Teacher Education and the Political : The power of negative thinking

Anxieties around teacher education have never been greater, nor criticisms of its practices stronger. These anxieties are manifested in recent policy developments, which are depoliticizing and de-intellectualizing teacher education. Against this background, they illustrate how contemporary theory can provide a language for critiquing recent developments and imagining new trajectories for policy and practice in teacher education.

The book assesses the implications of such policies for the work of teachers as well as for teacher educators and those undertaking initial teacher training. It is argued that these policy moves can be read as a depoliticising and de-intellectualising of teacher education. In this context, they illustrate how contemporary theory can provide a language for critiquing recent developments and imagining new trajectories for policy and practice in teacher education.

Drawing on the work of theorists from Derrida and Mouffe to Agamben and Lacan, this book argues for the need to maintain a space for intellectual autonomy as a critical dimension of the ethico-political work of teachers. Together these ideas and analyses provide examples of the power of negative thinking, illustrating its capacity to unsettle comfortable truths and foreground the political nature of teacher education.

Current teachers, teacher educators and school leaders will be particularly interested readers, alongside those concerned with policy in the wider educational landscape.