Materiality, Affect, and Diverse Educational Settings: A Collaborative Inquiry Between Urban and Rural Teacher Educators

Abstract

AbstractDominant conceptualizations of urban and rural education settings position these as distinct, with each presenting contrasting opportunities and challenges in the work of teachers. Consequently, it is unsurprising that teacher education research, focused on one of these settings, by and large fails to consider the commonalities that both of these contexts may in fact possess. In this chapter, the authors (an urban teacher educator and a rural teacher educator) report on a collaborative self-study they conducted that was focused on their teacher education practices in their respective settings. The purpose was to identify how an inquiry that attends to the materiality of these diverse educative and professional contexts could inform the preparation of future teachers and contribute to emergent perspectives on urban and rural teacher education. The inquiry is conceptually grounded in new materialism. As such, the authors not only investigated their teaching practices, but also how materiality and affect functioned to shape engagement with students, the institutional setting, and each other. Findings suggest that urban and rural teacher education possess shared commonalities, that the material structures in each setting serve to shape beliefs about teaching and learning, and that affect functions as an agentic force in the enactment of pedagogical practices. The chapter provides implications for teacher education and future research.KeywordsNew materialismSelf-studyUrban educationRural educationMaterialityAffect