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Interruptions: Cultivating Truth-Telling as Resistance with Pre-service Teachers

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Abstract

As ethical agents, teachers regularly must decide whether compliance to rules and norms is in the best interest of their students. Yet, teachers in the United States are educated to be passively obedient. In this paper, I argue that part of pre-service teacher education ought to learn ways of resisting. I describe one approach to verbal resistance, what Michel Foucault calls Truth-Telling. Building on a qualitative self-study with pre-service teachers, I explain how a form of team-teaching called Interruptions can promote Truth-Telling.

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Notes

  1. Though singly authored, this paper was heavily influenced by my work with Shannon. I am grateful to her for the project and her on-going discussions with me about what we both learned.

  2. I am grateful to Cecelia Traugh for helping me think through these distinctions.

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  1. University of Maine, Farmington, 186 High Street, Education Center, Rm. 303, Farmington, ME, 04938, USA

    Cara E. Furman

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  1. Cara E. Furman
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Correspondence to Cara E. Furman.

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Furman, C.E. Interruptions: Cultivating Truth-Telling as Resistance with Pre-service Teachers. Stud Philos Educ 39, 1–17 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09681-0

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