Files
Abstract
With the dominant neoliberal discourses←→practices in education across the world and the ongoing “double pandemic” of COVID-19 and racism, there is an urgent need to support K- 12 pre- and in- service teachers in not only developing disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical tools but also grappling with the type of criticality that is crucial in addressing complex social issues and “real-world” problems: criticality that allows us to do, think, and become outside the grid of intelligibility (Foucault, 1976/1978) that comes with pre-existing critical stances and dominant institutions. Through discussion of a year-long posthuman discourse study, this dissertation explores how a range of embodied activities were (re)designed for and used in two critical multicultural-lingual teacher education courses at an R1 university in the Southeastern United States.The overarching goal of the research is four-fold: 1) (re)design an embodied curriculum for two consecutive semesters to support pre-service ESL and elementary teachers in preparing for their work in multicultural-lingual contexts; 2) examine how did some of the embodied activities create or fail to create entry points for culturally and linguistically diverse participants to engage with each other’s shared and distinct material-discursive trajectories as a way of critical-collaborative (be)coming together; 3) explore how did some of these activities support or fail to support participants in (un)making sense of complex reading materials and issues around language, race, class, gender, and beyond; 4) reflect on participants’ thoughts and feelings regarding these embodied activities.
Data analysis involved thinking with (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; St. Pierre & Jackson, 2014) posthuman and sociolinguistic theories. Specifically, theoretical constructs from Barad (e.g., 2003, 2007) and Scollon (e.g., 2001, 2008) are plugged into classroom activities spanning over two semesters, individual interviews with students who took the course, and students’ textual-visual and embodied work. Implications point to embodied activities as part of a culturally sustaining approach that pulls diverse individuals toward togetherness, openness, and the type of “criticality” yet to (be)come (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 2014; St. Pierre, 2019).