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Abstract
In this study, I draw primarily upon the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987; 2009) to investigate economics education, economic subjectivity, teacher education and teacher subjectivity. The study is intended to inform the teaching and learning of economics as well as the non-linear and contextual ways teachers become teaching subjects. To do this, I deploy post-qualitative research methodologies. I begin by sharing my experiences as a middle grades social studies teacher attempting to become a teacher, particularly of economics content, in the midst of great economic and social upheaval as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. Then, I provide a literature review of economics curriculum, focusing on debates about the efficacy of neoclassic economic theory as framing economic curriculum. After the literature review, I provide an analysis of a particular set of K-12 economics standards, the Georgia Performance Standards. I argue that not only are the GPS standards neoclassic, but that neoclassic standards in general are capitalistic. Drawing on the literature review and standards analysis, I argue that economics curriculum produces particular subjects, which has implications for the values and approaches to teaching and learning of social studies. Next, I describe the methods and methodology of the larger study, wherein I employed a reflexive process to create various elicitation devices. I video and audio recorded interviews with youth ages 12-17 in local grocery stores, showed those interviews to graduate level students in a social studies methods course, and then asked four of those students to respond to, or make sense of, their in-class responses to the youths interviews. From this data I derived three chapters wherein I attend to processes of subject formation in each of the three phases of the study. Overall, I found that the things the participants said and did materialized in ways that were not predictable or understandable through current frames of economics curriculum or teacher education discourses. I drew on Deleuze and Guattaris (2009) theories of desire and becoming as well as theories of capitalistic production to theorize the data, arguing that the studys findings can provide important counternarratives in economics and teacher education.