Through the looking glass: One preservice teacher's experience of becoming a critical teacher

The concept of journey is (explicitly or tacitly) pervasive as a metaphor for the process of becoming a critical teacher, yet the received notion of "journey" rests on a structural definition---an act of travel from one location to another---and implications of a structural metaphor of journey in preparing critical teachers are seldom interrogated in the scholarly literature. Accordingly, this dissertation study offers a case study of one preservice teacher's experience of a praxis-based structural journey that was to begin with naming a social problem and end with an integrative curriculum of social action. The focal participant was a senior student in a prestigious teacher preparation program; she was concurrently completing practica in social studies, science and an independent study on teaching for social justice. Data sources included the preservice teacher's written journals and email communication, a self-constructed video case, and transcripts of related reflective conversations facilitated by the independent study teacher (now the researcher). Following Dyson and Genishi (2005) and Bogdan and Biklen (1992), data were analyzed using a system of iterative coding to identify recurrent themes. Data were interpreted through Field and Latta's (2001) poststructural conceptualization of what it means "to experience" becoming a teacher, including their application of Neitche's (1983) concept of "active forgetting" and their reliance on Arendt's (1958) notion of praxis as pluralistic and creative action (as opposed to reflection). Interpretation was also facilitated by reliance on Fendler's (2003) critique of teacher reflection as a widely used pedagogical intervention and through literary allusions to Lewis Carroll's (1832-1898) Alice's adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking glass. The study found that the preservice teacher experienced what was supposed to be a "liberatory" and "moral" social justice approach to teaching as a paradoxically constraining rabbit hole of frustrated intentions that prompted self-doubt. Attempts to step out of the rabbit hole through a personal journey of written self-examination drove the preservice teacher deeper into the rabbit hole as she named a problem (her white identity) she could not change; oral reflection enabled by the written reflection intensified the squeeze. Caught between the structural commitments of her praxis goal of naming/addressing a social problem and the poststructural commitments of her critical literacy goal of embracing multiple perspectives of students and of social issues, this aspiring critical pedagogue became paralyzed with failure. Construction of a video case helped to alleviate paralysis enabling the preservice teacher to "actively forget" her history of defeat and discover a way to achieve her praxis goal; more importantly, conversation about her case enabled a personal insight that the praxis goal was incommensurable with the critical literacy goal. While not rejecting the viability of praxis-based integrative projects the study suggests that when critical pedagogies reflect structural notions of journey, failure to reach desired goals occasions non-journeys that may discourage critical aspirations and complicate teacher assessment. The study troubles unexamined reliance on a journey metaphor and suggests attention to incommensurable "demands" of structural or poststructural notions of journey that underlie multifarious critical pedagogies. Findings also suggest caution in the use of written and/or oral reflection as a pedagogical intervention.