Unsworth, Ruth ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4900-3590 (2024) Researching in Uncertain Times: Exploring the Potential of An Inquiry into Modes of Existence in Teacher Education Research. In: ECER 2024, August 2024, Nicosia, Cyrpus. (Submitted)

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Abstract

This theoretical paper explores the potential of actor-network theory and its later form as [NET] (in Latour's AIME project) in teacher education research. The political, environmental and economic uncertainty of our current time has implications for teacher education that are yet to be fully grasped. Perhaps as an effort to harness teacher education in the service of social stability, many national governments increasingly seek to define and standardise the work of teacher educators — their professionalism, knowledge, practices, behaviours and beliefs— through policy. These attempts are often challenged by research which offers a more holistic, dynamic and contextually divergent view of (teacher) education, inviting us to view the work of teachers and teacher educators as necessarily uncertain (Stronach et al., 2002), rooted in dynamism and difference through its relational formation within the cultures, societies and physical worlds of different collectives (Braun et al., 2011; Nespor 1994). Moreover, against a backdrop of normative universality effected by political globalisation rooted in capitalist ideals, an argument has been made for research contributing to negative universality based in social antagonism (Kapoor and Zalloua, 2022): for researching teacher education from the perspective of the (uncertain, fluid) spaces outside of strong normative (policy and social) discourses (Rüsselbæk Hansen et al., forthcoming).
Building on the latter discourse, this paper sets out from the perspective of teacher education as a social construct and education as a discernible, yet fluid, mode of existence (Tummons, 2021). From this perspective is argued the value of ANT in its AIME form [NET] in teacher education research, as a way of coming to know education through description of all actors- normative and divergent- in its ongoing establishment, and the networked activity that holds them temporarily together. [NET] and AIME are explored in terms of the ontological and epistemological tenets by which they are characterised and the potential (and challenges) of these to the researcher of teacher education. The concept of reality as existing in a state of continuous performance and establishment offers researchers in uncertain times an approach that can encompass teacher education as a temporarily stabilised construct, explorable in terms of dynamism, fluidity and situationally dominant/ silenced/ co-opted differences (Unsworth, 2023).

If we can a view the relational and discursive creation of situated iterations of teacher education, constituent actors and the interplay(s) between them, we can comprehend its creation and inform discussion of its future in a rapidly changing, uncertain world. As a relatively underused approach to the study of teacher education, ANT and AIME offer an alternative view of teacher education, in which the human and non-human hold equal importance and in which can be encompassed dynamism, fluidity and the ‘otherness’ which comes to light more frequently in times of increased social uncertainty.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Status:	Submitted
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General) L Education > LB Theory and practice of education L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB1705-2286 Education and training of teachers L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/10731

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