Abstract:
This presentation addresses the necessity and the limitations of critique in teacher education in the context of multiple, ongoing and emerging socio-political, economic, and environmental crises. The examination aims to: 1) contribute to discussions about the importance of critique in making visible the praxis needed to address urgent contemporary crises to which education is positioned as a response, and 2) interrogate the sometimes-reductive assumptions that inform critical inquiry and practices in teacher education. I discuss how certain limitations in the framing and application of critique in teacher education can hinder its intended goals and instead lead to transformation stasis. These limitations include a tendency towards complexity reduction and binary categorisations (e.g., oppressor vs. oppressed), tacit assumptions about the subjects of critique (teachers, students) as unitary, disembodied, and rational, and a static view of social change as a fixed and predictable endpoint. Drawing on Thiele's (2017) concept of critique as an ‘affirmative force’ and Morin's (1992) ‘the paradigm of complexity’, I sketch elements of more productive approaches to critique. These approaches avoid overly reductive solutions or utopian ideals. Instead, they recognise complexity of the subject (as fallible, always partial and implicated) while advocating for unity of purpose amidst constant divergences and uncertainties within our evolving social reality. Such an approach to critique in teacher education can help facilitate more affective responses to the multifaceted crises we face today.