TY - JOUR
T1 - Teachers’ Changing Subjectivities
T2 - Putting the Soul to Work for the Principle of the Market or for Facilitating Risk?
AU - Mooney Simmie, Geraldine
AU - Moles, Joanne
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer Nature B.V.
PY - 2020/7/1
Y1 - 2020/7/1
N2 - Here we reconsider teachers’ changing subjectivities as autonomous agents whose practices acknowledge risk as an essential element in intellectual inquiry. We seek alternative descriptions to the limiting language of teachers’ current practices within the primacy of the market. We are convinced by Levinas’s claim that ethics is the first philosophy with its concomitant responsibility for the Other (Alterity). This provides a valuable point of departure and our understanding of its relevance is expanded by Biesta and Todd. This perspective allows interruption of the global reform ensemble with its reductionist understandings of teachers’ subjectivities within concerns for a ‘visible pedagogy’ and performativity. We illustrate how this global policy imperative is reworked in policies in the Republic of Ireland and share reflexive insights from our tutoring of teachers studying for a Master’s degree in Education. We show that teachers’ autonomy, which we understand as the capacity of teachers to facilitate risk and make ethically informed local judgements, is severely restricted by imposed standards, codes and laws to which there is tightly policed adherence. Instead we describe teachers’ practices occurring within an Invisible Pedagogy, which is not concerned with totalising and limited performativity but instead, explores risks associated with existential possibilities beyond commodification.
AB - Here we reconsider teachers’ changing subjectivities as autonomous agents whose practices acknowledge risk as an essential element in intellectual inquiry. We seek alternative descriptions to the limiting language of teachers’ current practices within the primacy of the market. We are convinced by Levinas’s claim that ethics is the first philosophy with its concomitant responsibility for the Other (Alterity). This provides a valuable point of departure and our understanding of its relevance is expanded by Biesta and Todd. This perspective allows interruption of the global reform ensemble with its reductionist understandings of teachers’ subjectivities within concerns for a ‘visible pedagogy’ and performativity. We illustrate how this global policy imperative is reworked in policies in the Republic of Ireland and share reflexive insights from our tutoring of teachers studying for a Master’s degree in Education. We show that teachers’ autonomy, which we understand as the capacity of teachers to facilitate risk and make ethically informed local judgements, is severely restricted by imposed standards, codes and laws to which there is tightly policed adherence. Instead we describe teachers’ practices occurring within an Invisible Pedagogy, which is not concerned with totalising and limited performativity but instead, explores risks associated with existential possibilities beyond commodification.
KW - Autonomy
KW - Existential possibilities
KW - Invisible Pedagogy
KW - Performativity
KW - Primacy of ethics
KW - Risk
KW - Teachers’ subjectivities
KW - Teachers’ work practices
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074493485&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11217-019-09686-9
DO - 10.1007/s11217-019-09686-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85074493485
SN - 0039-3746
VL - 39
SP - 383
EP - 398
JO - Studies in Philosophy and Education
JF - Studies in Philosophy and Education
IS - 4
ER -