting his sentiments we posit, mainstream narratives of dubious progeny championing conceptual imperialism or the imposition of exogenous categories, has rendered everything we love about people in a new narrative interpretation – the tacit and analogue in our complexity, our vagueness, our irrationality, and our insecurity, in other words, our humanness – is being persecuted and demeaned by technology’s distant, logical, explicit, and digital ideals. The values we are (mis)led to cherish today a forced incorporation of expressions of modernity – such as efficiency, assessment, and productivity – leave no room for softer, human qualities such as intuition, emotions, imagination, and creativity. They are denigrated as indigenous, or immature. And yet we instinctively and implicitly know how important these qualities are for human growth and development.

 

The Road Ahead: Universal Subjectivism

 

Despite techne’s brash  exertion of its myopic techno-rational authority on Viktor Frankl, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and a host of others … they lived to tell their tales, the triumph of the unwieldy influence of effulgent phronesis, despite the threats, phoenix like it continues to blossom into a myriad forms – existential therapy, non-violence and forgiveness. 

 

The invitation to Adivasi/Indigenous peoples’ ‘ways-of-knowing and ways-of-being’ is the call to self-reflection and change in certain mainstream and often-taken-for granted views of privilege in our way of thinking. We are called upon (usually implicitly, but often explicitly) to think about how we think and to challenge our assumptions. It is a call for all of us to rediscover the indigenous nuggets of hope and wisdom that are buried in us that will make tomorrow better than today. Despite the ravages of the rapacious, the eco-humanist manifesto of adivasi/indigenous/tribal peoples’ phronesis not only offers much food for thought but, more importantly, is an urgent and inspiring call to action - raising awareness and increasing happiness.

 

Dutch philosopher Floris van den Berg proposes a new perspective, called universal subjectivism, which can be adopted by anyone regardless of religious or philosophical orientation. It takes into consideration the universal capacity for suffering and, through raising awareness, seeks to diminish that suffering and increase happiness. With consistent and compelling moral reasoning, van den Berg shows that the world can be organized to ensure more pleasure, beauty, justice, happiness, health, freedom, animal welfare, and sustainability.

 

References

Pinar, W.F. (2006). The synoptic text today and other essays. Curriculum development after the

reconceptualization. New York: Peter Lang.

 

Öquist, O. (1992). Tyst erfarenhet. Stockholm: Carlssons.

 

 

Reflexive Pedagogy: Discovering Self with the Other

Reflexive Pedagogy: Discovering Self with the Other

“We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani, as quoted in the Talmudic tractate Berakhot (55b.)

 

Abstract

Reflexive Pedagogy is directed first at the SELF and gradually overflows and embraces the OTHER. It offers, teachers and particularly teacher educators a process to examine the often conflicting ethical, social, emotional, and intellectual messages that they offer to learners about what it means to be a TEACHER. While reflexivity remains an integral part of ensuring the transparency and quality of the research inquiry, its role in teacher education among teacher educators in India has merited scant attention. A Structured Learning Experience (SLE) drawing on Experiential Learning (EL) techniques is offered to Teacher Educators to ‘Discover Self through the Other’

Key Words: reflexive pedagogy, structured learning experience, experiential learning, self discovery,

 

A Structured Learning Experience to Discover SELF with the help of the OTHER. Is this even possible – see for yourself!

Through this interesting game YOU are invited to discover a bit, perhaps more of YOURSELF through the eyes of the OTHER.

The facilitator / Teacher / Teacher Educator, suggests to the participants – ‘I am inviting you to pick an object  ... which you believe ‘says’ something ... an important ‘aspect’ of yourself  ... any object that is around you ... (the lesser the instructions the better ...) you could add ‘... please avoid plucking flowers etc ... I am sure there are lots objects ... around you that does ‘depict’ an important part of yourself ...’ (best ... to avoid giving examples ... cos most folks tend to ‘follow examples’)

While you go about picking that object that you believe depicts an important aspect of you ... a  request – PERFECT SILENCE ... NOT TO TALK TO/WITH ANYBODY and  DO NOT SHOW THE OBJECT TO ANY OTHER PERSON ...

You could add ... not talking is going to be difficult  ... but believe me. ... you will soon understand WHY ? ....

By this time you have selected a suitable space .. where the participants can comfortably stand around in a circle ... and before the participants come in with their selected objects.... position yourself in the space you have chosen ... and silently indicate to the participant to ‘place’ their object right in the middle of the space you have chosen ... the golden rule... the lesser the instruction ... the better ...to queries such as ‘should I place it here ...?’ you could just nod or say ‘yes’

Once all the objects have been placed in the middle ... and with the participants standing around in a circle ... yes a large circle ... with all the chosen objects right in the middle of the newly formed circle ... there is bound to be a lot of chit chat and giggling  ...

After they are sufficiently curious as to what comes next ... you could get started by ... inviting at random any two persons (a name list of the participants, would be useful) to the centre ...it’s important you ‘choose the two’ and better  to choose those from different points of the circle ... not a pair standing together ...

With the two now in the middle, near the chosen objects, with the others watching  ... the activity starts... invite them to say their names... and whether they know each other ... if they know each other ... would they know the object ... chosen by the other ... ?Even if the answer is YES ... you could still proceed ...

Invite one person to ‘pick out’ the object that represents the other ... well he/she may say ... how is it possible ... etc? ‘It is not possible ...’ You could help by adding...TRY ... it is very interesting to note how persons respond to this request ... pick out the object that represents the other ...

Observe carefully the hesitation or confidence with which the person picks out the object... some may just ‘refuse’ ... but you could add ... just GUESS, and do pick an object ... it is important that you pick an object ... that you think represents ... the other person now standing with you ...

Once the object has been picked... ask the person who picked the object ... to name the ‘quality’ that she sees in the object ... that represents the other...

Most folks start describing the object ... intervene and say ... ‘what quality about the other do you see ... in the object that you are now holding ... what could that quality of hers/ his made him/ her choose this particular object ... with which you think she chose to describe herself....’ there is bound to be a lot of silence .. and kindly note the silence the gestures, the hesitation, the words giggles ...(in your analysis .. you could recall ...with your participants ...’do you remember how he/she hesitated to guess ...’)

In most cases when a person is asked to pick an object it is usually the wrong object.... and this is revealed only after the person has painstakingly tried to describe the other ...

At the end of the description ask the person who was being described ... is this the object you chose ... if the answer is yes... then you could ask him/him .. was the other person able to identify the quality that you saw of yourself in the object ... ?

If the other person has failed to choose the right object... ask the person being described to now pick out the object she/he chose ... and offer it to the other person ... now you could add ... now that you have the correct object he/she chose ... could you identify the quality that he/she sees of him/herself in the object that you are now holding in your hand?

Try this with a few more pairs, senior most and junior most, two best friends, different subject teachers, male and female ...

When a few pairs have tried to identify the other ... and when they have all gone back to the larger circle ... ASK THE PARTICIPANTS ... WHAT DO YOU THINK IS HAPPENING NOW ... HOW DO WE SEE THE OTHER? WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD ... TO WHAT WE ARE DISCUSSING...? ALLOW THE PARTICIPANTS TO SPEAK ... THIS IS VERY INSIGHTFUL AND A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR PEER LEARNING...

An analysis of the objects: after having invited three or four sets of people ... draw the attention of the participants to the objects themselves ... ask them to come closer... and ask ... now what do you ‘see’ ... can you ‘really’ identify folks from their appearance ...? How accurate are we in our observations of the other?  

Invite them into their classrooms ...What about the children in your classrooms... how would they want you to ‘see’ them ... which is that quality or qualities that they so desperately wish for you to notice ... On a more personal note ... invite them to their homes... ‘do you even see your sons and daughters, spouse ...’ as they really are?

Look at these objects... what do you see... yes like these objects... we just see stones, leaves, flowers... and what have you ... but the truth is that these were chosen by persons to represent themselves ... now isn’t that striking... how easily we dismiss persons by their appearance? All similar yet so strikingly perceived by the self as unique ... Our tendency to generalize, conversations about the North East for example ... eight states crying out uniqueness and we reduce them all to convenient moniker.  

Let’s go a little deeper ... how many leaves do you see... are they all the same... even if they are the same... do you think that the people who chose them chose them for the same reasons ...

Take a closer look at the objects  ... Have you noticed some objects are large, colourful, bright ... yet there are others ... tiny ... hidden away and they are hardly noticed ... all this is happening as you describe the objects they have brought ...  ARE THERE PEOPLE, STUDENTS, FAMILY MEMBERS... tiny and hidden  away ... but do they really want to hide? What would you do to discover these people?

Who are the teachers, people in society, who are the most visible ...  and what about them is visible ...but from what you see would you be able to describe how they wish to be seen and known ...who are the INVISIBLE ONES ... HIDDEN AWAY FROM PUBLIC GLARE ... How does your classroom, your school make PERSONS ... VISIBLE and INVISIBLE?

By way of summing up ...You could add... you know some of you  ... must have certainly wondered ... at the beginning of this small game ... ‘what quality of mine would I want to project’, perhaps you’d never given it a thought ... representing my quality through and object ... or for others ... ‘chalo yaar ... its just a game’ ... and some of you must have gotten lost in your ‘gupshup’ ... and this is so true... most folks go through life ... not knowing who they are ... how they wish to be seen and  ...  lost in gupshup.... the most frightening truth is ... that these folks ... are to a large extent lost ... it is the folks who ... are curious to discover and know themselves ... who appear to lead  ... meaningful lives ... for themselves and for others...!

While we all agree this is a game  ... none of us would deny the fact that there is a lot of REALITY that can be seen through this STRUCTURED LEARNING EXPERIENCE.

The Emperor’s New Pair of Trousers: A Modern Day Parable

Managerial elite, corporates, business tycoons and industrialists all seem to be extremely interested to invest in the education sector. With the assertion of business priorities before inclusive education dreams, the education system needs serious attention.

 

 

 

Why does every tom, dick, hari and harini ... feel confident to sashay into EDUCATION ... ?

 

You’ve probably heard of ... NGO’s. Well, you’d be surprised as to the many other facets of this increasingly attractive tribe and its many avatars. Civil Society Organizations, Social Sector Development Organizations ... Corporate Responsibility Outfits ... Bleeding Hearts, Philanthropic Mavens, Want to give back to society wannabes, Robin Hoods, Good Samaritans, and a host of other outfits and individuals ... it’s an interesting bunch out there! What probably unites this ‘assorted combine’ is their ‘desire to develop society’ with education the most favoured tool. Now this certainly begs a fundamental question - Why does every tom, dick, hari and harini ... feel confident to sashay into EDUCATION ... ?

 

Academicians, adapting to the demands and exigencies of bureaucratic technology, have morphed into ATMs ... spewing out soiled and used ‘value’ ...  to be reused ... like all ATMs do, they too, have their ‘cashless’ moments?

 

Rationalization, consolidation, optimum resource utilization ... and a host of decontextualized corporate terms have been loosely tethered together to promote - schools being shut down. If one were to go by the admissions to the Public School System … the decreasing trends ironically indicate, subscription to Free and Compulsory Public Education is hardly attractive! 

 

An increasing awareness and aspiration among the general public, disenchanted with the ‘free doles’, have begun questioning, inquiring ... and vociferously condemning of the Public Education that they are condemned to ... like the little boy in the Emperor’s new clothes … the public outcry is ... ‘ hey, the System is naked ... ‘ 

 

A tired and ‘scale-up oriented’ (disorientated) system ... is desperate ... having long run out of ideas ... Is the above mentioned ‘assorted combine’ their knight in shining armour … their ‘wish fulfillment’?

 

Corporate ‘honchos’, wannabes and also-rans, alumni of famed ‘alma maters’ raised on a staple of ‘efficiency and accountability’ ... have identified this as the ‘yawning chasm’ in the Public Education System and have banded together for a ‘second career option’ ... 

 

Where their early careers were marked by ridiculously lavish PROFIT at any COST ... this time irrespective of the fact that they are dealing with ‘the future of life as we know it ... ‘  for corporate guys and gals ... LOSS is inevitable... but mention LIVES  ‘...  is that even a variable ... ?’ could be the retort.

 

With the hustle and bustle, chintzy accoutrements, glitzy stages, garish audio and video gimmicks, celebrities … that usually accompany the collaboration and synergy efforts of the ‘assorted combines’  ... bureaucrats of every hue and rung, as if on cue, have begun to unabashedly ... ‘applaud’ the collaboration between Civil Society Organizations and the System ... lending to these combines a very convenient and much desired legitimacy! One cannot help but wonder if these cleverly crafted attempts … are the last nails driven into the coffin meant to inter the public education system in India. 

 

For the time being, the System ... has conveniently discovered a ‘new pair of trousers’ ...  to ward off a too virulent ‘public outcry / outrage’ ...

 

And like most Indian mythical tales ... they lived happily ever after ... !!

Reflexive Identities: Interrogating the Social Genesis of Teacher Educator Subjectivities in Late Modernity

Reflexive Identities: Interrogating the Social Genesis of Teacher Educator Subjectivities in Late Modernity

 

Anthony Joseph Research Scholar Dept. of Education – CIE, DU Delhi

Poonam Barla Research Scholar Faculty of Education – BHU Varanasi

 

Extended Abstract

 

(For, 9^th International Conference, 2018 of Comparative Education Society of India (CESI) on 'Modernity, Transformative Social Identities and Education in Comparative Contexts' from 14-16 December, 2018)

 

 

Education plays a major social function in society. Bequeathing to our children and posterity an education that is centred on social justice and human welfare, particularly in times of rapid economic and social change – is easily the central concern of government officials, social innovation practitioners, social entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, as well as students who would like to contribute to the common social good. The implicit role of teachers to address this concern assumes the role of teacher educators to promote a dynamic vision of teaching and build bridges between the academic world and political and social decision-makers. This paper argues that such an implicit assumption fails to adequately problematise the social genesis of teacher educator subjectivities in late modernity and thus the central concern of ‘LEARNING to Realize Education's Promise’ (World Development Report, 2018) remains a mere wish.

 

Ways of being and becoming in teaching requires of teachers to engage with ways to strengthen and sustain self, soul, heart, identity, and leverage these key touchstones to strengthen teaching and learning. While making sense of their teaching lives and teaching selves, teachers live in an ever-changing social world, which constantly demands adjustment to their identities and actions. With the shattering of the mirror of class consciousness, modern subjects conceive of themselves as reflexive, rational individuals, as indeed they must in order to survive the insecurity created by the structural fragmentation that Beck’s metaphor below makes explicit. 

 

The emergence of reflexivity goes hand in hand with a decline in sources of meaning which situate the subject within a collective. One of the driving forces behind this is the fragmentation of the industrial class structure and the resulting changes in the sources of identity available to subjects in late modernity:

 

To express this metaphysically, one could say that the concave mirror of class consciousness shatters without disintegrating, and that each fragment produces its own total perspective, although the mirror’s surface with its myriad of tiny cracks and fissures is unable to produce a unified image. As people are removed from social ties and privatized through recurrent surges of individualization, a double effect occurs. On the one hand, forms of perception become private, and at the same time - conceiving of this along the time axis - they become ahistorical. (Beck 1992, pp. 134–135)

 

The structural fragmentation challenges teacher educators to undertake the rigourous work of discovering who they are as human beings and how this impacts who they are with their students. Such a discovery calls for a critical interrogation of the social genesis of their subjectivities particularly in late modernity. Reflexive pedagogical practice, inherent in this interrogation, looks at the ‘identity undoing’ that such practice demands from teacher educators. Such identity undoing, the paper will discuss, is found to have strong connections to the impact on identity of power relations, resistance and struggle.

 

Reflexivity, which sets of reflexive pedagogical practice, is a core concept within the sociological theory of Anthony Giddens (1991), together with Ulrick Beck and Scott Lash brought the term its most prominence, is seen as the capacity of people to be both subjects and objects to themselves (Weigert and Grecas, 2003:280).

 

Reflexivity is viewed as a two-pronged understanding of the role of the researcher, both as someone who possesses knowledge and as someone pursuing knowledge (May, 2002). We contend that this understanding of reflexivity is also well suited for the practice of teaching, and specifically well suited for the practice of teacher education. Evidently, among teacher educators there been an increased awareness and call to use reflexive methodology particularly with

post-structuralist critiques of qualitative methods that made explicit the need for researchers to situate themselves within their data (Brewer, 2005).  Teaching and learning transforms Teacher Educators to research practitioners.  Positioned as instructors, they situate themselves within their data and are required both to demonstrate a way of knowing and seek to learn from their students about their social world and the potential application of their sociological knowledge beyond the university, namely the larger society.

 

Societies are defined and managed through discourses which constitute the social terrain on which subjectivities are constructed and practiced. The interactions between and among dominant discourses, structural and institutional processes, and lived subjectivities make up the complex web of power relationships that make up late modernity (Farrugia, 2015). This paper discusses a wide variety of critical issues that have a direct role in the social genesis of teacher educator subjectivities in late modernity. These include questions about the character of contemporary societies, the periodisation of social change, the processes of change by which societies are constantly made and remade by people, the relationships between the 'social' and the 'natural', the formation and maintenance of identities and matters of epistemology and methodology in pedagogy.

Theoretically, the paper approaches teacher educator’s reflexive identities as a manifestation of late modern material inequality, and sketches a theoretical framework which accounts for the relationship between these inequalities and the subjectivities available to teacher educators in late modernity.

 

Plotting the possibilities and challenges, the paper explores how the individual constructs a self from the thousands of colloquial identities provided by a society’s culture, and reveals how the individual actualizes and sustains an integrated and stable self while navigating the sometimes treacherous waters of everyday institutional life.

 

Current discordant discourses on all too familiar - disengaged students, disenfranchised teachers, sanitized and irrelevant curricula, inadequate support for the neediest schools and students, and the tyranny of standardizing testing have ignored the social genesis of teacher educator subjectivities in late modernity.  The ‘becoming’ of a teacher educator, an important dimension in a dynamic and ever-changing educational landscape in late modernity, hardly merits mention in the policy documents related to Teacher Education, nor how embracing a pedagogy in which emergence and becoming are central aspects– raises uncomfortable power and identity issues for teacher educators. Such an omission ignores questions related to, how do teacher educators weave personal and professional identities to model teaching practices to support continued resistance and possibilities in teacher education.

 

Exploring the curricular landscape of teacher educator identity, the paper aims to raise awareness of the inextricability of teaching and learning selves and the subjects with whom and which they engage, this paper argues that such an exploration entails a critical interrogation of the social genesis of teacher educator subjectivities in late modernity. By exploring identity at this intersection, the paper invites scholars and practitioners to reconceptualize relationships with students, curriculum, and their varied contexts. Our hope is to encourage authenticity, consciousness, and criticality that will foster more liberating ways of teaching and learning.

 

Teacher educators, through this paper are invited, to envision a social genesis a shifting of power away from government control and standardization and one pointed towards empowering teacher educators to guide and further develop the unique talents of diverse individuals. A Critical and sustained engagement with reflexive identities, the paper advocates, enables teacher educators with a new and generative approach to the introduction of critical literacies and pedagogies and offers a potentially powerful way to explore theory, methodology, and social issues.

 

Key Words: reflexive identities, social genesis, teacher educator subjectivities, late modernity

Reflexive Pedagogy: Researching Teacher Education

Education and being educated are intrinsic to what people associate with being able to live a full and fulfilling life yet, ‘researching education’ or more specifically ‘researching teacher education’ today is predominantly and myopically focused on the ‘practical’ and ‘useful’, and is far removed from understanding, questioning or contributing to debates about how we can understand education ‘now’, of what happens in education from a ‘reflexivity perspective’, of what education is or ‘could be’. Research that is neither philosophically sophisticated nor engaging divests the field of any meaningful and sustained disciplinary work.

 

Surrounded and smothered by the technical and technocratic, the time spent talking and worrying about research income, quality, accountability, ‘outputs’ and ‘impacts’, never seems to be enough. Not surprisingly, the ‘endless worrying’ deflects most researchers from making regular investments and locks up their best energies in just trading on the interest. Most researchers end up digging in the same quarry of ideas, year on year to meet the requirements for the mandatory ‘research performance exercises’.

 

A performance driven quest founded fallaciously on the idea of ‘individual merit’ misses the point about developing research together, being part of ‘a community of scholars’ and thrashing out a ‘generative research programme’. Have researchers in education and teacher education, reached a stage where they can’t see much point in much of what they do anymore, and more perniciously have they gotten so very good at pretending in an elaborate game playing charade?