From the reflective to the post-personal teacher

Abstract

Effective teaching is often connected to reflective practice. Reflection not only involves recording thoughts about what went well (or not) after class, but also to consider examples of potential bias in (re)actions to certain situations, and indeed, to one’s own evaluations of educational activities. This relates to the drive towards greater objectivity in education, and an emphasis on making educational practices and their evaluation explicit. In ‘Transcendence of the Ego’, Sartre (2004) outlines a theory in which a ‘pre-personal’ self produces itself through reflection. This production is unavoidable, and yet dangerous in how it is conflated with a more fundamental ‘pre-reflective’ state of being. This ‘pre-personal’ self, as the very foundation of consciousness, is only experienced in moments when one is fully absorbed in a task, conscious but unaware, uninterrupted by thoughts or reflections that might disrupt this ‘raptured’ state of being. Complete immersions in the task at hand find their place within educational settings, and thus, what Sartre deems as the move from the ‘pre-personal’ to the ‘produced’ self is relevant for teaching. But so too is what comes after that sense of exposure recedes. Such absorption in the task of teaching leads to might be called a ‘post-personal’ self and is often when moments of ‘good teaching’ can be found. But this proclivity for reflective action can disrupt the flow of such immersive events. This is dangerous for two reasons. Firstly, it frames teaching within a particular ‘temporality’ that fails to allow for the performance of teaching in the present moment. Secondly, it fails to account for what the experience of teaching entails. This paper attempts to argue for the space and value of such forms of suspension, and to call into question the overly metricised way in which teachers are expected to reflect.